Another researcher who seems to have demonstrated entanglement between minds directly is Michael Persinger, a professor and cognitive neuroscience researcher at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada. He is best known for his work with the Koren helmet, or as it is more popularly known, the “God helmet.” The device uses “transcranial magnetic stimulation” and appears to stimulate the temporal lobes of the brain in such a way as to cause hallucinations or sensations much like those described in meditation or a numinous experience. But his work does not end with the assumption that because he can stimulate hallucinations, there is little else to explore. Instead, he looked at the idea that telepathy and other psi phenomena could be enhanced in a similar way. In a conversation with Alex Tsakiris of the Skeptiko podcast, Persinger said, “What we have found is that if you place two different people at a distance and put a circular magnetic field around both, and you make sure they are connected to the same computer so they get the same stimulation, then if you flash a light in one person’s eye, the person in the other room receiving just the magnetic field will show changes in their brain as if they saw the flash of light. We think that’s tremendous because it may be the first macro demonstration of a quantum connection, or so-called quantum entanglement. If true, then there’s another way of potential communication that may have physical applications, for example, in space travel.”4
Ironically, despite Persinger offering some thought-provoking research into telepathy, his work with magnetic fields and the brain is often used by skeptics to dismiss experiences such as OBEs. Such claims will be discussed later, but Persinger does not see the fact that he can induce experiences of a mystical type in his subjects as disproving psi. On the contrary, his work suggests he may be able to enhance and even improve psi abilities in the future.
Contributing Factors in Psi Success
Emotions and memory
Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin have shown that emotional bonds and emotion in general allow for greater connection in telepathy trials. Ganzfeld telepathy experiments in particular have consistently shown that interconnections between people can be demonstrated empirically. The Ganzfeld process is a form of mild sensory deprivation that was introduced into psychology in the 1930s, and was later used by parapsychologists studying telepathy. It will be explored on a practical level later in this book. According to Dean Radin, a senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California and author of two in-depth books looking at the field of parapsychology, the statistical odds against chance in favour of telepathy in the Ganzfeld experiments stands at 29 quintillion to 1.5 Radin has also shown that advanced meditators have greater ability to control their psychic functions.
For our purposes, it may be helpful to familiarise yourself with the emotional traits that benefit psychic abilities. Empathy seems useful in working with telepathy, and I have also found that those who develop their artistic skills in a natural way can improve their psychic abilities. Michael Persinger has shown that people with high temporal lobe sensitivity can more easily have mystical experiences.6
Memory techniques provide a useful way of working on your visualisation skills that can also be easily tested. This is because memory recall has much in common with psychic perception. For example, when teaching some of these techniques, I asked a student to describe the interior of a building that we both knew well. She was able to recall major elements about the space, such as the layout of the building and large obvious structures, but when I asked her about the design of the walls and details such as the colour of the chairs, she was unable to describe them. I have found this is very similar to what we experience in our OBEs. In one of my own experiences, I found myself looking at a large building, and later I was able to describe its unusual structural elements, in this case, Egyptian-influenced designs. However, I was unable to describe the colour of the building or specifics about the structures. Memory in this sense may be linked to our ability to observe; the more we develop our observation skills, the more our OBE perceptions improve. Let’s explore two methods for working with memory.
The link method
Create a visual image of the concept or item you are trying to remember, and link it to a physical attribute. Some people imagine a scene and then add the item to the scene. With practice, the scene or place you use becomes familiar and the process gets easier. This is especially useful in learning to have OBEs, since it creates a strong awareness of space and the location of the object within space.
The story method
Instead of imagining a scene or a place, you create a story featuring the elements you want to remember. Suppose you want to remember the colours red, green, blue, and yellow and the numbers four, eight, and ten. You could create a story in which you and four friends get into a red car and drive to a green open space like a park. The park is surrounded by eight trees, under which you laid out a blue blanket and ten yellow cups.
Planetary influences
In the mid-1980s, Michael Persinger, studying telepathy, and Marcia Adams, studying remote viewing, both found a relationship between success in their experiments and days when the magnetic field from the sun was quiet.7 Similarly, Charles Tart explained in a paper on the subject that the sun’s magnetic field has several tangible effects on the Earth, including the aurora borealis.8 However, these effects were weak and, as with many psi-related phenomena, it is extremely hard to show a solid connection.
Krippner et al. found evidence that the moon had an even more powerful effect: “We found that psi seemed to operate better on nights of the full moon.” 9 This idea has been popular for centuries, but when I read the article, I was skeptical about whether it was anything more than coincidence. To test the concept, I went back through my diary entries from many years of my OBEs, noting down significant events. The result was that some 75 percent of my notable experiences took place within five days before a full moon. This was interesting, as I had made the diary entries years before without any reference to the moon, and I also made the list of major experiences before I used a computer program to find the moon phase at the time. Virtually none of my experiences were actually on the full moon.
