An Investigation into Out-of-Body Experiences

Posted by Ioannis on 14 February 2010 | 5 Comments

Tags: out of body experiences, direct experience, sleep,

What has always been fascinating to me are the books and texts about unimaginable spiritual things, written through experience, but without a well-defined source of where this information came from. If we look carefully, we can see that there have only really been a small number of these books throughout the history of mankind. On the other hand we have myriads of books that are discussions, ideas or studies about the things that these books have spoken of; some which contain brilliant theories and concepts. However, when you begin to read them, you can very easily see the difference between the first kind of books and the latter kind. The original ones touch you in a completely different way, I would say in a spiritual way, a deep touch in your heart, talking to your consciousness in a way that you cannot explain. The other ones touch your mind, creating complex ideas and processes that are intriguing and fascinating, but most of the times not truly profound.  They can also touch your feelings, but this is a 'touch' in a more crude way not in a deep, elegant way. And I have seen how easy it is to get fascinated with the mind processes that this kind of touch creates, and how you can get trapped in a false reality created by you, a self-fascination which will even alter anything that you perceive through your senses.

In what I have mentioned you can see that I make a distinction between the mind and the consciousness, but I will probably refer more on my thoughts and experiences on that in the future.

In my search of the spiritual, I have been through many different groups and ideologies and religions, but what I was seeking wasn't what suits me most mentally or emotionally but what would give me the tools to be able to find and verify knowledge by myself. My scientific background and my PhD studies in Artificial Intelligence gave me a very practical foundation which helped me to seek out something solid, something that I could prove and experience and at the same time seek the roots of those experiences in infinite depth. Although along the way, I found out that you can be trapped in your own experiences and imprison yourself but again, this is a separate, but very important topic.

Through my spiritual search at some point I heard of out-of-body experiences, otherwise called 'astral' experiences, which referred to visiting other realities or dimensions and exploring entirely new worlds - including near-death-experiences. This attracted my interest a lot and thus I began a search, many years ago, to investigate this topic. I began to find many controversial and conflicting references to out-of-body experiences. For example, there were some sources which stated that it is dangerous or that it requires special guidance, while others mentioned that it is natural and happens every night (but unconsciously), and other similar ideas. I am sure that most of us have noticed that on a specific topic we can find very controversial references (and that can be explained by the second kind of books that I mentioned before) and usually we 'go' with what we like most, or with what we agree based on our knowledge or cultural background or based on what we have read and 'approved' in other books, which is most common.

And so I started my search on what those out-of-body experiences actually are. My goal was to be able to experience them by myself and to be able to investigate further into them. It was very difficult and painful in terms of the efforts that this process required, which involved a lot of dedication and a lot of practicing.  However, no matter how strange it may sound, the concept I read was very simple and this was what made me try - it is that every night we are out of our body unconsciously  in our dreams and that a conscious out-of-body experience is like going to bed but being fully aware of whatever happens, including the process of sleeping. The facts I knew were:

a) Every single day we sleep at least once every night - this sums up to about 1/3 of our lives that we have no idea what actually is happening.

b) Most of the times I sleep, I have dreams that I can remember, sometimes a few and sometimes more.

c) I had no idea what happens during the sleep, nor how I go from the awakening state to the sleep state (and I am talking about a direct experience of what happens and not scientific or any other kind of other explanations).

So based on these three facts, I started my investigation by trying to be observant every time I went to bed, trying to watch out for anything that happened and trying to see for myself the process of sleep. In the beginning, the results were that:

a) I would fall asleep during my 'observation' of what is happening, or

b) I would stay awake because I couldn't sleep by putting mental tension in my efforts

I realised that the simplest thing of watching your sleep, is actually an extremely difficult task.

I further continued to investigate how it works and found that what I observed with the process of sleep was related to the way I lived my day, to my concentration and my mental state, to the stable or unstable state of my thoughts and feelings.  For example, when I lacked concentration in my day and had many scattered thoughts or daydreams, I noticed a repetition of this when I was falling asleep, with random thoughts interfering and pulling me quickly into dreams.  On the other hand, when I tried to be clear and focused through the day, I noticed that my approach to sleep was much more calm and stable and my dreams much more coherent. It also happened that I started these investigations with some friends of mine that were studying that same topic at the same time, and this was another way to verify common understanding and experiences throughout this process.

After lots of efforts and discipline I started to have my first experiences of the process and what happens during sleep. In my first experience, many years ago, I was sitting on my armchair comfortably trying to sleep, focused on the process. At this point I was concentrated enough so I could stay focused without putting tensions, and naturally the body began to relax. After about 2 hours of effort, I was becoming very tired of the process but I kept insisting saying that I won't get up until I have an experience.  Finally this effort was rewarded. After the 2 hours I began to feel sensations in my body, tickling sensations, vibrations and a deep sound that was increasing in density and loudness, but yet it wasn't annoying. I was just observing. At some point the vibrations were increasing a lot and I felt that it was like I was on a spring going up and down and after a while the vibrations stopped and I felt my body light and I was able to move it. So I opened my eyes, and tried to get up. I had some difficulty getting up in the beginning.  It is difficult to describe how it was, but it was like something was pulling me from behind, and my vision was a little bit blurred. I tried to focus more to be able to see clearly, and so I did and the problems soon disappeared and I moved forwards from my chair. I could see the room as it is, and feel my body, but the feeling was slightly but yet profound different and the same for my perception. I had a unique clarity, the colours were more vivid, I could hear more and perceive more. It was strange, so I turned back to look at my chair and was very surprised to see my own physical body still there in the armchair! Although this was something very shocking, I was not shocked in a way that upset me.

I looked at the body I was conscious of being in and I realised that it was the exact same shape as my physical body but the feeling of it was more of a plastic feeling. After a while I couldn't stay focused anymore, thoughts began to come into my mind and I could see the environment begin to fade away. I felt a sudden pull back to my physical body and then I woke up in my chair. My observations from this first experience were:

a) Being in that different body, I felt more alive than being in my physical body

b) There was a sense of extreme perception and awareness

c) Clarity was very sensitive to thoughts or emotions that could create a false perception. In this moment I had my first insights that 'being ' is different from 'thinking'.

d) The environment was more vivid and with more details - even details not visible in the physical.

e) Waking up in the physical body didn't bring all this dizziness and lack of clarity or laziness we can have when we wake up from sleep. This was a very important observation that I will explain from my investigations on that in the future.

f) I felt like I had slept for many hours, fully awake and with a clarity that I rarely had while awake - that strangely gradually faded away. That was another important observation that created a lot of questions in me.

This first experience made me question a lot of things that I considered true and many things that I believed or had been taught throughout my life. I realised that in that different 'dimension' not only we can perceive our known physical world in a more deeper level, but we could also investigate non-visible worlds, dimensions and many other things. 

It also made me completely change my way of sleeping - instead of going to bed to 'sleep' I was going to bed to 'investigate', trying to have a conscious 'sleep' instead of unconscious 'sleep'.

But however real this experience felt and was, it wasn't enough for my 'mind', I wanted more proof. And so I continued my investigations on out-of-body experiences.

A lot of experiences followed, amazing experiences which were the result of a lot of experiments and investigations I did to prove if this was something of my mind or not. In another post I will mention a few of the more intriguing experiences I had in my efforts to verify the reality of this different plane or dimension...