What's Really Going On Here?

Experiencing the Next World Now
by Michael Grosso, Ph.D.

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Do people really leave their bodies? Really know true ecstasy? The consensus of mainstream science today may find this incredible, even meaningless, but in light of the data gathered by psychical research, shamanic claims of ritual death and soul travel acquire an added dimension of truth. Experiencers report changes in their perception of reality. They feel they now "know" that an Otherworld exists. As we explore the different kinds of afterlife evidence, we will keep returning to the idea of direct experience, which I believe is the key to tipping the balance toward resolving the afterlife enigma.

When thousands, if not millions, keep reporting the same kind of experience, it seems wise to pay heed. According to one survey, 95 percent of world cultures believe in out-of-body experiences, which may occur in perfect health, deep relaxation, acute stress, or near-death. Many well-known writers had the experience, for example, Goethe, Ernest Hemingway, and Guy de Maupassant. Jack London wrote a novel called Star Rover about a prisoner who learned to consciously induce these psychic voyages. London's star rover defies his cruel jailor to place him in a straitjacket and brags he can leave his body at will. The story was based on the real case of San Franciscan Ed Morell.

It would help to gain a sharper sense of what the experience is like. The main thing is that consciousness seems to become detached and located outside its customary bodily envelope. You might be sound asleep or near death, totally calm or wildly aroused, meditating on your navel or racing a motorbike. In fact, there are so many ways to slip out of our bodies that one wonders how we manage to stay inside them in the first place. The conscious mind certainly hangs around the body, but doesn't seem all that attached or terribly loyal to it. Consciousness, I think it fair to say, likes to wander.

Otherbodied Environments

Sometimes the out-of-body environment is perceived in a realistic way and everything appears perfectly normal. The clock is above the mantelpiece and the moon is shining through the window. But sometimes, on closer inspection, the environment seems more like a dream. Psychical researcher William Roll described his out-of-body experience in a moonlit room. Roll floated out of his body and found himself in a part of the room where moonlight cast shadows on the floor; he memorized the location of the shadows in relationship to the carpet pattern, returned to his body, got out of bed and examined the carpet. No shadows at the location he recalled. Roll concluded he hadn't really left his body; the experience seemed more like a realistic dream. But in a survey conducted by parapsychologist John Palmer, about 15 percent of people claiming to leave their bodies were able to verify their experience.

Otherbodied environments vary. Sometimes things appear transparent or suffused with light. In rare cases, the experiencer senses nothing in the environment, or finds himself afloat in a black void, but most of the time perception is detailed, realistic, and more vivid than usual. The environment often consists of the familiar world, but sometimes it takes on the appearance of a vestibule, doorway, or tunnel leading to another world.

The Out-of-Body Body

Most sacred traditions speak of a "subtle" body. Thomas Aquinas describes the speed, lightness, and translucency of the resurrection body, but let's see what modern research has to say. English parapsychologist Celia Green found that subjects may occupy a subtle body, a replica of the physical. The new body isn't bound by laws of physics, but passes through solid matter, is luminous and gravity-free. This sounds like the radiant body that Saint Paul and the Neoplatonists spoke of and that Aquinas made into Catholic doctrine.

Sometimes, the experience is "asomatic"; subjects sense themselves as points of light or luminous vapors. Some observe a so-called astral cord connecting them to their physical body, others don't. Some can control their out-of-body capers. In brief or emotionally disconcerting experiences, control is difficult. Loss of control may stop the experience, as in my first out-of-body transport. Some report being aware of leaving and re-entering. Now and then you hear of a person projecting to some location and appearing to others. A young woman wrote: "I had several out-of-body experiences when I was in my late teens. One night I fell asleep as soon as I hit the pillow and had a vivid dream of being at my girlfriend's house. I was standing outside her room watching her arrange her clothing on the bed. She looked up in my direction. Then the dream ended. The following day my friend phoned me to say she had seen me standing outside her room, looking at her." I have found other cases of people dreaming of places where they were seen. I guess you could call these examples of living ghosts.

