Out-of-Body Experiences Read online

  Also by Robert S. Peterson

  Lessons Out of the Body

  out of body

  experiences

  how to have them

  and what to expect

  robert peterson

  foreword by charles tart

  Copyright © 1997 by Robert S. Peterson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this

  work in any form whatsoever, without permission

  in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages

  in connection with a review.

  Cover design by Frame25 Productions

  Cover painting by Louis Jones

  Drawings by Dave Brown

  Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc.

  1125 Stoney Ridge Road

  Charlottesville, VA 22902

  434-296-2772

  fax: 434-296-5096

  e-mail: [email protected]

  www.hrpub.com

  If you are unable to order this book from your local

  bookseller, you may order directly from the publisher.

  Call 1-800-766-8009, toll-free (orders only).

  ISBN 978-1-57174-057-1

  15 14 13 12 11 10 9

  Printed on acid-free paper in Canada

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Part I . From Skeptic to Believer

  chapter 1. background

  chapter 2. my childhood

  chapter 3. first contact

  chapter 4. beliefs blown to bits

  chapter 5. pokes and prods

  chapter 6. my first out-of-body experience

  chapter 7. the party

  chapter 8. overcoming fear

  chapter 9. scared to death

  chapter 10. the small still voice within

  chapter 11. the clairvoyant

  chaper 12. flight school

  chapter 13. “ever the silver cord be loosed”

  chapter 14. a helping hand

  chapter 15. what astral programmers do in their sleep

  chapter 16. to believe

  Part 2 . What the Books Didn't Tell Me

  chapter 17. what the books didn't tell me

  chapter 18. fight for sight

  chapter 19. the mind during obes

  chapter 20. the fantasy trap

  chapter 21. people and animals

  chapter 22. out-of-body reality

  chapter 23. environmental factors

  chapter 24. how to have an obe

  chapter 25. psychic experiences

  chapter 26. questions and answers

  chapter 27. the final frontier!

  Bibliography

  Foreword

  by Charles T. Tart, Ph.D.

  Professor Emeritus of Psychology,

  University of California at Davis,

  and

  Professor, Core Faculty,

  Institute of Transpersonal Psychology,

  Palo Alto, California.

  This is an interesting book, but much more than that, it's an important one. It deals with something vital to us all: our souls.

  A leading national news magazine recently reported that books which deal with the soul or that have the word “soul” in their title have been on the best seller lists a lot in recent years. The tone of the supposedly “objective” report had that faint ring of cynicism we've come to associate with media today through the implied question of: “How could Americans be crazy enough to buy such junk?”

  I think a more intelligent question would be to wonder how conscious beings like us who will inevitably die could not be interested in learning everything we could about what might or might not happen after death, and what that implies for how we live our lives? Yes, of course it's unpleasant to think about death, but trying to ignore the issue and smother our concerns under a surface layer of cynicism, masquerading as scientific or media “objectivity,” is not a very healthy psychological strategy. Hopes and fears that fester under the mind's surface become more powerful and pathological in their effects on our lives, not less.

  So what kinds of knowledge do we have about death? We have the physical knowledge of the body's death, of course, in more exacting detail than any previous generation, but what happens to our inner self, to our minds, our souls? Here we have two broad classes of knowledge, one we might call (a) opinions and speculations, on the one hand, and (b) scattered bits of experiential knowledge on the other. I will include almost all our religious teachings about what happens after death in the opinion and speculation category because the way we learned them, and the way our teachers themselves learned them, is almost entirely a matter of passing on previous ideas with little or no basis in actual experience. Experiential knowledge comes from direct human experience, such as cases of people who have had near death experiences (NDEs). While experiential knowledge tends to eventually get tangled up with and confused with our ideas and theories, we sensibly tend to give it a lot more weight than abstract knowledge. If my car needs repair, I am much more comfortable entrusting it to someone who's had years of experience repairing cars than to someone who's just read about cars extensively or only heard a lot of lectures and opinions about how cars ought to function.

  So after all the lecturing and theorizing about death is done, what sorts of direct experiences do people have that can give us some understanding of what might happen after death?

  NDEs are probably the most direct kind of experiential knowledge about the after death state we can have: they are certainly the most emotionally and intellectually powerful kinds of knowledge that, in some form, we survive death, for those who experience them. That's the catch. If you've only read about NDEs or even spoken with some people who've had them, NDEs are very impressive but are back in that first category of opinions and speculations as far as we non-experiencers are concerned, and so don't really still doubts and fears the way direct experiential knowledge does. Logically, it would be quite helpful if we each personally had an NDE, but after an extensive study of NDEs, I don't recommend that. The near part of the NDE is too tricky! Most people who come that near to death do not give us an interesting report of what happened afterwards; they get buried!

