Case reports suggest that the conscious self can part from the
physical body and see it from the outside. The subject may be
clinically dead, yet later is able to recall events happening at
that time. Out-of-body experience, or OBE, is often a component of
near-death experience, but it may also occur in healthy
people.
Cross-cultural studies show a belief in OBEs in 51 out of 54
cultures. Surveys of their incidence in various populations
indicate that between 10 and 25% of people have experienced them.
The most common characteristics reported are a distinct sensation
of distance from the body, heightened awareness and extended powers
of perception.
Profesional researchers have sought proof that some life force can
temporarily leave the body. In 1965-66 Dr Charles Tart of the
University of Virginia tested businessman Robert Monroe, who was
asked to project his non-physical being from one room to another
and report on what he saw. He apparently managed two brief OBEs in
eight sessions. In the 1970s Dr Karlis Osis of the American Society
for Psychical Research test and OBE-adept artist, Ingo Swann, who
could sometimes describe objects beyond his range of vision. Osis
also tested schoolteacher Alex Tanous, who affected sensitive
vibration detectors when he attempted OBEs. While no test was
conclusive, there was suggestive evidence of OBEs in each
case.
Dr Robert Morris of the Psychical Research Foundation carried out
some interesting experiments with researcher Stuart Blue Harary in
1973. Harary tried to make his OBE presence felt to a cat while he
himself was wired up to various devices in another building.
Physiological measurements indicated the OBE was a distinct state,
and changes in the behaviour of the cat did suggest that it sensed
something at the time of OBEs.
OBEs have long been associated with sages and yogis, and
20th-century writers have claimed such experience. In a classic
text, The Projection of the
Astral Body (1929), an American named Sylvan Muldooon
provides a record of his OBEs from the age of 12. Skeptical
psychologists have suggested that OBEs are just a kind of
reconstruction of memories, hallucinations or particularly lucid
dreams. Yet these theories cannot account for the ability of OBE
subjects to report events that occurred while they were ostensibly
unconscious.
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