Original subtitles

how many of you have had an out-of-body

experience hands up wow that's about

fifteen percent maybe even twenty

percent good that's about what I would

expect it's perhaps slightly on the high

side because you've come to a lecture on

out-of-body experiences but even the

most you know ordinary I'm talking about

something else the audience will

probably you know usually come up with

about ten percent so this is not an

unusual experience what I want to

consider today because of the topic of

this day and the previous lecture which

I much enjoyed is whether out-of-body

experiences are or can be spiritual

experiences what is the relationship

between thinking you're out of your body

and anything we might call spiritual so

let's have a go at that I want to begin

with one of my greatest heroes William

James he was the psychologist working at

the end of the 19th century and early

20th century he had the most wonderful

ideas which then Freud came along and

ruined everything with the unconscious

and the ego and the subconscious and all

these things which just have failed

again and again they're popular they're

the way we feel about our minds but

actually they're wrong they don't

connect up with anything to do with how

the brain works ah if if that hadn't

happened perhaps some of James's ideas

we'd have got to spirituality and

psychology a lot quicker because he was

already talking about that now he

probably most of you will know this

absolutely famous famous quote and this

was after he'd breathe nitrous oxide in

the previous lecture you heard about how

this was was coming up with the change

in chemistry and people Humphrey Davy

and was one of the main ones taking

nitrous oxide in those days and James

came to the conclusion that and his

impression of its truth has remained

unshaken that it is our normal waking

consciousness is but one special type of

consciousness whilst all about it parted

from it by the film east of screens

there like potential forms of

consciousness entirely different

I hope that all of you may have had some

glimpse of through the filmy screen he

did it with nitrous oxide now that is a

really simple chemical it's three atoms

no2 and yet it has a an important role

in the brain and it can have a most

extraordinary effect how many of you

have had nitrous oxide recreationally Oh

quite a few how many of you had it like

childbirth or something like that I put

both up any women had it in childbirth

it's very different then because the

same it is with heroin and morphine and

so on if you're if you're in pain you

don't get the the psychedelic effects

but what happened to William James was

happen to many many many people

he's a kind of switch so you may any

ordinary state of consciousness this

side of the filmy screen think that the

world is made of matter and then

suddenly you you'll breathe in some

nitrous oxide and the world is made of

thoughts mm-hmm odd just like breathe it

in it wears off about a minute later

which is more spiritual hmm I'm going to

be I thank you I'm going to be asking

you lots of questions and that's nice

when you answer I've just been at

amazing comments on psychedelics in

Estonia and I was like how many people

think you know what do you think of that

and those all said we're Estonians we

don't answer in lectures okay

great to be back in they did eventually

I forced them anyway good to be back in

England where people actually respond so

if you think the world is made of matter

then you have a problem with

consciousness materialism which is the

dominant view in science although not

the only one just can't handle

consciousness how can what's going on in

a physical brain give rise to this

experience but if you go the other way

and go to idealism everything's made of

thoughts you can't account for matter

why should it be that we could agree I

mean you probably all agree with me that

I'm up here you're over there

this is a computer screen and so on but

if it's just our thoughts and one of the

whole problems of consciousness I can't

get to your experience I can't get to

your interior 'ti so how can we agree

about anything so neither of these

really works hence they're a great

mystery of consciousness which is not

what I'm going to talk about today I am

going to talk about how to party

experiences now what are the things that

really gets me annoyed is the way people

ask you know if things real or not real

it's excellent but that I'm just read on

psychedelics and he has these kind of

questions how can you be sure he's

talking to people who've had psychedelic

experiences with at a stay or magic

mushrooms or DMT or whatever how can you

be sure this was a genuine spiritual

event and not just a drug experience and

a draw or a drug experience interesting

and pleasurable but signifying nothing

there's this tendency to divide things

up in what I think is an extremely

unhelpful way you get this in

out-of-body experiences all the time

I just picked up a few news headlines

particularly impressed with the

economists out of your mind not out of

your body very funny

major breakthrough as scientists confirm

out-of-body experiences are real now

what do they mean by real they mail

something actually left the body which

of course is an empirical question

whether it does or not so everyone who's

had one which didn't leave their body is

not real either and are they experienced

a both sorry what are you going to say

what you agree there's got to be one or

the other then I disagree with you I

mean you're perfectly at liberty to

think it's got to be one or the other

but I would go along with the person who

said both so we can find out we can find

out in in both cases do we consider its

spiritual do we consider it neurological

but opposing them from the outset is not

very helpful nor is it you know is an

out-of-body experience a mere

hallucination but of course in a sense

it's alienation there are many people in

psychology now saying well all

experience is a hallucination it's just

the degree to which they agree with the

world you may have seen that Ted lecture

by and all Seth if you haven't that's

great on that topic that all have

experiences hallucination so these are

ways I do not want to think about out of

body experiences I returned to William

James who talks about how these

experiences are so available but he ends

up asking this question how to regard

them is the question this alone makes

him a hero of mine because he's not

saying oddly this or are they that he's

got a perfectly open mind he's had

psychedelic experiences he's he's

glimpsed through or even moved right

through to the other side of the film is

screen and his question now is not one

of those crude questions it is how do we

regard them and that is what I'm going

to consider today I'm going to consider

this with respect to an experience that

I had myself

and I do apologize how many of you are a

bit sick of hearing about this

experience because you've read about

before no not too many you're being

polite

there's quite a lot of videos and I've

written about it in in two books but I'm

glad if it's if any of it is is new to

you this is a bit weird to have an

experience in 1970 and then still be

talking about it in 2018 but the truth

of the matter is that this experience

has actually shaped to my entire life if

it hadn't been for this experience I

wouldn't have done the science I've done

I wouldn't have given up all the

sensible things I was intending to do

before I had this experience and lived

such a weird life so that's how my mum

liked me to look only she'd tell me to

tie my hair back and look neater this is

how I prefer to look back in 1970 this

was the the tail end of the hippie era

it was so exciting I went up to

university and I know it's all

absolutely thrilling and in my first

term well a man turned up in my room I'd

signed up for lots of things in them

freshers fayre and a man turned up in my

knocked on my door one morning and he

said you signed up for the psychic

Research Society

but I'm the only member left from last

year would you like to start it up again

with me and I looked at this guy and he

had long long long wavy hair and bright

sparkly eyes and looked so super cool

and he was a second year and I thought

yes so so I started running a psychic

Research Society with him and one night

it was early November in 1970 we had a

Ouija board session which I don't

recommend because you can get yourself

into psychological you know yeah you can

so I'm not recommending it but on the

other hand we did it so we sat there

with a table and a glass in the middle

and letters around and how the spirits

there and you know and it's spelling out

messages you know now I mentioned this

you'll understand later but I mention

this because having your arm going like

this is very disturbing to your body

schema to your sense of where your arm

is and also when like me you

extremely sleep-deprived cause it was

also thrillingly exciting I was staying

up till 4:00 in the morning either

playing Monopoly or arguing about

quantum mechanics or something you know

getting up for nine o'clock lectures so

I was very anyway and then I'm doing all

of this and then I promise to go up to a

friend's room and have a spliff and so

that's what we did and what as one does

as one does indeed and certainly did

then and I sat down on the floor

cross-legged on the floor listening to

some music

and he guesses what music no it wasn't

if I could have been Hendrix pretty

probably well what did you say

you said Pink Floyd uh I'm pretty sure

it would have been either Pink Floyd or

Grateful Dead

so there I am listening to the music and

really really tired and thinking I

really got to go to bed and I was going

down a tunnel and I was going down a

tunnel of trees this is a simple drawing

I did a few days later when I'd

recovered and it was like being on a

horse or in a horse-drawn carriage

because there were the noise you know

and all these leaves flashing past like

an autumn a tunnel of a road you know

towards a light now this is 1917 the

term near-death experience wasn't

invented until 1985 in 175 in the

first-ever book about near-death

experiences by Raymond Moody and so I'd

never heard of tunnel experiences at all

had no idea then this just happened to

me

and then one of my friends said to me

would you like some coffee and there was

absolutely no way out you know in this

tunnel I could answer so I didn't answer

