Be first in line to access the groundbreaking Book 2 of THE GRAND ILLUSION series
Experience the “revolutionary healing science expanding the boundaries of being.” (NEXUS mag) > EVOLVE YOURSELF biofield activations.
Grab a paid subscription for full access (includes starting Chat threads, access to all audio versions 🎧 + comments on all pieces). Paid members get direct access to me and priority conversation in Chat.
The stock materialist explanation for out-of-body experiences is straightforward: the brain misfires under stress, oxygen deprivation, or anaesthesia, and produces a vivid hallucination of floating above the body. The acolytes of philosophical materialism would have us believe these things are compelling to experience but reducible to nothing more than illusory yet interesting effects created by chemicals-in-the-brain. Nothing to see here.
The problem is that the controlled experiments say otherwise.
Starting in the early 1900s and running through the instrumented laboratory studies of the 1970s and 1980s, researchers in France, Britain, and the United States put OBE subjects through controlled conditions specifically designed to test whether anything real was happening. They used luminescent screens, strain gauges, EEG monitors, shielded optical viewing devices, and blind independent judges. They weren’t believers trying to confirm a hypothesis. They were researchers trying to find the edge of what the evidence would support.
What they found doesn’t fit the standard model. I’ve had my own encounters with states that don’t fit it either—brief, but sufficient to make the research feel less abstract than it might otherwise. That’s not why I find this evidence compelling. The evidence is compelling on its own terms.
What follows is a focused account of the most significant findings—from Hector Durville’s calcium sulphide screens in early twentieth century France to Charles Tart’s EEG laboratory at UC Davis, where a young woman did something the odds against which were 100,000 to 1.
The intention here is not a comprehensive overview of a research field that dates back to the 1800s and could fill volumes—Carlos Alvarado’s concise survey Does Something Leave the Body? covers the historical record well for the seriously interested reader.¹ What follows is a focused account of the more important and evidentially significant findings, from the early French experiments through to the instrumented laboratory studies of the 1970s and 1980s.
French mesmerist and researcher Hector Durville conducted the first systematic out-of-body experience experiments in the early 1900s. His methodology was simple and the results were striking. Calcium sulphide screens—which luminesce in response to energetic proximity—were placed near subjects who had been placed in deep trance and induced into the OBE state. When the subject was given the suggestion to approach one of the screens in their out-of-body condition, the screen “glowed up with added brilliance as the result of the proximity of the astral body.”²
The screens were used repeatedly with consistent results. Durville describes one session:
“I placed one of the large ones on the abdomen of the subject and held the other in the phantom [subtle body/double], which was seated on an arm-chair to the left of the subject. The screen placed in the phantom became rapidly illuminated, and the one on the subject remained completely dark…I then took the screen which had been on the subject, and remained dark, and placed it in the phantom. It immediately became illuminated like the first.”³
The finding was structurally clean: the physical body emitted no light when the subject’s consciousness had departed. When the mind was present in the body, it did. The subtle bodies—not the physical—were the source of the luminescence. This is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that the subtle bodies consist of self-luminous plasma or a plasma-like energetic substrate.
Durville was more esoterically informed than many of his contemporaries, and his notes on the subtle body architecture are precise:
“The phantom of the doubled subject is composed of several bodies that double over again. When it is located near the subject…it is the etheric body, which is animated by the astral body…When it is away for some time, it abandons its etheric form and parts with the astral, which from then on is animated by the mental body. At this moment the etheric body, seat of vitality, reenters into the [physical] to animate it, because without it physical life cannot be prolonged for a long time.”⁴
And crucially: “The phantom is all the individual. On it live the sensations, thoughts, will, judgement; it has become the seat of consciousness…’The phantom is me,’ said one of my subjects.”⁵
This is the experimental confirmation of something the Consciousness Transition Model maps at the structural level: the physical body is the instrument, not the occupant. What Durville’s subjects discovered in the out-of-body state—that the body they had vacated was “nothing,” while the subtle double was unmistakably them—is precisely what the CTM’s Post-Mortem Architecture describes as the natural consequence of the Biological Disengagement Event. The identity does not dissolve with the physical body. It departs with the subtle body complex.
Durville’s psychic observers also documented the silver cord: “A cord is sometimes seen connecting the double to the physical body, coming out mostly from the navel of the physical body…the luminous fluid circulating from the subject to the double in one part, and from the double to the subject in the other.”⁶ Durville’s assistant André commanded one subject to send her double to tread on the feet of another subject in a separate room. The second subject immediately drew her feet back, complaining someone was treading on them. Physical objects were moved by the out-of-body phantom. Raps were obtained. On occasion, when screens were photographed, silhouettes of the phantoms appeared in the images.⁷
Durville concluded without equivocation: “Projection of the astral body is a certain fact, capable of being demonstrated by means of direct experiment…Immortality is a fact which is thus proved scientifically.”⁸
British psychical researcher Hereward Carrington, writing in Modern Psychical Phenomena, detailed his own OBE laboratory experiments conducted in a similar vein to Durville. Using hypnotic suggestion to partly dissociate the etheric body from the physical, Carrington then pricked the extruded etheric body with a needle—some six to eight inches away from the physical body. The subject responded as if the needle had struck her physically. This phenomenon is known in occult literature as repercussion: an effect upon the subtle vehicle registering sensorially in the physical.⁹
Carrington noted that “experiments of this character have been conducted on a large scale in France, and are known as ‘exteriorization of sensibility.’”⁹ The replicated finding carries a specific theoretical implication: perception of physical sensation does not occur in the physical body per se, but in the etheric vehicle—the subtle layer immediately interfacing with physical matter. This is what Allan Kardec (Hippolyte-Léon Denizard Rivail) called the perispirit: “a semi-physical (or fluidic) principle that linked the physical body and the spirit,” involved in certain psychic phenomena and apparitions.¹⁰
Carrington subsequently collaborated with Sylvan Muldoon, who had undertaken hundreds of out-of-body excursions across twelve years and co-authored two foundational books on astral projection scientific evidence with Carrington as a result.
