The out of body experience part 1

The out of body experience are known by many labels such as astral travel, astral projection, OOBE’s and OBE’s. A simple definition is: the spirit/soul leaves the physical body to explore other planes of existence or the physical plane without the body. Out-of-the-body experiences (OBE's) are usually brief experiences where a person seems to leave their body and to view the world from a point of other than where they would have if they were he still 'in' their body. In some cases the experiments claim that they 'saw' and 'heard' things. They saw objects which were really there, events and conversations which really took place. These things could not have been seen or heard from the actual positions of their bodies.

OBE's are surprisingly common. Different surveys have yielded somewhat different results but one would not be too far wrong if one said that somewhere between one person in ten and one person in twenty is likely to have had such an experience at least once. It seems that OBE's can occur to anyone in almost any circumstances. They are most frequent during sleep, during unconsciousness following anaesthesia or a bang on the head and during stress. Not all OBE's occur spontaneously. Some people have, by various techniques, learned the ability to induce them more or less when they wish to and a number have written detailed accounts of their experiences.

OBE's, especially spontaneous ones, are often very vivid and resemble everyday, waking experiences rather than dreams. They may make a considerable impression on those who experience them. Some people may find it hard to believe that they did not leave their bodies. They may draw the conclusion that we possess a separable soul, perhaps linked to a second body. This second body will survive in a state of full consciousness, perhaps even of enhanced consciousness after death. Death would be an OBE where one did not succeed in getting back into one's body.

Such conclusions present themselves even more forcefully to the minds of those who have experienced the type of OBE known as a 'near-death experiences' or NDE's. It is not uncommon for people who have been to the brink of death and returned, following a heart attack or serious injuries from an accident, to report an experience of leaving their bodies and travelling. They report travelling in a duplicate body to the border of a new and wonderful realm. These experiences are often reported as being very vivid. Reports suggest that the conscious self's awareness outside the body is enhanced and events which occurred during the period of unconsciousness are described in accurate detail and confirmed by those present.

Many OBE's are experienced by people who believe them to be flying dreams and they never consider them to be anything other than this. It is generally believed that dreams of flying or floating are OBE's. Astral: While you can read the information presented by others that are perhaps experienced astral travellers one must find their own path. While OBE’s my be a part of one person’s reality they might not be part of yours. Once you have read what is written on the topic of OBE’s you can practise and practise and see where you end up.

We don't really know what OBE’s are, how they're triggered or what actually happens. We can't prove very much about anything. We can be reasonably convinced but that's not the same. The mindset that demands concrete empirical data regarding OBE’s will not find truth. We don't have instruments that can detect the energy fields. The values and beliefs we have leave little conceptual space for the research effort required. It is hard for the western sciences to truly engage the phenomenon.

Whilst studying books and reading accounts of non-physical travels can be useful the only true way to understand them is to experience them yourself. You then have personally verifiable explorations on which to base your view of reality. The following will help you to get started.

The benefits of truly knowing the validity of out-of-body travel are immense:

a sense of knowing that you are more than your physical body

a greater understanding of your true identity
knowledge of life after death
overcoming personal limitations and fears
accelerated personal development
solving personal problems from a more expanded viewpoint
replacing limiting beliefs with what you personally know.

These are just a few of the benefits. Any expansion of consciousness is a good thing. Many people who have had OBE’s report them to be life-changing events. An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) are sometimes explained as a Wake-initiated lucid dream. They are an experience that usually involves a sensation of floating outside of your body. In some cases, one can see one's physical body from a place outside one's body (autoscopy). About one in ten people claim to have had an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives.

In some cases the phenomenon appears to occur spontaneously. In others it is associated with a near-death experience, use of psychedelic drugs or a dream like state. It is possible to induce the experience deliberately through visualization while in a relaxed, meditative state. Recent studies have shown that OBE’s can be induced by direct brain stimulation.

The subject may have willed themselves out of their bodies or found themselves being pulled from their bodies which are usually preceded by a feeling of paralysis. In other cases, the feeling of being outside the body was something realized after the fact. The subjects saw their own bodies almost by accident. The experience may occur with a spiritual epiphany or a more general feeling of peacefulness and love. Others have experienced fear and anxiety. For some there is no direct spiritual experience other than the OBE itself. OBE’s are not generally long. They usually last around a minute or so. The subjective experience may be described as being much longer than the objective time which passed.

The OBE may or may not be followed by other experiences which are reported as being as vivid as the OBE feeling. Sometimes the subject may fade into a state self reported as dreaming or they may wake completely. The OBE is sometimes ended due to a fear of getting "too far away" from the body. Many end with a feeling of suddenly "popping" or "snapping" and sometimes a "pulling" back into their bodies. Some people report being "sucked back" into their physical body.

