Live data from Hacker News

The Science of Near-Death Experiences

theatlantic.com

21–30 of 33 posts

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An out of body experience occurs when the mind is concentrated and the body goes to sleep. It's a skill that can be learned. It takes some people months of practice, while others do it on their first try.

Crap now I'm scared of meditating kind of.

Haha! I know what you mean.

It can be scary because we're essentially confronting the unknown, but concentration helps with that. Fear is a distraction that takes you away from a single pointed mind. When you recognize fear or worry popping up, you gently return to your object of concentration until it goes away.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#23

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc. While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE…

I've read all of Robert Monroe's books on out-of-body experiences and I'm convinced OBEs are a dream-type state. Especially his later books when he discuses his conversations with other beings and trying to ignore sexual urges (erections are common in REM sleep).

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#24

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc. While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE…

I've read all of Robert Monroe's books on out-of-body experiences and I'm convinced OBEs are a dream-type state. Especially his later books when he discuses his conversations with other beings and trying to ignore sexual urges (erections are common in REM sleep).

Have you ever had an out of body experience?

I would probably dismiss it all as a dream state too, if not for the experiences I had - including really impossible stuff, like seeing future events.

You can certainly have conversations with other beings there, although I don't think there's a good way to discern the nature of those beings. They are intelligent anyway.

Some people view sexual energy as a fundamental power that can be used for a variety of spiritual purposes, so they suggest that it be sublimated or transmuted.

Maybe these things seem weird - and they are weird - but neither proves that the world experienced while "out of body" is fabricated by the brain, assuming that's what you meant by dream-type state of course.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#25
i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a preast with a purple around his neck. I yelled out that i was not going to die,my the time not going to die ,i was back in my body.momlaughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#26
i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a preast with a purple around his neck. I yelled out that i was not going to die,my the time not going to die ,i was back in my body.momlaughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#27
i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a preast with a purple around his neck. I yelled out that i was not going to die,my the time not going to die ,i was back in my body.momlaughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#28
i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a preast with a purple around his neck. I yelled out that i was not going to die,my the time not going to die ,i was back in my body.momlaughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#29
i was in an acoma at 16. I was floating around the room way above my bed in the hospital. my mom walked in looked up at me straight in my eyes. behind her was a priest with a purplecloth around his neck. I yelled out, that i was not going to die,by the time the words, not going to die got out of my mouth ,i was back in my body.mom laughed commented how she knew this would work. the priest had an odd look on his face as he looked at me and mom.it was a shooked look. this was normal crap for my family. i know know most people are not like this.

Re: The Science of Near-Death Experiences

#30

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc. While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE…

About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed.

I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream and I didn't have any desire to try to fly around or through anything, I was content to float there and observe.

About a minute or two into the experience, I noticed something crawling across my pillow, towards my head. As I focused on it, it appeared to be a spider. This made me panic. I think the panic wasn't because of the spider, but that I suddenly realized I was floating in the air and looking at myself. I was overwhelmed with fear and felt myself suddenly fall into my body, at which point I woke up immediately. There was a physical sensation of light pressure when that happened. That experience felt like it lasted only a few minutes.

I jumped out of bed, turned on the some lights and looked all over. I pulled the blankets off the bed, turning over my pillow, etc. I woke up my wife and told her there was a spider on the bed. We spent a few minutes trying to find it, but to no avail. I never had anything like that happen before or since.

I don't know what actually happened, but the experience felt very real. There wasn't any alcohol or drugs involved, but I was in the Air Force at the time, so it could have been aliens. ;-)

Post reply on HN