Out of Body Experience

[Zarathustra]

i'm having a oobx right now just realizing you two are having a civil conversation! Big Grin

c hugs malik and esmer ------> Group Hug

I think if it weren't for politics, Esmer and I would have a lot in common. I can't speak for him, but that's the way it seems from this end.

[Vraith]

I'm wondering who told Esmer about those 3 oobe's that he doesn't remember having: I specifically told everyone there not to remind him about them. Next time we meet, I'll have to possess him all over again.

Since people are reluctant to share some experiences, I'll break the ice.
I have had dreams that came true...always they were lucid ones, I knew I was dreaming and also knew they would eventually happen. [unfortunately, they're very rare, and always about crap that is unimportant or I'd be rich and powerful]
At least twice, I have actual confirmation that it was not merely some weird deja vu.
Given that, I have a hard time denying that OOBE's are at least possible.

[lucimay]

oooohhhh. well those kind of (prophetic?) dreams are another thing entirely. i think there is a thread somewhere around here about that...prophetic dreams. cause i remember telling about the houses i dreamed about.

might be in the what have you been dreaming about lately thread. not sure.

[Dromond]

I've been away for awhile after starting this thread...gotta say thanks for the responses, some are so true to form it's fantastic! (But not why I started it.)

First, Syl, nailing it, IMO, I can't believe I never thought to look it up! I never heard of sleep paralysls yet that's it, certainly.

Furls... I'm so glad you know what I'm talking about! And how beautiful (and not unexpected) to read your explanation of Gods' glorious gift to you and Stephen! (And the newer ones)

Rus, ever consistent, giving the early Christian Churchs' take...

Thank you all.

My main thought right now, why did it stop? I was a Christian when I had these experiences. I personally believe they weren't religious in nature... they stopped because, well, I don't know.I think they stopped because I fought it and my mind shut it down . I would like to experience this again. I don't expect I will.

[The Laughing Man]

i'm having a oobx right now just realizing you two are having a civil conversation! Big Grin

c hugs malik and esmer ------> Group Hug

I think if it weren't for politics, Esmer and I would have a lot in common. I can't speak for him, but that's the way it seems from this end.

yea, if only things were different, how different things would be....

I'm wondering who told Esmer about those 3 oobe's that he doesn't remember having: I specifically told everyone there not to remind him about them. Next time we meet, I'll have to possess him all over again.

Since people are reluctant to share some experiences, I'll break the ice.
I have had dreams that came true...always they were lucid ones, I knew I was dreaming and also knew they would eventually happen. [unfortunately, they're very rare, and always about crap that is unimportant or I'd be rich and powerful]
At least twice, I have actual confirmation that it was not merely some weird deja vu.
Given that, I have a hard time denying that OOBE's are at least possible.

My, how astute we are Jeff! You win the prize! anyway, those are exactly the kind I experience; always something that is going to happen, and usually something quite trivial. They sometimes involve places I have been, but most often they are places I have never been before, which makes "proving" them automatic. you can't know what things you will find or what someplace looks like that you've never been before by any other means than an OOBX...

My most recent one involved a coworker of mine, a supervisor at a new job. one night as I lay sleeping, I "woke up" in a strange house. having "been there" before (in an OOBX, not the house), I immediately knew not to panic. I knew I couldn't breathe, so not to try, as I knew I couldn't walk, so not to try. I knew it was going to go much better if I just "followed along", and paid attention to what was being "pointed out" to me, like it always does. My "attention" was then drawn to the kitchen, where I was directed to observe the custom tile work, then to the dining room to observe the custom hand made dinette set, and the "strange" chandelier hanging there. a question began to form in my mind about the chandelier and the word "stolen" appeared in my "mind". it gets cloudy from there, and then I just woke up in my bed in my home with the familiar buzzing in my belly that occurrs every time one of these events happen. I also knew it was just a matter of time before it became clear to me what the "dream" was about...

As it happens, about 6 weeks later, as we were returning from lunch, my supervisor decided to go to his house because he wanted to show me something. You guessed it: he wanted to show me the custom blue tile work in his kitchen, the custom handmade dinette set that had been in his family for generations, and his new chandelier, which I noticed at that point came from one of the shipments I had just signed for from the lighting contractor. He just laughed......and so did I.

Anyway, that's the "normal" stuff. The really weird "events" seem to have occurred without my knowledge or memory of them happening. The only way I knew they happened was because people sought me out to tell me they happened. How can this be? good question. Seems I have this innate ability to "project my image". I'm assuming this also includes my awareness, but as of yet I have not been able to retrieve any memory of those events whatsoever. The only way I know this had happened was because people asked me to stop doing it. It seems they would wake in the middle of the night to find me standing, or sitting, at the foot of their bed, or over by the wall looking at pictures or out the window, always with this "shit eating grin" on my "translucent" face. according to them they would proceed to shout at me to go away, and as I turned to them smiling and obliged, I either sank thru the floor, merged thru the wall, or floated up thru the ceiling. This happened with two seperate women on several different occasions. My most recent experience, which was totally different, happened when I was awake, and didn't involve dreaming, and involved someone I had never physically met. If this person hadn't mentioned it, again I would have had no idea anything had happened at all. I was in the act of "praying" (intending) for this person. it was a simple prayer, a general prayer, one for her enlightenment in a time of great distress. (it turns out my distress for her was greater then her distress for herself, heh.) It was nothing more than an innocent display of me "traveling on the lines of the world", as I "surfed" down a "line" coming from the sky and proceeded to "stick the landing" just inside her window. I waved my arms to get her to notice me, and according to her I then just "faded away"...

Her name is Cyndi.

