From: Haunter Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body Subject: Links to info about research in OBEs and a few abstracts thrown in Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 06:33:42 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 161 Message-ID: <3857A6C6.7352B186@castles.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-285.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en]C-DIAL (Win95; U) X-Accept-Language: en Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!npeer.kpnqwest.net!blackbush.xlink.net!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews3 My friends: I just stumbled onto the website that posts the numerous research abstracts/summaries from a recent meeting of the Parapsychology Association. There's quite a few that looked into OBEs specifically: the addy is; http://perso.wanadoo.fr/basuyaux/parapsy/parapsy-eng.html Here's some quick examples. I've fallen way behind this weekend and so will have to apologize if I've been remiss in my answering any posts sent my way the last few days. Hopefully later today, tomarrow at the latest. Haunter xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Sometime back, I mistakenly referenced Dr. Susan Blackmore in answer to a statement by someone in the NG. I was wrong. It was Jessica Utts of UC Davis that I was refering to regarding her skills as a parapsychologist/statistician, not Susan Blackmore. I'm appologize to the individual I responded to, it was an honest mistake. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx EXPLORING COGNITION DURING OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES Susan J. Blackmore Department of Psychology,University of the West of England, Bristol Two major experimental paradigms have dominated research into out-of-body experiences (OBEs). The approach based on the ecsomatic theories has sought evidence for a real excursion out of the body or for signs of paranormal ability during OBEs. The evidence has been, at best, weak and unreliable. This approach also suffers the problem of distinguishing between really leaving the body and using imagination plus ESP. A second approach, based on psychological theories, has sought differences between OBErs and non-OBErs in their imagery skills, cognitive abilities or personality. Subjects have not been studied during their OBEs. Some success has been achieved but the OBE is still very poorly understood. A new approach is suggested in which OBErs are tested for cognitive skills during the OBE. This way we might ascertain whether the OBE involves cognitive abilities the same as or different from those used in waking imagery. The method incorporates tests of paranormal abilities but its main value is in exploring whether the OBE is, psychologically, more than "just imagination". xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Mapping the Characteristics of OBEs Carlos S. Alvarado Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh One of the aspects investigated by those concerned with the study of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) is the characteristics of the experience. This includes such features as sensations of floating, travelling to distant places or to other dimensions, seeing themselves in a replica of their physical body or with no body at all, seeing the physical body, tunnels, lights and spiritual entities, and, more rarely, obtaining information about events happening at a distance. Studies of OBE features have uncovered many other interesting characteristics to numerous to discuss here (e.g., Alvarado, 1984; Green, 1968; Giovetti, 1983; Osis, 1979; Poynton, 1975; Twemlow, Gabbard, & Jones, 1982). As Blackmore (1982) says: "A great deal can be learned about the conditions under which the experiences occurred, how long they lasted, and what they were like" (p. 45). However, little systematic work has been conducted about the phenomenology of the experience. This includes the study of the incidence and variety of OBE features and the study of the features as a function of such variables as cognitive and personality correlates, or induction factors. An OBE research program sensitive to the experience's phenomenological richness is essential not only to define an OBE, but to gain a more complete understanding of the OBE because it would let us see the fine-grained picture of the experience that is lost in more general studies. This more sensitive approach would allow us to construct and test theories of OBEs, such as Irwin's (1985) synesthetic theory. It would also eventually lead us to better understand both the constancy and dissimilarities of OBEs between and within individuals. Such an understanding would lead to a development of empirical taxonomies and typologies of the OBE, and to clear distinctions between the OBE and other analogous phenomena (at least phenomenologically, if not in terms of causal mechanisms). xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx REMOTE VIEWING REPLICATION: EVALUATED BY CONCEPT ANALYSIS Russell Targ Bay Research Institute, Palo Alto, California This is the first publication of a carefully conducted series of remote viewing trials carried out at SRI International in 1979. In this formal experiment we incorporated all the revisions in methodology suggested by critics of our earlier published experiments. We worked with six inexperienced volunteer subjects, each of whom attempted to describe six randomly selected distant locations visited by the experimenters. Four of these subjects achieved independent statistical significance in their six trials, evaluated by rank ordering of the six transcripts. From these data we calculate Stouffer's Z-score for the entire experiment as 4.52 standard deviations from chance expectation, which, when divided by the square root of the number of trials (36) gives an effect size 0.75. This effect size was comparable to what was seen in our laboratory at that time. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx A Pilot Study in ESP, Dreams, and Purported OBEs Stanley Krippner In 1966, we conducted a 4-night pilot study at the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn, New York. The subject was a male student who claimed to have frequent out-if-body experiences (OBEs) at night. We used a telepathy and a clairvoyance target (art print) each night, the latter having been placed in a box attached to the ceiling of the sleep room. The subject was asked to attempt discerning the clairvoyance target if he had an OBE, and to attempt dreaming about it even if he did not have an OBE. Outside judges observed few correspondences between the transcribed dream reports and the telepathy targets, but several correspondences between the reports and the clairvoyance targets. The most provocative dream report was on the final night of the study when a print of Berman's "View in Perspective of a Perfect Sunset" was randomly selected; the subject dreamed about a sunset, a content item that appears in fewer than 1 out of every 500 male dreams reports according to Hall and Van de Castle's normative data. The subject reported having had an OBE that night, and the EEG record disclosed an unusual pattern of slow brain wave activity interrupting REM sleep shortly before he was awakened for the dream report in which he mentioned the sunset. It is recommended that sophisticated brain scanning devices (e.g., CT, PET, MRI) be used with subject in an attempt to identify brain activity during purported OBEs. The expense and discomfort of these procedures have delayed their use by parapsychologists, but the advantages of these procedures outweigh the disadvantages. SYNCHRONICITY - AN IDEA FROM ALBERT EINSTEIN? Wilfried Kugel It is shown that C.G. Jung received his basic impressions of a non-causal connection - which he later termed synchronicity - from Albert Einstein. Many years later Wolfgang Pauli also discussed this complex of problems with Einstein, and it was Pauli who motivated Jung to cast the model of synchronicity in written form. The underlying concept is identified with special properties of Hermann Minkowski's four-dimensional space-time, as have been worked out by Kurt Gödel. Jung's hypothesis of psychical relativity of space and time is reduced to relativistic effects arising only from the observer's position in four-dimensional space-time. In what follows I will review some of the work conducted along these lines with spontaneous OBEs and will suggest some areas in need of further research.