and she said loser and went off outside

to the corridor to do the coffee and my

other friend came in said where are you

sue and I was like I really didn't know

where I was I can't say I'm in a tunnel

I don't know where I must remember I'm

in Vicki's room oh oh and as I try and

as I was sort of drifting and say

suddenly everything became clear

became so clear I had the impression

that this was vision

clearer than any vision I've ever had in

my life and there I am apparently on the

ceiling looking down and looking at

Kevin me Vickie out in the corridor I

could see through the walls but

otherwise it was quite you know sensible

looking and I think from what I know now

that if it hadn't been for Kevin

constantly asking me questions that

would be the end of that because most

out-of-body experiences are very brief

people get frightened or they start to

think about where they are or a think

about their body or they move and

they're back but Kevin said Oh have you

got an astral chord what could you do

now

can you move can you get out for him and

on and on and on and the result was that

I did I went up through another room out

of the roof and started flying around

the roofs of Oxford I was determined

even then to see if I could see anything

I could check the next day so I very

carefully looked at all the roofs and

the chimneys and the gutters and stuff

before I went flying off now I won't

bore you with millech travels because

they were in retrospect not very

interesting I tried to go to all kinds

of places but I suppose what was more

interesting was that I started with what

seemed like a complete Jupiter cut body

joined by a silver cord to the body down

there and then after some time and the

whole experience was more than two hours

after sometime I lost that and became

different shapes a huge flat sheet a

tiny speck odd shapes I mean it became

malleable and I tried to come back twice

the first time I came back I thought

fine it's okay things looked a bit weird

by now but you know at least I can come

back and then I went off again and the

second time when I came back what

happened was it's very interesting that

I can still remember this partly it's

probably some false memories I mean

because I've told the story quite a lot

both to myself and others

I've probably solidified some parts of

it possibly inaccurately but I did write

down as much as I could

two days later when I was able to write

again and I've also got my diary which I

wrote as well I came I tried to come

back into the body and now when I came

back the whole room was looking really

odd and my own body was kind of

like it didn't have a head on it had a

jagged neck it was really everything was

very weird nevertheless I was sure that

I had to get back in there

so I went inside and I got too small and

I was sort of moving around inside the

body thinking this is all wrong

I now know this is called internal chaos

copy but I didn't know that then either

I didn't know anything about any of

these things so I thought well I've got

to get bigger so I tried to get bigger

and I got bigger and bigger but I wasn't

the right shape and I tried to make

myself the shape of a body but I

couldn't despite what I've been doing up

until then and I couldn't manage it I

just got bigger and bigger and bigger

and then I really started to expand and

I didn't know anything about that as a

what a state of consciousness either and

I just got bigger and bigger and though

I went into the earth and the sky and

then the moon came in and planets and

then I think even then I was reflecting

that this was something like my rather

primitive idea of cosmology as as much

as I knew in those days but that was a

sort of plus passing thought the most

extraordinary thing was this I got to

the point where I couldn't get any

bigger I had the impression that I was

expanding at the speed of light but you

don't go anywhere then and time and

space it was the first time in my life

that I'd had an experience in which time

and space drop away and there are things

happening but they're not happening in a

conventional framework of time and space

and there was no distinction between

myself and everything else basically I

was everything everything was me I

didn't know anything about mystical

experiences oneness either in those days

and then Kevin said well there's got to

be something more what's next or

something like that and I you know was

was kind of dragged out of a wordless

state and thought well there can't be

anything more and then was this

extraordinary kind of a struggle that I

had or almost like but it's only a

metaphor really struggling through

clouds and that there opened up a sense

of something or someone benign not

looking at me either one I are millions

of eyes or just a sense though of being

observed by something benign and

slightly amused by how tiny

I was something like that and then and

then a long long struggle to get back

which really was I would interpret it

now as a long struggle to reinstate the

illusion of self that we all live by to

say you have got to go back inside the

body and look out through the eyes if

you want to go anywhere you've got to

take the body with you that seems you

know when I'm just pretty like going

anyway the ID of that lump down there

I've got to take it with me and you know

what made it happen in the end what do

you think would force you to take the

body with you

well-spotted exactly exactly I you know

in all these attempts to get back when I

was like drifting about the room and

every time I looked anywhere I'd sort of

go there and then there's a but and I

think you've got to do this you know

Victoria's cross with you enough because

you haven't answered her and keeping her

up and all that you know you've got to

get out of here so I did and then Kevin

said because he knew about you see he

was the second year and he was you know

the head of the psychic Research Society

and he knew about astral projection and

he said if you go to sleep now your

astral body will leave and never come

back and you'll die so I've got to keep

you awake so he kept me awake all night

which as far as I know is the only time

I've ever managed to stay awake all

night so you can imagine by the next day

I was a pretty weird state and I went

off to lick to a lecture and my bicycle

was and my body were over there and I

was going along like this and I thought

I'm not gonna fall off my bike but

anyway it was fine and then I had this

tutorial in which when sorry are closed

yeah yeah but I opened them in the

attempt to get back at that very last

stage I opened them and and then I'd

sort of zoom off again and I'd shut them

again try and concentrate and you know

and it that was part of the job it's an

interesting question because it was part

of the job to be able to open my eyes

without everything flipping which I miss

okay Oh astral only means of the stars

and I think the idea of astral

projection is that you know you project

beyond boring earth and go to the stars

but I don't really know the origin of it

it comes in theosophy from the Madame

Blavatsky and all that so

like long rendition of the experience

but I want to use this experience to

raise this question and perhaps we can

you know have a discussion and think

about it of whether these kind of

experiences can be considered spiritual

and if so in what way and and what that

might mean so that's the the starting

point now the philosopher Thomas

Metzinger who works a lot on

consciousness said has written you know

for anyone who had that kind of

experience it's almost impossible not to

become an ontological journalist that's

precisely what I did an ontological

duelist is somebody who believes like

Descartes in two kinds of kinds of stuff

mind and matter

ready Descartes 17th century French

philosopher much derided for Cartesian

dualism but I remember what a seeker he

was what a thinker he was asking himself

his meditations his book all the

meditations it's all asking difficult

questions you know who am i how does it

work how does it brain work he was one

of the first people to think of the of

the body as a machine and to think of

nerves taking signals along them but

then where did they go we still can't

really answer that so he would say you

know the light comes in into the eyes

and then it goes to the pineal gland

where pun yeah so it goes to the the

pineal gland which he chose as because

it's it's one of the few structures

there's only one of it in the brain you

know mostly because you know two

hemispheres because he could not solve

the problem which I started with at the

beginning we can't solve the problem of

consciousness at the moment how how this

relates to this very very difficult so

his idea was there really are two stuffs

to suck that ontology means what exists

so for him there was an existence mental

things and physical things but the

problem of this I mean it's absolutely

obvious what the problem is there are

lots of problems but the main one is how

the two would interact how on earth

could actual light signals and

you know whatever in the eyes suddenly

turn into the experience of red or the

experience of I don't know how what you

feel like sitting on the chair that

you're on at the moment it didn't work

then and it doesn't work now but does it

seem like this to you do you feel as

though you are inside your body does it

feel like you're inside your body does

it feel something like this I mean do

you feel yeah yeah I know you can't

can't detect that the comfy chair inside

your head and the speaker's but but do

you feel in some way that you are

inhabiting your body that you're inside

that head looking out through the eyes

and that you have that you know you are

in control if you want to raise your arm

you can do it if you want to pull the

leave it yes

hands up who feels something like that

most of the time okay so that's it's a

it's a common way that we feel now many

throughout most of the history of

thought people have thought well it is

like that there is somebody in there but

modern neuroscience tells us there can't

be anybody in there

this is a version if you like of Dandan

its Cartesian theater and what he meant

by the Cartesian theater was he was

saying you know everybody in

consciousness studies doesn't believe in

Cartesian dualism but they still

maintain this kind of idea that we're in

there there's a me in there and there's

a kind of mental screen on which my

experience and we have a stream of

