Welcome. But no, there is no after life, period. When you die you die, that is it.

As far as Outer Body Experiences, that is nothing more than your intense electro-chemical activity in your brain fooling with you and mixing your subconscious with your conscious> It was not real no matter how real you thought it was.

These vivid dreams which is all they are, can be triggered by stresses you might have not been aware of.

I had those when i was a kid too. It is all in your head, nothing more.

                     The beauty of freethinking is that we are not realy trying to convert you to our way of thinking but to consider a rational response to OBE and the afterlife.  Basicly we pride ourselves on a rational response to any scenario, welcome to the site.

@Brian37

I see, but how do you know this for sure? Have there been any scientific experiments that show electric-chemical activity can do this? I realize that the subconscious mind plays a heavy role in the dreams that we experience, but why would it simulate me leaving my body for no reason? The OBE's I experience are quite different from my dreams, there's no characters, there's no storyline, there's no dreamy fuzz that most dreams have. It's just me, inside my room, everything is vivid and real, except I'm floating and I'm not in my body. I fully accept the fact that it could all just be a hallucination, but so far I haven't found anything scientific to fully convince me. Yes, there have been countless study's on sleep, dreams, and NDE's, but nothing has come up so far to explain what I and others are experiencing. I really hope that more is done on this subject, someday, hopefully soon, there will be solid evidence that there is a soul or that it is a unique hallucination, I can't wait because I will be very content and happy with either answer.

@Natural

Thanks! Very interesting, I've had experiences like that as well, usually chalk them up to odd dreams. I completely agree with you when it comes to beliefs, I love Richard Dawkin's explanation of faith, he defines it simply as "the practice of non-thinking". I often find myself in open arguments with religious people because I don't hesitate to challenge them on there ignorant opinions. However, I define myself as a general skeptic and not a strong atheist because it seems like to be an atheist you have to be an absolute scientific materialist, which would mean discarding/ignoring certain experiences that I've had. Of course, I don't have full belief in anything until it can be proven to me scientifically, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to read metaphysical and philosophical works such as the "Tao Te Ching" by Lau Tsu, to give one example, or ponder the nature of the universe.

@Jeffrick

Thanks, I always appreciate open mindedness and discussion. I always make sure I'm as rational as possible, question everything. 

[Edit] Hello Rebecca!

Let's see - your mind can convince you of anything you want to believe.  Very sneaky.  I like to beat my mind occasionally, just to keep it from running away with itself.  (I'm a fan of "Over the Hedge" and Hammy the squirrel.)

My sister is a Jehovah's Witness.  According to her, Catholics are idolators who are following the devil himself.  But she is pretty loony.  She really does think praying to saints or Mary or ... is worshiping idols.  But when I asked her why it wasn't idolatry to pray to Jesus, her answer was "it just isn't the same!" not seeing, of course, that it is exactly the same.

I lost the faith once because I was assured that playing solitaire in my own home with my parents assisting and kibitzing would allow satan to leap out of the cards and steal my soul.  Fortunately, my mom thought that was as dumb as I did.

Post often and welcome.

For the same reason an amputee claims they can still feel their foot. You are looking for a reason, when dream states are hardly predictable but can be feel very powerful and very real, no matter how false they are,

There is no "reason" other than they happen. Misfire is what it amounts to. Your neurons from many aspects of your brain fire without you being aware of it, and mix in this dream state. Just like neurons in an amputee's brain can fire off sending a false sensation that the foot is still there.

No one is doubting you when you say "it feels real". My OBE's felt real too. And if I ever had one again, I would know after hand what was really going on.

In fact, I had a bad dream last week and woke up crying. My crying was real, and my emotions reacting to that dream were real, but that didn't make the dream real, even though I felt a real reaction to that dream. Feeling like you are floating outside your body is nothing more than an intense false feeling, just like my REAL crying was a reaction to a dream.

@Luminon

Very interesting, I've read about astral projection and what not. The only problem i have with it is that it seems to be often tied into much of the new age bull that's all over the internet. Ill certainly try your picture experiment, the only thing is I can't really induce it, it happens randomly, often when I sleep in. So I'm going to have my friend put a random picture in her closet, next time I have an OBE ill attempt to travel to her house and see the picture. Ill also have her place a low power night light near it, just in case I can't see.

