This repository is for records of my personal experiences and investigations into altered states of consciousness. The main question of interest to me is whether or not OBEs (Out of Body Experiences) are internal experiences (i.e. hallucinations within a person's mind) or if they are external experiences.
I intend to investigate this question as scientifically I can, although I am not a professional researcher and make no claims to be one. I will attempt to refute the hypothesis that OBEs are completely internal and the experiencer cannot access information outside of what he or she can create with his or her own mind.
To do so, I will learn to induce OBEs and then attempt to gain access to knowledge elsewhere in my own home that I could not otherwise access without leaving my bed. For example, I will ask my wife (who thinks I'm a bit crazy) to put a playing card or drawn shape on the dinner table at night. Then I will attempt to see the object in an OBE and tell my wife about it in the morning. If I can do this at a rate higher than what one would expect for random guessing, then I will have verified that OBEs allow us access to information outside of the experiencer's mind.
I will keep a daily diary on the above investigation to record its progress.
I will also be uploading other information I find to be pertinent research and links/resources related to the topic of altered states of consciousness for anyone interested.
The reason I am investigating these phenomena is mostly from personal interest. Before starting this experiment, I had never experienced an OBE or Near Death Experience, however I had a few experiences that I could not explain.
One memory which stands out in particular was when I was driving home from high school late at night through the Indiana country-side. I was eager to get home and speeding a bit. Suddenly, I had the thought that I should slow down, otherwise I would not be able to stop if a cat ran out in front of my car. I remember specifically thinking "cat". I continued on at that speed and about 30 seconds later a cat (or possibly a rabbit) darted out in front of me and I still remember feeling the car wheels running over it.
In addition, below are a few impressive claims that I have come across:
- During a medical surgery to remove an aneurysm from her brain, a woman named Pam Reynolds claims to have experienced leaving her body and observing the operating room. Although she was dead by all three standard scientific measures during the surgery, she was able to describe events which occurred with startling accuracy.
- Youtube user Jevixdluv claims to have seen something happen many miles away that was later corroborated by her family. She experienced her mind traveling a far distance from her resting physical location to view a little girl she knew at her church who was walking down a hallway with a towel wrapped around her. Later, when she talked to her family member who was at the church, he said that the child had wet herself and they have to wrap a towel around her.
- Youtube user yuttadhammo claims to have seen an event occur before it actually happened while being outside of his body. He claims to have seen his brother downstairs pouring a cereal and knocking it over, then when he woke and went downstairs he watched his brother pour a bowl of cereal, turn around and knock it over in the same manner as his premonition.
While such claims seem impossible, and skepticism is certainly warranted, I do tend to believe that "where there is so much smoke, there could be some fire". In other words, perhaps there is a kernel of truth to some of these claims. For these reasons, I am investigating these phenomena relating to altered states of consciousness.
Since inducing OBEs appears to take significant practice and the technique is non-trivial, I have created the following milestones for tracking the progress of my experiment. (NOTE: The method I plan to use is the method described here in the free Lucidology 101 training course. If this method turns out to be ineffective at inducing OBEs, I may look into other methods, such as The Gateway Experience from The Monroe Institute.)
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(Completed) (2012 Aug 09) Start training
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(Completed) (2012 Aug 10) Partial waking sleep paralysis
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(Completed) (2012 Aug 13) Full waking sleep paralysis in a single limb
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(Completed) (2012 Dec 15) Full waking sleep paralysis in entire body
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Experience an OBE subjectively (perceive my whole body including head)
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From an OBE, read a playing card placed in another room by my wife
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Repeat (6) 100 times with significantly higher than random success rate
My experiment is currently still in progress, but there can be only one of two possible outcomes:
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Hypothesis disproved -> Conclusion: OBEs allow the experiencer access to information outside of his or her own mind (i.e. it is an objective experience, not only within the person's head)
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Inability to refute hypothesis -> Conclusion: Inconclusive. OBEs might or might not allow the experiencer access to information outside of his or her mind, but this experiment could not disprove OBEs as an internal-only experience.