Are out-of-body experiences
valid? Dr. Crookall at the University of Aberdeen has written 9 books on
out-of-body cases due to the overwhelming amount of evidence in their favour. A
survey of 380 Oxford students showed that 34% had an OBE. A separate survey of
902 adults revealed that 8% have had an OBE. In a study of 44 non-Western
societies, only 3 did not hold a belief in OBEs. Another study showed that out
of 488 world societies, 89% had at least some tradition regarding OBEs. So this
phenomenon is familiar and lots of people claimed to have experienced it
before, but is there any scientific credibility to this phenomenon?
A fascinating experiment
was done by Dr. Charles Tart, who was a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the
University of California. He had also served as a Visiting Professor in
East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, and as an
Instructor in Psychiatry at the School of Medicine of the University of
Virginia. A study he published in the Journal
of the American Society for Psychical Research may be the most infamous OBE
study ever done.
He documented the
out-of-body experience of a young woman who was one of his research
subjects. She was in a room with nothing
but a bed, a shelf, a clock, and an observation window where Dr. Tart observed
from another room. She also had electrical
devices hooked up to her head to detect brain wave activities, which can be
seen in the diagram below.
What makes this particular out-of-body experience
remarkable is that she was able to leave her physical body as Dr. Tart watched
from the other room and read a 5-digit number of 25132 off of a piece of paper
that was on a shelf in the corner of the room.
The number was at a significant distance above the bed so that she would
not be able to read the number even if she was standing, and she reported
seeing the correct number him upon return to her physical body which remained
attached to the bed as she was being watched. EEGs, REMs, and galvanic skin
response were all recorded before and during her OBE which indicated a
significant alteration in the readings during the time she left her body. Her
OBE a good example of “veridical perception” which is where verified events are
observed while in an out-of-body state.
As Dr. Tart concluded:
“While the physiological data are limited by dependence on her retrospective
report in correlating physiological pattern with the experience, it seems as if
her out-of-body experiences occurred in conjunction with a non-dreaming,
non-awake brain wave stage characterized by predominant slowed alpha activity
from her brain and no activation of the autonomic nervous system. Two incidents
occurring in the laboratory provide suggestive evidence that the out
of-the-body experiences had parapsychological concomitants. In summary, this brief study found a fairly
clear-cut correlation between several of Miss Z’s reported OOB experiences and
a physiological pattern characterized by a flattened EEG with prominent alphoid
activity, no REM or skin resistance activity, and normal heart rate”
This is huge, because not
only does it show that the experience of leaving your body is correlated with
abnormal changes in brain-body activities, the test subject was also able to go
and read a 5 digit number. She also reported the correct positioning of
the piece of paper that had the number on it, which as flat on the shelf as
opposed to leaning against the wall which is what she was expecting. By the
way, the odds of guessing a 5 digit number first try are less than 1 in 59000,
so to claim that she just so happened to guess it right on her first try is out
of the question.
I have had 2 out-of-body
experiences myself, one of which I observed real events happening in a different
location in my house, so I can personally testify to their validity. I
saw exactly what my dad was doing and wearing, and I saw exactly what was on
television at the time, all of which were verified to be true after I awoke.
What skeptics are really
good at is leaving out pieces of evidence that they can’t explain, and point to
how some scientific studies have replicated the feeling of being out-of-body by
some virtual means. There is a
difference between the illusion of being somewhere else, and actually seeing
real events happening in locations that your physical body has absolutely no
access to. This study is another piece
of evidence that gives serious scientific credibility to the idea of a soul.
For more on veridical
perception
- See more at:
http://www.spiritscienceandmetaphysics.com/out-of-body-experiences-validated-by-scientific-study/#sthash.18FowFAj.dpuf
