“I began to move
through tunnels in my mind, very brightly coloured and getting more
and more real. There began to be places, which appeared very, very clearly...
I was thinking how high I was, in the sense that on looking down, my
feet seemed a very long
way away...
“I suddenly realised that I really was high up and looking down on my own body.
I think at this point I was at about ceiling level and gently drifting
about. Soon after I had begun talking, I saw the cord. I looked down
from where I was and saw, apparently coming from where my
tummy should be, a cord. It was not really any colour, but closest to
a slightly shiny greyish white and it was slowly moving... I reached
out, my hand but found two things. Firstly, if I wanted a hand
I could have one, or as many as I liked. Secondly, it wasn’t necessary
to have a hand, I could move the cord at will, and had great fun doing
it too. I was quite consciously talking all this time but very fast,
as I wanted to say so much and tell them every thing I was doing.”
~ Susan Blackmore, lecturer and writer, recounting her own out-of-body
experience during her student days at Oxford, from The Archives of Scientists’
Transcendent Experiences.
Out-of-body
experiences (OBEs) are brief, bizarre experiences involving a sensa-
tion of floating outside one’s body, perceiving the world from a location
outside one’s physical body and by means other than the physical senses.
Around
one in 10 to 20 people have an OBE at least once in their lifetime,
according to a BBC report. Though many sceptics dismiss them as dreams
or dream-like sequences, researchers agree that OBEs happen when the
person is fully awake and conscious. Quite a few seem to happen when
the person is in bed, resting or ill, or under the influence of psychedelic
drugs. OBEs are also very closely related to near-death experiences
(NDEs). Unlike most drug-induced hallucinations or dreams, OBEs are
not unstable and fleeting; they do not dissolve rapidly into something
else. They seem as real and solid as the perceived world around us.
As Dr Blackmore claims, “Somehow words fail to convey how completely
real it all seemed at the time.”
Recounts Devdeep Bhattacharya, a student of IIM-Kolkata who had an OBE when he
was in school, “I was on my bed, lying face down, trying to sleep,
when I had this weird feeling that I was afloat a few inches above my
own body, tied to it by silvery cords. It must have lasted a few minutes...
after which I suddenly plopped back into my own body, as if pulled down
by gravity, and seemed to wake up. At that time I had no idea about
out-of-body experiences... it was only a few years later when I came
across other similar experiences of people on the web that I realised
that the phenomenon had a name.” |
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Usha Ram,
professor in the department of psychology, Pune varsity, says, “OBEs
are still treated in the realm of parapsychology and at present, studies
and research regarding these experiences don’t fit within standard
theoretical models accepted by science or scientific methodologies currently
practised. In spite of this we are currently moving towards study
of what is presently called paranormal, and I hope soon enough
the research into that area would also be regarded as scientific.”
According
to her, there are various techniques, among them yoga and reiki, through
which some people have cultivated the faculty of inducing OBEs,
also known as astral projection.
Agrees Nandini Gulati, psychotherapist and a student of Brian Weiss,
a prominent British psychiatrist dealing in past-life regression, “OBEs
are usually induced when a person is undergoing an intense emotion
or stress, like pain, grief or love, even in those who are otherwise
not spiritually inclined. I don’t think science has a definitive explanation for out-of-body
experiences... Moreover, if spirituality offers better insight into
the cycle of life and death and offers comfort and strength, a scientific
explanation is not required. I think it is a great insight into the
meaning of being alive and human.”
She has
herself undergone a series of OBEs and describes one experience:
“I heard a buzzing sound in my ears, and had the feeling of
leaving my body and floating above... At that time, I was residing
in London, and I had the distinct feeling of floating above London and
seeing its roofs and the people walking in the street. I had a
sim- ilar buzzing sensation when I was being pulled back into
my body; by a force which was almost magnetic. The experience lasted
about 15 minutes.”
She also
asserts being able to leave her body at will, though the duration is much
shorter. “It strengthens my belief that we are more than just our corporeal
selves, and consciousness can exist beyond the physical body.”
shatarupa.chakraborty@timesgroup.com
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