  One aspect of NDEs, the out-of-the-body experience (OBE), is much safer, though, and also carries a lot of conviction about survival of death to those who have it. I have studied hundreds of OBEs in ordinary people over the last thirty years, and one of the most common aftereffects of having an OBE is expressed in statements like this. “I do not believe that I will survive death: I know I will.” The OB experiencer no longer bases her or his expectations about the after death state on opinions and speculations, on beliefs, but rather on her or his own direct, personal experience. Most of them do not believe they were physically dead, but they did have the direct experience of temporarily finding themselves located outside their physical bodies and nevertheless having a clear mind, a conscious existence without their physical bodies. To say that this is an impressive experience is to put it mildly! We non-experiencers can take issue with their interpretations of their experiences, but the OB experiencers are not impressed by our doubts: they were there; we are ignorant.

  We can learn a lot by studying the reports of those who've had NDEs and OBEs: It's not direct experiential knowledge for us, but at least it's only one step removed from such experiential knowledge. This is a lot more solid than the usual opinions and speculations, even those that bill themselves as scientific theories, where the current opinion is based on a previous person's belief which in turn was based on a previous person's speculations which were wrongly presented as fact or perhaps doctrine, etc, etc., back to antiquity. In most religious beliefs, for example, current doctrine may have been
based on someone's actual experiences many generations ago, but the accumulations of opinion, interpretation, distortion, and theological editing (probably thought of by the editors as “purification”) for compliance with the faith's orthodox doctrines may give us ideas far removed from what actually happened to a real human being once upon a time.

  As I mentioned earlier, there is sometimes a problem with studying the reports of those who've had OBEs or NDEs because, like all of us, they tend to get the memories of their direct, experiential knowledge mixed up with their previous and subsequent beliefs about their OBEs and NDEs, i.e. they get their facts mixed up with their theories. Sometimes this is obvious. There are writers who are clearly preaching at us and we suspect that, in their righteousness, they have too little respect for what actually happened to them as compared to the beliefs they want to force on us. At the other extreme, some writers clearly take great care to “tell it like it was,” to carefully give us as clear and accurate a recounting of the actual experience as possible, and to separate out their ideas and opinions about what it could mean. My friend and colleague Robert A. Monroe, now deceased, was one such person. His classic Journeys Out of the Body book is an excellent example of an intelligent, honest and competent person doing his best to make sense out of repeated OBEs. Monroe and a few (they are far too rare, given what we need to know) other pioneers of careful OBE reporting1 are now joined with this book by Bob Peterson, and our knowledge is thus further enriched.

  I haven't had the pleasure of meeting Bob Peterson in the flesh yet, but I feel I know him in important ways through reading this book, and I'm quite impressed. Peterson had an apparent NDE as a child which, under the influence of a scientific culture was pushed into the background—but never quite far enough to really destroy his curiosity. Sadly, curiosity about things of the spirit is crushed in too many people today. When he came across information (Monroe's book) about OBEs as an adult, rather than writing off the whole idea as crazy or weird, he decided to try to have the experience, to, in scientific (and real common sense) terms, actually become able to look at the facts instead of being satisfied with opinions and speculations. His knowledge of the soul is now much deeper than it was before his OBEs, and, a very important point, he is still puzzled by many aspects of his experiences: Personally, I am more inclined to trust those who admit to puzzlement in life than those who claim to know it all!

  A few individuals may have a natural talent for OBEs so it comes easy to them if they try, or is even forced on them. Most of us with an interest might try to have OBEs once or twice, but make no progress and so give up. Peterson worked at it systematically and eventually had hundreds of experiences. This is a reason why this book tells us more about the mind and soul than the study of collections of once-in-a-lifetime experiences: Any one OBE is influenced by unknown conditions and beliefs in ways we seldom recognize, but someone with repeated experience can start to separate out what is essential about the OBE and what accidental.

  I mentioned earlier that I do not recommend trying to have an NDE because the “near” part is too tricky. But OBEs are much safer, as Peterson reports, and for those of us who are really curious to directly examine the facts, to have an OBE ourselves, Peterson has many exercises in this book that we can try. His honesty shows here too, for he recognizes that these are exercises to try, not guarantees, and that what works for one person may not be helpful for another. But he gives us a wide variety of exercises and is convinced that if we really try them thoroughly, one or more will probably work.

  I say that “OBEs are much safer” than NDEs, but they are not, of course, safe in any absolute sense. These kinds of direct experiences of things which go beyond everyday reality are both exciting and unsettling, for we do love the habit, routine, and apparent “safety” of the everyday world. If you are reasonably “normal,” OBEs will have their frightening moments but probably lead to real growth and spiritual and psychic openings. If you are having difficulty functioning in the everyday world through internal problems, those kind of psychological problems should be solved before trying to venture out of body. The exotic, like OBEs, can be dangerous if we try to use it to bypass ordinary developmental tasks instead of facing them.

