Many OBEs start from dreams and since, by definition, one has to be conscious to have an OBE,
they tend to start from lucid dreams. The dreamer may become aware that he is dreaming and then
find himself in some place other than his bed and able to move about at will. He may have another
body and may even attempt to see his physical body lying asleep. This topic is covered separately in
the later section on lucid dreams.

What theories have been put forward to account for the (OBE) Out of Body Experiences?

The notion of the human double has a long and colorful history. Plato gave us an early idea. He believed that what we see in this life is only a dim reflection of what the spirit could see if it were released from the physical.
Imprisoned in a gross physical body, the spirit is restricted; separated from that body, it would be able to
converse freely with the spirits of the departed, and see things more clearly. Another idea which can be traced to the Greeks is that we have second body. The spirit or some subtle body would be able to see better without its body. Aristotle taught that the spirit could leave the body and that it is capable of communicating with the spirits, while Plotinus held that all souls must be separable from their physical bodies. This 'doctrine of the subtle body' runs through Western tradition.

Homer regarded man as a composite being comprising three distinct entities, namely the body (soma), the
'psyche,' and the thumos; this last term is untranslatable, but is always closely associated with the
diaphragm/midriff (phrenes), which was considered to be the seat of the will and feeling, perhaps even of the
intellect. At this stage (800 - 750 BC) the term psyche had not come to mean personal soul, but rather it
represented the impersonal life-principle which dwells in the body but which is unrelated to the intellect and the emotions. A fourth component, the 'image' ('eidolon'), might also be included in human make-up; it was this aspect of self which acted and appeared in dreams, where it was considered as a real figure.
/monroe/gateway.htm
Dionysus' early followers in Thrace reenacted his death and resurrection in a gruesome ceremony, where they
tore a live bull to pieces with their teeth, and then roamed about the woods shouting frantically. Later rituals were hardly less barbaric and frenzied; all were calculated to induce a stage of religious madness or mania. They took place at night to the accompaniment of loud music and cymbals, thus exciting the chorus of worshippers who soon joined in with shouts of their own. Dancing was so violent that no breath was left for singing, and eventually the worshippers induced through their excesses a state of such exaltation and rapture that it seemed to them that ordinary limits of life had been transcended, that they were 'possessed,' their soul having temporarily left the body. The soul was in a condition of enthousiasmos (inside the god) and ekstasis (outside the body); liberated from the confines of the body it enjoyed communion with the god.

Perhaps the most pervasive idea relating to other bodies is that on death we leave our physical body and take on some subtler or higher form. This notion has roots not only in Greek thought and in much of later philosophy, but also in many religious teachings. Some Eastern religions include specific doctrines on the forms and abilities of other bodies and the nature of other worlds; and in Christianity there are references to a spiritual body. Some religious works can be seen as preparing the soul for its transition at death.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or Bardo Thodol (meaning Liberation by Hearing on the After-Death Plane) was
first committed to writing in the eighth century AD, although the editor, Dr W. Y. Evans-Wentz, has no doubt that it represents 'the record of belief of innumerable generations in a state of existence after death.' It is thought that its teachings were initially handed down orally, then finally compiled and recorded by a number of authors. The book is used as a funeral ritual, and is read out as a guide to the recently deceased. It contains an elaborate description of the moment of death, the stages of mind experienced by the deceased at various stages of post-mortem existence, and the path to liberation or rebirth, as the case may be.

The Bardo body, also referred to as the desire- or propensity-body, is formed of matter in an invisible and
etheral-like state and is, in this tradition, believed to be an exact duplicate of the human body, from which it is
separated in the process of death. Retained in the Bardo body are the consciousness-principle and the psychic nervous system (the counterpart, for the psychic or Bardo body, of the physical nervous system of the human body) (Eva60). Due to its nature, the Bardo body is able to pass through matter, which is only solid and impenetrable to the senses, but not to the instruments of modern physics; and the fact that the conscious self is not embedded in matter enables it to travel instantly where it desires. Flights of the imagination become objectively real, the wish comes true.
/monroe/gateway.htm

In his introductions to The Egyptian Book of the Dead , called in the language of that people 'Pert Em Hru'
('Emerging by Day') Wallis Budge points out that its chapters 'are a mirror in which are reflected most of the
beliefs of the various races which went to build up the Egyptians of history.' As all commentators have hastened to indicate, the Book of the Dead is not a unity but a collection of chapters of varying lengths and dating from different ages. A selection of these would be made for the deceased, and would be copied on the walls of the tomb or inscribed on the sides of the sarcophagi; or they might even be written on scrolls of papyri which were then laid within the folds of the bodycloths. The extracts meant to benefit the deceased in a variety of ways.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead the perishable physical body, preservable only by mummification, is called the khat. Next comes the ka, which is generally translated as 'double,' and is defined by Wallis Budge as 'an abstract individuality or personality which possessed the form and attributes of the man to whom it belonged, and, though its normal dwelling place was in the tomb with the body, it could wander about at will; it was independent of the man and could go and dwell in any statue of him.'

