fa
Someone I know said that the idea of all people having a unique aura surrounding them is ridiculous. Can you imagine it, that everyone could be walking around with a light show for anyone who can see it? I've got an even more ridiculous idea. Every magnet has a unique field around it, even a wire wrapped around a nail and hooked up to a battery. The field will even change with the battery's current dropping off.
I heard that the mental plane is a lot of fun.
hts
I had to laugh at that article, and about halfway down, I got tired of reading it. First of all, it's damn near difficult to PROVE an OBE. It's one of those things that become painfully obvious to the projector, but hard to convince the non-projector. Just because you can't prove it to someone else, does that make it not real? It's like trying to show a blind person what "blue" looks like. You can describe it all you want, but they will never really KNOW.
I also liked how they say, "So-and-so had an OBE, and this person is the foremost authority on OBE's. This person admits that when she had her OBE, she was stoned."
I'm paraphrasing, since I only skimmed, but so many people base all of their beliefs on this type of crap, including me. When I was younger and highly indoctrinated into the church, I felt that OBE's were initiated by the devil. Why? Because I heard of another religious person who had one and this is what they said. Likewise, to think that ALL OBE's are hallucinations caused by drugs because this happened to one person is a gross assumption.
Bottom line.....I do OBE's for me and me only. I am currently in the hard position of trying to decide if I should tell my girlfriend about them. They are a HUGE part of my life, but even though we have been together for 3 years (and currently live together), she is completely in the dark about my experiences.
Keep smiling,
Jeff Mash, Founder and Editor
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://MyJokeMail.com
Hi Jeff, recently I mentioned to my girlfriend that I was reading literature on OBE's etc, without going into much detail. She seemed interested.
2 weeks ago I mentioned side effects I had suffered when doing some meditation exercises....it was at this point that I realised I had gone too far. She had a look in her eye saying to me " you're nuts".
So my advice is, don't garble it out all at once. Perhaps try and raise her interest in the subject...if she doesn't show any whatsoever...i'd keep it quiet.
As for the suject of this discussion, its fair enough - why should anyone who hasn't experienced OBE believe in it ?!! after all, there is no hard evidence that it exists. I'm sure that most of the "doting group of ignorant zealots" appreciate that there ARE things yet to be proven / discovered in the universe....but for everyone to acknowledge OBE, there needs to be scientific proof.
How do you prove something with physical evidence, because that is what people are looking for, that is not physical? OBEs unlike religion do not try to force people to believe in them. I know what I have experienced and could really care less if anyone else believes it or not. I do find it sad that people are so closed minded as to not accept the possibility of them being "real".
Which brings me to a question, what is real? Is real matter? Is real something that can only be measured by something physical and until that time it is unreal? Is real something that is generally accepted by the majority?
Jeff Mash, you should tell her if it is something that is important to you and want to be able to share. You should probably not drop it all on her at once. Maybe take a trip to the book store and happen to walk by the metaphysical section. Pick up a book on astral projection and say something about it, like you have been reading some on the subject. See how she reacts. If she reacts negatively try to explain what it is, as her negative reaction is probably out of ignorance.
I cannot understand these scientist-types who try proving obe phenomena by analysing other people's experiences. To my mind, if they spent one-tenth the effort on themselves, they could experience first hand what people like myself are on about.
They would also realise that there are, in fact, millions of people populating the Astral planes; whereupon they could interact with these people and collect all the evidence they liked.
It would also stop them from saying dumb things, such as:
quote:
If OBEs were a common occurrence, one would expect that there would be minds out of their bodies everywhere. There are supposedly thousands of souls leaving their bodies every day and night. You'd think that there'd be a mix-up occasionally and one or two souls or astral bodies would come back to the wrong physical bodies, or at least get their "silver" cords tangled up. One would expect some minds to get lost and never find their way back to their bodies. There should be at least a few mindless bodies wandering or lying around, abandoned by their souls as unnecessary baggage. There should also be a few confused souls who don't know who they are because they're in the wrong bodies. Perhaps this is one of those topics that should not be scrutinized too closely.
Yes, there are "minds out of their [physical] bodies" everywhere. As I say, there are millions and millions of them populating the Astral regions at a range of different levels.
