I described the entire incident (in a lot more detail than I just gave) to someone who said I had a textbook OOBE experience. And this was without me knowing what the textbook said.

Vivid dream? Probably. But it was very bizarre.

I think ALL of us believe in a soul -- it is a natural cognitive illusion

Sabio, while I broadly agree with the point you are making, it is perfectly possible to phrase it differently, for example: "I think ALL of us experience a SELF - a natural cognitive illusion - which makes it very easy to believe we have a SOUL."

religious people believe in the soul

I think ALL of us believe in a soul -- it is a natural cognitive illusion. Some of us take more efforts than others to not let the illusion influence us.

Gee, thanks, Steve. Here I was trying to bring some sense to the insensible.

Hey Thump you're welcome :) But of course this is the point about good 'ol non-falsifiable mystical woo; if the story doesn't fit the observable facts there's nothing to stop you changing the story. Religious apologists have been doing this for millenia and the new age types do it too.

Our political and economic problems are not the fault (solely) of the Republican Party. The modern incarnation of the Democratic Party shares most of the same basic fundamental economic, foreign policy, and ideological underpinnings as the Republican Party. A Democrat (Saint Jimmy of Plains) started the program which ebcame the horror zone of 1980s Central America (as well as giving the go ahead to the Indonesians to slaughter 1/3 of the East Timorese). Afghanistan was a bipartisan policy. Iraq was bipartisan...remember the lovely 500,000 children are acceptable collateral dmaage quote? That wasn't Cheney. Clinton killed welfare. Clinton bombed Serbia.

We all hated the Cheney Administration. But until "change" is something other a hackneyed political slogan and real differences in political philosophy and personnel is in place...let's be more modest about assigning blame to one wing of our unified political-military-industrial complex. Even if he reads from a teleprompter more eloquently than his idiot predecessor.

Or you could bust into an operating room when somebodies heart has been stopped as on a heart lung machine, heart transplant, etc. -- heart stoppage being used to define death when folks claim to have "died" and have these OBE's -- and bash the patient's head in and claim that you're innocent of murder since the doctor had already killed the guy when he stopped his heart.

Or when somebodies having an OBE, you could try and catch the thingee floating around the room with a plastic bag and determine if it's really incorporeal, etc. And how would a incorporeal thingee see since seeing is the actual physical interception of photos by the retina. Ditto, hearing. Or, another way of looking at it, if there are two ways of sensing, both physical with the eyes and however the soul does it, how would you blind a person since his soul would still be able to see.

I'm confused, at least my corporeal being is confused.

And do republicans have OBE's? -- I doubt they'd have souls -- at least Cheney doesn't.

It's a silver cord. Get your mystical nonsense straight :).

So it is, so it is. But then again, my invisible pink unicorn is actually purple.