Out-of-Body Experience in Meditation: Real or an Illusion?

What is an out-of-body experience during meditation — a real experience, or only a person’s interpretation of their sensations?

In this episode, answering Olya’s question, I look at the question of leaving the body. Why are any words about sensations only an interpretation? Why would no language in the world be enough to describe such a phenomenon? And where should you direct your attention if you have felt something in meditation?

Leaving the body during meditation: what kind of experience is it

– During meditation a person feels that they are outside their own body. What kind of experience is that? I found a study that was carried out in March 2026: scientists examined unusual bodily experiences, including the sensation of leaving the body during meditation. I’d like to understand what this experience is and whether it really happens at all.

A person’s sensations and their interpretation

– When we look at any phrases or concepts connected with human sensations — as you said, leaving the body, or the feeling of love, or the feeling of sadness — we must first of all understand that these states, these sensations, differ critically when they are interpreted by different people at different moments in time.

What is the feeling of love, anyway? What kind of state is it? Or leaving the body — what kind of state is that? These are just words and phrases that can be interpreted in different ways. Every person will have a certain interpretation. Either a materialistic one — in this case, scientists want to register some phenomenon on some sensor. Or, on the other hand, an interpretation of the soul and spirit, or the interpretation of spiritual science.

If a person has lived through such an event, they will think that this is how they lived it. Or they read about this event and will think: “Since I read it, it must happen the way it was described.”

What science measures: hormones, heartbeat, sleep phases

But let’s look at the example of love — I didn’t bring up love by accident. Scientists, I’m sure, have studied love a great deal too. But for them it is an abstraction where any scientific research is pointless. They will measure hormone levels, study the heartbeat or the work of the nervous system — over the long term, over the short term. But it is all just an abstraction.

It is the same as studying a person’s time at night, their sleep phases. Imagine: they study sleep phases, but in the material world nobody says that the astral body and the “I” of a person separated from the physical and etheric body during sleep or during a certain phase of sleep. They say: there is a sleep phase in which the organism reacts like this. This is how the heartbeat works, this is how the system of rhythms works, this is how the breathing system works. We have studied a certain number of people, and roughly this is how it works, and it is more or less correct.

But what actually happens in reality — nothing at all is clear.

It is like a plant. Imagine we are studying a plant: the sun shines, and for some reason some of its branches have wilted and some haven’t. We added water — and the plant got better. Or it rotted. But nobody will know what seed was planted to grow this plant.

They will study only this layer in the middle. They simply plugged into a construct, saw something, and are holding a discussion on the subject without understanding: what kind of plant is it, actually? How did it appear? How does it generate or restore itself, through what, how does it live? One plant is endlessly green, while another dries up, then recovers, then dries up again, recovers again. That is a very interesting fact.

Only an interpretation. True and false aspects of perception

So when we examine the subject of a person’s sensations — for example, the sensation of the absence of the physical body, or seeing certain energies inside oneself, or seeing colours around oneself, or understanding one’s presence in many spaces at once — this is only a person’s interpretation.

When we begin to translate this into material language, it is only a person’s interpretation: in places of false aspects of perception, in places of true ones, but nothing more than interpretation.

What is leaving the body? No language is enough

Even if we take the concept of what leaving the body is — how to stop feeling your physical body. Let’s stay with that, because someone might think that leaving the body is an independent observation of one’s physical body. Although that too, among other things.

It is important to understand: if you are able to be in such a state, then you know:

And since this phenomenon is not of the physical, not of the material world, the material world is not capable of assessing what is happening. How would it assess it?

The paradox of artificial intelligence

There is a very good story. I tell it all the time when I compare statements about modern artificial intelligence. There is a statement like this: artificial intelligence will surpass humans, and our task is to control this artificial intelligence that has surpassed humans.

And here is the paradox. If you managed to create an artificial intelligence that surpassed humans, then the first thing you should think about is this: a human being is not capable of inventing something that will surpass themselves. So what you created created itself. That’s the first thing. How else could it be?

After all, even when people reason about something divine, they say: “God created man.” Well, that is God. It is not we who created a God who surpassed man.

And the second construct with artificial intelligence, a very important one: if you created something that surpassed you, or if something appeared that surpassed you, then how can you control it? It surpasses you. And if it surpasses you, what kind of control can there be?

I am now speaking literally the way people reason about artificial intelligence nowadays. Although it is obvious that any systems, such as ChatGPT or Claude from Anthropic, are smarter than any human being — in terms of a basic understanding of intelligence, IQ tests, knowledge, the volume of information, memory, details and so on.

Humanity wants to replicate what makes a human unique

And humanity wants to replicate what there is in a human being — some unique feature. And what is very interesting is that the wish is to replicate not just the feature of one person, but all the features of all people.

If some person can read fast — artificial intelligence has surpassed them. Some person can walk fast — the artificial human has surpassed them. Someone can memorise a lot — artificial intelligence has surpassed them. Someone can work twenty hours a day and sleep little — artificial intelligence has surpassed them. Some person’s mood changes — and artificial intelligence says: “We can change our mood too. We also have different moods, different states.”

This is a very important aspect for understanding the perception of the spiritual world. At a basic level, a person is unhealthy in their perception even of phenomena like artificial intelligence: what it is, what kind of energy it is — and does not regard it as energy. What’s more, they think they are creating this energy as something greater than themselves, and that they will still be able to control it. So how will a person describe leaving the body? They will describe it as a kind of controllable event or a controllable action.

