Amiga Plus 1995 #2/Amiga Plus CD - 1995 - No. 2.iso/internet/faq/englisch/alt.out-of-body

Text File | 1995-04-11 | 188.7 KB | 3,384 lines

{Part one}

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                             alt.out-of-body
                       Frequently Asked Questions


                Written and maintained by Jouni A. Smed,
                   ([e-mail]).  November, 1994.


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Acknowledgement

This FAQ would not have come into being without the aid of Gary S.
Trujillo. In particular his proofreading and suggestions have been
invaluable.



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Contents

    "What is this alt.out-of-body newsgroup?"
    "What is an out-of-the-body experience?"
    "What are ESP, PK and psi?"
    "What theories have been put forward to account for the OBE?"
    "What is an astral projection?"
    "Is astral projection an adequate explanation?"
    "What is animism?"
    "Can the OBEer be seen as an apparition?"
    "How can one find out what an OBE is like?"
    "What is an average astral projection like?"
    "What is an average OBE like?"
    "How common are OBEs?"
    "What are the prerequisites for inducing an OBE?"
    "How to induce an OBE?"
    "What are lucid dreams?"
    "What is the physiology of dreams and lucid dreams?"
    "What is the physiology of OBEs?"
    "What are near-death experiences and are they some kind of OBEs?"
    "Is the OBE some kind of mental illness?"
    "Are people who have greater imagery skills more likely to have OBEs?"
    "Are OBEs some kind of hallucination?"
    "What are the features of OB vision?"
    "How can the OBE be explained?"
    "Where to find more information?"
    References


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"What is this alt.out-of-body newsgroup?"


Newsgroup History and Purpose

The alt.out-of-body newsgroup, created in September of 1992, was
established to provide a forum for exchanging ideas about out-of-body
experiences and for sharing actual accounts of such experiences.  It is the
successor to the alt.oobe newsgroup, established in July of 1992 for a
similar purpose.  (The older newsgroup still exists on some systems, but it
is no longer in wide-spread use.  The name "alt.out-of-body" was chosen
following a discussion about an appropriate name and a subsequent vote in
alt.config.)

Much of the discussion of out-of-body experiences has centered around the
recounting of experiences and speculation on the nature of those
experiences.  Some articles have questioned whether the experiences are of
an hallucinatory nature or purely a function of biochemical processes that
occur in the brain, and, at the other extreme, some have linked them with
notions of the existence of an immortal soul and other ideas generally
associated with religious interpretations of human existence.  Most readers
are intrigued by the thought of being able to have and control OBEs, and
see them as a potentially interesting experience, though some smaller
number of people taking part in discussions are interested in trying to
figure out their nature and function and their possible implications for
the understanding of what it means to be fully human.


Mailing List

The alt.out-of-body newsgroup is linked with a parallel mailing list,
provided for the benefit of those who do not have access to Internet /
Usenet or to the newsgroup.  To subscribe to this list, send a message
containing the text:

        subscribe alt.out-of-body Your Name

to the address "[e-mail]."  Postings can be made to the
mailing list / newsgroup by sending to the address "alt.out-of-body@
gnosys.svle.ma.us."



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"What is an out-of-the-body experience?"

Out-of-body-experiences (OBEs) are those curious, and usually brief
experiences in which a person's consciousness seems to depart from his or
her body, enabling observation of the world from a point of view other than
that of the physical body and by means other than those of the physical
senses.  Thus, an out-of-the-body experience can initially be defined as
'an experience in which a person seems to perceive the world from a
location outside his physical body' [Bla82].  In some cases experients
claim that they 'saw' and 'heard' things (objects which were really there,
events and conversations which really took place) which could not have seen
or heard from the actual positions of their bodies.

OBEs are surprisingly common; different surveys have yielded somewhat
different results, but some estimates indicate that somewhere between one
person in ten and one person in twenty is likely to have had such an
experience at least once.  Furthermore it seems that OBEs can occur to
anyone in almost any circumstances.  Researchers have approached the
question of the timing of OBEs by asking people who claim to have had OBEs
to describe when they happened.  In one of these, over 85 percent of those
surveyed said they had had OBEs while they were resting, sleeping or
dreaming [Bla84].  Other surveys also show that the majority of OBEs occur
when people are in bed, ill, or resting, with a smaller percentage coming
while the person is drugged or medicated [Gre68a, Poy75].  But they can
occur during almost any kind of activity.  Green cites a couple of cases in
which motor-cyclists, riding at speed, suddenly found themselves floating
above their machines looking down on their own bodies still driving along.
Accidents did not ensue.  Pilots of high-flying airplanes (perhaps affected
by absence of vibration, and uniformity of sensory stimulation) have
similarly found themselves apparently outside their aircraft struggling to
get in.  One might well struggle frantically under such circumstances.

More curious still are reciprocal cases of OBE and apparition: the OBE
subject, aware that he is operating in some kind of duplicate body, travels
to a distant location where he sees a person and is aware of being seen by
that person; this person confirms that he saw an apparition of the OBEer at
the time that the OBEer claimed to be in his presence.  Thus the two
experiences corroborate each other.

Not all OBEs occur spontaneously.  Using various techniques, some people
have apparently cultivated the faculty of inducing them more or less as
desired, and a number have written detailed accounts of their experiences.
These accounts do not always in all respects square with accounts given by
persons who have undergone spontaneous OBEs.  For instance the great
majority of those who experience OBEs voluntarily state that they find
themselves still embodied, but in a body whose shape, external
characteristics, and spatial location are easily altered at will, and an
appreciable number refer to an elastic 'silver cord' joining their new body
to their old one.  A much smaller percentage of those who undergo
spontaneous OBEs mention being embodied, and some specifically state that
they found themselves disembodied.  The 'silver cord' is quite rarely
mentioned.  It is hard to avoid suspecting that many features of self-
induced OBEs are determined by the subject's reading and his antecedent
expectations.

Common aspects of the experience include being in an 'out-of-body' body
much like the physical one, feeling a sense of energy, feeling vibrations,
and hearing strange loud noises [GT84].  Sometimes a sensation of bodily
paralysis precedes the OBE [Sal82, Irw88, MC29, Fox62].  OBEs, especially
spontaneous ones, are often very vivid, and resemble everyday waking
experiences rather than dreams, and they may make a considerable impression
on those who undergo them.  Such persons may find it hard to believe that
they did not in fact leave their bodies, and they may draw the conclusion
that we possess a separable soul, perhaps linked to a second body, which
will survive in a state of full consciousness, perhaps even of enhanced
consciousness, after death.  Death would be, as it were, an OBE in which
one did not succeed in getting back into one's body.

Such conclusions present themselves even more forcefully to the minds of
those who have undergone a 'near-death experience' (NDE).  It is not
uncommon for persons who have been to the brink of death and returned --
following, say, a heart stoppage or serious injuries from an accident -- to
report an experience (commonly of a great vividness and impressiveness) as
of leaving their bodies, and traveling (often in a duplicate body) to the
border of a new and wonderful realm.  Reports suggest that the conscious
self's awareness outside the body is not only unimpaired but enhanced:
events which occurred during the period of unconsciousness are described in
accurate detail and confirmed by those present.  The subject sometimes
'hears' the doctor pronouncing him dead when he feels intensely alive and
free from physical pain, and finds himself returning unwillingly to the
constrictions of the physical body.  If OBEs show the capacity of the
conscious self to have experiences and perceptions outside the physical
body, near-death experiences seem to suggest that this capacity still
obtains when the physical body is totally unconscious.

