An examination of out of body experiences
Out of Body Experience
Tony Crisp
Because out of body experiences occur while the person is apparently asleep, they can be considered as manifestations of sleep phenomena, but they do not have the same characteristics as a typical dream. Dreams are seldom verifiable observations of external events occurring at the same time as the dream. Out of body experiences (OBE’s) frequently display an accurate observation of external events, not available to the sleeping person except by extraordinary means.
At about two or three in the morning my wife Brenda and I were suddenly awoken from sleep by a noise. As we lifted our heads to hear we identified it as the handle on our children’s bedroom door being turned. The house only had two bedrooms, and the children’s room was directly opposite ours. Both of us had the same thought - ‘Oh no, it’s the children again.’ Much to our annoyance they had been waking in the middle of the night claiming it was morning and time to play. We had tried to suppress it, but here it was again.
As these thoughts went through our minds we heard the sound of feet clomping down the stairs. This was strange as the children usually stayed in their room. Brenda got up determined to get whoever it was back into bed. I heard her switch the light on, go down the stairs, switch the sitting room light on, and I followed her via the sounds of her movement as she looked in the kitchen and even toilet - we didn’t have a bathroom. Then up she came again and opened the children’s door - strange because we had assumed it had been opened. When she came back into our room she looked puzzled and a little scared. ‘They’re all asleep and in bed’ she said.
We talked over the mystery for some time trying to understand just how we had heard the door handle rattle then footsteps going down the stairs, yet the door wasn’t open. Also, the door handles on our doors were too high for the children to reach without standing on a chair. There was a stool in the children’s bedroom they used for that, yet it wasn’t even near the door when Brenda opened it.
Having no answer to the puzzle we stopped talking and settled to wait for sleep again. Suddenly a noise came from the children’s bedroom. It sounded like the stool being dragged and then the door handle turning again but the door not opening. ‘You go this time’ Brenda said, obviously disturbed.
I opened our door quickly just in time to see the opposite door handle turn again. Still the door didn’t open. I reached across, turned the handle and slowly opened the door. It stopped as something was blocking it. Just then my daughter Helen’s small face peered around the door - high because she was standing on the stool. Puzzled by what had happened, I was careful what I said to her. ‘What do you want love?’ I asked.
Unperturbed she replied, ‘I want to go to the toilet.’ The toilet was downstairs, through the sitting room, and through the kitchen.
Now I had a clue so asked, ‘Did you go downstairs before?’
‘Yes’ she said, ‘but mummy sent me back to bed!’. Tony C.
This is an unusual example of an OBE. Mostly they are described from the point of view of the person projecting and are therefore difficult to corroborate. Here, three people experience the OBE in their own way. From Tony and Brenda’s point of view what happened caused sensory stimuli, but only auditory. Helen’s statement says that she was sure she had physically walked down the stairs and been sent back to bed by her mother. Tony and Brenda felt there was a direct connection between what they were thinking and feeling – ‘get the children back to bed’ - and what Helen experienced as an objective reality.
OBE’s have been reported thousands of times in every culture and in every period of history. A more general experience of OBE than the above might include a feeling of rushing along a tunnel or release from a tight place prior to the awareness of independence from the body. In this first stage some people experience a sense of physical paralysis which may be frightening. Their awareness then seems to become an observing point outside the body, as well as the sense of paralysis. There is usually an intense awareness of oneself and surroundings, unlike dreaming or even lucidity. Some projectors feel they are even more vitally aware and rational than during the waking state. Looking back on ones body may occur here. At this very first stage of complete independence some people experience intense fear. This is most likely due to fearing that one is dying. I believe there is an unconscious connection between the exteriorisation of ones awareness and death.
Then I looked down on my sleeping body. Suddenly I was terrified. I didn’t at the time understand this terror, but the thought came to me in a flash that this what was I had read about - ie people leaving their body in projection. The fear immediately vanished to be replaced by uncontrollable laughter. Looking back I think the terror arose because I was certain I was dying. The laughter came at the realisation this was not so, and was a release of tension brought about by the terror. Tony C.
Once the awareness is independent of the body, the boundaries of time and space as they are known in the body do not exist. One can easily pass through walls, fly, travel to or immediately be in a far distant place, witnessing what may be, or appears to be, physically real there. Sir Auckland Geddes, an eminent British Anatomist, describes his own OBE, which contains many of these features. See: second example in spiritual life in dreams.
Becoming suddenly and violently ill with gastro-enteritis he quickly became unable to move or phone for help. As this was occurring he noticed he had an ‘A’ and a ‘B’ consciousness. The ‘A’ was his normal awareness, and the ‘B’ was external to his body watching. From the ‘B’ self he could see not only his body, but also the house, garden and surrounds. He need only think of a friend or place and immediately he was there and was later able to find confirmation for his observations. In looking at his body, he noticed that the brain was only an end organ, like a condensing plate, upon which memory and awareness played. The mind, he said, was not in the brain, the brain was in the mind, like a radio in the play of signals. He then observed his daughter come in and discover his condition, saw her telephone a doctor friend, and saw the doctor also at the same time.
