Some Methodological Problems in OOBE Research

Charles T. Tart

(1973, Scarecrow Press.)

Published in W. Roll, R. Morris, J. Morris (Eds.), Research in Parapsychology 1973, published by Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, pp. 116-
120. Presented at the 16th annual convention of the Parapsychological Association held at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, in
1973. The contents of this document are Copyright © 1973 by the Parapsychological Association (see detail)

Article

It's been very gratifying to hear these excellent papers on out-ofthe-body experience. I have no quarrels with them, so what I would like to do in
my comments is to emphasize that it's more complicated than we think. The term "out-of-the-body experience" is too broad: I think it probably
covers several different types of experiences, some of which are quite discrete and some of which run along various kinds of continua. It's going
to be very difficult at this stage of the game to try and apply the term more precisely. The phenomena that have come to us in spontaneous
reports come from people; and people are often very poor observers of internal experiences. Also, our language is not very well suited to
describe experiential data in much precision to begin with.

So we start off with a body of spontaneous data that gives us a rather vague concept that probably includes two or three or even half a dozen
subsets of concepts within it. First, let's talk about a subtype which I'm tempted to call the classical out-of-the-body experience, or d-OOBE-the
"discrete out-of-the-body experience." This is the experience where the subject perceives himself as experientially located at some other location
than where he knows his physical body to be. In addition, he generally feels that he's in his ordinary state of consciousness, so that the concepts
space, time, and location make sense to him. Further, there is a feeling of no contact with the physical body, a feeling of temporary semitotal
disconnection from it. This d-OOBE is the kind of thing that is described by Fox, Muldoon, and Monroe. A d-OOBE may seem to be oriented to an
earthly location, in which case our parapsychological interest is aroused. II the subject thinks he's at location X we can ask him what's going on
there, or we can put detectors there, and come up with very interesting results. A d-OOBE can also go to some place that's not recognizably part
of this earth, and that makes it rather difficult to deal with parapsychologically at present; if the subject says he visited a certain part of heaven,
we ordinarily don't have any channels by which we can find out if he was detected by the appropriate instruments there! Even this kind of case is
ultimately researchable, I think, if you can produce the phenomena reliably enough to send several independent observers to the same place, and
find out whether you have a consistent experiential reality, regardless of whether there is any physical basis for it or not. We would have a state-
specific science for d-OOBEs then.

With regard to the d-OOBE, there are two quite different approaches you can take in theorizing about its underlying basis. One is the rather
standard approach: it's just what it seems to be. Consciousness is somehow "at" a different space-time location than the physical body. That, of
course, is our parapsychologically interesting case. Alternatively, you can imagine a d-OOBE as located "within" the brain, but with a hallucinatory
reality having been created, as in a dream, and, simultaneously, a kind of disconnection from the body: you can't move, you can't perceive with
the ordinary sense channels, etc. As to the second type, you can get what you might call pseudo-classical-out-of-the-body experiences, and
confuse them with d-OOBEs, by the way you ask people questions. II you're absorbed in watching a good movie, and you forget where you're
sitting, and the fact that your foot's itching, and you're asked only for a momentary report on your experience, you might say, "Well, I was in this
old castle in Europe watching these people do such-and-such." But that's not really what we mean by a d-OOBE, because if you ask the person to
scan all of his experience, then he will say, "Well, if I turn my attention to it, I'm also aware of sitting here in this seat in the movie theater." In the
d-OOBE, on the other hand, the person will not report anything from the body, and indeed will fairly uniformly report that in order to bring back
bodily sensations he must effect a transition he calls "returning" to the body, which makes the out-of-the-body location disappear. This is why I
call this a discrete out-of-the-body experience; there seems to be a very clear transition in such classical cases.

If one postulates a continuum loosely labeled body awareness, then the d-OOBE represents a definite break in the continuum rather than merely
its lower end. The experience may be reached through a gradual movement along the continuum from higher to lower body awareness, but at
some point a transition phase occurs. Although movement along the body awareness continuum frequently takes place in d-OOBE induction, it
does not seem to be universally the case. Often the experience just occurs, as suddenly as getting hit on the head. There is as much variability in
the state itself as there is in the induction process. The d-OOBE sometimes follows a kind of step function in which it turns into something else. It
may be transformed into a discrete altered state of consciousness, such as a mystical or psychedelic type of experience. It may change from one
discrete state to another while "in" the out-of-the-body location. You can't assume that it's always going to stay within a certain kind of
experiential cluster, or remain a classical d-OOBE for its duration.

