Scientific Studies of OBE
Non-Local Consciousness Stimulated by Change in Body Perception
OBE has been traditionally linked with drug use, hallucinations and brain dysfunction. However, recent scientific studies on OBE have shown that out of the body experience can be induced in healthy people, suggesting that non-local consciousness is well within the parameters of normal human experience. Scientists at University College in London, UK and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne have recreated the OBE experience in healthy volunteers simply by tricking their brains into thinking that they have moved outside their physical bodies. This transition from personal to non-local consciousness seems to be triggered by a change in body perception.
The Typical OBE Experience
The OBE experience is a phenomenon usually found in 1 out of 10 people. Normally, it involves a sensation of floating outside one's body. Typically, the subject sees his physical body from a location outside the body. A common scenario is that of a patient, from a position up near the ceiling, watching doctors perform surgery on his body below.
Scientific Studies of OBE
Scientific studies of OBE were spurred by one central question: Can the sense of self within the body be changed by "moving" one's eyes outside the body? Using video cameras and virtual reality goggles to create a virtual hologram of the self, scientists enabled a volunteer to see his own back as though he were behind himself. By stroking the volunteer's chest with a pen while simultaneously stroking the virtual body, scientists have been able to induce the sensation in the volunteer that he (the volunteer) was outside his body, in effect looking at himself from a non-local perspective. What this suggests is that man's ability to move beyond his "in-body" experience lies in changing his body perception—replacing the idea of self within the body with one that is outside of it. In other words, by shifting his perspective of self outside the body, man can induce non-local consciousness.
OBE Is Non-Local Consciousness Stimulated by Change in Body Perception
While there is much research into visual perception, body perception is a relatively new field. Induced OBE experiments have opened up the arena for exploration of the nature of consciousness, specifically the idea of the self as being capable of both "in-body" and "out-body" experiences. They also suggest that non-local consciousness is normal experience within the realm of man's abilities. Others see these experiments challenging the idea that the "in-body" self is a static entity, suggesting that man's self-consciousness is more fluid than previously thought.
The fact that scientists have been able to induce OBE, once considered a paranormal delusion, in a lab setting is encouraging for those who wish to see man's capacity for non-local consciousness validated by science.
Out of Body Experience
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