Thursday, July 31, 2008
Going Out of Body
Going Out of Body
Recently, a friend told me that she had had an out of body experience some years ago. She was lying on her couch, suffering intensely from arthritis pain, when suddenly she shot out of her body and found herself near the ceiling, looking down on her prostrate figure. The experience lasted only a few minutes, but during that time she felt no pain.
Her story led me to think about all the other folks I have met who have also had such experiences (often referred to as oob for out of body). One such was the man I met recently in Colorado, who had seemed to be drowning, until he went out of his body and then watched himself in that desperate situation with a certain detachment until he was mysteriously thrown up out of the current and onto a rock. Another was a friend I had many years ago, who was in a doctor’s office to receive some kind of serious injection, when she found herself, terrified, clinging to the light fixture above. There are many similar accounts, especially (it seems) from those who suffered abusive childhoods or trauma as adults.
One of my favorite tales (of a different kind) involves someone who was a patient having an operation who not only went out of her body but traveled up to the roof of the hospital, where she noticed a single red shoe. How strange, she thought to herself. Later, she described her experience to the hospital staff who, of course, attributed her adventure to some side effect of the anesthesia. She finally persuaded them to send somebody up to check, and sure enough, there was the red shoe.
I myself have never had such a clear oob experience, though I often
used to do a lot of flying of various kinds in my sleep, and have many times, just as I was falling asleep, discovered myself in some strange place, a location with extremely distinct features, or else I seemed to be someone else having some unfamiliar experience which, in the dream, carried a real history of its own. How could I remember what had never happened? Of course, one seldom recalls such brief glimpses into the unknown. Like dreams, they generally vanish when we come into waking awareness.
Joseph Chilton Pearce in his recent book called "The Biology of Transcendence" gives a vivid account of his own oob experience when as a young man he traveled (in spirit) several miles to visit his sweetheart. When he returned, all the details of the journey were clear in his head, and she later confirmed that she had been doing exactly what he described at that place and time.
Once I decided to see if I could intentionally leave my body. I did, it seemed, manage to float up to the ceiling but when I got half way through, I got afraid. As I hung there, with my astral body stuck half in and half out, as it were, I suddenly realized I really didn't know what I was doing, and at that point I returned to my drowsy material self waiting below.
Skeptics have expended much time and energy debunking the near death experience, attributing it to everything from religious expectation to release of certain chemicals in the brain. They have duplicated similar effects on military trainees who were being whirled about in machines resembling those at carnivals. They seem to be comforted with the notion that near death accounts are "nothing but" chemicals behaving abnormally in the body, not true revelations of what to expect when the body expires.
But, as far as I am aware, no one has come up with a convincing scientific explanation for the out of body states. These experiences may comprise the most important discovery of our time. They offer extremely compelling evidence that consciousness is not local, that it is not dependent on a material base to operate effectively. This means that our awareness need not die when we cease to breathe and are pronounced dead by observers.
As far as I know, no one has effectively countered these descriptions from personal independent experiencers, although some talk about the rem states in sleep when something like hallucination can occur. But not everyone is asleep when the jolt skyward occurs. And the patient who wakes up and reminds the doctor of what he talked about or did during the operation (sometimes describing actions which could only be observed from above) is not creating fiction.
I personally think awareness continues after death, when the spirit leaves its body shell, which is no longer needed as a vehicle of consciousness during this particular life cycle.
An--I will go one step further. I think sometimes that profound and spontaneous kundalini awakening, when the subtle body suddenly opens in delight as the energies travel to the crown and the effulgent bliss of the universe flows in, is in fact a remembering or reawakening of past experience, a reconnection with other existences and states of being, either here on this planet in past eras or in the interim planes, where we existed in fact as who we truly are.
Dorothy Walters
July 30, 2008
Recently, a friend told me that she had had an out of body experience some years ago. She was lying on her couch, suffering intensely from arthritis pain, when suddenly she shot out of her body and found herself near the ceiling, looking down on her prostrate figure. The experience lasted only a few minutes, but during that time she felt no pain.
Her story led me to think about all the other folks I have met who have also had such experiences (often referred to as oob for out of body). One such was the man I met recently in Colorado, who had seemed to be drowning, until he went out of his body and then watched himself in that desperate situation with a certain detachment until he was mysteriously thrown up out of the current and onto a rock. Another was a friend I had many years ago, who was in a doctor’s office to receive some kind of serious injection, when she found herself, terrified, clinging to the light fixture above. There are many similar accounts, especially (it seems) from those who suffered abusive childhoods or trauma as adults.
One of my favorite tales (of a different kind) involves someone who was a patient having an operation who not only went out of her body but traveled up to the roof of the hospital, where she noticed a single red shoe. How strange, she thought to herself. Later, she described her experience to the hospital staff who, of course, attributed her adventure to some side effect of the anesthesia. She finally persuaded them to send somebody up to check, and sure enough, there was the red shoe.
I myself have never had such a clear oob experience, though I often
used to do a lot of flying of various kinds in my sleep, and have many times, just as I was falling asleep, discovered myself in some strange place, a location with extremely distinct features, or else I seemed to be someone else having some unfamiliar experience which, in the dream, carried a real history of its own. How could I remember what had never happened? Of course, one seldom recalls such brief glimpses into the unknown. Like dreams, they generally vanish when we come into waking awareness.
Joseph Chilton Pearce in his recent book called "The Biology of Transcendence" gives a vivid account of his own oob experience when as a young man he traveled (in spirit) several miles to visit his sweetheart. When he returned, all the details of the journey were clear in his head, and she later confirmed that she had been doing exactly what he described at that place and time.
Once I decided to see if I could intentionally leave my body. I did, it seemed, manage to float up to the ceiling but when I got half way through, I got afraid. As I hung there, with my astral body stuck half in and half out, as it were, I suddenly realized I really didn't know what I was doing, and at that point I returned to my drowsy material self waiting below.
Skeptics have expended much time and energy debunking the near death experience, attributing it to everything from religious expectation to release of certain chemicals in the brain. They have duplicated similar effects on military trainees who were being whirled about in machines resembling those at carnivals. They seem to be comforted with the notion that near death accounts are "nothing but" chemicals behaving abnormally in the body, not true revelations of what to expect when the body expires.
But, as far as I am aware, no one has come up with a convincing scientific explanation for the out of body states. These experiences may comprise the most important discovery of our time. They offer extremely compelling evidence that consciousness is not local, that it is not dependent on a material base to operate effectively. This means that our awareness need not die when we cease to breathe and are pronounced dead by observers.
As far as I know, no one has effectively countered these descriptions from personal independent experiencers, although some talk about the rem states in sleep when something like hallucination can occur. But not everyone is asleep when the jolt skyward occurs. And the patient who wakes up and reminds the doctor of what he talked about or did during the operation (sometimes describing actions which could only be observed from above) is not creating fiction.
I personally think awareness continues after death, when the spirit leaves its body shell, which is no longer needed as a vehicle of consciousness during this particular life cycle.
An--I will go one step further. I think sometimes that profound and spontaneous kundalini awakening, when the subtle body suddenly opens in delight as the energies travel to the crown and the effulgent bliss of the universe flows in, is in fact a remembering or reawakening of past experience, a reconnection with other existences and states of being, either here on this planet in past eras or in the interim planes, where we existed in fact as who we truly are.
Dorothy Walters
July 30, 2008