They would also realise that each physical body had a unique signature link with its respective spirit (or Astral body). Therefore, it is simply impossible for any mix-up to take place. Plus, it is also impossible for a spirit to, in some way, get lost. This is due to the biomagnetic attraction between the two bodies.
Astral anthropormorphism also rears its head, here. They talk about a "cord" and imagine it in a Physical sense, i.e. in the sense that it may become tangled, which is simply impossible.
Yours,
Frank
hi fallen angel, unfortunately I (amongst everyone else) haven't got the answer to proving that OBE exists ! I'm in the same boat as most people here; we have experienced something that has given us a conviction that it is real.
I appreciate that you are not particularly fussed about whether other people believe it is real or not....but personally I'd like to get others to believe in its validity.
As frank pointed out, its pretty futile to analyse others' experiences to try and validate OBE scientifically; you'll only end up with a load of crap as per the skepdic.com artical.
In an ideal world, the majority of people would have first hand experience of OBE, thereby deeming it real. My opinion anyway.
I truly believe that the OBE is provable...Robert Bruce, among many others, has expressed interest in developing and then carrying out a number of carefully controlled experiments. One he mentioned in an interview would include using a large warehouse divided by an impassable concrete wall, or something similar, and the person out-of-body would have to pass through it and record some kind of information. Of course the nay sayers still wouldn't believe, but it could work and many would believe. Although I am not terribly preoccupied about proving it, it would be nice for researchers and authors to be able to refer to it.
-D
fides quaerens intellectum
Skeptics who visit skeptics websites and who buy books de-bunking or demonizing psychic phenomena (including OBEs) are in my opinion beyond help. The father of my brother-in-law is like this; he seems to put inordinate effort into debunking so-called New Age ideas (that aren't new).
Like most the rest of us, they are looking for data to support their presumptions, rather than engaging in their own experimentation to find out what's what. Pro-psychic -types can be just as irrational . . . they read one New Age book on astral projection or auras and they are instant experts, never mind the fact that they never actually experienced OBE or saw an aura.
So fools get sucked into silly mindsets.
As for telling your significant other about your otherworldly experiences. . . if you can't be honest with the person you are sleeping with, you've got problems! I told my boyfriend about what I do/believe up front. He still thinks I'm nuts, but he loves me anyway. I call it TRUTH IN ADVERTISING! So take a chance at being REAL for the people you love. It might elicit some interesting conversations, but in the end, it all will turn out the way it should.
Tisha
"As Above, So Below"
quote:
Originally posted by fallnangel77:
Jeff Mash, you should tell her if it is something that is important to you and want to be able to share. You should probably not drop it all on her at once. Maybe take a trip to the book store and happen to walk by the metaphysical section. Pick up a book on astral projection and say something about it, like you have been reading some on the subject. See how she reacts. If she reacts negatively try to explain what it is, as her negative reaction is probably out of ignorance.
That's the thing. She has seen me do this, as well as notice my books on the subject, but like most people, I think she just thinks that I'm interested in this "phenomenon" as an intellectual hobby.
You want to know what my fear is? My fear is that something this deep and meaningful to me will simply be discarded by her as "no big deal." Not that she would say that in a cold way. It's just that I can imagine telling her about my ability to go OBE< and she would be like, "Wow, that's pretty cool." And then that's it!
I guess I would want her to be like, "Holy crap! Are you serious? How can I do that?"
Of course, that is expecting too much from my end. I think I will one day simply say, plain and matter of factly, "This is something I can do." Then, if she wants to hear more about my experiences, I will be glad to share them. Otherwise, I shouldn't expect her to understand. It just makes me wonder sometimes how a soul like mine would end up with someone who I deeply love, and yet, not have them be into these types of spiritual things which I hold so dear to my heart.
Keep smiling,
Jeff Mash, Founder and Editor
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://MyJokeMail.com
The thing is . . . your girlfriend does not have to believe you. She only needs to know what YOU believe, and accept you for who you are, nutty as you might seem. Someday, if you stay together, she may see "proof" of OBE. Or, she might not. It should not matter to you, for you to be at peace with this phenomenon.
