Saturday, July 7, 2012

out of body experience

Out of body experience

Question:  What are out of body experiences and are they supernatural or, simply logical and explainable occurrences, resulting from neurological activity in the brain?

Information: there are many definitions of what an out of body experience is however one that most can agree on is an out of body experiences is an experience where an individual leaves their physical body therefore is able to observe the world from their soul and or a point other than their physical body.                                                                                                  

There have been multiple stories told by different people experience this mysterious phenomena that science has not been able to find an explanation until recently.  A new research and study suggest that science may have finally found evidence to suggest that out of body experiences are simply occurrences, resulting from neurological activity in the brain.  In this experiment scientist were able to trigger healthy ordinary people to have an out of  body experience. 


Researchers had volunteers wear visual display goggles and stand in front of a camera.  While looking through the goggles, the volunteers saw a virtual- reality version of themselves standing in front of them.  Further the researchers touched their real back, and the volunteers could see their virtual back being touched as well.  The volunteers reported feeling that the sensation of touch originated from their virtual self, because they could see the action happening to themselves. 

Inferences:  Much more research needs to be done to conclude if in fact outer body experiences are tricks of our brains, science still holds no plausible explanation just theories and a few experiments. 

Point of view:  I find this experiment to be interesting and very informative however there isn’t enough evidence to suggest that out of body experiences are supernatural and/or a fraction of our imagination.  My personal opinion on this is that there is no good scientific explanation for why people experience out of body experiences and therefore I feel I have to remain neutral on this debate and wait for science to one day give an explanation rather than some experiments and theories.


  1. I agree, there is just not enough information to make my mind up about this topic. It is however extremely interesting. That experiment sounds like it would be a great experiment to be a part of or to observe!

  2. I agree with your point of view that there needs to be more research done on out of body experiences. It seems like when people have these experiences they are near death or going through a traumatic experience. I have always believed that they might be a type of hallucination. It would interest me to see if any studies could be done to measure brain activity during a near death experience to see if the brain functions differently. But that will never happen because it is extremely unethical, but it is just a thought of mine. I also feel like out of body experiences aren't a coincidence or people are lying about their experiences like some people believe. I think they occur way to often in similar situations to be a coincidence. I truly think the cause is some type of neurological activity. The question is why does the brain create these experiences in the first place?

  3. This was a very interesting post. I do believe that there are some things that science will never be able to explain however, and that some things are not meant to have hard evidence behind them. Almost all outer body experiences reported are similar in what actually happens. Most people can actually see the surgery going on, their family surrounding their hospital bed, etc. Although it would be nice, I highly doubt that this can be proven by science.

  4. This is a great post! Perhaps out-of-body experiences are rooted in our religious beliefs, eternal life after death. We want to believe that we have a separate mind, body, soul and spirit. The belief is deeply rooted into our psychic make-up. Do children who were never exposed to a religious belief of eternal life after death have these experiences? Who wants to think ashes to ashes and dust to dust is where are mind, body, soul and spirit originate and end? Not me, lol.