Out of Body Experience FAQ (2)
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one of the FAQ. written by Jouni A. Smed <jounsmed
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Contents of OBE-FAQ (2)<<< Previous page 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.
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
[Bla88, Irw88]. 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% 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
56% of the townspeople and 71% 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 79% 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. top 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 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 [Hea78], 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. 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 (28%) and five were DILDs
(6%). 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 (51%) 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]. top Clearly there are similarities between OBEs
and dreams. In both we experience a world in which imagination plays a great part
and we can perform feats not possible in everyday life. But the OBE differs in
many important and obvious ways from what we have called an ordinary dream. For
a start, it usually occurs when the subject is awake, or at least if drowsy or
drugged, not sleeping. Second, the imagery and activities of an OBE are usually
much less bizarre and more coherent than those of an ordinary dream, and most
often the scenery is something from the normal environment rather than the peculiar
setting of dreams. Third, OBEers are often adamant that their experience was nothing
like a dream. Finally, there is the great difference in the state of consciousness.
Ordinary dreams are characterized by very cloudly consciousness at best, and are
only recognized as dreams on waking up. But these differences are not enough.
You may argue that in a lucid dream both the imagery and the state of consciousness
are much more like those in an OBE. So perhaps the OBE is a kind of lucid dream
occurring in the midst of waking life. One way to find out might be to determine
the physiological state in which the OBE takes place. Such a finding can only
be made by means of laboratory experiment; but first we need to catch an OBE in
the laboratory. Observing an OBE in the laboratory setting is not easy. Most
people who have an OBE have only one, or at most few, in a lifetime. Capturing
an OBE requires a special kind of subject, one who is both able to induce an OBE
at will, and willing to be subjected to the stress of being tested. Fortunately
there are such subjects. One of the first to be tested was a young girl called
Miss Z., by Charles Tart who studied her OBEs [Tar68]. Her OBEs all occurred at
night. She used to wake up in the night and find herself floating near the ceiling.
With Miss Z. as subject Tart initially wanted to test two aspects of the OBE:
first, whether ESP could occur during an OBE, and second what physiological state
was associated with the experience. Altogether, Miss Z. spent four non-consecutive
nights sleeping at the lab. During her first night Miss Z. had no OBEs. During
the second night she woke twice and reported that she had been floating above
her body. During the first experience Miss Z. had not yet fallen asleep when the
OBE occurred, and the EEG showed a drowsy waking pattern followed by waking when
she told Tart about the experience. All the time the heart rate had been steady
and there were no REMs. Then at 3.15 a.m. Miss Z. woke up and called out 'write
down 3.13.' Apparently she had left her body and lifted up high enough to see
the clock on the wall. At that time the EEG showed various patterns but predominantly
theta and alphoid activity. There were few sleep spindles (a feature of the EEG
pattern in certain stages of sleep), no REMs, no GSRs (galvanic skin response)
and a steady heartbeat. On the third night Miss Z. had a dramatic OBE. She
seemed to be flying, and found herself at her home in Southern California, with
her sister. Her sister got up from the rocking chair where she had been sitting
and the two of them communicated without speaking. After a while they both walked
into the bedroom and saw the sister's body lying in bed asleep. Almost as soon
as she realized that it was time to go, the OBE was over and Miss Z. found herself
back in the laboratory. Tart was not able to contact the sister to check whether
she had been aware of the visit, but the physiological record showed that there
was mostly alphoid activity with no REMs and only a couple of minutes of Stage
1, dreaming sleep, with REMs. The last night was in some ways the most exciting,
for on that occasion the subject was able to see an ESP target provided; but the
EEG record was obscured by a lot of interference. Tart described it as somewhat
like Stage 1 with REMs, but he added that he could not be sure whether it was
a Stage1 or a waking pattern. Amongst all these confusing and changeable patterns,
some certainty does emerge. In general the EEG showed a pattern most like poorly
developed Stage 1 mixed with brief periods of wakefulness. For this subject at
least OBEs do not occur in the same state as dreaming. Tart would have liked to
have continued working with Miss Z. but this proved impossible as she had to return
to Southern California. However, Tart [Tar67] was able to work with another
subject, Robert Monroe, well known from his books. Monroe was monitored for nine
sessions with EEG and other devices. In this environment Monroe had difficulty
inducing an OBE. Electrodes were clipped to his ear, and he found them very uncomfortable.
During all the time that he was trying to have an OBE his EEG showed a strange
mixture of patterns. There was unusually varied alpha rhythm, variable sleep spindles,
and high voltage theta waves. On the whole Tart concluded that Monroe was in Stages
1 and 2 and was relaxed and drowsy, falling in and out of sleep. His sleep pattern
was quite normal and he had normal dream periods and sleep cycle. During the
penultimate session Monroe managed to have an OBE. Tart concluded that Monroe's
OBEs occurred in the dreaming state; but this idea presented him with a problem.
Monroe claims that for him, dreaming and OBEs are entirely different. Tart finally
concluded that perhaps the OBEs were a mixture of dreams and 'something else.'
This 'something else' might, he thought, be ESP. One of the next subjects to
be tested in this way was Ingo Swann. In several experiments at the ASPR [OM77]
Swann was attached to the EEG equipment while he sat in a darkened room and tried
to exteriorise, in his own time, and to travel to a distant room where ESP targets
were set up. He did not fall asleep and was thus able to make comments about how
he was getting on. After some months of this type of experiment Swann suggested
that he might be able to leave his body on command and so he was arranged to receive
an audible signal to tell him when to go, and when to return. Apparently he succeeded
in this effort, which meant that OBE and other times could easily be determined
and compared. During the OBE periods, the EEG was markedly flattened and there
were frequency changes, with a decrease in alpha and increase in beta activity.
While these changes took place, the heart rate stayed normal. These findings are
rather different from those with previous subjects in that Swann seemed to be
more alert during his OBEs. Perhaps this just confirms what was learned from case
studies, that the OBE can occur in a variety of states. But perhaps most important
is that in no case so far did there seem to be a discrete state in which the OBE
took place. There were no sudden changes in either EEG or autonomic functions
to mark the beginning or end of the OBE. Any changes were gradual; unlike dreaming,
the OBE does not seem to be associated with a discrete physiological state. The
one other subject who has taken part in a large number of OBE experiments is Keith
('Blue') Harary. The experiments in which his physiological state was measured
were carried out at the Physical Research Foundation [Mor73, HJH74, JHHLM74, MHJHR78].
The findings were different again from those of previous studies. Here there were
no changes in EEG. The amount and frequency of alpha were the same in OBE and
'cool down' periods and there were only slightly fewer eye movements in the OBE
phases. These measurements alone show that Harary was awake and that his OBEs
did not occur in a sleeping, dreaming or borderline state. Other measures did
show a change. Skin potential fell, indicating greater relaxation, and it was
this measure which provided the best indicator that an OBE had begun. Both heart
rate and respiration increased. These changes are surprising because they imply
a greater degree of arousal; the opposite of the finding from skin potential.
