Comments on: Body illusions: Leave your body behind

By: Diana

Diana — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:38:17 +0000

Sorry , It’s Richard that puts his leg into Gene’s trouser….got it the wrong way round.

By: Diana

Diana — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:15:50 +0000

This rubber hand thing, sort of reminds me a scene from the 70′s film Stir Crazy, starring Gene Wilder and Richard pryor.

The scene is where Gene and Richard are woken up in their prison cell, and forced to get dressed. Gene starts to put one leg into one side of Richard’s trousers and assumes Richard’s leg is his own and starts shouting that he can’t feel his own leg. I adore that scene.

By: Charmaine

Charmaine — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 03:26:01 +0000

Here\’s an interesting follow up experiment in light of what the gentleman said \’feeling that someone else\’s arm is your own\’:

You get 2 subjects (subj 1 and Subj2) that are similar in build and physical appearance. you dress them in similar clothes. Subj1 stands in front of Subj2. Subj 2 wears the virtual reality head set. The camera is pointing at Subj 1 (you follow me?) and this is fed into the VR headset.

Subject 1 has someone stand behind them and stroke them. Subject 2 does not know this (V important) The experimenter says that Subject 2 will be stroked but he is lying (also important) – no stroking will happen to subject 2!

research question: will subject 2 feel the stroking even though it is absent?

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 21:34:49 +0000

Nopke: I don’t think all research should serve a direct purpose. Why should it always be directly beneficial to medicine or society? The more knowledge we have, the better. I’d love to know HOW everything works, and WHY it works the way it does. If knowing these things eventually is useful to medicine or society or whatever (which it tends to be, because understanding whatever it is you’re dealing with usually helps), all the better. But the main goal of research should be knowledge. Otherwise, all not-directly-useful avenues of interest would be ignored, and many things would never be known.

Is it useful to me to know what deep-sea fish look like, and that the males live on the females as parasites? Not really. But I like knowing it. And our own brains are at least as interesting as deep-sea fish.

By: Nopke

Nopke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:54:06 +0000

Out of body experiences the way they are being described, the original ones: they always describe it as seeing their own body … (also those during/before surgery, not being sick but being into another state than they normally are, with perfectly normal selfes …..), i wonder at times .. we probably experience so much more out of body experiences … the moment you loose awareness of your own body you are already sort of out of your body .. sometimes that far that your body will respond by giving you symptoms which will force you back to it …. as we are the ones that drive the bodies …
Why no-one needs to proof this you may wonder …

Out of self experience .. hehehehe … many of them running around .. not being aware of this at all … but they are constantly aware of their bodies ..

I dont get this type of research if I’m honest They should not have used the term out of body experience in this area and should have focussed on more serious medical matters .. and a more usefull goal to serve human health/society.

If you want to research out of body experience .. undergo it yourself …. it’s not such a big deal after all.

In a body experience .. now that’s what I call difficult …. our cage on planet earth … (oh well, we can have sex due to it, and eat and drink … and oh well, we can use our brain to see more, at least that’s what it looks like ..or not to see anything ofcourse … )

Me personally would like to leave my body whenever it suits me … visit another body when I feel like it …
Hm … maybe I do all the time …

Maybe part of us is constantly out of our body .. and the further we can get out .. the more we can see, more than our normal senses could have made us see …
Is it the most nonsubmissive part of us that could make us see more …

Too bad that the bodies can’t cope with that state too long … without bad symptoms …

So, and now I’m planning my trip for tonight … be aware that I may come over to pay you a visit … make sure to be properly dressed … the one I visited will get this one single word in his/her mind tomorrow morning … the moment it’s in your mind you will realize why it wasn’t me who put it in there … Why? Just wait and you will see …

By: Berber Anna

Berber Anna — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:41:52 +0000

I never had an actual ‘out of body’ experience, but I had a really strange hallucination once, where my body felt all stretched out, like my head was at the ceiling and my arms were meters long. Interesting experience. It wasn’t that scary, since I fully knew what caused it — I hadn’t slept for four nights, trying to catch up on homework (I was 14 and sucked at planning even more than I do today… P).

By: Maura

Maura — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:23:50 +0000

@kelly – I get them with sleep paralysis, too although less often now than I used to. Most often it’s just a floating around the room thing, but I once had the sensation of speeding through hundreds of other apartments and houses incredibly quickly.

Good times!

By: Nopke

Nopke — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 19:12:01 +0000

Would not call it an out of body experience at all … the researchers clearly dont know what an out of body experience is … especially not the original ones …. the ones that happen to healthy people

By: kelly

kelly — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:18:13 +0000

I have these out of body experiences ALL THE TIME during sleep paralysis. It is weird because I can feel where I really am but it feels like the tactile equivalent of a dotted outline.
Brains are cool.

By: Flapjack

Flapjack — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 16:44:32 +0000

As I was watching, I got the strange feeling that the assistant with the paintbrush needed to put some paint on it.
If there was ever an excuse to scrawl “Kick me” on the back of someone’s t-shirt, surely this was it?