The Monroe institute states that R V is astral travelling. I feel it's sending a portion of your consciousness out through the 3rd eye. Thoughts please

I can only share my point of view, but because it is long and I do not want to copy the same thing twice, if you are interested, you can go to the post below titled 'How I understand remote viewing.'

https://www.farsightprime.com/forums/general/79769-how-i-understand-remote-viewing

No they are different. Remote Viewing is not astral travel.

I have done both.

And they are slightly different. In OBE you exit your physical body and can fly around while your body is in paralysis, in remote viewing your body is awake active but you can co-locate your consciousness. Both take training, practice and are separate skills to develop. But once you get the a full co-locations of consciousness at the target sight, there are not so many differences between the two.

It should be noted that some remote viewers use OBE's for all their data, and some never use that method. Remote viewing is much easier, as the OBE exit require you to put your body inparalisis - more like let it go there, completely not acknowledging your body existence and then travel and observe at the speed of thought and you don't have much logic or memory to work from so the intension you carry into the OBE is really helpful if you get an exit to get to the target.

Aziz did an OBE in the comment mysteries target a few months back and got assistance from a second biological being during the co-locations of consciousness and reported 4k high definition imagery. I have had that 4k OBE a few times is really impressive how detailed it can be.

It is important to know that you can get the same data with either method as it works with the same physics and subatomic inter dimensional plasma particles.

Anyway that is my current understanding, could change with time and experience.

They are both mentalic skills that rely on our collective consciousness to work. AP is generally considered easier to achieve, as it explores the upper plane in the current time, while RV moves forward or backward along your current 4th-dimensional path, as well as someone else's.