Paranormality by Prof Richard Wiseman

I'm currently reading Paranormality: Why We See What Isn't There by everyone's favorite psychologist, Professor Richard Wiseman. So far it's excellent - this guy is really good at taking strange and misunderstood phenomena and laying it out straight for the layman.

Among other things, the book goes into the scientific understanding of Out of Body Experiences - how a few simple changes in perception can "trick" your brain into leaving your body.

Anyone else read this? I will be putting my full review on site when I'm finished...

Thanks, Rebecca--looks like a great book with some much-needed skepticism! Looking forward to reading your review.

Did reading the book cause you to rethink any of your own conceptions and beliefs concerning OBEs? Also, does Wiseman (interesting name!) address lucid dreaming as a topic anywhere in the book?

I wonder if the day will ever come when these books will be taught to kids in school, like Algebra 1 books! I looked for these courses when I was in college, but they didn't exist yet.

Think I figured out the "rubber band" trick that's out at Wiseman's website!

fineganswaker wrote: Did reading the book cause you to rethink any of your own conceptions and beliefs concerning OBEs?

Yes actually, it has further cemented my beliefs... ;)

When I first discovered the concept of OBEs (same time I discovered lucid dreaming as a teen) I genuinely thought it proved the existence of the soul, mainly because that's how it was presented by the out of body explorer Dr Robert Monroe who's first book in particular is nonetheless fascinating. I was even afraid to induce OBEs at first because I thought I would encounter ghosts and maybe even get trapped outside my body! In the end I dared to experiment with it quite often although my focus was always on lucid dreaming, and I soon found the two kinda go hand-in-hand anyway.

But as for leaving the body... I was never too sure either way what was happening, I have always wanted to believe in an afterlife and the idea of the spirit. But the more I compared my experiences and examined my own perception of reality, the more I realized it's FAR more likely that these are just interesting tricks of the brain.

Richard Wiseman's work (and the wonderfully talented Derren Brown, if you read his latest book, Tricks of The Mind) provide a solid framework for understanding it all without resorting to paranormal explanations. They are the voices of sanity for me, in a world where a lot of people believe in a lot of nonsense for reasons they can't really justify -- and all I am looking for is truth.

(Incidentally, I am not in the habit of going round telling people what to believe, I find it's more important to let them decide for themselves, so long as their beliefs don't harm any other living things in the process. I dare say in this culture there is more to learn from being a spiritualist-turned-skeptic, for example, than there is being a born-skeptic.)

In particular this book tells of the origins of table turning, Ouija boards, automatic writing, cold reading, palm reading and other Victorian-era shenanigans that still survive today. It debunks the lies and misinformation with numerous scientific studies and even magicians and fraudsters who have come forward explaining exactly how it's down with absolutely no paranormal hocus pocus involved...

fineganswaker wrote: Also, does Wiseman (interesting name!) address lucid dreaming as a topic anywhere in the book?

As for his insights into lucid dreaming, I am about halfway through and yet to read anything on this topic, although there is mention of dream control in the blurb... It's also funny that in one of his other books, he highlights the psychological research into how our given names actually can affect the career path we choose, so it may be no coincidence that Mr Wiseman chose the academic route 8-)

Rebecca,

Thank you so much for you comments! You are obviously a very thoughtful reader--as well as a very incisive writer. (And I must apologize here, as I have not yet downloaded your ebook--although I plan to as soon as I finish these last chapters I'm reading of Waggoner's book).

I think your insights here are spot on. Seeing OBEs (and maybe even lucid dreaming) for what they most likely are does not necessarily diminish the experience in the least. As a matter of fact, one of things I like about LaBerge's book is how he keeps pulling the discussion back onto more scientific, or at least psychological, ground. For me it's like a breath of fresh air, or like being pulled up out of the muck of "bad faith".

It reminds me of a great review I read about the (imho, awful) movie What the Bleep Do We Know (which was all the rage out here on the west coast (of the US) a few years ago). The reviewer was a physicist--a real quantum mechanics head--and he said something along the lines of "You know, reality is strange enough without reading all this type of nonsense into it".

Rebecca wrote: I dare say in this culture there is more to learn from being a spiritualist-turned-skeptic, for example, than there is being a born-skeptic.

