- Externalisation - what is it and who can experience it?
- Exterior. How can an OBE be experienced? - Techniques
- Exterior. Who is behind it?
- Exterior - what does science say?
Externalization is the art of traveling outside the body, which, according to enthusiasts of the phenomenon, consists in perceiving the world outside of your own body. According to esotericists, it can be experienced unconsciously or elicited on purpose using special techniques.
Contents:
- Externalisation - what is it and who can experience it?
- Exterior. How can an OBE be experienced? - Techniques
- Exterior. Who is behind it?
- Exterior - what does science say?
Externalization(Out-of-body experience - OBE or OOBE) is becoming more and more popular and about the experiences of participants who have OBE during sleep or meditation, you can often read on internet portals or forums.
It should be emphasized, however, that according to modern science, exteriorization is not possible. According to this position, moving and communicating with others while the body is relaxing or dreaming does not take place in reality, but only within the human brain.
But what exactly is exteriorization, how can it be experienced, who practices and researches it, and what exactly does EBM, i.e. evidence-based medicine, say about it?
Externalisation - what is it and who can experience it?
Externalization is a phenomenon that can be experienced while sleeping, in a trance or deeply relaxing.
Its supporters describe it as a phenomenon that allows you to temporarily leave the body and experience many activities outside of it - they say that during it you can, among others, move away from the body (even at great distances), observe the world, including your body from above, and even communicate with others.
Interestingly, the phenomena can be experienced not only spontaneously and unconsciously, but also through the use of appropriate techniques and exercises.
Externalization can be experienced by people who dream, are in a trance or hypnosis, as well as people who have experienced traumatic experiences (e.g. after an accident or war), during severe exhaustion, illness (e.g. migraine, temporal epilepsy) ) or after taking psychoactive substances.
Exterior. How can an OBE be experienced? - Techniques
Supporters of exteriorizationemphasize that there are many techniques that deliberately help out-of-body travel.
One of them is visualization, during which you should focus your thoughts on your goal, i.e. leaving the body.
Then it is worth imagining looking at the body from the perspective of flight. You can also visualize yourself in motion which supposedly helps you achieve your OBE.
It is mainly about movement that will allow the physical body to detach from the astral, so you should visualize, for example, swinging on a swing, rotating around your own axis or climbing a rope, and then jumping off or throwing out of the vortex, and thus achieving exteriorization.
Another technique is the trance technique of focusing on one specific goal, e.g. by relaxing and not moving, which allegedly causes physical paralysis and detachment from the physical body.
According to OBE supporters, the effectiveness of the technique results from focusing on the inside and ignoring external and bodily sensations.
The next way to externalize is through the lucid dream technique, which resembles visualization, as it involves making sudden movements during sleep, e.g. jumping off, lifting, hitting, etc.
Another way is to use the 4 + 1 technique, which involves falling asleep for 4 hours and then waking up, getting up and doing any activity outside of bed for 1 hour. After this time, go to sleep again.
According to supporters of this technique, it is very easy to achieve OBE with this method.
This technique is often modified and occurs e.g. in the variant 6 + 2. For the externalization to occur, it is also recommended to induce it with drugs such as phencyclidine or ketamine.
Exterior. Who is behind it?
The most famous researcher and popularizer of exteriorization was Robert Monroe. The American parapsychologist published his experiences with the OBE in three books, and founded his own research center, in which, inter alia, compiled a collection of recordings to facilitate out-of-body travel.
According to the researcher, it is possible to leave the physical body and wandering consciousness beyond it, and the return is possible thanks to a special connection of soul and body, i.e. silver line.
Similar experiences also had Robert Bruce, who described them in his book "Treatise on Astral Projection". Currently, the phenomenon is also popularized, among others in esoteric and some religious-philosophical circles (e.g. in Hinduism and Buddhism).
Exterior - what does science say?
Science clearly states that it is impossibleleaving and traveling beyond the physical body .
This is evidenced by the fact that many experimental attempts were made during which the sense of locating oneself in space was manipulated.
Initially, these were only visual illusions and perceptual experiences used in research individually, but in 2007 researcher Henrik Ehrsson decided to combine them and thus showed that it is possible to induce an illusion involving the whole body.
The experiment used virtual reality apparatus, which made it possible to see the delocalized body of the participant.
In practice, this meant that after starting the equipment, cameras placed behind the participant showed him an image in which he saw the back of his back not far in front of him.
At this stage, the researcher gently hit the real chest of the participant and at the same time made a similar movement on the reflection of the frame, after which the participants of the experiment declared that they felt the touch in both cases.
Thus, these people had the impression that they function outside their own body, from which they view their backs.
Recent research by scientists from the University of Ottawa in 2014, which investigated the brain activity of a woman who allegedly experienced exteriorization, is also interesting.
As she claimed, this happened thanks to the years of exercises in which she visualized the observation of her body from above, being outside of it.
The scientists in the experiment used nuclear magnetic resonance and obtained brain scans in which the areas responsible for visual coordination were less active and those for motor coordination were more active.
Experience has shown that the states experienced by a woman are similar to those that can be obtained through meditation and induce hallucinations on their own, such as hearing colors or feeling sounds.
The research conducted in 2004 and 2007 by researcher Blanke and Thut also shows that the experience of exteriorization may also be the result of temporal-parietal contact dysfunction, which causes disturbances in the perception of locating one's body in space.
In addition, it is also worth remembering that phenomena identical to externalisation very often occur in people with epilepsy and after taking psychoactive substances.