consciousness and a stream of

experiences that we are consciously

having and then there's a whole lot of

other stuff as unconscious but then it's

point was when you discard Cartesian

dualism

you really must discard the show that

would have gone on in the Cartesian

theater that's all our experiences and

the audience as well because neither the

show nor the audience it can be found in

the brain and that is the only real

place there is to look for them now

there are many people that would

disagree people who believe in endless

consciousness expanded consciousness

consciousness beyond the brain and all

of that would say that the brain isn't

the only

so this is just one view but the point

that he's making is that we know the

brain does not have a central

headquarters it isn't constructed that

way we know that perception is not a

question of having pictures in the head

if you had pictures in the head you'd

need somebody to look at the pictures in

the head and that person would need to

have pictures in their head and you have

the whole homunculus problem and an

infinite regress it doesn't work now I

don't want to go into an entire lecture

on consciousness but that's that's very

much that that the starting point for

that psychology has also been able to

show that we start out very young as

journalists kids of three and four are

already separating living from nonliving

things even much much younger infants

tiny babies distinguish between things

that move themselves and things that are

pushed and by the time you're five or

six little kids are things things like

where's my brain and my brain helps me

do things and my brain helps me think

but it's me not my brain that has

feelings and loves my mummy and stuff

like that so these are very very natural

distinctions so being a Cartesian

duelist is a kind of ordinary state of

what people are like and to give it up

requires throwing out a lot of

intuitions the other thing of course is

that religions utterly most religions

sorry the monotheistic religions depend

at early on the concept of having a soul

or a spirit they couldn't play their

vile tricks if they didn't the all these

millions of people would not be going to

religious ceremonies if they were not

convinced of the the existence of a soul

or a spirit the whole idea that the

nasty meme tricks I mean I think of

religions as mean plexus they're nasty

mean pricked the most powerful meme

tricks that they play involves saying

well you've got a soul obviously and if

you behave in a certain way on earth

you'll go to heaven and if you'll behave

in a certain other way you'll go to hell

and they have very nasty ideas of what's

going to happen to you in hell you'll be

burnt alive and you know what

and the same thing is is true in Islam

the you are a precious god-given soul

and that's the way that Allah is able to

have power over you or the idea of and

all the instructions that you're given

they wouldn't work if you didn't if you

weren't a duelist

so actually giving it up is important if

you're going if you want to give up

being trapped by nasty religions

Buddhism alone or at least some versions

of Buddhism

not all reject this and I think the

Buddha really was doing this right from

the start he was rejecting some of the

proto Hindu kind of ideas about Atman

and the soul and so on and basically

developing the idea of an utter or or no

self which doesn't mean there is no such

thing as a self as far as I can

understand it at any rate because he

said different things to different

people

but as my understanding is it means that

the self is an illusion it's not what

you thought it was and I think this fits

very well with the neuroscience the self

is a construction of the brain it's a

story the brain is telling itself it's a

so representation of a self that doesn't

really exist so that representation has

effects important effects making us

selfish and greedy and all sorts of

other things some amongst all of it

I'll just give you one my absolute

favorite quote from early searchers of

what the would have said actions exist

and also their consequences but the

person that acts does not and the the

Zen endeavor at least because I can

speak more about Zen after 35 years of

Zen training and I'm not a Buddhist by

the way I'm going to sign up to any

religions you can probably gather from

the kind of things I say about religions

but the practices can be very powerful

the consequences of this go very deep

and they are to giving up the sense of

being somebody who acts of being

somebody with with consciousness and

free well those have to drop away in

quite a lot here but this is all kind of

leading me to the fact that astral

projection of course

makes in this context of what I've been

talking about makes perfect sense if you

have an out-of-body experience and you

feel as though you've left your body the

obvious obvious obvious answer is to

think that your spirit or soul or astral

body has departed from the physical and

gone somewhere else and you will find

this I mean I love all these things I

just put together a whole mishmash of

stuff I found on the web I specially

like this this blue powder astral

projection

blue powder and then of course there are

all the paranormal claims you can go to

the present or the future or the past

if you astral project and I expect if

you buy all these discs you can do even

more psychic powers there's all sorts of

psychic powers down there and well you

can go and do these things actually some

of them have very sensible advice on how

to have an out-of-body experience but

but most of them are written never less

dressed up in this and I want to get

away from making assumptions about this

and have a much more open mind about

what on earth might be going on in

out-of-body experiences so where we've

got to so far I've told you about this

experience I've suggested the problems

with dualism that suggests to me that

one can't one must necessarily think

about it in terms of something leave

with the body I would say it's an open

question

so I would like to know what you think

about it now we are going to have a

couple of breaks because this is a very

long session so I'm going to give you

five minutes or roughly five minutes and

I would like you to talk to your

neighbor please either just a couple of

people or three or whatever's convenient

in where you're sitting because we

haven't time to go off anywhere else and

just discuss with your neighbor or with

anybody what you think happened in that

experience well clearly you didn't have

any great trouble in discussing things

in a very crude way I am just going to

ask for hands up for three possibilities

something left something didn't or don't

know okay how many of you think that

something left the body

how many of you think that something

left my body during that experience like

an astral body or a spirit or soul or

something okay there's two four six

eight 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 roughly 24

okay how many think that nothing left

the body Oh probably about half the

audience okay hands up who didn't put

their hands up

why not oh you don't know that's not

very good answer how about you yes yes

you would you would could you all hear

that she was talking she was talking

about sleep paralysis this is when you

wait typically wake up it can happen as

you're falling asleep but typically it

happens as you wake up and you think

you're wide awake you feel it mentally

wide awake but you can't move now it how

many people have had that should be

about a quarter of you I was about a

third yeah now can we leave that till

later sorry we're not I was given

instructions not to allow questions in

between but anyway um Sulli paralysis is

very common as you couldn't tell from

here and the reason is when you're in

dreaming in REM sleep which is when you

have most of dreams if your your body is

kind of chemically paralyzed there's a

chemical disconnect between your motor

cortex and the spine and the muscles so

you can't move this is so you won't act

out your dreams and this disconnect that

this should be kept separate from waking

and it can go wrong in two ways

the paralysis cannot be good enough in

which case you go sleepwalking or the

paralysis can hang on when you've

partially woken up

now sleep paralysis is very very

interesting because we don't really know

whether when you're looking around your

bedroom and your

our lives and you're going and you got

you got screeching noises a quarter

maquette kind of noises going on in your

head you're feeling that you can't

breathe there's something on your chest

holding you down you've got sexual

arousal there's aliens coming to take my

eggs or whatever they can be really

horrible but it's it's perfectly normal

physiological state if anyone has it and

they don't like it the best advice is to

just relax it's only sleep paralysis

it'll go away but when you're in the

grip of it that doesn't help very much

as the woman's here said you know it's

so physically absolutely convincing and

200 years ago she would have been

thought she was being possessed or

attacked by the the the old men there

the the hag the old hag the nightmare

the canoe shabari in Japan the Kumar in

Nigeria I mean almost every culture has

its sleep paralysis myth and their most

recent one in the West is in the

production but why I go on about this

from you having said that is you can

turn sleep paralysis into an out-of-body

experience quite easily if you get sleep

paralysis then all you have to do is to

imagine just forget about the body and

imagine yourself lifting up or imagine

yourself rolling out of bed and your

motor out outflow the all the brain

stuff that's going to organize the

rolling out of bed will not be able to

make you actually roll out of bed you

stay there but it will split off and you

can get into an out-of-body experience

it's not reliable but it's one of the

best ways of getting an out-of-body

experience with one one um okay so who

else didn't put their hand up why

Tally's transporter yeah Oh hologram all

right right right yes yes yeah yeah I'll

have to stop you there because we can

come back and have longer discussions

later anyway third I've said there are

different reasons why you might not have

decided well I think it's an empirical

question but at the time what happened

to me was the next day I went out to

look at the roofs and the chimneys and

the gutters and everything well there

weren't any chimneys at all on my