Ah, easier said than done. I have fantasies of messing up my boyfriend's room during an OBE. He thinks my beliefs are a little silly, so I hope the "proof" he sees someday really rocks his world. I read that Monroe was able to pinch someone once, so the Astral body has to have SOME effect on the physical world, yes?
Tisha
"As Above, So Below"
quote:
Originally posted by Tisha:
The thing is . . . your girlfriend does not have to believe you. She only needs to know what YOU believe, and accept you for who you are, nutty as you might seem. Someday, if you stay together, she may see "proof" of OBE. Or, she might not. It should not matter to you, for you to be at peace with this phenomenon.
Ah, easier said than done. I have fantasies of messing up my boyfriend's room during an OBE. He thinks my beliefs are a little silly, so I hope the "proof" he sees someday really rocks his world. I read that Monroe was able to pinch someone once, so the Astral body has to have SOME effect on the physical world, yes?
Tisha,
Thanks for the response. I totally agree with you. My plan is to just tell her (when the time is right) without any expectations of her to accept it. Again, my main problem is that I think to myself, "OBE's are so mind boggling that I can't imagine ANYONE not wanting to look into them, especially when they are told that they're real." So naturally, my fear is that if I tell my GF and she isn't really interested, I'm afraid it will make me wonder what kind of spiritual person she is. In other words, if you and I were dating, and you told me that you could breathe underwater, I would think that only an idiot wouldn't want to investigate that phenomenon and look into it further. Therefore, if I tell my GF something as equally profound (like being able to exist outside of my body), I don't want to involuntarily think of her as an idiot for not expressing extreme interest. Does that make sense?
Sounds crazy, I know. Oh well.....I wish for the best in both of our situations.
Keep smiling,
Jeff Mash, Founder and Editor
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://MyJokeMail.com
Jeff....... how long have you been dating? Three years and living together? I'm afraid, in a way, that you have answered your own question. If you haven't talked about OBE phenomena, and your spiritual beliefs by NOW, your relationship has a BIG problem. Not that it can't be resolved. I'm just sayint that this is the elephant-in-the-livingroom that you don't want to talk about.
Believe me, I've been there. My ex-husband was nearly perfect, except for this ONE THING . . . no spiritual/magickal aspirations whatsoever. OK, he was also self-centered and vampiric and unfaithful . . . but nevermind that. The REAL thing that killed it for us was my trek down this magickal path . . . and he had no interest in joining me. Had he interest in magickal/spiritual concerns I would have at least TRIED to work the other things out.
If it were not for the fact that my present boyfriend comes from a bonafide strega (Italian witchcraft) family (his granfather was telekinetic, his aunt made a living as a psychic/hypnotist/tarot reader etc.), I would not be dating him now, for sure. I know he believes in psychic phenomena because he grew up with them. He just doesn't believe I can do it because he's never SEEN me do it (we live 350 miles away from each other). He's a little bit spoiled, having grown up around much voodoo. He thinks I'm eccentric with overinflated ideas about my psychic abilities. Since I'm working on giving up my "ego" and "self-importance" I'm trying real hard not to let his opinions bother me!
Ah . . . relationships. The things we go through just to be LOVED!!!!!!!! Jeff, lay it all out for your girlfriend, do it tonight if you can.
Tisha
"As Above, So Below"
quote:
Originally posted by Tisha:
Jeff....... how long have you been dating? Three years and living together?
Dating for three years...living together for four months.
quote:
I'm afraid, in a way, that you have answered your own question. If you haven't talked about OBE phenomena, and your spiritual beliefs by NOW, your relationship has a BIG problem. Not that it can't be resolved. I'm just sayint that this is the elephant-in-the-livingroom that you don't want to talk about.
I hear what you're saying. I don't think this will be as big a problem as I anticipate, for a couple reaons:
1) We hardly never fight, so I can't see something like this causing one.
2) If it does cause a stir, chances are that it is ME who has to deal with it, since I can't expect someone else to feel the same about something as I so passionately do.
quote:
Believe me, I've been there. My ex-husband was nearly perfect, except for this ONE THING . . . no spiritual/magickal aspirations whatsoever. OK, he was also self-centered and vampiric and unfaithful . . . but nevermind that.