The idea that we all have a double seems to spring naturally out of that of
the OBE.  If you seem to be leaving your physical body and observing things
from outside it then it seems natural to assume that, at least temporarily,
you had a double.  It also seems obvious that this double could see, hear,
think and move.  This interpretation is not necessarily valid.  As Palmer
has so carefully pointed out [Pal78a] the experience of being out of the
body is not equivalent to the fact of being out.

According to the English psychologist Susan Blackmore the definition of the
OBE as an experience may not be a perfect definition but one of its major
advantages is that it does not imply any particular interpretation of the
OBE.  The consequences of this definition are important.  First, since the
OBE is an experience, then if someone says he has had an OBE we have to
believe him.  Conceivably in the future we might find ways of measuring, or
establishing external criteria for, the OBE, but at the moment we can only
take a person's word for it.  Another related consequence is that the OBE
is not some kind of psychic phenomenon.  As Palmer has explained, 'the OBE
is neither potentially nor actually a psychic phenomenon.'  This view is a
natural consequence of any experiential definition.  A private experience
can take any form you like.  This experience may turn out to be one
associated with ESP and paranormal events, but it may not.



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"What are ESP, PK and psi?"

'Extrasensory perception' (ESP) is a term coined by Dr. J. B. Rhine of Duke
University.  It covers any instance of the apparent acquisition of non-
inferential knowledge of matters of fact without the use of the known
sense organs.  ESP is usually said to have three varieties: 'telepathy,' in
which the knowledge is of events in another person's mind, 'clairvoyance,'
in which the knowledge is of physical objects or states of affairs; and
'precognition' (telepathic or clairvoyant), where the knowledge relates to
happenings still in the future.  The word 'knowledge' is, however, not
entirely appropriate, for there may be telepathic or clairvoyant
'interaction,' in which a person's mental state or actions may be
influenced by an external state of affairs, though he does not 'know' or
'cognize' it.

Another American term is 'psychokinesis' (PK), the direct influence of
mental events on physical events external to the agent's body.  'Psi' (from
the Greek letter) is 'a general term to identify personal factors or
processes in nature which transcend accepted laws' [Gay74].   It is
sometimes used to cover both ESP and PK.



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"What theories have been put forward to account for the OBE?"

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.

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 the 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.

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 appropriate ceremonies had been performed by the
priests.

The Egyptians agree with the Primitives and the Tibetans in asserting a
form of continued existence after physical death.  Their notions are less
psychologically consistent and subtle than those of the Tibetans, but much
more complex and symbolically developed than those of the Primitives, whom
they resemble only in the earliest stages of their civilisation.  Their
unique features center round the overwhelming dread of physical corruption
and corresponding longing for the germination of the indestructible sahu in
which the khu will exist 'for millions and millions of years.'

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.  Other researchers, however, find such terminology and the
model it has been devised to describe to be unnecessarily biased in favor of
a certain 'esoteric' interpretation of the actual 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%) claimed that
most or all people could travel outside the physical body under certain
conditions.  A further 23 (or 43%) 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.

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.

There are stories of bilocation in which the physical body exists and acts
in two separate places at once.  But physical effects in OBE are rare.
Also related to OBEs are the phenomena of traveling clairvoyance, ESP
projection and remote viewing.  'Traveling clairvoyance' was used to
describe a form of clairvoyance in which a medium or sensitive seemed to
observe a distant place, therefore it included both OBEs and experiences in
which the clairvoyant 'perceived' the distant scene but without any
experience of leaving the body.  In both 'traveling clairvoyance' and 'ESP
projection' the occurrence of ESP is presupposed, but the experience of
leaving the body is not.  Remote viewing is a recent and better-defined
term.  Typically a subject describes or draws his impressions while an
'outbound experimenter' visits randomly selected remote locations.  Later
the descriptions and the locations are matched up.  Remote viewing has
often been compared with OBEs, and sometimes subjects who can have OBEs are
used in remote viewing experiments.

Many people have argued that the OBE itself is some kind of dream and
involves no double other than an imaginary one.  However, an ordinary dream
does not have those important features of the experient seeming to leave
the body and being conscious of perceiving things as they occur.  In this
sense OBEs are better compared with lucid dreams, which are dreams in which
the sleeper realizes, at the time, that he or she is dreaming.  In such an
experience, the sleeper may become perfectly conscious in the dream, which
makes the experience very much like an OBE.

The experience of seeing one's own double has been called 'autoscopy' or
'autoscopic hallucinations.' Here again the double is not the 'real' or
conscious person.  It is seen as another self, but the original self still
appears the most real.  In the OBE it is the 'other' which seems most
alive.

It has been argued that the OBE is an hallucination, and any other body or
double is likewise hallucinatory.  There are in fact many similarities
between some kinds of hallucinations and OBEs.

Among other experiences difficult to disentangle from OBEs are a variety of
religious and transcendental experiences.  People may feel that they have
grown very large or very small, becoming one with the Universe or God.
Everything is seen in a new perspective, and may seem 'real' for the very
first time.  It is difficult to draw a line between a religious experience
and an OBE and any line one does draw may seem artificial or arbitrary.



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"What is an astral projection?"

Superficially, the idea of having a double may seem to explain the OBE.
However, as soon as this idea is pursued, problems become obvious and the
system has to get more complicated to deal with those problems.  One of the
most complex, and certainly the most influential, of such systems is the
theory of astral projection, based on the teachings of theosophy.  In 1875
Madame Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society in New York, to study
Eastern religions and science.  From her teachings, brought back from her
travels in India and elsewhere, a complex scheme evolved.  According to the
Theosophists, man is not just the product of his physical body, but is
instead thought to be a complex creature consisting of many bodies, each
finer and more subtle than the one 'below' it.  These bodies should be
thought of as an outer garment which can be thrown off to reveal the true
man within.

Although there are variations in the details, it is commonly claimed that
there are seven great planes and seven corresponding bodies or vehicles.
The grossest of all is the physical body, of flesh, with which we are all
familiar.  There is supposed to be another body also described as physical
known as the 'etheric double,' or 'vehicle of vitality.'  Etheric double is
the manifestation of physical vitality.  It is constant and does not change
throughout the cycles of life and death, but it is not eternal, for it is
eventually re-absorbed into the elements of which it is composed.  This
'double' acts as a kind of transmitter of energy, keeping the lower
physical body in contact with the higher bodies.  Etheric substance is seen
as an extension of the physical.

Next up the scale is supposed to be the 'astral world' and its associated
'astral body,' or the 'vehicle of consciousness.' These entities are
thought to be finer than their etheric counterparts and correspondingly
harder to see.  Astral body is thought to be 'a replica of the physical
body (the gross body), but of a more subtle and tenous substance,
penetrating every nerve, fibre and cell of the physical organism, and
constantly in a supersensitive state of vibration and pulsation' [Gay74].

