OBE's can be triggered intentionally!!!!!!!!!!

Finally, science is able to almost completely explain OBEE’s, after they found out how to induce one, even against a person’s will. Basically, in an open brain surgery, electrically stimulating a certain part causes an OBE in the person. There’s afew articles.

nature.com/nsu/020916/020916-8.html
ananova.com/news/story/sm_673273.html?menu=

Cool, huh. Now all i need is a large saw and some electrodes.

It was only a matter of time before someone linked the globally commended OBE experience to a readily observable function of the brain. The articles mentioned in the above post certainly aren’t going to prove anything to the majority of people who cling to the idea that OBEs take place on a spiritual plane – but it’s perpetually looking more and more like this isn’t the case. As briefly explained in the above articles, the brain’s ability to interpret and perceive sensations is not always exclusively bound to the physical senses in operation.

People are often mistaking our senses to be a direct link to the world around us. This is not the case. Instead, each of our senses – everything we see, hear and feel – is created within the mind. We receive external stimulus that largely directs these sensations, but ultimately, the end result was created within the mind. Patterns of light that exist in the physical world may have told us what an object looks like, but our mind generated the representation that you consider to be your ‘vision’. This doesn’t mean that we can’t see things when light ceases to provide our eyes with signals – it just means what we’re seeing isn’t coming from the real world anymore. It’s coming from our imagination.

While it was previously accepted that hallucinations and strange sensations must be the result of an unapparent ‘spiritual’ world, ever-so-slowly we’re discovering the necessary information to dismiss that idea entirely.

why are you eager for the proof to dismiss the idea of a spiritual world entirely?

I guess it’s just a personal goal. I enjoy learning about the mind, and I strongly believe that every aspect of life can be legitimately accredited to its explicit functionality. It’s not so much that I long to disprove the spiritual world, but rather that I’m eagerly awaiting a time when we can fully understand the human brain – perhaps to take advantage of what it can provide. I guess the two are one and the same, though.

i dunno man, i mean i’m not trying to put any limits on science or anything cause some scientist comes and surprises me just about everyday it seems. but i’m not satisfied with the idea that science alone will ever be able to explain everything. if i may quote something from a book i have on taoist yoga

[i]I read books on modern physics and come away thinking that nothing is real. It is all being instantly created, like the signal on a television set. Yet where is the source of our signal? Where logic can no longer penetrate, there magic begins.

-Eric Steven Yudelove[/i]

i believe there’s an equilibrium between science and spirituality, and though they often overlap, science cannot explain everything just as spirituality can’t, it takes an understanding of both to effectively understand all things. just my opinion though :smile:

Using electrodes to stimulate regions of the brain can trigger a whole range of experiences or physical effects; laughter, twitching of limbs, hearing sounds, seeing lights. No-one’s suggesting that these experiments throw into doubt the objective reality of light or sound.

Of course experiments on the brain can trigger OBEs, the brain is our tool for interpreting everything, including paranormal experiences, this doesn’t invalidate those experiences. Taking drugs and hallucinating rabbits doesn’t prove that rabbits don’t exist in reality.

I doubt that even people who believe in the literal truth of OBEs are surprised by this, the entire practice of astral projection is based on the idea that by using our brains we can trigger this experience.

Mine too :smile:

Again a very valid point. It’s like stimulating an area of the brain so it can be tricked into seeing something. That doesn’t mean everything we see is created by the brain does it?