Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 2

Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 2

by Bob Peterson

Here is the second half of the previous blog article. Enjoy! If you missed part 1, here's a link: Becoming the Ideal Candidate for OBEs - Part 1.

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Develop Synaesthesia: Bleed-thru of the senses

People who use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD, psilocybin, or cannabis often “hear” colors or “see” shapes in sounds. The technical term for when the senses bleed together like this is synaesthesia, and it’s not confined to hallucinogenic experiences. I bring this up because according to scientists, there’s a high correlation between people who experience synaesthesia and people who rate high on the Tellegen Absorption Scale.

What I’d like to suggest is that while you listen to music, try to visualize its ups and downs. Some music apps made for phones and computers have a “visualization” mode that changes colorful patterns on the display with the music. Close your eyes and try to do that in your head. Again, I’ll talk more about that in chapter 53.

Visualizing music is like practicing or developing a kind of self-induced synaesthesia, which increases your level of absorption to more easily achieve OBEs.

Play Video Games

Scientists have known for a long time that people who play video games tend to have more OBEs. That’s because video games train you to change your focus from the body’s five physical senses to a computerized experience, an alternate “story of experience,” which is a subject I’ll cover in the next chapter. The same goes for virtual reality (VR) apps and games, or drones that feed real-time video data to a VR mask.

Engage in Creative Activities

People who have mystical experiences are often more creative. So one of the things you can do to bolster your creativity is to draw, doodle, or paint (without a template). If you’re more auditory than visual, you can try to compose music. Another exercise is to make up gibberish nonsense sentences.⁵ In my book Answers Within I give lots of different exercises designed to teach you how to get your subconscious to communicate, and since the subconscious is usually the source of creativity, many of them are helpful exercises for OBEs as well. For example:

• Ask yourself, “If I was a guru on top the mountain, (or the Dalai Lama, Jesus, or some other wise person), how would I answer this question?”
• Ask yourself, “What is love?” and try to make up a “wise answer.”
• Ask yourself to “Say something wise” and think up the wisest thing you can imagine.
• Go on a “metaphor walk” and ask yourself the “meaning” of the things you see. For example, “What’s the meaning of this street light?”
• Look at people and try to guess their story: “Where did she grow up?” “What’s his favorite sport?” “What will she be doing when she’s 85 years old and what will she look like?”

Keep a Dream Journal
People who keep a dream journal are more prone to having (and remembering) out-of-body experiences. When you keep a dream journal, it trains your brain to retain a small thread of awareness during sleep. It learns to pay attention to what happens (your "story of experience") while you're dissociated from your body, and to carry those memories across the boundary between waking and sleeping. (More details in this blog article: Why Keeping A Dream Journal Helps OBEs.)


Lose Some Weight

If you’re overweight, it might help to trim up and lose some weight. I’ve always had better luck when my weight is down. I’ll go into more details about that in chapter 70.

If you’re a left-brained logical thinker like me, it may seem unproductive, tedious, uninteresting or unappealing to spend hours engaging your creative mind, daydreaming, reading, playing video games and such, but they will make you a better candidate for OBEs.

Don’t do any of these exercises halfheartedly or they simply won’t work. A single event, like reading a novel, may exercise the right neural pathways, but it won’t rewire your brain unless you do it repeatedly. It’s a lot like physical exercise: you won’t develop strong muscles by going to the gym (or biking, hiking, etc.) once a month. You’ve got to develop a habit and keep at it. Every time you do it, the neural pathways get stronger, making you a better and better candidate for OBEs. And of course, you also need to give it some time to take effect. Experts say it takes 21 days to form a habit.

Whether you’re naturally a good candidate for OBEs, or became one with these exercises, that may still not be enough to attain them because you still need to tweak your brain to make it happen. First, we need science to tell us what happens to the brain during an OBE, then we can develop exercises to replicate that. That’s the subject of the next chapter.

22 January 2019

1 What Neuroscience Can Teach Us About Compassion, Carolyn Gregoire, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-neuroscience-can-tea_n_5268853

2 Out of Body Experiences, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 1997, pg. 40.

3 Seeing Myself, Susan Blackmore, Robinson, 2017, pg. 117.

4 Lessons Out of the Body, Robert Peterson, Hampton Roads Publishing, 2001, pg. 221.

5 How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain, Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman, Penguin Random House, 2016, pg. 124.