I think that also played into the problems you two had though (him being self-centered, unfaithful, etc). Whereas with me and my girl, we get along pretty good in just about every other aspect. We don't have any of those problems. I mean let's face it....a guy as extremely good looking as myself could never be self centered. :-) j/k
Seriously, I think if I tell her how important OBE's are to me, she is the type of person to support it since she's just has that type of personality.
quote:
The REAL thing that killed it for us was my trek down this magickal path . . . and he had no interest in joining me. Had he interest in magickal/spiritual concerns I would have at least TRIED to work the other things out.
Yes, that is my biggest fear, but I am trying not to focus on it for fear of making it a reality. I'll let you know how things go when I finally decide to tell her.
quote:
If it were not for the fact that my present boyfriend comes from a bonafide strega (Italian witchcraft) family (his granfather was telekinetic, his aunt made a living as a psychic/hypnotist/tarot reader etc.), I would not be dating him now, for sure. I know he believes in psychic phenomena because he grew up with them. He just doesn't believe I can do it because he's never SEEN me do it (we live 350 miles away from each other). He's a little bit spoiled, having grown up around much voodoo. He thinks I'm eccentric with overinflated ideas about my psychic abilities. Since I'm working on giving up my "ego" and "self-importance" I'm trying real hard not to let his opinions bother me!
Ahhh, the good ole ego! Well, although it's a struggle, it sounds like you're doing a good job containing it. Tell me....do you find that the majority of your conversations with your BF are about something spiritual? He seems to have quite the colorful background, which sounds fascinating.
quote:
Ah . . . relationships. The things we go through just to be LOVED!!!!!!!! Jeff, lay it all out for your girlfriend, do it tonight if you can.
Gulp...Tonight? But Big Brother 3 is on TV!! It probably won't happen tonight, but I think it will happen soon. Our anniversary is coming up, so maybe I can segway that special moment into something about OBE's!
Thanks again for your advice, Tisha. I appreciate it.
Keep smiling,
Jeff Mash, Founder and Editor
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://MyJokeMail.com
OK everyone, someone needs to tell me how to do that cool thing, pulling text from other messages into my messages.
Jeff, you wrote:
"Tell me....do you find that the majority of your conversations with your BF are about something spiritual? He seems to have quite the colorful background, which sounds fascinating."
Actually, we both work for the Defense Department and have very INTENSE jobs . . . especially now . . . so we talk mostly about work. He's a manager, so there is always something for him to rant about. But we do on occasion move on to more spiritual matters. The EARLY days were the most significant, since we have MAJOR religious differences (he's a Christian, I am not). We wanted to make sure we could live with the differences. After we settled on that matter, our discussions about religious/spiritual matters have been limited. He knows about all my OBEs, though!
Tisha
"As Above, So Below"
quote:
Originally posted by Tisha:
OK everyone, someone needs to tell me how to do that cool thing, pulling text from other messages into my messages.
You mean like that? Hehehehe! It's quite simple. Whenever you want to reply to a message, click the icon which looks like a folder with a red arrow coming out of the right side. It looks like this (http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/images/quote.gif) and it's located directly above the message you want to respond to.
quote:
Actually, we both work for the Defense Department and have very INTENSE jobs . . . especially now . . . so we talk mostly about work. He's a manager, so there is always something for him to rant about. But we do on occasion move on to more spiritual matters. The EARLY days were the most significant, since we have MAJOR religious differences (he's a Christian, I am not). We wanted to make sure we could live with the differences. After we settled on that matter, our discussions about religious/spiritual matters have been limited. He knows about all my OBEs, though!
Sounds like you have quite the complicated job. Almost sounds top secret! How do you find time to continue to post in here? Hell, I thought
I was busy with a full time programming job and a website to maintain on the side!
Keep smiling,
Jeff Mash, Founder and Editor
MyJokeMail.com - Jokes and Humor
http://MyJokeMail.com
Jeff, you might be underestimating your girlfriends ability to accept the things you can do. Were it the case of a woman trying to describe such things to her male partner she could probably expect some heavy resistance and a bit of criticism, but the other way around tends to be not such a problem. Women are much more naturally attuned to the astral - a "womans intuition" is just one very common example. Women are a lot more accepting of such concepts than men are.
