Dietary Considerations

OBE Dietary Considerations

by Bob Peterson

In my previous blog entry, I gave an excerpt about wheat gluten from my forthcoming book, Hacking the Out of Body Experience, chapter 69. Because of recent discussions on Facebook about vegetarian diets and such, I decided to post the rest of chapter 69, "Dietary Considerations." Enjoy.

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A lot of authors have theories about what works and what doesn’t to induce OBEs, but that’s only what works for them, not you. This especially applies to diet. D. Scott Rogo dedicated an entire chapter to “Astral Projection through Dietary Control”¹ which, he says, dates back at least to 1916. He names it the “[Minnie] Keeler system” and credits amateur psychic investigator Prescott Hall for documenting it. He says to combine the diet with a routine of visualizations like the techniques in part 2 [of this book]. The system, Rogo says, is this:

1. The student should begin by either fasting or cutting down food intake.
2. No food of any sort should be eaten just before an OBE attempt. Overeating may bar any success at OBE travel.
3. No meat should be eaten during the training program.
4. The diet should consist mainly of fruits and vegetables.
5. Carrots are extremely beneficial.
6. Raw eggs are favorable to the diet and to OB release.
7. No nuts of any kind are to be eaten.
8. Peanuts are especially bad. (Peanuts aren’t technically nuts, but belong to the pea family).
9. Liquids of all types are beneficial, but are not to be used in excess.

As far as I can recall, this is the only OBE book that mentions not eating nuts. What’s so special about nuts? Many people become constipated when they eat nuts, and I’ve had friends tell me they can’t induce OBEs if they’re constipated. I’ve also had friends tell me they can’t induce OBEs if they don’t drink enough water, and lack of water also leads to constipation. I believe it all goes back to the bacterium in the gut. In chapter 66 I talked about how raw potato starch gives you longer REM sleep because it feeds bacterium in your gut. I think they influence OBEs more than anyone realizes. 
 

The human body is a very complex ecosystem packed with not only human cells, but lots of other chemicals, hormones, nutrients, and bacteria. In fact, scientists in the UK recently discovered that we have more non-human DNA in our bodies than human DNA!² Normally, this ecosystem works just fine and we live normal “physical” lives, but if you tip some of those factors out of balance, OBEs may result, or at least become more likely. You may need to experiment with some of the factors below until you “tip the balance” in favor of OBEs.

The Effects of a Vegetarian Diet

Like Rogo’s book above, many in the genre recommend a vegetarian diet to induce OBEs.³ Graham Nicholls recently conducted an informal study of his OBE students in which he created a index value based on both frequency per month and duration of OBEs for a ten-month period. He found that students with plant-based diets consistently scored higher than those with non-plant-based diets.

Other experts say meat has no bearing on OBEs⁴ unless you believe it does, in which case the placebo effect kicks in. So which is it? Scientists are now learning that there are multiple body types. They recently found that any given weight loss diet might work for one person but not another because different body types metabolize foods differently. Maybe the same holds true for OBEs: maybe a vegetarian diet benefits some body types and not others. I’ve always been a meat eater, and it’s never affected my OBEs, but maybe other dietary considerations are more important than meat.

Body Mass

A vegetarian diet might work due to having less body mass: have you ever met an obese vegetarian? Or maybe they tend to eat more wheat gluten than meat eaters (more on that below.) I have reason to believe your weight or body mass may influence your ability to induce OBEs. Although it might be purely psychological, I have problems inducing OBEs if I get too heavy: 200 lbs (91 kg) seems to be my upper limit. More study is needed, of course, but I’ve generally found it much easier when my body weighs around 185 lbs (84 kg) or less. Since I’m 5’10” tall (177.8 cm), that makes my ideal body mass index 26.5. Maybe the brain chemicals and hormones needed for an OBE are too “spread out” if your body mass is too high, similar to how a small person becomes more quickly impaired by alcohol than a large person.

Fasting, Meal Quantity, and Dinner Time

Some religious and spiritual traditions teach that fasting can help induce altered states of consciousness like OBEs. Sylvan Muldoon wrote that “Fasting is promotive of astral projection.”⁵ He believed that without food, the astral body needed to spend more time away from the physical “to collect a greater charge of cosmic energy to balance the loss.” Other teachers dismiss this idea.⁶ For example, Akhena writes, “There is no point in suggesting that you fast in order to increase your chances of leaving your body.”

Several sources say that OBEs are more likely if you’ve only had a light meal for dinner. A friend told me he is much more likely to have OBEs if he doesn’t eat anything after 3:00pm (15:00). I’ve never tried with this, but fasting after 3:00 may work for some people. It’s certainly worth trying.

Pasta and Wheat Gluten

(I already posted this section into this blog article: https://obeoutlook.blogspot.com/2018/11/obes-pasta-and-wheat-gluten.html)

If you take all these things into consideration, you might be able to increase your OBEs by following these recommendations:

• Eat only light meals, and nothing after 3:00pm.
• Eat less meat, nuts, and cheese, and more carrots and other vegetables.
• Eat more wheat gluten.
• Maintain a healthy weight and stay trim.
• Drink lots of water.