A majority describe the end of the experience by saying "then I woke up". However those who describe the experience as something fantastic that occurs during sleep and who describe the end of the experience by saying "and then I woke up" are very specific in describing their experience as one which was not a dream. Many described a sense of feeling more awake than they felt when they were normally awake. One compared the experience to that of lucid dreaming but said it was "more real".

People often report having these experiences after suffering from traumatic experiences such as motor vehicle accidents. They are able to recall the accident as if observing from a somewhere outside the vehicle.

Whether OBE’s reflect reality remains controversial. It is reported that some of those who recall the experience remember visiting places and people they have never been to or seen before. When the individual retraces their experience they learn that these people and places do exist.

OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES AND LUCID DREAMS
OBEs are highly arousing. They can be deeply disturbing or profoundly moving. Understanding the nature of this potent experience would help us better understand the experience of being alive and human. We have already said what an OBE is. Another idea is that they are hallucinations. If this is the case then an explanation needs to be discovered to say why so many people have the same delusion. Some experiments have led people to believe that OBE’s are a natural phenomenon arising out of normal brain processes. Some believe that OBE’s are a mental event that happens to healthy people. The person retains the feeling of having a body but that feeling is no longer derived from information given by the senses. The person having an OBE perceives a world that resembles the world they generally inhabit while awake but this perception does not come from the senses either. The vivid body and world of the OBE is made possible by our brain's ability to create convincing images of the world even in the absence of sensory information. This process is witnessed by each of us every night in our dreams. All dreams could be called OBEs in that we experience events and places quite apart from the real location and activity of our bodies.

Out of Body Experience - What is it?
An "out of body experience" (OBE) can be defined as the process of transiently separating the spirit from the physical body so that the person and world are observed from outside of the body. OBE's are also known as astral projections. There are several ways people perceive an out of body experience. This can include dreams, daydreams and memories. People have reported having out of body experiences while under the influence of drugs, induced by some sort of trauma and near death experiences. Astral projection is taught through books, the internet and religious techniques. An out of body experience is clearer than a dream or daydream. Those who practice astral projections claim that their senses are enhanced allowing them to see and feel without physical constraint. The origins of out of body experiences are unknown. OBE's have been practiced for many years in several different cultures. The New Age Movement is well known for promoting and using this practice.

Out of Body Experience - Why Do People Seek It?
Out of body experiences are sought after by those who wish to gain knowledge or power in the spiritual realm, those who endeavour to help people, are curious or want to be entertained. In some rare cases people seek OBE's to cause harm to others. Mostly OBE’s are desired for a spiritual reason such as reaching a higher level of consciousness or enlightenment.

Out of Body Experience - What Does the Bible Teach Us?
According to some, OBE’s are justified in the Bible, citing several scriptures. Unfortunately, those interpretations have been taken out of context or they do not address the culture of that time. In the Bible, an OBE is regarded as an occult practice. The greatest evidence against OBE is that God's people didn't perform them. In all of the scriptures mentioning "in the spirit" or "caught up in the spirit," the people didn't look to have an OBE. Instead, God came to specific people revealing things for a specific purpose. These events occurred to glorify God and reveal His love for His people. The people did not try to have an out of body experience for personal gain or to get clarity about the world or God.

Out of Body Experience - Is There Potential Harm?
Some argue that there's no harm in having an OBE. In the Bible, it's clear that we are not to participate in occult practices. OBE’s were not part of the teachings of God. OBE’s could be defined as divination, sorcery, interpreting of omens, engaging in witchcraft or spell casting. Those who perform OBE may be referred to as mediums. Overall, these practices are detestable in the eyes of God. There could also be emotional, physical, mental, and/or spiritual harm associated with OBE’s. Since OBE’s are not condoned by God, it would lead us to believe that there is another force behind these phenomena. While having an OBE, one should remember that we need to be prepared for action, self-controlled, set on the hope given to us, obedient and not conform to our evil.

An out-of-body experience (or OBE, or OOBE) is characterized by subjective perception from a vantage point outside of one¹s physical body. It is sometimes associated with near-death experiences, hypnopompic or hypnagogic dreams, mystical trances or occult phenomena and psychoactive drugs.

An OBE may be contrasted with astral projection which does not require the perception of one's own body from the outside. Astral projection does not posit that a person’s consciousness or soul is travelling through our day-to-day physical reality. An OBE may be contrasted with dreaming, lucid or otherwise, by the intense sense of being awake and aware of the reality of the experience.

