i, 


Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210026-4 


“  Patapsychologists are interested in out-of-body experience 


By Joan Kron 


because it has implications for survival after death . . o 


On this past Halloween morning— 
after a dark and stormy night—I saw 
the past, present, and future at the 
Waynesboro-Afton Holiday Inn, near 
Charlottesville, Virginia. 


Acow had somehow strayed onto U.S. 
Highway 250 and was trotting along, 


unnerving motorists; in the inn’s park- 
ing lot, a flotilla of Corvettes was lined 
up for a convention of Corvette own- 
ers; and in three adjoining rooms on 


the upper level, thirteen men and wor- 


en, including me, were lying in bed 
wearing earphones, trying to achieve an 
out-of-body experience—a phenomenon 
in which one feels one’s consciousness 
is located outside the physical body. 
Out-of-body experience (OBE) could 
be the next body-control fad, a rival 
for fasting, yoga, TM, biofeedback, 
etc. But instead of being a means to 
control the body, OBE lets you escape 
the body. It’s supposed to be a pleasant 
trip. And if you’re looking for a mean- 
ingful experience, it couldn’t be more 
so, for it poses questions about exis- 
tence and nonexistence. 
Parapsychologists are interested in 
the OBE for two reasons, says Univer- 


sity of California parapsychologist John | 


Palmer: One, because “the OBE might 
be a state particularly conducive to ESP 
[extrasensory perception)” and two, be- 


of survival afer Qe6 RY Es ra RIP sa OaI Rb." EtRGEASP Gnd ABARAT AA RIA Abetniguc Tfor boreal 


CR WNWEW YORK/YEAR-END ISSUE 


function outside the body before death 
might be able to function [outside] the 
body after death.” 

No wonder people are beating a path to 


‘ Robert Monroe’s door in Afton, Virginia. - 


His M-5000 training program is a,pain- 
less, nontraumatic course in OBE using 
recorded speech and sound effects— 
and it’s almost ready to go national. 
Some 600 pioneers have already tried 
it, and Monroe has a branch pro- 
gram in San Francisco, When I ar- 
ranged to join one of the weekend ses- 
sions, insiders warned me I’d be spend- 
ing a lot of time in bed. And Monroe 
warned me I couldn’t expect to have an 
OBE on the first weekend. But I had 
high hopes for instant success. After 
all, 1 am an American. 

The $175 weekend (plus meals and 
motel room) did not attract the us- 
ual parapsychology crowd, although 
there were some in the group who 
knew their way around a séance table. 
There were three college students from 
Buffalo, a chiropractor from South Da- 
kota, a woman who had founded the 
Louisiana Society for Psychical Re- 
search, another who had recently lost 
her husband (and whose daughter. is 
writing a book on ESP in dogs), an ac- 
countant whose hobby is religion and 
philosophy and who believes he’s been 


works for Monroe, and an ordained 
minister. In addition, there were two 
young men-—a hematologist from Wash- 
ington, D.C., and a professor of psy- 
chological counseling—who were re- 
ferred by Illinois psychiatrist Elisabeth 
Kiibler-Ross, the cult figure of the 
death-and-dying movement and a Mon- 
roe booster. 


“Elisabeth Kiibler-Ross got out [of . 


her body] both times she took the pro- 
gram,” said one of the Monroe trainers. 

We were not so lucky.. In the course 
of the three-day program no one claimed 
to have achieved liftoff. We had lain 
on our adjoining beds through three 
45-minute tapes on Friday evening, 
nine 45-minute tapes on Saturday, and 
had about six to go on Sunday—and 
still nothing. 

The tapes evolved over a ten-year 
period. In 1973 Monroe took them— 


by invitation—to the Esalen Institute — 
in Carmel for a tryout. In the M-5000 - 


training-program jargon the tapes play 
combinations of sounds (using a pat- 


ented sleep-inducing method) with 


delta-theta pulsing, plus a binaural beat 
to help the left and right brain hemi- 


spheres get in sync. The voice-over in- | 


struction—some barely audible—is a 
step-by-step buildup with each tape 
guiding you - from relaxation to visual- 


illustrated by Mitom Glesst 


mm i 


Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210026-4 


ot 


... vai One ‘astral flight,’ claims Monroe, he visited tne home o: 


a skeptical woman friend and gave her an astral pinch...” 


ing and controlling nonphysical energy 
and refocusing consciousness away from 
physical reality. But to me it sounded 


- like ocean waves with a mesmerizing 


voice telling me, “Now you will conduct 
your exercise in resonant breathing as I 


