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.Pictures will be placedin hospital rooms in such a way that they are visibleonly from the ceiling to determine if they can be seenduring the OBE.It will be several years before we haveresults from this study.Hopefully, this study will answermany further questions about OBEs during NDEs.There have been several prior studies wheretargets were placed in areas of hospitals wherecritically ill patients might have NDEs.These targetswere paper or computer screens with visual pictures orwords.Targets were usually placed in a location wherethe patient, and those caring for the patient, would notordinarily see them.Designers of these studies hopedthat patients having an out-of-body experience duringan NDE would be able to see the targets and thusprovide objective proof of the OBE.So far there havebeen few NDEs and even fewer OBEs in thesestudies.None of the OBEs in these studies everincluded visual perception directed toward the target.Personally, I think it is extremely important tocontinue with this type of research.Not only does itcontribute to an understanding of our physical andmental processes, it may also contribute to ourunderstanding of the spiritual world.I am convincedthat studying out-of-body experiences in a variety ofways will lead to a clearer understanding of the specialstate of consciousness consistently described inNDEs.WHAT THE SKEPTICS SAY Some skeptics think that out-of-body experiences aresimply fragments of memory that pop up as a personbegins to die.They suggest that these fragments ofmemory might arise from what the near-deathexperiencer was able to hear or feel during the time ofapparent unconsciousness.This argument alsosuggests that out-of-body experiences may be unrealreconstructions of partial memories from the time theNDEr is losing consciousness before the NDE orrecovering consciousness immediately after the NDE.That some corroboration of the OBE observations withactual events or objects is found, they say, could bejust lucky guesses.The NDERF study shows that this argument iswrong.A review of 287 OBE accounts reveals thatthey are fully realistic, without any apparent error, in97.6 percent of the cases.If OBEs were unrealfragments of memory or lucky guesses, it isunbelievable that there would be such a highpercentage of completely accurate OBE observationsin hundreds of NDEs.Research says that memories formed just beforeor after a period of cardiac arrest, if they occur at all,are marked by confusion.8 By contrast, NDEs containconfused memories only rarely.If any part of the NDEwere due to simple reconstruction of memoryfragments, such memories would be expected tobecome progressively more or less confused as theNDEr approached or recovered fromunconsciousness.This is not what happens.Near-death experiences are typically highly lucid frombeginning to end.In the NDERF study we ask, At what time duringthe experience were you at your highest level of consciousness and alertness? People are invited torespond with a narrative answer.In reviewing hundredsof responses to this question, we have found that thehighest level of consciousness and alertness is usuallyexperienced not at the beginning or end of the NDEbut somewhere during or throughout the entire NDE.Very few NDErs describe their highest level ofalertness as occurring when they approached orrecovered from their time of unconsciousness.This isfurther strong evidence that the OBEs that take placeduring near-death experiences are real events, not justmemory fragments.In addition, NDERF researchshows people in an out-of-body state usuallyexperience a higher level of consciousness andalertness than they experience on a day-to-day basisduring their everyday life.FAR FROM THEIR BODYThere is additional striking evidence that OBEsoccurring during near-death experiences are real.Thisevidence comes from the case studies of those NDErswho say they have left their body and traveled somedistance from it, beyond the range of their physicalsenses.For instance, a patient whose body is beingresuscitated in the emergency room might find himselfor herself floating out of the room and into another partof the hospital.Later, the person is able to recountaccurate observations about what was taking place farfrom the physical body.Many case reports describingthis have been published over the years by NDEresearchers
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