My wife has taken a casual & sometimes active interest in my spiritual beliefs & practices. She is well versed in the ways of the mind, having studied psychology for a few years at uni, and uses that info to look at the possibilities, rather than to dismiss them.
I couldn't stop grinning at her the other night when she came home from Yoga, as she has recently started attending classes once a week run by her work. This night, her teacher started her group on meditation exercises and got them to start gaining awareness of the chakras. When my wife focussed awareness on her root chakra, it activated so much she had a huge bolt of energy fly straight up her spine and out the top of her head. She started feeling dizzy, and started seeing things in a strange disjointed way. She got a little scared and shut her root chakra down, but felt just a little dreamy after that. When I picked her up from the train station she told me about it and said "so that's what its about".
The psychology student UNDERSTANDS!!!
But then she's always maintained that a bit of healthy skepticism used in the right way will lead you to question things and learn, rather that either blindly accepting them, or blindly dismissing them.
By the way Tisha, another way to do the quotes is to put "quote" , "/quote" in square brackets before and after a bit of text you've cut & pasted. Have a look in the Help section of the Personal button. If you look for text formatting you'll find all sorts of groovy stuff you can do.
James S
- You don't choose the belief, the belief chooses you!
James :S Good example of how telling someone and them actually experiencing something are almost totally different things.
More on topic though. People we associate with are usually more tolerant than we let ourselves believe. Normally the people we get along with are tolerant of our (and I'm not referring to onyl matters spiritual) way of thinking. The best case is they instantly agree and try for themselves, a good middle ground is that they let us have our weird thoughts and at least aren't actively opposed. Worst case of course we all know and robably have experienced at some point...
My point is that we should give the people in our lives a chance of understanding.
2cents
jouni
PeacefulWarrior says: "Skeptics believe that NDEs can be explained by neurochemistry and are the result of brain states that occur due to a dying brain. For example, "neural noise" and "retino-cortical mapping" explain the common experience of passage down a tunnel from darkness into a bright light. According to Susan Blackmore, vision researcher Dr. Tomasz S. Troscianko of the University of Bristol speculated:
If you started with very little neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells were firing fast, the whole area would appear light (Blackmore 1993, 85).
Blackmore attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness of the NDE to the release of endorphins in response to the extreme stress of the situation. The buzzing or ringing sound is attributed to cerebral anoxia and consequent effects upon the connections between brain cells. [p. 64]
Dr. Karl Jansen has reproduced NDEs with ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, 'dissociative' anaesthetic.
The anaesthesia is the result of the patient being so 'dissociated' and 'removed from their body' that it is possible to carry out surgical procedures. This is wholly different from the 'unconsciousness' produced by conventional anesthetics, although ketamine is also an excellent analgesic (pain killer) by a different route (i.e. not due to dissociation). Ketamine is related to phencyclidine (PCP). Both drugs are arylcyclohexylamines - they are not opioids and are not related to LSD. In contrast to PCP, ketamine is relatively safe, is much shorter acting, is an uncontrolled drug in most countries, and remains in use as an anaesthetic for children in industrialised countries and all ages in the third world as it is cheap and easy to use. Anaesthetists prevent patients from having NDE's ('emergence phenomena') by the co-administration of sedatives which produce 'true' unconsciousness rather than dissociation.*"
All this stuff means that OBE´s are not real? In fact, even if we believe that they are real, we cannot hide the fact that such drugs produce OBE´s effects. We caanot hide that in laboratory scientists proved the fact that near death experiments are neural experiences, not real. What can you say about this? Are OBE´s real or not? If true, how can we conciliate such experiments in laboratory with the OBE reality?
One of the first thing that i posted here, was about astral proofs. Almost no one has given me a satisfatory answer (but i still being thankfull to everyone). I would like to hear something based on solid arguments.
