                                  T H E

                               Z E P H Y R

                      __     M A G A Z I N E
                     {__]++++++++++++++++++++++++++[]
                     Issue #40                5-26-87

                A weekly electronic magazine for users of
                            THE ZEPHYR II BBS
                        (Mesa, AZ - 602-894-6526)
                    owned and operated by T. H. Smith

                        Editor - Gene B. Williams

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                                (c) 1987

    THIS ISSUE:

       My apologies for the long absence. Most of you know that I
    make my living as a writer. Well, deadlines have been really
    keeping me crunched, and since it IS the way I pay the bills,
    those had to come first.
       Fortunately, Steve Jackson came to the rescue by submitting
    this issue's piece. The subject is astral travel - one bound to
    stir some conversation that probably belongs more on Sore-ing
    Spirits or Plato's Republic, but which has ended up here anyway.

                         OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES

                                   by

                              Steve Jackson

                              Introduction

       It has been a long day, and you're tired.  You come home,
    nearly doze off in front of the television set, then wander down
    the hall and plop on your bed expecting to fall asleep in an
    instant.  But - suddenly and mysteriously - you find yourself
    paralyzed.  Gushing sounds fill your ears.  Bright flashes of
    light flicker under your closed eyelids.  Then you feel as if you
    are beginning to float.
       A moment later, you open your eyes and find yourself hovering
    above your body.  You are floating in the air!  You are able to
    examine your physical body and everything else in the room from
    this viewpoint and independent perspective.  Your mind seems
    totally released from the confines of the body and you feel a
    freedom and expanded sense of awareness you have never before
    experienced.  But just as you are beginning to orient yourself to
    this new and novel state of being, you have a momentary
    "blackout."  Within a fraction of a second, you "awake" back
    inside your body.
       If this has ever happened to you, you are not alone.  The
    experience may have been frightening, transcendent, or merely
    puzzling.  But it was not unique.  Millions of people have
    undergone this strange adventure, which has been variously called
    astral projection, out-of-body travel, and a host of other
    things.(1)
       "It is unfortunately true, however, that the classic out-of-
    body experience (or OBE for short) does vaguely resemble certain
    phenomena studied in psychiatry and abnormal psychology.  A
    psychiatrist reading the above account might classify it as an
    example of depersonalization (a feeling that the self is no
    longer real), distortion of body image (where the sense of the
    body's boundaries become confused), or autoscopy (the seeing of
    one's own apparition).  The OBE is markedly different from these
    anomalies of perception in one great - and vastly important -
    way, however.  It is often veridical, or truth telling.  In other
    words, if you were to 'leave the body' and travel to a location
    miles away, you might be able to correctly see what was going on
    there!  This aspect of OBE takes it out of the hands of the
    psychiatrist and into those of the parapsychologist and those
    scientists who study the strange byways of psychic phenomena."(2)

                   What Is An Out-Of-Body-Experience?

       What exactly is an out-of-body Experience?  In short, an OBE
    is the projection of the "I" consciousness into an area of space.
    It is the ability to move one's own psyche from the body (where
    it may or may not normally reside) outside of the body.  In this
    state, the projected individual has a great sense of increased
    perceptions.  All normal sensory functions become quite
    magnified.  Yet, the individual "knows" that the normal means of
    receiving these perceptions somehow do not exist in this state.
    In this state of being, nothing more than a pinpoint of
    conscious awareness, an individual can hear, see, and sometimes
    feel, all while knowing they do not possess ears, eyes, or hands.
       The following, from the well known astral projector Robert
    Monroe, best summarizes the situation at hand:

       "In our action-orientated society, when a man lies down to
    sleep, he is effectively out of the picture.  He will lie still
    for six to eight hours, so he is not 'behaving,' 'thinking
    productively,' or doing anything significant.  We all know that
    people dream, but we raise our children to regard dreams and
    other experiences occurring during sleep as unimportant, as not
    real in the way that the events of the day are.  Thus most people
    are in the habit of forgetting their dreams, and, on the
    occasions when they do remember them, they usually regard them as
    mere oddities."(3)

