Namaste, Namo Buddhaya.
I'm here in my personal pursuit to understand death and soul from various perspectives. A few days back I was reading texts on life, death, and reincarnation and got to know that there exist some meditations that cause OBEs (Out-of-body Experiences), an important part of NDEs (Near-death Experiences).
Biologists and doctors while simulating NDEs in labs concluded that a very large portion of people recall OBE experiences. The official Wikipedia page on NDEs does mentions that:
A three-year longitudinal study has revealed that some Buddhist meditation practitioners are able to willfully induce near-death experiences at a pre-planned point in time. Unlike traditional NDEs, participants were consciously aware of experiencing the meditation-induced NDE and retained control over its content and duration.[58] The Dalai Lama has also asserted that experienced meditators can deliberately induce the NDE state during meditation, being able to recognize and sustain it.[59]
So there are certain medications that can induce OBEs (or roughly, NDEs) too. In the meantime to further research I found a few links on such meditations, one by a Hindu Guru Swami Sivananda:
During the course of practice, one day you will feel that you have separated yourself from the body. You will have immense joy mixed with fear, joy in the possession of a new, light, astral body, fear owing to the entry in a foreign, unknown plane. At the very outset, the new consciousness is very rudimentary in the new plane, just as in the case of a pup with newly opened eyes in the eighth or tenth day on the physical plane.
where he tells the experiences of OBEs.
Unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate on the details of the meditation. I assumed it was particularly meditation on a point between eyebrows and after a month of practice, I don't see any progress particularly here.
I just wish to know what form of meditation in Buddhism (apart from Yoga Nidra Tantra in Hinduism which is basically just hypnosis from sleep) causes OBEs? If my efforts are in the right place.