So in some ways Harary was more relaxed, but he was also more alert. Great
differences between subjects tend to obscure any clear pattern in the states,
but in all this confusion it is clear that the start of an OBE does not coincide
with any abrupt physiological change. There is no discrete OBE state. The OBE
does not, at least for these subjects, and under these conditions, occur in a
state resembling dreaming. The subjects were relaxed, and even drowsy or lightly
asleep, but they were not dreaming when they had their OBEs. top Much publicity
has recently been given to research on near-death experiences (NDEs), experiences
of those who survive a close encounter with death. More people now survive close
brushes with death. The near-death experience has been defined as the 'experiential
counterpart of the physiological transition to biological death' [Sab82]: it is
the record of conscious experience from the inside rather than the outside, from
the point of view of the subject rather the spectator. Raymond Moody [Moo75,
77] interviewed many people who had been resuscitated after having had accidents
and he then put together an idealized version of a typical near-death experience.
He emphasized that no one person described the whole of this experience, but each
feature was found in many of the stories. Here is his description:
A man is dying and, as he reaches the point of greatest physical distress,
he hears himself pronounced dead by his doctor. He begins to hear an uncomfortable
noise, a loud ringing or buzzing, and at the same time feels himself moving very
rapidly through a long dark tunnel. After this, he suddenly finds himself outside
of his own physical body, but still in the immediate physical environment, and
he sees his own body from a distance, as though he is a spectator. He watches
the resuscitation attempt from this unusual vantage point and is in a state of
emotional upheaval. After a while, he collects himself and becomes more
accustomed to his odd condition. He notices that he still has a 'body,' but one
of a very different nature and with very different powers from the physical body
he has left behind. Soon other things begin to happen. Others come to meet and
to help him. He glimpses the spirits of relatives and friends who have already
died, and a loving, warm spirit of a kind he has never encountered before -- a
being of light -- appears before him. This being asks him a question, non-verbally,
to make him evaluate his life and helps him along by showing him a panoramic,
instantaneous playback of the major events of his life. At some point he finds
himself approaching some sort of barrier or border, apparently representing the
limit between earthly life and the next life. Yet, he finds that he must go back
to the earth, that the time for his death has not yet come. At this point he resists,
for by now he is taken up with his experiences in the afterlife and does not want
to return. He is overwhelmed by intense feelings of joy, love, and peace. Despite
his attitude, though, he somehow reunites with his physical body and lives. Later
he tries to tell others, but he has trouble doing so. In the first place, he can
find no human words adequate to describe these unearthly episodes. He also finds
that others scoff, so he stops telling other people. Still, the experience affects
his life profoundly especially his views about death and its relationship to life. The
parallel between this kind of account and many OBEs is clear. There is the tunnel
traveled through as well as the experiences of seeing one's own body from outside
and seeming to have some other kind of body, and the ineffability is familiar.
One is tempted to conclude that in death a typical OBE, or astral projection,
occurs, and is followed by a transition to another world, with the aid of people
who have already made the crossing, and that of higher beings in whose plane one
is going to lead the next phase of existence. Although Moody's work gave a good
idea of what dying could be like for some people, it did not begin to answer questions
such as how common this type of experience is. After Moody there have been
studies by cardiologists Rawlings and Sabom. The most detailed research has been
carried out by Kenneth Ring, a psychologist from Connecticut [Rin79, 80]. From
hospitals there he obtained the names of people who had come close to death, or
who had been resuscitated from clinical death. Almost half of his sample (48%)
reported experiences which were, at least in part, similar to Moody's description.
Of Ring's subjects, 95 per cent of those asked stated that the experience was
not like a dream (the same result appears in Sabom): they stressed that it was
too real, being more vivid and more realistic; however some aspects were hard
to express, as the experience did not resemble anything that had happened to them
before. One of Ring's most interesting findings concerned the stages of the
experience. He showed that the earlier stages also tended to be reported more
frequently. The first stage, peace, was experienced by 60% of his sample, some
of whom did not reach any further stages. The next stage, of most interest to
us here, was that of 'body separation,' in other words, the OBE. Thirty-seven
per cent of Ring's sample reached this stage and what they reported sounds very
similar to descriptions of OBEs. Not all the 'body separations' were distinct.
Many of Ring's respondents simply described a feeling of being separate or detached
from everything that was happening. Ring tried to find out about two specific
aspects of these OBEs. First he asked whether they had another body. The answer
seemed to be 'no': most were unaware of any other body and answered that they
were something like 'mind only.' There was a similar lack of descriptions of the
'silver cord.' We can see that an OBE of sorts forms an important stage in the
near-death experience. After the OBE stage comes 'entering the darkness' experienced
by nearly a quarter of Ring's subjects. It was described as 'a journey into a
black vastness without shape or dimension,' as 'a void, a nothing' and as 'very
peaceful blackness.' For fifteen per cent the next stage was reached, 'seeing
the light.' The light was sometimes at the end of the tunnel, sometimes glimpsed
in the distance but usually it was golden and bright without hurting the eyes.
Sometimes the light was associated with a presence of some kind, or a voice telling
the person to go back. Finally there were ten per cent experiencers who seemed
to 'enter the light' and pass into or just glimpse another world. This was described
as a world of great beauty, with glorious colors, with meadows of golden grass,
birds singing, or beautiful music. It was at this stage that people were greeted
by deceased relatives, and it was from this world that they did not want to come
back. A completely different kind of analysis was applied by Noyes and Kletti
[Noy72, NK76] to accounts collected from victims of falls, drownings, accidents,
serious illnesses, and other life-threatening situations. They emphasized such
features as altered time perception and attention, feelings of unreality and loss
of emotions, and the sense of detachment. They found that these features occurred
more often in people who thought they were about to die than in those who did
not. This fitted their interpretation of the experiences as a form of depersonalization
(i.e., the loss of the sense of personal identity or the sensation of being without
material existence) in the face of a threat to life; that is as a way of escaping
or becoming dissociated from the imminent death of the physical body. Two other
aspects have yet to be dealt with. First, there is the absence of any trips to
'hell.' Neither Moody nor Ring obtained any accounts of hellish experiences. However,
cardiologist Maurice Rawlings [Raw78] has suggested that the reason for there
being no such reports is that although patients may recall such hellish experiences
immediately afterwards, they tend to forget them with time. In other words, their
memories protect them from recalling the unpleasant aspects. According to Rawlings
it is only because they have been interviewed too long after the brush with death
that all the experiences are reported as pleasant. It does seem to be the 'good'
side of experiences which makes the greater impact. Another feature which needs
mention is the 'life review.' It has often been found that a person close to death
may seem to see scenes of his past life pass before him as though on a screen,
or in pictures. Ring found that about a quarter of his core-experiencers reported
a life review, and that it was more common in accident victims than others. The
general effects of undergoing an NDE are of two kinds: philosophical and ethical.
The main philosophical changes are in attitudes towards death and afterlife. Sabom's
figures are extremely interesting in this respect: he asked those who had and
those had not had an NDE when unconscious whether there was any change in their
views of death and the afterlife. Of the 45 who had not had any conscious experience,
39 were just as afraid of death as before, 5 more afraid and 1 less afraid; while
of the 61 with an NDE none were more afraid, 11 just as afraid and 50 less afraid.
