Is Vision Possible in Out of Body Experiences? – Dialectic Two Step

Estimated reading time: 5 minute(s)

Response: This is a great question. Not because I think that there is any way that we can confirm or characterize out of body experiences, but because it allows us to think about how discordant the idea is with our understanding of sensations.

Experiences that we perceive as out of body are actually constructions of our brain
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Everything that science has told us about our senses is in the context of sense organs, nerve networks, and the brain. Even the senses of sight and sound, which inform us about objects and movement off in the distance, are bound by the edges of the body.

If we think about our senses as passive collectors of stimuli, there isn’t really room to consider an out of body sensory experience.  If we define an out of body experience as the separation of some nontangible element of self from our body, then the separated self would be incapable of sensation. It would also be true that the body would have no way of sensing the absence of the detached self.

Strictly speaking, if we had an out of body situation, we would have no way of knowing it happened.  Using the term out of body experience seems to be an anathema.  Experience comes from the accumulation of sensations and out brains processing of them.  Out of body situations are not available to our senses or our brains.

Strictly speaking, if we had an out of body situation, we would have no way of knowing it happened.
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I suspect that any experiences that we perceive as out of body are actually constructions of our brain in the body’s consciousness.  If it were not extremely unethical to test this hypothesis (i.e. out of body experiences tend to be associated with dying) I think we could verify this.

Dialectic Two-Step  is an ongoing series of my thoughts on questions that come my way.

Wisdom lies neither in fixity nor in change, but in the dialectic between the two. - Octavio

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