There is a need to consider alternatives to the idea that our bodies are empty vessels in which something 'non-physical' resides. This is if we are to answer a couple of questions in a least parsimonious way. One such question is: if our bodies are mere vessels, why can't we get out of the body (eg when we are sick), move with the soul check something in a far place, then come back to the body? Why do we need to phone someone over a vast distance if the body is a mere vessel? Is there a 'vessel' that you can't come out from at will? No! This is simplistic and it makes the idea of afterlife sounds far fetched to anyone who thinks scientifically.

Of course we can talk of Astral Projection, Near Death Experiences and other so called 'Out of Body Experiences' (OBE). However, if the body was a mere vessel, the acquisition of information via such OBE would be easily unambiguous. Someone could easily move out of the body and then check what is outside and surprise the pple inside, by correctly knowing about something outside the house without moving out with the visible body! I know there are claims of such cases but they are still unambiguous. 

Another issue relevant to the issue of 'non-soul explanation of OBE' is the one people often raise. They ask: If consciousness is just a state of the body, does it mean that all it takes to create another consciousness like yours is just a clone? Sadly, this is how some people conclude. Even some movies suggest that this is the case. To create 'one person at two places all at once', all you need is a perfect clone of the same person! But this is like saying that to create a hot object, all you need to do is to make another object that is perfectly similat to a hot object. Then voila! The other object will get hot too! 'Heat' here is analogous to 'consciousness' in that though both are just states of matter, it takes more than just a physical copy of the object for that object to acquire the state of the other object.

Consciousness is correlated to information. So a transfer of consciousness from place to place will obey the same rules of physics as those for the transfer of information. So for the clone to lead to a transfer of consciousness from one body to another, these two bodies must be entangled. Every time one aquires information, the other body must similarly aquire the very information. So both bodies are aware of the same information. But with such communication, you note that a perfect copy of the body is not necessary, as far as transfer of consciousness is concerned. Consciousness is more like program. Two computers don't have to be perfectly similar for them to run the same program. But communication between the two computers is of paramount importance. Another analogy is the transfer of heat between two bodies. A perfect similarity between the bodies is not important. We don't get into other people's bodies not because we are not physically similar but because there are no direct 'body to body' transfer of information.

The 'without soul OBE' then will be a transfer of consciousness into a copy of your body near the very body but which is not perfectly identical to it in the sense that the other body is not visible. To understand this, don't think about a 'clone' taking consciousness. Rather, imagine if your brain was so big that it covers the entire earth. This will take your consciousness to the other end of the earth in the same way you are somehow 'omnipresent' in your own brain. But we also know that we grow. A young whale might have avery tiny brain compared to an adult. As the whale grows, it accomodates 'other things' ss to be part of itself without, of course, losing consciousness. So the fact that we grow shows that consciousness is transferable from body to body, provided that the bodies comes close enough. It is very analogous to transfer of heat.

In OBE then, we don't realy 'come out' from the body. More accurately we somehow 'become in two places all at once'. It is sort of like a clone taking our consciousness as well. This 'clone' is the one that explore the astral worlds and it is still 'us' doing so in the sense that it is connected to us directly. Think of your left brain going to another place. Provided that it is in perfect communication with the right brain, it seems, to your awareness, that 'you are at two places all at once'. The 'perfect communication' can be achieved via a 'cable' of nerves.

You are now ready to understand why someone cannot easily 'get out' of the 'vessel' of the body, go out there and then collect information. The light gathered by 'astral eyes', for instace, is too dim since the astral body is too tenuous. Much light tend to simply pass through the body rather than get 'into' the body. The light to the visible, dense body, is too bright. So the apparent invisibility of the world as seen by the astral body is explained exactly the same way we explain why we don't see stars at day time.