Do you think out-of-body experiences are real?

[1] [Pop Psychic Theory] “The deceased’s spirit also attends their own funeral” https://headlines.yahoo.co.jp/article?a=20190407-00010003-jisin-ent

• [2] The brain’s functions can’t operate apart from the brain, obviously.
• [230] >>2 In times before science developed, nobody would have believed you if you said there was matter in the empty space right in front of them.
• [6] Yeah, they are. ‘Cause I’m doing it right now.
• [7] Basically, it’s impossible for mere protein to gain ‘self-awareness’ in 2000 days. It’s natural to think that a completed form comes from somewhere and leaves somewhere else.
• [39] >>7 Maybe what we call ‘self’ or ‘ego’ isn’t actually such a grand thing, you know?
• [71] >>39 There’s a soul-like entity inside the body, and while it leaves the body upon physical death, the soul doesn’t disappear. Just take this one idea, for example; it’s believed so commonly throughout the world. The concepts of heaven and hell are the same. The fact that these arose independently across multiple continents and races with no contact suggests there’s a solid reason for it. Even though they’re both island nations, Britain doesn’t have sushi. They have a culture of cooking eel, but the methods are completely different. Yet, they both have similar concepts of souls, heaven, and hell. They exist.
• [75] >>71 Nah, that’s just because human cultures are actually deeply connected with distant cultures.
• [117] >>75 That super sloppy dismissal made me laugh lol
• [120] >>117 Shinichi Hoshi, in one of his essays, pretty casually dismissed the concepts of hell across various religions and ethnicities, saying something like, ‘Humans probably just think up similar stuff.’
• [125] >>120 The fear of death is common to all humanity, right? So, it’s not that far-fetched to think that consciousness persists after death or goes to another world as a way to overcome that fear.
• [11] I’ve experienced it many times up to the point where my body starts shaking along with a loud noise deep in my ears, just short of making it out.
• [178] >>11 Isn’t that a type of sleep paralysis? Happens when you’re tired.

Kanashibari: Refers to a phenomenon similar to Sleep Paralysis, but in Japan, it has traditionally been thought of as a state where one’s body is immobilized by a spiritual entity.