Exactly! Bad metaphor alert: Keep the door open--but maybe still best keep the screen door shut!

Rebecca wrote: As for his insights into lucid dreaming, I am about halfway through and yet to read anything on this topic, although there is mention of dream control in the blurb...

Well, please keep us posted (literally) on this!

Rebecca wrote: It's also funny that in one of his other books, he highlights the psychological research into how our given names actually can affect the career path we choose, so it may be no coincidence that Mr Wiseman chose the academic route

Fascinating! Man, I've gotta check this book out (and I'm glad I recently picked up a library card--just too much interesting material to check into without breaking the bank otherwise!).

A bientot!

--FW

My review is up ;)

http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/paranormality-review.html

Thanks, Rebecca--great review! Nicely written and nicely balanced. I like the way you take Wiseman to task over his lumping lucid dreaming into the category of the paranormal (LDing is patently not paranormal in and of itself, as Wiseman himself seems to demonstrate!).

But an important book nevertheless--we LDers would do well to read such a work if only to "keep ourselves honest", as philosophers often like to put it--and hopefully a copy will be coming my way soon via an inter-library loan.

One question: I noticed on the jacket of the book out at Amazon something about how Wiseman debunks OBE/astral projection--something about how the phenomenon can be produced in such a way to prove how the mind doesn't actually leave the body...(?)

Is this just more dust-cover mongering, or does Wiseman actually cover the topic (maybe in his discussion of lucid dreaming in general)?

Thanks in advance for any further info on the book, and again--bravo!

Thanks!

Wiseman explains how you can artificially create an OBE, and this experiment comes to mind: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0708/07082305

...and how you can create this effect yourself -- if you have a fake hand nearby!

I dont want to ruin it for you if you're going to read the book.... but he makes the important distinction between what is "real" and what the brain perceives as "real".

Your brain constantly reassesses the fact that it is attached to your body and you can - in just a minute or two - make it forget by giving it false information (stroking a fake hand and pretending its your own, while ignoring your actual hand). The results are WEIRD. Amazing experiment that you can prove yourself!

And yes, I would say this is credible evidence to suggest the mind doesn't actually leave the body... Most lucidity experts and scientists who have looked at this phenomena agree that OBEs are cousins of lucid dreams and that technically we all therefore have types of OBEs (dreams) every night....

It makes good sense. Remember that dream where you were on a pirate ship chasing gold treasures? You were out-of-body then, right? Of course!

I'm not saying the experience is identical but a dream-type scenario is more credible than a literal conscious exit of the body...

Think I have read the book or one simlar and it is very interesting. I agree that the OBE is in the mind but that does not exclude being able to comunicate just like speech. It starts in the mind and then is expressed as voice (energy) I feel the dream state is just the same so communication is possible. I am not there yet but will hold this thought until I know differant

Peter

I absolutely agree with everything that you have stated here, Rebecca. I too thought that OOBEs proved the existence of a soul and an afterlife when I found the Robert Monroe method in a book called Mind Games by Michael Powell. To my surprise, the method for inducing such experiences worked and so did the section explaining how one can induce lucid dreams.

Soon, however, I began to realise that OOBEs and lucid dreams are not so different. In fact, today I'll go as far as to say that OOBEs are WILDs that include the illusion of separating from one's body. The phantom world that one encounters - whether or not it resembles the physical world - is nothing but a product of the mind. In fact, even our perception of reality is nothing but a mind construct and the difference being that it is an interpretation of sensory input rather than being solely a representation of thoughts.

Here's an analogy that I posted on my OBE4u blog which is relevant (if I've already posted this here I apologise):

"There was once a little guy called Mister Me who was born and lived in a dark house that he called the “brain”. This house had no doors and windows so there was no way in which Mister Me could see the external world.

However, Mister Me had little servants called “neurons” living with him who obtained information from the external world in other rooms of the house. Mister Me couldn’t enter these rooms, and, even if he could, he would not be able to understand what goes on in them. The information contained in these rooms was encrypted in a complex binary language capable of describing any reality imaginable.

This language had been developed since the foundation of the house and the birth of everything inside it. The neurons’ rooms contained telephones and fax machines called “synapses” which enabled communication among them and made their great network possible. Each room included cabinets full of files with data that could be potentially reused or merely revisited. Different cabinets had different labels like “memory”, “inner workings” and “outer reports”.

