Scientists unlock mystery of out-of-body experiences (aka astral trips)

reply to post by conundrummer

That site and others, in my opinion, cast reasonable doubt on some of the details of her out of body experience. Unlike, say, UFOs, it seems like you could set up an incontrovertible OBE test because all you need is a person and a target that can't normally be seen. If the phenomenon were repeatable and conclusive, I'd be more confident in believing such stories.

Anesthesia awareness is a lot different than what the woman described. This lady was able to tell the surgeons what kind of instruments were being used as well as recount their conversations. They were doing brain surgery on her...she would not have been laying on a table, but sitting up instead with sterile drapes over the majority of her head, her head would have been secured, her eyes would have been taped shut. But she told them exact things that they were doing...things she would have had to see. Take out the brain surgery factor and say it had been abdominal surgery or something else and she was laying on a table...she'd still be draped to contain the sterile field. She would not have been able to see the surgeons at all.

Add in the fact that they had her hooked to an electroencephalogram that was monitoring her brain activity...they had to make sure she was completely unconscious before putting her on bypass, so if it were awareness they would have seen some brain activity on the EEG. And they would not have started doing anything invasive until after they had her stabilized and ready so again, there would be no explanation for her seeing the instruments. I would be very curious to know what an EEG would have looked like of all the other people out there who have been classified as having anesthesia awareness, just for comparison.

reply to post by grey580


mysteries unlocked? Hardly they barely scratched the surface and wont go much deeper. What this is showing is only what happens in the brain during the projection. And obviously something is BOUND to happen to your brain when the main component of your existence, your soul, leave the body which was made just to protect it! Cant be more easy to understand. But they dont see the soul, they cant detect it, neither its energy. All they watched is the parts of the brain that become active. Who in the world would believe that the brain alone allow these people to go outside virtually and go through matter, fly or teleport? it is beyond the capability of the brain and of these scientists... Magic and science are incompatible.One is about energies undetectable which are not even in the physical world and the other is about what it can observe else it doesnt exist.

reply to post by Meditationplus


I had the same thought today.
Like leaving the car running while you go into the store shopping.

I

Scientist don't want to dedicate themselves to doing the meditation exercises to do an OBE. So they spin you around room and force blood out of your brain. Well yeah if blood is being drawn out of your brain then you start to die. LOL Well it's a release of chemicals in the brain that cause the hallucination. Wrong again the brain does that to make the passing more comfortable. It's a purge before the plunge. The vibrations before NDE, OBE are violent, death can be painful and a violent experience. Once over that, it is peace, no pain, and a whole lot of freedom do what you will. You're no longer bound by the physical.

Everyone has these abilities. Many people trying OBE meditations fail, because it's actually a 3 part system. One is training the physical mind. The second is the deep trance to induce the vibrations. Next is the visualization methods to exit the body while in the vibrational stage. This course can take days, weeks, months, even years. Every person is different. I got out of all this and don't do it anymore. However, it took for me 3 months. One month was just reading literature and drawing up a plan and finding a meditation I am comfortable with a trial and error. It takes dedication and will power to find the answer. It's out there if you want it.

From what I've read here it seems as though the woman who claimed she could perform OBEs at will either was not tested to see if she could see things that would not normally be visible to her physical body or that she could not see anything while out of her body. I don't see an answer for either of my assumptions though.

That seems like a glaring missed opportunity by the people who performed these experiments.

reply to post by grey580


I read the article associated with another thread, so if there are clarifying details, please correct me.

She states that her "OBE" is like she cannot disassociate from her body. She is still feeling her body feelings. In essence, she has an episode of highly vivid imagination of what OBE would be like. But she doesn't disassociate from her body.

This "study" isn't a study. Its the use of expensive machinary to probe the inner workings of an active imagination. It has only a casual relationship to OBE's.

I have had several OBE during extreme emotional upheavals,this is the most vivid. The people I saw during this OBE could not see me. It was a real vivid experience and I am sure it happened, I really don't care what a scientist says about it. My ex husband had taken off with my 2 year old daughter, I was lying in bed worried and upset not knowing where they were. I don't know if I drifted off or not but suddenly I was in a hall outside of a bedroom, I had never been in that house before. I looked into the room and my daughter was asleep in a small bed. I walked over to her. There was a bright light shining through the window on her, she was dirty and still in her clothing. I got angry and realized my ex husband was talking in another room, walked into the kitchen and saw my ex talking to his stepfather. He said " I couldn't stand anymore" and I lunged at him and landed on the floor in my own home, wide awake. Call it a dream if you will but I had never been to that house or that state and later when I went there it was exactly as I had seen it. I had wondered about the light shining in the window because I knew his stepfather lived out in the country, there was a large security light 20 feet behind the house that shone into that room. The things and people I saw were as real to me as this computer is.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