- guide you...,. You will know you have 


reached the resonant point when you 
feel an intensive vibration and hear a 


roaring or hissing sound in: your head © 


or experience patterns of light... .” 
And so it goes, hypnotically and some- 
what pretentiously, from C-One (your 
conscious physical waking state), to Fo- 
cus Ten (body asleep, mind awake), to 
Focus Twelve (state of expanded non- 
physical awareness), to exercises in re- 
mote viewing of a six-digit number (no 
one guessed it right), to psychokinesis 
(trying to make a cotton ball rise—it 
didn’t), to your energy bar tool (sort of 
a mental chinning bar), to Focus Fifteen 
(the state where time does not exist or 
is unimportant), to, it is hoped, the dis- 
crete out-of-body state. 
The woman from Louisiana kept 
falling asleep and someone else found 
himself swallowing a lot. “They were 
resisting,” we were told. Some people 
in other sessions dropped out because 
“they might not be able to take the 
assault on their value structure.” I had 


‘ a brief moment when I felt I was flying 


over New York, but maybe that was 
what scientists call the “halo” effect— 
trying to please the teacher—except I 
didn’t tell my teacher. 

“Why do I pursue this?” asked the 
physician from Washington, rhetorical- 


ly, in oné of our walks around the deck ~ 


between tapes. “Because I trust Kiibler- 
Ross,” he answered himself, “She says 
it happens, so I believe it happens.” 

I know it happens. I have had many 
OBE’s myself, years ago in the dentist’s 
chair when nitrous oxide (laughing gas) 
was commonly used for anesthesia, On 


those occasions, I relished the sensa- 
’ tion of floating out of my body up to - 


the ceiling, looking down on myself. It 
wasn’t like dreaming, because I felt 


‘fully aware, present. I could even talk 


to my doctor. There was a dizzy Fan- 
tasia-like delirium about it that made 
me feel omnipotent. The only thing I 
disliked about those levitations was 
the smell of the gas. 


For years, I felt unique for having | 


had those experiences. But now I’ve 


learned that untold thousands of ordi-| 


nary Americans have had OBE’s, They 
can be triggered by therapeutic drugs, 
marijuana, LSD, anesthesia, hypnosis, 


“But the best way to have an OBE,” 
says University of California psychol- 


ogy professor Dr. Charles Tart, “is to © 


almost die,” 
Whether it’s the best way for you to 


‘have one or not, it guarantees quick 


attention from doctors of varying spe- 
cialties who will want to debrief you 
for their forthcoming books. 

And if you have OBE’s often enough 


or can achieve them at will, you may: 


be invited to Stanford Research Insti- 
tute in California, the Psychical Re- 
search Institute in Durham, North Car- 
olina, the American Society for Psychi- 
cal Research in New York City, or the 
Clarke Institute in Toronto, Canada— 
where you will be hooked up to brain- 
wave machines and tested on all sorts 
of neurological equipment to help sci- 
ence fathom the enigma of the OBE. 
The big question is, when it’s not 


‘caused by body-chemistry alteration, - 


fever, or trauma to the brain, what is 
the OBE state’s neurophysiology? Sci- 
entists are fairly sure about what it's 


“not. It’s not a dream state; it’s not a 


sleep state. The only consistent finding 
emerging from studies, says John Palm- 
er, “is a reduction of eye-movement 
activity during OBE’s.” 

Gifted OBEers are almost as rare as 
certifiable ghosts—the most notorious 
ones around are New York artist Ingo 


‘Swann, Maine psychic Alex Tanous, 


parapsychologist Stuart “Blue” Harary, 
who works at Brooklyn’s Maimonides 
Medical Center, and M-5000 entre- 
preneur Robert Monroe. They all claim 
that they can travel and/or project their 
consciousnesses, or “doubles,” as they’re 
called, to other locales. One of the 
aims of Monroe’s program is to turn 
up gifted OBEers for his eight-per- 
son “explorer group.” ‘We're really 
paying Monroe to be his guinea pigs, 
aren’t we?” said the Louisiana woman 
in a flash of enlightenment. 

