Consciousness

‘you’ have left your body and are
floating or flying above it, look-
ing down on the world from this
new position. You might like to
listen to ‘And She Was’ by Talking
Heads, or ‘Your Mind Has Left
Your Body’ by Jefferson Starship
for musical evocations. Or you
could read Ernest Hemingway’s
novel A Farewell to Arms, which
was based on the author’s
experiences of fighting in Italy
in World War I. In Chapter  9 of
the novel there is an excellent
description of his protagonist
having an OBE (as part of a near-
death experience) in a dugout
during battle: it starts with a flash
and a noise that he experiences
(synaesthetically) as white and red, and then he can’t breathe and feels he is rushing
out of himself. He is certain he is dead, realises he’d been wrong to think that death is
the end, and then feels himself sliding back into his body and finally alive again on the
torn-up ground. We wanted to reproduce the passage here but his publisher forbade
us from using it. Like many other descriptions of OBEs, it leaves
open for investigation the critical question whether anything
leaves the body or not.

OBEs are related to three other types of ‘full body illusion’, all
resulting from displacement of the body schema (Blackmore,
2017). First, ‘autoscopy’ literally means seeing oneself, but in
psychiatry refers to experiences of seeing a double or doppel-
gänger. The person still seems to be inside their own body but
sees an extra self, or a person who looks like them, elsewhere.
Second is ‘heautoscopy’, an even more confusing experience in
which people are uncertain whether they identify with their own
body or with the double; they may even alternate between one
and the other. Finally there is the ‘sense of presence’ or ‘feeling of
a presence’, a powerful feeling that there is someone else close
by even if they cannot be seen. This can happen during sleep
paralysis or on the edges of sleep, for example when children are
convinced there is a monster under the bed or in the wardrobe.
These three, along with OBEs, have in common a doubling of the
sense of self (Blanke and Mohr, 2005).

Although an odd experience, OBEs are relatively common,
with somewhere between 12% and 20% of people claiming
at least one during their lifetime (Blackmore, 2017). More
precise estimates are hard to obtain because people often
misunderstand survey questions: they may, for example, say
‘yes’ because they have flying dreams, or ‘no’ if they think ‘real’
OBEs require proof of actual travelling. A  few people have FIGURE 15.11 • Tunnel of leaves

Multisensory Integration

Visuo-spatial perspective

Vestibular perception

Body perception

Agency

Mental own body imagery

Biological motion

Self-processing:

FIGURE 15.10 • Self-processing at the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ). The figure summarises data from several neuroimaging

studies that revealed an activation of the TPJ during different aspects of self-processing such as visuo-spatial

perspective taking, agency, self-other distinction, mental own-body imagery, biological motion perception, and

vestibular and multisensory perception. Activations during these paradigms that were found in other areas are

not shown. An approximate location with respect to the gyral and sulcal surface is given for each study. Most of

the results were found in the right TPJ only or showed a right-hemisphere dominance (Blanke and Arzy, 2005,

p. 22).