Among all of the various kinds of unusual or psychic experiences people have reported down through the ages, the one they typically describe as having a particularly strong impact is finding themselves, their consciousness, at some other location than where their physical body is. These out-of-body experiences (OOBEs) are quite varied and can occur under a great variety of conditions including ordinary waking states, states of relaxation, and periods of crisis that involve physical trauma and/or life-threatening events. OOBEs of the latter type are a major component of most near-death experiences (NDEs).
While most OOBEs are involuntary, some people can apparently induce them at will. Robert Monroe was one of the first to popularize this type of OOBE in his 1971 book” Journeys Out of the Body”. During the experience, which can last from seconds to more than an hour, people report that they have unusually clear but otherwise normal sense perceptions of the world they encounter. They may see their physical body, which typically looks familiar and rather unhealthy as if it were dead, producing a very unsettling feeling. Often experiencers find themselves in a kind of secondary body usually referred to in esoteric traditions as the astral or subtle body. Their consciousness seems to be somehow centered within the secondary body in much the same way as it is located within the physical body during ordinary waking states. This secondary body containing their consciousness can travel, sometimes for considerable distances, away from the physical body. During their time apparently outside of their bodies experiencers can acquire information about remote locations which they couldn’t have gained through normal sense perception. There have been reports of other people seeing the individual in his other body at the site he is ostensibly visiting .
An example of this type was reported to the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in 1957 by Martha (a pseudonym) from Illinois. She experienced a dream January 26th in which she traveled to her mother’s home 926 miles away in northern Minnesota. As this unfolded she initially felt herself to be alone going through a great blackness. Then she saw a bright oasis of light in the vast sea of darkness way down below her. As she headed toward this she saw that it was her mother’s small house. She entered and leaned up against the dish cupboard with folded arms, which she said was a pose she often assumed. She observed her mother who was bending over something white and doing something with her hands. Initially she didn’t appear to see Martha but then looked up. Martha reported a sort of pleased feeling and then turned and walked about four steps. She woke from her dream around 2:10 a.m which would have been 1:10 a.m. in Minnesota. Martha continued to think about the dream.
Several days later she received a letter from her mother who wrote that she had seen her for a few seconds on Saturday night at 1:10 a.m., January 26th, standing by the cupboard smiling at her. She said that she thought the dogs had also seen Martha because they got excited. Martha replied asking her to describe what had occurred and to identify what she, Martha, had been wearing. Her mother wrote back that at the time of the sighting she had been bending over the ironing board trying to press out a seam. She observed that Martha’s hair was combed nice, back in a ponytail, with the pretty roll in front. Her blouse was neat and light and seemed almost white. She observed that Martha was “very solid—just like in life.” She couldn’t remember seeing Martha from the chest down. Martha confirmed that during her “visit” her hairstyle and clothing were as her mother described.
The term out-of-the-body experience was introduced in 1943 by G.N.M Tyrrell in his book “Apparitions” and was adopted by later writers as a less loaded term for what had historically most commonly been referred to as astral projection. Perhaps as many as one person in ten has had some kind of OOBE in their lives. Dr. Robert Crookall published studies of astral projection in the 1960s drawing primarily from cases appearing in spiritualistic newspapers. The first extensive scientific study of OOBEs was made by Celia Green who in 1968 published “Out-of-the-body Experiences”, an analysis of 400 written, first-hand accounts from people recruited by means of appeals in the mainstream media.
In 1968 Charles Tart conducted one of the first and best-known attempts to study the OOBE under controlled laboratory conditions. The experiencer was a young woman, Miss Z, who told him about having frequent OOBEs since childhood which consisted of waking up for a few seconds during the night and feeling that she was floating near the ceiling of her bedroom.
Tart suggested that she write the numbers 1-10 on 10 slips of paper and put them in a cardboard box. After going to bed at night she should pick one at random, put it on her bedside so she couldn’t see it from her bed, but so it would be it clearly visible from the ceiling. If she found herself near the ceiling that night, she was to remember the number and check it for accuracy in the morning. When Tart saw her a few weeks later she told him she had tried the experiment on seven different nights and that she was correct each time.
Tart was interested in verifying the parapsychological nature of this experience as well as observing what happened in her brain and body while she was having it. To do this he was able to arrange for Miss Z to sleep in a psychophysiological laboratory on four different nights. She slept on an ordinary, comfortable bed with tiny electrodes glued to her scalp and various places on her body to record her brain waves, her eye movements, her blood pressure, and the electrical resistance of her skin. After she was in bed he wrote a five-digit random number on a large white card which he placed on a shelf about seven feet above her head. The target number was clearly visible to anyone near the ceiling but invisible to anyone lying in bed or walking around the room. Miss Z was unable get out of bed without disrupting the operation of the brain-wave recording device in another room and was thus prevented from seeing the number by ordinary means. He placed a clock beside the target number so she could try to note the time when she had an OOBE and saw the number.
