Spiritual concepts
Body image distortion
One of the quite startling effects of many experiences – particularly those on drugs and pharmaceuticals – is that our body image becomes distorted.
When you are in the out-of-body state, for example, you may see an image of your own body, or you may see yourself as a ball of light or you may feel you have no body at all. It all depends, it would appear, on what your expectations are.

Thomas Traherne saw himself as a sphere, Lewis Carroll [if Alice in Wonderland is anything to go by] grew in size and shrank in size and suffered distorted limbs – so did Henri Michaux.
If you have been told that in the out-of-body experience you will feel like a shooting star – that is the image the composer will concoct for you. It can also conjure up images of animals and that is why some people believed themselves to be wolves or stags or similar animals and took on these animals as their ‘mode of operation’ a sort of signature dress in keeping with their experience persona
Alastair Mackintosh – Beliefs about out-of-body experiences among the Elema, Gulf Kamea and Rigo peoples of Papua New Guinea
While disembodied the spirit can appear in any of three ways; as a facsimile of the physical body; in the form of a flying fox [fruit bat] if further magic is used, or as a light. The size of the light varies from small to football sized. In motion it twinkles like many stars compacted together and is shaped like a shooting star with a tail. It can radiate several colours – yellow, red and blue usually being the most prominent. The faster it moves the more brightly it shines
The composer will conjure up threads to link you to your body if you believe you need threads, or think that there are threads ‘holding you back’ figuratively speaking, or maybe just protecting you from getting lost – the composer acting as Ariadne for you. [If you have left via your Perceptions you will see threads]
In poems and other spiritual literature this ‘cord’ might also be described as ‘hair’ or rope – a means of return, once you had broken away from perception and started to travel in the wider spiritual realm.
If you think you can only fly with Wings, you will be given wings!
Our body image is software – the Template, - thus the composer can alter the template at will to give us new body images. If you want it to, the composer can remove any image of your body altogether – you have the power – via the composer, to conjure up whatever suits you best. In the examples you will see that people have felt themselves to be:
- A globular or an amorphous cloud, a patch of mist or a cloud like formation sometimes coloured
- The physical body but essentially the template not the actual body – an improved version
- Parts of the body – projections of surfaces analogous to arms, legs, a head etc
- A shape with ‘ends’ a definite top and bottom
- A flame
- An ‘energy' pattern
You can be horizontal and flying like a bird, or you can ask the composer to conjure up a chariot with horses or mythical animals – all are possible. In some cases people actually feel themselves converted to a totem animal – an animal or bird or similar that somehow represents who they are – the essence of their personality.
Paul Devereux – Shamanism and the Mystery Lines
An important element in shamanism, ………, was the ability to apparently travel in mind through the environment and observe distant events; this was [often] accomplished .. by assuming the form of an animal or bird,……
This is what is often meant when shamans talk about ‘shape shifting’, they assume a different shape to the one they are.
Overall then what we feel ourselves to be is entirely up to us; we can be an animal, a bird, connected by threads or ropes or a cord; we can be a ball, a shooting star or naked; we can be cloud like and a wraith; we can be horizontal and flying like a bird, or you can ask the composer to conjure up a mythical animal for you to ride – all are possible. Or you can appear to be your own body image of yourself – apparently real but in fact a constructed image of how you perceive yourself to be…. Or even maybe the new slim young you you’d like to be!
Mephistopheles from Faust
Observations
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- A Journey to Heaven, a Journey to Hell DOM by J. Andersen
- A migraine variant with abdominal colic and Alice in Wonderland syndrome: a case report and review
- A P Elkin - Aboriginal men of high degree - Throwing him into sky-land
- A somatic type delusional disorder secondary to peripheral neuropathy: a case report
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 01 - 4 Drink me
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 01 - 5 Eat me
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 02 - 1 Goodbye feet
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 02 - 3 The Mouse
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 04 - 2 Alice grows to fill the room
- Alice in Wonderland - Ch 05 - 2 Serpent
- All of me was there
- Arthur, James D - 05 Experience
- Blackmore, Dr Susan - Expands to the size of the universe
- Blackmore, Dr Susan - Goes out of body
- Body schema and body awareness of amputees
- Braveheart - Follow the yellow brick road
- Braveheart - Forest of bright birds
- Braveheart - Steam cleaned and broccoli
- Brendan
- Brunton, Dr Paul - A Search in Secret Egypt - A night inside the Great Pyramid 3
- Buddha - Diamond sutra - 10 A person whose body is large is not large bodied
- Buhlman, William - Adventures beyond the body - October 2, 1982
- Busey, Gary - And his NDE
- Cannabis - counteracting the pain of Hawaian Baby Woodrose poisoning
- Cash, Johnny – Goes out of body from amphetamine and barbiturate withdrawal
- Chardel, C - The Physiology of Magnetism – Out of body during sleep
- Collection of out of body shapes
- Craniosacral therapy, dreams and foxes
- Dentist into velvety blackness
- Dimenhydrinate and caffeine
- DMT - Universal shaman and the DMT being
