out-of-body experience

Declared dead, a man allegedly viewed the hospital in spirit, returning to tell what he saw. His surgeon was unable to provide a conventional explanation.

A theoretical physicist who worked with some of the founding fathers of quantum mechanics, Henry Stapp says the existence of the soul fits within the laws of physics.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are reported by an estimated 200,000 Americans a year, and studies around the world suggest NDEs are a common human experience. They have been recorded in the folklore of many cultures, and reported by people from diverse backgrounds and in widely varying circumstances.

When people report having profound out-of-body experiences during close brushes with death, skeptics often attribute it to physiological and psychological factors.

“And suddenly I was ejected from my body and I wasn’t angry anymore,” she said. A blaze of light appeared and she felt an energy pervading everything, including herself.

Do you believe that people can leave their bodies and float around as disincarnate consciousness? Do you believe that close to the moment of death people see spirits of dead loved ones who come to help them cross over? Do you believe that weird coincidences are profound and meaningful?

A free e-book published this month, “Consciousness Beyond the Body: Evidence and Reflections,” gathers current scientific knowledge related to OBEs, makes suggestions for further study, and reflects on the nature of the phenomenon.

At the University of Virginia, a space is given to the scientific investigation of strange phenomena that challenge currently accepted scientific assumptions. Such phenomena include extrasensory perception (such as telepathy), apparitions and deathbed visions, poltergeists, experiences of persons who come close to death and survive (usually called near-death experiences), out-of-body experiences, and claimed memories of previous lives.

Some elements of out-of-body experiences can be traced to the brain, but not all, say researchers.

Whether someone is crazy or not can be officially determined by a manual widely used to diagnose mental illness. If psychologists were to all take the extreme materialist perspective and label any belief in a spiritual side of existence as delusion, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists alike could all be considered mentally ill.

In some cases, what out-of-body experiencers have seen can be verified; researchers then try to determine whether the person could have seen these events or objects through normal means, without having left the body.

You can’t easily produce a near-death experience in a laboratory—or at least not without some serious ethical issues. There are, nonetheless, some methods for studying this phenomenon.

Dr. Jim Kwako is interested in dreams that are “not dreams in the usual sense,” he said. People commonly have dreams in which they talk to dead loved ones, or seem to presage some events in their lives, or have some other experience that has a profound effect on them mentally and emotionally.