I believe I have something of substance to contribute here . . . including acway to create an out of body experience on demand without drugs and/or surgery.
When I was a paramedic, we often had to do routine, non-emergency transports from hospital to nursing home, and so forth.
So, we were transporting an unfortunate man with an aggressive form of late-stage pancreatic cancer from a hospital to a hospice facility.
We were wheeling him through the hallway while carrying on a conversation with him, and he stopped talking when we entered the elevator.
He laughed nervously when we got off on the ground floor, and I asked him to share the joke.
He told me that he thought he had died on my stretcher, and said “I was floating above my body and looking down at myself . . . and I felt so peaceful.”
He was a retired attorney, so he was very articulate . . . and he described the situation in such graphic detail that he had the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.
Here’s where I get to my point: We returned to the hospital later that night for another call, and that was when I found out that the elevator had a mirrored ceiling.
The combination of the euphoria from the morphine, the downward motion of the elevator (which makes you feel lighter) and him contemplating his own reflection created a vivid, out of body experience.
I started looking out for mirrored ceilings in healthcare facilities after this, and they are not rare.
This incident led me to a way to create an out of body experience on demand.
You need an elevator with a mirrored ceiling, and an assistant for the timing.
You spin around lime a dervish (or an obnoxious kid) until you’re very dizzy . . . at which point you lay down on the elevator floor, and your assistant pushes the button for the bottom floor.
The dizziness, the downward motion of the elevator, and your own reflection combine to create a credible out of body experience.
I wrote a few letters and essays about this that were published in different issues of Skeptical Inquirer magazine.