college roof and the gutters were not

the ancient LED things I'd kind of

imagined or seen in my astral projection

they were modern plastic white ones but

you see there's always a way out of it

so I convinced myself that you know the

astral world is not an exact replica of

the physical world and things look

different in the astral and blah blah

blah and so I proceeded to become

absolutely convinced of the existence of

all sorts of things I had no way of

explaining this experience from the

science I was studying I was doing

physiology and psychology and the only

ideas I had were astral projection and

as Thomas Metzinger said it's natural to

jump to these conclusions if you have

such an experience so I decided then and

there age 19 that I'm going to devote

myself to parapsychology and to proving

to all those close minded scientists

that they are wrong and there's more in

heaven and earth than ever dreamt of in

your philosophy and blah blah blah blah

and I managed to get myself a place to

do a PhD funded myself through doing a

job and so on and began all my

experiments on telepathy and I basically

I utterly after art experience believed

in telepathy and clairvoyance

psychokinesis and precognition and go

sample

- guys sudden life after death and

spirit healing and you know so I trained

as a witch I learnt to read tarot cards

quite well

i sat with mediums physical mediums

mental mediums and all sorts of other

kinds of so-called spiritual trainings

that I did and I did loads of

experiments for my PhD and by the end of

my PhD I had a sprint theory the memory

theory of ESP that was going to

transform our understanding of the mind

and it was rubbish first of all I

discovered that that sort of theory was

had been around a long time and rejected

many times for theoretical reasons ennui

Bergson had a wonderful version of it

and I think as did - and then there was

the problem that we were beginning to

understand how memory does work I mean

back in 1970 we didn't have very much of

a clue I mean now in nowadays we can

look at dendritic growth and the changes

in sign up strength and we can

understand a lot about how memory works

but we didn't have a clue then so it was

kind of more forgivable that I had that

theory but the other thing was I devised

all these clever experiments - you know

it's sort of crafty you know

experimental design clever little

experimental designs to test my theory

that needed some telepathy awesome

clairvoyance and I never found any and

in the first couple of experiments I did

but then I'd done something wrong and I

got the stats wrong and you know as soon

as I started to do the experiments

properly I found no paranormal phenomena

so it was very difficult you have to

imagine me with my flowing hippie

clothes and my headbands and my dope and

my wonderful loom beads and all of this

stuff giving tarot readings to all my

friends and going you know what I don't

think there are any paranormal phenomena

at all it's a load of rubbish

yeah I did get my PhD I yeah thank you

yes thank you I did get my PhD and the

exact extent damn I said her noble work

a noble work even though he was really

disappointed because he was professor of

parapsychology at Edinburgh at the time

and and you know he said you know what

you've done is is was a wonderful series

of experiments that builds up you know

but it not what he would have liked to

see not what I would have liked to see

but this is the critical most central

thing about being a scientist that you

change your mind in the face of the

evidence so although it was extremely

painful at the time I'm ever grateful

for that because when I have another

brilliant theory about consciousness

which I do from time to time and then I

discover it's wrong I'm okay I'm used to

this and all my ideas about memes you

know I've wrote a book called the Mean

Machine most scientists think meme

theory is rubbish well I think I think

it's not I think it's brilliant it's not

me invented it Richard Dawkins invented

it but I can be proved wrong and that's

that's what science is all about so I

had to do something else I had to change

my mind and all bla bla very difficult

and so on but what I want to do now is

to tell you what over the years I've

discovered I will say first of all that

I wrote a book called beyond the body

published in 1982 which was my best

attempt after that failure of

parapsychology was my best attempt to

try and explain out-of-body experiences

in a naturalistic psychological way and

they couldn't really get very far at the

time it was considered a kind of classic

work of of trying to do that but we

didn't have the science and now we do so

what I'm going to do now is tell you

something about what we do know that can

help us understand my experience so what

about the tunnel this picture here is

was done by one of Ron Siegel's subjects

that he gave LSD to and you can see it's

a it's similar to my tunnel in the sense

that it's you know it's a tunnel with a

light at the end and it's got all these

televisions and things all around the

outside which is a surprisingly common

that's induced by LSD look at this one

in do in

sorry wrong button a picture that the

man called de David Howard gave me he's

given me a whole lot of paintings he

does paintings all the time

look at how similar that is it's got

that same structure with it it's you

know they could be television screens

very very similar but produced in

different ways

he gets frequent episodes of sleep

paralysis because of his narcolepsy and

he gets abducted by aliens and they take

him through this tunnel off to another

planet I should tell you he when he had

some medication that really helped he

kind of he was very much in two minds

about about it because he loved going to

these other planets and the medication

stopped it anyway why do we get tunnels

you also get tunnels in art in many many

cultures around the world particularly

cultures that use psychedelic drugs you

get them on textiles and pots and all

sorts of things and lots of people get

tunnels on the verge of sleep how many

of you have experienced visual tunnels

as you're falling asleep about a dozen

of you hmm

I get them what though what children get

yes yes yes yes yes they do

adults too but children more yeah

and they get out of body experiences too

when they L of course now what do we

know about tunnels well it turns out and

it's been known quite a long time the

answer is very simple but it requires

some mathematical modeling you all you

need to know is that if this represents

the outside world or your retina if you

prefer anything that is a circle in the

outside world or on the retina is

projected onto a straight line so the

way the cortex is built is a kind of

columnar organization and it takes is

its retinotopic in the sense that it

Maps the retina onto the cortex in v1

primary visual cortex but it does it in

such a way that circles become straight

lines now one thing we do know is that

when you get hyperactivity in the cortex

and this is going to be important in

several contexts

you get minds of spreading activation

going along now what I mean by

hyperactivity is too much activity so

what's happening in the brain is I mean

lots is happening but one fundamental

principle is you've got a lot of

excitatory neurons that excite the next

one they connect to and you have a lot

of inhibitory neurons that inhibit the

next one they connect to and all loads

and loads of processes operate to keep

everything in balance through inhibition

now if you take a drug for example any

of the classical psychedelics that

produce disinhibition then you get

hyperactivity if you are getting close

to death and lacking oxygen the

inhibitory cells are more susceptible to

oxygen loss and so you get this

inhibition if you have certain kind of

shock through other effects on

neurotransmitters you'll get this

inhibition so that's important to trying

to understand these experiences and

disinhibition individual cortex will

produce those circles and if they get if

this circles start to get bigger as the

hyperactivity gets stronger then you

will appear to be going down a tunnel

towards the end this is called the it'z

it's one of the four form constants

discovered in the 1940s by cleaver that

under these conditions you get spirals

cobwebs tunnels checkerboards and so on

and those pictures I showed you our

combination of constants the

checkerboard and the tunnel presumably

from that and in the near-death

experience when you have going towards

the bright light I did a simple computer

simulation a long time ago you know if

you are in if you've got no context and

something is a bright lights getting

bigger in front of you you'll feel as

though you're being pulled towards it

and typically in a near-death situation

you've lost contact with a sensory

contact with your body either through

great pain or damage or whatever so the

tunnel is not a mystery at all

now what about the out-of-body

experience itself how am I getting on

right okay first of all I want to be

clear about distinguishing it from some

other experiences so

it is not if you if you look in

Wikipedia and I must get around to

learning how to edit Wikipedia and

change it because it calls it Auto

Skippy but it's not

the trouble is auto Skippy means seeing

yourself so in that sense it is Auto

Skippy but normally in in psychiatry or

Tosca P refers to this experience like a

doppelganger

so in Auto Tosca P you in a doppelganger

you know Tammy I'm standing here and

I'll see another version of myself there

but I'm feeling myself in my body and

I'm seeing a hallucination of myself in

front of me that's classical rotoscopy

Co Tosca P is when you don't know and

that must be even worse when there seem

to be two of you and you don't know

which one uses you and which is not you

that's very rare much rarer than or

Tusker P and finally in the out-of-body

experience which is drawn here with them

lying down just because that's more

typical it's quite different you the you

know what you feel you are is looking is

outside the body looking at the physical

body so it's located that they don't get

them mixed up now I want to start with a

definition because definitions are

important again if you look up online

you will find an horrible model of

astral projection out-of-body

experiences and some very bad

definitions and out-of-body experiences

when you leave your body and float

around in the elsewhere or you get

