Chapter Two

OBEs Past and Present

Olga Worrall, alone and afraid, went to sleep with her bedroom light on. About an hour later, the British housewife awoke to see her husband standing by her bed. Although she knew he was away on a trip, she did not feel frightened.

“Put out the lights!” he seemed to say. Olga did as she was told. Then she went back to sleep.

When Worrall returned a few days later, he described what he thought was a dream. In the dream, he said, he walked through the house. As he neared the bedroom, he saw that the light was on. Reaching out to switch it off, his hand went through the wall. That was when he told Olga to turn the light out. As soon as she obeyed, Worrall woke up—in his hotel bed.¹

Were husband and wife sharing the same dream? After all, dreams take up two or more hours of each night’s sleep. But research shows that dreams grow out of your own store of memories. No one else shares your dreams. Scientists who study reports of OBEs can only shake their heads. No hard evidence of the existence of astral bodies has been found. What people call OBEs, they say, may result from dream activity or an ESP event.

Whatever their origin, OBEs are far from dreamlike. Those who claim to have had an OBE return with vivid reports of their travels. In a typical OBE, a body double leaves the sleeping body and floats above it. Sometimes the body on the bed seems to shudder and become stiff. The double appears to be attached to the body, often by a thin, silver cord. The astral body feels weightless and more alive than ever. The senses seem sharper, colors seem brighter.

Free to travel, the astral body walks through walls or soars high into the sky. During these journeys, the cord stretches but does not break. OBEs end when the body double returns to the physical body. Often it slips back in without effort. At other times, it enters with a jerk that wakes the sleeper. Either way, people who return from OBEs feel a sense of inner peace. Thoughts of death no longer fill them with fear.

No one knows when the first OBE took place. In early cultures, priests often put themselves into trances. The trance, they said, allowed their souls to find and speak to the gods. In ancient Egypt, OBEs were part of religious beliefs. Each person was said to possess a ka and a ba. The ka was a body double that lived on in the tomb after death. That freed the ba to travel on to the next world. In modern India, yogis enter trance states in which they claim to leave their bodies.

Over 2,500 years ago, the king of Syria led an army into Israel. Each time the Syrians attacked, the Israelite army was waiting. “Who is giving away our plans?” the king roared. A member of the court told him about a prophet named Elisha. This Israelite, the man said, knows everything that is said in your tent. Perhaps the king believed that Elisha was using his astral body to visit his tent. Certain that he had found the spy, he laid siege to the prophet’s city.

Image Credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, NY

Ancient Egyptian artwork depicts the ba, the bird-soul, hovering above a corpse. The Egyptians believed that the ba traveled on to the next world, while the body double (the ka) stayed in the tomb.

Once again the king of Syria ran into powers far beyond his own. Elisha asked God to blind his foes. Then Elisha led the army of blind men into the Israelite camp. When their sight was restored the Syrians saw they were captives. They laid down their arms and marched home.²

Did the biblical prophet Elisha travel out of body to spy on the Syrians? Whether Elisha did or not, the Syrian king acted as if he believed it.

Even the great Greek thinkers of ancient times believed in OBEs. Plato was certain that the soul could leave the body and travel freely. Plotinus wrote of “being lifted out of the body into myself.”³

The writer Hermotimus often seemed to wander far from his stiff, still body. “Do not touch me while I am gone,” he told his wife. But the wife, upset by her husband’s apparent absences, wanted to teach him a lesson. During one of his OBEs, she asked two friends to move his body. Sadly, the two men turned out to be rivals, not friends. They declared that Hermotimus was dead. Then they burned the body.⁴

When researchers study OBEs, some basic facts emerge.

The world has changed but accounts of OBEs stay constant. An OBE described by a Texas cowboy closely resembles those reported by ancient Greeks.
Most people report only one OBE in a lifetime. Their OBEs often take place during stressful events such as an illness or car crash.
No one who has had an OBE ever forgets it. Many people see their OBEs as proof that they will live on after death.
OBEs are nearly always pleasant. But once the astral travel ends, most people refuse to talk about their journeys. They worry that their friends will think they have lost their minds.
During an OBE people often “see” events they could not have seen with their normal senses. Experts suggest that the subjects may have used ESP—or they may have been astral traveling.

Scientific studies of OBEs face two problems. First, most people cannot summon an OBE at will. That fact makes it very hard to set up controlled studies in a lab. Second, few astral travelers are trained observers. Most are too involved in their once-in-a-lifetime “trip” to make good mental notes.

Lucky Lindy’s OBE

After World War I, brave pilots competed to set records for speed and distance. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh joined the ranks of aviation’s greatest heroes. “Lucky Lindy” captured the nation’s heart by flying nonstop from New York to Paris.

Once he was airborne, Lindbergh faced a flight of more than thirty hours. Twenty-two hours after takeoff, the Spirit of St. Louis flew into a thick fog. As the plane droned on through the gray mist, Lindbergh fought to stay awake. Then, he revealed years later, he seemed to slip into an OBE.

Lindbergh wrote that he seemed to exist outside of “time and matter.” He felt himself “departing from my body as I imagine a spirit would depart.” Drifting upward and outward, he seemed to pass through the frame of the plane. Then he floated in midair, “far distant from the human form I left [behind].” All this time, he was bound to his body by a long cord. The cord was so thin, he wrote, “it could have been snapped by a breath.”

Lindbergh knew that his “vision” could have been caused by fatigue. That kind of logic made sense—but the pilot set logic aside. He knew what he had seen and felt. The longer he lived, he wrote in his autobiography, the more he doubted that science has all the answers.⁵

Image Credit: Library of Congress Prints & Photographs

Charles Lindbergh claimed to have an OBE during his transatlantic flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. Was it fatigue, or did “Lucky Lindy” truly depart from his body?