out of body experience support group

[bobbin]

perhaps this should be for miscellaneous, but only if you subscribe to the destructive humankind-nature false dichotomy or something, maybe.

i was reading a page in a copy of the wire written by mark pilkington (of strange attractor magazine) where he mentioned having an out of body experience.

my first thought was, that's interesting, and my second was, fuck! i've had one of those!

it was in a dozing, somewhat lucid dreaming state one morning... the scene of the vision being my bedroom, and me becoming aware that i'd detached from my body. i could be wrong but i think i remember it being like my conscious person was still embodied, but invested in an evidently less substantial duplicate of my body.

i had a bit of a float around then a look back at myself. like mark, that made me feel too weird, which seemed to trigger snapping back into union with my original body and waking up. (in fact his description of this was what triggered my memory.)

i'm intruiged about whether anyone else has had the experience and/or whether it blows your mind/conception of reality. personally it doesn't mine at all, i don't see why the human mind shouldn't be able to construct the illusion.

i guess the vision could be a vague one or (assuming you've seen enough reflections of yourself to construct a subconscious self-image?) vivid, detailed and accurate... i think i remember mine being a bit short on visual detail.

 

[Woebot]

me too! me too! you're soon to hear from luke on this i'm sure.

great idea btw. mark would be delighted to know of this thread - i will inform him of its existence.

i have had a couple of these. the first when i was very young: hovering over a billiards table after i rode a bike through a glass window.

the last one was about thirteen years ago and altogether more lucid. it came early in the morning - so it felt for all intents and purposes like a dream - except that it was grounded in the 'geography' of where i was at the time. the strange thing was it felt like there was this "ectoplasmic thread" connecting me to my dozing body - and when i was awoken i snapped back in to my body like a plug on a hoover cord.

bit of a giggle!

 

[Asterism]

Hi there, Mark here,

Great that the piece has triggered these memories in you. It's a startling experience when it happens.

I'm trying to find the research but about ten years ago for Fortean Times I interviewed a Swiss neurologist who was looking at the way that the mind created 3-D models of the space surrounding it - something we're very good at it turns out.

His suggestion was that sometimes, either with a trigger - like Matt's accident - or spontaneously (or indeed with training) the mind projects its spatial self-image into the wrong part of the surrounding environment, creating the sensation of floating outside the body.

What's interesting is that it suggests that OBEs aren't a matter of visualisation (i.e. imagination) as most of us would assume, but are 'real' events, perceived in a 'normal' waking state.

Just trying to find the guy online (I can't remember his name) I came across this from Nature in 2002 - poking electrodes around in the brain to produce OBEs. While it's obviously a little invasive, it does demonstrate that these experiences are endogenous to the brain. Hopefully soon we'll be able to wear magnetic stimulation helmets that trigger them without the need for poking electrodes into the brain!

http://www.iands.org/research/important_studies/out-of-body_experiences_all_in_the_brain_2.html

Like the patient in that drawing, the Swiss woman lay on her back during the operation with her brain exposed just above and behind the right ear. In the process of searching for the site associated with her epilepsy, the physicians stimulated a specific area near the right temporal lobe called the right angular gyrus, and the patient reported intriguing sensations the authors called “out of body experiences.” This brain area was not related to her epilepsy.

When the physicians first stimulated this area, the woman “reported that she was ‘sinking into the bed’ or ‘falling from a height.’” When they increased the electricity, she reported, “I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” The authors reported that, “two further stimulations induced the same sensation, which included an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’ about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.”

I've also had one other really spectacular OBE while researching chemistry, but that doesn't count in the same way.

 

[massrock]

the strange thing was it felt like there was this "ectoplasmic thread" connecting me to my dozing body - and when i was awoken i snapped back in to my body like a plug on a hoover cord.

Just as T.Lobsang Rampa maintained. Had you been reading any of that by any chance?

 

[massrock]

Haha - Mr. Tea Lapsang Souchong

 

[grizzleb]

I've had this before when I was a wee guy and into lucid dreaming and stuff. I wonder if it's related to this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

It didn't really fuck me up, I've had loads of crazy, super detailed, hyperrealistic dreams. I used to at least. Swimming about in a Monet was a highlight.

 

[bobbin]

i have had a couple of these. the first when i was very young: hovering over a billiards table after i rode a bike through a glass window.

this sounds like a story i'd like to hear i assume the billiard table was really there?

except that it was grounded in the 'geography' of where i was at the time. the strange thing was it felt like there was this "ectoplasmic thread" connecting me to my dozing body - and when i was awoken i snapped back in to my body like a plug on a hoover cord.

mine was also definitely grounded in my surroundings. there was no suggestion of the ectoplasmic thread, but i do recall a more prosaic psychological equivalent... like that feeling when you should turn to look at something but don't really want to, i think there was a persistently nagging awareness of where my actual body was before i decided to look at it.

bit of a giggle!

no doubt! would like to repeat it any time soon.

 

[luka]

you can move the centre of conscoiusness about
i cant do it at will needless to say. but it doesnt have to be in the head. or even the body.

