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An out-of-body experience (or OBE) is an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a location outside their physical body. In other words, when you have an OBE you feel as though you have left the body and are able to see, feel, and move around without it. Note that this definition treats the OBE as an experience or state of consciousness, not as a psychic phenomenon. So if someone feels as though they are out of the body then they are—by definition—having an OBE, whether or not anything has left the body. This neutral definition allows researchers to study the experience without committing themselves to any particular theory of the OBE.
Some of the most dramatic OBEs have been reported as part of the near-death experience, for example in those who are resuscitated from cardiac arrests or survive life-threatening accidents. However, similar experiences can occur under less traumatic conditions. Surveys in several countries show that about 15–20 per cent of the population have had an OBE at some time during their life. Most of these people have only one, or a very few OBEs, although a few have many. Spontaneous OBEs most often occur during resting, just before sleep, or when meditating. However, they can occur at almost any time and occasionally the person carries on with what they were doing (such as walking, driving, or even speaking) apparently without interruption. Common factors include relaxation, loss or disruption of the body image, and reduced sensory input. Most spontaneous OBEs last only a few seconds. Some begin with the experience of travelling down a dark tunnel, often with a bright white or golden light at the end. Others begin with rushing or whirring noises, odd vibrations, or simply a brief period of blackout. Returning is usually gradual but occasionally there is a sensation of shock or disorientation.
People who have OBEs (OBErs) often feel as though they can travel anywhere and see anything they wish. Some seem to have another body or double, sometimes referred to as the 'astral body'. This is usually something like a replica of the physical body, though less distinct. Sometimes it is ghostly or transparent and described as whitish or pale grey. In rare cases this double is connected to the physical body by a silver cord. More commonly no double is experienced and the person feels as though they are a disembodied awareness or point of view.
Vision and hearing are reportedly clearer and more vivid than normal. Some people even get the impression that they could see all round at once or hear anything anywhere if they wished to—a sense of limitlessness. OBEs are like dreams in some ways—for example, the scenery and lighting can be very strange, and the ordinary physical constraints of the physical world do not seem to apply. However, unlike ordinary dreams, OBEs feel very real, consciousness is clear, and the experience is usually remembered vividly afterwards—often for years. In some ways OBEs are more like lucid dreams, that is dreams in which you know during the dream that you are dreaming. OBEs sometimes merge into mystical or transcendent experiences. Many people claim that OBEs cause positive changes in their attitudes and beliefs. An analysis of hundreds of cases of OBEs showed that fear of death was reduced and belief in life after death increased.
OBErs frequently interpret their experiences as psychic, paranormal, or mystical. They sometimes claim that they could see not only their own bodies, but distant scenes, although the experimental evidence to support these claims is extremely weak. More rarely they also claim to be able to influence distant events, although the frustration of being unable to speak to people or touch objects is more common.
Techniques for inducing the experience mostly use imagery and relaxation exercises. Experimental techniques have also used special sounds and visual displays and, from the early days of psychical research, hypnosis has been used to induce OBEs or 'travelling clairvoyance'. Drugs associated with OBEs include the psychedelics LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and mescaline, and the dissociative anaesthetic ketamine which often induces feelings of body separation, floating, and even dying. However, there is no known drug that reliably induces OBEs.
The occurrence of OBEs is not related to age, sex, educational level, or religion. However, OBErs score higher on measures of hypnotizability and absorption—that is, they can more easily become absorbed in films, books, or fantasies. OBErs are also more likely to believe in the paranormal, to have various kinds of psychic experiences, and to report frequent dream recall and lucid dreams. They are not more likely to be mentally ill. Indeed Gabbard and Twemlow's (1984) study of over 300 OBErs found that they were generally well adjusted with low levels of alcohol and drug abuse. Other studies found no differences in various measures of psychopathology between people who do and do not have OBEs. Some OBErs fear that they are ill or going mad, or that they will leave their body and not be able to get back. This fear is not well founded and most OBEs end spontaneously after only a few seconds or minutes with no ill effects.
1. Experiments on the OBE
Experiments on OBEs have been of three types. Attempts to detect the double began early in the 20th century using spiritualist mediums who claimed to be able to project their double at a distance. Photographs were taken and attempts made to weigh the soul as it left the body of people dying of tuberculosis, but the studies were not well controlled and the effects disappeared when better methods were developed. More recent studies used magnetometers, thermistors, ultraviolet and infrared detectors, as well as humans and animals, but no reliable detector of an out-of-body presence has ever been discovered.