Everyone needs proof

Notice how everyone needs proof. I recently heard a statement by a mathematician: “Artificial intelligence will never prove all of mathematics anyway.” That is so funny. If by mathematics you mean endlessly generated ideas, then of course it won’t.

Please generate for me a mathematical proof of a person’s death. An exact one. Or at least carry out a scientific study: examine a billion people by their natal charts in Vedic astrology and compare the periods of their death — does it match or not. Mathematically. There are mathematical formulas there, after all. Of course it won’t prove it. There are simply millions of everything there.

Science can’t even properly predict the weather. This week they promised three days of rain, then two days, then one. Then it may become six days, or there may be no rain at all.

If you have felt something in meditation

So when we, entering different meditative states, have felt something and don’t know how to describe it… A person has felt something and doesn’t understand how to describe it. Where do I recommend you direct your attention?

First, to the fact that what you felt in meditative practice essentially does not belong to meditative practice as a social phenomenon, as meditation. You felt it because it is your life. You are a human being, you were able to enter this state.

Let’s at least study the arising of anger — these are simpler phenomena than leaving the body, for the consciousness of a, in quotation marks, materially healthy person. The arising of anger, the arising of joy inside, of doubt, of a feeling of anxiety and apathy. Let’s study all these states.

Hundreds of worlds of silence

Let’s study silence. An incredibly interesting word for describing different states. I remember that at some point I realised very clearly that there are hundreds of worlds of the absence of thoughts and of silence. I felt it, saw it as a card index of the spiritual world. Hundreds or thousands — it doesn’t matter. Hundreds — to understand that there are many silences, if one can put it that way. Many of these worlds, many different states. And you begin to see how they differ from one another.

Sometimes you ask a person: “Is it quiet for you now, no thoughts?” They say: “No thoughts at all.” — “And now?” — “Now it’s even quieter.” How do you see this difference? How do you feel it? How do you understand it?

So when you say: “I left the body. And now I left the body. And now? And now?” — first of all, it is worth taking in for yourself:

Your spiritual system has a sufficient set of spaces, worlds and bodies to feel itself outside of something or part of something — always, simultaneously.

You can simultaneously feel yourself a part of and connected with other people, a part of all the world’s energies, a part of any piece of the earth or the Universe. And at the same time feel yourself an absolutely isolated space.

Can you get rid of the physical body completely?

The question is this: can you get rid of the physical body completely? When we say “left the body” — left it for real. You can, when you have died. Then the physical body dies instantly. It starts to rot. It is no accident that the body rots: it doesn’t live, it rots and disappears. Does anyone use it afterwards, put it on? It just rots.

So to study this phenomenon you need to understand quite seriously what your spiritual system is, what your spiritual world is, and what you really are, who you are. What you really consist of.

What science actually studies

Another important aspect. Imagine we set out to study ten, twenty or thirty people who experience certain states while going into some kind of immersion. What we need to study is not what they experience at the level of material words, but first of all where they are. That is what is interesting.

You come up to a person: “How are you feeling?” — “Bad.” — “And you?” — “Good.” — “And you?” — “I don’t know, so-so.” — “Do you have a business?” — “Yes, I do.” — “And you?” — “I have one too.” Everyone has a business, but they experience themselves differently. “Do you have a business?” — “No, and I don’t want one.” — “And you?” — “I don’t, but I want to open one now.” And everyone goes: “Oh!”

This one experiences themselves as good because they have a business. This one — neutral, because they don’t want a business. And this one — bad, because they want to open a business. There’s the connection. That’s how science works. Although this is in no way connected and has nothing to do with it.

Science works exactly like this, builds exactly such correlations. From the point of view of real, fundamental things, this is exactly how it compares.

Look at all the scientific studies on happiness: how people were surveyed, how many people in the world were surveyed, for how many years and so on. Look at how they are built. It is a complete abstraction. Or how people achieved a certain result.

So under no circumstances, when studying different people, can you study just the words they say at the end in order to assess what is really happening to them.

We know that a business can bring in a lot of money and the person will feel bad. A business can bring in very little money and the person will feel very bad. A business can bring in a lot of money and the person can feel very good. Our task is to assess what is really happening with the business, not what the person feels at the end. And to figure out: is there a connection between these? And if there is, what kind?

Leaving the body — a positive or a negative phenomenon?

When a person enters a state of separation from their physical body, is the sensation of having no connection with the physical body a positive phenomenon or a negative one? What do you think?

– I don’t know. Positive, maybe.

– Or maybe negative? It can be a negative phenomenon. Obviously, it can be different ways.

Actually, in the world a huge number of specific states that people want to experience are called illnesses. Especially if you go to a madhouse, to some psychiatric institution — there it is all called illness. A one-time entry into these states — especially if a person is socially stable and can go into this state — is considered cool. But actually, in the material world it is considered an illness.

Without fear: remembering what is happening to you

In exactly the same way, Olya, how many people I have seen who, immersing themselves in this silence and in this diversity of true perception, were afraid to go further, afraid of losing their connection with physical reality. And this is one of the main questions you should set yourself to observe:

And memory. I also want to draw attention to this aspect: a huge number of phenomena that a person truly lives through — deep states, what you were talking about, if it could somehow be described abstractly, like leaving the body — people tend to forget very strongly.

And this is what I recommend paying very close attention to: how you hold within yourself all your strength, all your striving to remember and be aware of what is really happening to you at any given moment — so that your ego and the Ahrimanic world do not close off and erase all this perception for you.

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