 

[muser]

I used to get sleep paralysis alot managed to move my arm once and saw it repeat as I moved it so there was about 5 of my arms infront of my face going down to the right. Also got some weird shit seeing patterns on the curtains moving about and such.

Only time I've had what could be described as an out of body experience was the first time I took a large line of Ketamine, was pretty vague and cartoony, almost like in a dream where conceptual memory of it happening is more than the visual. Looking down on the tent I was in and the rest of the festival.

 

[bobbin]

Hi there, Mark here,

Great that the piece has triggered these memories in you. It's a startling experience when it happens.

liked reading about the kraftwerk experience as well, sounded pretty banging!

I'm trying to find the research but about ten years ago for Fortean Times I interviewed a Swiss neurologist who was looking at the way that the mind created 3-D models of the space surrounding it - something we're very good at it turns out.

right right, this is exactly what it makes me think about. while i'm not inclined to be at all dualist/cartesian about mind and body, i can see how the experience of self in the environment might be put together from a combination of visual (and even olfactory and acoustic) perception plus the mind's nervous connections as an organ to the rest of the body.

which leaves open the idea of variance, skewing from the norm of how this process works. whether you say that makes obe's 'real' or whether they're another illustration that consciousness is superimposed on fundamentally inaccessible reality is a fairly old philosophical question i guess

but perhaps not so significant: either way i i think i can see why you'd carve that distinction from imagination/dreaming.

Hopefully soon we'll be able to wear magnetic stimulation helmets that trigger them without the need for poking electrodes into the brain!

yeah hopefully! don't know why i thought of it, but i'm seeing this significantly enhancing theme parks.

i'd be interested to hear why your obe in the process of chemistry research was so spectacular if you feel like recounting

 

[bobbin]

another possibly related thing (or so i'm thinking with the benefit of mark's description of that research) is another phenomenon of variant spatial self-image i've experienced.

i've found before if i stay up too long at night in front of the computer, i really feel like some kind of homunculus and not like i have my normal body... the hands, forearms and eyes are all i'm conscious of as parts of me, the rest of disappears into insignificance, like i've actually got far smaller.

kind of like this guy but without the mouth. http://jwz.livejournal.com/422384.html

 

[Woebot]

I'm trying to find the research but about ten years ago for Fortean Times I interviewed a Swiss neurologist who was looking at the way that the mind created 3-D models of the space surrounding it - something we're very good at it turns out.

that makes perfect sense. i suppose we need to do that so as to negotiate our way around. i imagine what we see is to some degree made up of our projected image of it.

thanks for your input mark.

 

[Woebot]

Just as T.Lobsang Rampa maintained. Had you been reading any of that by any chance?

no but i suppose this is the kind of thing that feeds into the popular imagination isnt it. i certainly read an unhealthy amount of occult literature as a child. was slightly obsessed by the supernatural aged 7-13.

 

[massrock]

Talking of popular imagination, and popular weirdness, you must remember The Unexplained magazine? Covered such topics as UFOs, spontaneous human combustion, ESP, psychic surgery, all sorts of great stuff and in lurid fashion. This was a series advertised on TV and the first issue came with a binder!

I'm not sure where my original set is but I found a copy of a book bound edition at a car boot sale and discovered it was published by St. Michael. Huh?

Amazon product ASIN B000S2PW44
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unexplained_(magazine)

There are some great pictures in there. Also I seem to remember one piece, complete with schematics, where they claimed that British Rail had developed a flying saucer. Someone was having a bit of a bubble I think.

 

[bobbin]

thanks for your input mark.

yeah thanks mark, very interesting.

this topic made me think of the orb for the first time in years. clearly this is the theme tune for the woebot billiards/OBE experience!

 

[Client Eastwood]

I used to have SP quite a lot, i would be dreaming but acutely consious that I was almost watching my dream but unable to move my body. This would happen quite a lot in fighting/fleeing dreams.

Also on OOBE, once it was a hot night and I had some water on a table across the room. I fell asleep and at some point I became aware that I (or something) had moved out of my body looked down at myself and drifted across to where the water was at which point I began to wake up and came back into my self. Very odd when you fully wake up.

Some people talk it to other levels altogether begin to explore other realms altogether and call it Astral Projection or is it just an extreme OOBE.

 

[massrock]

Does someone who's not had an OOBE = a NOOBE?

 

[nochexxx]

Hi there, Mark here,

hi mark,

hope you don't mind me asking but........

i heard a rumour that you were in the midst of making a documentary about ufo's for warp films, is this true and if so when is it likely to surface? and am i right in thinking there's also a book in the works too?
look forward to it!

 

[bobbin]

Does someone who's not had an OOBE = a NOOBE?

yes! i would say that's the correct terminology.

the only time i've had sleep paralysis i'd got really stoned. every time i started to fall asleep my body would go to sleep so that i had no ability to move anything, but my brain wouldn't. it was horrible so i had to go back up into a properly waking state. tried to sleep over and over again but it happened each time for the longest time... no fun at all.