The second type tests perception during OBEs. In early experiments mediums were asked to exteriorize their double, smell scents, or view the actions of people at a distance, but usually the medium herself could have seen what was going on, invalidating the results. More recently, target letters, numbers, or objects have been concealed from view in the laboratory and people who can have OBEs at will asked to try to see them. In a well-known experiment one subject correctly saw a five-digit number, but this success has never been repeated, and most other experiments have had equivocal results. There are many claims from case studies that people can really see at a distance during OBEs but the experimental evidence does not generally substantiate them.
The third type of experiment involves physiological monitoring of OBErs. No unique physiological state seems to be involved and OBErs are usually found to be in a very relaxed waking state or on the verge of sleep. There is no evidence that they are in REM (rapid eye movement), or dreaming, sleep. So OBEs cannot be equated with dreams.
2. Theories of the OBE
There are three main types of theory. First is the idea that something leaves the body. Most OBErs find the experience so compelling and realistic that they assume that their consciousness has separated from their physical body. Many conclude that this proves the existence of a soul or spirit that is independent of the physical body and can continue after physical death, although this does not necessarily follow since the physical body was always functioning at the time.
The idea of a double can be traced back to ancient Egypt and to Greek philosophy, and can be found in folklore, mythology, and religious doctrines from many cultures. A popular modern version is the theory of 'astral projection' derived from the teachings of theosophy. The astral body is said to be one of several energy bodies and can travel about on the astral plane.
There are numerous problems with this and all related theories. For example, it cannot specify what the astral body is made of, in what sense it is conscious, or how this consciousness is related to the obvious sensory and memory functions of the brain. It cannot explain how the double perceives the world without using any sensory apparatus and without being detected, nor why the astral world appears the way it does.
The second kind of theory is that OBEs are imagination plus extrasensory perception (ESP). In principle this might account for the claims of paranormal perception during OBEs without involving all the problems of other worlds and other bodies. However, this is the weakest possible kind of theory since imagination is such a broad term, and there is little evidence for the existence of ESP. In addition it is not easy to see how this theory could be tested.
Finally, there are psychological theories which involve no self, soul, spirit, or astral body that leaves.
Psychoanalytic interpretations treat the OBE as a dramatization of the fear of death, an uncoupling of the bodily ego from the mental ego, regression of the ego, or a reliving of the trauma of birth. One such theory suggests that a loss of, or change in, the body image threatens the self-image, with the OBE being an unconscious attempt to re-establish personal identity. Others liken the OBE to birth. Superficially there may be similarities between the tunnel and the birth canal, or the silver cord and the umbilicus, but the birth canal would look nothing like a tunnel to a fetus being born. Birth theories predict that people born by Caesarean section should not have either tunnel experiences or OBEs but one study showed that they have just as many of these experiences as people born normally.
Irwin (1995) suggested that, the OBE begins with a disruption of the normal body sense leading to somaesthetic sensations of floating or flying. This is then translated, by synaesthesia, into a complete experience of leaving the body, with visual, tactile, auditory, and other senses all being transformed. The process requires attention to, or absorption in, the new experience and loss of contact with somatic sensations. This explains not only the conditions under which the OBE occurs, but the tendency for OBErs to score higher in tests of absorption.
Blackmore (1992) suggested that, when sensory input is inadequate or disrupted, the normal impression that we are inside our own head is replaced with a bird's-eye view from memory and imagination—much like bird's-eye views in dreams. When such an image takes over as the current 'model of reality' an OBE occurs. Sounds can be incorporated relatively easily into the bird's-eye view, making many OBEs quite realistic. On this theory the OBE is entirely imagined but, because the new viewpoint has taken over completely, the experience feels real.
These psychological theories account for the conditions under which OBEs occur and explain why the out-of-body world is rather like the world of imagination, with transparent walls, the ability to move around at will and to see in all directions. They also explain why apparently correct details are often mixed with false ones since the brain has simply put together the best information it has. Experiments have confirmed that OBErs are better able to manipulate spatial images and more frequently experience bird's-eye views during dreams.
These three types of theory differ in their implications for life after death but we should be clear that the occurrence of the experience itself is not proof of survival. On balance the evidence suggests that nothing leaves the body during an OBE and that paranormal phenomena do not occur during OBEs. Nevertheless the experience is dramatic, interesting, and can have profound effects on people's lives.
(Published 2004)
Susan J. Blackmore
Alvarado, C. S. (1992). 'The psychological approach to out-of-body experiences: a review of early and modern developments'. Journal of Psychology, 126.
Blackmore, S. J. (1992). Beyond the Body.
Gabbard, G. O., and Twemlow, S. W. (1984). With the Eyes of the Mind.
Irwin, H. J. (1985). Flight of Mind: A Psychological Study of the Out-of-Body Experience.
From The Oxford Companion to the Mind
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