As OBE’s often occur at times of stress, a near-death-experience, great pain, or in deep withdrawal, they may have a link with such human and animal situations. In other words, OBE’s may have developed as an evolutionary or survival method to deal with death, near death, pain or stress.
For instance, many cases of OBE occur in a near death situation, where a person has ‘died’ of a heart attack for instance, and is later revived. Because of this there are attempts to consider the possibility of survival of death through study of these cases. In fact many people after experiencing an OBE have a very different view of death than prior to their experience. From the opposite point of view, that of the external observer who is not asleep, many OBE’s have been witnessed by relatives of people actually dying through war or accident. During the two world wars, many cases were reported and later corroborated, of seeing the dying person appear, and of them telling of their death, or silently communicating it. I believe this points out the deep connection between an OBE and dying, pain and stress. I have felt that the OBE is in fact the remains of something that existed in primitive animals as a survival mechanism. It was a way of communicating the cause of death to those with genetic bonding. This awareness would help in avoiding the same death.
Early attempts to explain OBE’s suggested a subtle or astral body, which is a double of our physical and mental self, but able to pass through walls and transcend the physical limitations of distance. It was said to be connected to the physical body during an OBE by a silver cord - a life line which kept the physical body alive. This is similar to the concept that the people we dream about are not creations of our own psyche, but real in their own right. This theory has limitations as it can be observed that many people in this condition have no silver cord, and have no body at all, but are simply a bodiless observer, or are an animal, a geometrical shape, a colour or sound. Analysis of many OBE’s therefore suggests that the ‘body’ and many of the other aspects of the experience are as much a creation of ones psyche as are the objects and people in a dream. See: identity and the dreamer.
This means the person’s own unconscious concepts of self seem to be the factor which shapes the form of the OBE. If, therefore, one feels sure one must travel to a distant point, then in the OBE one travels. If one believes one is immediately there by the power of thought, one is there. If one cannot conceive of existing without a body, then one has a body, and so on. The silver cord, from this point of view, exists simply because the ‘dreamer’ feels it is necessary. If the second example in spiritual life in dreams is read, it can be seen that Tony at one point travels, then suddenly the travelling through the air ends and he is immediately hundreds of miles away in London. Also, although his sleeping body was in pyjamas, his projected body is wearing outdoor clothes, showing he is not experiencing himself as an ‘astral double’ or copy of his sleeping self. He has no sign of any silver cord, and his own impression afterwards was that the experience was largely a creation of imagery to suit his own beliefs, except that in some way it interfaced with reality. Therefore any theory about OBE’s needs to explain the mixture of reality and subjective experience in such events. For example, in this instance, Tony’s dog had an awareness of him, verified by Tony’s mother, and yet Tony’s experiences were not a part of the ‘real’ world in the usual sense.
In a nutshell, the world of the OBE is created by the concepts of the ‘dreamer’. This world is experienced as physically real, in a similar way to the world of dreams. Yet it is neither a dream in the usual sense, nor is it a dream in which the person is highly lucid. There is a different quality about it than either dreaming or lucidity. The difference is that during an OBE the physical world can also be experienced and witnessed. So in trying to analyse events during an OBE, we must discover what aspects are created out of unconsciously held concepts, and what are witnessed physical world events or objects. Whatever the answer, this view of the OBE suggests there is no need for a person to travel to a site, or to have a silver cord, or in fact any sort of body at all. What emerges is that consciousness can at certain times completely go beyond the limitations of space, location and time we usually accept. For instance it is very real for us to accept that if we wish to personally experience the streets of Tokyo or New York we will have to transport our body to those locations. If we go to New York we cannot at the same time experience Tokyo. With an OBE these rules do not apply. Consciousness does not have to travel. In some way it is already a timeless blanket throughout space. The OBE appears to be a process in which the person focuses on a particular spot, or several spots at once, within that three dimensional blanket. To accomplish the focusing they may utilise personal forms of imagery such as travelling to the spot, or going down a tunnel to the site, or having a projected body. But this imagery, although deeply experienced, appears to be only an aid to focusing awareness away from ones usual physical senses onto the ‘timeless blanket’ of consciousness pervading all space.
This approach explains many aspects of the OBE, but there is still not a clear concept of what the relationship with the physical world is. If there is survival of death, then the OBE may be an anticipatory form, or a preparatory condition leading to the new form.
Many people mistake various other sleep experiences for an OBE. In fact the concept of a soul or spirit distinct from the body arose in pre-history from the experience of a dreamer going to a distant place while they slept. The dream of the distant or strange place was assumed to mean the dreamer actually travelled to somewhere else. But of course, actual experiences of OBE also occurred as frequently to our forebears as they do to us today.
The mistaken OBE can take many forms, as already explained. One of the most convincing however, is that occurring during the feeling of paralysis during the dream state. See paralysis while asleep - or trying to wake for an explanation of this.
See: altered states of consciousness; Life and Death - Part 1; death and rebirth under archetypes; death and dreams; ghost; hallucinations and hallucinogens; - Near Death Experience.
Also see The Astral Experience for lots of information about OBE's
Tony's in print Books in the UK or USA
Books - Stories - Poems - Articles/Features - Links - One Stop Shop - Home