Ecsomatic States: OBEs, Parallel Realities, and Astral Planes

 Limitations in Research and Issues with the OBE Notion

There may be a few reasons that more formal research into out-of-body states such as that undertaken by Dr. Charles Tart with Miss Z. many years ago has not been overly forthcoming over the decades (aside from a general lack of funding).

• These could include: 

  It’s hard to stay focused on physical reality in the OB/ecsomatic state; there’s a natural tendency to slip into astral states/dimensions.^⁠1 Thus, research aimed at retrieving veridical information pertaining to the physical world is inherently challenging ab initio. Monroe considered trying to stay focused on physical reality so to be a “forced” process. (Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body.)
•  Most people having an OBE (including NDErs) aren’t the slightest bit interested in the trivial matter of furnishing “proof” to mollify the sceptical mind. 
•  In the ecsomatic/OB state you don’t technically exist in the physical world, but a sort of virtual reality replica. Parity reversals only add to the confusion.
•  The assumption that perception in this “second state” (altered consciousness) operated much as physical sight does. Although there was some success with this approach, the reality of the situation appears to be more complicated and more subtle than most parapsychologists had initially assumed. As we do not “see” with physical eyes, we do not see in the same way at all.
•  Existing in the astral planes, according to metaphysicists like Leadbeater, means consciousness is operating in four dimensions of space; the extra dimension is usually not  noticed initially but may be perceived as a blurring phenomenon.
•  In contrast to esotericists, parasychology as an institution lacked a concept of “where” an OB subject existed whilst OB, or how to characterise that state of existence.
•  Thus, given the foregoing, the occult term “astral projection” is probably more appropriate and useful than OBE, however neither are sufficiently explanatory for our Information Age.

A potential point of differentiation between astral projection and remote viewing is that trained remote viewers have been known to be astonishingly accurate in accessing physical documentation and reading accurately—and they typically are not experiencing a classic OBE, in the sense of not perceiving themselves as having separated from the body (usually).

The training seems to condition the RVer into keeping their consciousness anchored or “tuned” to the physical body, and thus their awareness within the parameters of the real time zone—the “real world,” practically speaking—so that remote physical-related data can be accessed effectively through their dual awareness. (See Book 1 for more on RV.) Remote viewers consciously retain dual awareness (they must consciously be aware of the mind-split in a sense), while OBErs generally remain focused in their ecsomatic point of reference.

If you learn how to meditate effectively, you can shift your brainwaves into sleep frequencies, thus sending your body to sleep, while retaining conscious awareness. This is highly conducive to “paranormal” perception, including OBEs. RVers often need to keep their bodies awake so as to take notes or make comments in real-time, and so don’t generally need to go so deep.

In the OB state, awareness is focused in a sort of duplicate mind-world that mirrors the physical to a large extent—a realm Robert Bruce refers to as the real-time zone, and which Muldoon seemed to refer to as the “zone of quietude.” Here events unfold in real-time and there are relatively few of what Bruce dubs “reality fluctuations”—aberrations in the fabric and continuity of reality at that level. This is not the “real” astral plane per se, but a reflection of the physical domain existing in “nearby” astral frequencies/density (real-time zone). 

The material just discussed may go some way to explaining the various experiments that have attempted to adduce proof of veridical OB perception, such as Tart’s experiments with Robert Monroe, which were tantalising but inconclusive. More to the point, if we understand the “real-time zone” or nearby astral as a “virtual reality” replica or inter-subjective mind-world which closely resembles “physical matter reality,” as Monroe called it, certain incongruities make more sense.

For instance, in one experiment, Tart and his wife on the West coast acted as psychic beacons for Monroe who, asleep on the other side of the country (and three hours ahead in Virginia), was to visit them OB and hopefully obtain veridical information. Not long after Tart began to concentrate (at his 11 pm), the phone rang. The Tarts ignored the call though because they were in the middle of an experiment. It turned out they would have had Monroe on the line: he had experienced a sensation of “tugging” or being pulled out of his body at the time Targ was concentrating on him and felt compelled to call them, which is significant, because Monroe was not told beforehand when the experiment would begin. However, Monroe’s descriptions of the room and people in it did not accurately reflect the basic physical-plane reality.^⁠2 

As noted, Monroe used the broad term “Locale II” to encompass the infinite expanses of the so-called astral planes where our belief-influenced heavens and hells are found (more on this in Book 2 of THE GRAND ILLUSION). “Locale I” was his term for what he perceived as “consensus physical reality” from his OB state/second state (this is technically the nearby astral or “real-time zone”). Thus, Locale I, II and III all refer to OB/ecsomatic states of consciousness, with Locale I appearing to be seen as a near-exact replica of ordinary physical reality, featuring the same people and places.