So all in all, I do not deny anything like sleep paralysis or whatever occurs, but it certainly has nothing to do with whatever I have experienced. I also feel it is important to note that none of this (and other things) began to occur on a regular basis until after I had begun to study the works of Castaneda. Everything that has happened to me falls within the descriptions and instructions you will find within those books....so you see, I can't just "believe" him, I simply cannot deny it. Truth cannot be believed, it can only be known.

So Dromond, (and everyone else) I implore you to keep trying to figure this out, and keep in mind the crux of the teachings of don Juan revolve around "dreaming", and in my opinion there is no other valid source to get this information and instruction on how to reclaim the heritage all humans share and most of us have lost...

[lucimay]

thats exactly what happened. i can atest. i am the cyndi.

[The Laughing Man]

heh, I knew we'd shut this thread right down.

[Zarathustra]

As you may have guessed, I'm skeptical.

I've had dreams that later came true. Doesn't mean I traveled out of my body. It could be that sometimes we dream the future.

you can't know what things you will find or what someplace looks like that you've never been before by any other means than an OOBX...

I disagree. Having a dream that comes true doesn't mean you left your body. Like I said, it could mean you have dreamed the future. Or it could just be a coincidence. Lots of homes have tiles, dinette sets, and chandeliers.

Even if you had an OOBE, exactly as you described, why did this coincide precisely with what your boss wanted to show you? It wasn't merely displacement in space we're talking about here, but some connection to the future event of your boss pointing out those specific objects. So as long as some prescience *had* to be included, just to make sense of this, then why can't prescience explain it all?

It may seem like a small, nit-picky complaint to say it's seeing the future instead of leaving your body. But the former requires separation from your physical being, while the latter does not. The latter only requires psychic knowledge (admittedly, a big deal). Dreaming the future vs existence separate from your body is a big difference.

Anyway, that's the "normal" stuff. The really weird "events" seem to have occurred without my knowledge or memory of them happening.

Yes, I agree that's weird. But it also immediately makes them suspect. If you can't remember them, how are we supposed to take your accounts seriously? Your accounts are based on someone else's accounts. So it's a third-hand account of an extremely unusual phenomenon. The standard of proof has to be much higher than that.

Seems I have this innate ability to "project my image".

That's an incredible leap. Just because people who know you have "seen you" doesn't mean you projected the image. It could be that they were dreaming, hallucinating, etc.

I'm assuming this also includes my awareness, but as of yet I have not been able to retrieve any memory of those events whatsoever.

That's a huge assumption based on absolutely nothing. You're assuming that you've projected your own awareness, when you're not even aware of it, merely on a questionable claim made by someone else. That is a leap you can't expect the rest of us to take with you. I don't know these unnamed people, or how reliable they are. Maybe they were pulling your leg.

It seems they would wake in the middle of the night to find me standing, or sitting, at the foot of their bed, or over by the wall looking at pictures or out the window, always with this "shit eating grin" on my "translucent" face.

That's a big clue they were dreaming. I've often dreamed that I had awoken, myself. Why doesn't this phenomenon ever happen in broad daylight when people are awake? Could be a connection there.

My most recent experience, which was totally different, happened when I was awake, and didn't involve dreaming, and involved someone I had never physically met. If this person hadn't mentioned it, again I would have had no idea anything had happened at all.

Was she awake? Did this happen to her in the daytime, under "normal" conditions (i.e. sober)? How did you verify that it happened exactly the same time as your "prayer?" Had she ever seen a picture of you (from this site, for instance?). Was the image of you three dimensional, solid, complete, etc? Was stress or sleep deprivation involved?

Like I said, I'm willing to be convinced. But nothing about this is convincing. If someone else has to tell you that you have had an OOBE, then it's not much of an experience, is it? You are assigning yourself an occult power based on what could be nothing more than hallucinations or dreams of other people.

I think freaky things do indeed happen. I think I might be a little psychic, for instance. I think time and space are more dependent upon consciousness than we realize. So I am open-minded. But I've got to have more before I can believe it.

[lucimay]

i was not asleep.
i had just crawled into bed to go to sleep and taken my glasses off
and laid them on the bedside table.
i was not sleep deprived, it was a regular evening.
i had been reading as i do nearly every night before i go to bed.
i was not stoned.
i had no alchohol nor psychotropics.
i had, if i remember correctly, just folded my hands
behind my head and was looking toward the window
thinking about my day, doing inventory, as i do nearly
everynight before flopping over on my side and closing my eyes
to go to sleep.
i did know what Es looked like.
when he slid in through the window and landed on my floor
and started waving his arms i sat up on my elbows said in a sort of stage whisper (because ger was sleeping in the loft above me) "is that YOU!!"
then he disapated.
i knew it was him. no one else would choose that method of visiting.

[Zarathustra]

That IS amazing. Have you ever had anything like that happen to you before? How detailed was the image?

When I was a small child, about 5, my parents (very religious) were having a . . . I don't know what to call it . . . prayer meeting? Anyway, they were standing in a circle, praying with some of their Christian friends. I was a bored little kid, standing with them, supposed to have my eyes closed praying, too. But I had them open. Over in the corner of the room I saw this being standing there. It was all white and glowing and sparkling. It didn't scare me. It was actually very cool.

I thought it was an angel. Now, I don't know what it was. But I was definitely awake, standing, and not stoned.

So I can't dismiss your story, as crazy as it sounds. I do think it's a bit of a coincidence that it happened while you were in bed. You say you were awake, so I've got to believe you. But . . . it was dark. You had your glasses off. And you had laid down to go to sleep. I don't think it's a coincidence that people have strange experiences almost *always* when they are going to bed. The hypnagogic state is pretty weird. People often don't even realize they are asleep. Hypnagogic hallucinations are mental images occurring while falling asleep, in a state which is a precursor to sleep. So even though you thought you were awake, it's suspect.