The ba, or heart-soul, is depicted as a bird and is often translated as 'soul.' It is sometimes conceived of as an
animating principle within the body, but elsewhere it is hinted that one only becomes a ba after death, when it
either dwells with the ka in the tomb or with Ra or Osiris in heaven. The ba is often referred to in connection with the spiritual soul (khu), which was regarded as imperishable and existed in the spiritual body (sahu). The sahu was originally considered to be a more material body, and may have formed a part of an early and literal view of the resurrection, whereby the sahu, ba, ka, khaibit (shadow) and ikhu (vital force) all came together again after 3,000 years, and the man was reanimated. Gradually the sahu came to be regarded as more spiritual in its compositions, and the idea of physical resurrection lost its prominence. It was believed that this sahu was germinated from the physical body, provided that it was not corrupt, and that the priests had performed the appropriate ceremonies.

One of the directly relevant ideas derives from the teachings of Theosophy. Within a scheme involving several planes and several bodies, the OBE is interpreted as a projection of the 'astral body' from the physical body.
Theosophical ideas have influenced the thinking and terminology of many OBE researchers since many people reporting OBEs have found terms like 'astral projection' which derive from Theosophy to be useful in describing their experiences.
The idea that we have a double also appears in popular mythology. Often these doubles have sinister overtones, or are associated with the darker side of the psyche, but usually they are supposed to be quite harmless. These phenomena seem to be related to the OBE in that they involve a double, but there the resemblance ends.
Dean Sheils (She78) compared the beliefs of over 60 different cultures by referring to special files kept for
anthropological research. Of 54 cultures for which some information was reported, 25 (or 46 percent ) claimed that
most or all people could travel outside the physical body under certain conditions. A further 23 (or 43 percent ) claimed that a few of their number were able to do so, and only three cultures expressed no belief in anything of this nature. In a further three cultures the possibility of OBEs was admitted but the proportion of people who could experience it was not given. From this evidence, we can conclude that some form of a belief in out-of-body experiences is very common in various cultures.
/monroe/gateway.htm
Apparently, as many cultures interpret dreams as OBEs as those which do not. The notion that one may induce an OBE deliberately is not entirely absent from the cultures included by Sheils, though it is usually confined to certain types of people. Often only shamans can achieve OBEs, sometimes by using special drugs or methods for inducing a trance. Of those cultures described by Sheils, there were several in which there was a common belief that the soul could travel in earthly places, while in others the general belief was that the soul could only move in the world of the dead or spirits, and in others both kinds of soul travel were accepted.

One Of Robert Monroe's Method's
In his book Journeys out of the Body (Mon71) Monroe describes a complicated-sounding technique for inducing OBEs. In part it is similar to other imagination methods, but it starts with induction of the 'vibrational state.' Many spontaneous OBEs start with a feeling of shaking or vibrating, and Monroe deliberately induces this state first. He suggests you do the following. First lie down in a darkened room in any comfortable position, but with your head pointing to magnetic north. Loosen clothing and remove any jewellery or metal objects, but be sure to stay warm. Ensure that you will not be disturbed and are not under any limitation of time. Begin by relaxing and then repeat to yourself five times, 'I will consciously perceive and remember all that I encounter during this relaxation procedure. I will recall in detail when I am completely awake only those matters which will be beneficial to my physical and mental being.' Then begin breathing through your
half-open mouth.
/monroe/monroe.htm
The next step involves entering the state bordering sleep (the hypnagogic state). Monroe does not
recommend any particular method of achieving this state. One method you might try is to hold your
forearm up, while keeping your upper arm on the bed, or ground. As you start to fall asleep, your
arm will fall, and you will awaken again. With practice you can learn to control the hypnagogic state
without using your arm. Another method is to concentrate on an object. When other images start to
enter your thoughts, you have entered the hypnagogic state. Passively watch these images. This will
also help you maintain this state of near-sleep. Monroe calls this Condition A.

