Outer Body Experience
Explained
According to (Lawson, 2007), 10-20 percent of
the population are estimated to have experienced at least one, or outer body
experience (OBE). This type of
phenomenon has been reported as occurring during religious ceremonies, exposure
to psycho disassociate drugs such as ketamine, during sensory deprivation,
dehydration, near death, meditation, electrical stimulation of the brain,
hypnotically induced, or spontaneously (Lawson, 2007). I can remember a similar experience of floating
above my body, as a child, and thinking that it was a weird dream. Can people separate mind from body, rise
above and objectively view the surrounding environment? Empirical research says no. Researchers have discovered that OBE’s are a
type of hallucination is triggered by a neurological changes and is also
related to claims of near death experiences.
This was discovered when James Winnery of the U.S. Air Force, ran
experiments on jet pilots to find an answer to the high number of fatalities caused
by the physiological reaction to G Force.
According to (Kotler, 2016),
one thousand pilots were spun into gravity induced loss of consciousness
(GILOC). During their debriefing, the pilots claimed
to have had outer body experiences as they passed out, and went on to feeling
as if they were having near death experiences as the spinning continued. As the circulation of blood to the brain is
diminished with the centrifuge like action, the mind is tricked into the
sensation of objectively floating, above one’s body, and with even less blood
flow, the sensation of being close to death is experienced, as many of the
pilots described the sensation of walking down a tunnel of light. Another study was conducted on a woman who
claimed to be able to willfully place herself into an OBE. She was studied under functional magnetic
resonance imaging (f MRI), while in that state by (Smith & Messier, 2014). The
term OBE was referred to as extra-corporeal experiences (ECE) in this study,
because this experience did not, involve an emotional trigger, which
distinguished it from other accounts of OBE.
The fMRI results were surprising, as there was a "strong
deactivation of the visual cortex", and an "[activation]…of the left
side of several areas associated with kinesthetic imagery," which
delineated several specific areas of her brain associated with the minds sense
of body position and movement in space
(Main, 2014).
References
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