From: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
Subject: Re: OOBE or just vivid imagination
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 05:27:22 GMT

In <1992Nov4.184924.23982@m.cs.uiuc.edu> mcgrath@cs.uiuc.edu
	(Robert McGrath) writes:

> In article <40491@sdcc12.ucsd.edu>, jhussain@cs.ucsd.edu
	(Jabir Hussain) writes:

>> subject says it all.  how do you distinguish one from the other?
>> ...

> ...
> The evidence is that the reports from OBEs are a mixture of accurate,
> inaccurate, and totally fantastic elements.  This is consistent with
> the hypothesis that OBEs are mental events.

Perhaps we're asking the wrong questions, or creating false dichotomies.
There are certain assumptions made in drawing a implicit distinctions
between "mental events" and some alternative like "a literal leaving of
the body" (whatever such a thing might mean).

> No good evidence exists that people can perceive distant or unknown
> things during an OBE, or that anything leaves the body during an OBE.
> If this is true, then one may ask "why do OBEs SEEM so real?"

Well, just a moment ago, it was admitted that sometimes reports are
accurate.  I believe it was reported here or in something I was reading
on the subject in a book recently that Dr. Charles Tart's studies did
yield some good indications that an OBE subject *was* able to accurately
report five-digit numbers selected randomly placed on a shelf in the room
with the subject in a location where they would not be visible by anyone
standing or laying in the room - and the numbers were unknown at the time
to even the experimenters, to eliminate the possibility of telepathy
being involved.  (Tart, BTW, is professor of psychology at the University
of California at Davis, and wrote the preface to Robert Monroe's _Journeys
Out of the Body_.)

We have to quantify things a bit better, and to apply statistical judge-
ments in order to even attempt conclusions, I think.  Before claiming that
"no good evidence exists," we really need to do a thorough examination of
the available literature and to apply generally accepted criteria of cause
and effect in evaluating whatever useful reports there are.

My real point, however, is that I feel that the either/or of "mental events"
versus something else which is presumably more real or substantial is a red
herring when it comes to evaluating the phenomenon or phenomena under study
in these cases.  We can choose to define our terms in such a way that all
events are forced to be "mental," since nothing can be observed to be leaving
the body when an OBE takes place.  However, that lack of evidence is not the
same as evidence for impossibility for a separation of two or more parts of
the subject taking place.  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.  It doesn't seem to matter if there are lots of items of
information which are wrong or cannot be verified if there are any accurate
and detailed reports of events or situations which we can assure ourselves
cannot be known by the person reporting them in any normal way.  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.

The fact that the OBE subject reports the sensation of leaving the physical
body or of perceiving another "body" - and/or observing some connection
between the two bodies are elements of subjective experience, and are, IMHO,
not the best place to begin our analysis, since these things are so subjec-
tive and difficult to validate externally.  I think we just have to use logic
carefully - and to avoid saying that because we can't verify some element of
the experience reported by the subject that nothing interesting is occuring.
We might decide to disagree with the subject on the nature of the experience,
but that doesn't automatically make the experience uninteresting, I think.

To say that OBE subjects sometimes report incorrect or inaccurate information
does not establish that there is not something out of the ordinary happening.
And 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, and doesn't necessarily exclude phenomena of the sort that we're
discussing.

I hope we can make this discussion a bit more rigorous, while at the same time
encouraging the reporting of anecdotal evidence on all sides of the question.

(I personally hope that this experience is something that is available to some
who are interested in investigating the subject and reporting on it in a more
objective fashion.  Perhaps the actual having of the experience might suggest
some means of helping establish its nature in a way that others can understand
more easily.)

Gary
--
    Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst