Ekstasy : out-of-the-body experiences
Description: Firstly, as regards the book’s misnomer of a title, “Ekstasy”, there is nothing about “ekstasy” or even ecstasy in it apart from a short reference to an OBE or rather NDE experienced by the famous psychologist Carl Gustav Jung in 1944. This was interesting but ecstasy is hardly an essential or a characteristic feature of the book. Where Black gets the word/spelling “Ekstasy” I don’t know.

Secondly, the book as a whole is characterized by the author’s extreme skepticism about the whole matter of the feasibility of out-of-body experiences. He has an ambiguous attitude towards the subject since he doesn’t believe such experiences are possible but was attracted enough to the subject to embark on writing the book.

The book is packed with skeptical terms, phrases, expressions and insinuations of disbelief, such as the following:

“there is no reliable evidence for life-after-death” (Black is in for a shock/huge surprise when it’s his time to go)

“often claimed to have the power of out-of-the-body flight”

“confused out-of-the-body experiences with the mythology of astral travel”

“the out-of-the body phenomenon, as suspect as phrenology and UFOs”

“the fact that he (Krippner) even entertained the notion that in an out-of-the-body experience some part of consciousness might really leave the physical self – seemed preposterous”

“if one entertains the possibility of an energy body” (so he neither believes in life after death nor auras)

Black refers throughout the book to numerous examples of persons who were well-known for having frequent OBEs, such as Herotimos of Clazomenae, Carl Gustav Jung and Robert Monroe, founder of the Monroe Institute, who wrote the classic book on the subject, “Journeys out of the body”. He even informed us: “There is evidence that the out-of-the-body experience was one of the initiation rites of the Orphic mysteries. 

He asks Monroe what proof he had that his OBEs were real. “I haven’t been looking for proof”, he answered. Of course not! That wasn’t the point.

The irritating thing about this book is that the author discounts all the innumerable accounts of OBEs through the ages, instead focusing on his own subjective doubts about their reality.

He regales us with the concept of “autoscopy” – the projection of a consciousness unable to accept responsibility for a particular act, a narcissistic hallucination that denies the power of death” – as though OBEs are simply expressions of mental instability.

Black refers, among others, to John White from the Institute of Noetic Sciences, “a think-tank devoted to examining human consciousness”. White states that “the planet is getting ready for a great leap forward … a new species is emerging on the planet”.

All this is so true, and we are in the midst of this great leap forward and in the “Love Revolution”, as Matt Kahn terms it. (But Black is apparently not yet cognizant of these developments or revolutions.)

At the end of the book Black admits that he himself had an out-of-body experience (!), though he ends by discounting it. He is split – he “struggles alternately to believe and to disbelieve, unable to do either”.

I respect his honesty.

I found most of the book boring, but I like to finish books I’ve started, unless I find them unreadable. This book was exquisitely written and for this it absolutely deserves the one star, and it was therefore not unreadable. Also the author’s constant provocations kept me awake and reading.

Many may appreciate this intellectual treatise on whether or not OBEs exist, though I did not.

I have no idea why I was initially under the illusion that this was a book I would enjoy. But it was a disappointment to me, since I’m in no doubt of the existence of OBEs, and have had a few myself. I therefore cannot recommend that you read it, though, as stated, it may be of interest to many.