The astral world consists of astral matter, and all physical objects have a
replica in the astral.  There is therefore a complete physical copy of
everything in the astral world, but in addition there are things in the
astral which have no counterpart in the physical.  There are thought forms
created by human thought, elementals and the lowest of the dead, who have
gone no further since they left the physical world.  All these entities and
many others are used in ritual magic, and thought forms can be specially
created to carry out tasks such as healing, carrying messages, or gaining
information.

In the scheme just described, those who have the ability are supposed to be
able to see the nature of a person's thoughts by changes in the color and
form of the astral body.  All around the physical can be seen the bright
and shining colors of the larger astral body, making up the astral aura.
The aura is multi-colored and brilliant, or dull, according to the
character or quality of the person and therefore 'to the seer, the aura of
a person is an index to his hidden propensities' [Gay74].

All these conceptions are of special relevance because of the fact that the
astral body is supposed to be able to separate from the physical and travel
without it.  Since the astral is the vehicle of consciousness, it is this
body which is aware, not the physical.  It is said that in sleep the astral
body leaves the sleeping body.  In the undeveloped person, little memory is
retained and the astral body is vague and its travels are limited and
directionless, but in the trained person the astral can be controlled, can
travel great distances in sleep, and can even be projected from the
physical body at will.  It is this which is called astral projection.

In astral projection the consciousness can travel almost without
limitation, but it travels in the astral world.  It therefore sees not the
physical objects, but their astral counterparts, and in addition the beings
that live in the astral realms.  The astral world has been known as the
'world of illusion' or world of thoughts.  The unwary traveler can become
confused by the power of his own imaginings.  In this state one can appear,
as an apparition to anyone who has 'astral sight.'  Indeed one can appear
to other too, but to do so requires some involvement of lower matter, for
example of etheric matter, as in ectoplasm.  Ectoplasm is considered to be
the materialization of the astral body and is described as 'matter which is
invisible and impalpable in its primary state, but assuming the state of a
vapour, liquid or solid, according to its stage of condensation' [Gay74].

An aspect of astral traveling which has become important in later writings,
though it appears little in early theosophy, is the silver cord.  It is
held that in life the astral body is connected to its physical body by an
infinitely elastic but strong cord, of a flowing and delicate silver color.
Traditionally the cord must remain connected or death will ensue.  As one
approaches death, the astral gradually loosens itself, lifts up above the
physical, and then the cord breaks to allow the higher bodies to leave.
Death is thus seen as a form of permanent astral projection.

Beyond the astral Theosophy distinguishes a further five levels.  These
include the mental or devachnic world, the buddhic, the nirvanic, and two
others so far beyond our understanding that they are rarely described.  The
task of every person is to progress through all of these.



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"Is astral projection an adequate explanation?"

Many investigators are convinced of the reality of astral projection.
Among the best known are Muldoon and Carrington, and Crookall.  Sylvan
Muldoon claimed to be able to project at will and described his experiences
in The Projection of the Astral Body [MC29] written in collaboration with
the psychical researcher Hereward Carrington.  Together these two collected
many cases of spontaneous OBEs which they amassed as support for the
reality of astral projection.  Many years later Robert Crookall [Cro61-78],
in more systematic fashion, did much the same thing.  Many of the people
who report OBEs have found the notion of astral projection helpful, and
describe their experiences in these terms.

There are several serious problems with the theory of astral projection, as
pointed out by Susan Blackmore [Bla82].  The first is that many OBEs simply
do not fit well into the astral projection framework.  Celia Green [Gre68a]
has collected many cases in which the person describes no astral body,
indeed no other body at all.  Also very few people actually report any
cord, let alone the traditional silver cord.

Of course this type of experience can be fitted in by saying that the
experient's astral vision was clouded, or the astral body or cord too fine
to be seen, but these methods of attempting to account for actual
experience begin to weaken the theory.  Blackmore criticizes the complexity
of the theory of astral projection as it tries to account for new facts.
And this relates to the second problem, its 'stretchability.'  In her
opinion the theory is so complicated and flexible that almost anything can
be stretched to fit it and it makes hard to draw definite predictions from
the theory.  If you don't see the features you should, your astral vision
is not clear enough, or memory was not passed on from higher levels.  If
you fail to make yourself visible to someone else then not enough etheric
matter was involved and so on.  In this way the 'theory' is in danger of
explaining everything and nothing.  Furthermore, any theory which is
untestable is useless in scientific terms.



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"What is animism?"

A school of thought has grown up within parapsychology, and around its
fringes, which takes very seriously the idea of death being an OBE in which
one did not succeed in getting back into one's body.  Gauld [Gau82] refers
to this school of thought as the 'animistic' school (anima = soul),
'animism' being the view that every human mind, whether in its before death
or after death state 'is essentially and inseparably bound up with some
kind of extended quasi-physical vehicle, which is not normally perceptible
to the senses of human beings in their present life' [Bro62].  An argument
which one commonly hears from members of the animistic school runs as
follows:  OBEs and near-death experiences are, so far as we can tell,
universal.  They have been reported from many different parts of the world
and in many different historical eras.  The experiences of the persons
concerned therefore must reflect genuine features of the human
constitution; for we cannot possibly suppose that they derive from a common
stream of religious tradition or folk-belief -- the societies from which
they have been reported are too widely separated in space and time for the
common-origin idea to be a serious possibility.

The most powerful shot in the the animist's locker remains, however, still
to be mentioned.  There are some cases -- by no means a negligible number
-- in which a person who is undergoing an OBE, and finds himself at or
'projects' himself to a particular spot distant from his physical body, has
been seen at that very spot by some person present there.  Such cases are
generally known as 'reciprocal' cases.  Thus the animist, starting from his
study of OBEs and NDEs, claims to have direct evidence that after death we
remain the conscious individuals that we always have been and that the
'vehicle' of our surviving memories and other psychological dispositions is
a surrogate body whose properties (other perhaps than that of being
malleable by thought) are, he would admit, largely unknown.

In addition to taking OBEs and NDEs as themselves evidence for survival,
the animist might well feel able to offer the following argument in support
of regarding a further class of phenomena as evidence for survival of
consciousness following physical death.  There is in the literature on
apparitions a substantial sprinkling of cases of apparitions of deceased
persons, some of which have been seen by witnesses who did not know the
deceased in life.  An extensive statistical investigation by the late
professor Hornell Hart [Har56] strongly suggests that apparitions of the
dead and the phantasms of living 'projectors' in reciprocal cases are, as
classes, indistinguishable from each other in what may be called their
'external characteristics' -- such as whether the figure was solid, dressed
in ordinary clothes, seen by more than one person, whether it spoke,
adjusted itself to its physical surroundings, etc.  Now we know that in
reciprocal cases the phantasms of the projector is in some sense a center
of or a vehicle of consciousness, namely the consciousness of the
projector.  Since apparitions of the dead and of living projectors
manifestly belong to the same class of objects or events, we may properly
infer that since the apparitions of living projectors are vehicles for the
consciousness of the person in question, this must be true of apparitions
of the dead also.  Hence the consciousness of deceased persons survives and
may either have, or make use of, a kind of body.