Not every OBE has exactly the same aspects. There may be several different types of OBE that have different causes and meanings. Some observations can be made based on collections of firsthand accounts of "spontaneous" OBEs - those that were not part of a planned program to induce the experience

In a majority of cases, the subject reported being asleep, on the verge of sleep or having been asleep shortly before. A reasonably large percentage of these cases refer to situations where they were not in a deep sleep. This was due to illness, noises in other rooms, emotional stress, and exhaustion from overworking and frequent re-awakening.
Comparing the experience to that of lucid dreaming, it feels more real.
Opinions regarding the objective reality of OBEs are mixed. A number of people believe the phenomenon is exactly what it feels like and that the soul is leaving the body and exploring. Many OBE accounts are positive that the usual explanation that it was a dream experience is insufficient and they often cite the experience as having a spiritual effect.

Despite claims of some "projectors" who claim that they can initiate the experience at will, there is no reliable evidence that any imagery or information acquired during the experience could not have come from normal sources.

While the subjective experience may be very compelling, most sceptics discount the idea that the phenomenon is linked to an actual physical relocation of consciousness. They point out that, in the absence of the typical conviction that the experience is real; these experiences would be considered dreams. Lacking hard evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation would be that the subject’s sense of heightened reality regardless of how powerful is a subjective one.

In support of this, some neurologists point to experiments in the context of treatment of epilepsy involving electrical stimulus to a particular part of the brain, the right angular gyrus which is located in the parietal lobe. They produce subjective experiences having all of the features of an OBE, including the sense of enhanced reality and extreme disembodiment. This evidence, as well as similar results involving use of the drug ketamine, supports the hypothesis that at some OBEs are caused by an unusual but natural brain state in which one's body perception and sense of reality are altered.

Sceptics also point to the increasing amount of evidence which ties mental functions such as perception and memory to physical processes which occur in the brain. They also point out that no known mechanism would account for how these processes could occur at a distance (the mind-body problem). In some instances, such as patients during surgery, people describe OBE’s where they see something they could not possibly have seen while under anaesthesia.

OBE's cannot be disproved but at the same time there is no solid evidence that anyone has left their body either. Many subjects have made detailed observations they reportedly could not have made by any other means. These have not yet been studied to the satisfaction of the scientific community.

Messages received from out of body experiences are generally in the form of symbols or archetypes that you may or may not recognize at first.
'Out-of-body' experiences may come from within (23 August, 2005)
Psychologists at The University of Manchester are investigating the idea that OBE’s commonly thought of as paranormal phenomena, may have their roots in how people perceive and experience their own bodies.

Around 10% of the population have an OBE at some time. This involves a sensation of floating and seeing the physical body from the outside. It isn't uncommon for people to have more than one OBE. They may occur as part of the wider near-death experience some report experiencing in life-threatening circumstances.

Despite the high incidence of OBEs, there is still a much that scientists don't know about the phenomenon.

Out-of-Body Experiences and Survival after Death
Some people believe that OBE’s provide indirect support for the survival hypothesis. They claim that OBE’s show that the self, personality or mind can operate apart from the body which shows that a human being is not merely a physical system. In that case we have a good reason to believe in survival of bodily death.

People having OBE’s feel as if they travel to and observe the world from locations outside the physical body. OBE’s occur under a number of conditions including ordinary waking states, times of relaxation, periods of crisis, physical trauma and life-threatening events. Many of the latter cases are so-called near-death experiences (NDE’s) but not every NDE is an OBE. Most OBE’s are involuntary but some can apparently induce them at will. During the experience which can last from seconds to more than an hour, subjects appear to have unusually clear but otherwise normal sense perceptions of their environment and physical body. In many cases, they experience themselves as having a secondary body which is often called a subtle, astral, orparasomatic body. Some say the secondary body resembles the physical body and others believe it to be infused throughout or located within the physical body. OBE’s often feel that their main consciousness is somehow centred within the secondary body, in almost the same way as it seems to be located within the physical body during ordinary waking states. When subjects experience their secondary body as travelling considerable distances from their physical body, they experience their main consciousness as going along with it. In veridical OBEs, subjects gain information about remote locations which they couldn't have gained through normal sense perception. In other cases, people report seeing the subject at the site that person is visiting.

Although in a majority of OBEs subjects apparently perceive the world from positions outside their bodies, some OBEs seem to lack perceptual content. However, these rare cases needn't concern us here.

Some believe that all OBEs are illusory. OBEs may be unusually vivid and personally compelling but they reveal nothing more than sometimes formidable psychological creativity. Others regard OBEs as providing evidence, not of our imaginative capacities, but of our psychic functioning. They claim that OBEs demonstrate the mind's ability to influence and gather information about distant events. Others believe that OBEs indirectly support the survival hypothesis. From their perspective, OBEs show that the self, personality, or mind can operate apart from the body which shows that a human being isn't merely a physical system. If this is the case, we have good reason to believe in survival of bodily death.

