Both Persinger and Erhsson miss the point of true out of body experiences. They've crafted methods of creating an as-if experience, but what they describe is a hallucination. The experimental results are to a real out of body experience as Wilder Penfield's brain-stimulation hallucinations are to real music and images.

As anyone who's had an OBE (to use Engber's term) can tell you, you see things you really can't have seen any other way. The top of your own head (unless you really, really like web camming yourself from odd positions), for example. The position of others around you from above, and the location of landmarks you can't possibly have seen from the ground. Simulating that sense of floating behind yourself with a camera may feel like the real thing, as may stimulating the angular gyrus with an electrode. But it doesn't prove or disprove the reality of OBE. I'm not saying OBE is a supernatural or spiritual experience, I'm just saying that it's not imaginary either. When you have asurgeon relating his personal experience with it to Oliver Sacks (in a recent New Yorker), it gets harder to dismiss every incident as wishful thinking or brain damage.

I thought the most interesting experiment was this one by Dr. Olaf Blanke, which involved direct stimulation of the brain using electrodes. The researchers said "These perceptions may have been due to a disturbance in the multisensory processing of body and self at the temporoparietal junction."

With regard to seeing things from other angles or perspectives, the brain has plenty of capability to generate hallucinations. When we dream, we usually aren't aware of it at the time. A little detail can go a long way, if not all of the mind is so actively engaged as when we are fully awake. Not all the "error check" routines are running! An OBE that lasted a full day, while awake, would be a lot more interesting than one that lasts a couple of minutes in an abnormal situation.

I can imagine that in a case of e.g. accident, being partly asleep, going under anesthetic, etc., a breakdown in the part of the brain that provides the sense of bodily integrity could prompt an hallucination or dream that was compatible with that.

A quote from that article:

"Six years ago, another of Dr. Blanke’s patients underwent brain stimulation to a different multisensory area, the angular gyrus, which blends vision with the body sense. The patient experienced a complete out-of-body experience.

When the current flowed, she said: “I am at the ceiling. I am looking down at my legs.”

When the current ceased, she said: “I’m back on the table now. What happened?”

Further applications of the current returned the woman to the ceiling, causing her to feel as if she were outside of her body, floating, her legs dangling below her. When she closed her eyes, she had the sensation of doing sit-ups, with her upper body approaching her legs.

Because the woman’s felt position in space and her actual position in space did not match, her mind cast about for the best way to turn her confusion into a coherent experience, Dr. Blanke said. She concluded that she must be floating up and away while looking downward."

That's an interesting experiment. Too bad it would/does involve surgery to replicate it. An experience like that would be very enlightening and/or recreational. LSD without the potentially permanently disabling chemicals.

It's mentioned in an earlier Slate article on this topic. Doesn't detract from my point, which is that while hallucinations can provide vivid detail, they are not the same as actual OBE, in which the details would be more accurate, as well as vivid.

I've always been fascinated by OBEs. Isonomist, it sounds like you might have been one of the lucky ones to have a real one. True?

Are there any accounts of OBEs actually reporting accurate details that the subject had not previously seen? The accounts I've seen, like the famous account of the woman who saw the shoe on the outside windowsill, tend to be explainable as having been previously in the subject's view.

No. There have been several scientific studies regarding autoscopy. While it is generally accepted that the phenomenon involves a real feeling of leaving the physical body, there has never been any objective evidence to support the notion that a person can actually see something outside of their ordinary non-transcendental field of view.

Humans "see" because light enters their eyes, stimluates specialized cells, which creates electrical impulses that are interpreted by the brain, right? The process of "seeing" requires all of these organs which consist of matter located in our heads.

So, if a person is truly haveing an out of body experience, and they are "looking down at themselves," what exactly is recieving, creating the electrical impulses, and interpreting them? Thin air or anything immaterial cannot accomplish this process. I would think the fact that these people can still see is evidence they have not left their bodies at all.

So you're saying that you see with your eyes and not with your brain?

Do you see anything when you dream in total darkness?

I am sympathetic to Isonomist, but it doesn't work scientifically to just keep insisting that this, that, or the other is not a 'real' out-of-body experience because of . . .

You can just go on forever like that.

NightSwimmer:

So you're saying that you see with your eyes and not with your brain?

Is that what I said? No, it is not.

NightSwimmer:

Do you see anything when you dream in total darkness?

Well, if "seeing" is the process of using the eyes and brain to interpret incomming light, then no, I don't "see" anything when I am dreaming, even when dreaming of beautiful and vivid landscapes because light is not reflecting off anything and entering my eyes.

If "seeing" is merely the process of the brain generating images, whatever their source, then you could say that people "see" their dreams. In both cases, however, the process takes place entirely within the brain.

Exactly. How you define seeing is very important in this context.

I don't think that anyone sees anything during an OBE. Not in the strict sense of percieving light generated images in real time. People do, however, report seeing things. I don't see how the OBE experience is very much different from dreaming.

Well, if your point is that people do not actually leave their bodies during an OBE, I would agree with you. I think "OBE's" are events that happen entirely within the brain of the person having them, and are consequently not really "out of body."

For example, a person having an "OBE" who sees themselves from above is not really detecting light from a point above their bodies, but is merely imagining what they must look like from above, similar to how the brain "sees" people and places in a dream. The source of the image is internal, not external.

I agree with you. I never meant to seem confrontational, I just enjoy a good, lively discussion. Unfortunately, lightning storms on my end interrupted this one.