BS: Out of body experiences

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: olddude
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:47 AM

by the way, I am quite the religous person. I know some of my language but that is just adjectives in my thinking ;-). I am very religous and more so since I fully believe I saw the other side. I also was able to tell the docs exactly what they did because I watched it out of body. Explain that as just nerves firing. Blew them away. And there is a God and there are angels and there are friends and family there noone will tell me different but to each their own path.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:44 AM

Oh, wow. I just now saw the post before mine. I definitely stop watches.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: CarolC
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:43 AM

One time at the dentist office when I was a child. I was floating up around the ceiling, looking down at myself and at the dentist working in my mouth.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: olddude
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:30 AM

Had it happen to me, I had a PE from a clot docs brought me back. By the way, you may think it is crap but I listened to a doc on TV who studied these and he was asked if there were lasting problems that the people reported. The doc said they have trouble with watches, batteries go dead. I can't wear a watch with a battery, it dies in 2 months instead of the 2 years it is suppose to. I never understood that until I heard the guy on TV.

abolutely true in my case

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Peace
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:28 AM

What he said.

The possibilities are interesting.

I suggested to the mother of a speech-delated child who's on the autism spectrum that instead of talking, why not establish eye contact and think of an oblect from amongst about twenty and bring the object to the mom. No words, no hints with the eyes or body language. After three times bringing the correct object the child said, "No more eyes."

I know this to be fact. How it happened I do not know.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Amos
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 11:20 AM

I would think it was, in fact, you talking to your head. But that's my point.

Cultural ramifications: if people shift from thinking of themselves as bodies who occasionally have spiritual experiences, to thinking of themselves as spiritual beings having corporeal ones, the whole liasma of authoritarian belief systems stands to be brought town like Galloping Gerty, the Tacoma Narrows bridge, in a windstorm of paradigm shifts. For one thing, the field of psychosomatic and psycho-emotional constructs will blow wide open, changing the face of medicine. For another, a second Protestant revolution could well ensue, making people very adamant about their right to define their own sense of ethics and become their own metaphysicians. As research into this field progresses, simple education will take the place of psychiatry. Advertising and political PR methodologies will crumble because people who doscover thier own spiritual centers become much clearer about not being manipulated by mere restimulation and button pushing.

A whole lot of change could spring from this one small difference in paradigm, and I would love to see it.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Ebbie
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 10:57 AM

A slight segue here (What else is new?):

Once I found myself very ill with a high fever. Unable to even think of driving I called my mother to come across town and take me to the emergency room.

While waiting for her, I lay on my bed alongside myself. I talked to the head beside me assuring me that she was coming, to just hang on.

I don't know what my temperature was then but when I got to the ER my temperature reading was 104.4.

So who was this "I" that talked to "me"?

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Paul Burke
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 10:57 AM

Out of Body experiences have been recreated in the lab. It didn't involve a ghost.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Peace
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 10:25 AM

I was thinking something similar--although not in such excellent English.




"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower   
by Dylan Thomas


The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.

The force that drives the water through the rocks
Drives my red blood; that dries the mouthing streams
Turns mine to wax.
And I am dumb to mouth unto my veins
How at the mountain spring the same mouth sucks.

The hand that whirls the water in the pool
Stirs the quicksand; that ropes the blowing wind
Hauls my shroud sail.
And I am dumb to tell the hanging man
How of my clay is made the hangman's lime.

The lips of time leech to the fountain head;
Love drips and gathers, but the fallen blood
Shall calm her sores.
And I am dumb to tell a weather's wind
How time has ticked a heaven round the stars.

And I am dumb to tell the lover's tomb
How at my sheet goes the same crooked worm."

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Amos
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 10:10 AM

The thing that always puzzles me about such discussion is that the consequences of the event are so often underestimated.

If an OOB is real (and it certainly seems real to those experincing them) the entire Darwinian model of human beingts (and maybe many other classes of beings, as well) is erroneous in respect to identifying the complex body system as its own owner, rather than merely a vehicle.

IF the model IS incorrect in this regard it opens up a really interesting slew of questions about what the nature of this "I" is. The understandable impulse to consider it as merely a stressed projection from gray matter does not seem to add up consistently. This leaves the notion that a non-corporeal component capable of external existence, but usually not exterior unde rnormal conditions, is in fact the "I" behind all the subsystems of cognitive process, where the seat of intention and perception lies.

