OBEs are not lucid dreams.

Hi everybody, so today I am going to present some proof of OBEs, and how they are distinctly different then lucid dreams!

First off, most of this proof comes from the very scientists trying to disprove them. (Take that know it all science!)

Scientifically speaking, lucid dreams and OBEs are both psychologically and physiologically different. In the early 80s, the Australian professor Harvey Irwin conducted a through comparative study of lucid dreams and sleep-initiatied OBEs, which concluded that most OBEs where unlike lucid dreams because during an OBE the brainwave patterns would often show alpha activity but hardly ever any REM, meaning that whatever the subjects where actually doing, they where defienatly not dreaming.

To add to this neuroscientific evidence, we can offer the sceptics some information from scientificly oriented psychology. Keith Haray, executive director of the Institue for Advanced Pschology in Portland, Oregon, has done some exellent all-around OBE studies. Although he still believe that nobody quite knows what an OBE is, he proved under scientific conditions that his pet cat displayed significantly more setteled behavior when he guided his sense of self to it's location during sevreal randomly timed OBEs then when his sense of self (or whatever he believed was being projected out of his body) was not with the cat.

Even the physicists are starting to see, Dr Thomas Campbell in his book, My Big TOE, he describes the process through which he validated his OBEs. He collected very convincing data for the OBE as a real phonomenom distinct from dreams, and his position as a respected nucelear physicist gives a lot of credit to his work.

Then of course, there is Robert Monroe. Read his book "Journeys Out of the Body." In this book, he describes dozens of his personal OBE accounts meticulously analyzed for inconsistencies and far too detailed to be the work of a fraud. Monroe even went on to set up the non-profit Monroe Insituite, which gathered so much hard proof of the validity of OBEs that the former director of the Intelligence and Security Command of the US Army sent his personnel there for training. US Army documents declassified in 1995 reveal that the US government invested millions of dollars over 20 years in several top-secret projects which aimed to use OBE and remote viewing as a way to spy on the Russian Military during the Cold War. One of these "psychic spies" (a man named Joe McMoneagle) was even awarded the Legion of Merit by the US military for his discovery of a Russian submarine in 1979 through remote veiwing.

I mean how much more proof does anyone need? Whatever OBEs are, they are not lucid dreams!

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so what is an OBE, not what you think you are doing but what is classified as an OBE.

If I try for a WILD and look into the darkness in my eyes I can enter directly into a lucid dream

If I try for a WILD and think about my body I quietly slip out and am standing by my bed in my room in my other body and can walk around my house or go anywhere I want or call for a dream and get it or just blink my dream eyes and be in a dream

So is this an OBE or a lucid dream or not what you would call an OBE and if so tell me about some of yours so I know the difference

I cannot see any difference in what happens just in the entry style

Hey LucidLink

Since you posted this in the Dream Science thread you can expect a bit of rigorous scientific scrutiny :)

LucidLink wrote: (Take that know it all science!)

The beauty of the scientific method is that it questions everything and strives to prove itself wrong, because that's how we acquire the best explanations and the best theories. That's why scientists go through a process of observation, hypothesis, testing, theory, testing (again), and application. Just wanted to clear that up - scientists never proclaim to know it all from the outset ;)

LucidLink wrote: Scientifically speaking, lucid dreams and OBEs are both psychologically and physiologically different. In the early 80s, the Australian professor Harvey Irwin conducted a through comparative study of lucid dreams and sleep-initiatied OBEs, which concluded that most OBEs where unlike lucid dreams because during an OBE the brainwave patterns would often show alpha activity but hardly ever any REM, meaning that whatever the subjects where actually doing, they where defienatly not dreaming.

Researchers have discovered in the last few years that dreams can take place in non-REM sleep too, so on this basis to say "they were definitely not dreaming" is inaccurate.

Also, lucid dreams can generate alpha-brainwaves too. Setting OBEs into this category doesn't split them out as physiologically different.

But I would really appreciate a link to the study so I can explore this claim further. Thanks!!

