Summary: Interviews with author and out-of-body experience expert Graham Nicholls explores misconceptions about OBEs. Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with Graham Nicholls, author of Navigating the Out of Body Experience: Radical New Techniques. During the interview Nicholls discusses some misconceptions about out-of-body experiences: Alex Tsakiris: Your answer is very much in line with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake there, so you guys are on the same page, but I just don’t know how we can walk that fine line of --okay, don’t worry, “science” will figure this out eventually. There are a number of well known out-of-body experiencers who talk about a much more rich spiritual landscape that they feel like they’ve traversed and have come back and tell us about. They’ll tell you about lower levels; they’ll tell you about different kinds of beings, including what we would call evil or demonic beings up to beings we would associate with a lot of religious traditions. They’ll tell you directly that they’re related to some religious traditions. So I guess my point is I think we’re obligated to really take that stuff much more seriously once we cross over and say yes, this really is happening. I don’t know how we can really have such a wall and say it’s all going to be explained. Graham Nicholls: I don’t feel there’s a wall. I feel I’ve explored a lot of those kinds of ideas. I’ve found that those things just didn’t hold up. Alex Tsakiris: Didn’t hold up in terms of as you went and tried to explore them yourself and validate them, you couldn’t personally validate them. Is that what you’re saying? Graham Nicholls: But not just me personally. Also the people I work with… I’ve tried to really dig beyond the preconceptions and step outside of the box a bit and saying, “What might actually be going on,” rather than just going with the presumption that it’s all spiritual and demons and Angels and that kind of thing. If I saw those things or if I saw a consistency across cultures with everyone I worked with, I would take those things onboard. But the thing is I don’t see that so it doesn’t give me a strong reason to take them onboard. Graham Nicholls' Website Play It: Listen Now: Download MP3 (38 min.) Read It: Alex Tsakiris: Hi Graham. It’s so great to have you back on Skeptiko. Graham Nicholls: Hi Alex. It’s great to be back on. Alex Tsakiris: So here we are and I was looking over your new book. Fascinating, fascinating. One of the things that really struck me is on one hand it’s a very practical book. It says right in there that the aim of this book is to help you have an out-of-body experience, which is fascinating. We want to talk about that because you really take a rather novel approach to kind of throw in a whole bunch of different techniques at folks. You actually have a really sound scientific basis for why you think that varied approach might work for people. But at the same time, and this is the other part of the book I want to talk about, the book is very much about the science of out-of-body experience and the science-related questions that it raises. So first, am I getting that right? Are there really these two aspects to the book? Graham Nicholls: Sure, yeah. Very much so. I wanted to move it away from the heavily esoteric angle that’s common in a lot of books. And I also really wanted to base the techniques on something solid and just go out there and see what actually works rather than just repeating what so many books and so many other people have been saying for over 100 years. I wanted to see if this stuff will really actually do what people say and so we really have silver cords and energy bodies and all of these kinds of things that are talked about so commonly. So yeah, that was really the aim. Alex Tsakiris: Okay, good. So I tell you what. Let’s leave aside for a second the scientific questions about out-of-body experiences,
