Science creates: out-of-body experiences (no drugs)

Scientists recreate out-of-body experiences (no drugs) So what happened to the good ol' fashioned oobe? I thought the whole idea was to do it yourself, not to mention do it naturally. Science seems to be ruining all of the fun things in life.
From article:
For centuries, people have claimed to have had out-of-body experiences but now scientists have recreated the sensation without using drugs in the first experiments of their kind, a study said Thursday.

As many as one in 10 people say they have experienced the sensation of being awake and seeing their own body from another location, according to the study published in the journal Science.

news.yahoo.com...

Interesting stuff. Sounds like new generation computer consoles should be good. It kind of links in with the Holographic Universe theory as they are likening it towards the virtual side.
Maybe we do live in a virtual reality……..

Dang, I wish I was a part of that study.

This is essentially a means of projecting yourself, a form of teleportation. If we can project people into a virtual character, so they feel and respond as if they were really in a virtual version of themselves, just imagine the implications.

Seems to differ from "natural" OOBEs as it uses virtual reality goggles and whatnot. One thing that I've always wondered about OOBEs is how would your soul be able to physically see without eyes. Like you would need to take you sesory inputs in order to sense things outside of yourself, know what I mean?

Sidenote: I find it particularly ironic that as I was reading the article, Deathcab For Cutie's song Soul Meets Body was on Radioio Rock.

The time we live in is becoming more and more like a virtual universe. Just notice all the we pages you use daily like yahoo, lycos, netscape, etc. They all say "we use and collect personal information" in small print, usually at the bottom of the pages. I think the powers that be are getting more and more control. Not that...that is a bad thing, but the system seems to crave total and complete control. What happened to the idea of smaller government. Sorry I'm going off on a tangent, but you get my drift. Scintific oobe seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. Or am I mistaken? The real world is becoming more and more like a type of matrix.

That news story is kind of ridiculous, that isn't a scientific recreation of an oobe, it's a virtual reality video game that apparently is pretty realistic. Rubbish.

reply to post by eddiemaiden_80


Heard of Bell's Inequality? Now that is something to think about:

There may be no reality separate from its observation. This is where physics melds with philosophy and religion. Could it be that the universe only exists because we are conscious of it? Perhaps we only exist because someone or something is conscious of us?

Bell's Inequality and The EPR Paradox

Somewhere else I read (I think it was Wired Feb 2007) that in order for relativity to square with q-mechanics, either we've no free will or reality is an illusion.

Given those choices, I pick reality is an illusion.

reply to post by fweshcawfee


I agree with fweshcawfee here. This is no OOBE, but a virtual reality experience. Let's see them go into the astral world with these vr goggles, then I'll believe them.

Edit: The mainstream media at work on this story. Look at the headlines.

news.google.com...

Totally misleading.

[edit on 24-8-2007 by TheBandit795]

This ignorance dissapoints me..

www.timesonline.co.uk...

To many people who have had an out-of-body experience, they are profoundly spiritual events that reveal how the mind extends beyond the material confines of the body and strengthen beliefs in religion or the paranormal.

The sensation of watching your own body from a distance, however, need owe nothing to the supernatural, research has proved.

Scientists have recreated such out-of-body experiences in the laboratory successfully for the first time, in a pair of experiments that show them to be nothing more than tricks of the mind.

The whole phenomena of OOBe's is being dismissed because of a simple pair of vr goggles and confusion of the mind. They haven't even begun to address all of the experiences people (including myself) have had with OOBE's.

Seeing through closed eyelids.
The intense vibrations when leaving my body.
Seeing other creatures and summoning a person and having contact with them.
Floating through my house, not being able to pass through walls and the ceiling, but but bouncing against them (bouncing against the ceilling like a helium balloon).
Floating 20ft in the air in front of my house.

Address that, scientists..

OH Man I couldn't wait to see if this had been posted today, I read it yet I didn't fully understand it.

So it is virtual reality goggles?

After I read it I was considering more of our consciousness being outside our body, that would fall under the virtual illusion category,

the cernter of awareness located outside your physical body.

they sensed selves that had left their physical bodies

Ok so have you ever had a tramatic experience where it just didn't seem real?

When I saw the UFO's it was as if I was in a surreal state.

Originally posted by eddiemaiden_80
Interesting stuff. Sounds like new generation computer consoles should be good. It kind of links in with the Holographic Universe theory as they are likening it towards the virtual side.
Maybe we do live in a virtual reality……..

eddie that's where my mind took me.

either we've no free will or reality is an illusion.

It is both, if our personal reality is an illusion the script having already been written we didn't have a choice but to live the illusion as it was scripted.
if you believe in that sorta thing,

[edit on 24-8-2007 by Stormdancer777]

I wonder which hot celebrity i will have sex with first when i plug into the matrix. hmm why limit myself with just one? *chuckles*

"What is real? how do you define real? If real is what you can feel, smell, taste and see, then 'real' is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain"
"Digital Self Image - It is the mental projection of your digital self"

Well that certainly is disappointing.

Here I was hoping they had managed to induce a trance-like state using the input from the goggles, and through that state had obtained an OOBE.

Nope...

physorg.com
Both Ehrsson and another research team... used video cameras and virtual reality goggles to show volunteers images of their own bodies from the perspective of someone behind them. The researchers also touched the volunteers’ bodies, both physically and virtually.

The volunteers in Ehrsson’s study viewed images recorded by the cameras through their headsets. In Blanke and colleagues’ study, the video was converted into holograph-like computer simulations.

Still pretty cool... providing sensory input in a virtual environment can only go so far. Tricking the brain into actually relocating the conscious perspective is an important step towards true immersion.

Now they just need full body sense suits (I'll refrain from expanding on this idea...) and faster gyros. I suggest they save eating and drinking for later.

WTF?!
ARGH IM ANGRY NOW!!@!!!

I didn't actually read how they did it, i just assumed they used something cool to induce the OBE like microwaves or something as I heard Sony were working on this a while ago...

All this is, is real-time virtual reality. WTF!
im not impressed at all. this technology has been around for donkeys years and they finally decide "oh lets attach virtual reality goggles to real-time camera's"

PFFFFFFFT!

THATS NO WHERE NEAR RE-CREATING AN OBE!!! ARGH I WANT TO PUNCH THEM IN THE HEAD!

[edit on 28-8-2007 by Eonnn]