My physical body below hardly seemed like me; if I could not have made out my features and known where I was, I may not have recognized it. It seemed stony, grayed-out, and motionless. It was a very strange sight, yet it didn’t seem important or frightening, since I felt like I was the shimmering, floating form, not the still, silent body below me.
I’m not sure how long it lasted, as this is not noted in my diary, but it was a fairly short experience. Yet after this small success, my confidence returned and I found a new drive to experience more. Things were much easier after this, too. I experienced energy pulses and flowing waves even before I left my body, and I learnt that this signaled that I could bring on an experience.
Many people experience similar waves of energy, or vibrations as some authors have described them. I feel a lightening of my body and a sense of energy flowing in a wavelike, rhythmic movement. If I focus on this sense and allow myself to go with it, I often find that an OBE will follow. I first experienced this state early on in my six-month learning period, but I tended to focus on the idea of “projection.” This is an example of how a preconception can hinder you. I have found it far better to turn inward or simply surrender to the waves rather than try to use conscious will.
Different people experience the sensation of leaving the body in different ways. Some float out of their bodies, as in the case of Sylvan Muldoon, coauthor of the classic book on the subject, The Projection of the Astral Body; others almost roll out of their bodies. I generally “phase” to another location or gently float upward. Early on, I was far more likely to remain in my immediate physical surroundings. But now when I leave my body, I often seem to bypass the exiting part of the experience and find myself at a distant location without even the sense of traveling there. This seems to indicate a kind of traveling consciousness, as opposed to the idea that an etheric body leaves and travels to another location. In fact, many of my experiences seem to resemble a sense of moving as a conscious framework, a kind of traveling awareness rather than a body of any sort.
Sometimes, however, I do experience a body that usually seems to glow and to be made of some kind of translucent energy. This resembles classical descriptions from the literature of astral projection. For example, a very recent experience entailed floating out of my body and drifting to one of the large windows in my bedroom. As I came to the window ledge, I put my hands out in front of me, much as I would if I was stopping myself physically. I felt a slight resistance—although more in expectation of resistance, I would say—as my hands passed through the glass and frame and I drifted out above the street. I turned, hanging in the air and looking at the long, empty street. I was aware of my subtle body floating, the sensation much like treading water, but without the need to move, just a feeling that I was supported by something. My limbs and torso seemed normal, a double of my physical body but also surrounded by and radiating a misty haze of colour, mainly blue, though sometimes other shades would arise and flow through my form, too.
I have also experienced standing on the street, watching people passing by and taking in what is happening around me. In a few of these experiences, I have not felt myself travel nor even wanted to move; I have simply remained stationary and observed the events unfolding. In yet another experience, I vividly felt the sensation of my body as I circled a large mountain and slowly ascended to the level of the peak. All around the beauty of the snow and ice sparkled in the dawn light. In the distance, I could see valleys and possibly the signs of small villages or communities.
Through my OBEs, I have regained a sense of wonder, as I have never known what I might see or experience. And even more than that, it is the avenues that these experiences lead you down in everyday life that make them so powerful and life-affirming. I have experienced all the amazing possibilities that I read about as a teenager, which fascinated me enough to learn to project my consciousness. Yet I have never experienced one of the classic elements of an OBE, the silver cord—like a kind of umbilical cord attaching us to our physical bodies.
The silver cord has a long history dating back many centuries. Do not be surprised if you do experience one, or if you don’t; it seems to be related to the individual and is not important to the quality of your experiences. As I will remind you throughout this book, the more you are open to allowing the experience to take its own form, the better. The more you try to define it or build up expectations, the more you limit yourself in a way that will probably be unhelpful. The more we allow ourselves freedom and move away from influences that undermine the integrity of our state of mind, the more new experiences can take shape.
Learning to experience something new can be as much about changing and moving away from old habits as learning new concepts and practices. It takes a revolution of our inner spirit to bring the extraordinary fully into our lives. This change also requires us to be radically honest about ourselves. Be prepared to be as truthful as possible when thinking about your strengths and weaknesses, since by doing this you will reach your goals more effectively.
When I began my quest to have controlled out-of-body experiences, the one thing that more than anything else allowed me to succeed was a drive and passion for learning and experiencing. I was determined not to fail and was willing from the start to put my whole focus into what I was doing. As we walk down one avenue in life, we walk away from another; we must have the courage to grow and transform in ways we never imagined. The reward is a life full of exploration, experience, and wonder.