Peake suggests the discrepancies in Monroe’s reporting were because Monroe’s OBEs were actually occurring not in physical reality, nor in the astral planes of Locale II, but in the parallel/alternate earth reality of Locale III—in inner space.^⁠3 Another way of putting it (in Bohmian terms), is that physical reality is the explicate order, and Locales I, II and III each represent an implicate order (three out of an infinity of implicate orders). Monroe found Locale III to be extremely similar to our earth, only its civilisation lacked electronics, electromagnetics, and fuel combustion—it was somewhat anachronistic (one of the locomotives examined there was steam-powered, for example). (See Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body.) 

Rapid eye movement (REM) may hold a key to ecsomatic dynamics: Early research into sleep and REM using electroencephalograph correlated dreaming with REM with seventy per cent of the subjects. It turned out REM signified a shift into brain states normally correlated with waking consciousness. A paper from 2007 directly linked REM to ecsomatic states, suggesting there are two times when you may think you are awake but are actually asleep in a REM phase: sleep paralysis, and during sleep-related “hallucinations,” such as hypnogogic visions. In other words, in these moments you may be asleep but still conscious^⁠4, perhaps exploring the alternate realities or “dimensions” in the information field, whether in the form of your own lucid dream “cocoon,” or more expansive adventures in the broader astral dreamscape.

The angular gyrus and temporal lobe: In 2002 in Switzerland Dr Olaf Blanke and colleagues mapped an epileptic woman’s brain by implanting over 100 electrodes throughout her skull. One was positioned above her right temporal lobe adjacent to the angular gyrus, which is correlated with language, maths, cognition, and… spatial awareness. Stimulation of this particular electrode produced an ecsomatic experience: the woman reported floating above her body and looking down at herself. Only the electrode near the angular gyrus produced the OB experience.^⁠5 Interestingly, on stimulating the left angular gyrus, the subject experienced the sensation of a shadowy figure lurking behind her.

From the late 1980s, cognitive neurologist Dr Michael Persinger had suggested different types of mystical and religious experiences could be created through stimulation of the brain’s temporal lobes with weak electromagnetic fields. At least eighty per cent of his subjects felt the strong sensation of a presence in the room with them, while some reported perceiving a shadowy, cowelled figure in the periphery of their visual field.^⁠6 

Lucid Dreams, OBEs, and Locale III

If Locale II is simply where we go every night during sleep (and constitutes part of the earthly afterlife experience), Locale III is perhaps less tractable. It seemed to Monroe to be a sort of parallel/alternative earth where another version of himself existed. He called this person “I There.” Monroe found himself spontaneously taking over—one might say “possessing”—the body of “I There” for relatively short bursts, and wondered at what distress he may have caused this parallel self as a result of these intrusions into his body and life.^⁠7 As the perceptive Anthony Peake writes, his “I There” must have experienced these events as akin to petit mal “absences,” a “temporal lobe epilepsy parallel within a parallel universe.^⁠8” 

Peake posits in The Out-of-Body Experience that Monroe’s OBEs actually took place in Locale III, the parallel earth Monroe found. This could be why his attempts to produce veridical information from an OB state pertaining to the physical earth produced disappointing results—at least it’s one possibility. As Peake observes, epilepsy can be instigated by scars or lesions on the brain resulting from accidents or illness.

When epilepsy focuses itself on the temporal lobes, people usually experience the epileptic “aura” (totally unrelated to the auric field/biofield), which acts akin to an early warning system that a seizure is coming. In that vein, Peake finds it compelling that Monroe describes the sensation that immediately preceded his first OBE as being like a vibration coursing through his body like a painless electric shock—similar to the aura of both a migraine as well as TLE.^⁠9 Monroe exhibited other symptoms of the aura state, including hearing voices (such as from his “Helpers”) and an encounter with a talking light (all in the OB state).  

An experience I had circa 2020 while having a blood sample taken speaks directly to the parallel reality idea. In short, I “passed out” while sitting in the chair—apparently very common for healthy young men, for reasons unknown to me. What unnerved me afterwards was not that I lost consciousness, but that, on the contrary, I instantly found myself living another life in a completely different world, almost like a “walk-in.” It was completely tangible, coherent, and real—and felt utterly normal and familiar; the most natural thing in the world.