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"Can the OBEer be seen as an apparition?"

The study of apparitions formed an important part of early physical
research, and many different types of apparition have been recorded, but
the ones which primarily interest us here are those in which a person
having an OBE simultaneously appeared to someone else as an apparition.
There are many cases of this kind in the early literature and they have
been quoted again and again but a relatively small number of them really
form the mainstay of the anecdotal evidence on OBE apparitions.  Crookall
[Cro61] and Smith [Smi65] give some recent cases but they too concentrate
on the older ones.  Green [Gre68a] discusses the similarities between
apparitions in general and the asomatic body perceived by OBEers, but she
does not give any examples from her own case collection in which another
person saw the exteriorized double.  By contrast, about 10% of Palmer's
OBEers claimed to have been seen as an apparition [Pal79b] and Osis claims
that from his survey OBEers 'frequently' said they were noticed by others
and in 16 cases (6% of the total) he was able to obtain some verification
through witnesses, although he does not expand on this remark.  Obviously
it would be very helpful if much more evidence of this sort could be
collected, and recent cases thoroughly checked.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

{End of part one}


--
        Jouni A. Smed   [e-mail]  http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed
        Department of Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland
{Part two}

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"How can one find out what an OBE is like?"

One of the easiest ways to find out what OBE is like is to collect a large
number of accounts of cases and compare them.  In this way any common
features can be extricated and variations noted.  A great deal can be
learned about the conditions under which the experiences occurred, how long
they lasted, and what they were like.  Accounts by people who have had OBEs
fall, roughly speaking, into two categories.  There are the many ordinary
people to whom an OBE occurs just once, or a few times; and there is a
small number of people who claim to be able to project at will.

The limitations of this method are that there are many important questions
which cannot be answered by collecting cases.  Since the people voluntarily
report their experiences, the sample necessarily ends up with a bias.  Many
accounts are given many years or even decades after the event and it is
then impossible to determine how much of the story has altered in memory
with the passage of time.  For such reasons it is not possible to
determine, for example, how common the the experience actually is.  Second,
many OBEers claim that they were able to see rooms into which they had
never been, describe accurately people they had never met, or move physical
objects during their experience.  Such reports are of great interest to
parapsychology but they cannot be tested by collecting cases.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"What is an average astral projection like?"

Accounts of OBEs have been collected since the beginning of psychical
research.  The first collection of cases of spontaneous apparitions,
telepathy, and clairvoyance published in 1886 as 'Phantasms of the Living'
[GMF86].  Frederic Myers also collected similar cases for his 'Human
Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death' [Mye03].

The first major collection was made by Muldoon and Carrington and published
in 1951 [MC51].  Nearly a hundred accounts were categorized according to
whether they were produced by drugs or anaesthetics, occurred at the time
of accident, death or illness, or were set off by suppressed desire.
Finally they gave cases in which spirits seemed to be involved.  By
categorizing the cases in this way, Muldoon and Carrington were able to
compare and interpret them in the light of their theories of astral
projection, but they did not go beyond this rather simple analysis.  These
researchers implied that we do have a double, and that it is capable of
perceiving at a distance and even of surviving without the physical body.

The largest collections of accounts of astral projection have been amassed
by Robert Crookall.  In his many books [Cro61, 64a] he has presented
hundreds of cases which show the kinds of consistencies as Muldoon and
Carrington found.  He also divided the cases according to how they were
brought about.  First there were the 'natural' ones which included those
people who nearly died or were very ill or exhausted, as well as those who
were quite well.  Contrasted with these were the 'enforced' cases, being
induced by anaesthetics, suffocation and falling, or deliberately by
hypnosis.

Typical features of Crookall's accounts were the mysterious light
illuminating the darkness, the white double, the ability to travel at will
and inability to affect material objects.  Crookall cited typical elements
of the natural projection being the cord joining the two bodies, feelings
of peace and happiness and the clarity of mind and 'realness' of everything
seen.  By contrast with what Crookall calls 'the enforced' OBE, by which he
means one which is entered into deliberately by the experient, he argued
the person typically finds himself not in happy and bright surroundings but
in a dream or conditions reminiscent of popular conceptions of 'Hades.'

In projection two aspects can be exteriorized: in natural OBEs the soul
body or the astral body is ejected free of the vehicle of vitality and the
vision of the experient is clear, but when the OBE is the result of a
conscious effort to have an OBE some of the lower vehicle is shed at the
same time and clouds the vision.  The same principles apply in death:
natural deaths according to NDE accounts usually lead to an experience of
paradisaical conditions, but the victim of an 'enforced' death is likely to
find himself in Hades with clouded vision and consciousness.

The implication of Crookall's argument is that there is an astral body, a
vehicle of vitality and a silver cord, and that we survive death to live on
a higher plane.  He believed that insofar as such a thing could be proved,
the many cases he had collected proved the existence of out other bodies.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"What is an average OBE like?"

The previous case collections were made by researchers who believed
implicitly in the astral projection interpretation of the OBE.  A properly
analyzed case collection can provide a rich source of information about
what the OBE is like.  The collections used here include those by Hart,
Green, Poynton and Blackmore and the analysis is made by Blackmore [Bla82].

Hornell Hart, a professor of sociology at Duke University in North
Carolina, collected together cases of what he called 'ESP projection'
[Har54].  He required that the person not only have an OBE, but also
acquire veridical information, as though from the OB location.  This
excludes many OBEs in which the information gained was wrong or could not
be checked.  He also rated the cases.  The best possible case would gain a
score of 1.0, but in fact the highest score given was .90.  No higher
scores were gained because the cases show a curious mixture of correct and
incorrect vision which seems to be common in the OBE.

Through this research, one assumption is crucial, that ESP projection is a
single phenomenon which might have any or all of Hart's eight features.
Rogo [Rog78b] and Tart [Tar74a] have both suggested that several different
types of experience may have been lumped together under the label 'OBE.'
It could be that astral projection, traveling clairvoyance, and apparitions
are quite different and need different interpretations, or other
distinctions might be more relevant.  The reason Hart gave why the non-
evidential cases should be excluded is far from satisfactory: if there was
no evidence of ESP they did not count in his analysis.  Hart was ruling out
the majority of cases on the basis of a very shaky criterion.

Perhaps the most thorough, and certainly the best-known case collection was
carried out by Celia Green of the Institute of Psychophysical Research
[Gre68a].  Her definition of an OBE was an experience, defined as follows,
'...  one in which the objects of perception are apparently organized in
such a way that the observer seems to himself to be observing them from a
point of view which is not coincident with his physical body.' J. C.
Poynton [Poy75], like Green, advertised in the press, and circulated a
questionnaire privately, and on the whole Poynton's results, although less
detailed, are similar to Green's.  Susan Blackmore [Bla82] has analyzed the
cases collected by the SPR and by herself.