[Loredoctor]

I'm wondering who told Esmer about those 3 oobe's that he doesn't remember having: I specifically told everyone there not to remind him about them. Next time we meet, I'll have to possess him all over again.

Since people are reluctant to share some experiences, I'll break the ice.
I have had dreams that came true...always they were lucid ones, I knew I was dreaming and also knew they would eventually happen. [unfortunately, they're very rare, and always about crap that is unimportant or I'd be rich and powerful]
At least twice, I have actual confirmation that it was not merely some weird deja vu.
Given that, I have a hard time denying that OOBE's are at least possible.

Not strictly what you are discussing, but since you mentioned Deja Vu.

I have Deja Vu all the time. But with me, it happens at the time the event is occuring. I seem to recall that I must have dreamt the event I am experiencing. However, before the event, I am never able to recall the dream. It's only during the event I think "I am sure I dreamt this." I used to think that it was something paranormal, then I read lots of articles and found out that it was something entirely normal.

As I have epilepsy, it's common for epileptics to have focal seizures in parts of their brains that cause them to think memories are being triggered as they are experiencing events. Anyway, just thought I'd share my Deja Vu experiences.

As for Out of Body Experiences, I am a massive skeptic. Although I have read heaps on the paranormal, and I am not trying to claim that I am an authority here - I used to be a believer up until I was 24 - there's alot of research that like epilepsy and deja vu, OOBEs could be abnormal brain activity.

[rusmeister]

i was not asleep.
i had just crawled into bed to go to sleep and taken my glasses off
and laid them on the bedside table.
i was not sleep deprived, it was a regular evening.
i had been reading as i do nearly every night before i go to bed.
i was not stoned.
i had no alchohol nor psychotropics.
i had, if i remember correctly, just folded my hands
behind my head and was looking toward the window
thinking about my day, doing inventory, as i do nearly
everynight before flopping over on my side and closing my eyes
to go to sleep.
i did know what Es looked like.
when he slid in through the window and landed on my floor
and started waving his arms i sat up on my elbows said in a sort of stage whisper (because ger was sleeping in the loft above me) "is that YOU!!"
then he disapated.
i knew it was him. no one else would choose that method of visiting.

I would not discount such stories.
To offer an explanation consistent with my faith, people who do not seek the protection of the Church and faith, and may be far from it would be more amenable to manipulation by demons. The phenomenon is called "prelest"

False spiritual knowledge leads to spiritual delusion (Russian prelest, Greek plani) which is the opposite of sobriety. Sobriety meaning full consciousness and self-realization (enstasis) called true spiritual knowledge or true gnosis.[14] Theoria is the highest consciousness (i.e. the whole person united to God as a relationship or process is called theosis).

The term prelest is a Russian word which has come into Englisg usage for lack of a precise equivalent, although it is often translated as "spiritual delusion ," "spiritual deception," or "illusion," accepting a delusion for reality in contrast to spiritual sobriety. Prelest carries a connotation of allurement in the sense that the serpent beguiled Eve by means of the forbidden fruit. (Apart from its spiritual context, the word in Russian is often used in a positive sense of something charming, "lovely.") Here, two Holy Fathers of recent times define prelest in greater depth, and explain the two ways in which it is applied.



Bishop Ignatius



Spiritual deception is the wounding of human nature by falsehood. Spiritual deception is the state of all men without exception, and it has been made possible by the fall of our original parents. All of us are subject to spiritual deception. Awareness of this fact is the greatest protection against it. Likewise, the greatest spiritual deception of all is to consider oneself free from it. We are all deceived, all deluded; we all find ourselves in a condition of falsehood; we all need to be liberated by the Truth. The Truth is our Lord Jesus Christ (John 8:32-14:6). Let us assimilate that Truth by faith in it; Let us cry out in prayer to this Truth, and it will draw us out of the abyss of demonic deception and self-delusion. Bitter is our state! It is that prison from which we beseech that our souls be led out ,that we may confess the name of the Lord(Ps. 141:8). It is that gloomy land into which our life has been cast by the enemy that hates and pursues us. It is that carnal-mindedness (Rom. 8:6) and knowledge Falsely so-called (I Tim. 6:20) wherewith the entire world is infected, refusing to acknowledge its illness, insisting, rather, that it is in the bloom of health. It is that "flesh and blood" which "cannot inherit the Kingdom of God"(I Cor. 15:50). It is that eternal death which is healed and destroyed by the Lord Jesus, Who is "the Resurrection and the Life" (John 11:25). Such is our state. And the perception thereof is a new reason to weep. With tears let us cry out to the Lord Jesus to bring us out of prison, to draw us Forth from the depths of the earth, and to wrest us from the jaws of death! “For this cause did our Lord Jesus Christ descent to us,” says the venerable Symeon the New Theologian, “because He wanted to rescue us from captivity and from most wicked spiritual deception."

More:
www.monachos.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-1450.html

Prelest can happen with the active involvement of spiritual powers and not necessarily be imagination on the part of the person who experiences it.

It's a good thing to have a faith that acknowledges mysticism - things we can't explain, even within the faith, but have to just accept - which if the Faith were really the conveyor of absolute Truth would logically be the case. It means I don't have to dismiss such stories as imagination.

[Zarathustra]

I would not discount such stories . . . people who do not seek the protection of the Church and faith, and may be far from it would be more amenable to manipulation by demons.

Ah, I forgot the "it could have been demons" alternative explanation.

Once you start admitting the supernatural, it really could be anything. All bets are off. Maybe it was a shape-shifting leprechaun.

I know, after suggesting prescience and telling stories of "angels," I'm not one to start poking fun. But this does point out an interesting problem. If we are willing to believe things with such little proof, we can't dismiss *anything,* even Rus's demon explanation. Which part of the above story empirically rules that out? Nothing. Once we're in territory where none of the evidence rules out an infinite amount of supernatural possibilities, we've got to admit we're dealing with belief, not fact. The OOBE explanation fits Esmer's worldview. The demon explanation fits Rus's worldview.