Mister Me often thought that the neurons were able to look directly at the external world through a couple of windows, and, at times, he even believed that he was doing this as the information he received could be so intense. However, this was not the case, because, the house had no windows.

Instead, the house had two cameras attached to the exterior side of the front wall, which captured light from the world outside, and their sensors converted the light frequencies into electronic signals that the neurons could then interpret using their codes. A matrix report would then be produced and constantly updated in accordance with any changes in the external world. Mister Me would always be in his room, which was the main one in the house and its location was not certain but the neurons could always get their information there.

Artists lived with Mister Me in his room and their job was to interpret the matrix report from the neurons and create animations called “mental projections”, based on those reports, for Mister Me to see and experience. The animations had to be accurate so that Mister Me knew what was happening outside the house that the cameras could capture. Everyone worked together to produce a final product for Mister Me, and, by day, this product had to be congruent with what was happening outside the house.

During the day, the neurons worked in interpreting the signals from the external world. By night, the cameras were switched off but the neurons continued to work. There were periods of quiet, known as “delta”, when the majority of the neural departments needed to take a break and restore their energy. Then, their systems would be rebooted. Then, periods of great activity and excitement, known as “REM”, would follow. During REM, files could be reviewed and composed into something to be presented to Mister Me.

All neural departments would work in order to get Mister Me’s attention and bombard his office with a large matrix report containing a mishmash of memories, ideas and creativity. Mister Me would often get lost by selecting a portion of the mixed matrix and mistake the animations for events occurring outside the house. In the morning, however, Mister Me would realise that none of the animations were events occurring outside the house and would label them “dreams”.

Sometimes, Mister Me would become very much aware that the animations were not a direct interpretation of external world events while viewing them. In these moments of awareness, he was able to become the director of the house. He could request and browse files, order that specific matrices be formulated and influence his artists to make the animations more interesting. The dream animations during this period would often exceed real content animations in quality. During this peculiar awareness, when no sensory input was being received from outside the house, Mister Me felt the same as he felt during the day when curious about the external world and he proclaimed himself to be “lucid”.

Early in his life, Mister Me had learned about other “Mister Mes” who lived in their own houses. Some had messy houses where the neural networks were dysfunctional. Such Mister Mes were often thought of as being “mentally disabled”. There were cases where the house workers were ignoring or misinterpreting the signals from the external world even though the cameras were on and working fine. The Mister Mes in charge of making decisions were misled by the erroneous animations that were fed to them. They received lies from their neurons on a 24/7 basis and were often called “insane”. Mister Me was also unsure about whether or not he would survive when and if the house was destroyed."

If all of this is in our mind then how do we explain the multiple documented cases of children (and adults) recalling past life details that have been fully documented and verified. How did the information get from one person to another, without some external system as a medium? Especially when the two people were never alive at the same time?

fuzzylogic wrote: If all of this is in our mind then how do we explain the multiple documented cases of children (and adults) recalling past life details that have been fully documented and verified. How did the information get from one person to another, without some external system as a medium? Especially when the two people were never alive at the same time?

If there are any researchers who are sitting on this kind of evidence they are due for a Nobel prize - so why not tell the world about it?

They should publish their results in a scientific journal, which is then reviewed by other scientists all around the world. If no-one can find holes in the theory, it becomes accepted knowledge.

By that point, it would be all over the media: "Scientists find evidence for past lives" and all that such a groundbreaking theory implies - the afterlife, the soul, reincarnation, and so on. This would be the biggest scientific revelation EVER! It would change the world.

The fact that this hasn't happened is why I doubt these "multiple documented cases" are quite as foolproof as you think. In other words, they can be explained through other - more likely - means than reincarnation. There are many psychological and mathematical factors you've overlooked to reach the conclusion that past lives must be real.

Side note: skeptics are not* in denial *of past lives or other phenomena (as that would imply they are blind to the evidence). We simply take more convincing than non-skeptics.

I think this is a healthy attitude to have. If you reject science you also reject the fundamental process that led to the invention of cars, airplanes, space rockets, computers, medical diagnosis and thousands more features of the modern world.