Monroe is the author of Journeys Out 
of the Body, which chronicles his expeti- 
ments with inhaling glue fumes, fol- 
lowed soon after by his first spontaneous 
OBE at age 43, and since then his con- 
tinuously recurring OBE’s. On one 
“astral flight,” Monroe claims. he visited 
the home of a skeptical woman friend 
and gave her an astral pinch. The result- 
ing black-and-blue mark is proof, say be- 
lievers, of his dual existence in the 
OBE state. Monroe claims he can now 


“fly” in tandem with his wife and that’ 


two of his “explorers,” a husband and 
wife who live miles apart, visit each 


with a wink, “I don’t think they're put- 
ting everything that happens in it.” 
The 61-year-old Monroe seems to 
need to legitimize his OBE’s to prove 
that they’re more than hallucinations 
or altered states of consciousness, so 
he’s building an institute to go with 
them, complete with a “respectable” 
board of advisers (Kiibler-Ross is one), 
sci-fi jargon, and a hypothesis that ESP 
and OBE’s are related to some kind of 


‘more intelligent life on other planets. 


His explanation reads like a B-movie 
script. And it's expectable from a man 


who scripted a few episodes of The’ . 
Shadow when he was a New York 


writer, producer, and programmer in 
radio’s early days. Today Monroe sells 
the out-of-body trip the way Don Wil- 


son sold Jell-O. “The main thing is . 
how do you feel about the Ten state? . 


Can you feel the difference be- 
tween the Ten state and the Twelve 


state? You'll get to the ‘I know’ sys- 


tem—I know I am something: other 
than physical matter.’ That’s the begin- 
ning stage. You don’t need proof for 
that... . You must overcome the bar- 


rier of nonknowing. . . . You can’t 


crash-program out of your body... . 
You must log a number of exercises. 


‘Our failure rate is zero [if you prac-  _ 
tice]. Ten is simplistic. Twelve is the . 
gateway. I won’t begin to tell you the * 


things you can do with it.” 

Monroe’s brochure claims his courses 
are good for almost anything: Heal- 
ing. Re-energizing yourself, Pain reduc- 
tion.Dehabituation from smoking, drugs, 
and overeating; concentration and 
decision-making techniques; accelerated 
data-learning; exploration and contact 
with other energy systems. “So have a 
good time, folks, up there in Twelve,” 
says Monroe. “When you get into 
Twelve, you’re on the fringe of space 
time.” And “Thank you,” joked our 


- Jeader, Nancy, his stepdaughter, “for a 


flying Monroe-via.” 
Though “flying” out of the body may 
be an intriguing diversion in itself, a 


prime concern of the OBE buffs is its ° 


relevance to life after death. 


Life-after-death (also called sur- - 


vival) research isn’t new. It started in 


the nineteenth century and got a tre-' 


mendous boost in the late 1940s when 
prospector James Kidd bequeathed 
nearly $300,000 to anyone who could 
prove that the soul survives death. In 
1972, after the “Great Soul Trial,” 
Kidd’s money was finally divided be- 


- tween the American Society for Psychi- 


meditation, sensory Aippntoatind orckelodme 2008109 /akryCihigIRDP Dhe Pf SBRODAEOORTQASBR) and the Psy- 


treme stress. 


_ keeping a diary, but,” says Monroe chical Research Foundation (PRF) in 


Approved For Release 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96- 00788R001700210026-4 
avin diy 0 Slant 4a Ube 

Both organizations used the moucy 10 
test the separate existence of the OBE- 
et’s “double.” It was hard to prove. 
Meanwhile, ASPR research director 
Dr. Karlis Osis, with some extra sup- 
port from Xerox inventor Chester Carl- 
son, also did a cross-cultural survey of 
deathbed visions as reported by doc- 
tors and nurses. 

According to Osis, many dying pa- 
tients insist they have glimpses of post- 
mortem existence, persons long dead, 
scenes of otherworldly beauty. Espe- 
cially common were apparitions of 
the patients’ deceased mothers, spouses, 
and offspring, whom Osis calls “take- 
away figures,” whose role was to take 
the dying patients to the other side. 
“The data,” says Osis, “are more con- 
sistent with life after death than with 
death as total destruction, But it’s not 
proven.” 

Where the parapsychologist won’t 
rush to conclusions, psychiatrist Elis- 
abeth Kiibler-Ross doesn’t fear to. 
tread, “I’m convinced beyond a shadow 
of a doubt that. there is life after 
. death,” she said in a recent newspaper 
‘interview. Her encounter with the ma- 
terialized persona of one of her de- 
ceased patients seems to be one of her 
proofs. Her other “proofs” of life after 
death are the out-of-body experiences 
‘of dying patients. 

