Out-of-body experiences: what is reported, what the brain does, and what this helmet can test

An out-of-body experience (OBE) is the feeling that the self has left the body and perceives the world, often including the body, from a place outside it. It is one of the effects most often linked with the God Helmet and with Todd Murphy's Shakti and Shiva devices. It is also one of the few such effects with a solid mainstream neuroscience: neurologists have evoked OBE-like states by stimulating one region of the brain with electrodes, and psychologists have produced weaker versions in healthy people with cameras and a stick.

This page sets out what people report and how common it is, what Persinger's lab and Murphy claim, what the neuroscience shows, what the tests of "seeing" during an OBE found, and how to run an honest trial with this helmet. It describes; it does not promise. Nothing in the record shows that weak fields like this helmet's cause OBEs.

Related documents:

• RESEARCH.md: the Persinger/Koren record, the independent tests, Murphy's devices and the "States → brain regions → programs" table
• EXPERIMENTS.md: blinded real/sham sessions, checking the blind, trials and statistics
• SAFETY.md: who should not use the helmet, how to use it, the adverse-event record
• HISTORY.md: the Army, the Monroe Institute and the 1983 Gateway report
• Sensed presence: the effect most often reported in the God Helmet lab, which shares brain regions with the OBE
• Remote viewing: claims of perceiving distant places, and how they are tested

How to read this page

The evidence words are the ones used across the project (HISTORY.md):

Two different questions run through this page, and they must be kept apart:

1. Does something change in the brain or the mind? The OBE as an experience. Here the neuroscience is strong.
2. Does anything leave the body? That is, can a person in an OBE perceive things their eyes could not. This is a psi question, tested with hidden targets. So far the controlled tests are negative or inconclusive.

What people report

The core experience

Researchers who study OBEs use a narrow definition with three parts (Blanke et al. 2004):

• disembodiment: the self seems to be located outside the physical body;
• a distanced, often elevated, viewpoint: the world is seen from that outside location, typically from above;
• autoscopy: from there the person sees their own body.

Neurologists separate the OBE from two related experiences (Blanke et al. 2004):

The sensed presence ("someone is here") sits on the same spectrum. It can be thought of as a double that is felt, not seen; see Sensed presence.

What often comes with it

• Vibrations, buzzing or a rushing sound at the start. Robert Monroe described a "funny kind of vibration" in 1958 before his first experiences (Monroe 1992 interview, 5:21; Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.).
• Floating, rising, flying, falling, spinning. Cheyne and Girard group these with illusory limb movements as "vestibular-motor" sensations; in their sleep-paralysis surveys they cluster with OBEs as one factor (Cheyne & Girard 2009).
• Lightness of the limbs, or not knowing where the limbs are. The single Persinger-lab case below began this way (Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.).
• Calm and visual detail. In questionnaire studies most experiencers describe feeling relaxed and calm (79 % in Gabbard & Twemlow 1984), and most report seeing during the OBE (70 % in Terhune 2009); between about half and four in five say they saw their own body (Psi Encyclopedia: OBE).
• Fear, especially when an OBE comes during sleep paralysis or in a stimulation session.
• A return, sometimes felt as a jolt.

Where OBEs happen

• At the edge of sleep: falling asleep, waking, sleep paralysis and lucid dreams. Murphy reports that most OBEs after his sessions came while users fell asleep about an hour later (Murphy: OBE; Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.).
• In neurological conditions: focal epilepsy, migraine, lesions of the temporoparietal junction (Blanke et al. 2004).
• Near death: OBEs are commonly listed as the opening phase of a near-death experience (NDE) (Murphy 2006, 6:29; Greyson 2022, 1:34).
• In deep relaxation, meditation, hypnosis, under drugs (for example ketamine) and during extreme physical stress.
• On purpose, by practice. A few people say they can induce one at will; one of them was scanned (Smith & Messier, below).