Greetings Kazbadan,
We have to take into account that scientists are extremely limited by their training, scientific beliefs and the 3 dimensional physical universe. Their entire lives are structured within this framework, and they are simply unwilling consider anything outside of it - they simply could not handle it, it would overturn a lifetimes work for most of them. It suits scientists to exist within their own limited framework, and make everything else fit into that framework. There are numerous examples where scientists still refuse to believe the obvious, despite overwhelming proof. I do not have a problem with scientists - I used to be one myself [:)]
This situation will not always be the case. Look at physics for example. For hundreds of years all science followed the Newtonian model of the universe. Early last century, Einstein began to see that was flawed, and now quantum physics almost completely agrees with the age old knowledge as to the true structure of the universe. Having accepted that, it is not a very large leap for science to validate the reality of the higher spheres, the continuity of life after the death of the physical body, and therefore Astral projection etc..
Many branches of science will be in denial until the absolute end- they find it easier to remain in denial and make the facts always fit within their own self-imposed rigid frameworks. The truth cannot be supressed however, and it will not be long before the quantum sciences become the catalyst for a whole new scientific view. Remember, until quite recently science maintained the world was flat, and anyone denying that was considered to be deranged [:)]
With best regards,
Adrian.
Lest discuss something in this topic
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=5283&SearchTerms=prove
I'm pretty sure that there have been many such tests done to prove obe states, especially by robert monroe of the monroe institute-founder of hemi-sync.there are probably piles of documents laying in some storage room of science facilitys, ignored because people just can't accept the results of their experiments.[:(!]
Science can't even prove, in many cases, a direct cause and effect relationship between two events. They make asumptions on cause and effect given a proven statistically corrolation between one state and another. In psychiatry for example, the science that could help investigate AP, it is assumed that depression is caused by a low level of seratonin. What they really know is that there is a statisticaly close relationship between a low seratonin level and depression. But cause and effect? It could just as easily be argued that depression causes the low level of seratonin.
Also science requires some faith. Faith in other people's work. How do this sceintist know that the findings of their predecesors are right. Through out scientific history, previous findings have been proven wrong.
(The info found after my own comments here was all obtained from: Iwww.skepdic.com )
The first entry (regarding AP) states that there is "scant evidence" that it's for real. I KNOW it is FOR REAL, but why do you think so many are skeptical? I actually think that the majority of people are NOT skeptical, only a little befuddled when we try to talk about OBE, etc. to them because they are so not used to discussing or thinking about spiritual matters, unless it's from some preacher who is cramming it down their throats after he waters it down.
In my experiences talking with co-workers, church friends, etc. regarding NDE's, OBE's etc. not only do people seem receptive and interested, many of them have actually experienced something.
I think the following skeptical info reflects a "elitist" minority who are really nothing more than a doting group of ingorant zealots who attempt to undermine the truth but don't have a leg of their own to stand on.
____________________________________________________________
Skepdic.com
Astral projection:
Astral projection is a type of out-of-body experience (OBE) in which the astral body leaves its other six bodies and journeys far and wide to anywhere in the universe. The notion that we have seven bodies (one for each of the seven planes of reality) is a teaching of theosophist Madame Blavatsky. On its trips, the astral body perceives other astral bodies rather than their physical, etheric, emotional, spiritual, etc. bodies. In an ordinary OBE, such as remote viewing or the out-of-body near-death experience, there is a separation of a person's consciousness from his or her body. In the near-death out-of-body experience, there may be the experience of hovering above and perceiving one's body and environs,and hearing conversations of surgeons or rescue workers tinkering with one's body. In astral projection, it is the astral body, not the soul or consciousness, that leaves the body. The astral body, according to Madame Blavatsky, is the one that has an aura. It is also the seat of feeling and desire, and is generally described as being connected to the physical body during astral projection by an infinitely elastic and very fine silver cord, a kind of cosmic umbilical cord or Ariadne's thread.
There is scant evidence to support the claim that anyone can project their mind, soul, psyche, spirit, astral body, etheric body, or any other entity to somewhere else on this or any other planet. The main evidence is in the form of testimonials.
out-of-body experience (OBE)
An out-of-body experience (OBE) is a feeling of departing from one's physical body and observing both one's self and the world from outside of one's body. The experience is quite common in dreams, daydreams, and memories, where we quite often take the external perspective. Some people experience an OBE while under the influence of an anesthetic or while semi-conscious due to trauma. Some people have an OBE while under the influence of drugs. Finally, some people experience an OBE when they are near death. These are called near-death experiences (NDEs).