@Brian37

Also interesting explanation, hopefully soon I will know for sure. I completely agree with you when it comes to ghosts and other nonsense. However this is something I've experienced and therefore I want to explore it further. In the case of amputees I could understand, but wouldn't the lack of nerves cause this effect to wear off after awhile? I don't get why so many people describe this effect years after their accident, why doesn't the human brain adapt to the fact that it's missing a limb and divert mental resources to the rest of the body? 

People believe this crap for the same reason some people believe there was a man on the grassy knoll.

Outer body experiences only need to be studied like schizophrenia needs to be studied. If you want to study it strictly as part of human psychology, I would be for it. But to take this delusional belief seriously, one might as well believe that Ouija boards work and might as well believe Area 51 crap.

It is nothing but one species of superstition because filling in the gaps with rational answers is hard, intellectual laziness is easy. People would rather believe something they don't have to test because feeling an answer is right is easy, testing something with scientific method is much harder.

The simple explanation for this is that people want to believe it actually happened and are fooled by their own brain chemistry. The alternative is absurdity. The naked assertion that your "whatever" thoughts and you can float outside you magically and be separate from your physical body is bullshit.

I refuse to coddle such absurdity merely because a portion of human population willfully ignores reality. For the same reason I would call bullshit on someone claiming the earth to be flat.

Yea, just like it SHOULD drive you nuts if someone went around claiming the world was flat.

Of course I am emotional about it because selling this type of bullshit sells people LIES!

Otherwise it would be widely as accepted in the scientific community as DNA and quarks. Funny how "OBE" theory is never taught in high school or college biology or MD classes.

OBE is nothing but the same ilk as Big foot and Ouija boards and deserves as much credit as alchemy. Bullshit is bullshit, no matter how elaborate the person tries to sell it.

Luminon, I find it funny how ready you are, and how rightfully you dismiss the claims of others superstitions, but don't see the same lack of universal evidence that your own claims have.

OBE is nothing more than a mundane psychological gap answer for a very ordinary delusion.

It is bullshit, and I find no shame in being emotional about calling bullshit bullshit. Otherwise Santa is real because people like the idea of Santa being real.

You have as much evidence that OBE's are real as Muslims do for Allah and as the Egyptians did for the sun being a god. If you actually believe that you can float out of your body, then you might as well believe the moon is made of cheese.

Here I found a good quote of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, from Isis Unveiled. Words of that great woman are even today most apposite:

[[Vol. 1, Page]] 41 WHERE LIES THE BURDEN OF PROOF.

The position assumed by modern scientists is that even though the occurrence of certain mysterious phenomena in the presence of the mediums be a fact, there is no proof that they are not due to some abnormal nervous condition of those individuals. The possibility that they may be produced by returning human spirits need not be considered until the other question is decided. Little exception can be taken to this position. Unquestionably, the burden of proof rests upon those who assert the agency of spirits. If the scientists would grapple with the subject in good faith, showing an earnest desire to solve the perplexing mystery, instead of treating it with undignified and unprofessional contempt, they would be open to no censure.

True, the great majority of "spiritual" communications are calculated to disgust investigators of even moderate intelligence. Even when genuine they are trivial, commonplace, and often vulgar. During the past twenty years we have received through various mediums messages purporting to be from Shakespere, Byron, Franklin, Peter the Great, Napoleon and Josephine, and even from Voltaire. The general impression made upon us was that the French conqueror and his consort seemed to have forgotten how to spell words correctly; Shakespere and Byron had become chronic inebriates; and Voltaire had turned an imbecile. Who can blame men trained to habits of exactitude, or even simply well-educated persons, for hastily concluding that when so much palpable fraud lies upon the surface, there could hardly be truth if they should go to the bottom? The huckstering about of pompous names attached to idiotic communications has given the scientific stomach such an indigestion that it cannot assimilate even the great truth which lies on the telegraphic plateaux of this ocean of psychological phenomena.