In the United States, Karlis Osis—director of the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) from 1962 to 1975 and one of the most prolific parapsychological researchers of the twentieth century—spent several years conducting controlled OBE studies with Alex Tanous (1926–1990). Tanous held five academic degrees including a doctorate in theology, had served as a psychic consultant to the FAA, the FBI, and local police agencies (confirmed in a declassified CIA memorandum from October 1979),¹¹ and spent nearly twenty years working with scientists at the ASPR.
One early test involved Tanous travelling astrally to a distant office to observe what was on the table, then reporting back. Unknown to Tanous, a clairvoyant named Christine Whiting was waiting in that office to see if anyone came to visit. She observed Tanous arrive, described his position in the room, and detailed his clothing accurately—a shirt with rolled-up sleeves and corduroy trousers.¹²
In a separate series, Tanous’ task was to project astrally and view objects on a target table. He demonstrated a notable tendency to describe objects placed there days later—a characteristic the occult literature accounts for in terms of the non-linear temporal properties of the astral plane, where movement is through time rather than space. In Larson’s reciprocal model of space-time and time-space, this is precisely what one would expect: in the reciprocal domain, spatial position is fixed while temporal position varies freely.¹³ The clairvoyant observer present in the target room witnessed Tanous’ projected form “bend over the target table like a jack knife.”¹⁴
In 1980, Osis and his assistant Donna McCormick reported on the definitive series of OBE research controlled studies with Tanous. The experimental apparatus was an optical viewing device—a shielded structure 2’×2’×3’ containing a rotating disc divided into four quadrants, each a different colour, with one of five possible target images randomly selected per trial. Quadrant, colour, and image were all randomised and automatically recorded. The only way to observe the resulting combination was to look through a small window at the front of the device. No one involved could know the final combination in advance.
Tanous was to project himself into the shielded space and view the target through the window. In 197 trials across twenty sessions, he correctly identified the target 114 times—substantially above chance.¹⁵
But the crucial component was what happened next. Strain-gauge sensors had been installed near the viewing window to detect the slightest physical vibration or movement—hopefully, the mechanical signature of Tanous’ projected subtle body. Tanous was not told about the strain gauges and did not know they were present.
The finding was unambiguous: when Tanous correctly identified the targets, unintentional mechanical effects on the sensors were registered on a connected Beckman polygraph. When he missed, they were not. Something physically detectable was present at the viewing window at precisely the moments Tanous was accurately perceiving the target.¹⁵
Light sensors in a darkened room also registered increased luminosity when Tanous was present out-of-body—directly replicating Durville’s calcium sulphide results from sixty years earlier. Temperature shifts were also detected.¹⁶ Theorist Dan Winter offers a framework for the temperature finding: “ghost alarms sense a bit of coolness. Living plasma sucks up heat—just like an imploding vortex.”¹⁷ The presence of an organised consciousness unit—a coherent subtle body with centripetal, negentropic field properties—draws thermal energy from its environment, producing the localised cooling that researchers and paranormal investigators consistently detect.
Tanous summarised the cumulative findings from his years of experimental work: brainwave amplitude shifts during OBE, indicating electrical quiescence at the back of the head; sharply localised vision at the ostensible out-of-body location; absence of eye movement indicating the state is not a waking dream; and the kinetic strain-gauge effect present only when he was accurately perceiving the target—absent during misses.¹⁸
Charles Tart—who studied electrical engineering before becoming a psychologist, receiving his doctorate in 1963 and postdoctoral training in hypnosis research at Stanford—conducted what remains one of the most rigorous single-subject out-of-body experience research studies on record.
In the mid-1960s, while investigating altered consciousness states at UC Davis, Tart obtained an ideal subject: his babysitter, referred to in his published work as “Miss Z.,” who claimed she could leave her body at will and was willing to be tested under laboratory conditions. She agreed to spend four nights wired to an electroencephalograph in the university’s sleep laboratory. Tart’s target was a five-digit number written on paper and placed on top of a tall cabinet—visible only from a vantage point physically inaccessible to someone lying in bed, since any movement of 60 centimetres from the bed would disconnect the EEG electrodes.¹⁹
On the first three nights, Miss Z. reported out-of-body experiences but was unable to control her ecsomatic state sufficiently to perceive the target. On the fourth night something with odds of 100,000 to 1 happened…
The full piece—including what Miss Z. did, the strain-gauge results, the psychic with a 100% match rate, and what the cumulative evidence means for what happens at death—is available free HERE. 👈
Brendan is architect of the Consciousness Transition Model (CTM), an emerging framework that integrates NDEs, OBEs, and centuries of altered state observational data into a coherent map of post-mortem reality. Brendan researches consciousness and the origins of modern metaphysical narratives.
His work synthesises contemporary data with classical esoteric frameworks, most notably in Reverse Engineering the Afterlife—Book 2 of The Grand Illusion series—a landmark study into the afterlife system and rules of non-physical perception and state changes.
Grab your copy of the first volume “The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science and Spirituality — Book 1” (also available as a discounted add-on in the pre-order campaign of Book 2)
Watch the free How to Evolve Yourself (WITHOUT Hard Work or Meditation) Masterclass to learn how this transformative evolutionary biofield activation and healing work with sound could change your world. Watch now to register and save your seat for the next live ceremony
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.