Susan Blackmore, a parapsychologist with heavy skeptical leanings, is considered one of the world's leading authorities on OBEs and NDEs. She had an OBE while attending Oxford during the early 1970s. By her own admission she "spent much of the time stoned, experimenting with different drugs" (Shermer). During her first year at Oxford she had an OBE while stoned on marijuana after several hours on the Ouija board. The experience also occurred during a period of her life when sleep deprivation was common for her. She describes herself as having been in "a fairly peculiar state of mind" when she had the OBE (Shermer).
In her OBE, Blackmore went down a tunnel of trees toward a light, floated on the ceiling and observed her body below, saw a silver cord connecting her floating "astral body", floated out of the building around Oxford and then over England, and finally across the Atlantic to New York. (Kay Redford Jamison, one of the world's leading authorities on bipolar disorder, a disease from which she suffers, describes a similar voyage to Jupiter while she was enjoying the manic phase of her mental illness See An Unquiet Mind.)
After hovering around New York, Blackmore floated back to her room in Oxford where she became very small and entered her body's toes. Then she grew very big, as big as a planet at first, and then she filled the solar system and finally she became as large as the universe.
Blackmore attributes her experience to peculiar brain processes such as might cause "neuronal disinhibition in the visual cortex," which is her explanation for hallucinations and NDEs. She did not consider investigating abnormal psychology, where she would find many similar cases of Alice-in-Wonderland voyagers. Instead, she says that she devoted her study to astral projection and theosophy, hoping to find an answer.Her experience with the silver cord is right out of traditional occult literature on astral projection.
Blackmore's experience is typical in that like all OBEs hers requires us to believe that consciousness is a separate entity from the body (dualism) and can exist without the body and the body without it, at least for short periods of time. It also requires that the disembodied consciousness can 'see', 'hear', 'feel', and, I suppose, 'taste' and 'smell' as well. Or perhaps it is the case that the brain and the senses can operate over vast distances and perceive objects by some mysterious physiological power not yet discovered. Neither scenario seems plausible.
If OBEs were a common occurrence, one would expect that there would be minds out of their bodies everywhere. There are supposedly thousands of souls leaving their bodies every day and night. You'd think that there'd be a mix-up occasionally and one or two souls or astral bodies would come back to the wrong physical bodies, or at least get their "silver" cords tangled up. One would expect some minds to get lost and never find their way back to their bodies. There should be at least a few mindless bodies wandering or lying around, abandoned by their souls as unnecessary baggage. There should also be a few confused souls who don't know who they are because they're in the wrong bodies. Perhaps this is one of those topics that should not be scrutinized too closely.
Nevertheless, William Buhlman has dared to venture into the world of disembodied travelers. According to his promoters, Buhlman is "America's leading expert on the subject of out-of-body experiences." His book, Adventures Beyond the Body, and his OBE workshops justify these accolades, say his advocates. Buhlman, a certified hypnotherapist, promises that "we can use self-initiated out-of-body experiences to explore our spiritual identity and enhance our intellectual and physical lives." Astral travel, says Buhlman, can "expand your consciousness" and verify that you have a soul that has had past lives. Most importantly, OBEs can "enhance your daily life." Buhlman doesn't mention it, but it seems important to note that to have an OBE would be something meaningful to do while you are waiting to die.
See related entries on astral projection, near-death experiences and remote viewing.
near-death experience (NDE)
Near-death experience (NDE) refers to a wide array of experiences reported by some people who have nearly died or who have thought they were going to die. There is no single experience shared by all those near death. Nor do all those reporting near-death experiences share a single identical experience. Even those experiences of most interest to parapsychologists--such as the "mystical experience," the "light at the end of the tunnel" experience, the "life review" experience, and the "out-of-body" experience--rarely occur together in near-death experiences.