people saying astral projection is when

you really leave your body and an outer

body experiences when you don't and I

find these all extremely unhelpful so I

won't stick to this is the version I

wrote in my book then but there are

other very very similar definitions used

by the very very few scientists in the

world who actually study out-of-body

experiences they all take this form it's

an experience in which one seems to

perceive the world from a location

outside the physical body note the seams

that is the important thing

this leaves open the question of whether

anything really leaves the body or not

so an out-of-body experience by

definition is an experience in which you

seem

to be outside your body looking at the

world from there that describes the

experience now we can ask why does it

seem that way does it seem that way

because you really are or does it seem

that way for some other reason how can

we explain it so starting from that

definition I can tell you some allow

just zip through some stuff we know

about out-of-body experiences this

implies that an outer body experience is

not and cannot be a psychic phenomenon

like seeing something at a distance it's

an experience it's the experience of

seeming to be out of your body if it

coincides with you seeing something you

couldn't possibly have seen then that is

it that is a psychic a psychic

phenomenon but the two aren't

necessarily the same thing it's another

consequence of it now we can all answer

quite easily now which we couldn't in

1982 a whole lot of very basic questions

so how common are they

well actually it's quite hard to know

there are loads and loads and loads of

surveys but they all have huge problems

but there are several really well done

surveys I did one myself in 1984 where

there is a proper random survey done a

random sample of a population and that's

quite hard to do but you will see that

they all come up with pretty high

answers these these are the only ones

that as far as I know that exist Palmer

and Dennis took two populations in the

same town the students 25% had had

out-of-body experiences and they towns

folk only 14% which is kind of odd

because the students are younger so they

had less time in their life to have one

and we get this actually this age

phenomenon lots of people say they had

OBEs as children but when you asked

children they say they didn't they don't

so it's very very some very odd things

going on Iceland I mean this may be

biased landok people are less prone I

mean I really don't know and my own

survey came up with 12% but I think the

only important thing to note is that it

is an ordinary experience available to a

lot of people it's not just a kind of

weird thing for spiritual people or

anything else most of the experiences

happen when relaxing or meditate

usually lying down although not

necessarily there are some wonderful

stories I particularly like one

Celia green collected a load of them in

a book in 1968 of a woman taking her

driving test and she said she was

sitting on the roof of the car making

every kind of possible mistake she

possibly could and couldn't do anything

about it

probably because she was so nervous the

story does not relate whether she passed

or not but I assume not and I assume she

didn't drive the car into off a cliff or

we wouldn't have known the story and

this is something when people do have

over years when they're awake in normal

life they seem to carry on quite

normally like the vicar who was giving a

sermon and was particularly nervous and

he watched himself from the other end of

the church giving the sermon and

afterwards he asked the congregation or

some of them whether they'd noticed

anything odd and they said no no

wonderful sermon on the verge of sleep

of course a mutton tail sleep paralysis

and close to death obviously the

out-of-body experience is one component

of a near-death experience I'm not going

to say I might mention near-death

experiences but I'm not going to say

much about them but typically you get

tunnels lights at the end of the tunnel

out-of-body experience going to other

worlds meeting a barrier and so on so

it's just one component of an NDA who

has them well these correlations have

been found with positive schizotypy

which is a version of skits a tabby that

that is closely related to creativity

and imagination psychological absorption

which is the capacity to become absorbed

in film or a book or something like that

fantasy proneness things like having

childhood companions how many of you had

had childhood you know imaginary

imaginary friends as a kid oh not very

many anyway they are caught they are

quite common and they're they're

correlated with over years and

susceptibility to patent glare which

I'll come on to in a minute

people are often worried by their

out-of-body experiences and think they

must be going mad and this is something

at interested me a long time ago and

so I did a very small study with a with

a small group of schizophrenics and I

used as a control group patients and

they were all hospitalized for

schizophrenia and I used a control group

of patients who'd like broken the leg or

something nothing to do with mental

things and the answer was exactly the

same and then very soon after that

governed Twemlow did a huge study with

thousands of subjects and found that the

ob ears were typically psychologically

very healthy ah does this bother you

okay if it bothers you don't look at it

for too long I will not look at it

because it bothers me intensely weird

things happen

what sort of weird things are happening

to any of you it's moving it's moving

what did you say vibrating moving what

else

Karla's you've got colors forming

anything else hmm it's getting brighter

all right right yeah so all sorts of

weird things happen but it can be very

unpleasant for some people now this is

what's called pattern glare and it's

tested with a little set of things you

have to look at and if you're

susceptible to pattern glare then this

means that certain frequencies you'll be

more upset by than others and so it's

easy to test but it is thought to be a

test of cortical hyperactivity

excitability that is you remember I

talked about how the tunnel and I'll

come to the OBE later may be caused by

hyperactivity in different parts of the

brain well some people have just more

excitable cortex and I think I'm one of

those I'm very very susceptible to these

things I'm very susceptible to noise I

never listen to music if I can possibly

avoid it and I try and stay away from

noise as much as I can because it gets

up now I understand why because the

inhibitions not working too well I

suppose and it's recently been found

that people who have out-of-body

experiences are more susceptible and

this would fit with the idea that OBEs

may be caused by cortical hyperactivity

I'm still just asking some basic

questions are they just dreams no I mean

I've had so many boring people say to me

how are they just a dream no they're not

just a dream because we know that

out-of-body experiences although they

may happen on the verge of sleep ones

that have been tested in the lab have

never been in REM sleep also they don't

feel like dreams sorry they're not in

REM sleep they're usually in they can be

in stage one sleep but they're usually

in waking a waking state and certainly

most people would say that they were

wide awake when they had it and not

asleep also they don't feel like dreams

people after OBEs go

that was really than real and most of us

wake up after ordinary dreams and go oh

goodness me that was a rubbish and why

didn't I realize it was a dream well

most of us are not lucid most of the

time in dreams lucid dreams are dreams

in which you know at the time that it's

a dream how many of you have lucid

dreams Oh excellent

gosh probably more than half they are

closely related to Oh bees in the sense

that they feel very similar and the same

people tend to have them they have this

feeling of when you go from an ordinary

me to loose a dream everything seems

brighter more realistic but also you can

take control to a much greater extent

not not totally always but you can think

of oh right I can fly and that's a very

common response I have been told that

the really really cool thing to do with

a lucid dream is to meditate in a lucid

dream has anyone done that yes well good

for you

because I at 'le failed the only time I

got close I was become lucid because I

was swimming across the estuary in Seoul

come in Devin in the night and I thought

this is ridiculous I wouldn't be doing

this oh it's a dream I'll fly then and

as I was flying over the hills I thought

oh no I'm supposed to be meditating so I

went down to sit and meditate and that's

all I remember it

so never mind

cutter gosh yes there are all sorts of

ways you can play around with these

states if you have that you know I I

feel rather feeble I've had some amazing

experiences but I do not have the

control to do that to jump from dream to

another dream or some people can wake up

and then just go back into the dream

they were having before all sorts of

things that people do that are amazing

anyway a lot of these things are related

having lucid dreams having flying dreams

experiencing other altered states are

all correlated with having OBEs and I've

already mentioned sleep paralysis I

think what I didn't say is this feeling

of there's something on your chest and

that it's suffocating and you can't

breathe it's probably because when

you're still partially in REM sleep your

breathing is under automatic control

it's it's just goes on regardless and

you have no no actual control yourself

over the breathing so if you try to

breathe you think oh my god I'm so

frightened and you'd sort of expect to

be able to you know to be breathing

faster and you can't it's just going

your breathing's just going fine it

feels as though you're being obstructed

and I think that's the origin of the the

thing sitting on your chest

Incubus succubus those kinds of scary

stories and and does some you mentioned

in centuries gone by these things were

thought to be real and sent from the

devil and you that you must have done

something really really bad to deserve

this so I want to come to the real

question which is whether something it's

not the real question I'll come

eventually back to James's question but

the most obvious technical question is

whether anything leaves the body in an

OBE and there are two types of Theory

obviously it does or it doesn't and how