• [16] A long time ago, there was an out-of-body experience thread on an occult message board. It had instructions on how to do it. I tried it and flew around the sky at night several times after leaving my body. I wonder if that thread still exists.
• [49] >>16 Me too, when I was in high school, I learned how from a magazine or something and saw dream-like scenery of floating and flying over the town. Because it was a dream, it wasn’t clear, the visuals were blurry. When I tried to leave my body, there was a loud ‘BEEEEEP!’ noise, and I got scared and went back. Here’s the important part: as an adult, I had a period of 1-2 years with bad tinnitus. When I had that low-frequency ringing, I suddenly realized. Isn’t this exactly like the scary dreams I had as a kid, and the out-of-body experiences in middle/high school? Furthermore, I had sinusitis as a child which completely cleared up and I forgot about, but it came back as an adult. Pus builds up in my nasal cavity and even makes my teeth hurt.
• [19] Yeah, it exists. It’s amazing. I almost went to space.
• [22] Well, I’m currently detaching from life, if that counts.
• [26] I love stories about near-death experiences, but I guess they just get dismissed as dreams, huh?
• [28] It’s completely a dream. I can freely induce sleep paralysis and out-of-body experiences, but I can assure you it’s nothing more than a brain illusion seen in a dream.
• [32] >>28 During an OBE, can you go from Tochigi to Antwerp or something?
• [38] >>32 No way, that’s impossible. I’ve mastered phasing through walls and can go within about a 2km radius. I can fly sometimes too. But since it’s just a dream, the scenery is constructed based on my own memories, so I can’t enter other people’s houses.
• [29] I did it with just the upper half of my body once. I got scared and immediately returned to my body, and I remember my whole body hurt a lot. That was about 10 years ago.
• [34] When I almost died in a traffic accident, I remember looking down at myself.
• [35] It feels like your vision teleports instantaneously, and you lose control. When I floated up into the sky and saw space, I wanted to see it, but the anxiety of not being able to return made me panic, struggle, and wake up.
• [53] >>35 That’s a dream too. I’ve also had dreams of floating in some kind of outer space, and it’s terrifyingly lonely and helpless. You see strange clusters of galaxies or gas nebulas, it was just eerie.
• [57] But the imagination within dreams is incredible. Sometimes the content (the story within the dream) is something you’d absolutely never think up with your waking consciousness, which is interesting. It makes you wonder if psychological theories about humans having a collective unconscious shared at the bottom of consciousness could be true.
• [60] >>53 I thought that when the body perishes, human consciousness is flung into space. It’s like a strange mix of curiosity about being released into the universe and a premonition of not being able to return.
• [42] 38 Name: Nanashi-san @ Namida desu. (Osaka Pref.) Post Date: 2018/03/03(Sat) 13:48:40.90 ID:vQLlRZt50 I once had a job checking if the meat was sticking out of frozen shumai wrappers. My senior told me that once you get used to it, you can leave just your eyes and hands there, have an out-of-body experience, and go play outside.
• [56] >>42 Lol
• [218] >>42 Came here for this.
• [44] Sometimes I have dreams where I realize I’m in the sky, and then I fall.
• [45] I used to have the same dream often. At night, on a nearby hill, riding the headwind up into the sky. I’d get anxious and wake up.
• [51] What if someone takes over your body while you’re out? I’d never want to do that.
• [55] You stop getting sleep paralysis when you get older.
• [58] Didn’t some prominent neurosurgeon overseas say that OBE experiences aren’t dependent on the brain? (´･ω･`)
• [63] When you get sleep paralysis and the auditory or visual hallucinations start, if you try to force your body to move, you can pop out.
• [68] At the very least, lucid dreams definitely exist. I’ve had them. Lucid dreaming seems pretty deep, but it’s like half-stuck in the occult and hasn’t been academically compiled yet. If lucid dreaming was researched and people could have them freely, it would be amazing entertainment.
• [72] When my heart stopped, I went out the hospital window and flew around above. Probably a hallucination caused by strong painkillers, but it was incredibly fun.
• [73] You know, when you’re alive, it feels like your brain emits radio waves. I’ve had that ‘bug signal’ (hunch) about close acquaintances twice, and once I thought I heard a voice. I dismissed it as my imagination and went to sleep, but then the coat rack, which shouldn’t have fallen, tipped over onto my bed. It was about a woman, and turns out she had hit her head in an accident that day and was in intensive care.
• [77] Maybe brainwaves fly around like radio waves.
• [78] There was a story about a ‘bug signal’ in Esper Mami too. The one where a relative suddenly appeared in the field during wartime, covered in blood.

Esper Mami: Title of a Japanese manga and anime series. The protagonist is a girl with psychic powers.

