What are Out of Body Experiences?

Welcome to I Am Your Target, I'm Agraphic and today we're discussing out-of-body experiences shortened to OBEs. We're going to discover what might cause an out-of-body experience, what sort of studies have been done, and what is proven and unproven in this field. So what is an OBE? People experience them differently, but it's often where a person feels like they've left their body. This often occurs while sleeping, so look at the sense of floating above their bed and able to walk around or look at their body on the outside looking at themselves. In rare instances, they appear far far away from their bodies in other countries or even other planets. The idea of out-of-body experiences is an ancient one across many different religions and belief sets. What differs is what exactly causes these experiences. Some OBEs can be induced, usually by forcing something upon the body. For example, some hallucinogenic drugs can cause OBEs such as LSD. When this happens, it's not typically traveling far from your body, but rather losing the senses of your body. If you no longer hear or feel or smell, for example, you might feel like your vision is alone, floating, unattached. This mimics an out-of-body experience, but likely isn't one. Without drugs, there are meditative ways to induce an OBE, such as going into a deep trance and trying to let go of the world around you. There are always ways to mechanically induce, which includes a variety of methods in which you are stimulated in different areas of the brain or even deprived of certain senses. The studies that we'll next discuss use a variety of these methods to try to force the mind to trigger an out-of-body experience. Now, as we dive into these theories and studies, you'll notice a drastic spectrum of what people believe. Some believe it's outright paranormal. A lot of researchers come to the conclusion that OBEs are just one's imagination. When I talked about hallucinogenic triggers, these are not true OBEs, but rather they feel like them. Some researchers say these are equivalent to dreams, where the person just feels like they're outside their body. Other researchers believe that OBEs are defense mechanisms. Your life is in danger, so your mind tries to protect itself by trying to leave the body. You experience an intense emotional pain, so you leave that pain behind. These are intense and hard to replicate factors and are therefore hard to prove as a stimulant. In the timeline of research on OBEs, you'll notice a shift from a focus on the paranormal to a much more scientific understanding. The research done since the 2000s has almost unanimously pointed to a mismatch of brain processing, where vision is hyperactive but sense of touch is diminished, leading you to feel like you're floating outside of your physical body. Let's get into some specific studies. One of the most documented and now controversial studies is about an anonymous woman called Miss Z, who reported that she could leave her body and float at the ceiling during the night. Researcher Charles Tartt put a shelf above her bed and put a five-digit code on that shelf that she could only read from above. On the fourth night of testing, she was able to recite the code. However, this was the 60s and there weren't the sort of controls that we'd now expect, so we don't have any video proof, for example. She could have left the bed and peaked. There's a lot of ways that this study failed. Another controversial study in 1977 had a woman in a hospital claim to see a sneaker sitting on a ledge outside the building, and it was published as proof of out-of-body experiences. Nearly 20 years later, the exact location was replicated and it was discovered that people outside the hospital could see the shoe, so the patient might have heard people talking about it, then worked it into her out-of-body experience story. As the more modern age of research came upon us, more and more of these situational types of research proved false. They replicated hiding things from a sleeping person to no success. There have been studies of objects in other rooms to no success. More neurological studies have been done and have seen more success, though it's how the person feels. They lose the sensory feeling of lying in bed but visually feel awake, therefore feel floating and disattached from their body. Now, this wouldn't be a fun video if I ended there, so let's dive into some of the more interesting and untested waters. There's an idea called astral projection where someone can force themselves to leave their body and travel at will, seen in pop culture such as the hero Dr. Strange, who can leave his physical body behind. Also called remote viewing, this was a skill that was seen as highly valuable, even resulting in America's CIA trying to weaponize the skill during the Cold War. If a soldier could enter Russia and gain insight without ever physically stepping foot in Russia, that could change the tides. Now, this of course is not verified, but this is the stuff of conspiracy theory forums that I find intriguing. It's even the basis for a film called Men Who Stare at Goats about soldiers being trained to use paranormal abilities. There have been books written about these real stories, but again, hardly verifiable other than personal anecdotes. The idea of astral projection also brings up our connection to our physical bodies, usually represented by a cord that ties our soul to our body. Some people believe that when you push your soul too far, it severs this cord and your body slips into a coma. Some dark corners of the web even insist that our idea of ghosts and of the paranormal beings that exist on Earth might just be severed souls without a body, not actually the souls of the dead. So let's wrap it up. Have you experienced an out-of-body experience? Was it in your room, sleeping, or was it caused by a traumatic event? Share your stories in the comments, and thanks for watching!