are we going to find out well

classically in in parapsychology which

of course I was involved with for a very

long time they would ask whether astral

bodies can be detected and whether you

can affect things and I did a whole lot

of tests for about seven or eight years

I had a five digit number

word and some objects on the fridge in

my kitchen and anyone who had an

out-of-body experience spontaneously was

asked to come and see if they could see

them now this is interesting because you

see it's difficult to do OB studies in

the lab because you can't just get

someone and stick them in the lab and go

have an out-of-body experience now I'll

put you in a scanner but if you can do

this they can come they can have it

whenever they like in their own home at

night in bed and then come to my kitchen

but of all the people who ever tried it

nobody ever managed to get it right so

that was kind of disappointing

and of all the studies done in

parapsychology groups one particularly

thorough study and survey of the studies

concluded that overall no detectors were

able to maintain a consistent

responsiveness of the sort that would

indicate any true detection of an

extended aspect of the self I'm just

quickly glossing over lots and lots of

experiments which are extremely

unhelpful

well I'm inconclusive that everything

changed and this is why after I'd kind

of given up I wrote that book beyond the

body in 1982 and then I went off and did

other things mimetics consciousness

studies all sorts of other stuff work

that I did and I did not ever think I

would want to come back to out-of-body

experiences again but I did because of

what happened in 2002 a paper in nature

arguably the the top science journal in

the world Olaf Blanke a Swiss Nerissa

neurosurgeon was operating on a patient

a woman with such severe epilepsy that

she was having seizures all day long I

mean just she couldn't have a decent

life at all they completely failed to

find the focus of the epilepsy and so

they put a an array of subdural

electrodes now the dura is the skin over

the brain so this is not just under the

skull it's under the skin all right on

the brain you know there's a not a

common opportunity but he was able then

to stimulate you can see the array

roughly depicted here he was able to

stimulate different places and different

combinations of places

and what he found is when he stimulated

gently here in the right temporoparietal

Junction she said that her body was

becoming distorted it was getting longer

and thinner or her legs were moving and

then when he gave a stronger stimulus

she said I'm on the ceiling looking down

so we know this you can induce

out-of-body experiences by stimulating

the right temporoparietal Junction what

does it mean you see ah to me it brings

me back to the old gods spot arguments

do you remember the whole god spot thing

they discovered a certain spirit very

close spot actually that when people in

deep meditation or Carmelite nuns in

deep prayer or whatever this bit of the

brain lights up well some people said

well there you are you see spiritual

experiences meditation experiences are a

perfectly natural brain phenomenon and

other people are saying ah this is the

place through which God communicates

with us now you could have exactly the

same contrast here without a body

experiences you could say ah well this

is the hole through which the astral

body leaves this is the so called astral

door we found the astral door and so on

but what makes one not say that is to

know what the TPJ does and this just

comes from wikipedia the TPJ is

maintaining amongst other things is

maintaining the body schema now would

you all just kind of wriggle a bit like

this please see it's so easy you can do

it but you couldn't do that without

falling off your chair or hitting

somebody by mistake or whatever if you

didn't have a body schema in other words

of representation in the brain of where

your arms and legs are where they're

moving what you're telling it to do and

all of that it's so natural to us we

don't think about the fact the brain has

to create such a thing and probably

reception is part of it that is you know

it's not just proprioception it's taking

in other senses as well because sight

you know how hard it is just how long

can you stand on one leg with your eyes

shut that's meant to be a test of how

old you're getting and opening your eyes

helps an awful lot because you then know

where you are so it's integrating touch

sight proprioception and everything into

this representation of where the body is

so of course if you disturb it weird

things are going to happen like your

legs getting longer and shorter or your

body seeming bigger or smaller of that

somewhere haven't you and at the extreme

I think that what's happening not just

me what appears to be happening is the

brain is is so determined to keep

producing a body schema it has it has a

kind of body shape from birth you've got

that anyway even people who are born

with no arms or legs have a complete

body schema that does have arms and legs

that's intrinsic to us but if you if you

disturb the ongoing one that is trying

to connect with all the senses in the

proprioception then it's going to split

it can't any longer keep the the schema

it's got in touch with the feelings that

are coming from your body so it makes

perfect sense how do we know that the

body schema that the the TPJ is doing

this here's one simple little test there

are loads and loads of ways people know

but what I want you to do is is tell me

which hand it left or right hand is the

gray one so I'm going to shout out a

letter like C or something and I want

you to say left or right according to

which is the left hand are you ready B D

a C very good okay and that you got them

all right

I think everyone got them right very

good audience usually there's some

completely wrong people but this when

people are doing that sort of a test you

get activity at the TPJ there are many

other ways in which we know so that's a

kind of summary if you like of some of

the I'm just suddenly realize how little

time I've got of the things we know

about Oh bees so are they spiritual

experiences that's such a difficult

question I'm coming back now - James how

do we regard these things I think it's

unequivocal personally and you can

disagree

obviously that out-of-body experiences

are caused by hyperactivity

in the selfing system of the brain in

particularly the body schema but I

remember I started with this awful

distinction between I think real or not

real

that's to me not important I think the

answer is nothing leaves the body but

could they still be spiritual

experiences and to me the answer is yes

now I say yes

I had I was going to give you a break

there but I've gone too slowly and we've

only had one break and I was going to

have to but let's see how we get on what

I would like to do now just before I

move on to some final experiments is to

demonstrate for you who knows about the

rubber hand illusion who doesn't know

about the rubber Handan fine so more of

you don't know about it than do I can do

this very quickly but I would like a

volunteer please to come and have a

weird experience who would like to have

a weird experience right come on then

you can come and sit here now I am going

to give her a wonderfully weird expel

all ways work and of course it doesn't

always work particularly in situations

where you're being watched by a lot of

people kind of people but a lot of

people yes okay this is a rubber hand

now that the somewhat like your left

hand so I'd like you to put your left

hand in there please so you can't see it

but it's quite close to the rubber hand

all right

I'm really excited good that'll help now

I want you to put your right hand here

okay okay right bit more forward like

that so okay all right now I am going to

stroke the same finger on this rubber

hand as I'm stroking on her under here

but she can't see it I want you to look

I need to line it up a bit better I want

you to look at this rubber hand and feel

concentrate on feeling there stroking I

just keep looking at the rubber hand

why are you smiling it does do you feel

quite normal

yeah oh dear and I'm hoping to give you

a wonderful experience where do you feel

it yeah where's that yeah where's your

left ha ha it's obviously she's a

hopeless subject I kind of felt what

kind of dissociation yes I think so if I

could devote 10 minutes to this what

will happen thank you very much thank

you for your bravery if I could devote

that to 10 minutes and I'd got it set up

really well what happens is people start

to feel as though that is their hand and

it's really very spooky I've had people

go oh you know they're just suddenly it

seems to go other people it's very

gradual but it is a it is a kind of

weird weird experience now why is this

relevant it's relevant partly because

it's relevant to all kinds of illusions

and to what we make of our own body and

so on but it's particularly relevant

because where's my little thing gone

let's forget about this oddly oby ears

are not more susceptible to it let's

forget this but mm-hmm people have

wondered whether they could make the

same thing and make out-of-body

experiences with a whole body and they

have actually done so the famous paper

was called video ergo sum' meaning I see

therefore am and what they did was well

you can see you can see it here so you

have the participant here and they have

on a what you call it a head-mounted

visual display which is displaying what

comes from this camera here so the

camera is looking here

and it's showing through this wire what

it sees to this person here so what's

that person seeing they're seeing their

own back okay so now what do we do ha ha

stroke the back now what is the person

seeing hmm no they're not seeing someone

well you out they're seeing but yeah

they're feeling they're feeling was

stroking on the back here but they're

seeing the stick being stroked in the in

front so what do you think happens as

long as it's not you I don't mean that I

mean I mean that would have worked if we

carried on I'm sure hmm what what do you

think happens any more suggestions

yeah pun no they keep feeling it they

keep exactly not suddenly but they

identify with the virtual body so they

tend to feel I've moved forward they

tend to feel they're further forward

even though they can feel it here

because they're watching it there that's

why they call it video I go some their

