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Inducing the Out-of-Body Experience?

In the presence of death, many people have reported the sensation of themselves beyond a physical plane, and observing themselves as a third person. This is the out-of-body experience, or OBE.

Stories of the out-of-body experience have dated back to ancient China and Tibet. Monks in a deep state of meditation have claimed to have traveled to an astral plane, a state closer to whichever divine intelligence that they may be seeking. Many other stories relate incidences where the astral traveler is able to see incidences great distances away, and others report being able to communicate with the dead.

Scientists have claimed that they have been able to induce the out-of-body experience.

Read on to find out more about out-of-body experiences, the possible science behind it, as well as a my take on how it doesn’t quite yet explain the phenomena.

Today, the out-of-body experiences have been famously retold by people unconscious on operating tables, here’s a testimony from Sybil Burt, describing her experience:

Although the other people around me may have thought that I was unconscious, my spirit was more alive than ever and left my body lying on the bed. As I was leaving the bed, I knew what was happening and I saw for the first time in a year, my beautiful mother standing before me at the foot of the bed. Beside her stood my sister, who too had passed away one month before my mother. There was a host of heaven’s angels, or people that had also passed on before. I could not believe what my eyes were seeing before me.

Hundreds of people have come forward with accounts of OBEs very similar to Sybil’s description. They all describe the following commonalities:

• A feeling of beautiful calm.
• Seeing a tunnel of light.
• Visions of dead relatives and friends.

Many of these experiences have left lasting, powerful, and life-changing effects of these people.

Dr. Olaf Blanke, a neuroscientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland recently conducted a set of experiments requiring people to don virtual reality goggles while standing in an empty room. Subject would see themselves standing a distance away through their goggles while a camera behind them filmed their backs from a 6-foot distance.

Then Dr. Blanke stroked each person’s back for one minute with a stick while simultaneously projecting the image of the stick onto the illusory image of the person’s body.

When the strokes were synchronous, people reported the sensation of being momentarily within the illusory body. When the strokes were not synchronous, the illusion did not occur.

Here’s a video of the experiment:

According to Sandra Blakeslee from the New York Times (who was one of the first to report on the study) explains:

The research reveals that “the sense of having a body, of being in a bodily self,” is actually constructed from multiple sensory streams, said Matthew Botvinick, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Princeton University, an expert on body and mind who was not involved in the experiments.

Usually these sensory streams, which include vision, touch, balance and the sense of where one’s body is positioned in space, work together seamlessly, Prof. Botvinick said. But when the information coming from the sensory sources does not match up, when they are thrown out of synchrony, the sense of being embodied as a whole comes apart.

However, I would like to point out, although these experiments demonstrate the incredible power of the mind. But I find that there’s really lack of any evidence to demonstrate that the experiment and the experience really are related or not.

A chunk of the methods used in the experiment required the subjects to use their eyes and other senses. Most OBEs have happened when the individual is in a state of deep meditation and unconsciousness and have no access to their senses. Sure, this experiment may begin to answer how our minds are able to detach itself from our physical boundaries, but it does not even begin to start describing a ‘classical’ OBE or why they’re so similar to each other.

What about OBE accounts that are able to describe accurate details of whats happening to their bodies while unconscious? For example, being able to see who was in the room or what whats happening.

The research has yet to determine where the tunnel of light, or visions of dead relatives and friends are incorporated into the out-of-body experience. Being able to answer these questions could paint a better picture of what actually happens.

But until then, the out-of-body experience remains one of life’s mysteries, and remains just as life-changing to those who have apparently travelled to the fringe of a possible afterlife.

Reference: New York Times

Have you had an out-of-body experience? Tell us about it!