Doesn't matter if it's the longest day of the year or the shortest day of the year. We do the Paranormal Show and we do this every Friday morning because we thought, what can we do during the week that we think would keep you entertained. And one of the things that Brian Wiltche used to do on two GB Overnight, the King of the Overnight Show, was he used to do a lot of the paranormal staff, the UFO staff, and we thought, well, that's really great. I wonder if
our listeners will be interested in that. So we scour the internet to find people who are really interesting and have really interesting experiences and stories to tell. One of my favorites, of course, is Moira on the Central Coast, who's written books about UFOs and she's always good for a chat. But we've had white witches, we've had ghost hunters,
and our guess this morning is in the UK. He's an author and specialist on astral projection and out of body experiences and he's got a book about this and his name is Graham Nichols. Good morning to you. So how did you get involved in this? When did this first?
Well, I initially had some experiences when I was around eleven or twelve years old and basically was curious what this strange experience was and started to look into it, and I found a scientific book on the topic and basically then went from there, started to teach myself how to do it, and developed an interest in the whole area.
Basically, So you were eleven years of age when you decided to look into this.
I had the first experiences when I was eleven. I was about thirteen when I got the book and started to look into it more deeply.
Yeah, so what was the experience that set you off on this journey?
Well, basically, I found myself floating out of my body. Like it's actually not that uncommon an experience percent or so if people have them. But I found myself not in the room that I was physically in, but I found myself at a distance down the road essentially and was sort of a few feet off the ground. It was intensely vivid and real. I wasn't asleep, so I wasn't dreaming or anything like that. I was just kind
of relaxing. I just got back from school, was just relaxing, and then I kind of went into this altered state which is now I understand a precursor. Often people get a vibrational sensation, which is also what happened with me. I'm not sure it happened on that occasion, but it does happen usually, and then found myself in another location.
Essentially, I've had.
This happen to me twice, and I looked into it and somebody said to me that this often happens when you were under extreme stress or you're in a situation of duress and you tried to escape your body, which is different to what you said to me. But what happened to me was on both occasions petrified me, absolutely petrified me. And I was asleep, fast asleep, but felt
myself lifting up out of my body. And then I remember trying to turn to my girlfriend and shake her arm to wake her up and say, you know what was going on, but my body wasn't reacting to that at all. And then I came crashing back with a thud, and I had all kinds of pins and needles going through me. And I know for a fact this happened because it happened twice, and I know for a fact I wasn't dreaming, because it was I was so petrified
by the whole experience. Is that similar to what we're talking about here.
It might be a slightly different thing.
A lot of people tend to have fear responses and wake up in the middle of the night and have similar type experiences related to sleep paralysis, which is where like a waking nightmare, you wake up in the middle of the night terrified. Usually you can't move physically, and often there's a sense of presence in the room. But a lot of people do also have sensations of leaving the body and things like that. So I think that's
a slightly different category of experience, maybe related. We don't know enough yet in terms of the science of what's going on to really know how related different types of experience are, but I think they're all on a kind of continuum of different forms of spiritual or paranormal or psychological experience, depending on how you look at it.
Well, I didn't think paranormal, and even as I get further on in life, I still look at it as being somewhat of a spiritual experience. But you know, I know that I wasn't dreaming. I know for a fact that this actually happened, because there's no doubt in my mind.
I can still remember it now, and this was forty odd years ago, the first time it's only happened to us, And you know, I can exactly remember the experience in remembering how terrified I was of this me after you'd done some study what happened then.
Well, I basically started to have the experiences regularly. I got interested in the science on the topic. So now I'm involved in different parapsychological experiments and also organizations. I work with the Rhine Research Center in the US, which is the oldest organization of that type in the US, and I basically do research to try and find out
what might be really going on. And I'm really interested in both what actually is happening, because there's how it feels to us, and then there's what might really be going on. So those two things are different, I think. And then also on top of that, I'm interested in how I can help other people have.
The experiences as well.
So that's the thing that a lot of people are curious and interested to have their own experiences.
So those are the sort of things I focus on. Now.
There's a lot of awareness of our physical bodies and for a lot of people. Their physical body is all there is. You know, they never ever think about the spiritual side of it. I never ever dip their toe in that. Other people go to the periphery I guess of the spiritual world, where they go to transcendental meditation or some kind of meditation. I take it that this is the next step beyond that, or three or four steps beyond that.
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think it's a way to I guess, ask those questions or experience those things more directly. I think with meditation you get that sense of calm. It can lead to a feeling of non duality or a higher spiritual sense. But then there's also going beyond that kind of situation where you actually experience your whole reality or a whole sensory self, as being separate from your physical body. I don't know that that's really what happens. I do take quite a scientific angle
on it. But at the same time, I think we can only really explore it by having the experience directly and learning what we can about it.
So when you're having this experience, could you talk us through what happens?
Well?
With me, now, it tends to be that I will find myself at another location sort of instantaneously, So there's a kind of trance process that.
I go through.
So it's almost like something like self hypnosis or meditation.
Even so I'll sit down, I'll.
Lay down, go through a sort of mental process a bit like hypnosis, and then I start.
To go into an altered state.
And then usually we'll feel something like waves of energy that feel very electrical, which is a form of the vibrational state that is commonly described.
With our body experiences.
And then I'll find myself. Usually it's almost like I shift from one place to another, and I'll find myself in another location.
It will be very vivid.
Sometimes different forms of color and lights, and my visual field will be different to how it is physically. Other times it will look very similar, and I'll be able to kind of move around, drift around, you interact with the environment to some degree.
Then there are experiences that seem.
To be on other levels of reality altogether, which go into the more spiritual levels that it's very hard to know objectively whether that's all completely real or whether it's partially real. I think there's a good argument for there's a combination of factors going on without our body experiences.