• [83] Maybe spiritual experiences aren’t about actual spirits existing, but more like sensing the residual echoes of consciousness left behind by humans or living things?
• [84] With close people, I feel like maybe your consciousness flies to them even when you’re apart. Humans have a ‘sixth sense’ like the ability migratory birds have to know distant locations. ‘Sixth Sense’ in Humans – Ability to Sense Magnetism Discovered – University of Tokyo, etc. – Sankei News https://www.sankei.com/life/news/190319/lif1903190018-n1.html
• [86] Living things themselves are ghosts, basically.
• [87] When I lived in a rental apartment, I frequently dreamed of going between the rooms. Maybe it’s because my hearing got trained?
• [90] Same as seeing the afterlife. Faint electrical currents to specific parts of the brain, illusions shown by the brain.
• [94] Moment of astral projection caught on security camera https://youtu.be/65rH_UoV-ZQ
• [159] >>94 The spirit comes out so late, it’s funny. What was it doing for a while after dying?
• [102] There was a time I could float easily, but that was a dream, right? Still, unlike normal dreams, there’s consciousness and sensation. My ears feel weird. Maybe anyone can do it if they learn the trick?
• [104] When you lose consciousness, someone else takes over your body.
• [106] >>104 Me, it’s me.
• [108] >>106 No, it’s me.
• [110] My dad and mom were sleeping downstairs, but I saw my mom coming down the stairs from upstairs. I was so scared I fainted -> My older sister came home, woke me up, and I tearfully explained. She said, ‘You know, the other day, you came home from your part-time job after I saw you go into your room.’ I fainted again. I hate this house.
• [133] >>110 Some houses are like that… I’ve heard similar stories directly from acquaintances. Maybe it’s the house, or the place… perhaps because the connection to spirits is strong, just living there changes your constitution. They said they started seeing things they couldn’t before. However, the phenomenon might not be ‘a ghost with the same appearance wandering around,’ but closer to ‘images being recorded in space.’ Like seeing soldiers from long ago marching. In that case, it’s just like a 3D image, so communication is impossible, of course. Land or buildings where 3D images of humans or living things are easily recorded. One theory suggests places with lots of water are prone to such recordings, or that high-voltage currents can cause the same phenomenon. Are there any ponds, swamps, rivers, or electrical towers nearby?
• [143] >>133 Whether it’s true or not, that’s an interesting story. Wish I could have read internet message boards when I was a kid.
• [138] >>133 Assuming this idea of past images being recorded somewhere is true, I wonder what the medium is. Even with ‘bug signals,’ how is information transmitted to someone far away? Maybe science will find answers to these things as it develops, or perhaps it can surprisingly be explained by micro-level quantum mechanics. There’s a phenomenon called quantum entanglement, where distant quantum particles with no apparent connection move identically, and the principle behind how information is transmitted to a distant location is still unexplained, or so they say.
• [146] >>138 High-voltage currents, electromagnetic waves, transmitted through water maybe?
• [165] >>138 A relatively famous person overseas who researches the occult published several books, and I read the Japanese translations back then. I forget the name, but it was a well-presented book that analyzed occult phenomena from both scientific and spiritual perspectives. I’d like to read it again, but I can’t remember the name… Where the images are recorded, the book didn’t conclude, of course, but I think quite a few people associate seas, rivers, swamps – water – with spiritual images. It’s not necessarily that ghosts appear there, but rather, as a result of images being easily recorded, repeated sightings overlap, forming the ‘lore’ that ‘ghosts appear at that swamp (river).’ Places with high humidity have long been meccas for the occult, right? Baths and toilets too. Mountains and deserts have less of that image. I think the book also mentioned that stagnant water bodies are particularly prone to recording images.
• [173] >>165 Mountains too, plenty. Ghost stories related to mountain climbing are standard. Like hearing people moving around all night in a mountain hut.
• [113] I don’t believe in ghosts or anything at all, but I’ve definitely experienced astral projection once. I was floating fuwa fuwa (light and floaty), thought ‘Oh crap, this is it!’, desperately swam like breaststroke back to my sleeping body, and then was too scared to sleep. So it wasn’t a dream, right?
• [115] Whether the astral body is real or not, I think it’s not uncommon for people to have felt their consciousness floating away from their physical body.
• [118] I’ve never had an OBE or NDE, but I have seen hypnagogic hallucinations, like a stranger standing in the doorway. Like the flower fields or the Sanzu River in NDEs, I wonder why so many people see similar hallucinations.

Sanzu River: In Japanese Buddhism, a mythical river the dead are said to cross. Often used in descriptions of near-death experiences.

