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Out of body experiences (OBEs) are those
curious, and usually brief experiences in which a
person's consciousness seems to depart from his or
her body, enabling observation of the world from a
point of view other than that of the physical body
and by means other than those of the physical
senses. Thus, an out-of-the-body experience can
initially be defined as 'an experience in which a
person seems to perceive the world from a location
outside his physical body' [Bla82]. In some cases
experients claim that they 'saw' and 'heard' things
(objects which were really there, events and
conversations which really took place) which could
not have seen or heard from the actual positions of
their bodies.
OBEs are surprisingly common; different surveys have
yielded somewhat different results, but some
estimates indicate that somewhere between one person
in ten and one person in twenty is likely to have
had such an experience at least once. Furthermore it
seems that OBEs can occur to anyone in almost any
circumstances. Researchers have approached the
question of the timing of OBEs by asking people who
claim to have had OBEs to describe when they
happened. In one of these, over 85 percent of those
surveyed said they had had OBEs while they were
resting, sleeping or dreaming [Bla84]. Other surveys
also show that the majority of OBEs occur when
people are in bed, ill, or resting, with a smaller
percentage coming while the person is drugged or
medicated [Gre68a, Poy75]. But they can occur during
almost any kind of activity. Green cites a couple of
cases in which motor-cyclists, riding at speed,
suddenly found themselves floating above their
machines looking down on their own bodies still
driving along. Accidents did not ensue. Pilots of
high-flying airplanes (perhaps affected by absence
of vibration, and uniformity of sensory stimulation)
have similarly found themselves apparently outside
their aircraft struggling to get in. One might well
struggle frantically under such circumstances.
More curious still are reciprocal cases of OBE and
apparition: the OBE subject, aware that he is
operating in some kind of duplicate body, travels to
a distant location where he sees a person and is
aware of being seen by that person; this person
confirms that he saw an apparition of the OBEer at
the time that the OBEer claimed to be in his
presence. Thus the two experiences corroborate each
other. Do you want to have oobe? Contact us to join
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