The transition between physical and out-of-body states is often accompanied by sensations that are difficult to describe in familiar language. In this article, I answer three practical questions: why pain may remain after returning, where buzzing and ringing come from, and why a vivid experience can disappear from memory so quickly.
Can pain from an unusual experience remain after returning?
*Short answer: yes, the sensation of pain can sometimes remain for a while after a person returns, even though the physical body did not sustain a corresponding injury during the out-of-body experience.*
Outside the body, we can perceive touch, pressure, temperature, and pain. These sensations can be completely convincing. Consciousness does not need a physical wound to produce a full experience of pain. It uses the familiar language of sensation that it has relied on throughout earthly life.
After returning, the experience does not always disappear instantly. Attention is connected with the body again, but the memory of pain may still be active. The brain continues translating it into a familiar bodily sensation. This resembles the way the heart and breathing can continue reacting after an emotional event has already ended.
The intensity of the sensation depends partly on how deeply the person was involved in what was happening. Fear amplifies pain because all attention becomes focused on the threat. Calm observation often weakens it. In an out-of-body state, a person can remember that the perceived form is not the physical body, redirect attention, and sometimes turn off the unpleasant sensation completely.
At the same time, we should not automatically explain every pain as the result of an unusual experience. If it is severe, keeps returning, or does not go away, ordinary physical causes need to be examined. The body may have been in an uncomfortable position, muscular tension may have developed, or a condition may require medical attention.
A reasonable researcher does not decide in advance between a spiritual and a physical explanation. The first step is to record the observation; the next is to examine both possibilities.
Why do buzzing or ringing sounds occur during the transition between states?
*Short answer: I regard buzzing, ringing, humming, and vibrations as signs that perception is being reorganized when attention is no longer fully connected with the physical senses.*
While falling asleep, waking, or consciously separating from the body, a person may hear an intensifying hum, electrical crackling, a high-pitched ring, wind, or something resembling a powerful machine. The sound may seem external even though no one else in the room can hear it.
I do not believe there is one mandatory sound of transition. Consciousness translates an unfamiliar process into a language it can understand. One person hears noise, another feels vibrations, and a third notices a shift in pressure or flashes of light. Several sensations may also appear at the same time.
The sound itself is not dangerous. Fear creates the problem. A person decides that something terrible is happening, tenses up, and immediately returns to ordinary perception. When the sound is understood as a temporary stage of transition, it becomes possible to observe it calmly, without feeding it with fear or attempting to fight it physically.
Again, a basic physical check matters. Persistent ringing in the ears, hearing changes, dizziness, or sounds that occur during the day independently of practice may have a physical cause. They should not automatically be attributed to an out-of-body experience.
Transitional sound is useful as an orientation point rather than as proof. It tells the practitioner that the familiar setting of perception is changing. What follows depends on calmness, attention, and the ability to remain aware.
Why does the memory of an experience disappear during the first minutes after waking?
*Short answer: the memory of an out-of-body experience is connected with a different state of perception and often has not been fully encoded in the physical brain. After waking, bodily sensations and everyday thoughts quickly displace it.*
A person may return with the sense of having just lived through a long and important event. The place, conversation, and sequence of actions are still clear. Then the eyes open, attention turns to the time, the phone, or the coming day—and within minutes, only the feeling that “something happened” remains.
This does not necessarily mean that the experience was imaginary. A similar mechanism operates with dreams: the memory exists, but access to it depends on the state in which it was formed. An abrupt change in the mode of perception makes retrieval more difficult.
The first seconds after returning are therefore especially important. Do not move immediately or open your eyes. Maintain the body’s position, recover the final event, and then work backward: What happened before I returned? Where was I? Who was I speaking with? What did I see before that? This backward reconstruction often restores entire sections of memory.
The experience should then be written down or recorded immediately. Include not only major events but also colors, phrases, sensations, direction of movement, and emotional state. Later, a small detail may help explain the structure of the experience or make verification possible.
Memory can be trained. When a person regularly revisits an experience immediately after waking and records it, the connection between states becomes more stable. We are not inventing the memory again; we are learning to carry it across the boundary between states.
Unusual transitional sensations should not cause panic, and they should not be treated as proof by themselves. Their value lies elsewhere: they help us understand how perception changes, where memory is lost, and how consciousness reconnects experience with the physical body.
For a deeper exploration of transitions between states, memory, and out-of-body practice, see The Phenomenon of Consciousness Beyond the Body: Kindle Edition or Paperback.
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