The patterns were similar concerning belief in an afterlife: of the non- experiencers,
none had any change of attitude; while of the experiencers, 14 found their attitude
unchanged and 47 stated that their belief in the afterlife had increased [Sab82].
Ring found a correlation between loss of fear of death and what he called the
core experience, broadly that with a positive transcendental element in it. Moody
comments that there is remarkable agreement about the 'lessons' brought back from
NDEs: 'Almost everyone has stressed the importance in this life of trying to cultivate
love for others, a love of a unique and profound kind' [Moo75]. And he adds that
a second characteristic is a realization of the importance of seeking knowledge,
of not confining one's horizon to the material. A number of reductionist physiological
explanations have been advanced to account for NDEs: the two most common are 'cerebral
anoxia' and 'depersonalization'. Cerebral anoxia accounts for the experience by
saying that it is a hallucination due to an oxygen shortage in the brain. We have
seen that such 'hallucinations' frequently turn out to correspond to the physical
events actually occurring -- can the NDE therefore be labelled a hallucination?
Perhaps it can, but certainly not as a delusion. Ring and Moody both point out
that patterns of experiences are no different when there is clearly no shortage
of oxygen. Noyes starts by pointing out that none of the subjects can really have
been dead if they were resuscitated, so that their reported experiences cannot
be taken as 'proof' of survival of consciousness. Moody never actually states
such a position, but rather confines himself to asserting that the experiences
have a suggestive value; even if for the subjects themselves the experience is
proof. The common factor underlying all the physiological explanations of the
NDE is the attempt to avoid the prima facie interpretation of the experience as
an OBE. Sabom concludes that this hypothesis is the best fit with the data, while
Ring concludes that 'there is abundant empirical evidence pointing to the reality
of out-of-body experiences; that such experiences conform to the descriptions
given by our near-death experiencers; and that there is highly suggestive evidence
that death involves the separation of a second body -- a double -- from the physical
body' [Rin80]. Just as many different interpretations have been presented for
all aspects of the near-death experience. The most important of them have been
usefully summarised by Grosso [Gro81]. Most people seem to agree that the near-death
experience presents remarkable consistency varying little across differences in
culture, religion, and cause of the crisis; what is in dispute is why there should
be such a consistency. Rawlings steeps all his findings in the language of Christianity,
involving heaven and hell and the possibility of being saved. Noyes interprets
NDEs in terms of depersonalization; Siegel in terms of hallucinations, and Ring,
within a parapsychological-holographic model. But broadly speaking there are two
camps. On the other side are those who see the near-death experience as a sure
signpost towards another world and a life after death; on the other, those who
have, in various different ways, interpreted the experience as part of life, not
death, and as telling us nothing whatsoever about a 'life after life.' top If the OBE is to be seen as involving
psychological processes, rather than paranormal ones, we need to look at what
those processes could be. Let us begin with a psychiatric approach and ask whether
the OBE, or anything like it, is found in any mental illness. Noyes and Kletti
likened near-death experiences to the phenomenon of depersonalization. Related
to depersonalization is derealization, in which the surroundings and environment
begin to seem unreal and the sufferer seems to be cut off from reality. Depersonalization
is the more common of the two, and involves feelings that the person's own body
is foreign or does not belong. He may complain that he does not feel emotions
even though he appears to express them, and he may suffer anxiety, distortions
of time and place, and changes in his body image, and the subject may seem to
observe things from a few feet ahead of his body. His conscious 'I- ness' is said
to be outside his body. The patients characterize their imagery as pale and colorless,
and some complain that they have altogether lost the power of imagination. This
description does not sound like that of someone who has had an OBE or a NDE. There
are distortions of the environment and alterations in imagery in OBE and NDE experiences,
but it seems that imagery typically becomes more bright and vivid, colorful and
detailed, rather than pale and colorless. There are changes in the emotions --
but rather than a perishing of love and hate, many OBEers report deep love and
joy and positive emotions. The phenomena of derealization and depersonalization
do not in the least help us to understand. Any small similarities are outweighed
by overwhelming differences. One syndrome specifically involving doubles is
the unusual 'Capgras syndrome.' A person suffering from this illusion may believe
that a friend or relative has been replaced by an exact double. Since this double
is like the real person in every discernible way, nothing that the 'real person'
says or does will convince the patient otherwise. In this way the patient can
avoid the guilt he feels at any malicious or negative feelings towards a loved
one. From even this very brief description it is obvious that this illusion bears
no resemblance to the OBE. More relevant may be the kinds of double seen in
autoscopy, literally 'seeing oneself.' Although the OBE is rarely distinguished
from autoscopy in the psychiatric literature, other distinctions are made instead.
The main distinction is that OBE involves feeling of being outside the body while
autoscopy usually consist of seeing a double. Some people see the whole of their
body as a double; some see only parts, perhaps only the face. There is an internal
form in which the subject can see his internal organs; and a cenesthetic form
in which he does not see, but only feels the presence of his double. There is
even a negative form in which the subject cannot see himself even when he tries
to look into a mirror. An entirely different way of looking at autoscopy is
through the physical problems with which it is sometimes associated. One of these
is migraine, the most obvious symptom of which is the debilitating headache. During,
before or after the pain some migraine suffers apparently experience autoscopy.
In any case, a number of examples of people who have suffered both migraine and
a simultaneous experience of either autoscopy or an OBE, does not prove any particular
kind of connection between the two. top OBEs
might be expected to be more frequently experienced by people with the most highly
developed skills of conceiving mental images if the experience is one constructed
entirely from the imagination. Irwin [Irw80, 81b] was interested in whether OBEers
differ from other people in terms of certain cognitive skills or ways of thinking,
including imagery. He found 21 OBEers and to these he gave the 'Ways of thinking
questionnaire' (WOT), the 'Differential personality questionnaire' (DPQ) and the
'Vividness of visual imagery questionnaire' (VVIQ). For each he compared the scores
of the OBEers with those expected from studies of larger groups of the population.
The imagery questionnaire a self-rated measure of vividness of just visual
imagery. The scores of these few OBEers were unexpectedly found to be lower than
normal, and significantly so. It seems that they had less, not more, vivid imagery
than the average. The next test, the WOT, aims to test the verbalizer-visualizer
dimension of cognitive style. Irwin's OBEers obtained scores no different from
the average. So there was no evidence that OBEers are either specially likely
to use visualization or verbalization. Although not directly relevant to the
subject of imagery, the results of the DPQ were interesting. One of the various
dimensions of cognitive style which it measures is 'Absorption.' This relates
to a person's capacity to become absorbed in his experience. For example, someone
who easily becomes immersed in nature, art or a good book or film or a computer
game, to the exclusion of the outside world, would be one who scored highly on
the scale of 'Absorption.' Irwin expected OBEers to be higher on this measure
and that is what he found. His OBEers seemed to be better than average at becoming
involved in their experiences. top There is no single accepted definition
of hallucinations and it is not clear just how they relate to sensory perception,
illusion, dreams and imagination. However, let us define an hallucination as an
apparent perception of something not physically present, and add that it is not
necessary for the hallucination to be thought 'real' to count. Into this category
come a wide range of experiences occurring in people, not suffering from any mental
or psychiatric disturbance. Visual imagery may occur just before going to sleep
(hypnagogic), on first waking up (hypnopompic) or they may be induced by drugs,
sensory deprivation, sleeplessness, or severe stress. They may take many forms,
from simple shapes to complex scenes. Although it is possible to have an hallucination
involving almost any kind of imagery, it has long been known that there are remarkable
similarities between the hallucinations of different people, under different circumstances.
