Janet Lee Mitchell - Out-of-Body Experiences: A Handbook

A Handbook

By Janet Lee Mitchell, Ph.D.

A Panta Rei Production

Panta Rei is an imprint of Crossroad Press

First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

Digital Edition Copyright 2017 Janet Lee Mitchell

Previously published by Shango Books 2012

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If youre reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dr. Janet Lee Mitchell received her Ph.D. from City University of New York in experimental cognition. She did laboratory research on extrasensory perception (ESP) in New York City for fifteen years. She has taught at Yavapai College in Arizona, lectured across the country, appeared on national TV and radio, and written numerous publications on parapsychological topics. She is included in such volumes as The World Who's Who of Women and Contemporary Authors. Her work is described in some encyclopedias and many other books considering ESP phenomena.

Visit us online

Check out our blog and

Subscribe to our Newsletter for the latest Crossroad Press News

Find and follow us on Facebook

Join our group at Goodreads

We hope you enjoy this eBook and will seek out other books published by Crossroad Press. We strive to make our eBooks as free of errors as possible, but on occasion some make it into the final product. If you spot any problems, please contact us at and notify us of what you found. We ll make the necessary corrections and republish the book. We ll also ensure you get the updated version of the eBook.

If you d like to be notified of new Crossroad Press titles when they are published, please send an email to and ask to be added to our mailing list.

If you have a moment, the author would appreciate you taking the time to leave a review for this book at the retailer s site where you purchased it.

Thank you for your assistance and your support of the authors published by Crossroad Press.

To Aline

If it were not for Ingo Swann, this book would not have been written. He came to the American Society for Psychical Research in 1971 when my dedication to parapsychological ideas was eroding. He showed me that these types of experiences are real and can be valuable. He told me I could write a book and I believed him. I am grateful to him for his inspiration and for sharing some of his fascinating inner life with me.

Joan Ann de Mattia has been a steady support for my work since 1974. She has provided me with food and shelter in times of dire need. She has always been a true friend and a wonderful sister.

Thanks for encouragement and professional advice to Ruth Hagy Brod, Lee C. Downing, Eleanor Friede, Marian Nester, Karlis Osis, Boneita Perskari, Gertrude Schmeidler, and Elsie West.

Special thanks to E. Viken-Bowron for the cover photo and to Mark Bowron for producing the e-book.

by Gertrude Schmeidler

This is a book about an extraordinary, even a shocking possibility. It suggests that a persons conscious awareness can detach itself from the persons body, can travel to another place, can observe what is happening there, and sometimes can even produce a physical change at that distant place.

Is this believable? Is it science, or only science fantasy? You will reach your own decision as you read about it (or perhaps like me will arrive only at a state of indecision). You will of course examine the material critically to decide between accepting or discounting the evidence for this bizarre claim. Let me introduce it by suggesting an analogy.

Suppose someone, face to face, tells you a story so utterly unlike anything in your own experience that it sounds like a dream or a fairy tale. Will you reject the story as untrue?

You might. Probably you would if the person speaking to you was a stranger who came to you without credentials. You might suspect he was planning a fraud to victimize you, or that he was a prankster enjoying a joke at your expense, or that he was deluded, perhaps insane. Its easy to dismiss a strangers story, and it may be similarly easy for you to dismiss some of what follows in this book.

But suppose that the person is someone you know and trust or who is trusted by others whose opinions you respect. And suppose that by every other sign you could ask for, the person seems sensible, honest, intelligent, self-critical. This seems to me to apply to some of the people whose accounts are reported in this book: men of fine professional reputation, whose other work and whose personal lives would, in my opinion, make us think we could depend on the accuracy of what they say. If you would ordinarily accept without question what a person tells you, will you be willing to stretch the bounds of your belief for his unlikely tale?

Well, yes, any of us might stretch those bounds a little. If someone we know to be reliable told us that a stranger walked up to him on the street, gave him a thousand dollars and walked away, we might continue to think that our informant was sane and accurate and that the improbable incident really happened.

Suppose however that the reliable informant told us something not merely improbable but something we thought was impossible? Would we change our opinion of what was possible or change our opinion of the informant? What if others we respect support his story and tell similar stories of their own? How much and what kind of evidence can persuade us to rethink something we have always taken for granted?

Here is a book that will test your reactions. A typical story in it is that a person while in bed one night found himself looking from another vantage point at his own body, then found himself in another place. He was not dreaming. He could see what was happening around him. After a time he found he was back in his own room, saw his own body, and went back into it. Further, some of the stories tell us that what the person had seen in that distant place was actually there.

Can you believe this? I couldnt, some years ago; but Im now in the uncomfortable position of not knowing whether I can or not. Common sense says its absurd, and common sense is usually right but there are times when its wrong.

Lets consider the claims in terms of the general issue of what might compel us to accept something that seems incredible. One reason might be the evidence of our own senses. Weve probably all laughed at the old joke of the rustic who disbelieved what his eyes told him, when he went to his first carnival. He looked for a long time at the giraffe who was moving around, and finally said, There aint no such animal. If any of us had traveled to a distant place while our body stayed in bed, it would be easy to believe that others had done so. But I havent. For me, the evidence of my own experience doesnt support the claim.

Surely a second reason that could make us believe what common sense denies is scientific evidence. Our senses tell us a table is solid; molecular theory and atomic theory, with the weight of all authorities in physics behind them, have convinced us that the table is composed of tiny molecules with wide spaces between them, rather than a continuous surface, and also that what we used to call solid particles are better described as electromagnetic fields. Against the evidence of our senses, we believe that the earth revolves around the sun, or that the sun and earth revolve around a common center of gravity, not that the earth stands still while heavenly bodies move. But does the scientific establishment tell us that a man can leave his body, or a woman can leave hers, go to a distant place, then return to the body? No; far from it. Science-with-a-capital-S, as shown in standard textbooks, either disregards such claims or treats them with disdain.