DEMYSTIFYING THE OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCE

The sensation of being outside of your body is a genuine experience. The question is whether you, as a separate self, have actually separated from your brain in the sense that what you are now experiencing is not being registered by your brain or whether it is as if you were separated in the sense of being a very convincing hallucinatory type experience. This book, based upon an absolute belief that the conscious self does separate from the physical brain during an OB experience, is subtitled as A Practical Manual for Exploration and Personal Evolution

Louis Minero, a former chemistry honours graduate, is now the Education Director of the International Academy of Consciousness (IAC), founded in 2000 by Dr Waldo Vieira (b.1932), a Brazilian medical doctor and dentist who has written voluminously on the subject. The IAC now has a worldwide network of teaching centres including one in London directed by Sandie Gustus who was one of the lecturers at the Body and Beyond 3: Scientific and Spiritual Perspectives conference (2012) and is the author of Less Incomplete: A Guide to Experiencing the Human Condition beyond the Physical Body (2011). Minero teaches the skill of voluntarily entering the OB state of mind to IAC students and lectures widely on the subject. His aim, which he carries out in a calm and reasoned way, is to present the case for the actuality of separation of self from body during the OB experience by describing the whole process from separation to return together with instructional guidelines. To follow his train of thought we need to understand some basic IAC terminology. Dr Vieira, who has had OB experiences since childhood, coined the term Conscientiology in 1994 as the study of consciousness as a self existing entity and Projectiology as the study of the OB experience in his two huge volumes 700 Conscientiology Experiments (1994), and Projectiology: A Panorama of Experiences of the Consciousness Outside the Human Body (2002) reissued as Projections of the Consciousness: A Diary of Out-of-Body Experiences (2007, 3rd ed).

In his opening chapter on fundamental concepts Minero says that for science to study matter and energy as if they are the only realities is a conceptual error as it ignores the third reality which is consciousness. The Consciential paradigm includes the primal reality of consciousness as the intelligent principle underlying the universe. It is consciousness that animates and controls the body during life and it is the consciousness of self as an independent entity that continues after bodily death.

In IAC terminology the Holosoma (Holos meaning whole or complete and soma meaning body) refers to the set of four bodies that comprise each person's consciousness the study of which is called Holosomatics. These four bodies consist of the Soma, the biological body that interacts with physical reality; the Energosoma (the energetic body often defined in terms of chakras) that vitalises the biological body and acts as the continuing link between soma and consciousness during an OBE; the Psychosoma, often referred to by others as the astral body, that provides the psychic vehicle for the conscious self during an OBE by which we can communicate with other people's psychosoma during their OBE, and the Mentalsoma (intellectual body) the most sophisticated and complex body of the consciousness through which we can attain the ultimate level of lucid awareness of being 'at one with the universe'. According to Conscientiology the fact that we can have OB experiences demonstrates that we do not live in a one-dimensional-one-life-only-universe but in a multidimensional, multiexperiential, many-life-return universe which we can explore in depth during an OBE. I must mention one more central concept which is the Thosene. 'Tho' is derived from Thoughts,'s' from sentiments or emotions and 'ene' from energy. Consciential energies (CEs) are manifested in the thoughts-emotions-energy synergies of thosenes which form the units of conscious informational energy. Strongly emotional thosenes can, for example, imprint objects, buildings and rooms as when it is said that people can enter a room after it has been vacated in anger and sense the anger still present.