       If we look for scientific sources for information about OBEs
    we find practically none at all.  Scientists have rarely paid any
    attention to these phenomena.  The situation is rather similar to
    that of the scientific literature on extrasensory perception
    (ESP).  Phenomena such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition,
    and psychokinesis are "impossible" in terms of the current
    physical world view.  Since they can't happen, most scientist do
    not bother to read the evidence indicating that they do happen;
    hence, not having read the evidence, their belief in the
    impossibility of such phenomena is reinforced.  This kind of
    circular reasoning in support of one's comfortable belief system
    is not unique to scientists by any means, but it has resulted in
    very little scientific research on ESP or OBEs.
       In spite of the lack of "hard" scientific data, there are
    still a number of definite conclusions one can make from reading
    what material there is.
       First, OBEs are a universal human experience, not in the sense
    that they happen to large numbers of people, but in that they
    have happened all through reported history, and there are marked
    similarities in the experience among people who are otherwise
    extremely different in terms of cultural background.  One can
    find reports of OBEs by housewives in Kansas which closely
    resemble accounts of OBEs from ancient Egyptian or Oriental
    sources.
       Second, the OBE is generally a once-in-a-lifetime experience,
    seemingly experienced by "accident".  Illnesses sometimes bring
    it about, especially illnesses which are almost fatal.  Great
    emotional stress sometimes brings it about.  In many cases, it
    simply happens during sleep without our having any idea of what
    might have caused it.  In very rare instances it seems to have
    been brought about by a deliberate attempt.
       Third, the experience of a OBE is usually one of the most
    profound experiences of a person's life, and radically alters his
    beliefs.  This is usually expressed as, "I no longer believe in
    the death of the immortal soul, I know that I will survive
    physical death."  The person feels that he has directly
    experienced being alive and conscious without his physical body,
    and therefore knows that he possesses some kind of soul that will
    survive bodily death.  This does not logically follow, for even
    if the OBE is more than just an interesting dream or
    hallucination, it was still occurring while the physical body was
    alive and functioning and therefore may depend on the physical
    body.  This argument, however, makes no impression on those who
    have actually had an OBE.  Thus regardless of what position one
    wants to take on the "reality" of the OBE, it is clearly an
    experience deserving considerable psychological study.  I am
    certain that our ideas concerning the existence of souls have
    resulted from early experiences of people having OBEs.
       Considering the importance of the idea of the soul to most of
    our religions, and the importance of religion in people's lives,
    it seems incredible that science could have swept this problem
    under the rug so easily.
       Fourth, the OBE is generally extremely joyful to those who
    have it.  I would make a rough estimate that between 90 and 95%
    of the people who have this experience are very glad it occurred
    and find it joyful, while 5% are very frightened by it, for the
    only way they can interpret it, while it is happening, is that
    they are dying.  Later reactions of the person as he attempts to
    interpret his OBE can be rather negative, however.  Almost every
    time I give a speech on this subject, someone comes up to me
    afterwards and thanks me for talking about it.  They had had the
    experience sometime before, but had no way of explaining it, and
    worry that they were going "crazy".
       Fifth, in some instances of OBEs the description of what was
    happening at a distant place is correct and more accurate than we
    would expect by coincidence.  Not the majority, by any means, but
    some.  To explain these we must postulate either that the
    "hallucinatory" experience of the OBE was combined with the
    operation of ESP, or that in some sense the person really was
    'there.'  The OBE then becomes very real indeed.(4)
       Unfortunately for our peace of mind, there are thousands of
    instances, recorded by normal people, of exactly this sort of
    occurrence.  We are not dealing with a purely hypothetical
    situation.
       Such events have been termed traveling clairvoyance, astral
    projection, or, a more scientific term, out-of-the-body
    experiences (OBEs).  We can formally define an OBE an event in
    which the experiencer (1) seems to perceive some portion of some
    environment which could not possibly be perceived from where his
    physical body is known to be at the time; and (2) knows at the
    time that he is not dreaming or fantasizing.  The experiencer
    seems to possess his normal consciousness at the time, and even
    though he may reason that this cannot be happening, we will feel
    all his normal critical faculties to be present, and so knows he
    is not dreaming.  Further, he will not decide after awakening
    that this was a dream.(5)

                            Where Do You Go?

