Out of Body Experiences (OBEs)

Introduction

Out-of-the-body experiences, sometimes call OOBEs or, more commonly, OBEs, are, according to Enclyclaepedia of the Unexplained "Cases in which people have the experience of quitting their physical bodies and observing them from some vantage-point outside. This seems particularly likely to happen in situations of stress, for example, when someone is knocked down by a car, hit by a bullet, or undergoing surgery, but can also happen is quite ordinary circumstances. An example in one of a collection of cases by Celia Green, of a person who was sitting peacefully on a double-decker bus: 'I was sitting at the rear of a bus looking out through the window when without warning I found myself looking at myself from the stairs of the bus. All my senses, sight, feelings and so on, seemed to be on the stairs, only my actual body remained at the seat.' The experience can also occur when the subject is asleep or apparently unconscious under anasethetics. Miss Green distinguishes between parasomatic experiences in which the subject finds himself 'in an alternative body, more or less closely resembling his physical one', and the more common asomatic experiences, in which 'the subject, at his new point of view, is not associated with any spatial entity at all'."

     In his book, out of the body experiences, a book on OBEs, how to have them and what to expect, p.30,  Robert Peterson gives an example of an OBE, in which, after he'd relaxed himself completely, he tried to "...drift between waking and sleeping consciousness. I found myself drifting into sleep once or twice, and I yanked myself back to full consciousness each time, being careful not to move my fully relaxed body." 

According to Peterson, in order to have an OBE, one must be completely relaxed and have a clear mind that is free from thoughts. Then, using a technique Peterson knew about by Robert Monroe, when he found that he could hold his mind for long enough, "... I decided to ... go on to the next step: using imaginary lines of force to call 'the vibrations'. I followed Monroe's method to the letter, carefully pausing between each step in the process. I was just about to give up when I felt a heavy 'twang' in my head. It felt as if the lines of force had somehow become real and had touched a 110-volt power line. I thought, 'Oops. Maybe this isn't such a good idea.' I tried to pull myself back to normal consciousness by retracting my imaginary lines of force. I quickly pulled the lines of force back toward me, but much to my surprise, the 'electricity' I felt at the end of those lines was also being pulled toward me. It was as if I were fishing and felt a sharp bite at the end of my fishing pole: I quickly tried to pull my fishing line out of the water, but I only managed to set the hook and pull in a fish. And it was quite a fish: a kind of electrical 'vibration' violently swept my body, filling it with an electric-like shock and a terrible roaring noise. I thought I was being electrocuted and my first reaction was sheer panic. I could hear my heart beating wildly in mad fear, but I was powerless to control it.

      Somehow I could see through my closed eyelids. I looked up and saw a blue ring of electrical fire flying right toward my head. It was about a foot in diameter, with the energy sparks about an inch-and-a-half thick, and it was bright blue. I instinctively tried to raise my arms to protect myself from the impact, but I found myself paralyzed and unable to move my arms. The ring of blue energy started to slip over my forehead and I looked away, afraid to see what would happen next. I started to fight wildly to regain control of my body, and the 'vibrations' slowly smoothed down and died out. When the vibrations faded completed, I could move my body again. I shook my arms and legs, and rejoiced that I hadn't lost the ability to move them, happy that I was completely in my body. 'My God,' I thought to myself, 'It worked! Monroe wasn't lying! There are other worlds!'"

     

OBEs

Peterson's above example sounds intriguing. However, OBEs are subjective experiences, so although a large collection of them may appear to have a theme, they are unique to each person. Not all OBEs are like what Peterson described. However, it is an example. Some OBE accounts are more subtle, where the person exited their body and visited one of their friends, or something similar. And whilst some OBEs may be a bit traumatic or frightening - like Peterson's seemed to be - most accounts are positive and uplifting experiences. However, if some OBEs involve travelling to a friend to pay them a visit, isn't this actually called 'astral travelling'? 

Astral travelling

In The Afterlife, by Jenny Randles, the author gives an account of an OBE she'd had in January 1971, two days after her maternal grandmother had died and the night before the funeral, p. 207: "She was staying with a driend, in a strange and unfamiliar house, when she awoke in the middle of the night. She insists that she was wide awake, and yet she was not in the bed as expected. Instead, Jenny was floating a few feet overhead, looking down upon her body as it was sleeping. She saw this unfamiliar room, rather than an image of her own bedroom as happens in a dream. The sensation was remarkable. At this stage Jenny was a teenager with no experience of the supernatural. This unexpected happening was absolutely terrifying. In the second of two that it lasted she was gripped by an indescribably powerful terror. As if this acted as a catapult, there was a near instantaneous jerk and she found herself back in her body, sitting bolt upright and staring about the room scared witless and sweating profusely."
   On page 208, an OBE account of American researcher, Robert Monroe is the following: "I become deeply relaxed and then I roll out [of my body] -I don't pull out. Then, having the freedom, I go up and find some beautiful clouds to dive through. It's a lot of fun ... Once you have your courage up by diving through clouds that don't hurt you,  you can come down and dive through mountains and houses. Originally you are very nervous about approaching the side of the mountain at 600mph and so you kind of blink. But after a while you get used to it and it's a lot of fun."
   A researcher in the field of out-of-body experiences is Susan Blackmore, a psychologist and a parapsychologist.

OBEs and NDEs