From this introduction onwards Minero explores the whole subject in depth with many more technical IAC definitions. Ch 2 on Bioenergy divides this energy into two forms; one is the Immanent Energy (IE) inherent in nature and the other is Consciential Energy (CE) expressed in the interaction of the Energosoma with the physical body; Ch 3 on Out and About discusses the characteristics of nonphysical consciousness, different forms of OB projections and different levels of extra-physical lucidity; Ch 4 on How To describes a range of suggested techniques through which one can develop the ability to induce an OBE and learn strategies for effective post OBE recall; Ch 5 on Extraphysical Consciousnesses describes how you can interact with other OB selves including those who are 'deceased' and awaiting their return; Ch 6 on Consciential Maturity explores how to use the OB experience to evolve in wisdom as a spiritual being including acting as mental helpers to others and Ch 7 on Planning a Life uses the OBE perspective to explore the re-incarnatory life-death-rebirth cycle of each consciousness including where we go after we physically die, what we do, the implications of karma, and how we prepare for the next life. Each chapter is illustrated with personal accounts including many of Minero's own experiences, icons defining terms, line drawn figures, a key point summary and chapter referencing. There is an extensive bibliography, a glossary of terms and an index.

This book is very well written without making any dogmatic assertions. Minero's credo is that you must test what he is saying by reflecting upon your own OB experiences. The IAC has obviously collated a huge descriptive database of OB experiences and Minero presents an important percentage summary of their findings concerning thirty-seven reported sensations during an OBE including falling, floating, spinning and hyperacuity which should prove invaluable to other investigators (Figure 3.1 Typical OBE Sensations, p. 92).

What is one to make of this interpretation of the OB experience as a genuine separation from the brain and body? Conscientiology with Projectiology is Vitalism writ large and as far as the IAC is concerning an OBE is exactly what it says it is – a genuine out-of-body experience during which the physical body and brain remain in one location while the self-aware-self separates from them with the freedom to visit different geographical locations in the reality of this world as well as nonphysical realities. During an OBE you can interact with other OB selves and download the whole experience into the brain on your return for later referral. There are, of course, many religious and esoteric belief systems going back to prehistory that share a common belief in body/mind separation during out-of-body experiencing.

The question is whether this very sincerely held belief is correct. If it is, then during the OBE the brain will continue to quietly monitor bodily functions as if in non-dreaming sleep and there will be a period of intense activity when the self returns and downloads that experience into memory for later reference. With so many people now practised in inducing an OBE and with so much current neuroscience research into correlations of brain activity with altered states of consciousness one would have expected that brain imaging would have demonstrated such a temporary separation and return beyond all reasonable doubt. Unfortunately this is not what brain imaging has found. During what neuroscience terms as 'extra corporeal experiencing' (ECE), to disentangle this experience from popular OBE connotations, the brain is highly active throughout the OBE in all those areas known to relate to body imagery in imaginary context. No matter how spiritual the experience, no matter how in tune with the universe and no matter how apart from your body you may feel there is no escape from the brain. It seems that the correlation of brain activity with mind activity cannot be separated and then reunited.

There are, of course, many anecdotal accounts (much challenged) of what are termed 'veridical OBEs' with some, like Maria's shoe on the hospital window ledge and Pam Reynolds perching on the neurosurgeon's shoulder attaining almost mythic status. Such veridical observations should be easy to demonstrate in controlled, replicable circumstances with simple instructions such as 'Go into the lab room and describe (or remember) what you can see on the lab table' (where, say, a large, black vase with a rose in it standing in the middle), or remember the number you saw projected onto a blank laboratory wall, or identifying a person at the site. So far no one has been able to demonstrate such an ability beyond reasonable doubt during an OB experience.

Until there is replicable evidence of neural silence during the OB experience and a flurry of neural activity on return the explanation advanced by the neurosciences and cognitive psychology that an OB experience is a dissociative experience still seems to be the most likely explanation. The OB experiencer learns the skill of creating a personally convincing hallucinatory type experience of being elsewhere in which unfettered imagination can roam at will. Whether future research findings will challenge this interpretation remains to be seen

Regardless of whether an OBE is a factual separation or a brain based dissociative experience Luis Minero does succeed in his aim of demystifying the OB experience by clearly describing the whole process as it may be experienced and in that sense his account provides much valuable information. With a Foreword by Wagner Alegretti, President of the IAC and author of Retrocognitions: An Investigation into Memories of Past Lives and the Period between Lives (2004) this detailed and well written book is an important addition to the OBE literature whatever your belief as to true separation or dissociate imagining.