A study testing out-of-body experiences produced an unexpected twist that could ‘rewrite our understanding of consciousness’.
Researchers from the University of Virginia Health System enlisted 21 participants, who were asked to identify a random object on a laptop screen in another room.
While the participants failed to identify the object, something strange happened.
Two of the participants described the researchers’ locations and activities in perfect detail – despite them being behind closed doors.
‘I hope these findings encourage us to think more deeply about what they might mean for our understanding of consciousness and, ultimately, the nature of reality,’ said lead author, Dr Marina Weiler.
‘If studies demonstrate that people can obtain accurate information that they could not have accessed through their ordinary senses, we would have to reconsider some of our assumptions about the relationship between consciousness, perception and the physical world.’
A study testing out–of–body experiences produced an unexpected twist that could ‘rewrite our understanding of consciousness’ (stock image)
For the study, the team set out to understand if people can identify objects behind closed doors.
Twenty-one participants were asked what object they thought was on a laptop screen in another room.
While ten reported having an out-of-body experience, and 13 named objects, none of them got it right.
However, in an unexpected twist, two of the participants perfectly described the people in the other room.
One participant described how a researcher in another room had been seated on the left looking at a laptop screen while another researcher was farther back reading a book.
Another participant described how a researcher had been seated on the right, taking notes, while a second was sitting on the left at the computer.
Amazingly, trial records confirmed that both descriptions were correct at the time of the participants’ sessions.
What’s more, there was no way the participants could have seen the researchers.
According to the experts, this suggests some people might have something called ‘out–of–body remote viewing’.
Dr Weiler added: ‘The unexpected findings give us a potentially useful new direction, but they also need to be tested prospectively and under rigorous conditions before we can know what they mean.
‘For me, the most important takeaway is that unexpected findings can sometimes help us ask better questions.
‘We now have a specific idea that can be tested in future experiments, and that is exactly what science should do.’