Seems to me it is reasonable to assert that there is a great deal about this that is not known and that must (if things are as they seem in regard to this) severely extend and re-center the model of what it ias to be a human.


A

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Donuel
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 08:44 AM

I have never run out of body. I normally have just enough body to get me through the week. However my hair sometimes loses its body.
__________________________\


been there done that

Hypnogogic experiences are normal.
The expereience of going to a distant location while in an OBE is rare and can be alarming at first.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 07:39 AM

A few times.... I get a feeling somewhat akin to the description in 'Alice in Wonderland', where she's eaten the mushroom and suddenly her neck is above the treetops.

I feel as if I'm stretching, my neck becomes like a swan's neck, extremely flexible and I can turn round and stare at the top of my own head. I don't think I've ever totally separated, but it's definately not my body I'm in. It's quite relaxing and never scary unless I'm under the influence of prescription drugs - morphine does it to me every time, along with a feeling of panic, nausea and vertigo. I try to avoid morphine for that reason.

Having Pethadine during heart surgery for which I had to be awake but relaxed was interesting. Again, the feeling of stretching out and looking over myself, but this time I was stretching out from the side, like sliding the bottom card off the deck.

I can induce it, but not often. It doesn't scare me often.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 05:48 AM

The average prevalence of OBEs in the general population is 10 %, BTW.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Wolfgang
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 05:26 AM

Such experiences are more common than some would like to think. And though they are not fully understood there is more known about them than some would like to think.

Related phenomena are near death experiences and autoscopy (and doppelgaenger phenomena).

Usually, the subjectively perceived position of the "I" is within the body (mostly above the waist though no necessarily inside the head). Under some conditions (lack of oxygen, medication, meditation, some states of sleep, neural stimuation, brain tumor, extremely high arousal etc...)the body scheme of the brain breaks down and the "I" s perceived subjectively to be outside of the onfines of the body.

The way I can induced that perception in me would be extreme sleep deprivation.

By itself, it is not unhealthy or dangerous but it may accompany otherwise dangerous states (near death, e.g., by definition).

Susan Blackmore is a researcher who has experienced this phenomenon herself (if I recall corrrectly under the influence of marihuana) and has written a lot about it from the POV of a brain researcher.

A lot of reasearch is also done in Switzerland. One link to an article is

Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin .

Peter Brugger too (also from Switzerland) has often published on such things.

No serious researcher ever has ever scoffed such experiences BTW. Only sometimes some of those who have had such experiences do not like to hear other explanations than those they have made up themselves to explain what has happened to them.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 05:24 AM

Does anyone else have them? why do they happen? do they scare you? Can you stop them?

I've experienced sleep paralysis and that is absolutely terrifying.

I have lucid dreams and they don't scare me because I can change what's happening and since I have suffered "bad" dreams every night for years I don't worry about having a bad dream.

I did experience something a bit like an OBE (although it may not have been that, I really am not sure) when I was in a state of extreme exhaustion and serious stress; I couldn't possibly have stopped it but it didn't scare me, although it did bother me because of the situation I was in at the time and the feeling of loss of control. As a result of this I imagine (but I don't know) that an OBE can get people through very serious situations such as "near death" or total nervous breakdown.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: kendall
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 04:52 AM

Once. During meditation I found myself soaring in outer space. It was delightful, but there was a thread attached to me and the earth. Suddenly, I thought, "Hell! this is impossible" and immediately I was back to earth. I haven't tried it since.

"A wise man is never sure of anything."

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: ClaireBear
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 01:37 AM

I have had what I perceive to be OBEs -- like you, not above my body, but floating around the room, the house, or occasionally the neighborhood -- but in my case they always occur in conjunction with hypnopompic/hypnagogic hallucinations and sleep paralysis.

These are fascinatingly odd experiences that are extreme and terrifying when they happen. (Mine, for example, were so bad I was convinced I was being held down and violated nightly by a malevolent spirit. I couldn't move, and I couldn't wake up...every time I thought I HAD woken up it turned out I was just in another "layer" of the hallucination. The only way I could overcome them -- and I didn't even figure this defense out for years -- was to muster the strength to "break through" mentally and call on the four elements [or God, if you will] to surround me with protection.)

Happily these are now rare or even in the past for me. Perhaps menopause has its advantages after all...