LucidLink wrote: To add to this neuroscientific evidence, we can offer the sceptics some information from scientificly oriented psychology. Keith Haray, executive director of the Institue for Advanced Pschology in Portland, Oregon, has done some exellent all-around OBE studies. Although he still believe that nobody quite knows what an OBE is, he proved under scientific conditions that his pet cat displayed significantly more setteled behavior when he guided his sense of self to it's location during sevreal randomly timed OBEs then when his sense of self (or whatever he believed was being projected out of his body) was not with the cat.

I think we would all like to see a more measurable predictor of a spirit presence that the behavior of his cat. Sorry I don't think that's just me ;)

LucidLink wrote: Even the physicists are starting to see, Dr Thomas Campbell in his book, My Big TOE, he describes the process through which he validated his OBEs. He collected very convincing data for the OBE as a real phonomenom distinct from dreams, and his position as a respected nucelear physicist gives a lot of credit to his work.

I haven't yet read this book although I have heard about it in the spiritualist community. Could you explain how he validated his OBEs? This would be a major breakthrough!

If we're talking true verifiable OBEs, my recommendation is that he submits his experimental results to one of the better known science journals. Once published, his work could be peer reviewed and the OBE as a genuine out of body experience would become accepted scientific theory. I would be truly excited by this kind of event, it would be paradigm-shifting.

The fact that this has not happened should lead us to take a more skeptical approach to his claims. Because any claim worth its salt should really be testable and repeatable, otherwise it's just hearsay.

So, can we repeat Campbell's experiment, please?? I'll try it myself!

LucidLink wrote: Then of course, there is Robert Monroe. Read his book "Journeys Out of the Body." In this book, he describes dozens of his personal OBE accounts meticulously analyzed for inconsistencies and far too detailed to be the work of a fraud. Monroe even went on to set up the non-profit Monroe Insituite, which gathered so much hard proof of the validity of OBEs that the former director of the Intelligence and Security Command of the US Army sent his personnel there for training. US Army documents declassified in 1995 reveal that the US government invested millions of dollars over 20 years in several top-secret projects which aimed to use OBE and remote viewing as a way to spy on the Russian Military during the Cold War. One of these "psychic spies" (a man named Joe McMoneagle) was even awarded the Legion of Merit by the US military for his discovery of a Russian submarine in 1979 through remote veiwing.

I have read Robert Monroe extensively and he inspired a great number of personal OBE attempts in my early lucid dreaming adventures. He was, perhaps, my earliest LD idol :D

I believe he was genuine and not a fraud. However it is now well accepted (in the scientific community, who you're addressing) that his experiences were lucid dreams after all. How can this be? It is quite possible that his initial interpretations of the feeling of whizzing out-of-body (his apparent WILDs) led him towards the idea of literal OBE teleportation, which then generated expectations of out of body phenomena, which then influenced his lucid dreams to appear as such.

I've also read McMoneagle and became fascinated by Remote Viewing for a few years before realizing there is no solid evidence for it, other than some chance guesswork, to be a little blunt! Please don't take my word for it but investigate each claim yourself and make a decision. Even the US Military deemed it worth investing in during the 1970s (albeit a relatively small amount of funds compared to the billions of dollars spent on weapons) and later canceled the project when it failed to return repeatable successes.

LucidLink wrote: I mean how much more proof does anyone need? Whatever OBEs are, they are not lucid dreams!

There is evidence to suggest that OBEs are internally generated experiences, if not identical to lucid dreams then at least a close relative. So my question is how much proof do YOU need? :P

It is often not difficult to find anecdotal evidence to support any claim, but here in the Dream Science thread (and, I believe, in the pioneering academic world) we do need rigorous trials and published studies if we are to draw conclusions about such weighty matters.

I saw this with total respect ;)

I concur.

I'd also add that Mr. Campbell's TOE is nothing but hypothetical musings laced with mumbo-jumbo. He has already alienated himself from the scientific community by saying that he holds the "big picture" while the rest hold the little picture. He's a pseudoscientific narcissist who already has a cultish following...

Moreover, he is quite dishonest in his books when he deliberately twists the meaning (and context in which they were used) of quotes by renowned scientists and philosophers.

