Are OBEs scientifically proven like lucid dreams?
Absolutely not.
You’ll undoubtedly hear a lot of people say things like “But I saw a TV special about how people could actually watch themselves having surgery while unconscious” and so on, but there is no scientific basis for any of it. I think it’s easier for people to believe that they’re actually experiencing an OBE than to accept the power of the subconscious mind.
yeah, i figured that. like i always say, mind over matter. i guess mind over matter is used pretty powerfully in OBEs, heh.
There are a lot of positive scientific results going for obe’s but check out some of these links that deals with that:
victorzammit.com/book/chapter16.html
survivalscience.org/debunk/ww/arg23.shtml
soultravel.nu/2003/030428-IAC-OBE/index.asp
paradigm-sys.com/display/ctt … .cfm?ID=31
biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages … yCh47.html
uri-geller.com/content/research/dreams.htm
Most of those links were successful in nothing more than upsetting my good mood. Aside from explaining OBEs as fact rather than from an argumentative viewpoint, they also continue to overlook the hard evidence against it. In particular, the link relating to Near Death Experiences wrote this:
Gee, why do you think this is? Could it be because the person had just cheated death, and learned that they were an arms reach from pure oblivion? Yeah, that would probably change my life too.
I’m shocked they used that as evidence that there exists a spiritual element to life. Not only do dreams and hallucinations frequently change people’s lives, but from the host’s point of view, there is no difference between hallucinations and real events. The same resulting effect is generated inside the brain, regardless of where the stimulus came from. Personally, I’m offended at this article and its complete lack of scientific understanding.
Look, people can quote reports written by men claiming to have experienced OBEs, telekinesis or spiritual visions, but the argument remains that there is absolutely no evidence supporting it. I believe most of those people DID seem to emerge from their body, and were blown away by an incredibly realistic representation of their immediate surroundings. They may have also experienced an intense uplifting feeling of enlightenment to accompany the vision - but nothing yet proves that this is not simply a lucid dream.
Since the beginning of humanity, people have been quick to credit mysterious phenomenon to the most obvious conclusion, which is usually “a supernatural force did it”. This is largely irresponsible, and slows down our progress of actual discovery. As we’ve recently come to understand the full potential of the subconscious mind, we’ve seen myth after myth crushed with a complete infallible scientific explanation that was obviously beyond the technology and resources available to humanity back at the time of discovery.
Most of the links showing experiments with it done under controlled conditions. You only rebutted a small part that one article which had nothing to do with the actual evidence for it. If your talking about the evidence against it being that dying brain hypothesis it’s only a hypothesis which is rebutted in that article. Here is just one example of an explaination for an experiment from the first link of it being done under controlled conditions:
Other experimenters including Robert Morris at the Psychical Foundation of North Carolina spent two years investigating OBEs. A volunteer subject Keith ‘Blue’ Harary, who claimed to have been having Out of Body Experiences since childhood, was able to lie down in a sealed laboratory room and project himself to another house twenty yards away. While there he was able to read letters and report accurately on which experimenters were sitting there and where they were sitting.
The point of that particular NDE quote was to demonstrate just one occasion of the consistently unqualified information given throughout the article. More appropriately, it made use of painfully false ideals in an attempt to persuade the reader. The average person accepts the difference between reality and hallucination, and generally associates the difference with vividness or realism. This is simply wrong, as we’ve already determined that hallucinations aren’t limited to vague, blurry representations in all situations.
Several common explanations are overlooked in favor of enhancing the argument for OBEs. Rather than pointing out the minds ability to pick up information without the persons conscious knowledge, they assume the person is entering the experiment with absolutely no existing knowledge of the target location, code or symbol.
There just isn’t enough evidence yet to suggest that a person has ever been able to view the physical world from a viewpoint alternate to their own eyes. It doesn’t make sense, and it only seems foolish that a person would so quickly jump to the conclusion that it’s a spiritual force allowing them to defy physics, without accepting the possibility that there are other variables in effect that might be responsible for the extremely small amount of positive evidence we’ve seen yet.
Having never experienced an OBE, I have no opinion as to the “reality” of the phenomenon one way or the other. However, if OBEs are real, I don’t think they would necessarily defy physics; but rather, our current understanding of physics. The EPR Paradox and other quantum phenomenon can’t be explained with traditional physics. Because of this, the idea of a non-local universe is emerging - where there are no 3-dimensional limitations. The boundaries between space and time and mass and energy have already disappeared. More and more, we are seeing the interconnectedness of all things. The boundary between observer and observed has disappeared, and they have an interdependency. This makes it rather difficult to continue with the traditional scientific approach.
We are still only able to describe quantum events as randomness and probabilities. Since two quantum particles can “communicate” at what would be faster-than-light speeds in a Newtonian framework - it seems to me that the idea of an OBE is at least possible. We are an electo-chemical system, and doesn’t that mean that we produce a (small) electric field that radiates in all directions? That would mean that there literally is no end to us. We radiate everywhere and are interacting with everything, at least in a very small way.
However, I agree… there is no hard evidence to support the realness of OBEs. But I would pose this question: what kind of tests would need to be done in order to prove/ disprove the OBE once and for all? 