Are out of body experiences real….or are they simply fantastical fantasy and fiction? Does anything REALLY leave the body during the OBE…..or is it all just happening inside of your head? Here is an interesting article from Time Magazine (from a few years back – 2007) on the art and science of the OBE. My own thoughts? I’ve HAD numerous out of body experiences, and tend to be disdainful of those who claim they are all imaginary in nature. But….exploring the skeptical point of view DOES have value – and this article, while tending to support the notion of “hallucination” rather than genuine experience, is well worth reading none the less! Enjoy..:-) (and let us know what YOU believe below)
“I’m not really interested in out-of-body experiences,” says Henrik Ehrsson, one of the study’s authors and an assistant professor at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. “I’m really interested in in-body experiences: how the brain keeps and updates a model of the world and the body. To have a perception of your own body is the foundation of self-consciousness.”That is, of course, why out-of-body experiences have always been, well, out-of-body. People report such experiences after returning from the “brink of death,” or being under the influence of mind-altering drugs — no doubt why the sensation has long been equated with spiritual awakening (and with crackpots). But, today, with new advances in neurology, scientists are better able than ever to locate the physical roots of these bizarre perceptions of self. For example, neurologists have studied amputees who can feel sensation where their missing limbs used to be; researchers think this phantom limb phenomenon has to do with rewiring in the brain’s somatosensory cortex