Two M.D.s who have popularized the idea that the NDE is proof of life after death are Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and Raymond Moody. The former is well known for her work on death and dying. The latter is an M.D. with Ph.D.s in philosophy and psychology but whose favorite title seems to be 'parapsychologist'. He has written several books on the subject of "life after life" and has comprised a list of features he considers to be "typical" of the near-death experience. They are based mostly on liberal interpretations of testimonials and anecdotes from doctors, nurses and patients. The list of NDE features has been repeated by many of his followers. Characteristic of Moody's work is the glaring omission of cases that don't fit his hypothesis. If Moody is to be believed, no one near death has had a horrifying experience. Yet, there are numerous reports of bad NDE trips involving tortures by elves, giants, demons, etc. Some parapsychologists take these good and bad NDE trips as evidence of heaven and hell. They believe that some people actually leave their bodies and go to the other world for a time before returning to their bodies. If so, then what is one to conclude from the fact that most people near death experience nothing? Is that fact good evidence that there is no afterlife? Such reasoning is on par with supposing that dreams in which one appears to oneself to be outside of one's bed are to be taken as evidence of out-of-body experiences (OBEs).
Moody focuses on OBEs by persons who nearly die. He also made popular the notion that the NDE is generally an experience of feeling extreme peacefulness and involves a buzzing or ringing sound, a passage into darkness and then a passage into the light. However, what little research there has been in this field indicates that these sensations are more likely if the conditions that set off the experience would naturally affect brain states, such as cardiac arrest and anesthesia. The conditions which lead to the NDE seem to significantly affect the nature of the experience. Furthermore, many people who have not been near death have had experiences which seem identical to NDEs. These mimicking experiences are usually the result of psychosis (due to severe neurochemcial imbalance) or drug usage, such as hashish or LSD.
Moody thinks that NDEs prove the existence of life after death. Skeptics believe that NDEs can be explained by neurochemistry and are the result of brain states that occur due to a dying brain. For example, "neural noise" and "retino-cortical mapping" explain the common experience of passage down a tunnel from darkness into a bright light. According to Susan Blackmore, vision researcher Dr. Tomasz S. Troscianko of the University of Bristol speculated:
If you started with very little neural noise and it gradually increased, the effect would be of a light at the centre getting larger and larger and hence closer and closer....the tunnel would appear to move as the noise levels increased and the central light got larger and larger....If the whole cortex became so noisy that all the cells were firing fast, the whole area would appear light (Blackmore 1993, 85).
Blackmore attributes the feelings of extreme peacefulness of the NDE to the release of endorphins in response to the extreme stress of the situation. The buzzing or ringing sound is attributed to cerebral anoxia and consequent effects upon the connections between brain cells. [p. 64]
Dr. Karl Jansen has reproduced NDEs with ketamine, a short-acting, hallucinogenic, 'dissociative' anaesthetic.
The anaesthesia is the result of the patient being so 'dissociated' and 'removed from their body' that it is possible to carry out surgical procedures. This is wholly different from the 'unconsciousness' produced by conventional anesthetics, although ketamine is also an excellent analgesic (pain killer) by a different route (i.e. not due to dissociation). Ketamine is related to phencyclidine (PCP). Both drugs are arylcyclohexylamines - they are not opioids and are not related to LSD. In contrast to PCP, ketamine is relatively safe, is much shorter acting, is an uncontrolled drug in most countries, and remains in use as an anaesthetic for children in industrialised countries and all ages in the third world as it is cheap and easy to use. Anaesthetists prevent patients from having NDE's ('emergence phenomena') by the co-administration of sedatives which produce 'true' unconsciousness rather than dissociation.*
According to Dr. Jansen, ketamine can reproduce all the main features of the NDE, including travel through a dark tunnel into the light, the feeling that one is dead, communing with God, hallucinations, out-of-body experiences, strange noises, etc. This does not prove that there is no life after death, but it does prove that an NDE is not proof of an afterlife. In any case, the so-called "typical" NDE is not typical of anything, except the tendency of parapsychologists to selectively isolate features of a wide array of experiences and fit them to a paranormal or supernatural hypothesis.
Finally, Quigg Lawrence (Blinded by the Light) thinks that NDEs are the work of Satan. That is at least as good an answer as that they are due to real visits to other planes of reality.
See related entries on astral projection, out-of-body experiences, and remote viewing.
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