Hallucinations were first classified during the last century during a period when
many artists and writers experimented with hashish and opium as an aid to experiencing
them. In 1926 Kluver began a series of investigations into the effects of mescaline
and described four constant types. These were first the grating, lattice or chessboard,
second the cobweb type, third the tunnel, cone or vessel, and fourth the spiral.
As well as being constant features of mescaline intoxication in different people,
Kluver found that these forms appeared in hallucinations induced by a wide variety
of conditions. In the 1960s, when many psychedelic drugs began to be extensively
used for recreational purposes, research into their effects proliferated. Leary
and others tried to develop methods by which intoxicated subjects could describe
what was happening to them. Eventually Leary and Lindsley developed the 'experiental
typewriter' with twenty keys representing different subjective states. Subjects
were trained to use it but the relatively high doses of drugs used interfered
with their ability to press the keys and so a better method was needed. A decade
later Siegel gave subjects marijuana, or THC, and asked them simply to report
on what they saw. Even with untrained subjects he found remarkable consistencies
in the hallucinations. In the early stages simple geometric forms predominated.
There was often a bright light in the center of the field of vision which obscured
central details but allowed images at the edges to be seen more clearly, and the
location of this light created a tunnel-like perspective. Often the images seemed
to pulsate and moved towards or away from the light in the center of the tunnel.
At a later stage, the geometric forms were replaced by complex imagery including
recognizable scenes with people and objects, sometimes with small animals or caricatures
of people. Even in this stage there was much consistency, with images from memory
playing a large part. On the basis of this work Siegel constructed a list of
eight forms, eight colors, and eight patterns of movement, and trained subjects
to use them when given a variety of drugs (or a placebo) in controlled environment.
With amphetamines and barbiturates the forms reported were mostly black and white
forms moving aimlessly about, but with THC, psilocybin, LSD and mescaline the
forms became more organized as the experience progressed. After 30 minutes there
were more lattice and tunnel forms, and the colors shifted from blue to red, orange
to yellow. Movement became more organized with explosive and rotational patterns.
After 90 - 120 minutes most forms were lattice-tunnels; after that complex imagery
began to appear with childhood memories and scenes, emotional memories and some
fantastic scenes. But even these scenes often appeared in a lattice-tunnel framework.
At the peak of the hallucinatory experience, subjects sometimes said that they
had become part of the imagery. They stopped using similes and spoke of the images
as real. Highly creative images were reported and the changes were very rapid.
According to Siegel [Sie77] at this stage 'The subjects reported feeling dissociated
from their bodies.' The parallels between the drug-induced hallucinations and
the typical spontaneous OBE should be obvious. Not only did some of the subjects
in Siegel's experiments actually report OBEs, but there were the familiar tunnels
and the bright lights so often associated with near-death experiences. There was
also the 'realness' of everything seen; and the same drugs which elicited the
hallucinations are those which are supposed to be conducive to OBEs. There
have been many suggestions as to why the tunnel form should be so common. It has
sometimes been compared to the phenomenon of 'tunnel vision' in which the visual
field is greatly narrowed, but usually in OBEs and hallucinations the apparent
visual field is very wide; it is just formed like a tunnel. A more plausible alternative
depends on the way in which retinal space is mapped on cortical space. If a straight
line in the visual cortex of the brain represents a circular pattern on the retina
then stimulation in a straight line occurring in states of cortical excitation
could produce a sensation of concentric rings, or a tunnel form. This type of
argument is important in understanding the visual illusions of migraine, in which
excitations spread across parts of the cortex. Another reasonable speculation
is that the tunnel has something to do with constancy mechanisms. As objects move
about, or we move relative to them, their projection on the retina changes shape
and size. We have constancy mechanisms which compensate for this effect. For very
large objects, distortions are necessarily a result of perspective, and yet we
see buildings as having straight wall and roofs. If this mechanism acted inappropriately
on internally generated spontaneous signals, it might produce a tunnel-like perspective,
and any hallucinatory forms would also be seen against this distorted background.
In drug-induced hallucinations there may come a point at which the subject
becomes part of the imagery and it seems quite real to him, even though it comes
from his memory. The comparison with OBEs is interesting because one of the most
consistent features of spontaneous OBEs is that the experiencers claim 'it all
seemed so real.' If it were a kind of hallucination similar to these drug-induced
ones then it would seem real. Put together the information from the subject's
cognitive map in memory, and an hallucinatory state in which information from
memory is experienced as though it were perceived, and you have a good many of
the ingredients for a classical OBE. But what of the differences between hallucinations
and OBEs? You may point to the state of consciousness associated with the two
and argue that OBEs often occur when the person claims to be wide awake, and thinking
perfectly normally. But so can hallucinations. With certain drugs consciousness
and thinking seem to be clearer than ever before, just as they often do in an
OBE. An important difference is that in the OBE, the objects of perception are
organized consistently as though they do constitute a stable, physical world.
But such is not always the case; there are many cases which involve experiences
beyond anything to be seen in the physical world. Consideration of imagery
and hallucinations might provide some sort of framework for understanding the
OBE. It would be seen as just one form of a range of hallucinatory experiences.
But (and this is a big but) if the OBE is basically an hallucination and nothing
actually leaves the body, then paranormal events ought not necessarily to be associated
with it. People ought not to be able to see distant unknown places or influence
objects while 'out of the body'; yet there are many claims to such an effect.
top
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In the late 1960s Charles Tart began
the first laboratory tests with subjects who could have OBEs voluntarily [Tar67,
68]. In addition to his physiological research he also tested subjects' ability
to see a target hidden from their normal sight. His first subject, Miss Z., was
tested in a laboratory where a target was placed on a shelf about five and a half
feet above the bed where she lay. The target was a five-digit number prepared
in advance by Tart and placed on the shelf. Miss Z. slept in the laboratory on
four occasions. On the first she had no OBE; on the second, she managed to get
high enough to see the clock, and on third night she had an OBE but traveled elsewhere.
