An icebreaker
A broadcasting executive said he began leaving his body spontaneously at night and built a research institute to study it. Decades later a channeler began relaying messages from an entity claiming to be an interdimensional extraterrestrial named Bashar — a separate, unverifiable claim.
He described spontaneous experiences of leaving his body at night beginning in 1958, later founding an institute to teach others the technique. He framed his findings as personal exploration, not settled science.
He ran repeated overnight laboratory sessions challenging Robert Monroe to read a hidden five-digit code while out of body. Monroe never read the code, though he once reported a detail from the room that surprised the researcher.
After years investigating out-of-body reports, including well-known cases like Monroe's, she concluded the experience is a real mental event but found no good evidence that anything paranormal happens during it. She argued the sense of leaving the body is generated entirely by the brain.
Since the early 1980s he has entered a trance state and relayed messages he attributes to Bashar, a being he describes as an extraterrestrial from a civilization existing in a parallel dimension. He presents the material as channeled, not authored by himself.