feeling seems to go with vision so they

seem to move forward into the virtual

body there's another way of doing this

which is much trickier to do and I've

tried it but so in this case what

happens is here's the camera again two

meters from the person this is the

person with a head mounted display so he

is seeing what's coming through that

that lens so what's he seeing this in

this one it's different because what I

want you to do please is you will got

pens expect but if not use your finger

but pick up a pen and Stroke your own

chest like this so that comes up right

up here and then strike your chest so

what are you seeing

hmm what are you seeing yep you're

seeing the pencil or your hand appearing

before your face and then disappearing

and then you feel it yeah so what this

what Aronson tried to do was to mimic

okay sorry to mimic this by this stick

goes like that in front of it like you

were doing and this one is stroking the

chest so now what's going to happen no

in nothing on his back he'll feel the

thing on his chest and he'll see a stick

like this as though it's going in front

of him no it's very very tricky to see

this but just to try and imagine Oh

exactly he'll see it from the position

of the camera he'll feel as if he's

moved backwards into the place of the

camera because he's seeing that like

that's why I got you to do it because

he'll see that and then he'll feel the

thing on his chest so he thinks it's got

to be here because vision overtakes it

so he feels he goes backwards to the

camera so in the first case they seemed

to go forwards towards the virtual body

and in this case they seemed to go

backwards towards the camera and these

are both ways that they're not called

out-of-body experiences they're called

out-of-body illusions but I'll just

finish with some thoughts about this

which is they've done both with special

robotic stroking thing and then they

even put you in a and in a scanner and

they've found some really interesting

things you can manipulate the strength

of the effect and when you have a

stronger illusion you don't react so

much to a threat so they did experiments

with somebody's having this illusion and

they get a knife and go rather slowly

like that and normally if it came

towards you you would and have a sweat

reaction but if you're having an

out-of-body illusion you don't feel

you're there you don't get that lower

body temperature and reduce pain so they

have people put their arms in I

buckets which really hurts but doesn't

do you any harm and if they have their

out-of-body illusion they don't feel it

so much I think that's important because

a lot of kids abused kids and you know

have really awful circumstances will

resort to an out-of-body experience to

escape and it's kind of slightly

comforting to think that it really does

reduce the pain even though it doesn't

actually take away their harm done so

this is just a summary of how the

scientists are looking at out-of-body

experiences it's so exciting to me that

now after all these years there are

actually people researching and writing

about OBEs in proper scientific

literature

sadly they tend to say it's failure

disturbed deviant hallucinations and so

on I don't think that way I think it's

rather interesting that failure is just

an attitude towards it the fact that it

is an neuronal brain based phenomenon

for me that doesn't make it doesn't make

me want to dismiss it but it's also a

skill I mean people who can have these

experiences at will are quite rare but

what for me makes it a spiritual

experience is this it hits right at the

heart of what it of Who am I or all my

Zen practice if you like and all my many

experiences with psychedelics and with

cannabis have been a lot of them about

Who am I what is mind what is

consciousness this is you know what

drives my life if you like and that's

even at the heart of spiritual

experiences because so often the

spiritual experience is a self

transformation it's no longer I am a

little terribly important frightening

thing you know you know but I am

actually part of you or I am become the

tree me and the tree are the same thing

and any number of transformations of

what it is what the self is so I think

out-of-body experience research now is

getting at these different aspects of

the self which we know the self a self

system in the brain is constructing and

um and they're taking them apart by

doing things like the rubber hand

illusion and these other illusions so

you can think of the self the

brain is constructing embodiment I'm in

here first-person perspective I'm

looking from feeling from here ownership

this is my body who is the I who owns my

body by the way and agency I'm the one

who has free will and does things all of

these collapse in mystical experiences

and spiritual experiences or at least

they're all I would say agency collapse

the concept of freewill collapses things

are just happening ownership becomes

unimportant first-person perspective

changes and embodiment becomes different

as well we've known these things and I'm

coming back to did James thought itself

is the thinker and psychology need not

look beyond there isn't a thinker as

well as the thought I'm a pride myself

on me me I have these thoughts I decided

to do is earth but as in Zen practice

this this view of his is far more

realistic there's no place for a soul

inside your head no of course not

and I like this one from a spiritual

teacher a Buddhist teacher is the self

like a unicorn a mythical being whose

representations exist but who's actually

imaginary and I think that's what I was

getting at when I talked about an utter

and no self in in zan terms yeah there

is a self but it's a representation of

something that doesn't exist so it has

effects within the brain it's a brain

structure so here's just a few more

nobody ever was or had her self self

just seemed to be real and continuous

and they're not

and finally I'll come back to him apply

the requisite stimulus and there they

all are how to regard them is the

question and I think he would probably

agree with me in regarding the

experience that I've told you about and

many others as being spiritual

experiences that's why my answer is yes

this led me into decades of meditation

and I think I've found some of the same

places as I did before in the OBE

and I certainly regard those experiences

that I've had in meditation of time and

space disappearing of oneness and so on

and dropping away of action not doing

arising and so on so if you want to find

out anymore I gather they have got

seeing myself my book here but they

haven't got my very short introduction

to consciousness the second edition came

out about six months ago or the third

edition of my massive consciousness

textbook which my daughter Emily helped

me with and so you might be interested

in that but above all I would just like

to say thank you for coming to listening

to all this and I hope that I have given

you the thought that we should not just

divide things up into real or unreal

spiritual or physical because physical

and spiritual are one that's the lesson

of spiritual experiences is not mind and

not a separate they are one so if we're

ever to understand things like

out-of-body experiences this is the

right way to go about it and we

shouldn't just dismiss them as deviant

hallucinations but as teaching

experiences that help us to come closer

to that oneness thank you

I think we need a microphone we've got

just over 15 minutes I will try and keep

my answers quite short please make sure

that you ask a question and don't make a

very long rambling statement but having

said that I did that earlier on didn't I

say I'll have to forgive you do we have

the microphone Oh apparently we don't in

that case would you like to stand up and

shout your question we don't have a

microphone oh yeah he's arrived no you

don't need to shout he's come he's right

it's all right good question good

question they don't as far as I'm

concerned and I can be wrong and I as

I've said I'll change my mind if the

evidence tells me I'm wrong but it's got

to be very good evidence because I spent

probably the best part of 20 years

investigating all kinds of different

things not just my PhD research but

poltergeists and ghosts and so and so on

I do not think there are any paranormal

phenomena I think every single claim of

paranormal phenomena has a better

explanation in normal terms and I also

don't think that spiritual experiences

and paranormal experiences are remotely

connected its parapsychology kind of

claims to be spiritual people claim that

it's more spiritual if you're in your

near-death experience you saw the the

shoe in there whatever it was I don't

get that connection yep yes yes well I

was for a long time I'm not now yeah I

left eventually when I gave up

parapsychology but I gave him a lecture

on Oh bees a couple of years ago and I

still have friends many friends in it oh

well good for you good for you because I

love that society and there was a

wonderful people there this lady here

was kind of it and right sorry what was

the first kind of Dreams well if there

are clairvoyant dreams I'm wrong now you

may have had some that seemed to be

clairvoyant and you know if if this that

were 30 years ago I'd go right I'll come

and investigate and yeah give me you

know the number I did one for example

Chris Robinson was very famous quite a

long time ago in the troubles in

Northern Ireland you see I'm going back

now to the old days when I did this

stuff but he had these dreams in which

he predicted so it said the different

bombings and awful things that were

happening in the troubles in Northern

Ireland and so when he wanted to be

tested by his in those days I was quite

well known for doing parapsychological

testing so I set up an experiment with

his help he helped me design it in which

I had in my study a big box with his

name on and he saw where I sent him a

photo of where it was and he told me

what sort of objects to put in it and

then every day I would put one of these

objects in the box and lock it all up

and we had a proper procedure and then

he sent me all his dreams and he said

that he would be able to he would dream

of things in the box which he didn't he

was convinced you know that he was able

to do it but when you actually match

them up they didn't match up and you

know you it gets so tedious

I'm just except that most people in the

world believe in paranormal phenomena

because very many people in the world