However, on her fourth and last night she awoke and reported that she had seen
the number and it was 25132. She was right on all five digits which has a probability
of only one in 100,000 of being right by chance. Tart himself seemed reluctant
to conclude that it was paranormal. Tart's second subject was Robert Monroe, who
came to the laboratory for nine sessions, but he was only able to induce an OBE
in the penultimate session, and then he had two. During the first of these OBEs
he seemed to see a man and a woman but not to know who or where they were. In
the second he made a great effort to stay 'local' and managed to see a technician,
who was supposed to be monitoring the apparatus. With her he saw a man whom he
did not know was there and whom he later described. It turned out that this was
the husband of the technician, who had come to keep her company. Since Monroe
did not manage to see the target number, no real test of ESP was possible. In
1971 Karlis Osis began to plan OBE research at the American SPR. One of the first
subjects to be tested there was Ingo Swann, who went to the laboratory two or
three times a week where Janet Mitchell tested him to see whether he could identify
a target placed out of sight. A platform was suspended from the ceiling about
10 feet above the ground and divided into two. On either side of a partition various
objects were placed and Swann was asked to try to travel up to see them. The reason
for the partition was to see whether Swann would identify the correct target for
the position in which he claimed it to be. Bright colors and clear familiar shapes
seemed most successful and glossy pictures or glass did not work well for the
experimental purposes. After his OBE, Swann usually made drawings of what he
had 'seen.' Although these drawings were far from perfect renderings of the original
objects, they were similar enough that when eight sets of targets and respondes
were given to an independent judge she correctly matched every pair; a result
which is likely to happen by chance only once in about 40,000 times [Mit73]. The
results of all these experiment were most encouraging. From Tart's results especially
it seemed that although it was very hard for the subject to get to see the number,
and that if the number was seen, it was seen correctly. Further research showed
that OB vision could be just as confused and erratic as ESP has always seemed
to be. For example Osis [Osi73] advertised for people who could have OBEs to come
to the ASPR for testing. About one hundred came forward and were asked to try
to travel to a distant room and to report on what objects they could see there.
Osis found that most of them thought they could see the target but most were wrong.
He concluded that the vast majority of the experiences had nothing to do with
bone fide OBEs. This conclusion means that Osis was using the ability to see correctly
as a criterion for the occurrence of a genuine OBE. Much of the recent research
on OBEs has been directed towards that important question; does anything leave
the body in an OBE? On the one hand are the 'ecsomatic' or 'extrasomatic' theories
which claim that something does leave. This something might be the astral body
of traditional theory or some other kind of entity. Morris [Mor73] has referred
to the 'theta aspect' of man which may leave the body temporarily in an OBE, and
permanently at death. On the other hand there are theories which claim that nothing
leaves. Some of these predict that no paranormal events should occur during OBEs,
but the major alternative to consider here is that nothing leaves, but the subject
uses ESP to detect the target. This concept has been referred to as the 'imagination
plus ESP' theory. This last theory is problematic. The term ESP is a catch-all,
is negatively defined, and is capable of subsuming almost any result one cares
to mention. How then can it be ruled out? And given these two theories, how can
we find out which, if either, is correct? In spite of the difficulties several
parapsychologists have set about this task. Osis, for example, suggested that
if the subject in an OBE has another body and is located at the distant position,
then he should see things as though looking from that position. If he were using
ESP he should see things as though with ESP. This general ideal led Osis to
suggest placing a letter 'd' in such way that if seen directly (or presumably
by ESP) a 'd' would be seen, but if looked from a designated position a 'p' would
appear, reflected in a mirror. Following this idea further he developed his 'optical
image device' which displays various pictures in several colors as in four quadrants.
The final picture is put together using black and white outlines, a color wheel,
and a series of mirrors. By, as it were, looking into the box by ESP one would
not find the complete picture. To do so can only be achieved by looking in through
the viewing window [Osi75]. Experiments with this device were carried out with
Alex Tanous, a psychic from Maine. Tanous lay down in a soundproofed room and
was asked to leave his body and go to the room containing the device, look in
through the observation window and return to relate what he had seen. Osis recounts
that at first Tanous did not succeed, but eventually he seemed to improve. On
each trial Tanous was told whether he was right or wrong and was thus able to
look for criteria which might help to identify when he was succeeding. On those
trials which he indicated he was most confident about, his results 'approached
significance' on the color aspect of the target. Osis claimed that this aspect
was most important for testing his theory because some of the colors were modified
by the apparatus and would be very hard to get right by ESP. The next tests therefore
used only a color wheel with three pictures and six colors. This time overall
scores were not significant but high-confidence scores for the whole target were
significant and in the second half of the experiment Tanous scored significantly
on several target aspects, especially the one which Osis claimed required 'localized
sensing.' Blue Harary, who has provided so much interesting information about
the physiology of the OBE, was tested for perception during his OBEs, but according
to Rogo [Rog78c] he was only 'sporadically successful' on target studies and so
research with him concentrated on other aspects of his experience. Apart from
all these experiments there is really only one more approach which is relevant
to the question of ESP in OBEs and that is work done by Palmer and his associates
at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. They tried to develop methods
for inducing an OBE in volunteer subjects in the laboratory and then to test their
ESP. One can understand the potential advantages of such a program. If it were
possible to take a volunteer and give him an OBE under controlled conditions,
when and where you wanted it, half the problems of OBE research would be solved.
It would be possible to test hypotheses about the OBE so much more quickly and
easily, but alas, this approach turned to be fraught with various problems. First
Palmer and Vassar [PV74a, b] developed an induction technique based on traditional
ideas of what conditions are conducive to the OBE. Using four different groups
of subjects in three stages, the method was modified to incorporate different
techniques for muscular relaxation and disorientation. Each subject was brought
into the laboratory and the experiment was explained to him. He was then taken
into an inner room to lie on a comfortable reclining chair and told that a target
picture would be placed on a table in the outer room. The stage of the induction
consisted of nearly fifteen minutes of progressive muscular relaxation with the
subject being asked to heard a pulsating tone both through headphones and speakers
which served to eliminate extraneous noises and produce a disorientating effect.
At the same time he looked into a rotating red and green spiral lit by a flashing
light; this stage lasted a little under ten minutes. In the final stage he was
asked to imagine leaving the chair and floating into the outer room to look at
the target, but here several variations were introduced. Some subjects were guided
through the whole process by taped instructions while other were simply allowed
to keep watching the spiral while they imagined it for themselves. For some the
spiral was also only imagined and for some there was an extra stage of imagining
the target. When the procedure was over the subject filled in a questionnaire
about his experiences in the experiment and completed an imaginary test (a shortened
form of the Betts QMI). Then five pictures were placed before him. One was the
target, but neither he nor the experimenter with him knew which it was. When he
had rated each of the pictures on a 1 to 30 scale, the other experimenter was
called in to say which was the target. One of the questions asked was, 'Did
you at any time during the experiment have the feeling that you were literally
outside of your physical body?' Of 50 subject asked this question 21, or 42%,
answered 'yes.' As for the scores on the targets, overall scores were not significally
different from chance expectation. When the scores were compared for the 21 OBEers
and the others there was no significant difference between them. The OBEers did
get significantly fewer hits than expected by chance, but this result difficult
to interpret. Palmer and Lieberman [PL75a, b] took the techniques a stage further.