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science and
the out-of-body experience
Science, like spiritual disciplines, helps us to look deeply at the age-old questions of human existence. The scientific approach is focused on truth in the sense that it seeks to uncover the way things really are. Esoteric philosophies, on the other hand, while offering insight and creative ways of looking at the nature of reality, do not have this objective understanding drawn from precise observation. However, one of the practices of many esoteric systems, meditation, does have much in common with science. I like the analogy of a still mind: by reaching a state in which all thoughts and emotional imbalances are stilled, we can see with truth and clarity. This is actually a trait that meditation and science share—a clear perception of the way things are. They differ in that meditation focuses on the self and the limitations of the ego, while science focuses on that which is tangible and measurable. As I mention in my first book, many great scientists throughout history have worked in an almost meditative state. Think of Newton or Einstein’s ability to visualize the laws of the universe. Through reason and logic, they were able to comprehend nature and the forces at play in a vast and impersonal cosmos.
In this chapter, I want to introduce you to the fascinating world of parapsychology and show how this field of research can improve your understanding of the mechanics of out-of-body experiences. Most books on the subject offer personal experiences or traditional methods, both of which have merit in understanding the OBE, but science is based upon a more expansive, continually evolving understanding. If we are able to understand what is happening inside the brain when someone is perceiving information without the use of the five physical senses, we might be able to help someone else learn the same skill by generating the same state in their brain. This can be achieved through neuro-feedback, for example, and is just one example of how advances in science can help us reach levels of awareness that were not possible generations ago. As you read this chapter, keep in mind that all of the areas I mention give clues to the true nature of the out-of-body state, and techniques from those areas can often be directly applied to help us leave the body. To begin, we need to make sure that we are clear on the definition of science.
So What Is Science?
Let me start by saying what science is not. Science is not a body of dogma, nor an institution that holds all available knowledge about the world. Sci
ence is, in fact, simply a method of inquiry, combined with the analysis and comprehension of the results of that method. Genuine science is a life-changing way of understanding ourselves and our place in the world. Here is a formal definition I put together:
Science is a method of acquiring knowledge, usually about the natural world or the universe, by applying the principles of the scientific method, which include making precise observations, proposing hypotheses to explain those observations, and testing those hypotheses in a controlled manner, such as through double- or triple-blind experiments. The results of these experiments are usually published in a peer-reviewed journal within the relevant field for critique, exchange, and replication of the findings by others.
This definition references the scientific method, which can be the source of some confusion. Generally, when we hear about science in the media and in other sources, it is referred to as if it is simply a body of information and facts about the world. What would be more accurate is to say that by using the methods of science, we gain a clearer understanding of the world, which other scientists can observe and agree upon.
What is the scientific method?
The scientific method can be broken down into five key points:
1. Observe a phenomenon that has no good explanation.
2. Formulate a hypothesis based upon observation of this phenomenon.
3. Design an experiment to test the hypothesis.
4. Perform the experiment.
5. Accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis based upon the results obtained.
The out-of-body experience clearly falls into the area of “phenomenon with no good explanation,” so in our quest to better understand it, we need to observe what is actually taking place in an OBE and develop a hypothesis based upon what we find. In my opinion, two key elements need to be better understood if we are to come up with an accurate and workable understanding of what an OBE is. First is the objective evidence in favour of remote-viewing experiments and other studies of nonlocal perception. Second is the extremely complex area of the near-death experience (NDE). Thus the question becomes whether remote perception is possible, plus whether it is possible without an active, “living” brain.
Few scientists have applied the scientific method to the out-of-body experience, perhaps because some theories—such as a lack of oxygen to the brain contributing to an OBE—can be difficult to test scientifically. Also hindering objective investigation is a misguided belief by some skeptics that they are attacking superstition and pseudoscience.
The first rule of the scientific method (observe a phenomenon that has no good explanation) must be followed as objectively as possible to avoid any sort of bias. A religious believer, for example, who goes into an experiment with a predefined belief about the world is breaking this rule if he or she does not observe the nature of the phenomenon as it is. He or she may also break the fifth rule (accept, reject, or modify the hypothesis based upon the results obtained) if the findings do not match his preconceptions. The skeptic who goes into an experiment with a notion that the phenomenon is false is also breaking scientific protocol.
Back in 1990, when I induced my first out-of-body experience, the most influential book I read on the subject was by a parapsychologist, Janet Lee Mitchell. In it, she described what people actually experience when out of the body based on scientific observation. Her description was stripped of all religious or esoteric language; instead, it was clear, insightful, and factual. Similarly, it was obvious to me that this book should be based upon what parapsychology has discovered over the last 130 years. Science has identified many factors—ranging from the impact of sunspot activity to the physical and emotional state of the subject—that indicate likely success in out-of-body and psi experiences, whether the scientist involved believes the experiences to be objectively real, or not.