According to my worldview, I try to find natural explanations first before I believe an arbitrary supernatural one. I find it much more plausible that there are natural states of consciousness which are producing phenomena that people are calling "demonic possession," OOBE, ect.

[Brother Charn]

But this does point out an interesting problem. If we are willing to believe things with such little proof, we can't dismiss *anything,* even Rus's demon explanation.

Not true. The magic of belief is that it is just as easy as disbelief. The problem you have is that you keep trying to reconcile individual beliefs with one another, in an attempt to remain consistent and sort out the niggling inherent mutual exclusivities of things. ...and that is why you fail.

[Vraith]

I agree with Malik on the point that what seems like OOB could be explained by other kinds of weird phenomenon (for instance Esmer could have felt like he was projecting and...um..Lucimay? thought she saw him when in reality he was sending his image mentally and it was processed in her visual cortex). But that is just as 'mystical', or at least mysterious as if it actually occured as described.
But if people can do this, that doesn't make it 'supernatural' or imply demons might exist...it merely implies there are things people can do that aren't common, or explained yet. Having an IQ of 200 isn't common or explained either. If people can do these things, then they're natural...and they probably have a use/purpose and meaning...or at least the potential for that. There are medical schools that offer classes on learning to read auras, [not fly-by-night institutions, either...Yale or Harvard was doing this last I heard] and surgeons find it particularly useful if they can learn it...but no one really knows how it works.
Anyway, the real reason I came to this thread today: I was talking with a friend about the stuff here, he went to his bookshelf, then handed me a book...on techniques to learn OOB travel. He says he can do it sometimes, wide awake. I'm going to try to talk him into running some experiments. Any suggestions on what to try would be welcome.

[lucimay]

yes i knew that the fact that i'd taken my glasses off and gotten into bed would be the detail that would make the story suspect.
doesn't matter.
both times this has happened to me i was in bed
and the other time it happened to me (back in the 80's)
i had been in bed trying to go to sleep for quite a while
but couldn't, and i was stoned and having a major anxiety
attack.
i'm not going into detail about what happened in that incident because
its even crazier than the visiting esmer story and has nothing to do with
this discussion.
yeah. i knew the fact that i was in bed would make the experience
suspect but i'm trying to be honest.
honestly, i was not asleep.

and...truthfully, it doesn't matter in the long run anyway as i'm not really
trying to convince anyone of anything.
only backin Esmer up here with my testimony.

[Zarathustra]

Good points, Jeff. I agree that there might be some strange things our minds can do, and that this doesn't necessarily imply something supernatural. In fact, that's my whole point.

I don't think I saw an angel. But I saw something. Whether that something was in my head, or in the world, I don't know. But either explanation implies something about reality that defies my understanding. Because I've never seen one since. And I can't think of anyway that I saw it to begin with.

Perhaps there is a natural explanation for OOBEs to be possible, to be real. I just can't think of one. [Edit: actually, I just did; see next paragraph.] And in accordance with Occam's Razor, I can think of easier ways to explain it that require fewer assumptions about the nature of reality.

However, I don't rule out things like "psychic" knowledge. Seeing the future--or even seeing a distant place--doesn't seem as incredible to me in an age when time and space are relative, and Bell's Theorem has been proven. And maybe that's all an OOBE is, seeing a distant place. It doesn't mean that you leave your body, no more than watching TV means you leave your body. It just means we'd have to come up with a new, previously unexpected natural means for the transmission of information across time/space. Granted, that would entail a huge paradigm shift. But I think we might be headed that way.

[Loredoctor]

Dr Sue Blackmore is one of the leading researchers into Near Death Experiences and OOBEs. Here is an excellent article.

Near-Death Experiences: In or out of the body?

SUSAN BLACKMORE

Published in Skeptical Inquirer 1991, 16, 34-45

What is it like to die? Although most of us fear death to a greater or lesser extent, there are now more and more people who have "come back" from states close to death and have told stories of usually very pleasant and even joyful experiences at death’s door.

For many experiencers, their adventures seem unquestionably to provide evidence for life after death, and the profound effects the experience can have on them is just added confirmation. By contrast, for many scientists these experiences are just hallucinations produced by the dying brain and of no more interest than an especially vivid dream.

So which is right? Are near-death experiences (NDEs) the prelude to our life after death or the very last experience we have before oblivion? I shall argue that neither is quite right: NDEs provide no evidence for life after death, and we can best understand them by looking at neurochemistry, physiology, and psychology; but they are much more interesting than any dream. They seem completely real and can transform people’s lives. Any satisfactory theory has to understand that too—and that leads us to questions about minds, selves, and the nature of consciousness.



Deathbed Experiences

Toward the end of the last century the physical sciences and the new theory of evolution were making great progress, but many people felt that science was forcing out the traditional ideas of the spirit and soul. Spiritualism began to flourish, and people flocked to mediums to get in contact with their dead friends and relatives "on the other side." Spiritualists claimed, and indeed still claim, to have found proof of survival.

In 1882, the Society for Psychical Research was founded, and serious research on the phenomena began; but convincing evidence for survival is still lacking over one hundred years later (Blackmore 1988). In 1926, a psychical researcher and Fellow of the Royal Society, Sir William Barrett (1926), published a little book on deathbed visions. The dying apparently saw other worlds before they died and even saw and spoke to the dead. There were cases of music heard at the time of death and reports of attendants actually seeing the spirit leave the body.

With modern medical techniques, deathbed visions like these have become far less common. In those days people died at home with little or no medication and surrounded by their family and friends. Today most people die in the hospital and all too often alone. Paradoxically it is also improved medicine that has led to an increase in quite a different kind of report— that of the near-death experience.