In fact a NDE is actually still just a OBE. To differentiate the two, one is brought on by body trauma, or near death that triggers it. Both your body and astral body are still attached together. You can feel, see, hear everything that is going on in both locations at the same time. In fact when a OBE occurs if you look down you're still attached by a silver or golden umbilical cord coming from your naval. This cord is severed upon a real death. Like a infants umbilical cord is severed at birth. Death really is a continuance of life just in a different form.

reply to post by lost in space


Cool story. This was a trauma induced OBE. You can do it physically and mentally.

conundrummer
I'd like to believe that out of body experiences at death are from the pineal gland dumping dimethlytriptaime into the brain.

Shame that we can never really have a proper scientific discussion on this subject
considering that its against T&C's and also illegal !

but meh so much for proper debate and freedom of speech

reply to post by grey580


Interesting. It was only a matter of time since such an experience was mapped to brain signals, though I personally think that doesn't clear up the mystery much.

I think most people expect there to be specific brain signals during such an experience (since all our sensory information filters through the body-mind complex ultimately) but that doesn't do much in terms of confirming if people actually witness a realistic 'real-time' view of their surroundings/body or rather just an illusion of what the brain believes such a view should look like.

Ultimately, it doesn't define whether the experience involves some sort of 'external' point of view for consciousness (I.e supernatural/psychic/spiritual) or if the experience is completely internalised and a product of a clever 'guess' by the brain.

I've experienced an out-of-body saga that lasted for about 10 seconds. I was lying on my bed ready to go sleep and I remember the sensation of feeling like I was floating out of my body, and suddenly my view 'snapped' to a point from the top corner of my room - and I could look around and see my body lying on the bed and my rooms contents etc. Everything appeared to be in the right place and my body was also in the correct configuration in relation to how I was actually lying. It blew my mind to be honest. Very weird experience.

Since then, I've come close to having a similar sort of experience. Sometimes I'll be sat upright and I'll close my eyes for whatever reason (sleep or meditation). If I keep my body's position fairly constant and begin to clear my mind and thoughts, I will eventually feel my 'point of consciousness' shift. Not my 'view', since my eyes are closed, but rather the feeling of 'where' my mind is in relation to my body. I don't do it on purpose, but when it happens and I focus on it I end up 'breaking' it and resetting my point of 'consciousness'.

I can only describe it as: close your eyes right now and you should have this rough idea or feeling of the spatial connection between your mind and body. It feels like your mind is aligned to where your head physically is in space - if that makes sense.

This is your centre point of consciousness I assume. Now, during certain meditations or periods of trying to fall asleep, I'll feel this centre of consciousness DRIFT or change drastically from my head, and it can feel like its in my body or its beginning to drift outside my body.

It is NOT because my eyes are moving up or down, there is a distinct disconnection/feeling that only happens sometimes. Usually, at this point I ruin the experience by focusing on it too much, but I wonder if I knew how to sustain this moment what would happen?

I read a long time ago in a book somewhere regarding this sort of stuff that an ancient circle of magi believed the key to all these 'psychic/spiritual' abilities was to do with shifting the centre of your consciousness to reside outside the physical body. I never thought much of it until I experienced these mini-shifts/out of body experience myself. It would be interesting to find that book again.

Has anyone else had such experiences regarding a 'shift' in their point of consciousness? Perhaps it is the precursor for a true out of body experience?

Peace.

When I was a toddler I had to be taken to the ER because a piece of playground equipment had smacked me in the eye and pushed my face into the sand. I was inconsolable and so they put me into a strait jacket to keep me still while working on my eye. My parents were at the head of the table behind me and I remember looking up and back to see my mother crying. I remember feeling scared at sad at her expression then being forced to face the doctor above me, implements incoming. As soon as he came at my face I was suddenly viewing the whole thing from the ceiling corner of the room at the foot of the table. This time I viewed it all emotionless. Later at home I also viewed my own black eye just a couple feet away from my mother and myself sitting in her lap.

