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"It was as real as you and I talking here right now." This is a phrase we hear in numerous interviews with people who have had an out-of-body experience. "I was putting on my makeup in front of the mirror when, all of a sudden, I saw myself from the ceiling of the bathroom". The situations in which these experiences occur are extremely varied: walking, sleeping, eating sunflower seeds, during an orgasm... The only way to understand this extraordinarily strange experience seems to be to classify it as a hallucination, a dream or, in physiological terms, as a disturbance in sensory integration. This is how it has been interpreted by psychology and physiology.

However, these explanations fall short. First, because, if we believe the individuals involved, the experience is lived as completely real. Second, because no study has found a correlation between this phenomenon and any mental disorder. Moreover—and this is the hardest part to reconcile with any prior assumption—some individuals, together with the feeling of being outside their body, describe a sense of absolute and indescribable peace, long journeys or even, in the case of people blind from birth, claim to have "seen" while they were "out", to mention just a few of the most unusual aspects of this out-of-body universe. How can we explain this extraordinary phenomenon?

One mystery that has always accompanied us is consciousness. What is consciousness? How are brain processes translated into conscious perceptions? As early as 1898, William James, one of the fathers of modern psychology, proposed the possibility that the brain does not produce consciousness but rather acts as a kind of filter. According to this hypothesis, consciousness would be broader, and the brain would limit our experience of it. This premise might help us better understand these phenomena or, at the very least, offer us a different perspective that could, like a springboard, lead us to other explanations.

In my recent book Olvídate de ti, a self-knowledge book, I explain in an accessible way what I have found during my research on out-of-body experiences. And what does a self-knowledge book have to do with this type of experience? Simply that, when we contemplate a phenomenon so extraordinary and so difficult to understand, all that remains is humility: acknowledging that we do not know. Humility is a good companion for both science and life. When we accept that we cannot understand or control everything, we live more lightly.