That's why I maintain we should apply our scientific knowledge to phenomena like past lives and trust in the conclusion it brings us to. In this case, the evidence for reincarnation is founded on subjective anecdotal evidence, psychological effects like wanting to make the evidence "fit" the belief system, and coincidental effects that also help the evidence fit.... It's certainly not foolproof IMO.

100% agreed, Rebecca.

And as I mentioned earlier in another thread:

I've researched reincarnation and I have discussed it countless times. There is no evidence for it whatsoever. I don't understand why so many people cling to this belief and claim that it can't be any other way when there is no proof. I will point out many of the possible and more mundane explanations that believers dismiss:

The amazing complexity and inner workings of the brain which is still quite elusive. Coincidences. Cryptomnesia. Genetic memory. Etc.

You can argue that some people have had very specific experiences with dates, times, places, which were then researched and apparently verified. But, we don't know if they were already unconsciously aware of the details of said person before a so-called past life memory comes to light. There are some remarkable cases of cryptomnesia which reflect the amazing potential of the human mind. Have you researched them besides reincarnation?

We also possess genetic memory. We are born with certain memories. Some of them quite basic and inherited: a baby intinctively searches for a nipple, an animal knows it needs to get on its feet immediately etc etc. - and then we have the more far-fetched collective consciousness: are memories stored in the brain or are they extracted from electromagnetic fields that pervade our world (like Rupert Sheldrake's M fields)?

I saw a TV show (on Youtube) demonstrating this with a rubber hand and a hammer. Very interesting example of how the brain can assume ownership of a false limb.

Not so sure it debunks OBEs though.

I keep reading about cases where the person sees something during the OBE that is specific and verifiable. Like one example I read about where a person visited a friend who was asleep and documented a bunch of specific physical aspects of the scene- things like: your shoes we off at the foot of the bed and one was at a 45 degree angle from the other, and the toothpaste top was off and sitting behind the floss etc., etc.. When they checked, all of the physical items were verified.

Or the famous one where during an NDE a person saw a shoe on a hospital window ledge, and it was found to be there.

Or the many OBE or NDE accounts where patients saw scenes from other parts of the hospital and accurately recalled conversations from those scenes even though they weren't in the vicinity of the patient.

The one where the patient recalls seeing their doctor making physical movements "like a chicken", while he was fully sedated, and having surgery and had their eyes covered with a sheet. Turns our this particular doctor does have an unusual habit of stretching with a chicken kind of motion.

And then there are the many cases cited by Bruce Moen involving OBE with another person where they both documented their experiences in a journal and then compared them. And they were a good match.

How do we correlate all those experiences with the fake-limb, trick-of-the-brain, fully in the body explanation? Doesn't seem to match up very well to me. To me, it seems like the fake limb experiment is interesting but doesn't at all match the range of OBE case stories that are out there.

For me to accept this explanation, I would need to have a model that applies to a wider range of documented OBE experiences.

Hi Rebecca,

This is my first post on your site. Thanks for providing so much information about the subject. I tried to induce lucid dreams years ago, but lost interest after not being successful. Your site has much more information than I had then, so I am going to give it another go.

To the subject at hand (in particular, OBEs):

In your skepticism of the possibility that OBEs actually are an astral body leaving the physical body and wandering around this plane and other planes, how do you explain Monroe's own "reality checks" that he relates in Chapter 3 of Journeys Out of the Body, "On the Evidence", in which he relates how he visited several physical locations, noted what he saw there, and then checked his out of body observations against what actually occurred (including many details he could not have known ahead of time)? Isn't the fact that what he witnessed on several different occasions while travelling out of his body corresponded exactly to what he later confirmed actually occurred pretty strong evidence that OBEs are in fact what they appear to be and are thus qualitatively different from lucid dreams, even WILD ones?

There is further evidence along these lines in the book by Pim van Lommel, Consciousness beyond Life. In it, he relates the results of a study he did of the NDEs of recovered heart patients during the time when they were "brain dead", ie., had zero neurological activity in their brains. 18% of the patients in the study reported that their consciousness was active during that time, and a number of them were watching what was happening in the operating room. The details they reported witnessing were checked against what actually happened, and again, corresponded closely to actual events.

but it's not evidence really, is it? It's just claims. I read Monroe's first book (the second put me off as soon as I realised he was just promoting his hemisync) and although it was a fascinating read, it was very naive. There was a lot of speculation, theory and many associations made biased by his gradual inclination towards accepting, wholeheartedly, that OOBEs happen outside the body. Also, many of his claims are yet to be corroborated by his witnesses and the experiments he conducted have never been replicated with the same results.