Table: Some Results of Case Collections [Bla82]

                       Green      Poynton     SPR cases   Blackmore

Proportion of           61%         56%         69%         47%
  'single' cases

Some features of 'single' cases:

  Saw own body          81%         80%         72%         71%

  Had second body       20%         75%         --          57%

  Definite sensation   'majority'   25%         36%         --
    on separation         none

  Had connecting         4%          9%          8%         --
    cord

Apparently most people have had only one OBE, but the frequency of subjects
claiming many OBEs is high enough to conclude that if a person has had one
OBE he or she is more likely to have another.  Also many people learn to
control their OBEs to some extent, even if they never learn to induce them
reliably at will.

OBEs are occurring in a variety of situations.  Green found that 12% of
single cases occurred during sleep, 32% when unconscious, and 25% were
associated with some kind of psychological stress, such as fear, worry, or
overwork.  Some cases show that it is possible to have an OBE while the
body continues with complex and co-ordinated activity.  However, OBEs are
far more common when the physical body is relaxed and inactive.

Most of Green's cases occurred to people whose physical body was lying down
at the time (75%).  A further 18% were sitting and the rest were walking,
standing or were 'indeterminate.'  In fact it seemed that muscular
relaxation was an essential part of many people's experience.  Just a few
found that their body was paralyzed.  A feeling of paralysis was found to
be only rarely a prelude to an OBE.

A difference is found between the 'single' cases and the multiple cases.
The latter tended to have had experiences in childhood, and learned to
repeat them.  The single cases tended to occur mostly between the ages of
15 and 35.  Poynton found that many more of his cases came from females,
but among the SPR cases there are more males than females.  This sort of
difference is most likely to be due to sample differences.

Floating and soaring sensations are certainly common.  Poynton also found
that most of his OBEers saw or felt their physical body.  On the contrary,
catalepsy rarely occurred.  Some subjects mentioned noises or a momentary
blacking out, but this did not seem to be the rule.  The majority just
'found themselves' in the ecsomatic state.  As for the return, for most it
was as sudden as the departure.  An interesting finding by Green was that
more of the subjects who had had many OBEs went through complex processes
on separation and return.

Green separated her cases into those she called 'parasomatic,' involving
another body, and those she termed 'asomatic' in which there was no other
body.  Her surprising finding was that 80% of cases were asomatic -- they
had no other body.  She asked her subjects whether they had felt any
connection between themselves and their physical bodies.  Under a third
said they had, and only 3.5% reported a visible or substantial connection
such as a cord.  Poynton's results tell a similar story.  There seems to be
little evidence from the case collections to support the usual details of
astral projection.

Green found that on the whole perceptual realism was preserved.  Subjects
saw their own bodies and the rooms they traveled in as realistic and solid.
Even when the scene appears to be perfectly normal there may be slight
differences.  Some her subjects said that everything looked and felt
exaggerated.  The experience is typically in only one or two modalities:
vision and hearing.  Green found that 93% of single cases included vision,
a third also had hearing, but the other senses were rarely noted.  Another
interesting feature of the OBE world is its lighting.  In some mysterious
way the surroundings become lit up with no obvious source of light visible,
or else objects seem to glow with a light of their own.

Perhaps the most important question about the OBE is whether people can see
things they did not know about -- in other words whether they can use ESP
in the course of an OBE.  Among Green's subjects, some felt as though they
could have seen anything, but lacked the motivation to test out such an
ability.  Another related question is whether subjects in an OBE can affect
objects, or have the power of psychokinesis.  On the whole the evidence is
against that possibility.

The last feature which Celia Green found to be common in OBEs is that a
spontaneous OBE can have a profound effect on the person who experiences
it.  Sometimes OBEs can be very frightening, sometimes exciting and
sometimes they provide a sense of adventure.  Interestingly, Green found
that fear was more common in later, not initial experiences.  Pleasant
emotions are also common.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"How common are OBEs?"

Two surveys have used properly balanced samples drawn from specified
populations.  The first was conducted by Palmer and Dennis [PD75, Pal79b].
They chose the inhabitants of Charlottesville, Virginia, a town of some
35,000 people and selected 1,000 of these as their sample.  The question on
OBEs was worded as follows: 'Have you ever had an experience in which you
felt that "you" were located "outside of" or "away from" your physical
body; that is the feeling that your consciousness, mind, or center of
awareness was at a different place than your physical body? (If in doubt,
please answer "no".)' To this 25% of students and 14% of the townspeople
said 'yes.'

Further data from this survey reveals that no relationship between age and
reported OBEs was found.  Palmer found a significant positive relationship
between drug use and OBEs and concluded that this could account for the
higher prevalence of OBEs in students.  This relationship receives
confirmation from work by Tart [Tar71].  In a survey of 150 marijuana users
he found that 44% claimed to have OBEs.  It seems possible that the use of
this drug facilitate OBEs.

The second survey using a properly constructed sample was carried out by
Erlendur Haraldsson, an Icelandic researcher, and his colleagues [HGRLJ76].
For the survey a questionnaire was sent to a random sample of 1157 persons
between ages of 30 and 70 years.  There were 53 questions on various
psychic and psi-related experiences including a translation of Palmer's
question.  To this, only 8% of the Icelanders replied yes.


Table: Surveys of the OBE [Bla82]

Author     Year   Respondents              size of       N         %
                                           sample      'YES'     'YES'

Hart       1954   Sociology students        113          28        25
                  Sociology students         42          14        33

Green      1966   Southampton University
                    students                115          22        19

           1967   Oxford University
                    students                380         131        34

Palmer     1975   Charlottesville
                    Townspeople              -           -         14
                    Students                 -           -         25

Tart       1971   Marijuana users           150          66        44

Haraldsson 1977   Icelanders                 -           -          8

Blackmore  1980   Surrey University
                    students                216          28        13

                  Bristol University
                    students                115          16        14

Irwin      1980   Australian students       177          36        20

Bierman &
Blackmore  1980   Amsterdam students        191          34        18

Kohr       1980   Members of Association
                    for Research and
                    Enlightenment            -           -         50


Those vague statements about OBEs being 'common' are now backed up by a
variety of figures.  Blackmore gives a personal estimate of the incidence
of OBEs, based on all the available evidence, putting it at around 10%.
She thinks we can say with more conviction that the OBE is a fairly common
experience.

The surveys show that if a person has had one OBE he or she is more likely
to have another.  All these figures are far higher than you would expect if
OBEs were distributed at random in the population.

Green went on to compare different groups to see whether they had had
different numbers of OBEs.  Her only finding was that OBEers were more
likely to report experiences which they thought could only be attributed to
ESP.  Palmer and Kohr found that subjects who reported one type of
'psychic' or 'psi-related' experience also tended to report others.

Palmer also, like Green, found that many simple variables were irrelevant.
Sex, age, race, birth order, political views, religion, religiosity,
education, occupation and income were all unrelated to OBEs.

Palmer found significant relationships between OBEs and practising
meditation, mystical experiences and, as we have already seen, drug
experiences.  Palmer had over 100 people reporting one or more OBEs, and
asked them various questions about the experience.  They were asked whether
they had seen their physical body from 'outside' and this was reported for
44% of the experiences and by nearly 60% of the OBEers.  Fewer than 20% of
experiences involved 'traveling' and fewer than 30% of OBEers reported it.
Still fewer reported that they had acquired information by ESP while 'out-
of-the-body,' about 14% of people and 5% of experiences, or had appeared as
an apparition to someone else (less than 10% or OBEers).  These results
confirm the findings of the case collections: that few OBEs include all the
features of a classical astral projection.

