Can you have out of body experiences?

[Kramodlog]

A girl can do it at will.

Messier and his co-author interviewed the student and had her undergo an MRI to see if her brain activity might shed light on her unusual ability.Messier said the girl first noticed her ability when she was a child and had a hard time going to sleep during naps. To pass the time she would "float" above her body.
"I feel myself moving, or, more accurately, can make myself feel as if I am moving. I know perfectly well that I am not actually moving," the student told the researchers. "In fact, I am hyper-sensitive to my body at that point, because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving…For example, if I 'spin' for long enough, I get dizzy."
Messier said at some point the student's brain showed similar activity to that of a high-level athlete who can vividly imagine themselves winning a competition. One difference, however, was that her brain activity was focused on one side, and the athletes usually show activity on both brain hemispheres.
Messier said more study was needed, but he said that this discovery could mean many more people have this ability but find it "unremarkable." The discovery could be similar to how synesthesia, a mix of multiple senses, was discovered in a wider population.
Alternately, the ability could be something that everyone is able to do as an infant or child, but lose as they get older.

 

[Morrus]

Black text on black background. (Info here).

But in answer to the bit I can read - the thread title - no, I cannot.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Sort of. At several points I suffered through some severe hypoglycemia and felt like I was watching the scene when others tried to help me. I felt like a neutral observer musing about the chances of the helpers to, well, help me.

But I don't recall whether I actually saw myself from the outside, though. Actually I think these out-of-body experiences are the product of the subject's fantasy, perhaps a bit like deja-vus.

 

[kingius]

Yes people can do this and yes there is evidence. It's documented all over the place if you start looking into it. People being under while at hospital and having out of body experiences, watching everything that happens and then being able to state who was in the room, where they were and what was said. Out of body experiences are only a problem if you are a materialist, but then so is dark matter, paranormal experiences, what a 'thought' is and how much it weighs and so on. In which case, a materialist has to deny the documentation on this, claim that is anecdotal and therefore doesn't count (note - despite eye witness accounts being admissible in courts of law of course, but then double standards abound) or make statements about extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence (they don't: all evidence is equal as all facts are equal).

 

[Umbran]

Out of body experiences are only a problem if you are a materialist, but then so is dark matter, paranormal experiences, what a 'thought' is and how much it weighs and so on.

Please don't categorize dark matter with paranormal experiences. They aren't anywhere near equivalent.

"Materialsts" don't have to go very far to explain the described phenomenon - the person has some awareness of their environment in a semi-conscious state. Done. Nothing all that strange about it. The sensation of being outside the body is no more strange than, for example, seeing oneself from a third-person perspective in a dream.

 

[kingius]

A memory of the actual experience, from an outside perspective, is what happens, even though the person is unconscious and cannot possibly know those details which they recall. Go read the literature on this stuff. What you think an out of body experience is and argue for - and what is reported by those that have them - are not the same thing.

Dark matter cannot be detected directly, the theory of gravity tells us it is there or the universe would simply not hold together. A substance spanning multiple dimensions that can only be inferred that it exists is really very paranormal. Similarly with dark energy. And thoughts, which exist in our minds, but do not correspond to the physical structure of the brain, i.e. a neuron is not a thought, nor a chemical, but something else more mysterious.

 

[kingius]

A point of clarity - in assuming that out of body experiences are merely dreams, one is falling into a trap. If the dream revealed events that you could not possibly know, but nonetheless were confirmed by those that you dreamt about, then it would be similar to a dream. Otherwise, it really isn't. My advice is to go read about these incidents and challenge what you think you know about the nature of reality.

 

[Zombie_Babies]

I believe that Umbran's issue is that there's more proof to dark matter, gravity, etc than 'this guy that was on a lot of drugs (properly prescribed and administered, of course, but still drugs) says it happened'.

I've had some ... questionable experiences in my day that left me feeling a lot of different sensations. What I know about them is that not a one was real.

 

[Kramodlog]

I've had some ... questionable experiences in my day that left me feeling a lot of different sensations. What I know about them is that not a one was real.

Keep telling yourself that.

/smokes cigarette

 

[kingius]

Dark matter is inferred and there is no concrete proof of it. Almost by definition there can't be. It's possible that our theory of gravity is just wrong and variable gravity is correct (or one of a handful of alternative theories). What you are really talking about is is an assumption that because something is accepted by the mainstream of science that there must be evidence for it and lots of it, too. Yet this isn't how science works at all. Theories stand (based upon observations) until they are disproven. They are not proven first. They do not even have to be replicated. Or replicable. Take for example the theory of multiple parallel universes.