Forty subjects were tested, but this time they had a visual ganzfeld: that is,
half ping-pong balls were fixed over their eyes and a light was shone on them
so as to produce a homogenous visual field. Half the subjects were given an 'active
set' by being asked to leave their bodies and travel to the other room to see
the target, while the other half were given a 'passive set' being asked only to
allow imagery to flow freely in their mind. As expected more of the 'active'
subjects reported having felt out of their bodies: 13 out of 20 as opposed to
only 4 in the passive condition. The active subjects also reported more vivid
imagery and more effort expended in trying to see the target, but when it came
to the ESP scores both groups were found to have scores close to chance expectation
and there were no significant differences between them. However, those subjects
who reported OBEs did do better than the others and significantly so. This result
is quite different from the previous ones and is the opposite of what Palmer and
Lieberman predicted, but it is what one would expect on the hypothesis that having
an OBE facilitates ESP. Palmer and Lieverman put forward an interesting suggestion
as to why more subjects in the active condition should report OBEs. Their idea
is related to Schachter's theory of emotions, which has been very influential
in psychology. This theory suggests that a person experiencing any emotion first
feels the physiological effects of arousal, including such things as slight sweating,
increased heart rate, tingling feelings, and so on, and then labels this feeling
according to the situation as either 'anger,' 'passionate love,' 'fear' or whatever.
In the case of these experiments the subject feels unusual sensations arising
from the induction and then labels them according to his instructions. If he were
told to imagine leaving his body and traveling another room he might interpret
his feelings as those of leaving the body. Of course this suggestion has far wider
implications for understanding the OBE than those relating to the evaluation of
the results of these experiments. In the next experiment Palmer and Lieberman
tested 40 more subjects, incorporating suggestions from Robert Monroe's methods
for inducing OBEs. The was no ganzfeld and instead of sitting in a chair the subjects
lay on beds, sometimes with a vibrator attached to the springs. This time time
21 subjects reported OBEs; and, interestingly, these score higher on the Barber
suggestibility scale, but they did not have better ESP scores. In the final
experiment in this series 40 more subjects were tested, 20 with ganzfeld and 20
were just told to close their eyes [Pal79a]. This time 13 in each group claimed
to have had on OBE, but whether they did or not was not related to their ESP scores.
This time EEG recording was also used, but it showed no differences related to
the reported OBEs. All in all it seems that these experiments were successful
in helping subjects to have an experience which they labelled as out of the body,
but not in getting improved ESP scores or in finding an OBE state identifiable
by EEG. In an experiment designed to look at the effect of religious belief
on susceptibility to OBEs, Smith and Irwin [SI81] tried to induce OBEs in two
groups of students differing in their concern with religious affairs and human
immortality. The induction was similar to that already described, but in addition
the subjects were given an 'OBE-ness' questionnaire and were asked to try to 'see'
two targets in an adjacent room. Later their impressions were given a veridicality
score for resemblance to the targets. No differences between the groups were found
for either OBE-ness or veridicality, but there was a highly significant correlation
between OBE- ness and veridicality. This result implies that the more OBE-like
the experience, the better the ESP. All these experiments were aimed at finding
out whether subjects could see a distant target during an OBE. Although the experimental
OBE may differ from the spontaneous kind, a simple conclusion is possible from
the experimental studies. That is, OBE vision, if it occurs, is extremely poor.
top Most theories of the OBE either claim that
something leaves the physical body, or that it does not. Then within these two
major categories there are several different types of explanation, and there is
perhaps a last possibility; that any such distinction is meaningless and artificial.
The theories can be divided up as follows [Bla82]: A. Something leaves the
body. 1. Physical theories 2. Physical astral world theory 3. Mental astral world
theory B. Nothing leaves the body 1. Parapsychological theory 2. Psychological
theories C. Other (a physical double travels in the physical world)" First
there is the kind of explanation which suggests that we each have a second physical
body which can separate from the usual one. There are two aspects to consider,
one being the status and nature of the double which travels, and the other being
the status and nature of the world in which it travels. In this theory both are
material and interact with the normal physical world. You may immediately dismiss
this notion, saying that the double is non-physical. To make this theory even
worth considering it is necessary to assume that this double is composed of some
'finer' or more subtle material that is invisible to the untrained eye. This kind
of idea is sometimes expressed in occult writings. The idea appears, for example,
as the 'etheric body' of the Theosophists. Objections to this type of theory are
numerous, and are made on both logical and empirical grounds. First, what could
the double be made of? The possibilities seem to range between a complete solid
duplicate and a kind of misty and insubstantial version. Another problem with
this kind of double is its appearance. If all have a second body why does it appear
to some as a blob or globe, to other as a flare, or light, and to yet others as
a duplicate of the physical body? Muldoon and Carrington [MC29] wrestled with
this problem and so has Tart [Tar74b]. If the notion of a physical double is
problematic, the notion that it travels in the physical world is just as much
so. First there are the types of errors made in OB perception. These tend not
to be the sort of errors which might arise from a poor perceptual system, but
seem often to be fabricated error, or additions, as well as omissions. Then sometimes
the OB world is responsive to thought, just as in a dream the scenery can change
if the person imagines it changing; and lastly, there is the fact that many OBEs
merge into other kinds of experience. The OBEer may find himself seeing places
such as never were on earth, or he may meet strange monsters, religious figures
or caricature animals. All these features of the OBE make it harder to see the
OB world as the physical world at all, and lead one to the conclusion that the
OB world is more like a world of thoughts. (a non-physical double travels in the physical
world)" Many theories have suggested that the double is not physical but
non- physical, even though it travels in the physical world. Many occultists believe
there to be a whole range of non-physical worlds of differing qualities. Let us
look at some examples of this sort of theory to try to find out what is meant
by it. Tart [Tar74b, 78] refers to it as the 'natural' explanation. He describes
this theory of the OBE as follows '... in effect there is no need to explain it;
it is just what it seems to be. Man has a non-physical soul of some sort that
is capable, under certain conditions, of leaving the physical seat of consciousness.
While it is like an ordinary physical body in some ways, it is not subject to
most of the physical laws of space and time and so is able to travel at will.'
The 'theta aspect' has been mentioned in connection with detection experiments.
Morris et. al. [MHJHR78] explain that '... the OBE may be more than a special
psi-conductive state; they hold that it may in fact be evidence of an aspect of
the self which is capable of surviving bodily death. For convenience, such a hypothetical
aspect of the self will hereafter be referred to as a Theta Aspect (T.A.).' According
to Osis and Mitchell [OM77] it is possible that '... some part of the personality
is temporarily out of the body,' and many occult theories involve a non- physical
astral double rather than a physical one. Blackmore criticizes this view [Bla82].
She claims if the 'soul' is to interact with the objects of the physical world
so as to perceive them then it should not only be detectable, but all the other
problems of previous theories arise. On the other hand, if this 'soul' does not
interact with the physical, then it cannot possibly do what is expected of it
in this theory, namely travel in the physical world. She sees no escape from the
dilemma. Moreover, she claims there is already evidence that what is seen in an
OBE is not, in any case, the physical world. (a non-physical double travels in a non-physical,
but 'objective,' astral world) Each of the theories presented thus far support
a conclusion that OBEs do not take place in the physical world at all, but in
a thought-created or mental world. Each of the next three types of theory start
from this premise, but they are very different and lead to totally different conceptions
of the experience. The term 'mental world' could mean several different things.