Overall the OBE seemed to have had a highly beneficial effect on its
experiencers.  Many claimed their fear of death was reduced, and their
mental health and social relationships improved.  Ninety-five per cent said
they would like to have another OBE.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"What are the prerequisites for inducing an OBE?"

Many of the inducing methods use as a starting point techniques designed to
improve the novice's powers of relaxation, imagery, and concentration.  The
ideal state appears to be one of physical relaxation, or even catalepsy,
combined with mental alertness.

One of the easiest ways to relax is to use progressive muscular relaxation.
In outline this technique consists of starting with the muscles of the feet
and ankles and alternately tensing and relaxing them, then going on up the
muscles of the calves and thighs, the torso, arms, neck and face, until all
the muscles have been contracted and relaxed.  Done carefully this
procedure leads to fairly deep relaxation within a few minutes, and with
practice it becomes easier.

Relaxation usually leads to state of paralysis or catalepsy.  When you go
to sleep, your brain deactivates the mechanism by which you are able to use
your limbs, so that you become incapable of physical activity corresponding
to your dream images when you dream.  Quite a few people have found
themselves in this paralysis state as soon as they have gotten up after
sleeping.

The first type of paralysis, known as 'type A,' is a condition encountered
when approaching a deeper layer of consciousness from a light trance state.
The second, type B paralysis, is the reverse of type A, in that it happens
during the return home to physical reality.  The first type A 'paralysis'
goes something like this:

     "Mmmmmm.... I know I am awake; I can think ..... Mmmmmmm but my
     body is asleep ..." (Robert Monroe labelled it Focus 10
     consciousness)

     "Wait a minute here, there is something going on here, I just
     can't seem to...."

     "Yes, I can't seem to move my limbs; they seemed to be laden with
     lead, why can't I move at all? Hey, what's happening here!
     (Panic!)"

A typical type B 'paralysis' goes something like this:

     "Mmmmm... I am feeling groggy, absolutely. What was that just
     now, oh, it must be some dream..."

     "Mmmm...... hang on a minute, was that a noise I heard? It must
     have come from the door... I need to check it out, could be a
     burglar..... but I am so tired... and sleepy..."

     "I need to wake up, it could be important.... Hey, I can't seem
     to wake up, why are my legs not waking up, why can't my hands
     respond?"

     "PANIC!!! I need to wake up!!! I don't want to die... I need to
     exert more will on this... Hey, body, wake up, eyes open, ...
     WAKE UP!"

     "Gosh, NOW, I can move my limbs, I am awake now, body covered
     with perspiration, sitting at the edge of the bed, wondering why
     just now I simply couldn't wake up..."

     "Phew -- Thank goodness, it is finally over. Am I glad to be back
     to the familiar physical environment."

However, type A paralysis is the type that should not be resisted; if the
person can allow himself to 'go with the flow,' then some kind of altered
state of consciousness is bound to happen, which is what the person is
hoping to achieve anyway.

Many astral travelers have stressed the importance of clear imagery or
visualization for inducing OBEs and of course imagery training forms an
important part of magical development.  Progressive methods of imagery
training are often described in magical and occult books, and helpful
guidance can be found in Conway's occult primer [Con72], and in Brennan's
'Astral doorways' [Bre71].  Most involve starting with regular practice at
visualizing simple geometrical shapes and then progressing to harder tasks
such as imagining complex three-dimensional forms, whole rooms and open
scenery.

Practice 1: Read the description slowly and then try to imagine each stage
as you go along: Imagine an orange.  It is resting on a blue plate and you
want to eat it.  You dig your nail into the peel and tear some of it away.
You keep pulling on the peel until all of it, and most of the pith, is
lying in a heap on the plate.  Now separate the orange into segments, lay
them on the plate as well, and then eat one.

If this task doesn't make your mouth water, and if you cannot feel the
juice which squirts from the orange, and smell its tang then you do not
have vivid or trained imagery.  Try it again, the colors should be bright
and vivid and the shapes and forms clear and stable.  With practice at this
and similar tasks your imagery will improve until you may wonder how it
could ever have been so poor.

Practice 2: This is a rather harder one: Visualize a disc, half white and
half black.  Next imagine it spinning about its center, speeding up and
then slowing down, and stopping.  Next imagine the same disc in red, but as
it spins it changes through orange, yellow, green, blue and violet.
Finally you may care to try two discs side by side spinning in opposite
directions and changing color in opposition too.

Other useful skills are concentration and control.  Not only do you need to
be able to produce vivid imagery, but also to abolish all imagery from your
mind, to hold images as long as you want and to change them as you want,
both quickly and slowly.

Practice 3: Brennan suggests trying to count, and only to count.  The
instant another thought comes to mind you must stop and go back to the
beginning.  If you get to about four or five you are doing well, but you
are almost certain to be stopped by such thoughts as 'this is easy, I've
got to three already,' or 'I wonder how long I have to go on.'

All these skills, relaxation, imagery and concentration, are suggested
again and again as necessary for inducing an OBE at will.  Other aids
include posture.  If you lie down you might fall asleep, although Muldoon
[MC29] advocates this position.  On the other hand discomfort will
undoubtedly interfere with the attempt.  Therefore an alert, but
comfortable posture is best.  Some have suggested that it is best not to
eat for some hours before and to avoid any stress, irritation or negative
emotions.



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"How to induce an OBE?"


Imagery Techniques

It is possible to use imagery alone but it requires considerable skill.

a) Lie on your back in a comfortable position and relax.  Imagine that you
are floating up off the bed.  Hold that position, slightly lifted, for some
time until you lose all sensation of touching the bed or floor.  Once this
state is achieved move slowly into an upright position and begin to travel
away from your body and around the room.  Pay attention to the objects and
details of the room.  Only when you have gained some proficiency should you
try to turn round and look at your own body.  Note that each stage may take
months of practice and it can be too difficult for any but a practiced
OBEer.

b) In any comfortable position close your eyes and imagine that there is a
duplicate of yourself standing in front of you.  You will find that it is
very hard to imagine your own face, so it is easier to imagine this double
with its back to you.  You should try to observe all the details of its
posture, dress (if any) and so on.  As this imaginary double becomes more
and more solid and realistic you may experience some uncertainty about your
physical position.  You can encourage this feeling by comtemplating the
question 'Where am I?', or even other similar questions 'Who am I?' and so
on.  Once the double is clear and stable and you are relaxed, transfer your
consciousness into it.  You should then be able to 'project' in this
phantom created by your own imagination.  Again, each stage may take long
practice.



Inducing a Special Motivation to Leave the Body

You can trick yourself into leaving your body according to Muldoon and
Carrington [MC29].  They suggested that if the subconscious desires
something strongly enough it will try to provoke the body into moving to
get it, but if the physical body is immobilized, for example in sleep, then
the astral body may move instead.  Many motivations might be used but
Muldoon advised against using the desire for sexual activity which is
distracting, or the harmful wish for revenge or hurt to anyone.  Instead he
advocated using the simple and natural desire for water -- thirst.  This
has the advantages this it is quick to induce, and it must be appeased.

