Perceiving oneself or the environment from outside the physical body
The experience of perceiving oneself or the environment from a viewpoint outside the physical body. Among the most externally verifiable types: several accounts involved specific details perceived from non-physical vantage points that were later corroborated. Appears almost exclusively in the NDE accounts.
The narrow gap between the broad and strict numbers reflects that those who reported this rarely described it in passing. They described it in detail.
"I found myself free of the pain that took me to the hospital. And I found myself on the ceiling looking down at the nurses and the doctors as they performed the process they needed to perform."
"A separation occurred — I knew without doubt that this body was not this consciousness. I was looking down at a body going, oh, that's the body. This — this is me — is this bit behind the eyes."
"What am I doing up here?" I wasn't asking what I was doing down there where my physical body was. The I that I was identifying with was not my physical body. It was the part of me that was in the ceiling — that was the I am that I understood to be who I actually am.
Enlightenment is no more than leaving kindergarten. It's not a ceiling — enlightenment grows as you grow.
First-hand accounts from people who described this experience, drawn from the interviews in this collection:
Francisco Valentin was a young Catholic man from Puerto Rico who died in a severe car crash in 1979 at age 17-18, experiencing a death event…
Watch interview →Jurgen C is a commercial artist and author who began having spontaneous out-of-body experiences early in his adult life, initially without a…
Watch interview →Peter Panagore was an outdoorsman, first responder, and later ordained clergy who suffered severe hypothermia during an ice climbing expedit…
Watch interview →Eric Uner is a spiritual explorer who underwent a significant awakening process including a near-death-like experience, followed by years of…
Watch interview →Debra Martin was a mother and emerging medium who experienced three near-death experiences, including a profound third NDE in 2012 while cri…
Watch interview →Ryan Burton is a long-term spiritual practitioner who has undergone multiple stages of awakening, including collapse of duality and no-self …
Watch interview →