I knew I had a life there and just “continued going about my business.” I remember walking outside, on my way somewhere. To my beloved and perturbed Aimee back in the doctor’s surgery, I was still seated in the chair, head back with my eyes rolling and fluttering as if having a seizure of some sort. But I was utterly oblivious to Brendan D. Murphy and his body—my “I” was somewhere else and feeling a-okay in the other life. Had I shifted my locus of awareness to an alternate/probable self elsewhere in the quantum hologram/multiverse somehow? Was it Locale III? Who knows. I’m just glad it didn’t last long.

To support his argument in favour of Locale III Peake also points to inconsistencies in other research, such as that involving the late government-employed remote viewer Ingo Swann (see TGI Book 1 for a more detailed account of these interesting CIA-funded remote viewing (RV) experiments and the government RV programs). One of Swann’s RV tasks was to remote view Jupiter at a time when little was known about the planet. He correctly perceived a ring around Jupiter against all scientific expectation of the time.

Respected psychic Harold Sherman simultaneously performed his own RV of Jupiter some 2,000 miles away independently and recorded near-identical observations. The catch: Sherman noted huge volcanic peaks while Swann saw massive mountain ranges, only there is no evidence to date that suggests it is even possible that mountains could form in Jupiter’s gaseous hydrogen and helium atmosphere. So some of what they saw applied to Jupiter (the rings) and some of it applies not to Jupiter but, as it turns out, one of its moons, Io, which does have volcanoes. 

Peake suggests—and I tend to agree—that Sherman and Swann remotely participated in a shared hallucination,^⁠10 which in itself may be seen by some as remarkable, as “hallucinations” are supposed to simply be internally generated illusions restricted to one’s skull.

I differ only slightly in that I tend to think that the two RVers’ perceptions were a blend of fact (the rings) and fiction probably based on expectation and preconception (the mountains and volcanoes). I don’t believe they were viewing Io by mistake, because Io does not have any rings, thus I believe the virtual reality blend of fact and fiction—resulting from shifting awareness into the quantum information/probability/possibility field—is the most likely explanation.

It is well known that expectations can influence one’s experience in these virtual reality/mind-world experiences, and we will see this undeniably in the following chapter on near-death experiences. Alternatively, we could speculate the two seers both viewed an alternative version of our solar system in “Locale III,” also entered via the probability/possibility/information field. We will never really know.

Many astral projectors appear to find themselves, in the initial stages of a projection, in the physical world, the “real-time zone” of the near-astral sub-planes. The presence of anomalies, however, can indicate the crossing into astral frequencies/sub-planes; prosaic details like the colour of a wall or location of a chair might be off. These kinds of things constitute a form of “reality fluctuation.” Astral projector and author, William Buhlman, has shared how it slowly dawned on him that the OB environ was not actually the physical world proper, but a non-physical simulacrum, which is why there were slight variations between the nonphysical and physical furniture and other objects.^⁠11 

Buhlman also adds that to be able to see what looked like his normal physical surroundings, his internal vibrational rate had to be relatively dense, or slow. (Contrariwise, he found the act of “requesting consciousness and clarity seemed to automatically increase the internal frequency of my nonphysical body.^⁠12”) Hence, in order for “ghosts” to affect physical matter or create “poltergeist” disturbances, they must lower their awareness/frequency enough to fall into phase with physical matter. Only then can they act out their impulses, desires and whims, for example; throwing things or rearranging furniture. 

Buhlman’s “candle experiment”, wherein he tried—in his OB state—to blow out a candle he lit prior to his projection, was unsuccessful. He merely managed to extinguish the astral counterpart. Theosophist Arthur Powell wrote in 1927, “One could no more move a physical object by moving its astral counterpart than one could move the rose by moving its perfume.^⁠13”

Great analogy.

To affect the physical realm, you have to first fall into phase with it or generate enough “kindling” (Bearden’s term) of charge and force to influence physical matter. Otherwise it appears you are merely toying with a virtual reality astral simulation of the physical. 

¹  Dennett, Out-of-Body Exploring, 44.

² Tart, Six Studies of Out-of-the-Body Experiences.

³ See Peake, The Out-of-Body Experience, chapters 4 and 5.

⁴ Ibid., 130-2.

⁵ Ibid., 132-3.

⁶ Ibid., 136-7.

⁷ Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body, chapter 6.

⁸ Peake, The Out-of-Body Experience, 66.

⁹ Ibid., 70.

¹⁰ Ibid., 86.

¹¹ See Buhlman, Adventures Beyond the Body.…

¹² Ibid.

^{13 See} Powell, The Astral Body, chapter 16.