Here is a case Saint Augustine described fifteen centuries ago. "I believe that a person has a phantom which in his imagination or in his dreams takes on various forms through the influence of circumstances of innumerable kinds. This phantom is not a material body, and yet with amazing speed it takes on shapes like material bodies; and it is this phantom, I hold, that can in some inexplicable fashion be presented in bodily form to the apprehension of other people, when their physical senses are asleep or in abeyance." And he gives a good example. "Another man reported that in his own house, at night-time, before he went to bed, he saw a philosopher coming to him, a man he knew very well. And this man explained to him a number of points in Plato, which he had formerly refused to explain when asked." Later, the man who saw the vision confronted his philosopher friend, and asked why he came to visit so late at night. The philosopher replied: "I did not do it; I merely dreamed that I did." Augustine concludes: "This shows that what one man saw in his sleep was displayed to the other, while awake, by means of a phantom appearance."

The Traveler's Inner State

What does it feel like to leave your body? In a November 6, 2000, New York Times story the English author Philip Pullman commented on the worldview that informs his novels: "I wanted to emphasize the simple physical truth of things...rather than the spiritual or the afterlife." He added: "That's why the angels envy our bodies — because our senses are keener, our muscles are stronger. If the angels had our bodies and our nerves, they'd be in a perpetual state of ecstasy." I wonder how Mr. Pullman came to know all this. Fortunately, we do have some evidence from out-of-body experiencers who can claim to know what it feels like to be without a body.

Pullman thinks that without bodies and nerves, perception has to be dull and flat. But surveys of out-of-body experiences prove otherwise, revealing them to be vivid, intense, and ecstatic. Contrary to Pullman, one could say that being in a body is a drag on experience, and that any angel worth its salt would loathe being forced into one. My point is not to heap gnostic contempt on the body, but that certain facts point to possibilities at least worthy of our curiosity. We should be more open-minded about the possible range of human experience.

J. H. M. Whiteman, a mathematician and physicist who taught at the University of Capetown, besides being a scientist, was a psychic, mystic, and visionary, and was well suited to observe, classify, and analyze his extraordinary experiences. Leaving the body, he thought, is the first step on a scale that leads toward the mystic light and union with the Godhead. Whiteman's experience was triggered by a lucid dream. Lucidity implies something we experience only occasionally even in waking life, and that is being reflectively aware of what we're doing or thinking or feeling.

If you can become self-aware while dreaming, you might trigger an out-of-body excursion. "Then," according to Whiteman, "suddenly the dormant faculty of recollection having become stirred, all that up to now had been wrapped in confusion instantly passed away, and a new space burst forth in vivid presence and utter reality, with perception free and pin-pointed as never before; the darkness itself seemed alive. The thought that was then borne in upon me with inescapable conviction was this: 'I have never been awake before.'" Sorry, Mr. Pullman, but the most intense physical experiences seem pretty dull by comparison with these ecstatic journeys.

A Curious Experience

Is there a relationship between heightened self-awareness and the out-of-body state? According to Celia Green, reflecting on your personal identity can induce the experience. I can attest to this. I was a student at Columbia University, at home in bed reading a book by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego. The ego is a product of reflection, says Sartre; unless we're reflecting and thinking about ourselves, consciousness is egoless, and lacks all sense of ownership.

Studious even in sleep, I dreamed about Sartre's ideas. In my dream, I began to wonder if I could stop thinking about my ego and experience pure consciousness; the moment I thought this I felt a whirlwindlike sensation of being sucked out of my body. I was drawn out through the nape of my neck into thin air. Shocked by the suddenness of this, I woke to my mundane bedroom, shaken. Again, the experience quit on me, probably because I was violently surprised and my emotions were too much aroused. So the experience takes many forms, and ecstasy comes in many colors. Just thinking very deeply about who you are may produce one of these surprising flights of consciousness.

Copyright © 2004 by Michael Grosso

About the Author

Michael Grosso studied classics and obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University. He has taught philosophy and the humanities at Kennedy University, City University of New York, and New Jersey City University. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Philosophical Practitioners Association, and is working with the Esalen Center of Theory and Research on a consciousness research project. His previous books include The Millennium Myth and Soulmaking.