Miss Z had several OOBE’s over the course of the four nights. She awoke within a minute or two after each and reported on it. In all but one of these she didn’t feel that she had floated in her second body to a position where she could have seen the target and thus didn’t venture a guess. On the last night she did report floating to a position in her second body from which she could see the number, and she correctly reported it as 25132. Tart notes the odds against correctly guessing a five-digit number when only trying once are 100,000:1. The result was highly significant.
Tart points out that critics typically suspect cheating in any parapsychological study. This would have been extremely difficult in this case. Miss Z would have had to conceal a mirror and telescoping rod in her pajamas and use these to observe the number at a time when she assumed he wouldn’t be looking through the observation window. Tart notes that while the results may be interpreted as showing the paranormality of OOBE’s under laboratory conditions, he prefers to see them as only demonstrating the feasibility of studying OOBE’s under such conditions. He readily recognized that Martha’s experience could have involved telepathy or clairvoyance, not an actual OOBE.
In 1980 Karlin Osis and Donna McCormick conducted an experiment with Alex Tanous that resembled the Tart study and again appeared to show that something does leave the body during an OOBE. Tanous was asked, while being carefully observed and with his bodily states being monitored, to voluntarily project himself to an assigned target area where he was to identify randomly selected visual targets displayed within a shielded chamber. Strain-guage sensors were placed in front of the viewing window of the chamber to register unintentional mechanical effects on a polygraph during the time when he was presumed out of body and trying to identify the targets. Measurements were made immediately before and after targets were generated for each trial. Twenty sessions were conducted involving 197 trials. Tanous managed 114 hits and 83 misses. When Tanous was reportedly looking at the target, strain-guage activation was significantly higher for trials that were hits than for trials that were misses.
Some writers and researchers interested in life after death believe that the OOBE could constitute some of the strongest supporting evidence. The argument is that if people can literally leave their bodies, then human personality is something distinct from the body itself. A person who leaves his or her body and then returns to it must be something more than just a very complex materialistic psychophysical organism. If that aspect of the person that is conscious can exist apart from his or her physical body and brain, then the brain is not needed for consciousness.
Almeder argues that the results of the Osis–McCormick experiment offer the strongest kind of evidence that something actually does leave the body during some OOBEs. The skeptics explanation that the results were caused through psi (ESP and PK) doesn’t work. While he concedes that the information could have been obtained about the targets through clairvoyance, psychokinesis could not account for the subject’s ability to produce mechanical effects on the strain-gauge sensors in the target area. In all known cases of PK when someone produces action at a distance, he or she must have a deliberate intention to do so.
Stephen Braude offers a penetrating analysis of the out-of-body experience and draws the conclusion that it does not offer the kind of strong evidence for life after death that Almeder and others believe. Braude is willing to say that some accounts of OOBEs are authentic and that in some cases the OOBE experiencers can accurately describe objects or events that they were not physically in a position to observe normally, and furthermore, that conventional psychological and physiological factors can’t explain this. However, he’s not willing, as Almeder is, to say that veridical (determined to be factual) OOBEs can’t be explained by ordinary ESP. There are, for example, several bodies of relevant evidence from laboratory studies as well as observations of the activities of physical mediums and poltergeist phenomena that indicate that PK can be unintentional. Thus, having some kind of secondary or astral body containing our basic senses and feelings that leaves the body and travels to the target is not the only valid explanation for OOBEs.
Furthermore, Broad points out, there is one major problem that the externalist (secondary body) hypothesis can’t easily account for. This relates to the old question, ‘Why do ghosts wear clothes?’ Even if we’re willing to grant that each a person has a detachable subtle extension or astral body along with a normal physical body, it’s difficult to suppose that our clothes also have subtle extensions as well. Suppose, Braude notes, he has on a new Armani suit, and he has the ability to project himself in an OOBE to a friend who sees him in this suite. If we say that his friend could accurately describe him because of a traveling secondary body, how do we explain his ability to see Broad’s suit? Does his suit have a double?
Given his views on out-of-body experiences, it’s not surprising that Braude believes that they add little independent support for the case for survival. Better evidence, he believes, comes from studies of mediumship and reincarnation.
Braude, S. (2004).” Immortal Remains”.
Tart, C. (2009). “The End of Materialism”.
Almeder, R. (1992) “Death and Personal Survival: The Evidence for Life After Deat”h.