As a student of OBEs, you will find it extremely helpful to use a scientific viewpoint when learning. As you have your first experiences, you may find that they have certain characteristics that may well be unique to you. The more careful you are in recording them, the better your understanding will become, and you will be able to fine-tune your approach.
The Extended Mind Theory
In Chapter 1, I briefly mentioned a group of innovative scientists exploring the nature of consciousness and what they refer to as the “extended mind”—the idea that mind (consciousness) and brain are not identical, but may exist in relationship to each other, rather than mind simply being the result of brain function and nothing more. One of the main scientists in this group is Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist and psi researcher based in London. He is the author of more than eighty scientific papers and ten books. A former Research Fellow of the Royal Society, he studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College. I worked with him in 2009 on a joint project looking at telephone telepathy and continue to take an active interest in his research.
As part of Sheldrake’s research into plants, he began to question the generally accepted idea that you could discover everything about a plant by cutting it into smaller and smaller parts and looking at these parts in isolation. Instead, he thought that looking at the function of a life form as a whole would reveal more about it and how its complexity and form arises. This later led to his theory of “morphic fields,” or the idea that the structure and final form of a plant or animal could not be fully explained by genes or reductionism, and that a field may exist around all living things that organises their final complexity. He soon saw that these fields could exist in other forms beyond the plant and animal kingdoms and began to consider the idea that even social groups could function in this collective way.
If these fields exist, as Sheldrake believes, this could account for the idea that information is nonlocal; in other words, that thoughts and memories—in fact, all the things that we associate with the mind—could be extended outside of our brains within these morphic fields. He has put the case for the extended mind thus: “The mind may be extended not only in space but also in time. We may all draw upon a collective memory, similar to the collective unconscious postulated by C.G. Jung.”1
Is there any scientific basis for the idea of the collective unconscious? Is the extended mind a supernatural or a natural phenomenon? It is clear that we do not have a conclusive answer to these questions yet, but the work of many scientists shows that the extended mind is a real possibility.
The extended mind is not the same as the out-of-body state—or is it? I believe that this depends upon your perspective of what an OBE is and where it takes place. When in the out-of-body state, I experience the world around me from the vantage point of a kind of traveling awareness, sometimes with a body, sometimes without. What this suggests to me is that the experience takes on the form that my consciousness or awareness is aligned to at that particular time. Sheldrake posits that there are fields that contain information about a plant or animal that can develop and change as new information comes into that field: “Morphic fields organize atoms, molecules, crystals, organelles, cells, tissues, organs, organisms, societies, ecosystems, planetary systems, solar systems, galaxies. In other words, they organize systems at all levels of complexity.”2
Could then the OBE be a kind of field of consciousness that, depending upon the habits and behaviours of the person involved, changes and develops over time? If there is a “second body,” then could it too be a form built up by the behaviour and nature of the person involved? It is an interesting possibility and, in fact, one that seems to bring together the concept of a second or subtle body with the concept of an extended awareness of consciousness. It shows that these two ideas need not be totally separate: that in fact the second body and our extended consciousness may be one and the same.
The morphic field theory, which sees mind as extended through these frameworks of information, is one explanation for the out-of-body e
xperience. Another explanation is that our consciousness can appear to us to be in another location because it is entangled on a quantum level of our physical universe.
The Quantum Entanglement Theory
The out-of-body experience is often placed into the domain of the supernatural, especially by those skeptical of the objective nature of such experiences. The debate between skeptics and proponents often revolves around the idea, on one side, that there is nothing but a brain producing an illusory framework we call consciousness, and on the other extreme, that there is a spirit or soul that survives bodily death and has little to do with natural laws. My position does not include the supernatural; I see the OBE as a natural phenomenon possibly resulting from an extended form of consciousness or mind. This is also the approach that most scientifically based proponents take.
The still-evolving field of quantum physics suggests an alternate possibility. The clearest theory put forward thus far to show that psychic abilities could be based in objective reality was outlined by Brian Josephson, a British physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1973. He studied at Cambridge University and went on to head their Mind-Matter Unification project. He draws upon Bell’s Theorem, an important aspect of quantum physics, to suggest that the interconnected nature of reality could extend to biological organisms such as human beings. This essentially means that the processes of thought and memory could be extended across any distance, regardless of space and time, as quantum entanglement has been shown not to be bound by limitations such as the speed of light.
While the idea of an extended mind has not been proven, it is becoming a solid possibility in light of recent findings, including research by Rita Pizzi, from The State University of Milan, that appears to demonstrate nonlocality in human brain cells.3 This challenges many of the arguments against nonlocality as a workable theory of psychic abilities, such as the longstanding belief that entanglement does not “scale up” to the level of cells and therefore brains.
Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience Page 3