Out-Of-Body Experiences as Lucid Dreams:
A Critique
D. Scott Rogo
In his recent book
on lucid dreaming, Stephen LaBerge (1985a) suggests that out-of-body
experiences represent a form of lucid dreaming. The only difference between the
two experiences, he argues, is the way the subject interprets the experience.
LaBerge goes on to show that the type of reasoning and observations that occur
during OB states is similar to phenomena arising from lucid dreaming. He also cites the experiences of
Oliver Fox (19710, whose OBEs were bound
up with experiments and experiences with dreaming awareness.
The idea that OBEs
are really lucid dreams gains some support from two recent findings.
There are a number of
techniques for inducing OBEs that rely on lucid dreaming or dream control
(Rogo, 1983), while there exists considerable survey data that people who
experience OBEs also experience lucid dreams (Irwin, 1985). Despite these
points of evidence, there are a number of reasons for rejecting any theory that
equates OBEs with simple lucid dreaming. The most important of these is that OBEs
and lucid dreams seem to emerge from different psychophysiological states.
Probably the most consistent finding about the lucid dream is that it occurs
within the context of normal Stage 1 REM sleep. The
only exception to this rule is that some lucid dreams may occur during sleep
onset (Dane & Van de Castle, 1985), though it is unclear whether the EEG
tracings taken from such “dreams” indicate true sleep or a waking hypnagogic
state. So from the standpoint
of psychophysiology, lucid dreams do not seem to be unique experiences, but
merely a subtype of normal dreaming.
If OBEs are to be explained as simple lucid dreams, it follows that
the EEG tracing taken from subjects inducing them should conform to the
patterns that accompany dreaming. In an earlier paper (Rogo, 1984, I pointed
out that several psychophysiological studies of gifted OBE subjects have in
fact been made. The results indicate that OBEs emerge from a wide variety of
brain states, with no consistency present between the EEG records from one
subject to another.
To date, there have been four
studies conducted with subjects capable of inducing OBEs from the sleeping
state. The first of these was reported by Tart (1968), working with a gifted
subject in California. The EEG tracings that accompanied her sleep OBE revealed
no REMS. They did show continuous alphoid waves and poorly defined sleep
spindles, but the alphoid activity was so peculiar that an outside judge could
not classify it as clear-cut sleeping or waking. So while these results showed
some superficial resemblances to dreaming, they seem to be pointing in a different direction. Tart (1967)
was later able to replicate his research with a second subject, who has now
been identified as Robert Monroe, well known as the author of a classic book on
his personal OBEs. It would appear that Monroe’s OBEs stem from a poorly
defined Stage 1 sleep state, although his REM activity was not as pronounced as
might be expected in normal dreaming. Later, however, more EEG tracings were
taken from Monroe’s sleep induced OBEs at the Topeka Veteran’s Administration
Hospital (Gabbard & Twemlow, 19813). Researchers there found a strong
relationship between Monroe’s OBEs and the production of the theta waves. Such
a finding is not consistent with the idea that OBEs are any sort of dreams.
In a more recent report, Gabbard and Twemlow (1984) have
reported on their work with a second subject. Her complex readings indicate that
her OBE occurred in a state resembling Stage 3 sleep, typified by theta and
delta activity with a cessation of alpha waves. This subject reported herself
to be still awake during the process of leaving the body, although the
experimenters try to interpret her experiences as a type of “window in
consciousness” during sleep.
The subjective
experiential report offered by the second subject tested by Gabbard and Twemlow
demonstrates that OBEs do not necessarily occur during clearly-defined
sleep. This fact alone should keep us from
facilely equating OBEs with lucid dreams. Most deliberately induced waking OBEs
occur by way of relaxation exercises or similar procedures that result in reduced cortical (personal
communication, 1985) activity (Irwin, 1985: Rogo, 1983). LaBerge (1985b) has
suggested that such OBEs can be equated with those lucid “dreams” that
sometimes occur during the hypnagogic phase of sleep onset. This is certainly a
testable hypothesis, since the hypnagogic stage is typified by a fairly consistent
EEG pattern of broken alpha wave activity. However, this is not the
pattern we find when we look at the EEG records procured from gifted
subjects capable of experiencing waking
OBEs.
The most thorough of these studies was a
series of experiments undertaken
with Keith Harary by researchers at the Psychical Research Foundation (then) in
Durham (Hartwell, Janis & Harary, 1975). The EEG tracings taken from
several of Harary’s OBEs showed
no robust changes from his resting base-line EEG. The results were consistent
with his entering into a normal, waking, eyes-closed condition. Very similar
data were later collected by Osis and Mitchell (1977) with a subject they
tested at the American Society for Psychical Research. In both cases the EEG
records were typical of an awake and mentally alert state. Both subjects showed
a subtle decrease in electrical activity in the left brain hemisphere, but none
of these findings support the theory that the subjects were lapsing into a
hypnagogic state.
An experiment
using volunteer subjects was conducted by Palmer (1979), who introduced them to
an OBE- induction procedure in his laboratory. Several of them reported OBEs,
but there was no consistent EEG index that related to them.
These various
studies reveal that, unlike dreaming, OBEs do not emerge from any discrete
state of consciousness as defined psychophysiologically. This is a rather
extraordinary finding, since the phenomenology of the OBE is so self-consistent.
Even OBEs reported from sleep tend to differ in content very little from waking OBEs. Yet practically
no EEG tracings taken from a gifted OBE subject has ever conformed to a similar data taken
from any other subject. There
is even some indication that a single subject is capable of inducing OBEs from
different brain states, as the research with Robert Monroe suggests. So what
are we to conclude from all of this? The polygraph is just about the only
objective tool psychology has to explore the exciting in-reods of
consciousness. Though perhaps a crude tool, EEG monitoring offers considerable
evidence that OBEs cannot be explained as lucid dreams. While LaBerge is
correct in pointing out the many similarities between OBEs and lucid dreaming,
objective EEG criteria suggest that these resemblances are purely superficial
or artifactual. Research to date reveals that, with all their vagaries, OBEs
emerge from a group of psychophysiological states distinct from REM sleep
and/or lucid dreaming.
References
Dane,
Joseph & Van de Castle, Robert (1985). Evidence of non-REM lucid dreams:
Theory, physiology and phenomenology. Paper delivered to the 1985 meeting of
the Association for the Study of Dreams,
Fox,
Oliver (reprint 1974). Astral projection.
Gabbard,
Glen & Twemlow, Stuart (1985). With the eyes of the mind.
Hartwell,
J.; Janis, J. & Harary, B. (1975). A study of the physiological variables
associated with out-of-body experiences. In Research in Parapsychology-1974.
Irwin,
LaBerge,
Stephen (1985). Lucid dreaming.
Osis, Karlis & Mitchell, Janet
(1977). Physiological correlates of reported out-of-the-body experiences. Journal
of the Society for Psychical Research, 49, 509—24.
Palmer, John (1979). ESP and out-of-body
experiences: EEG correlates. In Research in parapsychology-1979.
Rogo, D. Scott
(1983). Leaving the body.
Rogo, D. Scott (1984). Researching the
out-of-body experience: The state of the art. Anabiosis, 4, 21-49.
Tart, Charles T. (1967). A second psychophysiological
study of out-of-the-body experiences in a gifted subject. International
Journal of Parapsychology, 9, 251-58.
Tart, Charles T. (1968). A psychophysiological study of
out-of-the-body experiences in a selected subject. Journal of the American
Society for Psychical Research, 66, 3-27.
Lucidity Letter 4(2), December, 1985, p. 43.