Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (Book)

[Jim]

I found this interview fascinating. Listen to this interview with Mary Roach on her book "Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife."

There was a study where cardiologists at the University of Virginia were interested in trying to verify the out-of-body experience. What they did was setup a laptop open flat facing the ceiling. The laptop displayed different images at different intervals.

The cardiologists were specifically looking at patients that had diffibulators being inserted (to kick-start their heart; installation requires the stoppage of the heart briefly). The cardiologists asked all of their patients if they remember anything from their experience in the operating room and of the 24 that claim that they did, none of them could identify what was on the laptop screen at the time of their heart stoppage.

Not that this proves much of anything, but these are the sorts of controlled studies I enjoy hearing about when studying the after-life.

Part of me clings to the hopes of an afterlife but I have never felt comfortable leaving my objective grounding (hence, why I was so attracted to this book)!

The author is extremely entertaining; it's definitely worth a listen.

Also, here are some excerpts from the book. Booknoise.net | Spook

[Erin Pavlina]

All well and good, but if I'm going out of body because my heart is being defribbed, checking out the pretty pictures on a laptop probably wouldn't be the first thing I'd be interested in or even notice.

Plus, if I was out of body in that circumstance, I'd probably be staring down at my own body in shock, doing my best Neo impression and saying, "Whoa!"

[TechnoGuyRob]

Not even one person bothered to follow their directions, even if its a second-long glance?

Then again, perhaps they claimed the laptop showed pictures it never really displayed. The rationale? They're in a subjective reality, of course, and they definitely saw an egg on that laptop screen, even if the only displayed images were a tree and a hammock. They also saw a train in some other subjective reality they decided to create for themself, but they decided the egg was a better mental picture.

[Erin Pavlina]

But the patients weren't told to look at the laptop were they?

What instructions were the patients given? "If you find yourself out of body, take a peek at this laptop here?"

I'm just saying if they found themselves out of body they would have more pressing concerns than noting waht was on the laptop. Maybe there was glare on the screen.

[TechnoGuyRob]

But they couldn't look down on their own body without looking at the laptop. This was the setup:



As for me, I don't know how they could have seen anything without eyes. :P Unless, literally, they experienced some kind of deitical form and saw everything, including all the stuff in the background like radio waves, microwaves, visible waves (what we see), infrared, ultraviolet, neutrinos, etc. Interesting how one would visualize that without a physical visual representation system, though.

[Erin Pavlina]

I can see when I'm out of body. I think it's the same eye I use to detect a deceased person or a spiritual presence.

[Radical]

Great hearing about experiments like these. Anyone else know of any more experiments of this sort? And have any been successful?

[Jim]

Radical, the book is filled with descriptions of experiments like these.

[Radical]

Were any successful and accepted by credible scientists?

[Athena]

yes, here's another one:

Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame


wonder if Steve or Erin can counter it?

[Radical]

Originally Posted by Athena

Out-of-Body Experience? Your Brain Is to Blame

Nice title, lol.

[Erin Pavlina]

A lot of people sent this article to me and I wrote back to them with some thoughts about it. I'll see if I can dig up an old response since I don't want to retype it. Stand by...

Aha, I have found my response. I read the article and then posted this back to the guy who asked me to comment on it:

I read the article. Some things didn't make sense to me.

I mean, I understand how when you stimulate parts of the brain then people have weird experiences, but in the article, no one accurately described a real out of body experience. They talked about feeling a presence (that's not an OOBE) and then they said a woman felt a strange sensation like she was floating on the ceiling, but that's not astral projection either. The fact that she was able to speak with her mouth while she felt that way negates the possibility that she was having an oobe. When you're really out of your body, your body just lays there like a shell, you no longer have any consciousness in that shell at all. ALL of your consciousness is in your astral body.

What would be an interesting experiment, however, is to take people who claim to have real OOBE's and subject them to the same electro-stimulation and compare their experiences to see if they are the same.

I mean, if I was hooked up to a machine that could duplicate my exact experiences with astral projection then I would consider that and weigh it heavily. But if they hooked me up to the machine, and I had an experience, but it was dissimilar to my other astral expereinces, then I would say it's inconclusive. Know what I mean?

[Athena]

Wow Erin, that's a great response.

They totally should test you and see what your brain looks like during an obe.

Hopefully in the future there is a more cooperative exchange between the spiritual and scientific communities... studies like this from scientific authorities are used to try to disprove spiritual phenomenon for a generally skeptical reading public... but apparently there's a lot of gray area that they don't mention.