Out-Of-Body Experience – What is It?

An out-of-body experience or OOBE can be defined as a paranormal phenomenon in which consciousness or spirit or soul separates from the physical body and observes the physical body as well as the physical world from outside. An out-of-body experience can be mistaken for a dream or daydream. However, an out-of-body experience is much clearer than a dream and cannot be mistaken for one.

Most OBEs are spontaneous, that is, people do not consciously have them. Spontaneous OBEs take place when people are in a traumatic situation, sick, under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or close to death.

Some people induce OBEs for a number of reasons. They could be just curious about the experience and might want to know more about it. Or they might want to have an OBE just to find out if it is true. They might desire power or knowledge or they might want to help someone or they simply want to have some fun.

OOBEs have the tendency to move people deeply. You cannot just have an OOBE and brush aside the experience. The OOBE will transform your life in some way or the other. The experience might disturb you, move you, or transform you completely.

Susan Blackmore, the eminent English psychologist, has an interesting view of OOBE. She says that people have OOBEs when they completely lose touch with the physical body. The people having an OOBE know that they have physical bodies, but do not receive any sensory data from them. On the contrary, the astral double outside the body perceives a world that bears a striking resemblance to the physical world, but does not experience it via the senses. According to Blackmore, this happens because of the brain’s ability to create fascinating pictures of the world even in the absence of sensory input.

Many people who have experienced an OOBE might disagree with Susan Blackmore because she almost implies that an OOBE is nothing but a dream. People who have experienced OOBEs say that the experience is more vivid and clearer than a dream. They claim that they really felt as if they were out of their bodies. Their consciousness was housed in a body similar to the physical body, but which had immense quantities of energy. They report feeling vibrations or hearing noises. Sometimes, they even experience physical paralysis just before the OOBE. They report feeling totally different from their bodies, hearing roaring or buzzing sounds in their heads, rushing experiences, hissing sounds in their ears, and much more.

To find out for sure whether an OOBE is real, you must study, analyze, and experience OOBEs in detail. Ancient texts and spiritual books claim that the physical world, which we can easily perceive via our senses, is not the only thing in existence. An OOBE might or might not be a real separation of the body and soul; however it successfully gives us a glimpse of the beyond. It offers a glimpse of the inner world, which is so vast, varies, weird, and unknown that it is almost impossible to know it.