The Out-of-Body Experience by Anthony Peake

Author:Anthony Peake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: The Out-of-Body Experience
ISBN: 9781780280219
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2016-07-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

The Mystery of Lucid Dreaming

False Awakenings

In 1976 researcher Stewart Twemlow wrote an article for a US national magazine in which he asked for responses from any readers who had experienced an out-of-body state. The results of this survey were eventually published in the American Journal of Psychiatry in April 1982.36 Of the 1,500 responses, 700 reported experiences that involved the perception of total separation of mind and body.

In 1977, two follow-up questionnaires were sent out to all 700 in the subset. These were the POBE (Profile of Out-of-Body Experiences) and the PAL (Profile for the Adaptation to Life). The researchers received 339 responses in which both questionnaires were completed. The results are of great interest as they show that individuals who report OBEs are normal and show no real psychological extremes. However, there were two results of this survey that I consider to be of great significance. Firstly, in the Twemlow survey only 58 per cent reported that the out-of-body (OOB) environment was the same as that where their body was located. By extrapolation this tells us that 142 reported that during their OBE they perceived a totally different place. In my opinion these individuals were not reporting an OBE but a lucid dream.

The major difference between an OBE and a lucid dream is that in most cases lucid dreamers find themselves in an environment other than their actual physical location. In other words an experiencer has the sensation of leaving their body (soma) and moving into the external space surrounding the soma. They still feel located in a physical space and, in some cases, within a form of etheric body, something I would like to term the ‘ecsoma’.

The implication is that something has moved out of the soma and is located in real space close to the soma. The experiencer views the ‘real’ world through the senses of the ecsoma and can move around this environment as they would ordinarily do in normal life. Indeed, it is regularly reported that OBEs are so subtle that the experiencer simply thinks they have got up to go to another location such as the bathroom. It is only when they look back and see their soma that they realize they are in an ecsomatic state. This is known as a ‘false awakening’. Some individuals report that this can happen two or three times. They wake up, go to the bathroom, something odd happens, they realize they are dreaming and wake up, go to the bathroom again and repeat the process, waking again and again until they really do find themselves in consensual reality.

False-awakening OOB states feel real because they are mundane. There is no feeling of strangeness until the experiencer spots the soma. However the more usual OOB state involves the ecsoma floating above the soma, usually looking down from a location near the ceiling. This is so odd that the experiencer becomes immediately aware that something peculiar is taking place. In consensual reality we do not view the world from a floating position near a ceiling.

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