1 Leaving the Body, D. Scott Rogo, Prentice-Hall, Inc, 1983, chapter 4.

2 More than half your body is not human by James Gallagher, BBC News, Health, 10 April 2018.

3 For example, Navigating the Out of Body Experience by Graham Nicholls, and Exploring Your Inner Reality by Jonas Ridgeway.

4 For example, Out of Body Experiences by Akhena. William Buhlman also eats meat and even offers meat dishes at his OBE classes at The Monroe Institute.

5 The Projection of the Astral Body, Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington, Weiser, 1929, pg 147.

6 Out of Body Experiences, Akhena, Channel Soleil Publications, 2013, pg. 47.

7 Out of Body Experiences, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 1997, pg. 37 – 38.

8 http://psychedelicfrontier.com/how-psilocybin-works-addition-by-subtraction/

9 Measuring Brain Blood Flow Change by fNIRS during an Out-of-Body Experience, Yasuhiro Inui and Hideyuki Kokubo (2009).

10 How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Penguin Random House, 2016, pg. 204. This drop in blood flow to the PFC may partly explain why OBEs are often experienced during an Near-Death Experience (NDE), especially in cases of cardiac arrest.

11 For example, Wheat and Schizophrenia, Psychology Today, by Emily Deans, M.D. (March 28, 2011)

OBEs, Pasta and Wheat Gluten

OBEs, Pasta and Wheat Gluten

by Bob Peterson

Here's another short excerpt from my forthcoming book, Hacking the Out of Body Experience. It's taken from chapter 69, "Dietary Considerations." I chose this excerpt because my friend Jason Kish recently posted in the Facebook group "The Lounge" about an experience with eating pasta before bed.

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Unless you have gluten intolerance, you probably don’t give much thought to eating foods that contain wheat gluten, like breads, pasta, and some cereals, etc. But for a few years now, I've suspected that wheat gluten can actually help you induce OBEs. As far as I know, nobody has made this connection before, but bear me out and consider the following:


If you’ve read my first book, Out of Body Experiences you may remember that I had my very first full-blown OBE after I came home late from the University and ate a big slab of lasagna: lots of wheat gluten right before bed.(1) That should have been my first tip-off, but wheat gluten wasn't on anyone's radar back in 1979.


I also theorized earlier [in the book] that the infamous OBE "vibrations" might be a "milder" form of a migraine headache. Remember that all three of my brothers and my sister, my mother and my grandmother all had severe migraines. I'm the only one in my family who escaped this genetic curse, but I'm also the only one who has OBEs. Also bear in mind that some people who have debilitating migraines are cured when put on a gluten-free diet.

Now consider this: A few years ago I read an article on how psilocybin, the psychoactive ingredient in “magic mushrooms” affects the brain, based on an analysis of brain blood flow.(2) It caught my interest because many people report OBE-like “trips” when they take psilocybin. The study correlated the “trips” with decreased blood flow to two key areas of the brain, the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). The lower the blood flow to these two regions, the harder you trip.

Then I read a Japanese study(3) that found brain blood flow was decreased to the prefrontal cortex (PFC) during an OBE. Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman’s information also suggests that profound states of consciousness are associated with a sudden drop in neural activity in the prefrontal cortex (PFC).(4)

Other articles suggest that wheat gluten similarly reduces blood flow to the brain’s frontal cortex.(5)

If that's not convincing enough, consider this: Some people have a disease known as “wheat schizophrenia.” Although I’m no expert, my understanding is that wheat gluten causes a drop in blood flow to the frontal cortex of people with the disease, causing a form of temporary schizophrenia, complete with vivid hallucinations. If the patient is put on a strict gluten-free diet, their symptoms go away and they behave normally.

Based on all these things, my theory is that maybe wheat gluten in the right quantity can cause a similar drop in the PFC of ordinary people (without the aforementioned disease) causing an OBE as the result.

To test my theory, I did some experiments where I ate shredded wheat cereal or pasta before bed. I haven't produced an OBE this way yet, but I definitely feel more OBE-prone the next morning.

Not everyone shares my theory. Daniel Kelley, author of Behind the Veil suggests a gluten-free diet, among his many recommendations, so take this discussion with a grain of salt. I don’t recall any other OBE books mentioning gluten-free diets. More testing is needed to determine if my theory is correct, but it's sure worth giving it a try.

Bob Peterson

13 November, 2018

1 Out of Body Experiences, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 1997, pg. 37 – 38.

2 http://psychedelicfrontier.com/how-psilocybin-works-addition-by-subtraction/

3 Measuring Brain Blood Flow Change by fNIRS during an Out-of-Body Experience, Yasuhiro Inui and Hideyuki Kokubo (2009).

4 How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Penguin Random House, 2016, pg. 204. This drop in blood flow to the PFC may partly explain why OBEs are often experienced during an Near-Death Experience (NDE), especially in cases of cardiac arrest.

5 For example, Wheat and Schizophrenia, Psychology Today, by Emily Deans, M.D. (March 28, 2011)