Out of body experiences

After a close relative shared her "Out of body experience" with me I have been very interested in researching the phonemina. Her heart stopped when she nearly bled to death during an operation. She said that she went to heaven and spoke with Jesus and he told her that it was not her time and she returned back to her body.Like others she was absolutely convinced that it real and actually happened and was not a dream or figment of her imagination.This is a very good site with hundreds of these Out of body experiences told in first person. http://www.oberf.org/ Some of these are clearly false but the majority appear to be actual accounts.This is another good example (of an agnostic turned christian) http://www.oberf.org/William%20B's_STE.htmAny evolutionist explainations?

JonathanI suggest this character state appeared after divergence from the last common anscestor with Neanderthals. At this time it is likely that religous myth became beneficial as language had become sufficiently advanced and the concept of death became describable and it's inevitability became accepted in small isolated populations. The dream centre in the prefrontal lobe of the brain evolved to trigger halucinations during near death events. The describing of these 'dreams' in primitive cultures generated an optimism, euphoria and community spirit that encouraged cooperation and began to be selected for leading to allopatric speciation and the origin of both Sapiens and religion.Seriously, in the creationist/Christian scenario some of these experiences may be real.

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[This message has been edited by Tranquility Base, 07-22-2002]

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Originally posted by Tranquility Base:
Jonathan

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I suggest this character state appeared after divergence from the last common anscestor with Neanderthals.

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I'd put it further back than that. Neanderthal is really pretty late in our evolution.------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

Some of these experiences include factual evidence that supports their claims. Such as what was being said in the operating room and even what occured in another room. There is even an account of a woman blind all of her life and was able to see after her "death" and then described her surroundings later.Read through some of the stories on the site I previously posted.

Easy explanation: hallucination. I find these stories, on their own, even less credible than Bigfoot and UFOs. They are also strikingly inconsistent, with experiences ranging from the holy to the erotic.

If you have ever spoken with someone who has experienced an out of body experience they absolutely convinced that it was real, not a hallucination. Most of the accounts that Ive read the person claims to have had an extreamly heitened sense of consciousness, not a dreamy or deluisional state.And these cases are not isolated, there are thousands of reported cases with a very similar structure. I would say approx 80-90% have the same story structure. (levitation, extreame relaxation, no body, complete awareness, dead relatives, god represented by a ball of light, being told its not their time, rushing back to their body etc.)If they are hallucinations then thousands of people are hallucinating the exact same thing. http://www.mikepettigrew.com/afterlife/html/near_death.htmlhttp://www.oberf.org/obe_stories.htm

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Originally posted by Jonathan:
If you have ever spoken with someone who has experienced an out of body experience they absolutely convinced that it was real, not a hallucination.

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I spoke to myself about my own personnal out of body experience when I was about fifteen. Weird how dreamlike it was.....------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

Would you mind sharing it?

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Originally posted by Jonathan:
Would you mind sharing it?

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No big deal really. It was an extraordinarily vivid dream within which I was fully conscious. I tripped. I fell. I missed the ground. I flew around a bit and there you have it.Similar thing happened another time. I saw my body beneath me. The whole bit.I also dreamed an entire day from waking to going back to bed. I went to school and argued all day that it was Wednesday and not Tuesday.------------------
www.hells-handmaiden.com

[QUOTE][b]If you have ever spoken with someone who has experienced an out of body experience they absolutely convinced that it was real, not a hallucination.[/QUOTE][/b]Most alien abductees are convinced that their experiences are real. People who believe they can psychically project themselves to spacecraft chasing comets that are piloted by crystal beings from the Pleiades are absolutely convinced that it was real. Marshall Applewhite's people were so convinced they castrated themselves and then drank poisoned punch. That doesn't mean that the rest of us missed anything. [QUOTE][b]Most of the accounts that Ive read the person claims to have had an extreamly heitened sense of consciousness[/QUOTE][/b]Typical of deep relaxation involving other states of the brain. [QUOTE][b]And these cases are not isolated, there are thousands of reported cases with a very similar structure.[/QUOTE][/b]Because all brains are somewhat alike, and respond to strain in the same ways. [QUOTE][b]I would say approx 80-90% have the same story structure. (levitation, extreame relaxation, no body, complete awareness, dead relatives, god represented by a ball of light, being told its not their time, rushing back to their body etc.)[/QUOTE][/b]All of the above are pretty generic representations of death in the Western world. What you have overlooked are that most of the stories on the page you gave us are bizarre, sublime, and even absurd. There was one fellow that flew to Mars, another one got dragged off by Mormon missionaries, and one ended up having sex during his OBE. At least two were supposedly UFO related. [QUOTE][b]If they are hallucinations then thousands of people are hallucinating the exact same thing.[/QUOTE][/b]No, from that page, it seems like everyone is hallucinating unique and ridiculously strange things. But if they have a few basic elements in common, it is because brains are generating the same sensations under the same conditions. By the way, I've even heard of synthetic neural networks having comparable experiences when they are shut down in particular configurations. And they are only machines.