Close Brushes with Death

Resuscitation from ever more serious heart failure has provided accounts of extraordinary experiences (although this is not the only cause of NDEs). These remained largely ignored until about 15 years ago, when Raymond Moody (1975), an American physician, published his best-selling Life After Life. He had talked with many people who had "come back from death," and he put together an account of a typical NDE. In this idealized experience a person hears himself pronounced dead. Then comes a loud buzzing or ringing noise and a long, dark tunnel. He can see his own body from a distance and watch what is happening. Soon he meets others and a "being of light" who shows him a playback of events from his life and helps him to evaluate it. At some point he gets to a barrier and knows that he has to go back. Even though he feels joy, love, and peace there, he returns to his body and life. Later he tries to tell others; but they don’t understand, and he soon gives up. Nevertheless the experience deeply affects him, especially his views about life and death.

Many scientists reacted with disbelief. They assumed Moody was at least exaggerating, but he claimed that no one had noticed the experiences before because the patients were too frightened to talk about them. The matter was soon settled by further research. One cardiologist had talked to more than 2,000 people over a period of nearly 20 years and claimed that more than half reported Moody-type experiences (Schoonmaker 1979). In 1982, a Gallup poll found that about 1 in 7 adult Americans had been close to death and about 1 in 20 had had an NDE. It appeared that Moody, at least in outline, was right. In my own research I have come across numerous reports like this one, sent to me by a woman from Cyprus:

An emergency gastrectomy was performed. On the 4th day following that operation I went into shock and became unconscious for several hours. . . Although thought to be unconscious, I remembered, for years afterwards, the entire, detailed conversation that passed between the surgeon and anaesthetist present.... I was lying above my own body, totally free of pain, and looking down at my own self with compassion for the agony I could see on the face; I was floating peacefully Then . . . I was going elsewhere, floating towards a dark, but not frightening, curtain-like area.... Then I felt total peace.

Suddenly it all changed—I was slammed back into my body again, very much aware of the agony again.



Within a few years some of the basic questions were being answered. Kenneth Ring (1980), at the University of Connecticut, surveyed 102 people who had come close to death and found almost 50 percent had had what he called a "core experience." He broke this into five stages: peace, body separation, entering the darkness (which is like the tunnel), seeing the light, and entering the light. He found that the later stages were reached by fewer people, which seems to imply that there is an ordered set of experiences waiting to unfold.

One interesting question is whether NDEs are culture specific. What little research there is suggests that in other cultures NDEs have basically the same structure, although religious background seems to influence the way it is interpreted. A few NDEs have even been recorded in children. It is interesting to note that nowadays children are more likely to see living friends than those who have died, presumably because their playmates only rarely die of diseases like scarlet fever or smallpox (Morse et al. 1986).

Perhaps more important is whether you have to be nearly dead to have an NDE. The answer is clearly no (e.g., Morse et al. 1989). Many very similar experiences are recorded of people who have taken certain drugs, were extremely tired, or, occasionally, were just carrying on their ordinary activities.

I must emphasize that these experiences seem completely real—even more real (whatever that may mean) than everyday life. The tunnel experience is not like just imagining going along a tunnel. The view from out of the body seems completely realistic, not like a dream, but as though you really are up there and looking down. Few people experience such profound emotions and insight again during their lifetimes. They do not say, "I’ve been hallucinating," "I imagined I went to heaven," or "Can I tell you about my lovely dream?" They are more likely to say, "I have been out of my body" or "I saw Grandma in heaven."

Since not everyone who comes close to death has an NDE, it is interesting to ask what sort of people are more likely to have them. Certainly you don’t need to be mentally unstable. NDEers do not differ from others in terms of their psychological health or background. Moreover, the NDE does seem to produce profound and positive personality changes (Ring 1984). After this extraordinary experience people claim that they are no longer so motivated by greed and material achievement but are more concerned about other people and their needs. Any theory of the NDE needs to account for this effect.



Explanations of the NDE

Astral Projection and the Next World: Could we have another body that is the vehicle of consciousness and leaves the physical body at death to go on to another world? This, essentially, is the doctrine of astral projection. In various forms it is very popular and appears in a great deal of New Age and occult literature.

One reason may be that out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are quite common, quite apart from their role in NDEs. Surveys have shown that anywhere from 8 percent (in Iceland) to as much as 50 percent (in special groups, such as marijuana users) have had OBEs at some time during their lives. In my own survey of residents of Bristol I found 12 percent. Typically these people had been resting or lying down and suddenly felt they had left their bodies, usually for no more than a minute or two (Blackmore 1984).

A survey of more than 50 different cultures showed that almost all of them believe in a spirit or soul that could leave the body (Shells 1978). So both the OBE and the belief in another body are common, but what does this mean? Is it just that we cannot bring ourselves to believe that we are nothing more than a mortal body and that death is the end? Or is there really another body?

You might think that such a theory has no place in science and ought to be ignored. I disagree. The only ideas that science can do nothing with are the purely metaphysical ones—ideas that have no measurable consequences and no testable predictions. But if a theory makes predictions, however bizarre, then it can be tested.

The theory of astral projection is, at least in some forms, testable. In the earliest experiments mediums claimed they were able to project their astral bodies to distant rooms and see what was happening. They claimed not to taste bitter aloes on their real tongues, but immediately screwed up their faces in disgust when the substance was placed on their (invisible) astral tongues. Unfortunately these experiments were not properly controlled (Blackmore 1982~.

In other experiments, dying people were weighed to try to detect the astral body as it left. Early this century a weight of about one ounce was claimed, but as the apparatus became more sensitive the weight dropped, implying that it was not a real effect. More recent experiments have used sophisticated detectors of ultraviolet and infrared, magnetic flux or field strength, temperature, or weight to try to capture the astral body of someone having an out-of-body experience. They have even used animals and human "detectors," but no one has yet succeeded in detecting anything reliably (Morris et al. 1978).