God knows I’d like to believe in life 
after death. Like most survivors, 1 
have yearned to be, even dreamed of 
being, united with my dead daughter. 
Sometimes when I put the key in the 
lock of my apartment door, I feel she 
is hovering over me in the hall. After 
she died, it was comforting to imagine 
her being taken care of by all those 
who had predeceased her—my grand- 
father, my father, my friend’s son. 

The theory of evolution - notwith- 
standing, belief in “the other side” is 
almost a reflex action. Miracles are 


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So, thanks, Reverend Norman Kuck. 


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; “Could it have been JVC 
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The personal portable 


programmed into us from the begin- 
ning—through our religions, our my- 
thology, and our fairy tales. “If you be- 
lieve in fairies,” says Peter Pan, “Tin- 
ker Bell will live.” And if you don’t be- 
lieve in fairies, Tinker Bell will die. 
Following that line of reasoning, if you 
believe in life after death, you will find’ 
it—and if you don’t, you won't. So we 
skeptics hunger for proof. 

It’s no surprise, then, that Dr. Ray- 
mond Moody’s book, Life After Life, 
embellished with a foreword by Ktibler- 
Ross, is a best-seller. There was a 
favorable reaction from all religious 
denominations, and sales of the book 
went out of sight. 

Members of the thanatology commu- 
nity (who study death), however, had 


Basel ee hc ee 


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:  ,..sust because she heard them say she was dead doesn’t mean 
3 she was dead. Maybe it was a lousy diagnosis,’ said Blacher ; . se 


mis 11 


ject for scientific study, one of their 
own members, Kiibler-Ross (who was 
already getting flak from her colleagues 
for her. stages-of-dying theory), was 
now steering thanatology into spiritual- 
ist waters. “I admire Elisabeth tremen-. 
dously,” said one colleague, “but I 
don’t believe in mixing one’s religious 


‘beliefs with science.” “I have left in- 


structions,” said another, “not to let 
that woman within a mile of my death- 
bed,” 

But most of the critical blasts are 
aimed at the 32-year-old Moody, a psy- 
chiatry resident, now on leave from the 
University of Virginia to write a se- 
quel to his best-seller. “As anecdotes, 


‘I'd give the book B-minus,” says Uni- 


versity of California professor oi 

thanatology and_ suicide expert Dr. . 
Edwin Shneidman, “and as research, 
I'd give it D-minus.” i , 

Life After Life is based on interviews 
with 50 people who came close to death 
through accident, illness, or injury—as 
well as some who were judged or pro- 
nounced clinically dead and were resus- 
citated, Nowhere in the book, however, 
does Moody state exactly how many of 
his subjects were pronounced dead, or 
how many had a spiritualist orientation. 
Moody says merely that he himself has 
never been interested in spiritualism 
and that many of his subjects were doc- 
tors and nurses, from which, presuma- 
bly, we are to infer that they are totally 
objective about their experiences. 

In a recent lecture at Columbia- 
Presbyterian Medical Center, Moody : 
said that fifteen elements crop up again 
and again in the experiences of his sub- 
jects: “There was an alarming audi- 
tory sensation, like a swarm of bees— 
this is referred to as the’ moment of 
death. Many people said they heard 
the doctor pronounce them dead. Then 
there was a feeling of being drawn 
down a tunnel, valley, or sewer, then 
the sensation of looking at their body 


' from outside of it, of floating on the 


ceiling. They feel they can’t get through 
to their doctors and nurses. They often 
feel ‘someone who has died before 
them is there to meet them. They have 
flashes of their life or a panoramic re- 
view of it—in 3-D, all at once, not se- 
quentially. And they see a being of , 
light, a loving, warm, accepting being 


_ that most of them called ‘he’ or Christ 


or the Supreme Being or the angel.” 
“It’s fascinating as near-death experi- 

ence,” said Boston psychiatrist Richard 

Blacher. “The trouble lies in the subtle 


extrapolation that t OWS, 1 Psa 
curred after dying. ose is not heen 


as dying. Flying to San Francisco is not 
the same as San Francisco. Just because 


the patient heard the doctor say she - 


was dead doesn’t mean she was dead. 
«+ Maybe it was a lousy diagnosis.” 


Even Moody admits, “I certainly - 


.don’t: think that a logical conclusion 


can be drawn that these are life-after- 
death experiences,” thereby contradict- 
ing his own book title and book jacket. 

So why did Moody, a man the Ban- 


tam P.R. person says has “this integrity - 


thing,” call his book Life After Life? 
“I didn’t pick the title,” Moody told 
me. “But ... I especially like it be- 
cause it doesn’t say life after death.” 