       Where do you go in an OBE?  As perhaps a standard, nearly all
    individuals report being right next to their own bodies.  They
    are here where we all are yet in an invisible state.  Another
    report from individuals who have had OBEs report to be able to
    permeate matter.  They simply act as invisible ghosts walking
    through doors, or walls.  After the initial step of projection
    from the body and seeing ones own self, accounts vary and
    differentiate.  It is quite likely that the idividual is in an
    after death state since many astral projectors, such as Robert
    Monroe in his book FAR JOURNEYS report seeing and speaking with
    deceased ones, roaming areas of great joy or bliss, and speaking
    with beings who appear to be everything from your next door
    neighbor type to angels.

                Whoever Said You Were In the Body Anyway?

       Who said you were in a body to begin with?  "Some cultures
    hold the belief that people function from their hearts; our
    culture seems to hold to the belief that we function from inside
    our brains or heads.  If the living entity can be thought of as
    being located in the heart or brain, is it not just as easy to
    think of it as outside the body - operating the body from a foot
    above the head or any other location that feels right?
       Philosophical materialists adhere to the idea that we are in
    bodies and therefore identical with them.  Many theories have
    been put forward as to how the mind and body are interrelated.
    Present-day philosopher Michael Grosso suggests as a possible
    conceptualization of the mind-body problem that one always was
    out of the body and that the paranormal OBE represents one type
    of empirically dramatic and self-certifying instance of becoming
    fully conscious of the fact.
       Another Philosopher, C.J. Ducasse, concluded twenty years ago
    that "the soul is not in the body, but the body is in, and
    dependant upon, the soul, which precedes and survives it, and
    whose force gives form and organization to the matter of which
    the body is composed."(6)
       Finally, the subject is best summarized by Swami Satchidananda
    who states:

       "Our belief that we are identical with our bodies is
    contradicted by our language.  If we are in the body and
    identical with it, why do we use the possessive "my" when we
    speak of it?  We speak of it as something we own, not something
    we are.  With our belief that we are in the body, it would be
    more appropriate to say, "I hurt up here," than our usual comment
    that "my head hurts."(7)

                               Conclusion

       In conclusion, the study of the phenomena of astral projection
    is still very much an infant stage.  Many individuals have
    written books on their astral projection experiences.  There have
    certainly been a few great pioneers in the field to excite
    scientific research and study.  Many write books on the subject
    to help and guide others experiencing the same phenomena.  Robert
    Monroe wrote his books on OBEs exactly for this purpose.  At the
    beginning of Jouneys Out of the Body he clearly states his books
    and research institute are to help people who feel there is
    something psychologically wrong with them because they have OBEs.
    It is interesting to note, that he wonders how many individuals
    being treated by psychologists are in therapy or institutionalized
    because they have had similar experiences.  As society moves on
    and realizes we do not live on a left brain alone, and we exist
    in more than a mechanistic universe the idea of having an OBE,
    and traveling to the spirit or astral realm will become a viable
    natural gift.
       "The OBE is a unique phenomenon that can teach us much about
    the nature of life and reality.  One of the OBEs most fundamental
    values is what it teaches about our minds and spiritual
    nature...I am talking of the use of the OBE to explore new levels
    of reality, new dimensions of time and space within the universe.
    All of the great astral projectors have been aware of these
    spheres of existence, these 'higher worlds,' and have glimpsed
    them, Hugh Callaway, Marcel Louis Forham, Robert Monroe, J.H.M.
    Whiteman, and many others have described these parallel worlds
    and spiritual dimensions in their autobiographies.  Some have
    been able to interact with their residents."(8)
       "The lessons we can learn from all this information is pretty
    obvious...The universe and its various dimensions cannot be
    studied merely by the cold art of scientific measurements and
    statistics.  It can be studied only by those who have experienced
    the various domains of the cosmos at first hand."(9)
      "Learning the byways of time and space may turn the normal
    world of the five senses a bit topsy-turvy.  But when one embarks
    on what is essentially a spiritual quest, that is a small price
    to pay."(10)

    Footnotes

    1.  Rogo, Scott D, "Leaving the Body," (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1983):
       p. 1: Good book on different techniques to induce an OBE.
    2.  Ibid. p. 1,2
    3.  Monroe, Robert A, "Journeys Out of the Body," (New York: Anchor
         Books, 1977): p. 5: Excellent book on personal studies and research
    into the Astral Plane.
    4.  Ibid. p. 7,8,9
    5.  Ibid. p. 7
    6.  Mitchell, Janet Lee, "Out-Of-Body-Experiences," (North Carolina:
    MacFarland & Company, 1981): p. 76:  Good book explaining in detail OBEs
    and what to expect if you do induce an OBE.
    7.  Ibid. p. 77
    8.  Rogo, Scott D. Ibid.  p. 174
    9.  Ibid. p. 182
    10.  Ibid p. 183