If something really leaves the body in OBEs, then you might expect it to be able to see at a distance, in other words to have extrasensory perception (ESP). There have been several experiments with concealed targets. One success was Tart’s subject, who lay on a bed with a five-digit number on a shelf above it (Tart 1968). During the night she had an OBE and correctly reported the number, but critics argued that she could have climbed out of the bed to look. Apart from this one, the experiments tend, like so many in parapsychology, to provide equivocal results and no clear signs of any ESP.

So, this theory has been tested but seems to have failed its tests. If there really were astral bodies I would have expected us to have found something out about them by now—other than how hard it is to track them down!

In addition there are major theoretical objections to the idea of astral bodies. If you imagine that the person has gone to another world, perhaps along some "real" tunnel, then you have to ask what relationship there is between this world and the other one. If the other world is an extension of the physical, then it ought to be observable and measurable. The astral body, astral world, and tunnel ought to be detectable in some way, and we ought to be able to say where exactly the tunnel is going. The fact that we can’t, leads many people to say the astral world is "on another plane," at a "higher level of vibration," and the like. But unless you can specify just what these mean the ideas are completely empty, even though they may sound appealing. Of course we can never prove that astral bodies don’t exist, but my guess is that they probably don’t and that this theory is not a useful way to understand OBEs.

Birth and the NDE:
Another popular theory makes dying analogous with being born: that the out-of-body experience is literally just that— reliving the moment when you emerged from your mother’s body. The tunnel is the birth canal and the white light is the light of the world into which you were born. Even the being of light can be "explained" as an attendant at the birth.

This theory was proposed by Stanislav Grof and Joan Halifax (1977) and popularized by the astronomer Carl Sagan (1979), but it is pitifully inadequate to explain the NDE. For a start the newborn infant would not see anything like a tunnel as it was being born. The birth canal is stretched and compressed and the baby usually forced through it with the top of its head, not with its eyes (which are closed anyway) pointing forward. Also it does not have the mental skills to recognize the people around, and these capacities change so much during growing that adults cannot reconstruct what it was like to be an infant.

"Hypnotic regression to past lives" is another popular claim. In fact much research shows that people who have been hypnotically regressed give the appearance of acting like a baby or a child, but it is no more than acting. For example, they don’t make drawings like a real five-year-old would do but like an adult imagines children do. Their vocabulary is too large and in general they overestimate the abilities of children at any given age. There is no evidence (even if the idea made sense) of their "really" going back in time.

Of course the most important question is whether this theory could be tested, and to some extent it can. For example, it predicts that people born by Caesarean section should not have the same tunnel experiences and OBEs. I conducted a survey of people born normally and those born by Caesarean (190 and 36 people, respectively). Almost exactly equal percentages of both groups had had tunnel experiences (36 percent) and OBEs (29 percent). I have not compared the type of birth of people coming close to death, but this would provide further evidence (Blackmore 1982b).

In response to these findings some people have argued that it is not one’s own birth that is relived but the idea of birth in general. However, this just reduces the theory to complete vacuousness.

Just Hallucinations:
Perhaps we should give up and conclude that all the experiences are "just imagination" or "nothing but hallucinations." However, this is the weakest theory of all. The experiences must, in some sense, be hallucinations, but this is not, on its own, any explanation. We have to ask why are they these kinds of hallucinations? Why tunnels?

Some say the tunnel is a symbolic representation of the gateway to another world. But then why always a tunnel and not, say, a gate, doorway, or even the great River Styx? Why the light at the end of the tunnel? And why always above the body, not below it? I have no objection to the theory that the experiences are hallucinations. I only object to the idea that you can explain them by saying, "They are just hallucinations." This explains nothing. A viable theory would answer these questions without dismissing the experiences. That, even if only in tentative form, is what I shall try to provide.

The Physiology of the Tunnel:
Tunnels do not only occur near death. They are also experienced in epilepsy and migraine, when falling asleep, meditating, or just relaxing, with pressure on both eyeballs, and with certain drugs, such as LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. I have experienced them many times myself. It is as though the whole world becomes a rushing, roaring tunnel and you are flying along it toward a bright light at the end. No doubt many readers have also been there, for surveys show that about a third of people have—like this terrified man of 28 who had just had the anesthetic for a circumcision.

I seemed to be hauled at "lightning speed" in a direct line tunnel into outer space; (not a floating sensation . . .) but like a rocket at a terrific speed. I appeared to have left my body.

In the 1930s, Heinrich Klüver, at the University of Chicago, noted four form constants in hallucinations: the tunnel, the spiral, the lattice or grating, and the cobweb. Their origin probably lies in the structure of the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes visual information. Imagine that the outside world is mapped onto the back of the eye (on the retina), and then again in the cortex. The mathematics of this mapping (at least to a reasonable approximation) is well known.

Jack Cowan, a neurobiologist at the University of Chicago, has used this mapping to account for the tunnel (Cowan 1982). Brain activity is normally kept stable by some cells inhibiting others. Disinhibition (the reduction of this inhibitory activity) produces too much activity in the brain. This can occur near death (because of lack of oxygen) or with drugs like LSD, which interfere with inhibition. Cowan uses an analogy with fluid mechanics to argue that disinhibition will induce stripes of activity that move across the cortex. Using the mapping it can easily be shown that stripes in the cortex would appear like concentric rings or spirals in the visual world. In other words, if you have stripes in the cortex you will seem to see a tunnel-like pattern of spirals or rings.