Now, when it comes to lucid dreams and OBEs, the only difference I see is interpretation. In the former, the individual recognises the experience for what it actually is while in the latter one makes an unfounded belief-centric assumption.

Now consider this. Last night I was running from a mammoth in a dream and became lucid...

Yes, I had a dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD). No perceived separation from the body involved. But I was flying and was able to explore a land where people and cartoons interacted with one another like in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." I did not perceive myself tobe lying in bed(even though I knew this to be the case). Instead,my experience was fully immersed in being somewhere else other than where my physical body lay. Ostensibly, I was in a Space Jam world...

I felt like I was separate from my sleeping body and yet I knew it was all in my mind aka lucid dreaming. So now I pose the question:

What is the real difference? Cuz from where I'm standing,I see none. Am I wrong?

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Summerlander wrote: I concur.

I'd also add that Mr. Campbell's TOE is nothing but hypothetical musings laced with mumbo-jumbo. He has already alienated himself from the scientific community by saying that he holds the "big picture" while the rest hold the little picture. He's a pseudoscientific narcissist who already has a cultish following...

I like a lot of Tom Campbell's ideas but will admit they are not science, at least at this point in time. They are more like philosophy which is O.K. He may be a scientist, but in order to prove something as science you need to follow the scientific method. I think it hurts his credibility to continue insisting that his ideas are scientific when they are not. He seems to want the justification/recognition of science without following the method.

Summerlander wrote: Now, when it comes to lucid dreams and OBEs, the only difference I see is interpretation. In the former, the individual recognises the experience for what it actually is while in the latter one makes an unfounded belief-centric assumption.

I basically agree with that. All lucid dreams are OBE since we perceive "ourselves" as in some other world with a separate reality and dream body while we are aware of our physical body being in the bed sleeping. If I have a lucid dream of my body floating to the ceiling in my bedroom, it's no more an OBE than a lucid dream about being in some unknown house flying around. I might interpret the dream of floating around in my bedroom as an OBE, not lucid dream, just because it's a familiar place.

Yes, it's logic.

About three years ago, me and a friend (who happens to have a doctorate in physics) were discussing with Thomas Campbell our nuances in relation to the TOE. We enjoyed the hypothetical notion of "it's all data" but we exposed some of the loopholes and requested that Campbell clarify his point of view. (In particular, the double slit experiment because it seemed that he was getting his fans to believe that "observation" really meant "observation" and not "measurement.") we were taken aback when Campbell completed rejected what we were saying and accused us of having the "little picture" without even providing a propitiatory account, which, in all fairness, we still believed the great Campbell would be able to pull off and expected no less from him. (I did not want my suspicions about him to be correct.)

I still have Campbell as a friend on Facebook. He won't delete me. We had privately discussed so-called psychics once and his answer (his answer to everything) was something along the lines of, "It's all data." I just finished reading "God's Debris" by Scott Adams. By no means does that provide an accurate picture of reality but it is a strangely compelling one precisely because it spins your brain...

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Interesting OP. However, do you happen to have any sources you could post? And are OBE's falsifiable?

Are OOBEs falsifiable? Good question! Though I think you meant to include the world "real" before the acronym. So far, all it can be said is that there is no evidence of anything leaving the physical body. Moreover, "misses" happen regularly, while "hits" are rare. This shouldn't surprise anyone as coincidental 'jackpots' are inevitable in chance. If they never happened then it would be odd! If some of them occur due to some natural phenomenon that we are yet to discover, then it is most certainly not because something conscious has exited the body of the experiencer. Most likely, it would have something to do with quantum entanglement (and I'm surmising here).

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Scientifically speaking, lucid dreams and OBEs are both psychologically and physiologically different. In the early 80s, the Australian professor Harvey Irwin conducted a through comparative study of lucid dreams and sleep-initiatied OBEs, which concluded that most OBEs where unlike lucid dreams because during an OBE the brainwave patterns would often show alpha activity but hardly ever any REM, meaning that whatever the subjects where actually doing, they where defienatly not dreaming.