How common

"About one in ten" is the usual round figure; it appears in the description of Blanke's Science & Cocktails lecture and on Murphy's OBE page (Blanke, Science & Cocktails; Murphy: OBE). Student samples report more than general-population samples. Sleep paralysis, which often carries OBE-like sensations, has a lifetime prevalence of about 7.6 % in the general population (Sharpless & Barber 2011).

So a sizeable minority of any group of volunteers will already have had an OBE, with or without a helmet. This matters for the trial design at the end of this page.

OBEs in the God Helmet record

Persinger's laboratory

OBEs were never the lab's main outcome; the sensed presence was (RESEARCH.md). The OBE-specific reports come late, from work with Murphy's 64-coil Shiva hardware.

The press release presents the Saroka case as an OBE produced "in under six minutes". The paper's own timing makes the onset fall in a pause, when no field was on. One person, with no sham session, cannot separate the field from the setting, expectation and the anxiety he reported.

The lab's general problem applies here too. The best independent double-blind test of its method found no field effect, and personality traits predicted who reported unusual experiences (Granqvist et al. 2005). A helmet with no field at all also produces "extraordinary experiences" in people who expect them (Maij & van Elk 2018). See RESEARCH.md for both.

Todd Murphy's Shakti and Shiva claims

Murphy sells the consumer descendants of the lab devices. His statements on OBEs:

• Placement. Sessions over the right hemisphere: the temporal lobes, the parietal lobes or the area behind them. His "modulated 40 Hz" page adds a two-coil option, one coil in front of and below the right ear and one over the right angular gyrus (Murphy: OBE; Murphy: modulated 40 Hz; Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.).
• Signals. The hippocampal signal, the "modulated 40 Hz" (obe45) signal or the chirp. All three are proprietary; the project's versions are approximations (SIGNALS.md).
• Timing. About 30 min; most OBEs reportedly came while falling asleep about an hour after the session (Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.).
• Candidates. "Right-hemispheric" people, with traits such as easy meditation, déjà vu, lucid dreams and occasional word-finding trouble, and above all people who have had an OBE before (Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.). In a 2006 interview he says people who have practised or had such experiences are the better candidates, and that some users had their first OBE with the technology (Murphy 2006, 10:18; Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.).
• Expectations. Murphy's own page stresses that OBEs need effort and learning, that no method is "pushbutton", and that the Shakti may need more sessions than the lab devices or Shiva, with the odds still low (Murphy: OBE).
• NDE framing. Murphy treats OBEs as the first of the classic NDE phases and says the lab evoked fragments of NDEs, not whole ones (Murphy 2006, 6:29; 9:01). In a 2011 lecture he lists OBEs among the experiences the Shakti has induced (Murphy lecture, 1:12:08; Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.).
• Geomagnetic link. In a lecture he says OBE-like experiences rise during periods of enhanced geomagnetic activity in people with many temporal-lobe signs (Murphy lecture, 1:12:50; Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.; see RESEARCH.md on geomagnetic claims).

No controlled study of a Shakti or Shiva OBE session has been published. The one independent test of a Shakti found no field effect on its outcomes (Gendle & McGrath 2012). Murphy's choice of the right angular gyrus follows Blanke's 2002 case, described next: the target site has a mainstream basis, the method of stimulating it does not.

The neuroscience

Electrical stimulation: Blanke 2002

The best-known modern case came from presurgical epilepsy mapping in Geneva. Neurologists stimulated the cortex of a 43-year-old woman through implanted electrodes to locate her seizure focus. Currents at the right angular gyrus first gave sensations of sinking into the bed or falling. At higher currents she reported seeing herself lying in bed, from above, but only her legs and lower trunk. Further stimulations brought back the experience, and also illusions of limb movement and shortening (Blanke, Ortigue, Landis & Seeck 2002).

• Evidence: Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication., one patient, milliamp currents directly on the cortex. Later cases point the same way (below).
• Blanke describes the case in his talks, with the patient "under the ceiling looking down" (Blanke TEDxCHUV, 14:58).