    EDITOR'S NOTE (from Gene)

       Undoubtedly, quite a few of our users have had an experience
    much like that mentioned in this week's article. You might have
    ignored it, passed it off as a dream, . . . or did it really
    happen?
       Closely related are near-death experiences. A very close friend
    of mine was declared dead twice. The first time, he was in his
    late teens. He was playing football and received a particularly
    hard crack on the head. When he "awoke" he was standing in the
    crowd looking over the doctor's shoulder - at himself. He heard
    the doctor saying that the boy was dead. As they started to load
    the body into the ambulance, he felt himself yanked "back inside"
    and opened his eyes. The scene was precisely what he'd seen while
    "disembodied."
       Did *that* happen? Or was it stimulated by the concussion?
       The major problem is that such experiences are very personal.
    It happens to the individual alone and cannot easily be shared
    except by telling about it later. (In other words, two people
    don't seem able "project" and go traveling together.)
       The experiences can't be measured or quantified. Nor can they
    be called up on demand. Worse, a common excuse (or explanation,
    depending on your point of view) is that the experience is not at
    all conducive to a laboratory situation.
       It's not unusual for a person to want to *be* unusual. Being
    able to claim, "Hey, I leave my body and go traveling around,"
    can make a person feel powerful and/or unique. Some claim that
    this motive can be powerful enough that the individual could fool
    himself or herself.
       And then on top of all that, making matters even worse yet, are
    all the flakes, frauds, charlatans and downright liars in the
    variety of "psychic" fields.
       It's easy - even necessary - to be skeptical. Even of your
    own experiences. In my personal opinion, it's also necessary
    to keep an open mind.
       Not all true things can be absolutely proven to be true; and
    lack of concrete evidence doesn't necessarily mean that the
    thing in question is therefore automatically false.
       Think of something simple - germs. There was a very long time
    in our history where the existence of things like germs was
    denied. You can't see them. Until relatively recently, our
    science wasn't advanced sufficiently to measure or quantify.
       Many made the mistake that since germs couldn't be absolutely
    and concretely proved to exist, they therefore didn't exist. At
    several points in our history it was considered heresy - even
    blasphemy - to claim that germs made people sick.
       At the same time, there have been many things in our history
    that were claimed to be true without evidence, and often with
    the usual, "Our science isn't advanced enough to measure it"
    excuse. Then science caught up, was able to measure it, and then
    prove the idea to have been false all along.
       It works both ways.
       The die-hard skeptic who never believes anything that can't
    be demonstrated and measured before his own eyes (if then) is no
    more - and just as much - a fool as the person who blindly accepts
    an idea just because it's interesting, fun or comfortable.
       That works both ways, too.

    UNTIL NEXT TIME

       For those keeping track, I've just finished book #9 for Chilton.
    This one is on home video equipment, with a concentration on video
    cameras and the related peripherals.
       Excuse the bragging - my earlier book, "Chilton's Guide to VCR
    Repair and Maintenance," (third in the series) has been listed as
    the #1 best seller in the "technical" category. Needless to say, I'm
    rather proud of that. It's just a category, and a fairly small one
    at that. You won't see it in Basha's or Circle K. But getting a "#1"
    in anything is rather nice.
       At the moment I have two books and a new series of books all
    under negotiation; plus the usual efforts towards magazine writing.
    So you can see that things are busy, busy, busy.

       As I started saying, deadlines have kept me from doing new
    issues for over a month. Now the deadlines are taken care of, and
    Steve's article gave me one more bit of relief. As of this posting,
    I have not only this issue but also another of my own, plus a
    couple other guest issues promised.
       So, things should flow smoothly for a while.
       Even so, if you have dreams and/or desires to be a writer, or
    to see your name in "print" (if only as a glowing letter on a
    screen), contact me in E-mail with your article or story idea.

Zephyr Magazine is © Gene Williams. All rights reserved.