But yeah, so there's a whole kind of range.
And then I've had very powerful experiences, like precognitive experiences that seem to allow me to see something before it happens. That one was of the so Hope bombing that happened in ninety nine in London, and I had an experience of that five days before it happened. And that out of body experience that was for other people in the
room with me when it happened. So it's a really interesting experience because it was sort of could be verified by others as having happened before the event happened.
So talk to me about what goes on when this happens. I mean, are you aware of what's actually happening.
Yeah, there's often a very physical sense. You can move through objects sometimes and there's a you almost like feel the object. There's a sense of movement. Wind would be present, not usually, smell interestingly sometimes sound not always. But the main experience is more visual and sort of kinetic and physical sort of like sensations. Those are the main ones.
There's been parallels drawn between this and near death experiences. Are they related? Do you think this kind of experience.
I think that an our body experience is an aspect of a near death experience. Often people when they have a NEAREDIF experience, will have the same sensation of lifting out of their physical body, going to a different location, sometimes traveling along a tunnel. Things like that can often happen as part of a near DEIF experience. But with a NEAREDIF experiences often other elements like coming to another world,
seeing relatives who've passed over, that kind of thing. So it can have other elements that are not present in the outer body experience, but the outer body experience is often a component of the near death experience.
It's funny, isn't it, because people who would be cynical about this would actually believe in other body experiences from a near death experience, maybe because that's got more publicity.
What do you think, Yeah, that could be the case.
I think that our body experiences can happen under all different types of conditions. And I think that when someone has an accident or there some kind of like you mentioned at the beginning, some kind of stress or some intense experience happens that can cause an our body experience
an illness as well, for example. But then there's also situations where it happens from a very healthy, very sort of natural type situation as well, maybe like physical exhaustion or an altered state of some description, or you know, lack of sleep. Things like that can also cause the experience. So it's when there's something that kind of pushes the body and the mind beyond the normal limits of what it's used to. I guess that it often happens naturally.
From the books that I've read and the articles that I've read about people who've had near death experiences, is it's almost always epiphanous for them. They come back to their body and then their life has a completely different trajectory, usually a really good trajectory, because they look at the things that they were doing before and they've decided that that wasn't for them bad health, bad job, whatever, and
it's a spiritual experience for them as well. Do you find that similar things happen with your experience and with the people that you've talked to, that it has a sort of epiphanus or euphoric experience to it.
I think so for sure. I think it's definitely had a big impact on my own life. I think I've I came from quite a rough, working class background, but I think that it's led me to a much more sort of peaceful way of being in my life, and much more positive and health focused and lots of things like that. So and I see that in a lot of the students and people I work with that they described to me that they've had like a change in their life where they feel happier or healthier or calmer.
Those kinds of things to tend to be the effects, I would say, So, yeah, it does seem to have a positive effect for sure.
Would you classify this as being more of a mental experience or more of a spiritual experience?
Well, that's that's where it gets tricky, I would say, because I think it is, we have to sort of define those terms of it. But I guess how I see it is. I think it's I think it's a degree of both. I would say, I think that I think that what we're experiencing is a kind of extension of consciousness. If you think about the brain or the mind and how the activity of the brain happens, we usually understand that to be electrical in nature.
For example.
Well, I'm not saying this is how it works. But this is just an example. But for example, electricity is not confined necessarily to the boundaries of your brain or to the boundaries of your skull, for example, So if you have electrical activity and things like that, it could potentially extend beyond. This is sort of where the science starts to come in. And Brian Josson, for example, won the Nobel Prize for physics, so we were in the slices.
He feels that there may be a quantum entanglement effect going on, a non locality effect going on within the brain. So possibly this is how these kinds of pie or psychic experiences might happen. We don't know yet, but I think there's strong evidence from the science I've been involved
with that many many other people have done. So I think that what we're kind of dealing with is a bit of a mixture between our psychology and maybe this extension of the mind, this extension of consciousness beyond the brain. I think it's probably a mixture of the two. So depends how we look.
At the spiritual.
But I guess if we see the spiritual as something that has a positive or a beneficial effect through a sort of expansion.
Of the mind.
Then I would say, yes, there's a combination of the.
Two, and of course you would find it hard to get science to cross into the spiritual world. But when they've done tests with people who've been doing meditation on the electrical energy from the brain, they've got verifiable proof there that something's going on.
Yeah, well, I think I think actually science parapsychology, which is a proper field of science, is.
Very open to these things.
It's just that unfortunately mainstream scientists are not very aware of parapsychology, or they dismiss it because of very vocal skeptics in the media and things like that. But I think if you actually look at the research that's been done for the last one hundred and forty years or more, there's very good, repeatable experiments that have shown evidence for especially things like telepathy, but also precognition, often in the form of presentiment, which means like feeling a sense of
something going to happen. So that's foreboding that a lot of people might get before they and they maybe decide not to go around a corner and then two cars crash or you know, we've all heard stories of that kind of scenario. Where you get that gut feeling. Well, there's been research looking at that, the sense of being stared at. I worked with Rupertshaw Drake, who was a scientist in the UK who looks at the idea of
the sense of being stared at. So when you get that feeling kind of on the back of your neck that someone's looking at you, when you turn around and they're looking at you, that's often dismissed as oh, it's just chance, But when you actually look at the research that's been done, you find that actually it's above what you would expect by chance, and people do seem to be able to have a sense of when someone's looking at them.
Well, that's right if you break it down to that, it's inherent in everybody. Everybody has that ability within them. Could you suggest one of your books for people to read.
Well, I've just released a special edition, updated version of my classic book which is Navigating the Outer Body Experience, So that goes into all of the things I'm talking about, and lots of techniques and methods for people to have their own experiences as well.
Great, an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.
You're very welcome.