Patients: Blanke 2004 and later case series

Blanke and colleagues studied six neurological patients with OBEs, autoscopic hallucinations or heautoscopy. In five, the damage or dysfunction lay at the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). They proposed that the experiences come from a failure to integrate touch, proprioception and vision with vestibular signals, during a brief and partial impairment of consciousness (Blanke et al. 2004). In his lectures he notes that most of his patients had epilepsy, and that having an OBE does not make someone a patient (Blanke, Science & Cocktails, 2:23; 16:49).

Later lesion analyses and imaging, including a study combining virtual reality with patient lesions, placed self-location and the first-person perspective in the TPJ (Ionta et al. 2011). Taken together, the link between the right TPJ and OBE-like states is Established: Replicated by independent groups. in neurology, even though each stimulation case is a single patient.

A tinnitus implant: De Ridder 2007

A 63-year-old man had an electrode implanted over the right temporoparietal cortex to suppress tinnitus. The stimulation did not help the tinnitus, but it reliably produced a feeling of disembodiment, about 50 cm behind and to the left of his body, for about 17 s each time. He did not see his own body. PET imaging during the experience showed activation at the right angular–supramarginal gyrus junction and the right superior temporal gyrus, among other sites (De Ridder et al. 2007; Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication., one patient).

Healthy people: the full-body illusions of 2007

Two papers in the same issue of Science produced partial OBEs in healthy volunteers without touching the brain:

Both are Established: Replicated by independent groups.: the illusions have been replicated many times since, by these and other groups. They are not full OBEs, since people know where they really are and do not see the room from above, but they show that the sense of where "I" am can be moved by conflicting sensory signals. Ehrsson explains the camera set-up in his TEDx talk (Ehrsson TEDxGöteborg, 7:08); Blanke shows the stroking version and the control in which a box replaces the body and no illusion occurs (Blanke, Science & Cocktails, 36:05; 39:07).

A voluntary OBE in the scanner: Smith & Messier 2014

A 24-year-old psychology graduate student said she could produce, at will, the feeling of her body moving above her physical body, while aware that her body was not moving. In fMRI, these episodes activated mainly left-sided regions: the supplementary motor area, the supramarginal and posterior superior temporal gyri (overlapping the TPJ), the cerebellum and parts of the frontal lobe; visual areas were less active. The authors concluded that it was "an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery" (Smith & Messier 2014; Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication., one person, self-report). The left-sided pattern does not fit a simple "right TPJ" story.

Who has them: cognitive correlates

• People who report spontaneous OBEs score higher on measures of temporal-lobe instability and of body-distortion experiences, and are worse at mentally imagining their body from another viewpoint (Braithwaite et al. 2011; Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication.). The temporal-lobe measure is close to the "temporal-lobe signs" Persinger and Murphy use, but it predicts OBEs without any field.
• Sleep: people with NDEs reported REM-sleep intrusion into wakefulness (sleep paralysis, hypnagogic hallucinations) far more often than controls, 60 % against 24 % in one study of 55 pairs (Nelson et al. 2006; Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication.). Nelson argues that OBEs are a blend of waking and REM consciousness (NYAS 2013, 1:10).
• Susan Blackmore points to cortical hyperexcitability and disinhibition, and to things that raise them (sleep deprivation, some drugs, oxygen lack) (Blackmore QED 2016, 23:20).

The model in one paragraph

The brain builds a sense of "where I am" from vision, touch, body position and the vestibular organs, integrated at the TPJ and nearby cortex. When those signals conflict, or the integrating cortex misfires (seizure, stimulation, lesion, the transition into REM sleep), the self can be placed outside the body, and memory and imagination fill in a view from there. This model is Established: Replicated by independent groups. for the experience. It does not, by itself, rule out the second question (whether anything perceives from outside); that is what the hidden-target tests below address.

What this means for weak fields

Every mainstream induction of an OBE used either milliamp currents through electrodes on or in the brain, or sensory conflict (RESEARCH.md, "What produces these experiences without fields"). None used a weak magnetic field. This helmet's field at the coils is about 1 µT, and the electric field it induces in the cortex is far below what stimulates neurons (RESEARCH.md, "What this helmet delivers"). That the right angular gyrus can produce an OBE when stimulated with milliamps tells you nothing about whether a microtesla field over it does.