In a practical sense, I recommend that you experiment during the run-up to the full moon. You may find that the process of inducing the vibrational state or having a full out-of-body experience is easier at these times.
It may simply be that the moon is suggestive to us of something mysterious and beyond the normal realm of understanding, and this appeals to us on the unconscious level. The unconscious mind, and our beliefs and motivations, have a huge impact on success in virtually all human endeavors, as we will explore next.
The unconscious mind
On a day-to-day level, we are only ever aware of a small portion of the vast store of memories, motivations, and beliefs that exist beneath our awareness in what is known as the unconscious or subconscious mind. Much of our success in attempting to leave the body seems grounded in our ability to be in tune with this hidden aspect of ourselves. If the conscious and unconscious minds are in conflict in some way, the process becomes harder.
Dreams are the main experience people think of when they imagine ideas bubbling up from the unconscious level. These sometimes strange nighttime perceptions offer us clues about our emotional state, our daily lives, and our desires. But most of us are not fully aware of our dreams, because they are largely ignored as we go about the more pressing aspects of our daily lives. The first step, therefore, in becoming more attuned to psychic development is to give attention to our unconscious world in the form of recording our dreams. This is not simply a process of waking up and noting down what you were dreaming about, but also becoming aware of what you felt and saw, as well as the symbolic meaning behind the dream. The best way to do this is to take a few minutes and reconnect to the dream experience as soon as you wake. Let yourself drift back to the edge of the dream state. Try to drift as
far back in this perception as you can without falling asleep again. I call this reconnecting, and with practice you can reach a point where you can sense how the dream arose. The point at which a dream arises marks the point between a purely unconscious state and a semiconscious state such as a dream. Become aware of this point of awareness—how does it feel? What do you sense? Note all of this in your journal.
The next step is to use this awareness to become conscious as the dream arises. This is called lucid dreaming, which means to have greater awareness and control during the dream state. It is essentially a state in which your conscious mind has reconnected with your unconscious landscape. From this point on, you can explore and begin to see how your consciousness is capable of much more than we imagine, both in and outside of our body awareness.
A voice recording device such as a dictaphone is a useful tool when learning to have lucid dreams, since recording yourself is a great way to communicate with your unconscious. Make a recording of a positive affirmation, for example, “I wish to experience being beyond my body with total freedom, joy, and awareness tonight.” This can be played back, over and over, while you go to sleep or shortly before you go to sleep. You can also use the recorder to record details of your dreams or OBEs when you wake the next morning.
Our culture is dominated by visual messages, so a visual format can be used in a similar way as audio recordings, to suggest to your unconscious mind what you want to achieve. Footage of flying, views of landscapes from above, and images of energy and light all suggest the key elements of an OBE. Focusing on these kinds of images right before bedtime may help you edge closer to your goals.
How Remote Viewing and
Near-Death Experiences Relate to OBEs
It seems to me that the line between remote viewing, near-death experiences, and out-of-body experiences is very thin. The distinction may even be a matter of degree; in other words, the same mental state may exist in each experience, but with varying levels of depth. Remote viewing, in this sense, is like a mild form of OBE—a state in which perception at a distance is possible, but awareness at the location of the physical body also exists. In an out-of-body experience, by usual definitions, perception is fully separate from the physical body. This is directly related to the concept of nonlocal consciousness.
Remote viewing
Remote viewing (RV), as discussed briefly in Chapter 1, was developed as a system of controlled clairvoyance—the ability to perceive information at a distance through a faculty other than the usual physical senses—and was an attempt to utilise psychic abilities for the purpose of intelligence gathering. The term remote viewing was coined on December 8, 1971, by Ingo Swann, Dr. Janet Mitchell, Dr. Karlis Osis, and Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler at the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) in New York City.10 Over the twenty years that Project Stargate, as it was later known, was in existence, some compelling evidence was amassed for the ability to move one’s consciousness to various locations in space and/or time.
It is excellent practice to use the RV approach when exercising our psychic faculties. Here is a simple exercise.
Exercise: Remote viewing
Start by finding a comfortable seat at a desk or table with plenty of paper and a pen. Have a friend preselect a “target” for you and seal an image of that target in an opaque envelope.
Step 1: Sit down and go through a relaxation process (perhaps the Deep Breathing Technique; see page 180). Joseph McMoneagle, one of the original U.S. military remote viewers, calls this period the “cool-down”—a time to clear the mind of random thoughts. You want to reach a point at which your mind is like a blank canvas ready to receive impressions.