They judge by its surface, covered with froth and scum. But they might with equal propriety deny that there is any clear water in the depths of the sea when an oily scum was floating upon the surface. Therefore, if on one hand we cannot very well blame them for stepping back at the first sight of what seems really repulsive, we do, and have a right to censure them for their unwillingness to explore deeper. Neither pearls nor cut diamonds are to be found lying loose on the ground; and these persons act as unwisely as would a professional diver, who should reject an oyster on account of its filthy and slimy appearance, when by opening it he might find a precious pearl inside the shell.

Even the just and severe rebukes of some of their leading men are of no avail and the fear on the part of men of science to investigate such an unpopular subject, seems to have now become a general panic. "The phenomena chase the scientists, and the scientists run away from the phenomena," very pointedly remarks M. A. N. Aksakof in an able article on Mediumism and the St. Petersburg Scientific Committee. The attitude of this body of professors toward the subject which they had pledged themselves to investigate was throughout simply disgraceful. Their premature and prearranged report was so evidently partial and inconclusive as to call out a scornful protest even from unbelievers.

Not out-of-body experiences, but 'spiritual revelations' none the less -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

Say who ! Say who !!

Meh, almost all Europeans call their country that at some point. Isn't it just fatalism and laziness, though ? Easier to complain that to work to fix it ?

Or do you have a sneaking suspicion that if you ever held a position of power yourself, you'd find out it wasn't that simple ?

You're not going to hear me say much good about pharmaceutical companies. They've gotten very rich of the crap they fed my mom over the years, and the benefits, while crucial, are minimal.

But here's the thing : Alternative medicine tried too. They got even more money out of her, and oh yeah, they nearly killed her.

See, it's really simple : Either something works, or it doesn't. All the rest is crap, and here I speak for everyone with a terminally ill family member.

In other words, if it works, then you can prove it. If it doesn't, then you can't. No lobbyist, monopoly, or corrupt doctor is going to change that.

Because life's not fair, that's why. Some conditions can't be cured yet. Only the symptoms can be alleviated. Duh.

Careful now. Doctors most certainly DO care. Funding for conventional research isn't exactly growing on trees. And it just so happens that there are quite a lot of doctors who won't give a patient a prescription if he doesn't urgently need it, even if the patient in question physically threatens them.

Because the world population is still growing.

Because they're doctors. Not magicians.

It's called psychiatry.

I think you'll find conventional medecine acknowledges a link between patients and their conditions.

And when the "order" is no longer "hidden", we're talking about conventional medecine, so what's your point ?

That would be very irresponsible if they did, so lucky for us that they don't.

It is not my method. I did not make up the concept of replication and falsification and independent verification. That method was established long before I was born.

What you cant do is square your new age woo with established method. Don't try to pawn your lack of evidence on someone who didn't set up the rules.

If you have a better system than scientific method, I am all ears.

When you can get the entire scientific community to accept your little green men theory like gravity and evolution, then you will have something. But it is NOT up to me to bow to you just because you don't like my objections to your claims. It is up to you to prove your claims. Otherwise any idiot making a claim can claim whatever they want.

We are all entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. Scientific method is the way we filter out our own bias. Get your little green men on Larry King and Oprah and have Dawkins and the AMA confirm your little green men theory at a UN meeting, then it can be considered universal.

But, just like Ouija boards, it is a safe bet to me, that the only way you can perpetuate your tripe is convincing yourself that ambiguity is your only life raft.

There was no third man on the grassy knoll and Santa isn't real and Jesus did not survive rigor mortis.

Isn't it funny that you, and I and Oprah and Larry King and a Muslim and Jew and Hindu, can all agree that a car works by the same concept? No matter our personal bias, a car works by the concept of a combustion engine. And for that matter, no matter our personal bias, the computers you and I type on, despite their varying make up, still all work on the principle of machine language?

Isn't it funny that a Jew, a Muslim and an atheist can all jump off a skyscraper without the aid of anything breaking their fall we will all splat on the ground?

And isn't it funny that humans have always had a history of making bad guesses more so than getting things right?

All I am telling you, is to date, the best way to filter out our pet whims as individuals is to replicate and falsify. A history of claims does not constitute evidence, otherwise the earth would be flat and the sun would really be a god. I treat your little green men theory no different.