The OBE Outlook on Life

The OBE Outlook on Life

by Robert Peterson

This is my very first blog! I've often thought about doing a blog, but never taken the time. As a writer, I feel compelled to share my thoughts with whomever might want to read them, and I think I have a unique perspective, which I'll explain below.

In 1979, I started studying out-of-body experiences, or OBEs. As quickly as time and money would permit, I amassed a collection of more than a hundred books on OBEs, and eagerly read them all. That was just OBE books. I also collected books on similar topics: Near-Death Experiences (NDEs), Shamanism, Remote Viewing, Life After Death, Mediumship, Channelling, Psychics and on and on.

It took lots of hard work and dedication, but I eventually learned how to induce them myself. What I discovered was a lot of misinformation, and buried deep within, grains of truth. I felt compelled to right this wrong and write my own book on the subject.

In 1997, my first book, "Out of Body Experiences: How to Have Them and What to Expect" was published by Hampton Roads Publishing.  It's done quite well. It's even been translated into German, Japanese, Russian and Czech.

I also put the entire book on my web site for free, just to prove I'm not "in it for the money." The money is not important to me; it was much more important to share my information with the world. Not just Americans, but anyone in the world, rich or poor, who wanted the information.

In the first book, I treated the OBE very scientifically, explaining what I had learned about them from personal experience. But shortly after the book came out, I felt a lot of regret: the fact of the matter was, my out-of-body experiences had changed my whole life. I had been transformed from a shallow Catholic who only paid lip-service to God, into a person with a unique spiritual perspective. There's something about looking at your own inanimate body lying on the bed that makes you think about your own mortality and what lies beyond the grave. And those thoughts naturally lead you to think about God, Angels, Mediumship, Religion, Life-after-death and lots of other things. What had really changed was my perspective on life, on death and everything between. There was a spiritual side of the OBE that I had completely neglected in the first book.

To right that wrong, I wrote a second book, which I called "Lessons Out of the Body". It was about the spiritual side of OBEs and what I had learned from them. It was published by Hampton Roads Publishing in 2001.

In that book, chapter 17 was called "The OBE Outlook on Life", which is what I decided to call my blog. The chapter was divided into sections. The sections--which pretty much summed up my outlook on life--were:

Life is a school
Self-Identity: You are not your body
A greater reality
We're never alone
Privacy is an illusion
Don't judge others
Physical objects lose their glitter
Death is an illusion
Death is a friend
What if people misunderstand me?

I firmly believe that we're born in this world in order to learn certain lessons, which we decide upon before we're even born. To that end, our subconscious, out "higher self" and even non-physical guides (what most people call angels) conspire to bring us those spiritual lessons. Sometimes (but not always) the lessons are painful and the ride is bumpy. More so if we try to resist the lessons we came here to learn.

This blog will cover a lot more than out-of-body experiences. It will be about life, spirituality, life-lessons, my favorite music, computers, philosophy and whatever. I hope you enjoy it.

Bob Peterson
Sunday, 2012 November 4