What is an OBE?
OBEs - Out Of Body Experiences
Out-of-body-experiences (OBEs) are those curious, and usually brief experiences in which a person’s consciousness seems to depart from his or her body, in this state, they can observe the world from a point of view other than that of their physical body and by means other than those of their perceived physical senses.
Therefore, an Out Of Body Experience can be defined as ‘an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a location outside his physical body’.
In some cases, those who have had an OBE claim that they ’saw’ and ‘heard’ things (objects which were really there, events and conversations which really took place) which they could not have seen or heard from the actual positions of their bodies.
OBEs are surprisingly common. However, various surveys have yielded differing results. Nevertheless, some estimates show that somewhere between one person in 10 and one person in 20 is likely to have had an OBE at least once. It also appears that OBEs can occur to anyone in almost any circumstance.
Some researchers have approached the OBEs, by asking people who claim to have had them to describe when they happened. In one of these, over 85% of those surveyed said they had had OBEs while they were resting, sleeping or dreaming.
Other surveys also show that the majority of OBEs occur when people are in bed, ill, or resting, with a smaller percentage coming while the person is drugged or medicated.
Nevertheless, OBEs can occur at any time and during almost any kind of activity.
A couple of cases have been discovered in which motor cyclists, riding at speed, suddenly found themselves floating above their machines looking down on their own bodies still driving along. A disconcerting experience indeed! But in this case accidents did not occur.
A small number of pilots of high-flying airplanes (possibly affected by the absence of vibration, and uniformity of sensory stimulation) have also found themselves apparently outside their aircraft struggling to get in. And I guess that I too would struggle frantically under such circumstances! 
Even more fascinating are Reciprocal Cases of OBE And Apparition. In Reciprocal Cases of Outer Body Experience, the OBE subject travels to a distant location where he sees a person and is aware of being seen by that person. The person who he sees later confirms that he saw an apparition of the OBE subject at the time that the subject claimed to be in his presence. Thus the two experiences corroborate each other.
But not all OBEs occur spontaneously. By using a variety of techniques, some people have been able to induce them more or less as desired, and a number who have used these methods have written detailed accounts of their experiences.
Nevertheless, these Accounts Of Self-Induced OBEs do not always agree entirely with accounts given by persons who have undergone spontaneous OBEs.
For instance the great majority of those who experience Self-Induced OBEs say that they find themselves still embodied, but in a body whose shape, external characteristics, and spatial location are easily altered at will, and an appreciable number refer to an elastic ’silver cord’ joining their new body to their old one.
In contrast, a much smaller number of those who undergo Spontaneous OBEs mention being embodied, and some claim that they found themselves entirely disembodied.
The ’silver cord’ is quite rarely mentioned in the latter cases. Therefore, it is hard to avoid suspecting that many features of Self-Induced OBEs are determined by the subject’s reading and his expectations of what is likely to occur.
Common aspects of an Outer Body Experience include:
- Being in an ‘out-of-body’ body much like the physical one, feeling a sense of energy, feeling vibrations, and hearing strange loud noises.
- Sometimes a sensation of bodily paralysis will precede the OBE.
OBEs, especially spontaneous ones, are often very vivid, and resemble everyday waking experiences rather than dreams, and most of the time they make a considerable impression on those who undergo them.
People experiencing a spontaneous OBE may find it hard to believe that they did not in fact leave their bodies, so deep is the experience of ‘being somewhere else’. From this, they may draw the conclusion that we possess a soul which is separable. Some will claim that this soul may be linked to a second body, which will survive in a state of full consciousness, perhaps even of enhanced consciousness, after death. This can be a source of comfort to those contemplating their own death, as death, in this case, would simply be an OBE in which one did not succeed in getting back into one’s body.
Such conclusions present themselves even more forcefully to the minds of those who have undergone a Near Death Experience (NDE). It is not uncommon for persons who have been to the brink of death and returned (following, for example, a heart stoppage or serious injuries from an accident) to report an experience of leaving their bodies, and travelling (often in a duplicate body) to the border of a new and wonderful realm.
Many reports like this suggest that the conscious self’s awareness outside the body is not only unimpaired but enhanced. Events which occurred during the period of unconsciousness are described in accurate detail and can later be confirmed by those present.
The subject sometimes ‘hears’ the doctor pronouncing him dead when he feels intensely alive and free from physical pain, and finds himself returning unwillingly to the constrictions of the physical body.
If OBEs show the capacity of the conscious self to have experiences and perceptions outside the physical body, near-death experiences seem to suggest that this capacity still remains when the physical body is totally unconscious. This research also suggests that the OBE is a ‘good’ experience which demonstrates that we reach only a proportion of our full capacity within our physical bodies.
Do OBEs suggest we all have ‘doubles’?
The idea that we all have a double has been presented by some experience and/or studying OBEs. Thier argument is, that if you seem to be leaving your physical body and observing things from outside it then it seems natural to assume that, at least temporarily, you had a double. It also seems obvious that this double could see, hear, think and move.
Nevertheless, it could be argued that this interpretation of the OBE experience relating to your ‘double’ is not really valid. Because the experience of being ‘out of the body’ is not equivalent to the fact of being out and in a totally different body. The experience is always related to the body we are ‘living in’.
Scientist have long attempted to discover whether OBEs actually exist, and, if so, what it really means in terms of being a human living being. However, as all OBEs can only be recounted by the person who has had one, there is no tangible ’scientific evidence’ to work with.
Nevertheless, the descriptions of OBEs given by those who have had Uninduced (Spontaneous) OBEs in particular, demonstrates that these are very real experiences of some kind.
The problem is in finding out exactly what that kind is…
Hopefully, in the future, there may be a scientific method for studying OBEs, but at the present time, we have to take the person’s account of their Out Of Body Experience as they describe it.
All we know is that too many OBEs have occured for even scientists to discount them. 
