Monroe Institute Research Files: Out-of-Body Experience

expressed the desire to meet him, to which she acceded. The technician removed the electrodes, and I went outside with her and met her husband. He was about her height, curly haired, and after several conversational amenities, I left. I did not query the technician or her husband as to anything they saw, noticed, or felt. However, my impression was that he definitely was the man I had observed with her during the non-physical activity. My second impression was that she was not in the control console room when I visited them, but was in another room, standing up, with him. This may be hard to determine, if there is a first rule that the tech nician is supposed to always stay at the console. If she can be con vinced that the truth is more important in this case, perhaps this second aspect can be validated. The only supporting evidence other than what might have appeared on the EEG lies in the presence of the husband, of which I was unaware prior to the experiment. This latter fact can be verified by the technician, I am sure. (Tart, 1967, pp. 254-255) As with Miss Z, Monroe's physiological changes were interesting but not medically exciting. He was not at all near death, just showing the relaxed body characteristics of sleep and relaxation. This fits the general pattern that emerged from many later studies that while being physiologically close to death may facilitate the occurrence of an NDE, it is not necessary for either NDEs or OBEs. As to exactly what was Monroe's state during OBEs, there was some general simi larity to Miss Z's, in that both involved a stage 1 EEG pattern that was somewhat like, but not identical to, ordinary dreaming, but the two patterns, in the limited sampling of these two studies, were not identical. Monroe had some alphoid activity, but not the large amount Miss Z showed. He also showed REMs in his second OBE where he reported seeing a stranger with the technician. Too, in the all-night study we also did with Monroe to get a baseline of normal sleep, when he was not trying for OBEs, he showed a normal pattern, and did not call the stage 1 REM periods that occurred there OBEs. He sharply distinguished the states of consciousness of his dreams and his OBEs. CHARLES T. TART 87 We must remember too that while there is a strong correlation between EEG stage 1 REM pattern and the psychological experience of dreaming, correlation is not causality or identity with the physi ological state of stage 1. We can think of stage 1 REM as a physi ological state that has evolved during the sleep of mammals. In humans the psychological activity of dreaming can use this physi ological pattern to manifest itself readily, although psychological states very like dreaming may sometimes occur in other physiological conditions. Too, the lucid dream, a dream state in which conscious ness "wakes up" and feels in full possession of its waking faculties, also occurs in the physiological state of stage 1 REM (LaBerge, 1991). Perhaps an OBE is also facilitated in this same physiological state. Was Monroe really "out" when he saw the technician away from her machine and speaking with a strange man? In her notes, my technician reported: ... In the second sleep the patient saw me [the tech] and he said I had a visitor, which I did. However, it is possible that Mr. Monroe may have heard the visitor cough during his [cigarette] break be tween sleeps. Mr. Monroe states that he patted the visitor on the cheeks and tried to take his hand but that the visitor avoided. Mr. Monroe recalls that he left the cot, went under it and out the door into the recording room and then into the hallway.... Mr. Monroe did not see the number. Thus we have only weak evidence that Monroe was actually "out" on this occasion, a result he found as unsatisfactory as I did. I left the University of Virginia post after a year there to take up a new position at the University of California at Davis, so our work ended for the time being on a note both encouraging and frustrating. The scientific world had doubled its knowledge about EEG patterns during OBEs, since there were now two studies instead of one, but a common pattern had not emerged, and the parapsychological as pects of Monroe's OBEs had not been confirmed in this study. Out-of-Body Experiences: Fourth Study Several months later, after moving to California, I wanted to have more data about whether Monroe was really "out" in his OBEs, so I decided to try an experiment in which my wife Judy and I would, for a short period, try to create a sort of "psychic beacon" by concen trating on him, to try to help Monroe have an OBE and travel to 88 JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES our home. If he could describe our home accurately, this would be good evidence for a psi component in his OBEs, because he had no idea what our new home was like. As in my first study using hyp nosis to try to produce OBEs, I was