And why does his Bantam paper- 
back bear the subhead “Actual case 
histories that reveal there is life after 
death”? — 

“It’s hard to trust the copy on the 
covers of books,” says Moody. Then he 
adds, “Just as it’s impossible to infer 
there is survival after bodily death, 


there is no way to assume that there is : 


not,” 

The “clinical death” cases in his 
book refer to people whose heartbeat 
and respiration had stopped, who had 
no blood pressure, and whom the phy- 
sician had considered dead. “Cardiac or 
even respiratory standstill does not, 
however, automatically mean the onset 


of clinical death,” it says in the 1976 


Encyclopaedia Britannica section on 


.death authored by Elisabeth Kiibler- 


Ross. “The pronouncement of death is 
much more problematical and contro- 


versial than most people realize,” says” 


medical ethicist Dr. Robert Veatch, 
“When a person says, ‘I died for 
three minutes and had this experi- 
ence,’ this person was not dead. He 
or she transiently ceased respiration 
and heartbeat but not all -brain func- 
tion. Key brain function had to be 
there or the person couldn’t come 
back.” Even Moody concedes the “re- 
turn” to life of these people was “no 
physiological miracle . . , something 
was going on in those bodies in order 
for them to be resuscitated.” But what 
accounts for the out-of-body visions of 
these near-death experiences? As Moody 
admits in Life After Life, they might 
be attributed to drugs, isolation, or 
cerebral anoxia. When oxygen levels 
are tampered with, you can get all 
sorts of subjective visions and dissoci- 
ative effects like OBE’s. 

But please don’t call it hallucination, 
as if comparing these patients to psy- 
‘chotics. Many of these people, Says 


QOOsIO SD tcl ASRIBAOOT 8BRAD 4% 


cination or a religious experience. We 


need to reassure patients they are not 
(crazy].” 

But apparently no one ever needs 
to reassure them again about dying. 
“People who have survived this expe- 


rience are no longer afraid to die,” says : 


Moody. 

Must you almost die to conquer your 
fear of dying? 

According to parapsychologist John 
Palmer (in a paper entitled “Conscious- 
ness Localized in Space Outside the 
Body,” published in Osteopathic Physi- 


cian, April, 1974), “Many persons who 
‘have had striking OBE’s report that the 


experience convinced them of survival 


after death and eliminated their fear: 


of death. Whether or not this con- 
clusion is objectively valid, it does 
suggest therapeutic possibilities for the 
OBE. ... [It] may help persons engaged 
in high-risk occupations...where fear... 
may adversely affect . . . performance. 
{It] might also provide comfort to pa- 
tients in certain stages of terminal 
illness.” 


_ Kiibler-Ross, who once said she “ex. 


pected to die fighting and not accept- 
ing,” is now an adviser to Robert Mon- 
roe on his Star System program—an 
OBE course for the terminally ill that 
has certain similarities to earlier stud- 
ies using LSD for the terminally ill. 


“It’s a program to help the dying get. - 


a foothold on the other side,” says Mon- 


roe. “If there is a great beyond, there’s - 
a place for out-of-body. Given three ' 


months, we can easily train a person 
to achieve out-of-body experience and 
change his concept of death and estab- 
lish a beachhead where he’s going.” ; 

Encouraging the dying to believe in 
an afterlife isn’t new. “I don’t dis- 
courage a belief in life after death,” 
says Philadelphia hematologist Dr. J. 
Lawrence Naiman, who works with leu- 
kemic children. “It’s a strong element 
providing comfort in dying children 


and their families.” The Monroe. pro- 


gram doesn’t discourage it either. 
During the M-5000 weekend, the lead: 
er casually mentioned that “one woman 
took the course to try to reach her son 
who had died.” My pulse quickened. 
(I have never tried to communicate with 
my daughter. I do have a friend who 
prearranged all sorts of signals with her 
husband when he was dying, but after 
his death she never received a message 


‘or sign.) The next day I asked non- 
chalantly if that woman had. ever - 


reached her dead son, A lot of people 
AA 


cians that their experience was a hallu- ‘one had asked. “Not during the train- 


4 


ieved that some- . 


oe 


-" | Approved! For Release. 2003/09/10 : CIA-RDP96-00788R001700210026-4... 


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“. “Our own death is unimaginable,’ s 


Dr. Noyes, ‘so we become observers’. . .” 


ing-program weekend,” we were told. 


“She reached him after months of prac- 
tice at home.” 