have experiences that seem to be

paranoid but they just don't stand up to

the evidence as far as I can see yes yes

okay I I have been called I'm responding

to this lady here I have been called a

sigh inhibitory experimenter in other

words when I go in when sue Blackmore

comes into the lab all the paranormal

phenomena disappear

and could it be well two things firstly

in the beginning I believe they said

because I'm not a believer but in the

beginning I believed all this stuff you

believe me don't you it I really

believed it I mean I really really

really did that was my whole aim in life

was to prove it so you can't say that my

experiments didn't work in the first

place because of that because I really

really really really want to go to work

so but this is a very common argument

within parapsychology that Sue Black was

assigned hibbity experimenter so there

have been tests with a sign here tree

and a not an aside promoting

experimenter mmm there have been two

experiments that seemed to show some

difference but most of them don't so we

you know that's a scientific question

you can go in but I don't ever want to

do parapsychology again because it's so

frustrating all I can say is from what I

know I don't think there any phenomena

somebody else can go and do all that

hard oh that's the easy bit that's

changed dramatically over time that has

changed dramatically over time at all do

George

or I could say Oh nurse'll no I'll go

call her for you the art the old

person's home joke I can't I can't say I

can't answer the first part but I can

say that it's changed dramatically and

it's not any longer

that'll do that'll do right ESP is

defined as three phenomena telepathy

clairvoyance psychokinesis sorry

telephony clairvoyance precognition

those are the three phenomena of ESP and

I have already said that I think all of

them don't exist you can see why you

don't have to agree with me I don't

expect everyone to agree with me because

most people in the world at every time

we know about have believed in these

phenomena and I think it's all because

of dualism and I think dualism is all

because the way evolution has structured

us to get around in the world the

easiest thing is to have a model of self

and we're getting this in robotics now a

model of self as an entity controlling

the body and since that's we've evolved

that way it's very very hard and there's

a wonderful another wonderful quote from

the Buddha a monk asks him oh great

Buddha where were they caught him

chuckling meanie it does a man cry and

weep when he learns that there is no

self and the Buddha says yes a man does

cry and weepin and beat himself when he

discovers that there is no self and I

think this is just a statement of even

in those days it's probably worse now

because we're so self obsessed with you

know social media and and email and

everything and our communications it is

natural to be a dualist it is natural to

believe in communication by telepathy

it's very very hard

not at all impossible it's a long slog

to let go of free will to let go of self

as a controlling entity who has a stream

of experiences

these are the practices which come about

through meditation through mindfulness

practices I think it's a letting go of

those thank you I'll take

well I I'm not going to answer your part

about how we can explain psychic

phenomenon because I you know done that

been there not succeeded and I don't

want to spend my life doing it anymore

but at the heart of the first part of

your question is something very

important would it be better for society

to encourage people to be firmly within

their body now one part of my answer is

to say but I'm interested in the truth

not what's good for society and I've had

this augmented lot with Dan Dennett and

others about free will because I think

free will is an illusion and he says yes

but if everybody believed that then

society would break down and I'm going

well like Darwin you know and and and

then people were saying to him then but

if people found this out then it would

be so terrible and you know so that's

one part of your question but another

another response to that is it's a

well-known question within spiritual

teachings it is often said that you need

to have a really firm and solid sense of

self before you let it go and some

people think yes and some people think

no but it is a it's it's probably a

sensible and safe way to approach it you

do not take young kids well actually

they do now mindfulness but you don't

take them to do deep intensive

meditation until they've got the firm

sense of self and you don't take its

phrenic and say hey it'd be really good

for you to try and have out-of-body

experiences but you know so I agree I

agree with you there and I think that's

an important question

I've just come back from a conference

called SCI currents psychedelics

conference in Tallinn in Estonia and I

was lucky enough to have the most

extraordinary DMT experience and also

had one night of since I've been and one

night of DMT and this was DMT not DMT

dimethyltryptamine is the active

ingredient in ayahuasca it's a very very

powerful hallucinogenic you can smoke it

and it only lasts about 10 minutes if

you smoke it longer than nitrous oxide

but not very long and it hits you like

I've done this before

it hits you like everything goes in like

screaming noise and everything you see

turns into monsters and then it's over

in ayahuasca the reason it's so short is

because it's broken down by monoamine

oxidase in ayahuasca Amazonian peoples

are very cleverly over the centuries

discovered that if you mix it with some

other plant which contains harmine and

harmaline and tetra hydro calm I mean

these are mono amine oxidase inhibitors

and if you take them in this so-called

vomit drug it's absolutely vile tasting

disgusting awful gloop and you swallow

this stuff you get six seven eight hours

of slower and quite mind-blowing and

extraordinary experiences last week I

had something completely different and I

think it's very rare which is inhaled

DMT with a monoamine oxidase inhibitor

prepared beforehand out and put under

your tongue and absorbed and then you

can breathe this stuff in and it will

last 15-20 minutes and then it sort of

wears off but you can then have some

more so I was able to go in and out of

the DMT experience and I was told to go

within and become very small and I had

the most extraordinarily profound

experiences a amongst the hallucinations

on that now I don't know what your

question was but I'm so full of this

because it's last week I'm like you know

that was amazing and not amazing in the

way like you know like you might see an

amazing painting or amazing sunset and

go out so amazing oh this is amazing and

actually what it's doing to me and they

talk about plant teachers and I'm going

Oh Ponty just that's one a minute you

know this seems to be these things here

is that in any way an answer to your

question well no I think it's mythology

I think the shaman's have I mean you can

tell you can probably guess what I'd say

can't you from everything I've said here

and the questions you've arts and in the

way you've responded you clearly

understand where I'm coming from now

after 40 or 50 years of not finding

paranormal phenomena my I tend to think

that these mythologies are built on a

very long solid training in what these

drugs do when they say that the the

plants are alive with an actual spirit

well I don't think it's an actual spirit

but I will certainly go so far as to say

we are part-and-parcel II if you're

sitting in the forest having this

experience and you have a oneness with

the tree well that's true we know we're

made of the same stuff as trees are made

of so I I think I take the mythology as

such but also is helpful because some

shame it's not all know an awful lot

about the mind and the way it responds

to these drugs that you know I don't so

I'm I'm a beginner I've only had

ayahuasca eight times and I can tell

from the people I know who've done it a

lot but I'm really baby beginner and

it's a real tough one I'm not advocating

ayahuasca unless you are really coming

back to this man's question unless you

are really stable and able to and really

want to explore yourself in a very tough

way and you don't mind vomiting and

vomiting and vomiting and vomiting for

quite a long time before it stops but it

can be extremely interesting so thank

you for asking such a question wave

whoever you are cuz I can't tell where

you are oh yeah

the Buddhists taken from the original

Buddhists whoo what a shot communiy um

Siddhartha Siddhartha was his human name

I don't know what you mean he's name his

parents gave nothing

was he a materialist he refused to

answer questions of that kind so people

would ask him and they wouldn't say are

you a materialist because that concept

wouldn't have been there I can't answer

your question but I will say that he

espoused the doctrine of codependent

arising which is something like

everything it happens happens because of

what happened before no magic because

the the Hinduism and the other spiritual

traditions around at the time that he

was rejecting all had notions of a soul

or a spirit or an Atman or something

like that and and spirits and nature

spirits and all of these things which

could magically intervene in the world

and he was rejecting all that he's

saying everything happens because of

what's happened before and then there's

a whole concept of indras net in which

everything is connected with everything

else and everything reflects it's a net

with mirrors everywhere and everything

reflects on everything else

what he have called so he was he was

working with an interrelated non dual

perception of a universe in which

everything evolves out of everything

else in other words he was basically a

scientist I think one would say now but

whether he was materialist I think he

would refuse to answer but I don't know

yes well I'll say this I am NOT a

Buddhist scholar and I don't find it at

all easy to remember any of the Sanskrit

words and all everything I know several

very very good Buddhist scholars whom I

can ask questions of I'm interested in

the practice so I will say with some

confidence things that happen in many

decades of practice but I really don't I

really can't answer those more technical

questions that you're asking sorry but

hey I don't know is always a good place

to end up after a long session and I

don't

[Applause]

[Music]

[Applause]