This theory is important in showing how the structure of the brain could produce the same hallucination for everyone. However, I was dubious about the idea of these moving stripes, and also Cowan’s theory doesn’t readily explain the bright light at the center. So Tom Troscianko and I, at the University of Bristol, tried to develop a simpler theory (Blackmore and Troscianko 1989). The most obvious thing about the representation in the cortex is that there are lots of cells representing the center of the visual field but very few for the edges. This means that you can see small things very clearly in the center, but if they are out at the edges you cannot. We took just this simple fact as a starting point and used a computer to simulate what would happen when you have gradually increasing electrical noise in the visual cortex.

The computer program starts with thinly spread dots of light, mapped in the same way as the cortex, with more toward the middle and very few at the edges. Gradually the number of dots increases, mimicking the increasing noise. Now the center begins to look like a white blob and the outer edges gradually get more and more dots. And so it expands until eventually the whole screen is filled with light. The appearance is just like a dark speckly tunnel with a white light at the end, and the light grows bigger and bigger (or nearer and nearer) until it fills the whole screen. (See Figure 1.)

If it seems odd that such a simple picture can give the impression that you are moving, consider two points. First, it is known that random movements in the periphery of the visual field are more likely to be interpreted by the brain as outward than inward movements (Georgeson and Harris 1978). Second, the brain infers our own movement to a great extent from what we see. Therefore, presented with an apparently growing patch of flickering white light your brain will easily interpret it as yourself moving forward into a tunnel.

The theory also makes a prediction about NDEs in the blind. If they are blind because of problems in the eye but have a normal cortex, then they too should see tunnels. But if their blindness stems from a faulty or damaged cortex, they should not. These predictions have yet to be tested.

According to this kind of theory there is, of course, no real tunnel. Nevertheless there is a real physical cause of the tunnel experience. It is noise in the visual cortex. This way we can explain the origin of the tunnel without just dismissing the experiences and without needing to invent other bodies or other worlds.

Out of the Body Experiences:
Like tunnels, OBEs are not confined to near death. They too can occur when just relaxing and falling asleep, with meditation, and in epilepsy and migraine. They can also, at least by a few people, be induced at will. I have been interested in OBEs since I had a long and dramatic experience myself (Blackmore 1982a).

It is important to remember that these experiences seem quite real. People don’t describe them as dreams or fantasies but as events that actually happened. This is, I presume, why they seek explanations in terms of other bodies or other worlds.

However, we have seen how poorly the astral projection and birth theories cope with OBEs. What we need is a theory that involves no unmeasurable entities or untestable other worlds but explains why the experiences happen; and why they seem so real.

I would start by asking why anything seems real. You might think this is obvious—after all, the things we see out there are real aren’t they? Well no, in a sense they aren’t. As perceiving creatures all we know is what our senses tell us. And our senses tell us what is "out there" by constructing models of the world with ourselves in it. The whole of the world "out there" and our own bodies are really constructions of our minds. Yet we are sure, all the time, that this construction—if you like, this "model of reality"—is "real" while the other fleeting thoughts we have are unreal. We call the rest of them daydreams, imagination, fantasies, and so on. Our brains have no trouble distinguishing "reality" from "imagination." But this distinction is not given. It is one the brain has to make for itself by deciding which of its own models represents the world "out there." I suggest it does this by comparing all the models it has at any time and choosing the most stable one as "reality."

This will normally work very well. The model created by the senses is the best and most stable the system has. It is obviously "reality," while that image I have of the bar I’m going to go to later is unstable and brief. The choice is easy. By comparison, when you are almost asleep, very frightened, or nearly dying, the model from the senses will be confused and unstable. If you are under terrible stress or suffering oxygen deprivation, then the choice won’t be so easy. All the models will be unstable.

So what will happen now? Possibly the tunnel being created by noise in the visual cortex will be the most stable model and so, according to my supposition, this will seem real. Fantasies and imagery might become more stable than the sensory model, and so seem real. The system will have lost input control.

What then should a sensible biological system do to get back to normal? I would suggest that it could try to ask itself—as it were—"Where am I? What is happening?" Even a person under severe stress will have some memory left. They might recall the accident, or know that they were in hospital for an operation, or remember the pain of the heart attack. So they will try to reconstruct, from what little they can remember, what is happening.

Now we know something very interesting about memory models. Often they are constructed in a bird’s-eye view. That is, the events or scenes are seen as though from above. If you find this strange, try to remember the last time you went to a pub or the last time you walked along the seashore. Where are "you" looking from in this recalled scene? If you are looking from above you will see what I mean.

So my explanation of the OBE becomes clear. A memory model in bird’s-eye view has taken over from the sensory model. It seems perfectly real because it is the best model the system has got at the time. Indeed, it seems real for just the same reason anything ever seems real.

This theory of the OBE leads to many testable predictions, for example, that people who habitually use bird’s-eye views should be more likely to have OBEs. Both Harvey Irwin (1986), an Australian psychologist, and myself (Blackmore 1987) have found that people who dream as though they were spectators have more OBEs, although there seems to be no difference for the waking use of different viewpoints. I have also found that people who can more easily switch viewpoints in their imagination are also more likely to report OBEs.

Of course this theory says that the OBE world is only a memory model. It should only match the real world when the person has already known about something or can deduce it from available information. This presents a big challenge for research on near death. Some researchers claim that people near death can actually see things that they couldn’t possibly have known about. For example, the American cardiologist Michael Sabom (1982) claims that patients reported the exact behavior of needles on monitoring apparatus when they had their eyes closed and appeared to be unconscious. Further, he compared these descriptions with those of people imagining they were being resuscitated and found that the real patients gave far more accurate and detailed descriptions.