After first achieving this state Monroe recommends to deepen it. Begin to clear your mind and observe your field of vision through your closed eyes. Do nothing more for a while. Simply look through your closed eyelids at the blackness in front of you. After a while, you may notice light patterns. These are simply neural discharges and they have no specific effect. Ignore them. When they cease, one has entered what Monroe calls Condition B. From here, one must enter an even deeper state of relaxation which Monroe calls Condition C a state of such relaxation that you lose all awareness of the body and sensory stimulation. You are almost in a void in which your only source of stimulation will be your own thoughts.
The ideal state for leaving your body is Condition D. This is Condition C when it is voluntarily induced from a rested and refreshed condition and is not the effect of normal fatigue. To achieve Condition D, Monroe suggests that you practice entering it in the morning or after a short nap.
/monroe/gateway.htm
With eyes closed look into the blackness at a spot about a foot from your forehead, concentrating your consciousness on that point. Move it gradually to three feet away, then six, and then turn it 90 degrees upward, reaching above your head. Monroe orders you to reach for the vibrations at that spot and then mentally pull them into your head. He explains how to recognize them when they occur. 'It is as if a surging, hissing, rhythmically pulsating wave of fiery sparks comes roaring into your head. From there it seems to sweep throughout your body, making it rigid and immobile.' This method is easier than it sounds.

Once you have achieved the vibrational state you have to learn to control it, to smooth out the
vibrations by 'pulsing' them. At this point, Monroe warns it is impossible to turn back. He suggests
reaching out an arm to grasp some object which you know is out of normal reach. Feel the object
and then let your hand pass through it, before bringing it back, stopping the vibrations and checking
the details and location of the object. This exercise will prepare you for full separation.

To leave the body Monroe advocates the 'lift-out' method. To employ this method think of getting lighter and of how nice it would be to float upwards. An alternative is the 'rotation' technique in which you turn over in bed, twisting first the top of the body, head and shoulders until you turn right over and float upwards. Later you can explore further. With sufficient practice Monroe claims that a wide variety of experiences are yours for the taking.
/monroe/gateway.htm

Welcome to Altered States newsletter no 42 Part 2
PART 2

What are lucid dreams?

The term lucid dreaming refers to dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. It was coined by the Dutch
psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in 1913. It is something of a misnomer since it means something quite different from just clear or vivid dreaming. Nevertheless we are certainly stuck with it. That lucid dreams are different from ordinary dreams is obvious as soon as you have one. The experience is something like waking up in your dreams.
It is as though you 'come to' and find you are dreaming. This experience generally happens when you realize
during the course of a dream that you are dreaming, perhaps because something weird occurs. Most people who remember their dreams have had such an experience at some time, often waking up immediately after the
realization. However, it is possible to continue in the dream while remaining fully aware that you are dreaming.

One distinct and confusing form of lucid dreams are false awakenings. You dream of waking up but in fact, of
course, are still asleep. Van Eeden (Van13) called these 'wrong waking up' and described them as 'demoniacal,
uncanny, and very vivid and bright, with ... a strong diabolical light.' The one positive benefit of false awakenings is that they can sometimes be used to induce OBEs. Indeed, Oliver Fox (Fox62) recommends using false awakenings as a method for achieving the OBE. For many people OBEs and lucid dreams are practically indistinguishable. If you dream of leaving your body, the experience is much the same.

LaBerge's studies of physiology of the initiation of lucidity in the dream state have revealed that lucid dreams have two ways of starting. In the much more common variety, the 'dream-initiated lucid dream' (DILD), the dreamer acquires awareness of being in a dream while fully involved in it. DILDs occur when dreamers are right in the middle of REM sleep, showing lots of the characteristic rapid eye movements. DILDs account for about four out of every five lucid dreams that the dreamers have had in the laboratory. In the other 20 percent, the dreamers report awakening from a dream and then returning to the dream state with unbroken awareness one moment they are aware that they are awake in bed in the sleep laboratory, and the next moment, they are aware that they have entered a dream and are no longer perceiving the room around them. These are called 'wake initiated lucid dreams' (WILDs).

For many people, having lucid dreams is fun, and they want to learn how to have more or to how to induce them at will. One finding from early experimental work was that high levels of physical (and emotional) activity during the day tend to precede lucidity at night. Waking during the night and carrying out some kind of activity before falling asleep again can also encourage a lucid dream during the next REM period and is the basis of some induction techniques. Many methods have been developed and they roughly fall into three categories.

