From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: Re: OOBE or just vivid imagination
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 01:51:25 GMT

In <1992Nov6.055629.21882@gnosys.svle.ma.us> I write:

> ...The Kanuhas are the shamans among the indigenous Hawaiians...
         ^^^^^^^
How embarrassing.  It's "Kahuna" - I knew that fact, but my fingers seem to
be developing a case of dyslexia.  :-)  Thanks to Ross Yahnke for pointing
out my error in a personal message.

Continuing with my response to Robert:

I quoted the study by Charles Tart, and Robert responded:

>I am aware of this study.  This is frequently cited and is one of the
>very, very few studies that offers potential evidence of actually
>seeing during an OBE...

He goes on to say that the results are inconclusive, and that

>And, as I pointed out in my comments (that you omittted) there have
>been hundreds or even thousands of such experiemnts, with no convincing
>positive results and lots of definite cases where the person tried and
>failed to read the number.  Thus, my summary was "no good evidence",
>and I think that is a fair statement.

Well, I'd like to get more specific, and to find out what those studies
are and how we can obtain copies.  Perhaps we can even get the partici-
pation of some of the people who did the studies in our dialogue.  I'm
not asking Robert to quote the studies right now, but I hope we can get
the information that permits us to individually examine them.  I think
we also need a way to evaluate the anecdotal reports.  Perhaps we can
even design some experiments of our own.  I suspect we'll have a hard
time making them as rigorous as they would need to be to really provide
convincing evidence, but we might be able to find some ways to help
ourselves decide on whether there is something there worthy of addi-
tional personal exploration, and, if so, how it might best be conducted.

>...Well, OBEs are CERTAINLY mental events.  That is, there is definitely
>a subjective experience.  This is not really in dispute.  What is
>open to investigation is:
>  1.  What are the characteristics, causes, explanations, and so on for
>  the mental events?
>  2.  Does anything actually leave the body during an OBE?

I accept this pair of suggestions for investigation, and hope we can
design a logical procedure for doing so.  I am personally less inter-
ested in the second of the two, because I don't think it really matters
and I think it will be very difficult to decide one way or the other.
I'm sure I'll have more to say on this subject when we actually get into
that whole discussion, but just to indicate the basis for my thinking,
it seems to me that we may be dealing with a whole range of phenomena
here that may have gotten lumped together by some people writing on the
subject, due to the bias introduced by their own philosophical perspec-
tives, some of them having a spiritualist or Theosophical bent.  Thus,
we may or may not want to consider the near-death category of experience
in the course of our inquiry, and we may or may not want to look at cases
of "co-location," where a person is reported to be in more than one place
at a time, or with shamanic journeys, where one can supposedly enter an
altered state of consciousness induced by drumming or the use of psycho-
active substances that produces a sense of journeying - possibly under
the surface of the earth, and travelling vast distances.  My own sugges-
tion is that it would be best to stick to the more "conventional" OBE
experience at first, since we'll really end up with very muddy waters to
get into all those other matters, even if there does turn out to be a
good basis for considering them to be related, as some authors on the
subject seem to assume from the outset.

I should add, though, that I hope it might at some point be possible
to construct some kind of mental map which permits us to relate which-
ever of these events we might feel are related, or to develop a pro-
cedure to evaluate whatever claims along these lines (of there being
relationships) we might find in the literature.

>This is NOT a dichotomy, as the mental events require understanding
>whether or not anything leaves the body.

OK.  I'll accept that statement.  It sounds as if Robert is convinced
that there is a "real" event here, even if it does not correlate with
a phenomenon observable from the outside.  I guess it sounded to me at
first as if he may have been wanting to dismiss the reality of the events
on the basis of their taking place completely within the subjective
experience of the person having that experience.  I would just prefer to
put my own energies into understanding the nature of the subjective
experience, and possibly attempting to duplicate it myself, but I think
that trying to determine whether there are external correlates is a
legitimate topic of discussion in this newsgroup.