I suggest you look those phenomena up and see if they perchance bear any resemblance to your night terrors. If so, I'd be happy to tell you more, and I know there are other Catters who've had them too.

Claire

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Alice
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 12:18 AM

Back in 1980, not long after my parents died, I was appointed to a task force to create a report for the governor on the subject of the energy crisis and low and fixed income consumers. We would meet once a month in different parts of the state, spending 2 days discussing the issue. One month we met at a resort hotel between Butte and Anaconda at the location of a natural warm springs, called Fairmont. I was very excited that night about the progress I was able to bring to the project that day.

I was staying on the second floor of the hotel, and each room had large glass doors that opened to a balcony. That night I woke up and floated out through the glass, feeling the resistance of the metal frame of the door, as I passed through it to the outside. I was looking down and saw yellow lines. At first I could not figure out what I was seeing, then realized it was the yellow lines painted for the parking places in the parking lot. I realized I was outside looking at the steam from the pond, and as soon as I thought, I wonder if I could reach my mother from here, I was back inside and in my bed.

The oddest thing for me now is that almost 30 years later, I spend weeks at a time living in that hotel, sometimes staying in that same room, as I work a couple months a year in Butte for a company that provides my lodging at that hotel out in the country.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: katlaughing
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 12:10 AM

Yep, same here. I was bleeding out when my third child was born. The docs couldn't get an IV started, my veins were collapsing. As an EMT, I knew what that meant. I went right out, hovered above and watched as they worked on me. Wanting to be with my preemie baby and two older children kept me from letting go altogether.

There have been other times, but none so dramatic.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Peace
Date: 08 Sep 08 - 12:04 AM

Twice. Once when I almost died (actuallt DID die but they got me back) on an operating table and another when I met an 'angel'. I don't discuss the experiences for the same reason as SINS. Too many closed-minded people around who would say on the internet what they wouldn't say to yer face.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 10:00 PM

I've had 2 relatives who had out of body experiences. One when she was quite ill and in danger of dying. Another when he was totally exhausted and very discouraged about his life. In both of those cases they had the feeling of moving entirely out of the body and looking down on it from some distance above it. In both cases they said that their body looked very weak and fragile and ill, but that they themselves felt absolutely fine outside of it...to the point where they were a bit reluctant to descend back into it.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Amos
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 09:41 PM

Well, it's a good bet that resisting them as hard as you can will not settle the issue for you.

It might be more worthwhile to try and experience them calmly and practice deciding where to view from, or be, at will, rather than just waiting for some impulse to bounce you in or out.

If the dreams are related it is because of the decision that they are related, a matter of perceptions being associated, not because (probably) there is an actual connection in the "now" to terror.

You will get all kinds of opinions, yes, trying to assess them for you or invalidate them for you or whatever. Don't let the noise throw you off making up your own mind.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 09:15 PM

No, actually I have never 'seen' my own body, just feel myself floating up and out of it and back down again. I get a lot of the other classic signs of OBE - a feeling of intense buzzing and vibrating in my head and body, and its always dark when its happening so I guess its happening in real time.

I have night terrors too and vivid dreams, which could be related.

It's funny because I used to be into spiritualist stuff years ago, and would liked to have had an OBE then, indeed I think I tried - but now as a non-believer they are involuntarily happening. I've been on a few forums dedicated to the subject but they are preoccupied with people who like having them, or want to have them but are still trying.

I do remember one person I knew years ago who had them and didnt like it. He said that he floated up to the ceiling and tiny specks on the ceiling appeared the size of dustbin lids. thats pretty scary.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 09:13 PM

Shirley MacLaine had a great documentary on this subject. The human mind, being the free spirit that it is, escapes the physical body.
Many times I have experienced phenomena that I can not explain so I am no sceptic. Please pass on some detail.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Little Hawk
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 09:07 PM

So, can you describe the experience briefly, Jane? Do you see your own body from a vantage point outside it? And are you conscious of having a separate "spirit" body when that happens?

I haven't had such an experience, but I see no reason to scoff at someone else saying they did.

Subject: RE: BS: Out of body experiences
From: SINSULL
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 08:44 PM

Yes. No. Yes,
i am tired of being laughed at over this one.

Subject: BS: Out of body experiences
From: Jane of 'ull
Date: 07 Sep 08 - 08:37 PM

I have these periodically and I don't like them, it frightens me. Does anyone else have them? why do they happen? do they scare you? Can you stop them? Jane x