In order to employ this technique, you must refrain from drinking for some
hours before going to bed.  During the day increase your thirst by every
means you can.  Have a glass of water by you and stare into it, imagining
drinking, but not allowing yourself to do so.  Then before you retire to
bed eat 'about an eighth of a teaspoonful' of salt.  Place the glass of
water at some convenient place away from your bed and rehearse in your all
the actions necessary to getting it, getting up, crossing the room,
reaching out for it, and so on.  You must then go to bed, still thinking
about your thirst and the means of satisfying it.  The body must become
incapacitated and so you should relax, with slow breathing and heart rate
and then try to sleep.  With any luck the suggestions you have made to
yourself will bring about the desired OBE.  This is not one of the most
pleasant or effective methods.



Ophiel's 'Little System'

Ophiel [Oph61] suggests that you pick a familiar route, perhaps between two
rooms in your house, and memorize every detail of it.  Choose at least six
points along it and spend several minutes each day looking at each one and
memorizing it.  Symbols, scents and sounds associated with the points can
reinforce the image.  Once you have committed the route and all the points
to memory you should lie down and relax while you attempt to 'project' to
the first point.  If the preliminary work has been done well you should be
able to move from point to point and back again.  Later you can start the
imaginary journey from the chair or bed where your body is, and you can
then either observe yourself doing the movements, or transfer your
consciousness to the one that is doing the moving.  Ophiel describes
further possibilities, but essentially if you have mastered the route fully
in your imagination you will be able to project along it and with practice
to extend the projection.

Ophiel states that starting to move into OBE will produce strange sounds.
He says that this is because the sense of hearing is not carried over onto
the higher planes, and that means that your mind tries to recreate some
input, and just gets subconscious static.  He asserts that the noises can
take any form, including voices, malevolent, eerie, and get worse and
worse, more and more disturbing, until eventually they peak and then just
fade to a constant background hiss while one has OBE.  Apparently, his
'final noise' sounded like his water heater blowing up.  He says, anyway,
to ignore the noises, voice or otherwise, as they are only static or
subconscious rambling, and do not represent any being in any way, not even
the self really.



The Christos Technique

G. M. Glasking, an Australian journalist, popularized this technique in
several books, starting with Windows of the Mind [Gla74].  Three people are
needed: one as subject, and two to prepare him.  The subject lies down
comfortably on his back in a warm and darkened room.  One helper massages
the subject's feet and ankles, quite firmly, even roughly, while the other
take his head.  Placing the soft part of his clenched fist on the subject's
forehead he rubs it vigorously for several minutes.  This should make the
subject's head buzz and hum, and soon he should begin to feel slightly
disorientated.  His feet tingle and his body may feel light or floaty, or
changing shape.

When this stage is reached, the imagery exercises begin.  The subject is
asked to imagine his feet stretching out and becoming longer by just an
inch or so.  When he says he can do this he has to let them go back to
normal and do the same with his head, stretching it out beyond its normal
position.  Then, alternating all the time between head and feet, the
distance is gradually increased until he can stretch both out to two feet
or more.  At this stage it should be possible for him to imagine stretching
out both at once, making him very long indeed, and then to swell up,
filling the room like a huge balloon.  All this will, of course, be easier
for some people than others.  It should be taken at whatever pace is needed
until each stage is successful.  Some people complete this part in five
minutes, some people take more than fifteen minutes.

Next he is asked to imagine he is outside his own front door.  He should
describe everything he can see in detail, with the colors, materials of the
door and walls, the ground, and the surrounding scenery.  He has then to
rise above the house until he can see across the surrounding countryside or
city.  To show him that the scene is all under his control he should be
asked to change it from day to night and back again, watching the sun set
and rise, and the lights go on or off.  Finally he is asked to fly off, and
land wherever he wishes.  For most subjects their imagery has become so
vivid by this stage that they land somewhere totally convincing and are
easily able to describe all that they see.

You may wonder how the experience comes to an end, but usually no prompting
is required; the subject will suddenly announce 'I'm here,' or 'Oh, I'm
back,' and he will usually retain quite a clear recollection of all he said
and experienced. But it is a good idea to take a few minutes relaxing and
getting back to normal.  It is interesting that this technique seems to be
very effective in disrupting the subject's normal image of his body.  It
then guides and strengthens his own imagery while keeping his body calm and
relaxed.



Robert Monroe's Method

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.

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.

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.



Ritual Magic Methods

Most magical methods are also based on imagery or visualization and use
concentration and relaxation.  All these methods require good mental
control and a sound knowledge of the system being used, with its tools and
symbols.  Charles Tart, in introducing the concept of 'state specific
sciences' [Tar72b] also considered state specific technologies, that is,
means of achieving, controlling and using altered states of consciousness.
Many magical rituals are really just such technologies.  In a typical
exercise the magician will perform an opening ritual, a cleansing or
purifying ritual and then one to pass from one state to another.  Once in
the state required he operates using the rules of that state and then
returns, closes the door that was opened and ends the ritual.

This technology varies almost as much as the theory, for there are a
multitude of ways of reaching the astral.  One can use elemental doorways,
treat the cards of the tarot as stepping stones, perform cabbalistic path-
workings or use mantras.  The techniques are very similar to all others we
have been considering, so we can see the complexities of ritual magic as
just another related way achieving the same ends.



Meditation and Chakra Meditation

Meditation has two basic functions -- achieving relaxation and improving
concentration.  Therefore the ideal state for OBE is familiar to meditators
and indeed OBEs have occasionally been reported during meditation and yoga.
The two main types of meditation are concentration meditation (focusing)
and insight meditation (mindfullness).  Most kinds of meditation are the
concentrative type.  One simply focuses his attention upon a single
physical object, such as a candle flame; upon a sensation, such as that
felt while walking or breathing; upon an emotion, such as reverence or
love; upon a mantra spoken aloud or even silently; or upon a visualization
as in chakra meditation.  Concentration meditation is, simply put, a form
of self-hypnosis.

The other main type of meditation, insight meditation, is the analysis of
thoughts and feelings in such a way as to cause realization of the
subjectivity and illusion of experience.  Such meditation is done in an
effort to attain transcendental awareness.

Chakra meditation is a special type of concentrative meditation which is
basically kundalini yoga -- the practice of causing psychic energy
(kundalini) to flow up sushumna, energizing the various chakras along the
way.  A chakra is 'a sense organ of the ethereal body, visible only to a
clairvoyant' [Gay74].  As each chakra is energized by this practice, it is
believed to add occult powers (sidhis), until at last the crown chakra is
reached, and with it, full enlightenment is attained.

According to East Indian philosophy, man possesses seven major chakras or
psychic centers on his body.  In theosophical scheme there are ten chakras,
which permit those trained in their use to gain knowledge of the astral
world (three of the ten are used in black magic only).  Each of the chakras
forms a bridge, link, or energy transformer; changing pure (higher) energy
into various forms, and connecting different bodies together.  The chakras
are located along the nadies (a network of psychic nerves or channels) and
follow the autonomic nervous system along the spinal cord.

