Virtual Reality Out-of-Body Experiences Reduce the Fear of Death
A new virtual reality technique substitutes a person's real body for a virtual body where someone can potentially have an out of body experience (OBE). The technique is similar to the rubber hand illusion where people can "feel" that some other hand, or a fake hand, is their own, through clever sensory manipulation.
32 female participants were divided into two groups to test how the fear of death (FOD) can be influenced by experiencing an OBE. They each wore a black suit with oculus HMD.
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The virtual body can be programmed to move synchronously with the real body using real-time motion capture technology. This is called visuomotor synchrony.
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Virtual objects are used to touch the virtual body that sends vibrotactile stimulation (vibrations) to the real body through sensors attached to the wrist and ankles. This is referred to as visuotactile synchrony.
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Both groups had the same initial visuomotor synchrony where they had strong feeling of ownership of the virtual body. After that familiarity with the virtual body takes place, the virtual viewpoint is lifted up behind their virtual body.
One group with half of participants could still move their virtual body below while it was continuously struck by the virtual balls.
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The other group loses control of the virtual body, while the virtual balls follow their floating body. They no longer sense the virtual balls through the stimulation of vibrations on the real body and report feeling disconnect from their actual body.
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After a few minutes, the participants removed their headset, and filled out a questionnaire that had a question about fear of death.
Volunteers who experienced this illusion of disconnection and detachment reported a lower fear of death afterwards.
The researchers also categorized the fear of death score through a condition of being an atheist or not. The lowest anyone can score was seven, and the highest they could score was a 35. As you can see from the chart below, it didn't matter what someone accepted as a belief. The experience itself was what determined a reduction in the fear of death.
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Here is a video with the explanation as well:
Personally, I have played a game where I fell from a great height, which produced a feeling of "free-fall" within me, in my stomach, even though I wasn't in reality going through that experience. I have posted about the power of consciousness before, both from others to manipulate us, and for us to fool ourselves all on our own.
The VR OBE study is a great experiment to demonstrate how the senses and perception can be tricked into a false experience of reality. Those who induce inner-experiences and altered states of consciousness by altering their internal perception, intent and affect their neuro-electro-chemical processing can learn from this, whether it's meditation or psychedelics use.
I have not written about this yet, but the point is about how inner-existence and subjective experience can be induced by our consciousness, and doesn't reflect an actual reality anywhere outside of the phantasmal imagination factory we have.
This, and other things like the placebo effect, demonstrate the power of consciousness to affect our psychical bodies, where we can induce emotional and physiological states through th electro-chemical changes that our consciousness can cause our brain to produce. Consciousness is an emergent property dependent on a neuronal communication, but this emergent phenomenon of consciousness has executive power to induce electro-chemical changes.
Whether someone takes substances or does intentional internal manipulations that alter the normalized functionality and ability to experience reality as it is towards an altered false reality of their own internal making, the result is of creating an alternate subjective reality that misrepresents objective reality.
Experience does not determine what is in objective reality. Consciousness can be induced with imagery, emotions, altered states of consciousness and experiences.
As I have previously explained in The Power of Consciousness - Magic, Abracadabra and the Word (Pt.2):
Experience is not de facto existence/reality. Experiences rise and fall without any substantial changes in reality itself, without any existing real being coming into existence/reality or going out of existence/reality. It's all internally subjective, induced by internal consciousness emotional states and bio-electro-chemical states. The inner "world" and "multiverse" "reality" of subjective experience does not determine what does exist or does not exist in the objective world, universe and reality. The internal "existence" of experience is not the same, nor more real, than external reality/existence.
References:
- Virtual out-of-body experience reduces your fear of death
- Virtual reality 'out-of-body experience' reduces fear of death in volunteers
- A Virtual Out-of-Body Experience Reduces Fear of Death
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2017-01-27, 5:10pm
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In Toronto we had the largest IMAX screen in the world that would show first person style short movies of things like planes flying over water or riding a roller coaster.
It created that effect of feeling as if you are falling without ever leaving your seat. Ever since then I have been eagerly awaiting this moment when personal VR systems would be affordable. We are so close.
I have wondered for a long time, why, with the prevalence of the fear of death, somniphobia, aka hypnophobia, or fear of sleep, is not more common. Can a dying person tell the difference between dying and falling asleep?
Having the full experience first-hand of what it is to be a soul and nothing but the soul is in itself very very liberating. Having the chance of experiencing something close to this effect such as in virtual realities where you can float and/or fly here and there at will surely promotes this feeling. I still remember playing the game MACH 3, a airplane fighter flying through mazes of canyons shooting enemy canons and such, I simply couldn't get enough of it as I knew perfectly that it was an extremely similar feeling to the one we experience while being in an out-of-body experience.
I guess from that standpoint, it is definitely conceivable that someone might feel reassured by the feeling of freedom and weightlessness while still being able to assert a certain level of control... A first step toward accepting the death of their body, but more importantly, a solid step toward building the courage to face death itself, eye to eye.
Thanks for this great article, all for one and one for all! Namaste :)
I just don't get it. Like Jim Morrison so aptly put it; "Nobody makes it out alive." You're going to die, I'm going to die, there's no avoiding it. Like Epicurus wrote: "There's nothing to fear in death for death is merely the dissolution of atoms and there's nothing to fear in the dissolution of atoms...for when death occurs, the soul has already departed." The end of this life is just the beginning of the next...let the adventure begin!
its interesting content like the question from where we coming?
I think the nature of conscoiusness is still very much an open question. The 'induced' inner experiences, especially wrt psychedelics, is also open, especially with psychedelics like DMT which can provide new and useful information about objective reality. Because these experiences are induced by computer simulations it is tempting to view it all as subjective. I'm not sure. Of course we can be fooled, I agree, we try to interpret and can be wrong, but that doesn't necessarily make it purely subjective.
For mine I think that concepts, like fear and death, already have an objective basis so the experiment is simply changing the way we think about or access those concepts by changing our relationship to our body, our perspective. All very real and objective. Similarly psychedelics can help us access concepts or percepts that we usually can't but that are also objectively real. I guess that's the model of the mind as receiver that is tuned in to the 'human' channel most of the time but can tune in to 'out of body' channel too. Sorry, crapping on a bit! Not too sure, but a bit different.
Anyway it reminds me of the idea that we are already living in a simulation. The experiment invites that idea and it's a popular conjecture lately:
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/11/simulated-world-elon-musk-the-matrix