One of the best known techniques for stimulating lucid dreams is LaBerge's MILD (Mnemonic Induction of Lucid Dreaming). This technique is practiced on waking in the early morning from a dream. You should wake up fully, engage in some activity like reading or walking about, and then lie down to go to sleep again. Then you must imagine yourself asleep and dreaming, rehearse the dream from which you woke, and remind yourself, 'Next time I have this dream, I want to remember I'm dreaming.'

A second approach involves constantly reminding yourself to become lucid throughout the day rather than the
night. This is based on the idea that we spend most of our time in a kind of waking daze. If we could be more
lucid in waking life, perhaps we could be more lucid while dreaming. German psychologist Paul Tholey (Tho83) suggests asking yourself many times every day, 'Am I dreaming or not?' This exercise might sound easy, but is not. It takes a lot of determination and persistence not to forget all about it. For those who do forget, French researcher Clerc suggests writing a large 'C' on your hand (for 'conscious') to remind you (GB89). This kind of method is similar to the age-old technique for increasing awareness by meditation and mindfulness.

The third and final approach requires a variety of gadgets. The idea is to use some sort of external signal to
remind people, while they are actually in REM sleep, that they are dreaming. Hearne first tried spraying water
onto sleepers' faces or hands but found it too unreliable. This sometimes caused them to incorporate water
imagery into their dreams, but they rarely became lucid. He eventually decided to use a mild electrical shock to the wrist. His 'dream machine' detects changes in breathing rate (which accompany the onset of REM) and then automatically delivers a shock to the wrist (Hea90).

Meanwhile, in California, LaBerge (LaB85) was rejecting taped voices and vibrations and working instead with
flashing lights. The original version of a lucid dream-inducing device which he developed was laboratory based and used a personal computer to detect the eye movements of REM sleep and to turn on flashing lights whenever the REMs reached a certain level. Eventually, however, all the circuitry was incorporated into a pair of goggles.
The idea is to put the goggles on at night, and the lights will flash only when you are asleep and dreaming. The
user can even control the level of eye movements at which the lights begin to flash. The newest version has a chip incorporated into the goggles, which will not only control the lights but will store data on eye-movement density during the night as well as information about when and for how long the lights were flashing, making fine tuning possible.
/lucid/nova.htm
There are two reasons for associating lucid dreams with OBEs. First, recent research suggests that the same
people tend to have both lucid dreams and OBEs (la88, Ir88). Second, as Green pointed out (Gre68b) it is
hard to know where to draw the line between an OBE and a lucid dream. In both, the person seems to be
perceiving a consistent world. Also the subject, unlike in an ordinary dream, is well aware that he is in some
altered state and is able to comment on and even control the experience. Green refers to all such states as
'metachoric experiences.' It is possible to draw a line between these two experiences, but the important point to realize is that that line is not clear, and the two have much in common.

But there is an important difference between lucid dreams and the other states. In the lucid dream one has insight into the state (in fact that fact defines the state). In false awakening, one does not have such insight (again by definition). In typical OBEs, people feel that they have really left their bodies. Those experiencing NDEs may have a sense of rushing down a long tunnel, which some perceive as being an entryway into a world beyond death. It is only in the lucid dream that one realizes it is a dream.

Just as in the case of OBEs, surveys can tell us how common lucid dreams are and who has them. Blackmore
estimates that about 50 percent of people have had at least one lucid dream in their lives (Bla91). Green (Gre66) found that 73 percent of student sample answered 'yes' to the question, 'Have you ever had a dream in which you were aware that you were dreaming?.' Palmer found that 56percent of the townspeople and 71percent of the students in his sample reported that they had had lucid dreams and many of these claimed to have them regularly (Pal79b).
Blackmore found that 79percent of the Surrey students she interviewed had them (Bla82). Beyond producing these
kinds of results, it does not seem that surveys can find out much. There are no very consistent differences
between lucid dreamers and others in terms of age, sex, education, and so on (GL88). All these surveys seem to agree quite closely, showing that the lucid dream is a rather common experience far more common than the OBE.

What is the physiology of dreams and lucid dreams?

