Psience Quest

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook site, here's a series of sceptical blog posts about Out-of-Body Experiences by Susan Blackmore, from the blog section of Psychology Today:
(1) Leaving the Body? How an out-of-body experience changed my life.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...g-the-body
(2) Far Beyond the Body. How an OBE became a mystical experience.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...d-the-body
(3) Into the Astral? Does the theory of astral projection make sense?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...the-astral
(4) Seeing with Astral Eyes. Is astral projection a useful theory, and can it be tested?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...stral-eyes
(5) The Human Aura. Do psychics really see an aura around other people?
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...human-aura

More to come ...

Evidently this is to promote the North-American edition of her book, "Seeing Myself: The new science of out-of-body experiences," which was published in the UK two years ago.

One thing I hadn't appreciated was that before her own OBE she experienced about half an hour of hallucinations (or "pseudo-hallucinations"), including the formation of a tunnel along which she rushed "accompanied by a thunderous noise as though I were a horse galloping down a tree-lined avenue towards a distant light." Apparently she viewed all this as "familiar drug effects" which were quite different from the out-of-body experience that followed. Evidently at the time she attributed them to a joint she was smoking.

But as far as I can see, visual hallucinations are actually quite uncommon as a result of cannabis. I'd have thought in her 50-year quest to understand this experience, a pertinent question would be whether she really experienced hallucinations whenever she used cannabis, and what that might imply. Another question would be whether that was really the only drug involved that night, or whether a real hallucinogen might have been responsible, perhaps after she'd been given it unwittingly.

Perhaps she is just being a little coy about the type of drug, or perhaps it was as you say Chris, taken unwittngly.

Comparing the accounts at
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...g-the-body
and
http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?se...00075&ss=1
gives a bit of a different emphasis.

(2019-07-21, 12:17 PM)Typoz Wrote: [ -> ]Perhaps she is just being a little coy about the type of drug, or perhaps it was as you say Chris, taken unwittngly.

Comparing the accounts at
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/...g-the-body
and
http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?se...00075&ss=1
gives a bit of a different emphasis.

Thanks. It's interesting to see the detailed account she refers to in the blog.

Also interesting to see that she has had brief OBEs "once or twice" when taking LSD and evidently a much longer one with ketamine, though she said it was nothing like the first one. I was amused to see this comment on the ketamine trip:
"My companion held up various numbers of fingers out of my line of sight and asked me to say how many I saw. I did fairly well at this task but he did not record the results or ensure that I had absolutely no way of seeing them."

Initially, her out of body experience convinced her that something left the body (she has said).  In (her out of body experience) she apparently saw the roof of the building she was staying in and noted that it had old guttering etc.

Quite some time later, she realised that the guttering she had seen in her OBE was incorrect and she then changed her mind about her OBE (apparently)…"Oh, it must not have been real, I've been deceived and therefore OBE's are all illusions" etc. (summary)

If you think about this, it's complete nonsense, because if she'd really had an OBE that impressed her so greatly, she would have gone outside the next day and checked, wouldn't she ? But she didn't, it apparently only occurred to her much later. Why didn't she immediately check as a good paranormal investigator would ? 

Secondly, no matter how many times she's been informed and reminded about the hundreds of veridical OBE's during cardiac arrest that have been verified, she continues to state that there are ONLY several ...and these favoured ones keep 'doing the rounds', one being Maria's shoe which has been debunked (*no it hasn't).

She refuses to comment on newer persuasive cases other than to say, "I think if you really delve into those cases you'll actually find they really didn't happen like that...I tried myself and was never able to verify anything" (summary)...which is simply not true. 

I've sent her several emails down the years (with my real name added in) with verified cases, one being the Pam Reynolds case and all she could muster was, yes it looks interesting...we shall see...meaning Parnia will sort it out.

However, whenever she's interviewed about the phenomenon on you tube, she seems to suffer from amnesia and completely forgets that as a good sceptic she's supposed to have suspended judgement ( until Parnia has sorted it out).

I think she's dishonest in her research, lightweight and wedded to her own persona as the go to source of expert knowledge of the paranormal.    

* http://michaelprescott.freeservers.com/w...chers.html

(2019-07-21, 10:59 AM)Chris Wrote: [ -> ]Evidently this is to promote the North-American edition of her book, "Seeing Myself: The new science of out-of-body experiences," which was published in the UK two years ago.

One thing I hadn't appreciated was that before her own OBE she experienced about half an hour of hallucinations (or "pseudo-hallucinations"), including the formation of a tunnel along which she rushed "accompanied by a thunderous noise as though I were a horse galloping down a tree-lined avenue towards a distant light." Apparently she viewed all this as "familiar drug effects" which were quite different from the out-of-body experience that followed. Evidently at the time she attributed them to a joint she was smoking.

But as far as I can see, visual hallucinations are actually quite uncommon as a result of cannabis. I'd have thought in her 50-year quest to understand this experience, a pertinent question would be whether she really experienced hallucinations whenever she used cannabis, and what that might imply. Another question would be whether that was really the only drug involved that night, or whether a real hallucinogen might have been responsible, perhaps after she'd been given it unwittingly.

I used Cannabis pretty heavily in my youth, and some of my friends were real stoners. People smoking Pot every day, and in bongs too.

Only one reported a vague hallucination, and probably it was only bacause he fell after ripping a bong (it was so powerful he lost balance) and hurt his head. I honestly doubt Cannabis can provoke long, intense visual hallucinations.

(2019-07-24, 03:43 PM)Raf999 Wrote: [ -> ]I used Cannabis pretty heavily in my youth, and some of my friends were real stoners. People smoking Pot every day, and in bongs too.

Only one reported a vague hallucination, and probably it was only bacause he fell after ripping a bong (it was so powerful he lost balance) and hurt his head. I honestly doubt Cannabis can provoke long, intense visual hallucinations.

That was certainly my impression after a quick browse of some of the published research online.

FWIW - my first time trying cannabis, via edibles, was a terrifying experience that did involve hallucinations of Arthur the Aardvark (the old 1976 Arthur that actually looked like the animal) - but those "hallucinations" were no more substantial than memory over vision (ex. if I remember an incident from third grade right now, I can "see" it, but my actual line of vision only consists of the laptop I'm writing this on.)

I like the way you explained that, Will.

I think the context Sue describes was one of using a whole range of drugs over a period of time. Perhaps, rather like regular meditation, or regular inducement of OBEs via non-drug means, these activities can re-arrange some paths of the brain, whether deliberately or accidentally, to make an out of body experience occur more readily.

The real questions here are not so much over the actions of various drugs, but on how to consider the 'reality' of what happens in an OBE. I think Blackmore discounts it on the grounds that there were discrepancies between observations during the OBE of such things as chimneys or gutters on the rooftops, and subsequent checking of the physical world.

However, she is not the first nor the last to have noted such discrepancies. It seems it is common for the world in the OBE to differ from the present-day physical counterpart. But people still reach different conclusions on what this means. Blackmore's position is not the only possible one. Other OBE practitioners or experiencers reach different conclusions.