Furthermore, out of the Monroe fever, another group of followers were born under the wing of Thomas Campbell. Such group now heavily relies on pseudo-science in order to convince the laymen that their theory where there are physical and non-physical realities and where an afterlife undoubtedly exists is the most plausible and logical one.

Bottom line: don't believe everything you hear and read especially when the books are full of sensationalism which is always unattainable by the reader. You are better of relying on your own experiences and reading books by people who have extensively researched lucid dreaming and were officially recognised for it...like Stephen LaBerge, for example.

Summerlander wrote: Furthermore, out of the Monroe fever, another group of followers were born under the wing of Thomas Campbell. Such group now heavily relies on pseudo-science in order to convince the laymen that their theory where there are physical and non-physical realities and where an afterlife undoubtedly exists is the most plausible and logical one.

I do like some of their ideas, certainly food for thought, but I must say you are totally right about Monroe and Campbell. I'm trying to read Campbell's "Big Toe: Awakening" but he's constantly wrapping himself in this mantle of "scientific research" which is pure nonsense. I'm pretty fed up with it already.

Summerlander wrote: I read Monroe's first book (the second put me off as soon as I realised he was just promoting his hemisync)

Campbell tells us that upon meeting Mr. Monroe he realized right away that the guy was already really rich so he of course couldn't have been doing any of this for the money. Normally people don't get rich by not doing things for the money, but I'll hold back judgment, maybe I'm wrong. Then later in the book there's this, "Bob was swamped with the requests from people of all sorts wanting to participate. Bob began to see the makings of a business and Dennis and I along with Nancy Lea, became trainers more than researchers." This is one of the most believable parts of the book.

I read My Big Toe and at couldnt find out what he was trying to say. It just sort of minced around some vauge points I think. I can normally extract a needle in a haystack with reading and just could not work out what he was trying to say or where he was going.

Ive read that scientists were able to connect a visual icon over two peoples brains using an identical magnetic impulse with the same source. If this could be converted into a hypnogogia transmitter, mutual dreams might be possible. If anyone in this discussion knows a magnetoceptionoligist then perhaps you could consider this topic with them

Rebecca wrote:

fineganswaker wrote:Did reading the book cause you to rethink any of your own conceptions and beliefs concerning OBEs?

When I first discovered the concept of OBEs (same time I discovered lucid dreaming as a teen) I genuinely thought it proved the existence of the soul, mainly because that's how it was presented by the out of body explorer Dr Robert Monroe who's first book in particular is nonetheless fascinating. I was even afraid to induce OBEs at first because I thought I would encounter ghosts and maybe even get trapped outside my body! In the end I dared to experiment with it quite often although my focus was always on lucid dreaming, and I soon found the two kinda go hand-in-hand anyway.

But as for leaving the body... I was never too sure either way what was happening, I have always wanted to believe in an afterlife and the idea of the spirit. But the more I compared my experiences and examined my own perception of reality, the more I realized it's FAR more likely that these are just interesting tricks of the brain.

fineganswaker wrote: Also, does Wiseman (interesting name!) address lucid dreaming as a topic anywhere in the book?

See, That's where you and a so many other 'Educated' people are wrong. Astral Projection is really the waking of our mind while our body is asleep. You may call it a soul but In scientific terms its called a consciences. Don't believe me? Read about the Unified Field Theory which has enough of proof for everyone that says matter came into into existence from a conscience! Most people have truly not had an Actual Astral projection, including you, You are just dreaming but not having an astral projection in reality. A real Astral Projection is really hard to control cause your conscience is constantly being dragged into your body, you conscience is not visible in the mirror and your body moves like a snake while the world is seen as if your eyes were on your feet. I know your very knowledgeable and been lucid dreaming for a Way longer time than me. But you are most definitely wrong when you say Astral projections and OBEs are just tricks of the mind.