- DPT, threads and slugs
- Dr James Terrill - The nature of the LSD experience
- Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mrs Celia Taylor, of Middle Rd., London, E.8 has an OBE
- Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Mrs H. M. Fox has an OBE
- Dr Robert Crookall - More Astral projections – Reine, P.E.Cornillier's model
- Dr Susan Blackmore - The Rigo of the Gulf Province of Papua New Guinea
- Dr. A. S. Wiltse, a physician of Skiddy, Kansas and his NDE
- Dr. Charpignon on the state of clairvoyant ecstasy of a sleepwalker
- Durville, Hector and Henri - Mrs. Eugénie Garcia doubles up
- F**kin' foo fighters
- Feeling like a little ball
- Fell about in a catatonic state
- Flying round the garden
- Freedom Long, Max - Becoming amber light
- Fuckers came at him from all sides
- Gautier, Theophile - Becomes an elephant
- Gautier, Theophile - Le Hachiche
- Gay man meets his lover in near death
- Gerhardie, William - Resurrection 05
- Growing claws and fur
- Growing until she was as big as a tree
- H.I.M.'s sister - realized herself as being in the spirit and very luminous, like an electric light
- Hallucinations from Phenobarbital
- Hans Peter Duerr - Tungus shaman
- Haven't Cried like that for Years Toad Venom by UmbrellaTools EROWID
- Hennell, Thomas - His body was no bigger than a glow worm
- Hoigne's syndrome
- Hokusai - Rokurokubi
- Home D. D. – Bodily elongation experiments 01 – Mr. Jencken’s testimony
- Home D. D. – Bodily elongation experiments 02 – Mr. Jencken’s testimony
- Home D. D. – Bodily elongation experiments 03 – Lord Adare’s testimony
- Home D. D. – Bodily elongation experiments 04 – Lord Adare’s testimony
- I thought I was going to die
- Jan Manette - Believes to the soul, death does not exist. She had seen it with her own eyes
- Joseph Campbell - Kung dancing
- Kepler, Johannes - The Daemon from Levania from Somnium
- Ketamine psychosis
- Krishna, Gopi - the kundalini experience No 7
- Ludlow, Fitz Hugh - Becomes a hippopotamus
- Ludlow, Fitz Hugh - His head a hundred foot high
- Madam Home - D D Home his life his mission - Testimony of Mr. H. T. Humphreys, a journalist
- Martineau, Harriet - Letters on Mesmerism - Feels herself transparent
- Masha Wasson Britten - Also takes the sacred mushrooms
- Masters and Houston - Shrinking
- Michaux, Henri - Arrival in Alicante
- Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - An arm three meters long,
- Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - Mescaline and Hashish compared
- Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - Stretched animals
- Michaux, Henri - Miserable Miracle Mescaline - Tiny incomplete creatures
- Michaux, Henri - Passages - The amoeba state
- Mild, but Definitely Not Poisonous Amanita muscaria by Activist
- Mircea Eliade - Inuit - Some shamans have visited the moon
- Mircea Eliade - The flying Emperor and other cases of 'magical flight'
- Mircea Eliade on Sufi flight
- Monroe, Robert - Shape shifting and out of body
- Monroe, Robert - The rubbery elasticity of the other body
- Morphing on DPT
- Mrs S.B.L. goes out of body in a coma and describes the impressions she felt during her unconscious state
- MS blog – people who have had OBEs
- Muldoon, Sylvan - Stages in separation OOB
- Mushrooms and cannabis effects
- Nightmares from memory of terrible experience
- Nizami – Makhzanol Asrar (The Treasury of Mysteries) – from Describing the night and cognising the heart 01
- Oliver Sacks - Growing and shrinking during chicken pox
- On hallucinations, bizarre sensations, phantom phenomena and body-image disturbances
- One Man's Shamanic Initiation DPT by InstantEnlightenment
- Ossowiecki, Stefan - out of body makes him ill
- Out of body - to flash across the universe in a blink of the eye
- Paroxysmal perceptual alteration and hallucinations from anti-psychotics
- Petrushka like doll below
- Psychotic symptoms in a woman with severe Anorexia Nervosa
- Ramachandran, Dr V S - John
- Ramachandran, Dr V S - Mirabelle, templates and body image
- Ramachandran, Dr V S - The body image game
- Rig veda - Those who know have wings
- Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - Scott’s own OBEs - 01 The first time
- Rogo, D Scott - Leaving the Body - Scott’s own OBEs - 03 Getting used to the OBE, after one aborted experience
- Salvorin A - Gwyllm becomes Medusa
- Seeress of Prevorst, the - Sympathetic magic and doppelgangers
- Shot up like a rocket
- Sister Veronica Laparelli – Both levitation and bodily elongation
- SmOkin' ToAdZ Toad Venom by Spiney Norman EROWID
- Ten year old boy hallucinations
- The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
- The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
- The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead
- The Gold Realm and White Room of Crucifixion Amanita muscaria by Space Elf
- The Good Drugs Guide website - summary of effects of LSD
- Tholey, Paul and LaBerge, Stephen - Perspectives of the Dream Figures
- Traherne, Thomas - Centuries of Meditations - My naked simple life was I That act so strongly shined
- Typhoid
- Universe begins to buzz
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home - 07 Home grew, I should say, at least, six inches
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home - 16 Seance with Mrs. Hamilton, her daughter, Lady Fairfax, and Mrs. Gregory; diagnosing illness
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home – 24 We heard Home go into the next room, heard the window thrown up, and presently Home appeared standing upright outside our window
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home – 26 Home was elongated slightly and raised in the air
- Viscount Adare - Experiences in Spiritualism with Mr D D Home – 45 Home walked about and was elongated in the usual manner
- Whiteman, J H M out of body dancing
- Wolfe, Thomas - Out of body
- Xam bushmen - Num dom
- Xing Kong Zi's Secrets of Embryonic Breathing
- Yram - Out of body manouvering