What is "out-of-body experience"

n. (context parapsychology English) An experience in which one feels outside of one’s body.

n. the dissociative experience of observing yourself from an external perspective as though your mind or soul had left and was observing your body

An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is an experience that typically involves a feeling of floating outside one's body and, in some cases, the feeling of perceiving one's physical body as if from a place outside one's body ( autoscopy).

The term out-of-body experience was introduced in 1943 by G. N. M. Tyrrell in his book Apparitions, and was adopted by researchers such as Celia Green and Robert Monroe as an alternative to belief-centric labels such as " astral projection", "soul travel", or "spirit walking". OBEs can be induced by brain traumas, sensory deprivation, near-death experiences, dissociative and psychedelic drugs, dehydration, sleep, and electrical stimulation of the brain, among others. It can also be deliberately induced by some. One in ten people have an OBE once, or more commonly, several times in their life.

Neuroscientists and psychologists regard OBEs as dissociative experiences arising from different psychological and neurological factors.