One out of four persons (I think) claim to have had the out-of-body experience(s), a form of zombification.I had one such out-of-body experience when 18 years old, somewhat similar to the one your relative described, but not with extensive vicarious astral travel. I don’t place a lot of credit in it for my YEC beliefs or Christianity:In an exhausted post-study state, after having (daily) read some ‘Seth Speaks’ (by Jane Roberts) (no doubt Satanic) mystical literature, I laid down in my dorm bed. In the process of attempting some funky telekinetic maneuver, I literally felt my soul’s autonomy: my soul seemed to detach, and elevate, to what may have been a few feet above my body, leaving the body limp and lifeless. Notwithstanding, the original telekinetic effort to move an object via the mind failed.Whether or not I was in my body or out (naturalistically speaking) didn’t matter: I astral traveled long enough (a few seconds) to realize that I’d better get back in my body quickly or else be damned to a sinner’s hell. At the time I felt nothing of the Science of a Christ-crucified-and-risen for my meager soul’s behalf. I only felt my damnation was immanent.When I (my soul) returned into the body, it was another mystical experience. Besides feeling spared (of perdition), I felt like my body was a new body joined to my old soul. It felt, perhaps, not unlike certain drug-rushes, only much more real. Later, I discarded the experience as Satanic, since astral travel only proffered delusional redemption only.The ToE would state that astral travel is impossible, by merely hand-waving it away, as a sort of incidental or malfunctioning movie-in-your-brain phenomenon.I’d respond that this so-called movie-in-your-brain phenomenon -- with its seeing, hearing, touching, proprioception, emotions, intellect, personality, etc. -- is sufficient proof of your soul SANS the body. No evo-naturalist can truly come to grips with his or her soul-world. It is here that you might discover the Evos in denial, opposing themselves as they oppose youMight not the Evo beg and hoax every botched neuro-scientific explanation imaginable to relegate the apperceptive psyche to mere quantum waves, neuro-molecular activity, brain waves, synaptic impulses, and the like. He (she) must glibly, yet fallaciously, equate the material events with the immaterial (spiritual) ones.Naturalistically, a fine-tuned young natural body well-houses a man’s soul (perhaps not unlike a beautiful wife); while an old, sickly, worn-out wretched body may imprison his soul, even darkening his countenance in front of others. Senile/pre-senile dementia (Alzheimer’s disease) manifests this phenomenon, don’t you think?When the wonderful person you once knew is not-all-there, it’s easy to think his or her soul hardly exists. This temptation is yielded to by a large number of naturalistic physicians and YECs even. As a podiatrist, I treat these patients daily in nursing homes but am enabled (by God) to see numerous redemptive events taking place amidst many cursed person(s): i.e., love, joy, lightened countenances, peace, heavenliness, patience, longsuffering, gentleness, faith, meekness, and hosts of other similar yet powerful redemptive events.

Simple questions for you, Phillip.If your soul can see, why do you have eyes?If your soul can think, why do you have a brain?

Thanks for your real-time response

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Originally posted by gene90:
Simple questions for you, Phillip.
If your soul can see, why do you have eyes?
If your soul can think, why do you have a brain?

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The knower and the known both have eyes and brains in their bodies.
Consider your dreams: you see without your eyes in your soul-world.
Consider your brain as an instrument that merely connects you to the naturalistic world (Descartes vs. Hume)

Naturally I want to have a strengthened belief in my own soul so I'll go out of my way to work with you on this one. Your answers might be satisfactory but I'm going to have to check my philosophy text first. I think this will be my last response for the night.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by gene90:

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All of the above are pretty generic representations of death in the Western world. What you have overlooked are that most of the stories on the page you gave us are bizarre, sublime, and even absurd. There was one fellow that flew to Mars, another one got dragged off by Mormon missionaries, and one ended up having sex during his OBE. At least two were supposedly UFO related.

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Yes some of those stories are way way out there Ill admit that. But like I said earlier some of them were clearly false. What suprised me the most was that the majority of the people were either atheist or agnostic and were expecting "nothingness" after death. instead they went on this journey.As far as UFO's go they may sound strange too but when a 911 operator receives 50-60 calls reporting lights hovering in the sky they're not all hallucinating.

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[This message has been edited by Jonathan, 07-24-2002]