Dreams occur during Theta wave states, so do hypnagogic images. I can see HI without moving my eyes and manipulate them. I'm seeing them with my "Mind's Eye" not my eyes the same goes for NREM Lucid dream states. I don't know whether or not I'm moving my eyes during during REM Lucid Dreams; but in the normal course of sleep REM Dreams don't happen until after REM Muscle Atonia and I do recognize and experience the onset of RMA during WILDS even if only as dream images. Did he test to see if there were Theta States during those OBE? Rapid Eye movements in themselves don't mean anything.

We also have Celia Green's work (a survey of OBE) which reasonably demonstrated rather than proved OBE occur both when awake (and often doing something) and while dreaming and that 80% of them are as "Disincarnate Consciousnesses" rather than as bodies. I don't do OBE in dreams, but when doing WILDs start as a Disincarnate Consciousness and possess Dream Characters and leave them - this is not proof that I'm OBE or that I'm possessing real people on a different plane of existence as some people claim :o. I also recently created a 3D Hypnagogic Image of an Ancient Roman Legatus (aka general) and moved around in it and had to leave it before I could end the HI - does not mean I'm a God nor that I created a Topa and doing that is not much different than Summerland and Mr. Rainbow (The English translation of Summerland's boss's Russian name Raduga) with his OBE4U stuff. I have also tried to see through my closed eyes as a self created HI and I can do it, but that does not mean I'm actually seeing the real world through my closed eyes.

To add to this neuroscientific evidence, we can offer the sceptics some information from scientificly oriented psychology. Keith Haray, executive director of the Institue for Advanced Pschology in Portland, Oregon, has done some exellent all-around OBE studies. Although he still believe that nobody quite knows what an OBE is, he proved under scientific conditions that his pet cat displayed significantly more setteled behavior when he guided his sense of self to it's location during sevreal randomly timed OBEs then when his sense of self (or whatever he believed was being projected out of his body) was not with the cat.

Scientists running experiments in the known real world often get fake results -the reason why sample size and being repeated by other Scientists is so important. People also often use pseudo-mathematical odds as proof of PSI. I've thrown two natural yahtzees in a row in real life and correctly called a coin flip ten times in a row - does not mean I have telekinetic powers or am Psychic. I'm also been dealt an incredible about of two card Royal Flushes playing Holdem the odds of getting as many as I have are well over a billion to one -does not mean I have any more chance of getting one than anyone else.

Even the physicists are starting to see, Dr Thomas Campbell in his book, My Big TOE, he describes the process through which he validated his OBEs. He collected very convincing data for the OBE as a real phonomenom distinct from dreams, and his position as a respected nucelear physicist gives a lot of credit to his work.

Watched him on youtube and think he's a Pantheistic Dogmatist rather than someone being scientific or with any good evidence that I've seen.

Then of course, there is Robert Monroe. Read his book "Journeys Out of the Body." In this book, he describes dozens of his personal OBE accounts meticulously analyzed for inconsistencies and far too detailed to be the work of a fraud. Monroe even went on to set up the non-profit Monroe Insituite, which gathered so much hard proof of the validity of OBEs that the former director of the Intelligence...

One's subconscious knows more than one's conscious mind and can do things impossible for one's conscious mind to do. My WILDs are also extremely stable and realistic and some LD have show me real things that I did not know about and real places. Does not mean I was out of body or psychic -my subconscious is quite capable of showing me stuff and doing stuff that I don't know or can do.

The US Military wasting tons of hundred dollar bills is also nothing new nor proof that what they wasted it on was ever a reasonable spending of money.

Pantheistic dogmatist! LoL! I couldn't have said it better. I've just debated with a bunch one morons who look up to him and have shown themselves to be pretty unscientific. They claim to have consciousness and the nature of reality sussed out. Some sort of monism where "it is all data" but also a kind of dualism as distinctions such as physical and nonphysical are made. What they propound is analous to the "God of the gaps" fallacy peppered with mumbo jumbo. :-D

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double post.