NDEs and the hidden-target tests in hospitals

Cardiac-arrest survivors sometimes report watching their own resuscitation from above. If perception really happened from outside the body, a picture visible only from near the ceiling should be seen. Hospital studies have tested this.

What the AWARE studies show:

• Some people report lucid experiences during cardiac arrest, and in AWARE II some patients showed EEG patterns consistent with consciousness up to 35–60 min into CPR (AWARE II). This bears on when the experience happens, not on whether perception is extrasensory.
• Hidden targets are hard to test in hospitals: few patients survive, few of those have an OBE, and few of those are in a room with a target.
• After more than 2,500 arrests in two studies, no hidden visual target has been identified.
• Parnia's own interpretation, that the dying brain may lose its normal inhibition and "open access" to new dimensions of reality, is a hypothesis (Parnia Lab video; Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.).

The strongest-sounding NDE cases are anecdotes reported after the fact, such as the hospital patient Bruce Greyson describes who mentioned a spaghetti stain on his tie that he could not have seen (Greyson 2022, 2:39; Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.). Such cases cannot rule out ordinary information, for example from what was said in the room, and none has been tested with a blind target.

Culture and history

• Traditions. Many cultures describe a second body or soul that can travel during sleep, trance or illness. In Western occultism this became "astral projection": 19th-century Theosophy's astral body, and 20th-century manuals such as Muldoon and Carrington's The Projection of the Astral Body (1929). The descriptions match the modern phenomenology (vibrations, floating, a cord, seeing the body) and are Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases..
• Robert Monroe (1915–1995), a radio executive, described spontaneous experiences beginning in 1958 and wrote Journeys Out of the Body (1971). He founded the Monroe Institute and its Hemi-Sync binaural-beat tapes (Monroe 1992 interview; Monroe Institute video; Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.). Charles Tart recorded his EEG during attempted OBEs in 1967; Monroe was in borderline sleep states with alpha and theta activity, typical of stage 1 sleep (Psi Encyclopedia: OBE).
• The Army and Gateway (documentary only). The Army sent remote viewers to the Monroe Institute's Gateway course from about 1980 to 1984. In 1983 Lieutenant Colonel McDonnell wrote the "Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process", a theoretical essay that explains Hemi-Sync and out-of-body states with popular physics and presents no data (Claim: Stated by an author, vendor or programme, without published supporting data.). The National Research Council found in 1988 that support for Hemi-Sync "does not meet generally accepted criteria for scientific evidence". The full record is in HISTORY.md; the Gateway tapes are copyrighted and not reproduced in this project (GUIDES.md).
• Modern practice. OBE teaching continues in workshops, books and online, usually through relaxation at the edge of sleep, a wake-back-to-bed routine and strong intention. Success rates are not documented (Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases.).

Tests of perception during OBEs

If an OBE involves seeing from outside the body, hidden targets should be read. These are the main attempts.

Blackmore became a parapsychologist after a long OBE of her own at 19, and later gave the profession up. She now explains OBEs as the brain's model of the self coming loose from sensory input (Blackmore, Weekend University; Blackmore QED 2016, 6:03; Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases. for her experience).

Bottom line: in sixty years there is one striking single hit (Miss Z) under loose controls, a handful of null or inconclusive studies, and no hit in the large hospital studies. Perception from outside the body is Unverified: Nobody has tested it, or we could not check the source.. The experience itself is Established: Replicated by independent groups..

Videos

All links were checked for title, channel and length. Years are upload years estimated from YouTube's "years ago" display, so may be off by one; where the talk's own date is known, it is given. Timestamps were checked against the transcript.