Step 2: Close your eyes tightly, or use an eye-mask so that you are looking into pure blackness. Impressions will begin to arise, probably in the form of images initially. These first images should feel different from your day-to-day thoughts and your imagination, as if they are arising from some external source. They will also seem more detailed than imagination; they may even be extremely vivid, possibly more so than your physical sight. Draw these initial impressions. Try not to interpret what you are seeing, especially in terms of scale.
Step 3: Now try to bring in any other sensory impressions: are you aware of the temperature, or maybe the wind? What about smells, or noise? Try to get a clear sense of the type of location you are in. Simply write down keywords on the paper, such as sandy, dry, hot, or whatever the impressions may be.
Step 4: Next, try to make a deeper connection with the target. How do you feel? Do you have a good feeling here, or a sense that this is the site of something more emotionally complex? Again, write down your impressions in keywords or short sentences.
Step 5: Try to establish a connection with the target from a different perspective, maybe viewing it from above or moving to another part of the target.
Step 6: Cross-reference any new information with your original information. How was this new perspective different? What new impressions arose?
Step 7: To conclude, open the target envelope and assess how well you did. Don’t be put off if you get “misses”; the best remote viewers in the world do. It is more important to learn how to distinguish the “misses” from the “hits.” You may get a stronger sense that you are “on target” in some trials than in others. This will start to train you to recognize when you are on the right track.
Near-death experiences (NDEs)
The work of Pim Van Lommel, a Dutch cardiologist and researcher who conducted the largest study to date of near-death experiences, draws upon the idea that our consciousness may be nonlocal in nature. He believes that there is objective, repeatable evidence for this claim, and that quantum entanglement may lie at the root of NDEs and the out-of-body perception that is usually a part of them.
Van Lommel puts forward the idea that our consciousness may be the result of various nonlocal interactions, rather than simply being a function of the brain. He uses the analogy of a television: “Could our brain be compared to the TV set, which receives electromagnetic waves and transforms them into image and sound, as well as to the TV camera, which transforms image and sound into electromagnetic waves? This electromagnetic radiation holds the essence of all information, but is only perceivable by our senses through suitable instruments like the camera and TV set.”11
If this is the case, much of what makes up our consciousness would exist outside of our brain. Van Lommel states that it is an “almost unavoidable conclusion that at the time of physical death, consciousness will continue to be experienced in another dimension, in an invisible and immaterial world, the phase-space, in which all past, present, and future is enclosed.”12 Dr. Penny Sartori, who is known for conducting the UK’s first and largest long-term clinical study of NDEs, has shown that those who have had NDEs can sometimes perceive highly accurate, verifiable facts about their resuscitation that they could not have known otherwise. This is powerful evidence in favour of the NDE being at least partly objective, since patients were able to observe events from an out-of-body vantage point. Sartori went on to say in an interview with the BBC, “All the current skeptical arguments against near-death experiences were not supported by the research.”13 She also states, “Current science says [consciousness] is a by-product of the brain. But it may be that consciousness is around us and the brain might be a mediator, an antenna, instead of controlling consciousness.” This echoes the conclusions of Pim Van Lommel, Peter Fenwick, and Rupert Sheldrake, among others.
The secrets of science reveal that we are intimately linked to the world and the universe around us, and that our inner awareness can experience the world without the need for a body or our physical senses. As our understanding grows, I suspect this intimate connection, this oneness, will become more apparent, and the line between us and the cosmos will become arbitrary.
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&
nbsp; skeptics and the
out-of-body experience
Some of you reading this book may be unsure about the objective reality of out-of-body experiences. Maybe you are reading it out of a desire to decide for yourself whether or not the experience is real. This is a very understandable and healthy position to take. If we don’t learn to have an inquiring, yet skeptical, way of looking at things, we will simply be lost in the cultural baggage of our upbringing, or worse, be drawn along by the interests of mass media. A skeptical inquiring mind is especially important when we begin to explore areas like the OBE. We are dealing with an area that is full of beliefs and claims that lie outside of our reasonable understanding, so without skepticism we are literally lost.
Webster’s defines skepticism as “an attitude of doubt or a disposition to incredulity, either in general or toward a particular object; the doctrine that true knowledge or knowledge in a particular area is uncertain.”1 In other words, genuine skepticism is simply about looking in an objective way at our own beliefs, as well as the claims that people make. It is about learning rather than believing. If we don’t investigate psychological or mundane explanations for what we experience in the world, we have little chance of ever understanding what is happening to us. It was, in fact, this question—what is happening to me?—that first led me to explore science and skepticism. However, it soon became obvious to me that what is generally referred to as “skepticism” is often a movement of activists with an agenda that can result in a limiting of scientific inquiry.
Navigating the Out-of-Body Experience Page 4