The electrical activity of the brain has been observed and classified with EEG (electroencephalograph)
equipment; signals are picked up from the scalp by electrodes, then filtered and amplified to drive a graph
recorder. Brain activity has been found to produce specific ranges for certain basic states of consciousness, as indicated in 'Hz' (Hertz, or cycles/vibrations per second):

Delta 0.2 to 3.5 Hz (deep sleep, trance state) Theta 3.5 to 7.5 Hz (day dreaming, memory) Alpha 7.5 to
13 Hz (tranquility, heightened awareness, meditation) Beta 13 to 28 Hz (tension, 'normal' consciousness)

In the drowsy state before falling asleep, the EEG is characterized by many alpha waves while the muscles start to relax. Gradually this state gives way to Stage 1 sleep. Three more stages follow, each having different EEG patterns and marked by successively deeper states of relaxation. By Stage 4 the sleeper is very relaxed, his breathing is slower, and skin resistance high. He is very hard to wake up. If the dreamer is awakened, he may say that he was thinking about something or he may describe some vague imagery, but he will rarely recount anything which sounds like a typical dream.

But this is not all there is to sleep increasing oblivion. In a normal night's sleep, a distinct change takes place an hour or two after the onset of sleep. Although the muscles are still relaxed, the sleeper may move, and from the EEG it appears that he is going to wake up and he returns to something resembling Stage 1 sleep. Yet he will still be very hard to wake up, and in this sense is fast asleep. The most distinctive feature, however, is the rapid eye movements, or REMs and the stage is also called REM-sleep. In earlier stages the eyes may roll about slowly, now, however, they dart about as though watching something. If woken up now the sleeper will usually report that he was dreaming.
/lucid/nova.htm
Lucid dreams implied that there could be consciousness during sleep, a claim many psychologists denied for more than 50 years. Orthodox sleep researchers argued that lucid dreams could not possibly be real dreams. If the accounts were valid, then the experiences must have occurred during brief moments of wakefulness or in the transition between waking and sleeping, not in the kind of deep sleep in which REMs and ordinary dreams usually occur. In other words, they could not really be dreams at all.

This contention presented a challenge to lucid dreamers who wanted to convince people that they really were
awake in their dreams. But of course when you are deep asleep and dreaming you cannot shout, 'Hey! Listen to me. I'm dreaming right now.' During REM sleep, the muscles of the body, excluding the eye muscles and those responsible for circulation and respiration, are immobilized by orders from a nerve center in the lower brain. This fact prevents us from acting out our dreams. Occasionally, this paralysis turns on or remains active while the person's mind is fully awake and aware of the world.

It was Keith Hearne (ea78), of the University of Hull, who first exploited the fact that not all the muscles are
paralyzed. In REM sleep the eyes move. So perhaps a lucid dreamer could signal by moving the eyes in a
predetermined pattern. Lucid dreamer Alan Worsley first managed to do this in Hearne's laboratory. He decided to move his eyes left and right eight times in succession whenever he became lucid. Using a polygraph, Hearne could watch the eye movements for sign of the special signal. The answer was unambiguous. All the lucid dreams occurred in definite REM sleep. In other words they were, in this sense, true dreams.

A typical lucid dream lasted between two and five minutes, occurred at about 6.30 a.m., about 24 minutes into a REM period and towards the end of a 22-second REM burst. The nights on which lucid dreams occurred did
not show a different sleep pattern from other nights, although they did tend to follow days of above average
stimulation.

It is sometimes said that discoveries in science happen when the time is right for them. It was one of those odd things that at just the same time, but unbeknownst to Hearne, Stephen LaBerge, at Stanford University in
California, was trying the same experiment. He too succeeded, but resistance to the idea was very strong. In
1980, both Science and Nature rejected his first paper on the discovery (LaB85). It was only later that it became clear just how important this discovery had been.

Some conclusions can be drawn from this information. In both OBEs and lucid dreams, the person seems to have his waking consciousness, or something close to it. He is able to see clearly, but what he sees is not quite like the physical and it appears to have many of the properties of a dream world or imaginary world. But there are differences as well: the lucid dream starts more often when the subject is asleep, and the dream world is less distinct and real than the OB 'world,' allowing less control and freedom of movement; in addition, the person who has an OBE starting from the waking state never actually thinks he is dreaming. Most lucid dreams involve only the subject, but there are cases on record of 'meetings' in lucid dreams. The important question is whether the OBEer is observing the same world as the lucid dreamer. Are the two experiences essentially aspects of the same phenomenon?

According to Stephen LaBerge it seems possible that at least some OBEs arise from the same conditions as sleep paralysis, and that these two terms may actually be naming two aspects of the same phenomenon (LL91). In his opinion the survey evidence favors this theory. There is also considerable evidence that people who tend to have OBEs also tend to have lucid dreams, flying and falling dreams, and the ability to control their dreams (Bla84, Gli89, Irw88). Because of the strong connection between OBEs and lucid dreaming, some researchers in the area have suggested that OBEs are a type of lucid dream (Far76, Hon79, Sal82).