Australian professor Harvey Irwin conducted a through comparative study of lucid dreams and sleep-initiatied OBEs, which concluded that most OBEs where unlike lucid dreams because during an OBE the brainwave patterns would often show alpha activity but hardly ever any REM, meaning that whatever the subjects where actually doing, they where defienatly not dreaming.

Thanks. I found your post very interesting. Seems you are sharing with a very tough group thou lol. Ah well, it is the science forum so tough sceptics are essential.

If I was still doing OBE and had got very experienced at it, I think I would go around trying to pinch all the sceptics. (Ive heard one can leave bruises but I never tried anything like that, I wish I had).

Peter wrote: so what is an OBE, not what you think you are doing but what is classified as an OBE.

If I try for a WILD and look into the darkness in my eyes I can enter directly into a lucid dream

If I try for a WILD and think about my body I quietly slip out and am standing by my bed in my room in my other body and can walk around my house or go anywhere I want or call for a dream and get it or just blink my dream eyes and be in a dream

So is this an OBE or a lucid dream or not what you would call an OBE and if so tell me about some of yours so I know the difference

I cannot see any difference in what happens just in the entry style

I think people can easily dream an OBE if they have done reading on that kind of thing, I suspect this has happneed in smany cases.

I think an OBE in a person who has never read stuff on this but still has all the classical OBE stuff coming in eg vibrations and feeling the astral body leaving the physical body.. is more likely to be an OBE in that case.

I think an OBE in a person who has never read stuff on this but still has all the classical OBE stuff coming in eg vibrations and feeling the astral body leaving the physical body.. is more likely to be an OBE in that case.

Even this can't be taken as evidence. People who have OBEs but have never heard of such experiences previously are most likely experiencing proprioception distortions as the result of a glitching thalamus or something of the sort.

Summerlander wrote:

I think an OBE in a person who has never read stuff on this but still has all the classical OBE stuff coming in eg vibrations and feeling the astral body leaving the physical body.. is more likely to be an OBE in that case.

Even this can't be taken as evidence. People who have OBEs but have never heard of such experiences previously are most likely experiencing proprioception distortions as the result of a glitching thalamus or something of the sort.

Yeah you are right, it cant be taken as evidence still thou. (I personally think the only real evidence is to test things out like Ive said in my previous posts).

Have you got a theory on how it would produce exactly the same sensations eg vibrations in people? There must be so many different sensations a person could feel, why commonly that? and why commonly the sensation of the body loosening from the physical and starting to slip out in places. The sensations people get with astral projection even with those who have never read on these things, are quite specific ones which often happen.

Its like a group of people who have never see a dog or had one described to them at all, no knowledge of them. .. all describing dogs. What causes the dream (if that is all dream) to be so specific?

Summerlander wrote: I concur.

I'd also add that Mr. Campbell's TOE is nothing but hypothetical musings laced with mumbo-jumbo. He has already alienated himself from the scientific community by saying that he holds the "big picture" while the rest hold the little picture. He's a pseudoscientific narcissist who already has a cultish following...

Moreover, he is quite dishonest in his books when he deliberately twists the meaning (and context in which they were used) of quotes by renowned scientists and philosophers.

Now, when it comes to lucid dreams and OBEs, the only difference I see is interpretation. In the former, the individual recognises the experience for what it actually is while in the latter one makes an unfounded belief-centric assumption.

Now consider this. Last night I was running from a mammoth in a dream and became lucid...

Yes, I had a dream-initiated lucid dream (DILD). No perceived separation from the body involved. But I was flying and was able to explore a land where people and cartoons interacted with one another like in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit." I did not perceive myself tobe lying in bed(even though I knew this to be the case). Instead,my experience was fully immersed in being somewhere else other than where my physical body lay. Ostensibly, I was in a Space Jam world...

I felt like I was separate from my sleeping body and yet I knew it was all in my mind aka lucid dreaming. So now I pose the question:

What is the real difference? Cuz from where I'm standing,I see none. Am I wrong?

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a pseudoscientific narcisist? Sounds just like you haha!