This last line of reasoning may be traced back to the early days of the Society for Psychical Research. Even this still has adherents and all along philosophers have taken the view quite seriously. In recent years philosophers have been unusually attentive to the topic of OBEs and survival. These latest participants in the debate disagree perhaps more than their predecessors on the meaning of the evidence. Some claim that OBE’s provide strong support for the survival hypothesis, whereas others argue that it provides none. Some argue that the survival hypothesis is more probable in light of the evidence.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, OBE’s weren't called out-of-body experiences. They were discussed under the headings of veridical phantasms or travelling clairvoyance.

During an OBE one seems to be feeling, perceiving, thinking, deciding and acting while being apart from one's body including one's brain. This experience gives strong prima facie support to the idea that when the body dies the core of the person will continue to have experiences.

If OBE experiences give those who have them knowledge of the events they witness from places outside of their bodies, this weakens the claim that we are tied to our bodies in a way that our veridical perception is impossible without a modification to our sense organs. It strengthens the claim that subjects were, in some manner, situated in a place outside of their bodies for this is the place from which they perceive.

If people can literally leave their bodies, then human personality is something distinct from the body itself. The person who leaves their body and then returns to it must be something more than just a very complex organism whose properties are revealed by physical science. Such a person would need to be some sort of non-physical being that lives in the body.

The OBE Argument
Explanations of OBEs tend to divide into two broad classes. According to the first, consciousness is physically separable from the body. The subjects mind or mental states are at the sites from which the subject seems to perceive. According to the second explanation, the experience of being outside the body is always illusory. Some researchers label these options the extra somatic and intrasomatic hypotheses. Others call them the externalist and internalist hypotheses.

Many externalists take the view for which Broad imported the term "animism" (Broad, 1962). Behind this view is an intuition that many feel is too obvious to mention and which many philosophers and scientists have held since antiquity. The feeling is that an individual's thoughts, feelings and dispositional capacities can exist only so long as they are grounded in or supported by an underlying substrate. Whatever that substrate turns out to be, it must enable our mental capacities and psychological characteristics to persist over time. For example, we assume that people have psychological attributes and traits when those characteristics are not being expressed - for example, during sleep or unconsciousness. Most people believe this is possible because these capacities and traits are somehow rooted in the body. Some might think that this substrate has another feature as well. It allows us to express our mental states and capacities in a similar way that the physical body does. That would be denied by those who accept reincarnation. They would say although our capacities and memories persist in a substrate between incarnations we need a physical body in order to express them. It's a widespread thought that mental states must be grounded in some kind of substrate if they are to exist and persist at all. If our mental capacities and traits can operate apart from the body and persist even after bodily death and dissolution, it would appear that some substrate besides the normal physical body makes this possible.

According to the animist, each human mind before and after bodily death is inseparably tied to some kind of extended quasi-physical vehicle, which is not normally perceptible to the senses of human beings in their present life. This is what some identify as the secondary or astral body they experience during OBE’ and which observers at remote locations apparently see in reciprocal cases. One could argue that a human mind "informs" its secondary body which constitutes the unit we call the human "soul." Before death, a human being would be composed of two intimately but only temporarily connected things, a soul and a physical body. We can explain their relationship by saying that the soul "animates" the physical body. The animist regards death as a type of OBE where one's soul never returns to animate the physical body. Philosophically, this view has an ancient and distinguished lineage with roots traceable as far back as Plato's Phaedo.

We're now in a position to consider what some call the OBE Argument for survival. The difficulties of this argument emerge clearly from a step-by-step examination. This idealized version of the OBE Argument is a number of claims taken from the views of some philosophers
Some accounts of OBEs are authentic. The experiences happen as largely as they are reported).
Some OBEs reported in those accounts are veridical. The subjects accurately describe objects or events that they were not physically in a position to observe.
The veridicality of some of those OBEs is not fortuitous. There appears to be a type of causal connection between certain states of affairs and the subject describing those states of affairs correctly.
The non-fortuitous veridicality of OBEs can't be explained in conventional physiological terms or conventional psychological terms.
The non-fortuitous veridicality of OBEs can't be explained in terms of ordinary ESP.
The most plausible remaining explanation is externalism. This is the hypothesis that one's mental activity can literally be at locations different from the location occupied by one's body.
Those mental states at locations remote from the body are distinct from bodily states.
According to the survival hypothesis, one's characteristic mental activity can continue in the absence of corresponding bodily activity even after the death of the physical body.
Externalism is compatible with the survival hypothesis, even if it doesn't entail it.
The evidence for OBE’s also supports the survival hypothesis to some degree.

While some researchers agree that some OBE’s are veridical the totality of features common to OBEs that externalism handles more easily than rival explanations. Although OBE evidence alone lends some support to the survival hypothesis, when that evidence is combined with the evidence from mediumship and reincarnation, the case for survival strengthens considerably.

Out-of-Body Experiences PART 2