The subtle bodies

From this historical perspective, the most telling conclusion to be drawn from studies and personal accounts of the OOBE is that human beings are more than just their physical bodies. When one experiences a lucid OOBE, one has irrefutable evidence that the physical body is merely a temporary "house" through which one's consciousness or awareness manifests in the physical dimension.

For what occurs during the OOBE (which usually takes place when the physical body is either in an altered state of consciousness or asleep) is a separation of the nonphysical (or extraphysical) body from the physical body. If the individual has awareness during the experience, he sees that his self-awareness resides in the extraphysical body, not in the physical body. The most concrete personal evidence of this is when an individual gains lucidity outside the body and witnesses his physical body sleeping on the bed. This commonly occurs during the near-death experience (NDE), when the departure of the extraphysical body is forced through the critical physical condition of the individual. Thousands of documented reports of accident victims and cardiac arrest patients, among others, attest to this phenomenon known as self-bilocation.

Similarly, it is widely reported and acknowledged that the extraphysical body is connected to the physical body by a retractable energy field, known as the silver cord. The silver cord acts like a set of reins on the extraphysical body, preventing it from getting lost in extraphysical realms or failing to return to the physical body. The silver cord acts as an energetic intermediary between the two vehicles of manifestation (the physical and the extraphysical bodies) and is broken only at the time of biological death, at which point the extraphysical body (housing the consciousness) departs to begin a new period between physical lives (the intermissive period).

The silver cord is sometimes referred to as one's bioenergy or energetic body (as it is known when the individual is in the physical waking state). In fact, this energetic body is the connection point through which the fields of energy generated by the chakras inside the human body flow back and forth to the nonphysical body.

This constant (usually unconscious) exchange of energy is responsible for maintaining the necessary functioning of the body and for keeping it alive, both when the individual is in the waking state and when he or she is outside the body. This energetic connection similarly enables the nonphysical body to travel far from the physical base.