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

Dr. Palmer conducted yet a third experiment in which he used a vibrating chair during the induction procedures, along with ganzfeld stimulation. Since many people who have had OBEs report that their bodies vibrated as though an electrical current were being passed through them, Palmer thought that producing this sensation artificially might help induce the experience.

He was right. During the upcoming experiments, he tested 40 subjects with this new technique, and nearly half of them reported OBEs.

Now it could be argued that Palmer's subjects were merely imagining that they had left their bodies and did not really experience classic OBEs.  However, this theory cannot explain all the results. Some of the subjects reported experiences virtually indistinguishable from the types of spontaneous OBEs that people report as a result of accident or when nearing sleep.

For instance, one subject described how he suddenly became aware of being out-of-body.

"At first during the relaxation," he told Palmer ,"l felt like a rush of . . . excitement, sort of, and I felt completely detached from everything. Then when I was supposed to be trying to leave my body, my mind became very alert and analytical and I felt in a box sort of inside a dead body. This continued the whole way through the experiment, and when it was over I felt a big come-down when the tape clicked off. I felt sort of the whole way through also, like I could see my whole body down beneath me in the chair, and once I felt like my mind was in a yellow glow right above my eyes close to my head and it was me, but I could also see it; and I tried to imagine the room with myself in it and I felt like I was very wide awake seeing the room. And there is an impression of a picture of blue-green and bright reddish-brown, but that could be a picture I just had in my mind."

Other subjects reported initial sensations of leaving the body, reminiscent of the way some people describe the onset of spontaneous OBEs.  For instance, one of Palmer's students said that

 "...l had a sense of sliding out of the back of the chair. I seemed to be still in my body, but there was a definite sense of motion of two or three feet back. ln a second I just seemed to raise up a bit-a floating sense-like in a tub of water."