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David Scott Rogo - Leaving the Body: A Complete Guide to Astral Projection

The first observation is an outgrowth of a lengthy and detailed research project undertaken by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists in Kansas.  Dr Glen Gabbard of the Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Dr Stewart Twemlow of the Topeka V.A. Medical Center, and Dr. Fowler Jones of the University of Kansas Medical Center became interested in the OBE in the late 1970s and began collecting accounts from people who had experienced it. They also began studying the reporters themselves, and presented their first batch of findings at the annual convention of the American Psychiatric Association in May 1980 in San Francisco.

The three researchers reported on several different phases of their work, including how they attempted to map out the characteristics of the OBE, how they tried to determine if a person capable of experiencing this phenomenon is psychologically different from most other people, and whether the OBE can be explained psychiatrically. They received a variety of answers to these questions, but the data in general indicate that the OBE is a widespread human potential that anyone is capable of experiencing.

The researchers explained that their research began in February 1976 when Dr. Twemlow was interviewed about his interest in the out-of-body experience for the National Enquirer.  As part of the interview, the psychiatrist asked any readers who had experienced the OBE to write to him. He received 1,500 letters in response. 700 of his correspondents described rather typical OBEs.

For instance, one government employee wrote to Twemlow about an OBE he had when he was approximately 10 years old.

"l was living together with my older brother at my uncle's house, a major in the U.S. Army Medical corps," he wrote. "One day I was reclined on my bed quite awake and was looking at the ceiling beams of the old Spanish building where the living quarters were located. I was saying to myself many questions such as what was I doing there and who was l. All of a sudden I got up from the bed and started walking toward the next room. At that moment I felt a strange sensation in me; it was a sensation of weightlessness and a strange mix of a sense of a feeling of joy. I turned back in my steps in order to go back to bed when, to my big surprise, I saw myself reclined on the bed. This surprising experience at that very small age gave me the kind of a jerk which, so to say, shook me back to my body."