It could mean the purely private world created by each of us in our thinking.
One possibility is that there is another world (or worlds) which is mental but
is in some sense shared, or objective and in which we can all travel if we attain
certain states of consciousness. The important question now becomes whether the
OB world is peculiar to each individual, or shared and accessible to all. Occultists
have suggested that there is a shared thought world. There are many other versions
of this kind of theory. The pertinent features of this idea are that there is
a non-physical OB world which is accessible by thought, that it is manipulable
by thought, and that it is the product of the mind of more than just one person.
Tart [74b, 78], as one of his five theories of the OBE, suggests what he calls
the 'mentally-manipulatable-state explanation.' He raises here the familiar problem
of, as he puts it 'where the pajamas come from.' That is, if the OBE involves
the separation of a 'spirit' or 'soul' we have to include the possibility of spiritual
dinner jackets and tie pins. Of course any theory which postulates 'thought created'
world solves this problem. Tart therefore suggested that a non-physical second
body travels in a non-physical world which is capable of being manipulated or
changed by 'the conscious and non-conscious thoughts and desires of the person
whose second body is in that space.' In 1951 Muldoon and Carrington had come
to a similar conclusion [MC51]. Muldoon states '... one thing is clear to me --
the clothing of the phantom is created, and is not a counterpart of the physical
clothing.' Through his observations he came to the conclusion that 'Thought creates
in the astral, ... In fact the whole astral world is governed by thought.' But
he did not mean it was a private world of thoughts. Also relevant here is the
occult notion of thought forms. Theosophists Besant and Leadbeater describe the
creation of thought forms by the mental and desire bodies, and their manifestations
as floating forms in the mental and astral planes. All physical objects are supposed
to have their astral counterparts and so when traveling in the astral one sees
a mixture of the astral forms of physical things and thought created, or purely
astral, entities. There are other versions of a similar idea. For example Whiteman
questions the 'one-space theory' of OBEs [Whi75], and Poynton follow him suggesting
'... what is described is not the physical world as actualized by the senses of
the physical body, but a copy, more or less exact, of the physical world' [Poy75].
Rogo [Rog78b] suggests that the OBE takes place in a non-physical duplicate world
which is just as 'real' to the OBEer as our world is to us. The idea of shared
thought world, attractive as it is, has some serious problems. The first problem
relates to how the thoughts of different people could be combined together to
create an astral world and the second problem concerns the storage of ideas. The
idea that thoughts can persist independently of the brain has been a cornerstone
of many occult theories, but also parapsychologists have used a similar idea to
try to explain ESP. According to Blackmore [Bla82] the problem is essentially
one of coding. We know that when a person remembers something he has first processed
the incoming information, thought about it, structured it, and turned it into
a manageable form using some sort of code. We presume that the information persists
in this form until needed when the person can use the same coding system to retrieve
it and use it. Even if we don't understand the details of how this system works,
there is in principle no problem for one person because he uses the same system
both in storing the material and retrieving it. But if thoughts are stored in
the astral world, then we have to say that one person can store them there and
another can get them out again. And that other person may have entirely different
ways of coding information. So how can these thoughts in the astral possibly make
sense to him?
(imagination plus ESP) The OBE might involve only imaginary
traveling in a private imaginary world. According to this type of theory, nothing
leaves the body in an OBE. The advantage of such a theory is that it avoids all
the problems of the previous ones since it involves no astral worlds and other
bodies. Certain parapsychologists have tried to incorporate the evidence that
ESP occurs during OBEs by suggesting that the OBE is 'imagination plus ESP' or
PK. For example, one of Tarts's five theories is the 'hallucination-plus- psi
explanation.' According to this theory, 'For those cases of OBEs in which veridical
information about distant events is obtained, it is postulated that ESP, which
is well proved, works on a nonconscious level, and this information is used by
the subconscious mind to arrange the hallucinatory or dream scene so that it corresponds
to the reality scene' [Tar78]. Osis [Osi75] contrasts his 'ecsomatic hypothesis'
with 'traveling fantasy plus ESP' and Morris [MHJHR78] compares the theory that
'some tangible aspect of self can expand beyond the body' with what he call the
'psi- favorable state' theory. In parapsychology many states have been thought
to be conducive to ESP. They include relaxation, the use of ganzfeld or unpatterned
stimulation, and dreaming. There are many reasons why an OBE might be thought
of as a psi-conductive state. Palmer suggested that it might induce attitudes
and expectations consistent with psi, thereby facilitating its occurrence [Pal74].
This sort of theory is not satisfying. It appears to avoid all the previous
problems and yet to be able to cope with the paranormal aspects of the experience.
According to Blackmore 'Calling the OBE imagination or hallucination tells us
very little, and adding the words 'plus ESP' adds nothing. We know little enough
about ESP. It is defined negatively, and we cannot stop and start it or control
it in any way.' This
theory amounts to the statement that all the details of the OBE are to be accounted
for in psychological terms. Nothing leaves the body in an OBE, the astral body
and astral world are products of the imagination and the OBE itself provides no
hope for survival. Osis has called the followers of such theories 'nothing but-ers,'
reducing the OBE to 'nothing but a psychopathological oddity' [Osi81]. Among
psychological approaches there have been psychoanalytic interpretations, analogies
between the 'tunnel' and the birth experience; the creation of the double has
been seen as an act of narcissism or as a way of denying the inevitable mortality
of the human body. Then there have been theories which treat the near-death experience
as a form of depersonalization or regression to primitive modes of thinking, and
those which treat it as involving an archetype. John Palmer used a mixture
of psychological and psychoanalytical concepts in his account [Pal78a]. He made
the crucial point that the OBE is neither potentially nor actually a psychic phenomenon.
An OBE may be associated with psychic events but the experience itself, just like
any other experience, is not the kind of thing which can be either psychic or
not. He went on to suggest that the OBE almost always occurs in a hypnagogic state.
Within this state it is triggered by a change in the person's body concept which
results from a reduction or other change in proprioceptive stimulation. This change
then threatens the self concept and the threat activates deep unconscious processes.
These processes try to re-establish the person's sense of individual identity
as quickly and economically as possible in a way that follows the laws of the
Freudian primary process. According to Palmer it is this attempt to regain identity
which constitutes the OBE. Since the whole purpose of the OBE is to avoid a
threat, the person will usually remain unaware of that threat and of the change
in body image which precipitated it. However, Palmer adds that it is possible,
with practice, to gain ego-control over the primary process activity. Of course
the OBE is, at best, only a partial solution to the threat and both ego and primary
process strive to regain the normal body concept. As soon as they succeed the
OBE ends. For Palmer any psychic abilities which manifest themselves during an
OBE do so more because of the hypnagogic state than because anything leaves the
body. This theory has much in its favor. It has no need of astral bodies or
other worlds and so avoids all the problems of the earlier theories. It makes
sense of the situations in which the OBE occurs, and the way it varies with the
situation, and it relates the OBE to other experiences. However, the theory is
not without its own problems. It depends heavily on the idea that the OBE is a
means of avoiding a threat to the integrity of the individual and the anxiety
which such a threat would arouse. But it is not clear that the OBE would not provide
an even greater threat than the original change in body concepts. Sometimes OBEers
are terrified that they will not be able to 'get back in' which is surely also
a threat. Susan Blackmore [Bla82] bases her theory on the claim that the evidence
of paranormal events during the OBE is limited and unconvincing. She therefore
asserts that the claims for ESP and PK in OBEs are not impossible but there is
actually not very much evidence which has to be 'explained away' in this fashion.