There are problems with this comparison. Most important, the people really being resuscitated could probably feel some of the manipulations being done on them and hear what was going on. Hearing is the last sense to be lost and, as you will realize if you ever listen to radio plays or news, you can imagine a very clear visual image when you can only hear something. So the dying person could build up a fairly accurate picture this way. Of course hearing doesn’t allow you to see the behavior of needles, and so if Sabom is right I am wrong. We can only await further research to find out.

The Life Review:
The experience of seeing excerpts from your life flash before you is not really as mysterious as it first seems. It has long been known that stimulation of cells in the temporal lobe of the brain can produce instant experiences that seem like the reliving of memories. Also, temporal-lobe epilepsy can produce similar experiences, and such seizures can involve other limbic structures in the brain, such as the amygdala and hippocampus, which are also associated with memory.

Imagine that the noise in the dying brain stimulates cells like this. The memories will be aroused and, according to my hypothesis, if they are the most stable model the system has at that time they will seem real. For the dying person they may well be more stable than the confused and noisy sensory model.

The link between temporal-lobe epilepsy and the NDE has formed the basis of a thorough neurobiological model of the NDE (Saavedra-Aguilar and Gomez-Jeria 1989). They suggest that the brain stress consequent on the near-death episode leads to the release of neuropeptides and neurotransmitters (in particular the endogenous endorphins). These then stimulate the limbic system and other connected areas. In addition, the effect of the endorphins could account the blissful and other positive emotional states so often associated with the NDE.

Morse provided evidence that some children deprived of oxygen treated with opiates did not have NDE-like hallucinations, and he his colleagues (Morse et al. 1986) have developed a theory based on the role of the neurotransmitter serotonin, rather than the endorphins. Research on the neurochemistry of the NDE is just beginning and should provide us with much more detailed understanding of the life review.

Of course there is more to the review than just memories. The person feels as though she or he is judging these life events, being shown their significance and meaning. But this too, I suggest, is not so very strange. When the normal world of the senses is gone and memories seem real, our perspective on our life changes. We can no longer be attached to our plans, hopes, ambitions, and fears, which fade away and become unimportant, while the past comes to life again. We can only accept it as it is, and there is no one to judge it but ourselves. This is, I think, why so many NDEers say they faced their past life with acceptance and equanimity.

Other Worlds:
Now we come to what might seem the most extraordinary parts of the NDE; the worlds beyond the tunnel and OBE. But I think you can now see that they are not so extraordinary at all. In this state the outside world is no longer real, and inner worlds are. Whatever we can imagine clearly enough will seem real. And what will we imagine when we know we are dying? I am sure for many people it is the world they expect or hope to see. Their minds may turn to people they have known who have died before them or to the world they hope to enter next. Like the other images we have been considering, these will seem perfectly real.

Finally, there are those aspects of the NDE that are ineffable—they cannot be put into words. I suspect that this is because some people take yet another step, a step into nonbeing. I shall try to explain this by asking another question. What is consciousness? If you say it is a thing, another body, a substance, you will only get into the kinds of difficulty we got into with OBEs. I prefer to say that consciousness is just what it is like being a mental model. In other words, all the mental models in any person’s mind are all conscious, but only one is a model of "me." This is the one that I think of as myself and to which I relate everything else. It gives a core to my life. It allows me to think that I am a person, something that lives on all the time. It allows me to ignore the fact that "I" change from moment to moment and even disappear every night in sleep.

Now when the brain comes close to death, this model of self may simply fall apart. Now there is no self. It is a strange and dramatic experience. For there is no longer an experiencer—yet there is experience.

This state is obviously hard to describe, for the "you" who is trying to describe it cannot imagine not being. Yet this profound experience leaves its mark. The self never seems quite the same again.

The After Effects:
I think we can now see why an essentially physiological event can change people’s lives so profoundly. The experience has jolted their usual (and erroneous) view of the relationship between themselves and the world. We all too easily assume that we are some kind of persistent entity inhabiting a perishable body. But, as the Buddha taught we have to see through that illusion. The world is only a construction of an information-processing system, and the self is too. I believe that the NDE gives people a glimpse into the nature of their own minds that is hard to get any other way. Drugs can produce it temporarily, mystical experiences can do it for rare people, and long years of practice in meditation or mindfulness can do it. But the NDE can out of the blue strike anyone and show them what they never knew before, that their body is only that— a lump of flesh—that they are not so very important after all. And that is a very freeing and enlightening experience.

And Afterwards?
If my analysis of the NDE is correct, we can extrapolate to the next stage. Lack of oxygen first produces increased activity through disinhibition, but eventually it all stops. Since it is this activity that produces the mental models that give rise to consciousness, then all this will cease. There will be no more experience, no more self, and so that, as far as my constructed self is concerned, is the end.

So, are NDEs in or out of the body? I should say neither, for neither experiences nor selves have any location. It is finally death that dissolves the illusion that we are a solid self inside a body.



Note

In November 19901 visited the Netherlands to give two lectures. The first, on parapsychology, was part of a series organized by the Studium Generale of the University of Utrecht and titled "Science Confronts the Paranormal." The second was at the Skepsis Conference. Skepsis refers to the very active Dutch skeptics organization called Stichting Skepsis, which means "skeptical foundation." Cornelis de Jager, professor emeritus in astronomy, is the Chair. Skepsis was established in 1987 and publishes the journal Skepter. Stichting Skepsis also publishes conference proceedings and monographs on subjects like reincarnation, spiritism, and homeopathy. As its purpose is to educate the public, Skepsis received a starting grant from the government but is now self-supporting, thanks to many generous donations. This is the lecture I presented at the organization’s 1990 conference, on "Belief in the Paranormal."



References

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[Zarathustra]

And now I've got something to read this weekend! Seriously, that's going to take some time. But it looks interesting.

[Loredoctor]

And now I've got something to read this weekend! Seriously, that's going to take some time. But it looks interesting.

Thought you'd like it, Malik.