  But if we seriously try the kinds of OBE inducing exercises Peterson presents and have results? Then “soul” will not be just an opinion or speculation for us: Its reality and its implications for living will be experiential data. Need I say that the effects on how we live our lives will be rather important?

  February 1997

  * * *

  1 Thorough and clear experiential accounts of repeated OBEs are given in books by Oliver Fox (nom de plume of Hugh Callaway), Joe McMoneagle, Robert A. Monroe and Sylvan Muldoon. Full references to these classics are listed in the bibliography.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I'd like to thank the following people for their support:

  Kathy Peterson, my wife. Without her support this book would not have been possible.

  Robert Monroe, whose books changed my life forever. Even though he's left his body for the last time, his love and dedication are still spreading spirituality throughout this plane.

  My brother Joe and his wife Candy for their love and support.

  My friends in Phoenix: John, Peggy, Dawn, Patricia, Sabrina, Bob, Cheri, Brad, Bob, Georgann, Jon, Herb, Mary, Judy, Perry, Carol, Jean and everyone else.

  LD, wherever you are.

  Those who have inspired me with their music: Jon Anderson, Kerry Livgren, Tom Scholz, and Dan Fogelberg.

  PART ONE

  From Skeptic to Believer

  CHAPTER 1

  background

  I was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and spent the first twenty-four years of my life there. My childhood was normal except for a few unusual experiences that will be described later.

  Before I started kindergarten, I met a boy named Brian, who was about three years older, and we became friends. Brian was a good friend, but he had a bad habit of lying. Brian felt that lying made him seem more knowledgeable and important than other kids, and he loved to be in that position of power. At that young age, I was naive and always asking questions, but I had no concept of dishonesty. Hanging around Brian, it didn't take me long to find out what a lie was. Before long, I didn't trust anything that Brian said to me. Still, Brian was my only friend and there were no other kids my age in the area. Instead of abandoning our friendship, I took it as a challenge. I still valued his friendship, but I had to learn to separate fact from fiction. I was forced to use logic to tell when he was lying and when he was telling the truth. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't. But I got better at it by verifying some of the facts with grownups I knew I could trust.

  Before too long, my parents intervened and told me I couldn't see Brian again because he was a “bad influence.” They were right. But Brian's friendship taught me some valuable lessons when I was at an impressionable age. First, I learned that you can't believe everything you hear or read. I gained a real appreciation for the “truth,” and I learned to question everything. Second, I learned how to use reason, deduction, and logic. My love of the truth turned into a love for scientific knowledge, an insatiable curiosity, and a thirst for knowledge and exploration.

  When I entered grade school, I made my first important discovery: the school library. Most of the kids would run to the fiction section to grab the storybooks. I would run to the shelf marked “science” and I'd read textbooks. I would read any book as long as it was scientific: books on dinosaurs, biology, lasers, botany, archeology, astronomy, and anything else that crossed my curious mind in a particular week. Even before I could read, I would learn by looking at the pictures.

  My mom used to take me to the public library and let me wander around while she picked out books. Of course, I'd go straight for the science books there too. But in the public library, children's books were mostly storybooks. So I would wander around the adult section and look for science books. I remember
one day when I stumbled into the anatomy section of the adult books. I wonder what my parents would have said if they found out I knew all about sex and the reproductive system at the age of six! I remember arguing with other six-year-olds about where babies came from. They insisted on storks and cabbage patches, and I just couldn't talk any sense into them.

  I got a reputation for being a “know-it-all” or a “brain.” I didn't care for that status at all because people couldn't relate to a “brain” and everyone resents a “know-it-all.” I did my best to fight against my reputation and stuck to a small group of friends.

  In high school I became interested in the field of computers and my curiosity led me to study computers in my spare time. After taking every short-course the University of Minnesota had to offer, I spent my free time reading computer manuals and writing computer games. My face became well known in the university computer labs. I often chuckled when people twice my age would ask me for help on their programming class assignments.

  After high school, I entered the University of Minnesota, majoring in the field of Computer Science. During that time I started having out-of-body experiences (OBEs), and it changed the course of my life. Perhaps it can change your life too!

  EXERCISE 1

  affirmations

  This “exercise” section, which appears at the end of each chapter, is designed to present exercises and pointers to readers who are interested in learning to have out-of-body experiences. The exercises will be simple in the early chapters and get more complicated in later chapters.

  This particular exercise is an affirmation. An affirmation is like a New Year's resolution: something you say to yourself to strengthen your ability to do something. It's not enough just to say the affirmation; you should think about it first, then say it slowly to yourself a few times. Each time you say an affirmation, you should try to put emotion behind your words and actually believe what you are saying.