Blackmore suggests that the OBE is best seen as an altered state of consciousness
(ASC) and is best understood in relation to other ASCs. Everything perceived in
an OBE is a product of memory and imagination, and during the OBE one's own imagination
is more vividly experienced than it is in everyday life. In other words the experience
is a kind of privileged peek into the contents of one's own mind. Blackmore
suggests that in the case of the OBE the following are necessary: vivid and detailed
imagery; low reality testing so that memories and images may seems 'real'; sensory
input from the body reduced or not attended to; awareness and logical thinking
maintained. She shows how these prerequisites can lead to an altered state of
which one form is the semi- stable OBE and indicates related states, such as lucid
dreaming, and shows how experience can change into others when conditions, or
ways or thinking, change. This theory accounts adequately for cases of so-called
traveling clairvoyance, where the subject does not necessarily see his body, but
is aware of a distant scene. It accounts less well for cases of conscious projection,
where the subjects feels himself to be at a distant location and is actually perceived
by a person at that location. It also underestimates the veridical aspect of perception
in cases where there is no apparent distortion by the imagination, in other words
when the scene viewed from another point of space corresponds exactly with what
one might expect to observe from that point; for instance a room seen from the
vantage point of the ceiling. The question of perceptual distortion is related
to the degree of interference by the imagination: the greater the imaginative
element, the less veridical the perception of the place. Stephen LaBerge describes
a theory in which OBEs occur when people lose input from their sense organs, as
happens at the onset of sleep, while retaining consciousness [LL91]. This combination
of events is especially likely when a person passes directly from waking into
REM sleep. In both states the mind is alert and active, but in waking it is processing
sensory input from the outside world, while in dreaming it is creating a mental
model independent of sensory input. This model includes a body. When dreaming,
we generally experience ourselves in a body much like the 'real' one, because
that is what we are used to. However, our internal senses reside in the physical
body, which when we are awake inform us about our position in space and about
the movement of our limbs. This information is cut off in REM sleep. Therefore,
we can dream of doing all kinds of things with our dream bodies -- flying, dancing,
running from monsters, being dismembered -- all while our physical bodies lie
safely in bed. During a WILD, or sleep paralysis, the awake and alert mind
keeps up its good work of showing us the world it expects is out there -- although
it can no longer sense it. So, then we are in a mental dream world. Possibly we
feel the cessation of the sensation of gravity as that part of sensory input shuts
down, and then feel that we are suddenly lighter and float up, rising from the
place where we know our real body to be lying still. The room around us looks
about the same as it would if we were awake, because such in image represents
our brain's best guess about where we are. If we did not know that we had just
fallen asleep, we might well think that we were awake, still in touch with the
physical world, and that something mighty strange was happening -- a departure
of the mind from the physical body. The unusual feeling of leaving the body
is exciting and alarming. This, combined with the realistic imagery of the bedroom
is enough to account for the conviction of many OBE experients' that 'it was too
real to be a dream.' Dreams, too, can be astonishingly real, especially if you
are attending to their realness. Usually, we pass through our dreams without thinking
much about them, and upon awakening remember little of them. Hence, they seem
'unreal.' But waking life is also like that -- our memory for a typical, mundane
day is flat and lacking in detail. It is only the novel, exciting, or frightening
events that leave vivid impressions. If we stop what we are doing, we can look
around and say, 'Yes, this world looks solid and real.' But, if you look back
and try to recall, for instance, brushing your teeth this morning, your memory
is likely to be vague and not very life-like. Contrast this kind of event to a
past event that excited or alarmed you, which is likely to seem much more 'real'
in retrospect.
Perhaps
all the distinctions and problems are artificial, perhaps the mind is neither
'in' nor 'out' of the body. Grosso argues the possibility [Gro81] that one is
always 'out' and in an OBE just becomes conscious of that fact. Should the distinction
between normal and paranormal then be dropped? Let us consider the state of
affair that is considered normal: the 'in-the- body' experience. What does it
mean to be in a body? LaBerge [LL91] argues that saying that one is in a body
implies that the self is an object with definite borders capable of being contained
by the boundaries of another object -- the physical body. However, we do not have
any evidence that the self is such a concrete thing. What we think of as 'out-of-body'
in an OBE is the experience of the self. This experience of being 'in' a body
is normally based on perceptual input from the senses of both the world external
to the body and the processes within the body. These things give us a sense of
localization of the self in space. However, it is the body, and its sense organs,
that occupy a specific locus, not the self. The self is not the body or the brain.
If we think that the self is a product of brain function, even this does not make
it reasonable to state that the self is in the brain -- is the meaning contained
in these words in this page? It may not make any sense on an objective level to
say that the self is anywhere. Rather, the self is where it feels itself to be.
Its location is purely subjective and derived from input from the sensory organs.
Putting aside the question of the essential nature of the self, perception
is undeniably a phenomenon tied to brain function. So, when we find ourselves
experiencing a world that seems much like the one we are used to perceiving with
our usual equipment -- eyes, ears, etc., all things linked to our brains, it would
be logical to assume that it is our usual brain creating the experience. And,
if we were to really leave our bodies -- severing all connection with them --
it would be illogical to assume that we would see the world in the same way. Therefore,
LaBerge points out, although no amount of contradictory evidence can rule out
the possibility of a real 'out of body experience,' in which an individual exists
in some form entirely independent of the body, it is highly unlikely that such
a form would utilize perceptual systems identical to those of the physical human
form. Spiritual teachings tell us that we have a reality beyond that of this
world. LaBerge concludes that the OBE may not be, as it is easily interpreted,
a literal separation of the soul from the crude physical body, but it is an indication
of the vastness of the potential that lies wholly within our minds. 'The worlds
we create in dreams and OBEs are as real as this one, and yet hold infinitely
more variety. How much more exhilarating to be "out-of-body" in a world where
the only limit is the imagination than to be in the physical world in a powerless
body of ether! Freed of the constraints imposed by physical life, expanded by
awareness that limits can be transcended, who knows what we could be, or become?'
[LL91].
top Most people taking part in discussions of OBEs seem primarily
interested in developing and ability to do so themselves and to learn to control
the experience. Aids to people wanting to develop such abilities, which include
books, audio tapes which are claimed to assist in the process, and training programs
are available from: Monroe Institute Route 1, Box 175 Faber, Virginia 22938-9749
U.S.A. Phone: 804-361-1252 Product Orders: 800-541-2488 top
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Direct replies or comments please send to Jouni A.
Smed <jounsmed (at) utu.fi>
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