Another somewhat tricky source of variability is that you may develop procedures which will decrease a person's body awareness, but not all of
them may lead to the transition into a d-OOBE. We have a lot of evidence that relaxed states are favorable to the operation of psi. Many of these
continua of reduced body awareness may therefore give you enhanced psi results without ever getting the subject into the d-OOBE. If you have a
subject who is not very good at discriminating his internal experiences, he may tell you he's having an out-of-the-body experience when really
he's just at a low point on the body awareness continuum. In addition, all sorts of experimenter biasing effects can come in. The subject,
although not having a classical d-OOBE, will join you in the game and give you the kind of experiential data you like--experiential data is at least
as subject to biasing effects as behavioral data, and possibly more so. I might mention two other possible outcomes of attempting to induce
OOBEs. First, you might have a procedure that will reduce body awareness to the point that it in turn induces a discrete altered state of
consciousness, which then leads into a classical d-OOBE. Second, you might have a procedure which produces a (psi-favorable?) altered state, but
does not ultimately lead into a d-OOBE. The problem is that we simply don't know enough yet to be able to say that we have the criteria, or the
questions to ask the subject, which will enable us to distinguish among these possibilities.

am very much in favor of something that was implicit in all the papers presented at this symposium: the ending of "colonialism" in
experimentation, in which the almighty knowledgeable experimenter manipulates the warm body that we politely term the subject for the sake of
us educated people who understand the universe. This experimentersubject model creates all sorts of artificial games in the situation. I would
really like to see us talk instead about co-experimenters who cooperate to find out something that's mutually valuable to both of them.

And now a few comments about detectors. Most of the attempts at instrumental, animal, or human detection so far have as their background the
idea of the classical d-OOBE. We're obviously not trying to detect somebody on one of the lowered body awareness continua using ordinary kinds
of psi, but rather somebody in the classical out-of-the-body state in which we'd like to think "something" leaves the body and thus can be
detected at the distant location. The mechanical detectors are a fine idea, but I think we should be prepared for a lot of discouragement. This
research is essentially going to be a matter of begging, borrowing, and stealing every possible kind of instrument you can on every occasion, and
hoping that something will show the right kind of blip when your out-ofthe-body experiencer is there. The animal detectors are probably a better
way to approach the problem; we're dealing with a life phenomenon, and will be more likely to detect it with the responses of living things than
with the responses of machines. Machines are too simplified, I think, in some sense. But let's not assume that it's simply a matter of finding the
right animal and putting him where the out-of-the-body person tries to go. You may have to train the animal to show the right kind of response.
With a combination of training techniques, including probably some kind of operant technique to reinforce the animal for making some sort of
unique response at the time the out-of-the-body experience is occurring, we may be able to develop fairly reliable animal detectors. Finally, I
think the emotional link between the animal and the out-of-the-body person is important. It's Blue's pet kitten that they're getting results with at
the Psychical Research Foundation, not hamster number 1437 taken out of the animal colony.

The last thing I want to say is that I think we're going to have to work with drugs in trying to induce out-of-the-body experiences. There are so
many rather old but good cases that came from anesthetic drugs. Nitrous oxide would be a good drug to work with, in my opinion, especially
since it is relatively safe to use under medical supervision. I would probably combine it with something like hypnosis to manipulate motivation,
put in proper posthypnotic suggestions which then might be effective in the anesthetic state, and so forth. On the other hand, I'm very leery of
using hypnosis alone here: I've done one study in which hypnosis produced experientially wonderful out-of-the-body experiences in trained
subjects. They showed classical phenomena that they'd never heard about, but their description of what was in the next room was absolutely
inaccurate. You can investigate out-of-the-body experiences psychologically, and they're exceptionally important from this point of view whether
they have any parapsychological aspects or not. After all, most people who have these experiences come back saying they no longer believe in
survival of death, they know it's true because they've been there, and this is extremely important psychologically. But as parapsychologists we're
interested in the paranormal aspects of out-of-the-body experiences primarily, so I would caution against using hypnosis alone to induce them.
It's too easy to get a good experience without also getting the extrasensory aspects.

End Notes

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