Neuroscience

Near-death research

Practitioners and claims

Sceptical

Reading list

Neuroscience:

• Blanke O, Ortigue S, Landis T, Seeck M (2002). Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions. Nature 419: 269–270. doi:10.1038/419269a
• Blanke O, Landis T, Spinelli L, Seeck M (2004). Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin. Brain 127: 243–258. doi:10.1093/brain/awh040 (open PDF)
• De Ridder D, Van Laere K, Dupont P, Menovsky T, Van de Heyning P (2007). Visualizing out-of-body experience in the brain. N Engl J Med 357: 1829–1833. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa070010
• Ehrsson HH (2007). The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences. Science 317: 1048. doi:10.1126/science.1142175
• Lenggenhager B, Tadi T, Metzinger T, Blanke O (2007). Video ergo sum: manipulating bodily self-consciousness. Science 317: 1096–1099. doi:10.1126/science.1143439
• Ionta S et al. (2011). Multisensory mechanisms in temporo-parietal cortex support self-location and first-person perspective. Neuron 70: 363–374. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2011.03.010
• Smith AM, Messier C (2014). Voluntary out-of-body experience: an fMRI study. Front Hum Neurosci 8: 70. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2014.00070
• Braithwaite JJ, Samson D, Apperly I, Broglia E, Hulleman J (2011). Cognitive correlates of the spontaneous out-of-body experience (OBE) in the psychologically normal population. Cortex 47: 839–853. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2010.05.002
• Cheyne JA, Girard TA (2009). The body unbound: vestibular-motor hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. Cortex 45: 201–215. doi:10.1016/j.cortex.2007.05.002
• Nelson KR, Mattingly M, Lee SA, Schmitt FA (2006). Does the arousal system contribute to near death experience? Neurology 66: 1003–1009. doi:10.1212/01.wnl.0000204296.15607.37
• Sharpless BA, Barber JP (2011). Lifetime prevalence rates of sleep paralysis: a systematic review. Sleep Med Rev 15: 311–315. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2011.01.007

Near-death studies:

• Parnia S et al. (2014). AWARE—AWAreness during REsuscitation—a prospective study. Resuscitation 85: 1799–1805. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2014.09.004
• Parnia S et al. (2023). AWAreness during REsuscitation - II: a multi-center study of consciousness and awareness in cardiac arrest. Resuscitation 191: 109903. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2023.109903 (PubMed)
• Psi Encyclopedia: AWARE NDE studies (a summary written from a parapsychology perspective)

Parapsychology and history:

• Tart CT (1968). A psychophysiological study of out-of-the-body experiences in a selected subject. J Am Soc Psychical Res 62: 3–27. (Not online; criticism summarised at Wikipedia: Charles Tart and answered by Tart at Fearless Books)
• Blackmore S (1982). Beyond the Body: An Investigation of Out-of-the-Body Experiences. Heinemann. Blackmore S (2017). Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-of-Body Experiences. Robinson.
• Blackmore S (1984). A postal survey of OBEs and other experiences. J Soc Psychical Res 52: 225–244.
• Psi Encyclopedia: Out-of-body experience (surveys, Tart, Osis, Harary)
• Monroe RA (1971). Journeys Out of the Body. Doubleday.
• McDonnell WM (1983). Analysis and Assessment of Gateway Process. US Army INSCOM (documentary; see HISTORY.md).

God Helmet record:

• Saroka KS, Mulligan BP, Murphy TR, Persinger MA (2010). Paper, archived copy. NeuroQuantology 8(4): 466–477.
• Collins (2013). Thesis, Laurentian University.
• Murphy T: OBE sessions; modulated 40 Hz (vendor pages).
• Granqvist P et al. (2005). Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields. Neurosci Lett 379: 1–6. doi:10.1016/j.neulet.2004.10.057

Trying it with this helmet

What to expect

Be clear about the odds before you start. The programs below copy Murphy's OBE recipes and one lab case. Their evidence ranges from Anecdote: Personal reports, testimonials and single cases. to Single lab: Reported by one laboratory or one group and its close collaborators, with no independent replication.. No controlled study shows that a weak field over the right hemisphere raises the chance of an OBE. If anything happens, the setting (darkness, silence, lying still, the edge of sleep, expectation) is the first explanation to rule out, and the only way to rule it out is a blinded comparison with sham.