One problem with this argument is that although people who have OBEs are also likely to have lucid dreams,
OBEs are far less frequent, and can happen to people who have never had lucid dreams. Furthermore, OBEs are quite plainly different from lucid dreams in that during a typical OBE the experient is convinced that the OBE is a real event happening in the physical world and not a dream, unlike a lucid dream, in which by definition the dreamer is certain that the event is a dream. There is an exception that connects the two experiences when we feel ourselves leaving the body, but also know that we are dreaming.
/monroe/gateway.htm
LaBerge organized a study which consisted of analysis of the data of 107 lucid dreams from a total of 14 different people. The physiological information that was collected included brain waves, eye-movements and chin muscle activity. In all cases, the dreamer signaled the beginning of the lucid dream by making a distinct pattern of eye movements. After verifying that all the lucid dreams had eye signals showing that they had happened in REM sleep, they were classified into DILDs and WILDs, based on how long the dreamers had been in REM sleep without awakening before becoming lucid, and on their report of either having realized they were dreaming while involved in a dream (DILD) or having entered the dream directly from waking while retaining lucidity (WILD).
Alongside the physiological analysis each dream report was scored for the presence of various events that are typical of OBEs, such as feelings of body distortion (including paralysis and vibrations), floating or flying,
references to being aware of being in bed, being asleep or lying down, and the sensation of leaving the body.

Ten of the 107 lucid dreams qualified as OBEs, because the dreamers reported feeling as if they had left their
bodies in the dream. Twenty of the lucid dreams were WILDs, and 87 were DILDs. Five of the OBEs were
WILDs (28percent) and five were DILDs (6percent). Thus, OBEs were more than four times more likely in WILDs than in
DILDs. The three OBE-related events which were looked for also all occurred more often in WILDs than in
DILDs. Almost one third of WILDs contained body distortions, and over a half of them included floating or flying or awareness of being in bed. This is in comparison to DILDs, of which less than one fifth involved body
distortions, only one third included floating or flying, and one fifth contained awareness of bed.

The reports from the five DILDs that were classified as OBEs were actually much like those from the
WILD-OBEs. In both the dreamers felt themselves lying in bed and experiencing strange sensations including
paralysis and floating out-of-body. Although these lucid dreams sound like WILDs, they were classified as
DILDs because the physiological records showed no awakenings preceding lucidity. However, it is possible that these people could have momentarily become aware of their environments (and hence been 'awake') while continuing to show the brainwaves normally associated with REM sleep.

The laboratory studies show that when OBEs happen in lucid dreams they happen either when a person re-enters REM sleep right after an awakening, or right after having become aware of being in bed. Could this relationship apply to OBEs and lucid dreams that people experience at home, in the 'real world'?

Not being able to take the sleep lab to the homes of hundreds of people LaBerge conducted a survey about
OBEs and other dream-related experiences. The difference between his survey and previous ones is that in
addition to asking if people had had OBEs, he asked specifically about certain events that are known to be
associated with WILDs, namely, lucid dreaming, returning directly to a dream after awakening from it, and sleep paralysis.

A total of 572 people filled out the questionnaire. About a third of the group reported having had at least one
OBE. Just over 80 percent had had lucid dreams. Sleep paralysis was reported by 37 percent and 85 percent
had been able to return to a dream after awakening. People who reported more dream-related experiences also
reported more OBEs. For example, of the 452 people claiming to have had lucid dreams, 39 percent also
reported OBEs, whereas only 15 percent of those who did not claim lucid dreams said they had had OBEs. The
group with the most people reporting OBEs (51percent) were those who said they had experienced lucid dreams,
dream return, and sleep paralysis.

In this survey, people reporting frequent dream return also tended to report frequent lucid dreams. Thus, LaBerge believes that the fact that dream return frequency is linked with OBE frequency in this study gives further support to the laboratory research finding that WILDs were associated with OBEs. On the other hand he stresses that the proof that some or even most OBEs are dreams is not enough to allow us to say that a genuine OBE is impossible. However, he suggests that if you have an OBE, why not test to see if the OBE-world passes the reality test. Is the room you are in the one you are actually sleeping in? If you have left your body, where is it? Do things change when you are not looking at them (or when you are)? Can you read something twice and have it remain the same on both readings? LaBerge asks 'If any of your questions and investigations leave you doubting that you are in the physical world, is it not logical to believe you are dreaming? (LL91).
/monroe/gateway.htm