Out of Body Experience Clues May Hide in the Mind

[CATHYW]

Hi all! I don't know your personal opions on out-of-body-experiences, but I find them fascinating. Today, on CNN.com, they have an article that indicates some Swiss physcians may have determined their origin-accidentally!

Click on this link for more:

http://asia.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09/19/coolsc.outofbody/index.html

I don't know that I agree with them, but it is certainly interesting!

[hoolahan, ASN, RN]

I am fascinated with this topic, and wrote a paper on it for an advanced writing class. In the course of my research, I fouind out ,many interesting things.

When children have a near-death experience, they are usually given a choice as to whether they want to come back, like push the green button to stay and the red button to go back.

People who have never been religious or practiced a religion reported being with "God" too.

And some people had terrible experiences like a hellish place.

Maybe it is a result of a delusion, or hypoxia, but, why is it, that so many people around the world, different cultures and religions, and they all describe the white light, the feelings of love, etc... Is it a collective delusion??? I prefer to believe it is real.

[CATHYW]

Originally posted by hoolahan

And some people had terrible experiences like a hellish place.

Hoolihan, how interesting! I've never heard of stories with this angle. When you did your research, where did you find these stories? I think it is simply further evidence that there is life after death, for good, or for bad.

[Youda]

Sleepyeyes, once again we seem to be in sync. :)

In the early 1980s, I had (what I choose to call) a near death experience. I had gone to bed and woke up when my "body" hit against the ceiling of my room, sorta like how a helium balloon softly raises and bounces against the ceiling. I looked down at myself, and really didn't care. It was just an interesting sort of thing to see myself laying there. I knew I was dead because I wasn't breathing, but it was no big deal. Then it was like getting sucked up into a vortex, a tunnel if you will, but one that pulled me into it. While I was traveling there, very quickly, everything I had ever done in my life that I was ashamed of, or wished I had done differently, especially times when I did not reach out to help someone in need, all these things came to my mind as if I were reliving them again, and I was so wracked with guilt over them.

I remembered a girl I had worked with who was too poor to afford a coat in the winter, and I had thought of giving her mine, but selfishly kept it for no better reason than I liked the color and wanted to keep it for myself. Those times hurt me to no end. Trust me, if there is a hell, it is only the realization of what you did and didn't do, and how it hurt others, all hitting you at once.

Then, I burst out of the tunnel into a very bright light. As Sleepyeyes said, it didn't hurt my eyes. I felt such unconditional love and a loving Being who knew my heart and saw me as good no matter what I had done, or hadn't done, before in my life. I was told that no matter whatever happened on earth, the only thing that ever mattered was if you had learned to love, and if you took the opportunity to help others when you could.

I could "talk" with people who had left this earth before me. Only it wasn't talk in words, but communication with thoughts that included all the emotional overtones, motives, and deep understanding that got "thought" with it. Such a pure form of communication!

I enjoyed communicating with these people for awhile until the white light asked me to go back. But, I didn't want to. I didn't want to leave such a wonderful place, such feelings of love and acceptance, and understanding! And, I was given a choice. So, I said no, I would stay.

That's when the Being in the white light said that I could stay, but there was some disappointment in the approval to stay. I was told that if I stayed, then something that only I could do would be left undone in the world. I was told that everything would still go on without me, but that the one thing I needed to do would forever cause an emptiness that no one else could fill, because no one else was me.

I thought, then, that I should return. As soon as that thought entered my mind, I felt the reverse of the "vortex" tunnel, and I was pushed back into my body.

So here I am. Like many accounts of this kind of thing, I came back with some abilities that I didn't have before. But, that's another thread, and don't know that I want to talk about them anyway. Maybe just a part of my brain got stimulated, like the article said. But, I prefer to think that somewhere there's a kind of love so pure, so accepting of us, that we can barely imagine it in this life. I will tell you that everytime I stand by the bedside and one of my patients is dying, I feel that same pure love radiating around the room, and I know that I'm never really alone.

[Sleepyeyes]

Youda, Excellent post!! So well-put!!

[live4today, RN]

Wow Youda! Your story gave me goosebumps as I read it! So beautifully inspiring! Thanks for sharing it! Awesome...truly truly awesome! :kiss :)

[CATHYW]

What an awesome story! Had you been ill, or anything, at the time this experience occurred? There have been times in my life when I was sleeping that I felt as though I was "flying" over everyone below me. Sometimes they could see me, and sometimes they couldn't. Sometimes it was current, and sometimes I was flying over people and events in my past, and sometimes talking with them as I hovered over them. I doubt that this is at all the same thing that you and the others have described, but it is the closest I have come. Thanks for sharing your great story.

I found it especially interesting about the guilt you felt for not helping others, during your transitional experience. Do you find that you have altered the way you live, because of it?

[Youda]

Did it alter the way I live? Of course it did. It made me a better nurse, for one thing. If a patient is suffering, needs a drink of water, needs the doctor called, whatever, I get it done. Those things aren't ignored or passed onto the next shift. I can't walk by when my patients need something. It's hard to explain how, but often I just "know" when someone needs something, or is getting into trouble, so I go straight to their room. I'm also more adamant, determined, assertive (PIA -- whatever you wanna call it) when I "know" I'm right about something, more of a patient advocate, I guess. Sleepyeyes, does that happen to you, too?

Interesting about your flying. I had a patient once who'd tell me all the places she went while she was asleep. She described the same thing as you did. Her favorite stories were about going to Paris.