Traveling Out of Body

In his 1907 book, The Psychic Riddle, Dr. Isaac K. Funk, the renowned publisher (Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary, etc.) tells of some out-of-body experiences (OBEs) told to  him by a friend, whom, out of privacy concerns, Funk declined to name.  However, he described the friend as "a well-known gentleman in New York, a man whose veracity would be questioned by no one who knows him, a physician of standing, also an editor and publisher of reputation."  After the physician personally told Funk of the experiences, Funk asked him to write the story out for him.  As the physician was apparently not suffering from any malady at the time, it is unclear whether to classify the experiences as near-death experiences (one kind of out-of-body experience) or more generally as OBEs.

"I want it to be distinctly remembered that the body was in no way sick or diseased, nor was I, in so far as I know, unduly mentally tired or worn out," the physician put the story in writing.  "I had, as I said, been concentrating my mind a great deal, but there was no sense either of physical or mental depletion."

The physician, who lived in New York, explained that the several experiences took place "some years before" when he considered himself in perfect physical health.  He had boarded a St. John's River steamer in Jacksonville, Florida, headed for Palatka.  "Within 15 minutes after the time I went on board the steamer, my feet began to grow numb and to lose sensation," he explained.  "I would walk for a little while with my friends, then walk up and down the deck, trying through mental effort and exercise to throw off the numbness, but this I was unable to do."

He returned to his room and examined his feet and ankles, discovering that they were cold and without circulation and sensation.   The sensation spread up his legs. "As the movement continued upward, all at once there came a flashing of lights in my eyes and a ringing in my ears, and it seemed for an instant as tho I had become unconscious," he continued the story.  "When I came out of this state, I seemed to be walking in the air.  No words can describe the exhilaration and freedom that I experienced.  No words can describe the clearness of mental vision.  At no time in my life had my mind been so clear and free.

"Just then I thought of a friend who was more than a thousand miles distant.  Then I seemed to be traveling with great rapidity through the atmosphere about me.  Everything was light, and yet it was not the light of the day or the sun, but, I might say, a peculiar light of its own, such as I had never known.  It could not have been a minute after I thought of my friend before I was conscious of standing in a room where the gas-jets were turned up, and my friend was standing with his back toward me, but suddenly turning and seeing me, said, ‘What in the world are you doing here?  I thought you were in Florida,' and he started to come toward me.  While I heard the words distinctly, I was unable to answer.  An instant later, I was gone, and the consciousness of the things that transpired that memorable night will never be forgotten.  I seemed to leave the earth, and everything pertaining to it, and enter a condition of life of which it is absolutely impossible to give here any thought I had concerning it, because there was no correspondence to anything I had ever seen or heard or known in any way. The wonder and the joy of it was unspeakable, and I can readily understand now what Paul meant when he said, ‘I knew a man, whether in the body or out of it I know not, who was caught up to the third heaven, and there saw things which it is not possible to utter.'"

The physician added that the friend whose home he had visited that night wrote to him the next day about the strange apparition he had witnessed.

It is unclear from the book whether the physician is referring to the same experience or a different one, as it is later made clear that he experienced a number of OBEs over a period of three months.

"In this latter experience there was neither consciousness of time nor of space; in fact, it can be described more as a consciousness of ecstatic feeling than anything else.  It came to be after a time that I could stay there if I so desired, but with that thought came also the consciousness of the friends on earth and the duties there required of me. The desire to stay was intense, but in my mind I clearly reasoned over it, whether I should gratify my desire or return to my work on earth.  Four times my thought and reason told me that my duties required me to return, but I was so dissatisfied with each conclusion that I finally said, ‘Now I will think and reason this matter out once more, and whatever conclusion I reach I will abide by.  I reached the same conclusion, and I had not much more than reached it when I became conscious of being in a room and looking down on a body propt up in bed, which I recognized as my own.  I can not tell what strange feelings came over me.  This body, to all intents and purposes, looked to be dead.  There was no indication of life about it, and yet here I was apart from the body, with my mind thoroughly clear and alert, and the consciousness of another body tow which matter of any kind offered no resistance."

After what he recalled being a minute or two of observing the body, he began to try to control it.  The sense of separation from the physical body then ceased.  After what seemed to be a long time, he was able to move, got up from the bed, and went down to breakfast.

"If the whole world was to rise up and say that there was no life after one left the physical organism, it would not make one particle of difference in my mind, as I am absolutely certain that I have been as free from my physical body as I ever will be, and that my life apart from it was far more wonderful than any life I have ever experienced in it.

"Previous to having passed through these things, I believed in continuity, but I had no abiding certainty concerning it. At the present time there is never a doubt as to its verity that troubles my mind.  I have the absolute assurance that when the something we call death comes, it will only mean a new and larger and more complete life.  I do not expect to convince any one of the truth as I see it merely by making those statements, because I have the feeling that one must realize these things for himself; but when once such realization comes, there is thereafter no power on earth that can disturb it."