• [119] Whenever occult topics come up, there are always people who brandish extreme denialism, so let me be clear. Many of the occult stories talked about in the world are lies, misunderstandings, or already explained scientific phenomena. On the other hand, even if it’s just a small part, there are things that cannot be explained, strange things. Not everything is a spiritual phenomenon, but not everything is fake either.
• [129] When I was a kid, delirious with fever, I did have the sensation of looking down at my sleeping self from above.
• [135] When I was in middle school, during sleep paralysis, I felt someone’s presence and was touched all over my body. It felt quite real and terrifying. Like being on an operating table touched by several people. It’s amazing I remember this 35 years later. Exploring sleep paralysis and OBEs was so exciting every day back then, I still remember it like yesterday.
• [136] Well, they’re probably just people with the ability to have those kinds of dreams. Believing it’s astral projection is creepy, but being able to see the dreams you want is genuinely enviable.
• [142] When I got hit by a car long ago, the world went into slow motion, but that was probably just my brain going full throttle for crisis aversion.
• [149] Apparently, if you measure brainwaves while instructing someone to grasp their hand at a signal, the arm muscles react before the brainwave appears. Since the arm itself wasn’t stimulated, it’s different from spinal reflexes reacting to pain or heat. This implies something exists that commands the body separately from the brain. There’s a theory that the mind or soul exists separately from the brain, and the brain acts as an intermediary between it and the body. So, the soul is the king, the brain is the minister, and the body is the people. The king isn’t versed in politics, so orders to the people usually go through the minister. But for simple commands, the king can direct them personally. That’s the idea.
• [153] The body runs on electricity too, so it wouldn’t be strange if it emitted radio waves.
• [154] I’ve had dreams that felt like astral projection.
• [156] Nope. Ghosts don’t exist, so there’s no afterlife or this world, no past lives either. What if you experience astral projection or psychic phenomena? It’s a brain bug. Human memory and brains are unreliable; assumptions and misunderstandings are scary things.
• [166] Sometimes you hear stories about reincarnation in India and stuff, but I think it’s not souls being reincarnated, but rather the memories of a previous person being stored somehow and transferring to a newly born person.
• [170] A CD disc just has strings of 0s and 1s, right? But when you play it, music comes out. Same with games, put the disc in, and the game starts. This means that within the radio/cassette player or game console, the potential for all the music and games humans create already exists. The human brain also receives everything seen and experienced as electrical signals called senses, and it can all be expressed in 0s and 1s, strictly speaking. This means everything a person sees, hears, and experiences from birth to death potentially exists within the brain from the moment they are born. Thinking about it that way is strange.
• [176] What about the common testimony of seeing something absolutely impossible to see from the body’s location during an OBE? Is it all coincidence, all lies, or are OBEs actually real?
• [185] Speaking of sleep paralysis, I’ve felt a presence standing by my pillow. It was in the nap room at work. I thought maybe someone came to wake me for an emergency, but they were walking incredibly slowly, coming from my feet towards my head without waking me. Feeling something was wrong, I tried to open my eyes, but couldn’t, nor could I move my body. I felt something touch my face area, which was super creepy, then suddenly felt something jump onto my body. It felt exactly like my cat jumping on me, and somehow that relieved me, and the eerie presence left. Shortly after, I could move and woke up.
• [190] >>185 Wow, that’s exactly like my experience, it’s surprising. These experiences seem to have similar tendencies. Mine was over 30 years ago though. Seems like this kind of experience isn’t really affected by trends in society.
• [189] It’s because you heard stories like that, became conscious of it yourself, and then had that kind of dream.
• [192] I don’t know about the afterlife, but I feel like humans reincarnate. Repeating over and over again.
• [195] Hypnagogic hallucinations -> OBEs, etc. Sleep paralysis -> Kanashibari. You can induce these intentionally. Lie down in bed. Stop moving your body. At that time, try not to fall asleep. In about 15 minutes, the awareness of your physical body will start to fade from your fingertips. This gradually gathers towards the center of your body. From here it varies by person, but in my case, I hear a sound like a giant iron ball passing by my ear. By this time, the brain functions controlling body movement are dormant, and the body can’t easily be moved. This is the tricky part. Without moving your physical body, try to roll over in your mind. If successful, you’ll smoothly slip out. Then you’ll be looking down at yourself from the ceiling. Sometimes you panic because you can’t get back easily. Now, enjoy your own personal brain theater!
• [196] When I was little, I went with my older sister to her piano lesson, got my finger crushed in the soundproof door, a major injury, and lost consciousness. While unconscious, I had the sensation of watching myself collapsed from a corner of the room. An adult man rushed over to help me. Strangely, I just watched without fear. I could see an ambulance arriving from outside the window? Then, from the ceiling of the stair landing, I saw paramedics rushing up, and then everything went black. When I regained consciousness in the hospital, I remember feeling immense anxiety and fear.
• [202] Nowadays, our lives can be understood through smartphone activity, right? If there’s a world with civilization more advanced than humans, it wouldn’t be strange if someone said they created humans. Maybe they want data on human actions, thoughts, emotions, cunning, and goodness. It wouldn’t be surprising if they’re making us repeat life experiences over and over to create the ultimate AI rich in life experience.
• [216] Not OBE, but I’ve sent out an ikiryo (living ghost). Also, I remember the pain when my heart stopped, I was cut open, and got cardiac massage.

Ikiryō: The Japanese concept of a living person’s spirit leaving their body to affect others.

• [217] Doesn’t exist. I was in an accident so bad the doctors gave up and gathered my relatives, literally hovering between life and death, but there was nothing. It’s just people constructing stories afterwards based on confused consciousness and memory.
• [224] Rather than a dream, isn’t it something seen due to some problem occurring in the brain, a sort of brain malfunction? Similar to how it’s currently understood that people who claim to see ghosts are actually seeing some kind of image generated within their brain due to a malfunction… Well, good luck with your astral projection!
• [236] I’ve experienced it, so I can’t deny it.
• [215] Hey! Hey hey!