Epictetus

There is a great deal of popular literature out there which "documents" people having had extra-corporeal experiences (out-of-body) and a related phenomenon, the Near-Death Experience. As far as I know, ALL of this literature is anecdotal in nature - accounts of people who had similar stories with similar elements.

I seem to recall that there have been some scientific experiments done by Duke University or elsewhere where researchers tried to verify if these experiences were repeatable and where they tried to document that the person was really out of their body by bringing back information they obtained when "out" such as a number hidden on top of a shelf in a specified room, etc.

Does anyone know if this kind of research has been done, what the precise findings were, and if the investigation continues or that the researchers came to the conclusion that the whole phenomenon was without merit?

lulay

I have read a bit about socalled OBEs, plus i have had two experiences, one VERY powerful, and weirder than i have read

Now, your question seems to be wondering whether these experiences can be verified?

Depends what you mean. Gyrus....see his online essay Dionysus Risen, offers a very interesting alternative--cant remember the exact term he used , but it means visceral awareness...that the spirit or whatever is exploring BODY rather than 'leaving' body......if this thread continues i will try and find a passage about it

My own experience was very real. very unlike any dream i have ever had. i met 4 entities in the experience, two of which looked very like Satyrs......

If someone was to say i 'imagined' it etc etc., i would just look at them like you lookat an ignorant child. Having said that, i wouldn't say it was an 'OBE' as though we even know what that means

it has to be explored what we MEAn ABOUT 'BODY'...when we ask that question, what do we mean? are we asking it in a materialistic-reductionist way?

BioBeing

I remember reading about the study you refer to, Epictetus, but can't track it down right now.

I did come across this:

ashe

Well. When someone says you "imagined" it, they don't mean it never happened. They just are suggesting that you must consider the possibility of hallucination as an explanation for the occurrence.

Sure, it sucks big time to have to consider the possibility that you may have had a hallucination. But I think about it all the time. I think it's a very valid question.

We assume that our senses and mental faculties work well. But what if they don't really work all that well? Or maybe they don't work quite the way our experiences suggest that they do?

Perhaps the brain "cuts corners" and we don't really notice. Except when we do - and those cut corners manifest in the form of hallucinations, illusions and delusions.

Or maybe there really is an astral plane.

ashe

Naruto

I've read Robert Monroe's three books about his claimed OBE's. While I don't believe him, they make one of the most interesting, thought-provoking reads I've seen in a while. I would definitely recommend them to anyone to read as fiction.

Epictetus

Monroe would certainly take issue with you on his accounts being 'fiction," however, I would agree that his descriptions of his out-of-body adventures are certainly bizarre in the extreme. Other books that are just as fascinating are The Projection of the Astral Body by Sylvan Muldoon, Astral Projection by Oliver Fox, and Casebook of Astral Projection by Robert Crookall.

The accounts one reads from people who have experienced this are quite compelling. However, most scientific minded inviduals attribute their experiences to some kind of neurological malfunction or pathology; i.e. their brains are damaged or not working right. I understand this approach, since we westerners tend to want concrete tests that we can apply to such questions. I am just not sure this is possible given our present state of technological sophistication. It seems premature and hasty to dismiss this field from a science standpoint when perhaps we simply lack the ability to measure that such phenomenom are occuring; much like trying to test whether video images could be sent through the air prior to developing receivers that could sense the signal.

Most of the scientific experiments that I have read about with this topic are either old (1960s and 70s) or they are sponsored by seemingly wacko fringe groups that also proclaim tarot card validity, horoscopes, healing, etc. The field of OBEs gets thrown in with a bunch of really suspect subjects and no one seems willing to try to verify if it is an actual phenomenon or not. :huh:

Coragyps

I attribute the single OBE I had, back in '69 or so, to some mescaline I took three or four hours previously. Whether good ol' 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine has been documented to stimulate the right angular gyrus, I don't know, but I "watched" how the muscles in my thighs slid over each other from up above the porch swing I was in.

My vote is for brain chemistry, whether induced or endogenous.

Fortuna

Coragyps,

I remember reading some research some years ago (done in Holland, I believe), back when I was interested in the phenomenon of NDEs. In any case, it suggested that when the brain is deprived of oxygen that phenylethylamines began to either be formed by an reaction involving the chemistry of the brain, or that they were released by some part of the brain.

This would tend to explain these powerful hallucinations and perhaps also some of the reported sensations during an NDE.

Strikingly similiar to your reported experience, as mesc is classified as a PEA also, n'est pas ?

(I will try to dig up the research, if you are interested)

DBT

Was this the one you mean? the link is not to the original study though, but a quote in a new age magazine,its all I could find offhand.

Quote;
Researcher: Charles T. Tart Psychology Department, University of California. The experiment was published in the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1968, vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 3-27.

Epictetus

Yes, this was one of the studies. There were also a couple other studies done by Tart with Robert Monroe, mentioned in some posts above. These studies, though, when you read them appear to be done in a somewhat "loose" fashion without normal laboratory controls and standard experimental safeguards. And there have been virtually no other studies done by anyone else. It's like the whole subject is a black hole that no one wants to touch because they are afraid they will be labelled as nut cases.

In the absence of stringent laboratory controls, how much validity can we attribute to anecdotal accounts? For there are literally thousands of stories from people who have experienced this phenomenon. Are they all crazy? I tend to think not. But what exactly is happening to them? Some of these OBE occur without any drugs (mescaline) or injuries (NDEs). They are spontaneous...and very real. And some of the people that experience them have extrasensory knowledge of events that they couldn't possibly obtain while in their physical bodies; i.e. they see people in certain locations that are later "verified," they see strangers who helped them during an accident that they can later identify, and so on.

Now perhaps this is all second or third hand BS. But when you read the literature "out there" on this phenomenon, the weight of these anecdotal accounts is quite impressive. How it occurs, who knows! But I question those who dismiss it entirely because they are only convinced with highly controlled laboratory studies.