My concern is whether we can establish a range of non-ordinary kinds of
abilities as being possible, and that one can experience them by means
of following a set of instructions.  (Note, however, that I am *not*
saying that I am necessarily saying that doing so is a good idea, since
I'm not sure at this point of the real nature of these experiences.)
My main motive, as I said earlier, is in trying to get a better under-
standing myself of who and what I am, so I might easily settle for a
set of results which are ambiguous in a scientific sense (given the way
science has become defined in the Western world), but which are person-
ally enriching and meaningful.  Nonetheless, I would like to use logic
carefully, and to use as much rigor as seems personally necessary to
establish the "reality" of the phenomena, even if in a subjective sense,
so that I feel what I might be able to experience is worthy of serious
attention and the expenditure of some energy to explore further.  I do
not have a position on that matter at present.

> When I said,
>   "This is consistent with the hypothesis that OBEs are mental events."
>I really should have said "purely mental events", to indicate that
>the accuraccy of OBEs is similar to dreams and mental imagery and
>appears to not support any claim of ESP or actual travel beyond the
>body.  Notice that I said "consitent with the hypothesis", which
>is an accurate statement and does not imply that it "proves" something.

Well, I'm not really sure what we mean by "travel" in this case, since
the concept is only well-defined for material objects.  If I perceive
motion in my subjective experience, and am able to make reports of what
I observed at a place far distant, even if there was no external evidence
of my having done so (such as having been observed at that place in any
form - or having produced some effect on the environment), does that fact
count as "travel?"  We need to define our terms and the questions we are
asking more precisely, I think.  I hope we can work out these kinds of
things as a group, so that we have a clear idea of the questions we are
trying to answer together.  I'm still a bit troubled by the use of the
term "purely mental events," since it sounds too much to me like the
sentiment suggested by the phrase "it's all in your head."  I appreciate
Robert saying that he is only advancing a hypothesis, rather than making
a claim which he wants to defend.  I hope I'm reading his words correctly
here.

>There are STRONG theoretical reasons for questioning the multiple body
>hypothesis.  In the absence of either theoretical or empirical support,
>we must say that there is good reason to question whether anything
>leaves the body during an OBE.

Well, I think we may not be able to speak meaningfully about this subject,
unless we "get lucky" and find something that can be observed that departs
from the physical body.  I think we may need a different model, which will
not be easy to construct (in fact, I seriously doubt we have the intellec-
tual tools to do it, for a variety of reasons) in order to evaluate this
question of "multiple-bodies" and "leaving the (physical) body" properly.
I suspect that the real answer to this question depends on areas of physics
which have not yet been developed - so I really don't consider it to be a
productive use of my time to really think too much about ways of observing
something leaving the body.  (What I mean to indicate is that our present
science of physics draws a fairly sharp distinction between mind and matter
though things are changing a bit in this area.  It will probably take quite
some time before we have a mature physics that has constructed the kinds of
models we would need to properly evaluate the question.)

>> I would like to suggest that we put aside or at
>> least defer the question of whether something "real" leaves the body and just
>> start by trying to validate the reality of the experience by some objective
>> means, such as the reporting of accurate information that could not be known
>> by any other means.
>
>1.  The experience is REAL.  That doesn't need to be proved.

OK.

>2.  The question of "reporting of accurate information that could not
>    be known by any other means" is the question of ESP during an OBE.

Well, it all depends on how you define your terms, I think.  ESP is only
defined, as far as I know, relative to ordinary physical senses.  But I
think this question is probably mostly one of semantics.  I think this
subject, in fact, is tied up with the previous one, of what, if anything,
leaves the body.  I'm content to say that one aspect of what I see myself
wanting to investigate is whether consciousness can extend beyond the
normal confines of bodily senses during an OBE.  If you want to call such
a thing "extra-sensory," so be it.

>    Strictly speaking, ESP could occur without astral travel, but
>    in practice a test of one hypothesis is a test of the other.

I'd really really like to avoid the term "astral travel."  There are too
many "new-age" kinds of connotations of the term, and it puts our inves-
tigation on a footing that would, I think, be very unfortunate.  We might
want to consider some of the anecdotal reports and the analysis offered
by spiritualistically oriented writers, but I see no need to use their
terminology when talking about the phenomenon.

>    Thus, the evidence for ESP during an OBE is just as weak as
>    for astral travel.