Just last week I had an odd experience, but in this case I can't figure out if it was an OBE attempt, a dream, or if I physically did it. Anyway, I was sleeping and attempting to get out of my body. It was difficult and I tried to 'throw' myself out. There was a tearing sensation, like a sheet of cloth ripping, where I rolled out of my body somersault-style onto the floor facing my door. The room had a bluish-grey cast to it where it was dark, but there seemed to be a light coming from everywhere. It only lasted a few seconds though. As soon as I rolled up onto my feet my first thought was, "Crap, I did it wrong!". I thought that I had rolled out of bed in reality like some kind of parkour, sleepwalking. An instant later I shifted backwards back into my bed and, realizing the improbability of returning to my bed in that way, then thought, "wait...what just happened? Did I do it?". After that, I guess I fell asleep.

Whatever it was, it happened too fast for me to stop and take a look around. And it was like I was processing these thoughts and regretting my hastiness afterwards in my sleep.

First of all, EXCELLENT post OP. I wanted to acknowledge that first. Science is making progress but I'm thinking, why not try it for yourselves? An OBE is relatively easy to do with enough practice, and when it happens to you, you won't be asking "is it a dream? " ..."Is it a hallucination?". There would be no need for you to wait for scientists to spoon feed you your reality. In fact, every scientists who is interested in finding the answer, should try it for himself. Seriously, what is stopping you from seeing it first hand?

It's really frustrating listening to people, who have no direct experience of the OBE phenomena, talk about pineal glands, hallucinations, dreams. It''s mind numbing listening to their ideas about reality or even duality for that matter. The average person's ignorance of self (soul or consciousness) is almost child-like if you could only see. From the average Joe to the Phd's, damn near embarrassing. Like trying to understand what water feels like by poking it with a stick....

IMHO, Stop it already with the theorizing and go see for yourself. Or wait another 20 years for science to stuff your mind with incorrect theories and assumptions which , while making you appear like an intelligent conversationalist at a dinner party, will lead you no closer to the truth.

GO SEE FOR YOURSELF! Wean yourself from dependence on scientists to tell you what you are. No more vague observations and assumptions, evolve yourself for REAL. There is absolutely nothing stopping you, and there's nothing to be afraid of.

bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by grey580

 

I read the article associated with another thread, so if there are clarifying details, please correct me.

She states that her "OBE" is like she cannot disassociate from her body. She is still feeling her body feelings. In essence, she has an episode of highly vivid imagination of what OBE would be like. But she doesn't disassociate from her body.

This "study" isn't a study. Its the use of expensive machinary to probe the inner workings of an active imagination. It has only a casual relationship to OBE's.

I am quoting myself here to remind everyone what it is we are talking about. The scientists in the OP unlocked only 1 thing: what the brain scan of a single individual with a good imagination looks like.

Great Post!!! Thanx for the Share!

When I was younger, like about the time I was goin' through puberty, I had OOBE's a Lot. For that summer, I had dozens of trips out. I didn't know what they were all about, but called them 'Flying Dreams'. I would just go to bed at night like normal, not even knowing anything about OOBE's, so I didn't purposely initiate them.
I'd lay down in bed, and fall asleep, well maybe these things happened right before I was full asleep, not sure. I would rise up awhile looking down on myself laying there and go out right through the wall and go up and start flying around our property. Those flights would not last very long, as most of the time I was so amazed, I didn't even think about going on long journeys.
A few times however, I would begin my flights in a totally different area. I would just pop in to This area, that was a Huge City somewhere where I would just appear on the edge of it, and then could go anywhere I chose. I could fly over to an area, float down to the street and walk around.
I would interact with some people, and others acted like they could not see me. Another Plane for them? I don't know.
Ok, Flash to the present, almost. Couple yrs ago I found a way to have OOBE's while doing a breathing technique.

Laying on my back in bed at night, Totally quiet, perfecty flat on my back, hands at my sides on the bed, breathing slow and steady, after a bit would begin to hear a soft electricity humming and crackling then I would hear a louder Crack and I would be OUT! Awesome to experience.
Sometimes the louder Crack would startle me too much and I would not connect with the Ethereal Plane.

Nowadays there is too much noise where I am at to have OOBE's.
Some other poster mentioned his experience, and it was mostly like mine. He said when he was out, everything looked like a silver glow. Like it was at night and had Very Bright moonlight that cast a silver glow to everything.
I experience the same thing as to how everything looked. Bright Glow, but it was dark .
I would say it was like being black as night, but having more like 2 Moons at Full Moon Brightness and no clouds to diffuse the Silver glow on EveryThing! Cool Stuff.
Later, Syx.

bigfatfurrytexan

bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by grey580

 

I read the article associated with another thread, so if there are clarifying details, please correct me.