The search for reunion with the lost 
love object, as C. Murray Parkes points 
out in his book Bereavement, is biolog- 
ical—an animal instinct. Similarly, the 
griever is drawn to reunion like the 
moth to the flame. Many suicides are 
reunion-bound. So I felt ambivalent 


about this possibility—attracted and at - 


the same time guilty for not wanting to 
leave life yet. Still, I was curious to 
talk to that woman. As it turned out, 
she had never actually “been able to 
contact” her son. However, since she 
had taken the Monroe course she had 
had a dream in which her son told her 


not to. worry about him—he was not | 


alone. 

Whether or not OBE can help sur- 
vivors, do we need an OBE rehearsal 
for dying? A paper by University of 
Iowa psychiatrist Russell Noyes Jr. and 


clinical psychologist Roy Kletti entitled 
“Depersonalization in the Face of Life- 


Threatening Danger: A Description” 
and a subsequent interpretive paper 
could save you hours of practice with 
earphones. Noyes and Kletti interviewed 
104 people who had had near-death 
experiences. 

“The accounts revealed the almost in- 
stantaneous development of depersonal- 
ization”—a cluster of reactions includ- 
ing altered perception of time, lack of 
emotion, feeling of unreality, altered at- 


tention, sense of detachment, loss of | 


control, panoramic memory, and the in- 


_ ability to describe it—“‘ followed .. . by 


a separation of the observing from the 
participating self [OBE]. . Deper- 
sonalization,” write Noyes and Kletti, 
. appears to be an almost universal 
reaction to life-threatening danger. As 
such it may be a basic adaptive pattern 
of the nervous system. .. .’ 
“It’s an emergency mechanism,” 
Noyes told me, “a reflex action, if you 
like,” which, as his article explains, 


“has been viewed psychologically as a 


defense against anxiety. Freud felt we 
tend to eliminate death from our lives 
by becoming . . . detached observers. 
Our own death is indeed unimaginable, 
80 we perceive that we really survive 
as spectators. Thus, in the face of mortal 


danger, we find individuals becoming - 


observers . . . effectively removing them- 


_ selves from danger.” 


Noyes reports that 49 percent of the 
people he interviewed experienced de- 
_ tachment from body. A sense of harmony 


cal extension of this experience oc- 
curred almost exclusively in persons in 
whom some alteration of cerebral func- 
tioning might be presumed to have oc- 
curred——for example, cases of drown- 
ing, where, it’s implied, there might 


have been a lowered level of oxygen 


to the brain. And 47 percent of those 
who believed death imminent had pan- 


_oramic memories, Although much the 


same symptoms are found in deperson- 


alization brought on by marijuana in- - — 


toxication, says Noyes, the revival-of- 


‘memories component appears to be 


more closely associated with life-threat- 
ening circumstances, and bears a strik- 


‘ing resemblance to a typical grief 


reaction, where memories of deceased 
persons, resembling. lifelike presences, 
are reported during the acute stages and 
represent a bereaved person’s clinging 


to and at the same time severing ties - 


with the lost loved one. It could also 
explain Osis’s “take-away figure.” 
What about the tunnel Moody’s people 
see? “I’ve heard of experiences like 
that but not very many,” says Noyes. 


While there's no question that peo- © 


ple are concerned about the hereafter, 
studies show that people don’t fear 


- death nearly as much as they fear 


dying. Will I be in pain, disfigured, 
abandoned? These are the universal 
fears. “What does it feel like to die?” 
is a question that’s common to patients 
who know they are dying. 

Noyes’s work, contrary to Moody’s, 
addresses these fears by explaining the 
out-of-body experience and the accom- 


‘panying phenomena as an automatic 


component of dying rather than a pre- 
sumption of being dead. “One may 
take comfort,” says Noyes, “from the 
fact that if suddenly confronted. by [im- 
minent] death, one might find within 
oneself the resources for coping with 
that frightful prospect. In such an ur- 
pent moment, the strengih may be 
found to effect a rescue, but failing 


that, to face life’s end with serenity— - 


even acceptance.” 
Yes, I find that a tremendous com- 
fort. And it makes me suspect that it’s 


no more necessary to rehearse for dying ° 


than it is to learn to breathe. 

But don’t let me ground you. The 
nonchemical out-of-body trip may just 
possibly be—like meditation—a_first- 
class ticket to relaxation, self-actualiza- 
tion, and enlightenment. 

It may also be the quintessential vi- 
carious a ala for our plastic sur- 

gery~prone, -de-aging, death-denying 


le. have. 
su SoS an igbaar intention obra gconle ~ sails 


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