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The vibrations could be feedback from neuronic activity. The pons region of the brain sends inhibitory signals to the spinal cord, thus eventuating muscle atonia while you are sleeping. Conscious sleep paralysis could at times entail the perception of such feedback right before you hallucinate yourself leaving the body. So, all you have to do to experience the vibrational state is to be human. Since we all have the same organs and are so similar, there is your possible mundane explanation for why vibrations are so common - or common knowledge amongst lucid dreamers at least...

What is your view so far, tania?

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My two cents regarding body vibrations and such: I haven't experienced OBEs but I did experience a couple WILDs and they started with buzzing in my head and body vibrations, movement, rolling sensations, etc... I assumed these sensations were from the conscious awareness disconnecting from the physical senses' input (audio, proprioception, vestibular, touch, etc...). The picture that comes to mind is the 'static' one gets when unplugging a signal cable from an oscilloscope: at the critical disconnection point, there might be a lot of noise in the signal before it flat-lines. Or same as when unplugging the headphone from the iPod, there is scratchy noise for half a second before the silence. If one keeps the headphones half-way plugged, the signal stays scratchy and noisy longer, until one yanks them all the way out (or all the way back in).

During the WILD I had ZERO input from my body's senses. I actually had no awareness of having a body except from remembering I have one, but body feelings were completely absent. During the WILD I actually felt new sensations that have no equivalent in real life (except for the vision, which was similar).

This explanation is certainly better and more plausible than mine. Especially where the noises are concerned. Another thing I would like to add is that, sometimes, during violent vibrations, I felt like someone was blowing raspberries on my spine.

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I heard the middle ear starts to vibrate and that's what causes the noises. Then they're misinterpreted with an hallucinating, dreamy perception.

During muscle atonia, there is a disconnection between the messages from the brain to the muscles through the central nervous system and spine, which again is misinterpreted.

That would explain the whole myriad of experiences people report, but all based on two simple, biological phenomenons.

I've got a few crazy stories myself, and no two were the same! I actually find them as thrilling, perhaps even more thrilling, than any lucid dream that ensues!

I had one experience, before I had any LDs, where the buzzing sound was extremely loud and extremely discordant, vibrations were extremely intense, and I could see brightly colored 'light beams' around me, looking like electrical arcs (buzzing and vibrating), and I could feel hands trying to grab me all around. I would get this insight: 'Here's my chance to get out of my limited box and explore the unknown, isn't that what I always wanted?' I was trying to stay centered and not to panic, but being in that state felt like sitting right on the nose of the space shuttle during lift-off, and regular life in comparison felt like an old faded black and white postcard with me sitting on a couch.

I chose to go back in the postcard (in other words, wake up), it felt SO QUIET and easy in there, LOL. :lol:

Of course then I regretted I didn't take that chance. ;)

Yeah, Hagart, the auditory system plays its role in the phenomenon it seems. It is possible that it is a combination of all that we've said. It may happen every time we hit the sleep threshold but it takes consciousness to be aware of it - so no wonder a lucid entrance into the dream world often follows. By the time we are lucid dreaming, the brain has already disconnected from sensory input and the mind is free to author a new reality with a potential for greater detail and freedom to be creative.

I've had times where fear and excitement got the better of me too, Karin. Michael Raduga has the perfect advice for it: "Re-enter the phase." (Pluck up some courage and return to lucid dreamland.)

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This is something I find interesting and I'll make a new topic about it in the General Lucid Dream area. I'll look back at my dream journal and share some of my own wacky experiences, and listen to others and it should be fun!

We may find common similarities and allay peoples worries about the dreaded SLEEP PARALYSIS.

(To summerlander: It happens EVERY time we sleep, but we only notice if our minds are 'awake' enough to realize it. I agree. And every single time, I was already in a dream whether I knew it or not at the time. Only in retrospect did I realize I was already dreaming up the whole thing no matter how real it seemed at the time.)

(To Karin: I too have gotten too excited with an adrenaline rush and ruined it. It's best to kick back and just observe and allow it without expectation. Enjoy the ride wherever it takes you. It's hard sometimes and I too can't help myself from over-thinking it. )