(I’ve written a thread about doing this while in a dream in the adventures forum, read that first).
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As for the theory behind it, dreams are - from that point of view - simply astral projections. When you’re dreaming you’re in the astral plane, but not the astral world (astral equivalent of the real world). /edit: To get from the astral plane to a specific world, go through a symbol while mentally outside your body. The astral world has its own symbol, just like the physical one has (the physical ones being the hexagram). Once you’re there, you can gradually ‘wake’ your senses there, which at the same time puts the equivalent in your body to sleep. To get back, just put all senses except for vision and consciousness out again, then step through the exact same symbol again (not necessarily in the same place, just same color, shape and so on). edit/
As for achieving the same thing directly from a wake state, simply put your brain, your eyes and most importantly your hypophysis (roughly the bottom middle part of your brain, about the height of your eyes) to sleep. Doing this with the latter has the strongest noticeable effects, it’s like being cut off from your body, you’ll gradually lose all senses except for vision. Just putting the whole body to sleep does not achieve the same result - if you do that, you get to the dream state, but are still linked to your other senses (in other words your mental body is clinging to your astral body).
Don’t forget to wake your body up again afterwards, just sleeping does -not- return you to the normal state, most importantly completely wake the hypophysis up again. It’ll probably take some time until you understand how exactly putting part of your body to sleep works (it’s just ‘let it happen’ basically).
You’ll need to also consciously relax your body, either switch between putting to sleep and relaxing or do both at the same time. It’s the same when you’re waking your body up again, though you’ll probably need less relaxation to get it done - it’s best to get as relaxed as you can though, helps when you work on getting out again.
Going to sleep while in that state (partially having put the mentioned parts of your body to sleep but not yet being separated from your body) is - at least for me - very hard, the body feels quite hot in strange way and you’re kinda ‘energetic’, but in an unpleasant way. That feeling is reduced by training, you get more used to that state of being after a while.
Anyway, whoever tries this out, I’m interested in hearing the results.