She states that her "OBE" is like she cannot disassociate from her body. She is still feeling her body feelings. In essence, she has an episode of highly vivid imagination of what OBE would be like. But she doesn't disassociate from her body.

This "study" isn't a study. Its the use of expensive machinary to probe the inner workings of an active imagination. It has only a casual relationship to OBE's.

I am quoting myself here to remind everyone what it is we are talking about. The scientists in the OP unlocked only 1 thing: what the brain scan of a single individual with a good imagination looks like.

Long response here, but please bear with me. I really want to get this off my chest.
I agree with you, you shouldn't trust ANYONE's word for it. Be it a scientist, a philosopher, priest, mystic, guru or scripture or even this article. I would never put my trust into ANYBODY's words when it came to subjects of such sacred and valuable import. Such valuable and damn near sacred knowledge will never be passed on to you in it's purist form. The scientific information will eventually just become meaningless numbers, graphs and evolving varieties of useless and meaningless concepts and data. Why don't you go try yourself? What's the point in sitting behind the fence while the Phd's do all the work? They, themselves, have no clue what or who they are. When you see it for yourself, you will know what I'm talking about. They don't know it yet, but these scientists are still cave men poking things with sticks in the dark. And they're destroying our World in the process.

So we don't need to trust anyone when it comes to these matters. But that doesn't mean that you should just write off what could be the most vital puzzle you've been searching for your entire life. (Assuming you're a searcher and not a spectator or a comfortable, spoon fed sheep).


No intelligent person, especially a seeker (be it a scientist, mystic, or religious follower, should just BELIEVE in something, no matter how correct it may sound, if it is not from a personal experience with the subject matter. PERSONAL experience is the only thing that will stop this endless debate.

I don't mean to sound harsh or rude, but it's really scary to see so many people who are STARVING for knowledge and truth, depend on others to spoon feed it to them. Then they debate who's right and wrong like hungry dogs on a dead carcass. When instead, the entire experience is available for you to personally experience. Why the heck would anyone want to write off a chance to experience something that MAY change their entire life and perspective of it?

Why are we still letting our theories, opinions and imaginations tell us what is real and what isn't? We all need to start taking the baby steps to seeing reality for ourselves. Or we can just sit around, endlessly debate about things we have no personal experience with, throwing 'thumbs up' and 'thumbs down' at other people's scientific and philosophical hard work. After a few thousand years, it gets really boring.

We no longer need to believe the world is round, we KNOW it. Yet, with all the available OBE techniques out there, we're still relying on theories and belief systems about the soul and about consciousness and even God. Meanwhile our poor white coats, philosophers, and other so-called experts, who are at least making an effort to figure things out, have to take the public stoning. Why are we still doing this? There is absolutely no reason to stand on the side lines when it comes to something as important as your own soul, you're own existence.

reply to post by Visitor2012


Any tests conducted on a single individual has little real world value. It isn't science, no matter how expensive the measurement devices are.

bigfatfurrytexan
reply to post by Visitor2012

 

Any tests conducted on a single individual has little real world value. It isn't science, no matter how expensive the measurement devices are.

You reinforce my statement about our dependence on scientists to define reality for us. You are absolutely correct, the data is of ZERO value. It's another meaningless 'believe it or not' story. Even the socially accepted scientific theories are belief systems. They are inconclusive themselves, theories lead to more theories, it is never ending and they have yet to derive meaning from even the most BASIC observations of life and the energy which surrounds it.

For example, take any scientific theory. Let's say Quantum theory or whatever, if you haven't personally verified these findings, you're relying on the same kind of faith that is required of religion. You either believe or you don't believe, and you will only believe if it rhymes with what you already believe or hope to believe. It's all pure rubbish and it's not the path of an intelligent person. Thus why I asked what shy's people away from seeing things for themselves. It's like we are still in caves, waiting for the explorers to tell us what reality is outside the cave. When there is absolutely nothing blocking the path to the outside.

So you don't believe in OBE's? Fine. But have you had one? If not, then your conclusion and opinion is equally invalid. That was the aim of my post. I could understand if we were talking about subject matters that is beyond our current ability to experience. Like living in the International Space Station or walking on the moon. For that, we just have to take their word for it. But we're doing that with OBE's and subjects concerning the soul, life and existence here and beyond? The most important quest for anyone to partake and they can do it anytime they want to, wherever they are. Be it a peaceful garden or a prison cell.

reply to post by Visitor2012




great post. i read it to my wife, with the result of her just blankly staring back at me.

FWIW, i fully believe in OBE's. I am from the camp that says the mind is external.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Thank you. I love the animated GIF btw.