I have been haphazardly following this newgroup for a while now but have missed
a fair number of the postings since the newgroups bandwidth rather exceeds the
bandwidth of my own free time, so forgive me if my post is recovering old
ground.
Basically I percieve two sides to the argument:
1) OOBE's are imaginary. That is to say an OOBE consists of reordering and
replaying old memories in a creative, vivid, coeherant fashion. The entire
experience consists of either old sensory "input" (memories), variations on that input that come from natural extrapolation and entirely new but entirely imaginary input.
2) OOBE's provide a method outside the usual 5 senses to obtain new, current
input from ones surroundings. Whether anything actually leaves the body is
debatable but really beside the point.
I currently support the first of the two options but would very much like to
be persuaded into supporting the second. This is not however necessarily
going to be an easy thing to do. Firstly I know no one (including myself) that
has ever experienced an OOBE. Furthermore it seems to me that if the second
option was true and worked in a reliable and consistant fashion, it should be fairly easy to "prove" that it worked (just get a friend and a deck of cards).
I welcome any new information that anyone has to share with me on the subject.