Programs

The signals are approximations of unpublished vendor files, and the coil sites are inferences from Murphy's wording; each program's notes say what was left out. The brain view shows where the field is strongest. It does not show that anything there is stimulated.

Setting

• Follow Murphy's set and setting if you are testing his claim: a dark, silent room, lying or reclining, a blindfold, and the session about an hour before you plan to sleep (RESEARCH.md, "Sessions and schedules").
• Never sleep with the helmet on. Take it off when the program ends, then go to bed. Most of the reported OBEs are claimed for the later sleep, not the session.
• Keep a notebook by the bed. Write a report as soon as you wake, before you check the Log or talk to anyone.
• The state-post checklist in the Guides tab has an out-of-body and vestibular item; it is app-defined and unvalidated (QUESTIONNAIRES.md).

Blinded real/sham

Follow EXPERIMENTS.md, "Blinded real/sham sessions". In short:

1. Decide in advance: the program (one only), the number of sessions, and the outcome, for example "an OBE reported in the session or the following night: yes or no", plus a 0–10 rating.
2. Before the first session, run the cue test in EXPERIMENTS.md on a foam head, so you know the coils give no audible or tactile cue.
3. In the Programs tab, tick Blind and start. The helmet's random generator picks real or sham and keeps it hidden.
4. Next morning, write the report and the rating, then your real/sham guess, before you open the Log.
5. Keep at least 72 hours between sessions (SAFETY.md). With a yes/no outcome and the low base rate of OBEs, a single person needs many sessions to show anything; count every one, including the nights when nothing happened.

If you have had OBEs before, record how often they happened in, say, the past year, before you start. Prior OBEs are the strongest predictor Murphy names, and they would give you OBEs in the sham arm too.

Optional: a hidden-target check

The hospital studies asked whether a person in an OBE can see what only a viewpoint near the ceiling can see. You can ask the same at home with the two-part guide in the Guides tab, Out-of-body hidden-target check (part 1 arms the target before bed, part 2 records and reveals). It uses the helmet only as a random-target source; the helmet sits on the shelf, not on your head.

• A spare phone or tablet lies face-up on top of a wardrobe or high shelf, above eye level and away from mirrors and windows, showing a picture that the helmet chose at random from a 4-picture set and that nobody in the room has seen.
• After the attempt, you write what you saw, lock the response, rank the four pictures, and only then see the reveal.
• With 4-picture sets, chance is 1 in 4 per night. In 20 pre-registered nights, 9 or more first-place hits would happen by chance about 4 % of the time (exact binomial, computed); 8 or more about 10 %.
• Count every night you decided to count, including the many that end in ordinary sleep. An "OBE" in which the picture is not seen is still data.
• This is the Miss Z design with the leaks closed: a target nobody knows, chosen by hardware, judged before the reveal. Read EXPERIMENTS.md on judging, statistics and known pitfalls before you start.

A field effect and a perception effect are two different questions (EXPERIMENTS.md, "Two questions, kept apart"). A run of hits says nothing about the helmet unless real sessions beat sham sessions on the same task.

Safety

Read SAFETY.md before any session. Points that matter most here:

• Not for people with epilepsy or a seizure history (the burst-firing patterns are modelled on seizure EEG), psychiatric conditions, or sleep disorders, distressing sleep paralysis or dissociative conditions (the hidden-target guide excludes these too).
• Right-hemisphere-only sessions can bring fear or unease. The single lab case reported anxiety, nausea, tiredness and a headache. Stop at once on distress, and don't repeat a session that felt bad.
• The obe program's notes say to stop using the signal if you have trouble finding words.
• The wake-back-to-bed routine costs sleep. Keep the loss modest, and don't drive or do work that needs you alert the next day.
• OBE-like episodes that come unbidden, especially with confusion, lost time, odd smells or jerking, are a reason to see a neurologist, not to run more sessions.