Out-of-Body experiences during an NDE

“During their OBE,” cardiologist Pim van Lommel observes, “people have the feeling that they have apparently taken off their body like an old coat, and to their surprise and confusion, they apparently have retained their own self-identity with the possibility of perception, emotions, and a very clear consciousness.” [AS, 22]

Oncologist Jeffrey Long reports in his book Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, examples of out-of-body experiences during NDEs.

I could feel my spirit actually leaving my body. I saw and heard the conversations between my husband and the doctors taking place outside my room, about forty feet away down a hallway. I was later able to verify this conversation to my shocked husband. {EA, 7}

I still had a “body, but it was entirely different. I could see in three dimensions as if I had no body at all but was just a floating eyeball, for lack of a better explanation. I could see all directions at once, yet there were no directions or dimensions as we think of them. {EA, 60}

Having no material body, I was sensing, seeing, feeling, on another plane. It is like trying to explain the colors of the rainbow to a blind person. {EA, 90}

“Even people who are blind from birth,” van Lommel notes, “have described veridical perceptions during OBEs at the time of their NDE.” [AS, 24]

Everything was very bright and sharp. I am legally blind without my glasses, but the nurse took my glasses before they took me to the delivery room. Yet [during the out-of-body experience] I could see clearly what the doctor was doing. {EA, 88}

“Some patients can describe how they consciously returned into their body, mostly through the top of the head, after they had come to understand that ‘it wasn’t their time yet’ or that ‘they still had a task to fulfill.’ This conscious return of the self into the body is experienced as something very oppressive. They regain consciousness in their body and realize that they are ‘locked up’ in their damaged body, meaning again all the pain and restriction of their disease.” [AS, 24]

“Following a successful resuscitation,” van Lommel explains, NDE survivors may “report veridical perceptions from a position outside and above their lifeless body. This OBE is scientifically important because doctors, nurses, and relatives can verify the reported perceptions, and they can also corroborate the precise moment the NDE with OBE occurred during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).

“In a recent review of 93 corroborated reports of potentially verifiable out-of-body perceptions during an NDE, about 90% were found to be completely accurate, 8% contained some minor error, and only 2% were completely erroneous. This proves that an OBE cannot be a hallucination, that is, the experiencing of a perception that has no basis in ‘reality,’ like in psychosis; neither can it be a delusion, which is an incorrect assessment of a correct perception, nor an illusion, which means a misapprehension or misleading image.” [AS, 22-23]

“The NDERF survey asked 613 NDErs, ‘Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body.’ In response, 75.4 percent answered ‘Yes.’” {EA, 8}

AS - “Near-Death Experiences: The Experience of the Self as Real and Not as an Illusion,” Annals N.Y. Acad. Sci. ISSN 0077-8923, 1234 (2011) 19–28, http://pimvanlommel.nl/files/NDE-NYAS-Experience-Self-article.pdf

EA – Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry, Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences (2010)