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I wish to thank the following persons for reading the manuscript of this paper and
offering valuable suggestions for its improvement: Harvey J. Irwin, Alfonso Marti'nez-
Taboas, John Palmer, Ian Stevenson, and Charles T Tart. I am also grateful to the
following persons for their help in clarifying questions related to their research: Erlendur
Haraldsson, Stuart Blue Harary, Janet L. Mitchell, and Robert L. Morris.
210 The Journ a l o f Parapsychology
P sychological C orrelates
*A few studies will not be considered in this paper because they consist only of brief
mention of unpublished research (e.g., News and announcements, 1970; Roll, 1975, p.
253) and reports without the necessary details for proper evaluation (Green, 1975). No
systematic attempt has been made to survey the non-English literature because of the
lack of bibliographical and language resources.
2I am referring to comparisons of OBEs of different levels of vividness and the
possible effect on the experience of different induction techniques (e.g., subjects own
procedures vs. experimental procedures with specific demand characteristics).
E S P D uring Out-of-Body Experiences 211
3This was not a measure of ESP, but of the magnitude of the ratings assigned to all
pictures.
212 The Jou rn a l o f Parapsychology
Perceptual Aspects
Palmer and Vassar (1974) covered the ESP targets with sheets of
paper for some of the subjects but not for others in order to see if the
accuracy of OBE perception would be affected, but no significant
difference was found between conditions.
Perceptual OBE tests were done with Alexander Tanous as subject
(Osis, 1975). Two kinds of apparatus were used: an optical device and
a color wheel. Both presented a randomly determined composite
picture as target, part of which was an optical illusion that could be
perceived only from the viewing windows of the apparatus, the
purpose being to see if results were consistent with localized OBE
vision expected in an externalization model. Overall results were not
statistically significant. Other analyses were made in terms of Tanouss
feelings of success on specific trials, called high-confidence trials,
which were characterized by feelings of being OB without any body,
like a spot of consciousness or concentrated pinpoint of light, and by
214 The Jo u rn a l o f Parapsychology
P hysiological C orrelates
4The possibility that the number could be perceived subliminally from the
reflection of the target on the case of a clock standing above the target, although
considered unlikely, led Tart (1968) to state that Miss Zs reading of the target number
cannot be considered as providing conclusive evidence for a parapsychological effect
(P- 18).
E S P D uring Out-of-Body Experiences 215
of the first study. Monroe could not read the target while out of the
body, so the physiological correlates of the OBE will not be reported
here.
One of Palmers (1979b) studies considered physiological aspects of
ESP though the large number of analyses performed must be taken
into consideration in assessing the significance of the findings. EEG
data were correlated to ESP scores in 96 analyses, 10 of which were
significant, indicating that:
ESP scores correlated positively with an overall proportion o f EEG alpha
and negatively with EEG beta. A composite index consisting of alpha
minus beta correlated significantly with ESP scores for the baseline
period . . . the correlation for the test period was significant only for the
right hemisphere . . . , although the correlation for the left hemisphere
was quite comparable in magnitude, (p. 138)
ESP/PK C orrelates
O ther Studies
This section includes studies done just to obtain evidence for ESP
or to relate it to other variables not discussed above.
Long-distance OB E-ESP studies done with about 100 volunteers by
216 The Jou rn a l o f Parapsychology
the A.S.P R. have not been formally published, but some available
data may be included here (Osis, 1974b). Participants tried to obtain
information of persons and objects placed in the target area. About
85% of the participants were unsuccessful, although they claimed to
have perceived the target while out of the body. Osis (1974b), referring
to the remaining subjects, writes:
O f those individuals . . . who have shown some signs of OOB perceptual
power, we did not find a single one who could see things clearly every time
he felt he was out o f the body the perception ranging from fairly good
(i.e., clearly distinguishing some objects) to complete failure (i.e., produc
ing very foggy or totally incorrect images), (p. I l l )
Auditory targets were used by Harary and Solfvin (1977) to test for
ESP during OBEs. Their subjects were six students in a parapsychol
ogy seminar who had never had OBEs, and two subjects who claimed
they could induce the experience at will: Ingo Swann and George
Kokoris. All of them had to identify tape-recorded sounds played at a
distant location and to indicate whether the person in charge of
monitoring the randomly selected tapes was present or absent. The
six subjects passed through several procedures (not specified in the
report) to induce OBEs. The results were analyzed separately in terms
of inexperienced and experienced OBE subjects. Only Swann obtained
significant results, scoring direct hits on the auditory and detection
tasks (p < .05). (The published report does not say if it was planned in
advance to analyze separately each of the two experienced subjects or
if this was a post hoc analysis. However, in a recent communication,
Harary (Note 2) informed me that the analyses were planned in
advance.)
Stuart Blue Harary was the subject/experimenter of a series of
OBE tests conducted by researchers of the Psychical Research Foun
dation (Morris, Harary, Janis, Hartwell, & Roll, 1978). Colored letters
were used as targets in a distant location. Harary seemed to have some
partial hits,5 but they were not statistically significant. There were four
sessions in which he had to indicate the location of persons in
different rooms. Only one session obtained significant results (p <
.05); the overall results were not significant. Three-dimensional
5This information is not included in the official report of the studies discussed
here, but may be found in Rogo (1976), where the following interesting qualitative
(non-predicted) aspects of Hararys OBE vision are presented: (1) perceptual distor
tions, (2) unclear vision, (3) reversal of target positions.
E S P D uring Out-of-Body Experiences 217
objects were also used as ESP targets in two experimental sessions; one
of them was considered a hit, while Harary did not make a choice in
the second session. No statistical analyses were reported to assess the
results of the first session. (These tests were not part of Morriss
original design, but were done by Rogo [1976]. The targets, however,
were not selected randomly.)
D iscussion
6Osis did not report statistical tests, but wrote that most (85%) of the subjects were
unsuccessful on the ESP task.
Table 1
O ccurrence of ESP D uring OBEs in the Laboratory
independently responsible for ESP and the OBE. At the moment, the
concept of the OBE as an ESP-conducive state has little empirical
support.
Unpublished research with the same design shows that veridical OBE vision can be
both localized and not localized on different occasions in the same subject (Osis,
1974a).
222 The Jo u rn a l o f Parapsychology
The observation that Swann had good ESP results with targets
made of leather, fabric, and clay and not with plastic and glass is
interesting in the light of Roll and Pratts (1968) discovery that Pavel
Stepanek scored significantly only with cardboard targets and not with
aluminum targets. However, psychological variables have not been
ruled out in either study.
While most of the studies reviewed here used visual targets, one of
them explored auditory stimuli (Harary & Solfvin, 1977). Since
spontaneous OBEs show a wide range of perceptual abilities (e.g.,
Green, 1968; Twemlow, Gabbard, & Jones, 1982), it may be worth
while to explore different perceptual modalities in future experimen
tal studies.
Direction and magnitude of ESP. Most of the studies reporting
significant ESP showed positive deviations from chance, but Palmer
found evidence for ESP-missing (Palmer & Vassar, 1974). Post hoc
analyses indicated that ESP magnitude was affected by the OBE state,
whereas ESP direction was affected by the OBE induction technique
(Palmer, 1978a).
111 conducted a study of spontaneous OBEs in which an attempt was made to study
ESP and the sheep-goat effect; unfortunately, the hypothesis could not be tested because
only a few ESP reports were obtained (Alvarado, in press).
224 The Jo u rn a l o f Parapsychology
C oncluding Remarks
R efer en ce N otes
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Division of Parapsychology
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Charlottesville, Virginia 22908