OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCE

Posted by anthonynorth on December 30, 2007
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One area of the paranormal that has risen to prominence since the 1970s is the out-of-body experience, or OBE. This, and the related near death experience, or NDE, has regularly caused bafflement.
Do these phenomena offer evidence of wider paranormality, even survival of death? Or are they simply quirks of the mind, with nothing of a paranormal nature actually occurring?

SOME CASE STUDIES

Ernest Hemingway claimed to have had an OBE in Italy in 1918 after being hit by shrapnel from a mortar bomb. He talked of seeing his soul leave his body and float around.
Psychologist D Scott Rogo spoke of his OBE in 1965, describing how, whilst lying down, tired, he saw himself walk about the bedroom. However, it is often the case that this soul-body actually sees things itself.
Typical was the case of biologist Lyall Watson, when a bus overturned whilst on a safari in Kenya. Knocked unconscious, he found himself looking down at himself. He also saw a trapped boy. Moments later he regained consciousness and immediately dived down to rescue the boy - a boy only seen by his ‘other’ body.

IT’S BEEN AROUND A WHILE

Beliefs in the OBE are worldwide. In the Bible, St Paul seems to describe his own OBE. Also known as Astral Travel, the soul-body was known as the ‘ka’ to the ancient Egyptians.
In India it is usually known as the ’siddhi’, whilst the Tibetans call it the ‘bardo-body’. During the 1970s Dean Sheils from Wisconsin studied tribal cultures from around the world and found beliefs in the OBE in 95% of people.
Beliefs tend to be just as strong today. For instance, a 1952 survey of 115 students at Duke University by Hornell Hart revealed that 30% thought they had had an OBE. A similar 1966 survey by Celia Green showed that 19% of students asked at Southampton University had had one.
A typical modern case was identified by cardiologist Dr Michael Rawlings. He spoke to one patient who could remember what the doctor was wearing and what he did during an emergency procedure. This was impossible because the patient was in a coma at the time.

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

Following studies by Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and Raymond Moody in the early 1970s, the OBE came to be associated with the Near Death Experience, where, close to death, the patient leaves the body, often gaining extrasensory insight, and then goes down a tunnel before meeting a light.
Beyond the light, an afterlife is percieved and the person is judged as to whether they should die or not. A 1982 Gallup Poll claimed that eight million Americans have had such an experience, which can be life changing.
The Near Death Experience can, I think, be discounted as a real event. During the 1990s students in Berlin achieved such afterlife images during deep faint, suggesting the experience is psychological in nature. But the extrasensory information available is something else.

ASTRAL TRAVELLERS

Some people claim to be regular OBErs, or Astral Travelers. The early 20th century gave us some spectacular claims. Marcel Forhan, known as Yram, claimed to often have OBEs, claiming to have met his wife whilst traveling.
The American Sylvan Muldoon was a bedridden, sickly individual who got his only excitement from ‘traveling’, a thing he claimed to do since he was twelve. He claimed that we all do it, our dreams being remembrances of our OBEs.

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