"I got up from the ground where I lay, surprised that I felt no pain or bruising, and moved away. I saw people running and looked around to see why.

"Then I saw that my body was still laying in the road and they were running toward that...some of them passed me as I stood there. I could hear shouts and a woman's voice crying 'She's dead.'

"And then a feeling (I can still feel the awful shock of this whenever I recall the incident) of terrible fear came to me. I knew I had to return to me body before it was touched. There was a dreadful sense of urgency, or it would be too late. It is this sensation of dread that remains so indelible.

"I went back and lay down on top of myself. And as I did so I felt the hardness of the road beneath me and all the terrible pains of bruising, lacerations, and concussion that I was subsequently found to be suffering from...

"I was moving about thinking I was my normal body...Everything looked normal...my "floating self" behaved exactly as my physical." ²

The above statement was given by a woman after she recovered from being hit by a car while on her bicycle. This experience is commonly called an out-of-body experience, or an OBE.

An OBE typically consists of the feeling that one's consciousness is located away from the physical body, and often this includes an omniscient visual perspective. OBE's generally last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes, though there have been cases reported in which the OBE lasted much longer.

A more esoteric approach to OBE's claim that it is a detachment of the soul, or the astral body, from the physical body. Supposedly, the astral body wanders through the physical world, or exists in an astral plane, which, while encompassing the physical world, extends to other dimensions. The astral body is thought of as the double of the physical--it even wears the same clothes--but it has a translucence which makes it seem like an apparition. It can also pass through walls and travel at incredible speed. ³

The process of leaving the body is very similar in many cases. Often, travelers report leaving their body through the head or the solar plexus, or simply just rising from their bodies and floating away. Often a silver cord is perceived attaching the astral body to the physical. Many believe that if the cord becomes detached or cut, the soul is unable to return to the body, resulting in death. The idea that one should not wake a sleepwalker stems from this belief. ³

Once in the OBE state, the experient typically reports that the experience was vivid and realistic, and that they were able to see through obstacles and pass through walls. They also noted that they seemed to be floating or flying, and that attempts to interact with the physical world, such as picking up an object or gaining the attention of others, generally fail. ²

While many OBE's occur close to death or after injury (called induced or enforced OBE's), not all OBE's occur at life-threatening times. They may sometimes occur when one is extremely stressed, relaxed, or tired (called natural OBE's). Induced, enforced, and natural OBE's are what is termed spontaneous OBE's, and though the majority are spontaneous occurrences, a few people claim the ability to induce an OBE at will (usually while in an altered state of consciousness, such as during yogic meditation). This ability is also called astral traveling. ²

Generally, people who experience spontaneous OBE's remain in the vicinity of their bodies. However, skilled OBEers (or astral travelers) often report visits to all sorts of foreign cities. Despite never having visited those cities, they are able to describe scenes with such accuracy that it would have been impossible for them to gather the information from a travel guide. Other travelers claim to have visited heavenly bodies, or, more commonly, the astral plane.

While some claim that OBE's are nothing more than brief sensory hallucinations, this explanation does not account for the cases in which people reportedly traveled afar, or gained information that they could not have possibly learned from a hallucination.

Examples of this include OBE's in which a patient is having surgery; they report afterwards that they were watching the surgery from above and are often able to give such detailed descriptions of the events that the surgeons themselves are flabbergasted. Considering that the patient should have been unconscious, hallucinations do not adequately explain this phenomena.

OBE's interested early psychical research because of what they suggested about the nature of a soul or some type of consciousness that co-exists with the physical body. Indeed, OBE experiences often leave the person with a strong conviction that their 'souls' left their bodies. In some cases, people who were visited by an OBEer reported seeing an apparition or feeling a presence at the exact time of the OBE. ²

Some experiments into OBE's consisted of a subject who was hooked up to a "plethora of monitors, registering everything from brain waves to heartbeats," and a set of objects that were placed out of view of the subject. The subject was told to achieve an OBE and describe the objects upon his return. Several successful experiments with Ingo Swann provided some strong evidence for the existence of OBE's. ³

One series of investigations conducted by Dr. Robert Morris and astral traveler Keith Harary involved Harary astral traveling to another room in which a kitten (name Spirit) was being monitored. During the times that Harary was instructed to visit Spirit, the kitten's behavior changed drastically.

One interesting point is that, unlike a dreaming state, Harary's OBE state consisted of slightly faster heart and respiration rates. And, while Spirit and several other people in the vicinity were able to sense Harary's presence, it could not be detected by any physical equipment. ²

However, later experiments aimed at detecting an OBEer with physical equipment had more promising results. One experiment, conducted by Karlis Osis of the American Society for Psychical Research, involved a strain gauge ("which detects extremely subtle physical movements") that was set in front of an optical device which concealed the target. "The setup was such that the image could only be perceived [when one was directly in front of] the...strain gauge...otherwise, from a different angle, a viewer would only see overlapping lines." ⁶

"The psychic Alex Tannous, who was not told about the strain gauge, was asked to attempt to [astral] project in front of the optical apparatus [and] describe what he saw. Osis found that the strain gauge registered significantly more movement in those trials in which Tannous [was astral projecting.]" These results suggest that some part of Tannous' mind was indeed projecting itself. ⁶

One explanation for an OBE claims that no part of the mind actually leaves the body, but rather the mind "expands" to perceive the world from an outside perspective. ³