OBE… what good it it?

Since I was a kid reading Robert Monroe’s Journey’s out of the body, I have been obsessed with out of the body experiences. Mainly because I was relieved and facinated that someone had had the same experience I’d had. Sadly, I don’t have them anymore (or at least none that I can recall).

When I was having them, I found it quite terrifying. I’d come to awareness and feel like I was floating on the ceiling or partially through the bed and floor and suddenly wake with a start only to realize… I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move my body. Like a chinese finger trap, the more I struggled the harder it was to move. Only when I relaxed was I finally able to slowly wake up my slumbering physical corpse. And when I opened my eyes I didn’t ever want to close them again for fear of being “locked in”.

I was able to conquere my fear of those other worldly experiences and eventually stop them almost completly by time the time I got to Junior High School, but by that time I’d read several books that talked about what I came to know as “sleep paralysis”, astral projection (OBE) and what you could do with these abilities. I was facinated and wanted to be able to do them again, but was never able to recreated the frequency I had when I was in elementary.

These days (’08 in my 30’s) I’m just as obsessed but even more shut out from those experiences. I have strange unexplainable experiences maybe twice per year if that.

Today as I read, Robert Bruce’s Astral Dynamics, I find my self asking what practical good is Out of the Body Experience, anyway? Don’t get me wrong. This is not me playing Aesop’s Fox and blowing the whole thing off because I am an “OBE failure”. Further, I don’t doubt that it is a real experience. The theories behind this global, cross-culture phenomenon may not agreed upon, but I personally know its real because I’ve experienced it. What IS the experience and WHY is another matter altogether.

A bigger question (for me) is, what good is it? If you can do it at will and can teach others, so what? Sure it feels good, its amazing, its exciting (and I definitely want to do it), but how can we use it to make the world a better place. I suppose you could argue that knowing that some part of the self may indeed survive death is pretty signifigant. I guess that accounts for something (I’ll mention with a shrug of my shoulders). Perhaps if everyone knew that physical reality was a mere stepping stone to another place they would behave better.

A warm fuzzy feeling is all well and good however I would submit this to you: OBE is not as important as the ability to shift to different states of consciousness. OBE seems to be only one of many grand symptoms reflecting what the human mind is capable of achieving in altered states of consciousness. Consider some of the inventions, music and discoveries achieved from altered states of consciousness:

Scientist Otto Loewi dreamed the experiment that enabled him to prove that nerve impulses are chemically transmitted, a discovery that won him the Nobel Prize.
Beethoven composed a canon in his sleep, and transcribed it after waking.
Tartini dreamed a famous violin sonata.
Robert Louis Stevenson received his stories in a twilight state of “reverie” in which benign spirits he called “brownies” helped him to compose.
William Butler Yeats wrote his celebrated one-act play Cathleen ni Houlihan from a dream, and much of his poetry flowed directly from dreams and visions.
Elias Howe, the inventor of the modern sewing machine, dreamed the solution to the technical problem that had stumped him.

— Robert Moss, Way of the Dreamer, “Two Minute History”

Others altered state creations include some of Paul McCartney’s songs, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Madame C.J. Walker (first American Woman Millionaire… who also happen to be African American) and here are many other examples.

I would take this idea a step further and suggest that our best professional athletes also experience altered states of consciousness when they are “in the zone”. Just thing of the possessed demon that wore #27 in the Chicago Bulls. Micheal Jordan’s enlightenment was a tongue out slam dunk in a 27 point game. Consider Lance Armstrong state of mind while he won his SIXTH tour de France after kicking cancers NATURAL BLACK ASS. Is it a stretch to believe that the greatest among us are capable of reaching the far reaches of human mind by accessing shamanistic states of bliss with amazing feats of focus.

I would also mention some of histories great porn stars, but I guess that would make everything I just a big joke to some. But consider it.. your best sexual performance probably included your most amazing state of mental, emotional physical focus… you were in the zone and the pay off is something you’d repeat every day if you could.