Well, I can't really say until I've had a chance to investigate and to
evaluate the evidence.

>> First, we
>> would need to distinguish the phenomenon from some other kind of event, such
>> as one that involves some other paranormal sense, like telepathy - or else,
>> we might discover that OBEs and telepathy are actually closely related, so
>> that and OBE might just be a special form of telepathy in which there is
>> more visual, auditory, or other kind of sensation involved in the exper-
>> ience.
>
>Here we differ sharply.  OBEs are a well established psychological fact--
>the experience happens spontaneously and deliberately.  Telepathy and
>so on are NOT well established.

Well, I'm not staking out a position, merely indicating a possibility.  My
reading has indicated that telepathy actually has some pretty good evidence
to support it - but I don't want to get into arguing about that subject in
this forum.

>IMHO, it is a mistake to start speculating on the relation of OBEs to
>hypothetical psi-phenomena.  This will serve to obscure the study of
>OBEs in the smoke and confusion of ESP research.

I'll accept this recommendation for the present, unless and until I might
find evidence to suggest looking for correlations.  In fact I agree strongly.
I just wanted to indicate one possibility, not to say that I think that I
think it's likely or that it represents a good place to begin looking.

>...we can ask the question whether the subjective events reported
>had any known external (i.e., outside the person's mind) existence.  The
>OBE is REAL, but that doesn't mean that anything happened outside the
>person's head.

Right.  But, as I said earlier, I suspect we're going to have a very rough
time establishing external correlates, and I don't have the energy or the
tools or the knowledge to know how to go about such a thing.  I'll be in-
terested to know what experiments have been done along these lines, though.

>And who said subjective events aren't interesting?  Sleep and dreams are
>subjective events that people have studied for centuries.  OBEs are
>"interesting" regardless of whether they involve astral travel or ESP
>or not.

Well, this statement goes without saying.  But the claims for OBEs seemed
to indicate that they are very different from dreams, particularly in regard
to memory.  Whereas dreams are usually remembered only indistinctly, and it
might be very difficult to reconstruct them, the reports I've heard about the
OBE experience makes me think that people who have them feel much more like
they feel in waking existence, and able to recall the experiences much more
vividly than dreams.  Thus, I would think OBEs to be even more interesting
than dreams, even if they are found to be strongly related, if for only this
reason.  But I think the main problem here is probably that I misunderstood
Robert initially, and might have assumed a more skeptical stance than I now
feel him to be taking.  My apologies.

>> ...saying something is "mental" as opposed to being of some other character
>> is not terribly useful, since the matter of what "mental" means is really not
>> well-defined...
>
>Well, "mental" is pretty clearly defined in my book.  However, it is quite
>true that the workings of the human mind are not well understood.  That
>doesn't mean that nothing is gained by determining that a phenomenon is
>"mental".  And like I said about, the OBE certainly has a "mental"
>component, even if nothing other than that component can be established.

I think we agree, if Robert means to say not only that we do not understand
well the *way* the mind works, but also that we do not understand all that
much about its capabilities outside the narrow range of "normal" operation.
We also do not understand the relationship between mind and brain, as I
attempted to discuss in my last article in relation to the observations of
Dr. Rupert Sheldrake.

>...What do you want to mean by rigorous?  How would you like to proceed?

Well, I guess I'd like to list a set of questions that we might want to
start investigating together.  I'd also like to develop a good bibliography
to aid in our investigations, and to be able to discuss what claims are
made or what evidence is examined by certain writers on the subject.  My
recent announcement of a mailing list for people working on the FAQ list
is intended to support this set of objectives.

>By the way, none of this theoretical/philosophical rambling in any way
>detracts from reports of OBEs.  Whatever hypotheses, theories, and
>explanations one may propose, they must "cover" the data of experience.
>Thus, the anecdotal reports contain data of relevance to all the
>explanations offered.  Thus, regardless of how you view the question
>of "rigorous" investigation, or what explanations you might favor,
>your reports of your own experiences are a useful contribution
>to all of us.

I agree wholeheartedly, and am very pleased that we agree on so much!

Gary
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst
Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body