The first chakra, located at the base of the spine at the perineum is the
root chakra, muladhara.  The second chakra, known as the sacral center,
svadhisthana, is located above and behind the genitals.  Third of the
chakras is the solar plexus, manipura, located at the navel and it is said
to correspond with the emotions and also with psychic sight (clairvoyance).
The heart chakra, anahata, is the fourth chakra, located over the heart and
corresponding with the psychic touch.  The fifth chakra is the throat
chakra, vishuddha, located at the base of the throat (thyroid) and
corresponding with psychic hearing (clairaudience).

The remaining two chakras are believed to relate mostly to elevated states
of consciousness.  The frontal chakra, (or 'third eye') ajna, the sixth
chakra, is located between, and slightly above, the eyebrows.  Ajna is the
center of psychic powers and it is believed to be able to produce many
psychic effects.  Finally, the crown chakra, sahasrara, located atop the
head, (pineal gland) is the seventh chakra.  It is referred to as the
thousand-petaled lotus and corresponds with astral projection and
enlightenment.

To practice this chakra meditation, you simply concentrate on the chakras,
beginning with the root chakra, and moving progressively up, as you
visualize psychic energy from the root chakra traveling up shushumna and
vivifying each higher chakra.  As mentioned above the chakras have certain
properties associated with them, so that this type of visualization may
'raise consciousness,' promote astral projection, and other things -- once
you have reached ajna and eventually the crown chakra.



Hypnosis

In the early days of psychical research hypnosis was used a great deal more
than now to bring about 'traveling clairvoyance,' but it can still be used.
All that is required is skilled hypnotist with some understanding of the
state into which he wants to put the subject, and a willing subject.  The
subject must be put into a fairly deep hypnotic state and then the
hypnotist can suggest to him that he leaves his body.  The subject can be
asked to lift up out of his body, to create a double and step into it, to
roll off his bed or chair, or leave through the top of his head.  He can
then be asked to travel to any place desired, but hypnotist must be sure to
specify very clearly where he is to go, and to bring him safely back to his
body when expedition is over.  If this is not done the subject may have
difficulty reorientating himself afterwards.



Drugs

There are some drugs which can undoubtedly help initiate an OBE.
Hallucinogens have long been used in various cultures to induce states like
OBEs, and in our own culture OBEs are sometimes an accidental product of a
drug experience.  In absence of any further information we might already be
able to guess which are the sorts of drugs likely to have this effect.
They might be those which physically relax the subject while leaving his
consciousness clear and alert.  Drugs which distort sensory input and
disrupt the subject's sense of where and what shape his body is ought to
help, and so may anything which induces a sense of shaking or vibration.
Imagery must be intensified without control being lost and finally there
must be some reason, or wish, for leaving the body.

Considering these points hallucinogens might be expected to be more
effective than stimulants, tranquillizers or sedatives.  The latter may aid
relaxation but help with none of the other features just mentioned.  Few
other types of drug have any relevant effect.  This fact fits with what is
known about the effectiveness of drugs for inducing OBEs.  Monroe states
that barbiturates and alcohol are harmful to the ability, and this makes
sense since they would tend to reduce control over imagery even though they
are relaxing.  Eastman [Eas62] states that barbiturates do not lead OBEs
whereas morphine, ether, chloroform, major hallucinogens and hashish can.

Relatively little research has carried out in this area, partly because
most of the relevant drugs are illegal in the countries where that research
might be carried out.  It seems that certain drugs can facilitate an OBE
but what is not clear is why drug experience should take that form rather
than any other.  Part of the answer is that usually it does not.  There is
no specific OBE-creating drug, and OBEs are relatively rarely a part of a
psychedelic drug experience.  Drugs may help in inducing the OBE but they
are not recommended as a route to the instant projection, they are no
alternative to learning the skills of relaxation, concentration, and
imagery control.



Dream Development

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.



Palmer's Experimental Method

In the search for a simple and effective method of inducing an OBE Palmer
and his colleagues [PL75a, 75b, 76, PV74a, 74b] use relaxation and audio-
visual stimulation.  Subjects went through a progressive muscular
relaxation session and the heard oscillating tones and watched a rotating
spiral.  One of the interesting findings was that many of the subjects
claimed that they had been 'literally out of' their bodies, and there were
indications that their experiences were very different in some ways from
other those encountered in OBEs.



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{End of part two}


--
        Jouni A. Smed   [e-mail]  http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed
        Department of Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland
{Part three}

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"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.

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.



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"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 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].



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"What is the physiology of OBEs?"

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.



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"What are near-death experiences and are they some kind of OBEs?"

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.

George Gallup Jr. in his extensive study 'Adventures of Immortality'
[Gal82] come to the conclusion that one person in twenty or 5 per cent of
the population has had at least one NDE.  Kenneth Ring [Rin84] estimates
that in the USA alone there are over 8 million NDEers. Therefore, in his
opinion, we are dealing with a significant and quite common phenomenon.

After Elisabeth Knbler-Ross and Raymond Moody, who has lately researched
past life regressions [Moo90], 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 [Rin84] 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.'



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"Is the OBE some kind of mental illness?"

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.



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"Are people who have greater imagery skills more likely to have OBEs?"

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.



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"Are OBEs some kind of hallucination?"

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.



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{End of part three}


--
        Jouni A. Smed   [e-mail]  http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed
        Department of Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland
{Part four}

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"What are the features of OB vision?"

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.



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"How can the OBE be explained?"

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



Something Leaves the Body

1. Physical Theories (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.



2. Physical Astral World Theory (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.



3. Mental Astral World Theory (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?



Nothing Leaves the Body

4. Parapsychological Theory (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.'



5. Psychological Theories

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.



Other approaches

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].



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Where to find more information?"

Publications Database

A database containing information about books and articles on out-of-body
phenomena is being created.  This database presently contains only author,
title, publisher, date of publication, and ISBN information, but it might
eventually also include reviews from net-readers and others, which could
serve to provide useful information for someone wanting to locate reading
material on the subject.  A prototype version of the database is presently
accessible via electronic mail.  To access the complete contents, send a
message to the address "[e-mail]" with the content "get
booklist" in the text portion of the message.  Anyone interested in
contributing to the database should contact Gary Trujillo, using the
address "[e-mail]"


Out-of-Body Tools

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:          [phone]
        Product Orders: 800-541-2488
        E-mail:         [e-mail]
        WWW:            http://www.monroe-inst.com/


WWW and FTP

A PostScript version of this FAQ (among many other interesting files) is
available from Senthil Kumar's FTP site minpro.mng.psu.edu (IP
128.118.175.136) in directory /pub/OBE/.

A hypertext version of this FAQ is available from RenO Mnller's Spirit WWW
site:

        http://zeta.cs.adfa.oz.au/Spirit.html

Both versions of the FAQ and many other documents are also available from
my "Altered States of Consciousness" WWW site:

        http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed/asc/asc.html

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

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{End of part four}


--
        Jouni A. Smed   [e-mail]  http://www.utu.fi/~jounsmed
        Department of Computer Science, University of Turku, Finland