Just two months after I arrived in California, someone invited me to a workshop on the out-of-body experience. This seemed like a quintessential L.A. thing to do, so I canceled my weekend plans and went instead to a Robert Monroe workshop. I really had no idea what to expect, since the only thing I knew about it was what I'd read in Shirley MacLaine's book, Out on a Limb. Turns out it's not so easy to describe, although Monroe himself does a pretty good job in Journeys Out of the Body and his subsequent books.

The leader of that particular weekend event had been a resident researcher at the Monroe Institute in Faber, Virginia, after having a near-death experience in which he left his body and hovered above the vehicle he'd been in during a car accident. He was having a grand old time until he realized he needed to get back down to earth and drag his friend out from behind the steering wheel.

Despite many anecdotal reports of this nature, the cultural mainstream has always cast a dim eye on out-of-body experience.

Now, however, the University of Southampton in the U.K. is launching a huge, international study of the human brain, consciousness and clinical death. For the AWARE (AWAreness during REsuscitation) study, scientists and physicians are collaborating to see if they can finally get a clue as to what happens after we die. We still won't be able to get much beyond an hour or so, but maybe we'll have a better reason to believe the remarkably consistent reports that often include white lights, tunnels of light, and loving friends waiting on the other side.

According to Dr. Sam Parnia, leader of the study, death does not take place in a single specific moment. We all think death occurs when the heart stops, but it's actually a process. The heart stops beating, the lungs stop working, and the brain ceases to function. Medically, this would be termed cardiac arrest, but biologically it's what we call death.

Sometimes the heart is restarted and the dying process is reversed, and previous studies have shown that up to 20 percent of these patients report clear thoughts and visual events that took place during the process. Often the patient reports seeing people trying to revive him, but being unable to let them know he was still alive.

One of the main techniques to be used in the AWARE study is quite simple. Since patients often report floating above their bodies (and perhaps this is where the idea of heaven being in the sky originated), researchers are placing images high on the wall in hospital resuscitation rooms, with a small shelf below them that completely blocks their visibility from any patient being resuscitated. If a patient's heart stops and is then restarted, and the patient reports having seen this image during resuscitation efforts, it would clearly indicate that the person was indeed floating above his or her body. It would confirm that what the patient reported seeing was clearly not just a memory or imagination.

It's wonderful to see science exploring the metaphysical, but I'm concerned: What if no patients report seeing the heretofore hidden image? What if they're all too busy marveling at floating out of their bodies and don't bother to look around? Will the scientific world dismiss all the anecdotal reports and insist they are the product of imagination? Does the metaphysical realm only exist if we have tangible proof of it?

Anyone who's had an out-of-body experience can tell you how real it is. Scientifically proving it is something else.

Photo by Piccadilly Wilson