hoping for a big effect that would be obvious evidence of ESP. I telephoned Monroe and told him that we would try to guide him across the country to our home at some unspecified time during the night of the experiment. That was all I told him. That evening I randomly selected a time to begin concentrating; the only restriction I put on my choice was that it would be some time after I thought Monroe had been asleep for a while. The time turned out to be 11:00 PM California time, 2:00 AM where Monroe lived in Virginia. At 11:00, my wife and I began our concentration; but at 11:05, the tele phone rang. We never get calls late at night, so this was rather sur prising and disturbing, but we did not answer the phone, nor did we have an answering machine so we did not know who had called. We tried to continue concentrating and did so until 11:30 PM. The following day, I telephoned Monroe and noncommittally told him that the results had been encouraging, but that I was not going to say anything more about it until he had mailed me his written account of what he had experienced. His account was as follows: The evening passed uneventfully, and 1 finally got into bed about 1:40 am, still very much wide awake. The cat was lying in bed with me. After a long period of calming mind, a sense of warmth swept over body, no break in consciousness, no pre-sleep. Almost immedi ately felt something (or someone) rocking my body from side to side, then tugging at my feet! (Heard cat let out complaining yowl.) I recognized immediately that this had something to do with Charley's experiment, and with full trust, did not feel my usual caution with strangers (!) The tugging at my legs continued, and I finally man aged to separate one second body arm and hold it up, feeling around in the dark. After a moment, the tugging stopped and a hand took my wrist, first gently, then very, very firmly and pulled me out of the physical (body) easily. Still trusting, and a little excited, I ex pressed feeling to go to Charley, if that was where he (it) wanted to lead me. The answer came back affirmatively (although there was no sense of personality, very businesslike). With the hand around my wrist very firmly, I could feel a part of the arm belonging to the hand (slightly hairy, muscular male). But could not "see" who be longed to the arm. Also heard my name called. Then we started to move, with the familiar feeling of something like air rushing around my body. After a short trip (seemed around 5 seconds in duration), we stopped, and the hand released my wrist. There was complete CHARLES T. TART 89 silence and darkness. When I drifted down into what seemed to be a room.... (Tart, 1977a, pp. 190-191) When Monroe finished his brief OBE he got out of bed to telephone me: it was 11:05 PM, our time. Thus he experienced a tug pulling him from his body within one or two minutes of the time we started concentrating. The portion of his account that I have omitted, on the other hand, his description of our home and what my wife and I were doing, was quite inaccurate. He perceived too many people in the room, and perceived my wife and me performing actions that we did not do. Looking at the description, I would conclude that nothing psychic had happened. Thinking about the precise timing, though, I cannot help but wonder whether one can have an OBE in which one is really "out" in some sense, yet have grossly mistaken (extrasen sory) perceptions of the location one has gone to. Whether or not that was the case in this experiment, after years of researching how much perception is a semi-arbitrary construction, often badly dis torted, even in our normal state (Tart 1986, 1994), I have no doubt that this is possible for OBEs. I will return to this question later. Out-of-Body Experiences: Fifth Study In 1968 I was able to do one further study with Monroe when he briefly visited California. I had a functioning sleep laboratory at the University of California at Davis, more comfortable than the Univer sity of Virginia EEG lab, and he spent an afternoon with me and my assistants (Tart, 1969). In the course of a two-hour session, Mon roe had two brief OBEs, and reported awakening within a few sec onds after each, allowing correlation of physiological recordings with the OBEs. EEG, eye movements, and peripheral blood flow (plethys mograph) were again recorded, and he was monitored via closed cir cuit TV for the first OBE. The television monitoring equipment was already set up for other purposes, and I had vague hopes of seeing something ghost-like emerge from Monroe's body if he had an OBE; but nothing unusual was seen and we turned it off after the first reported OBE as Monroe felt uncomfortable being watched. Monroe was asked to try to produce an OBE, then to travel into the equipment room where my assistants and I were, and to read a five-digit target number in that equipment room. In his first OBE, he reported finding himself in the hall connecting the rooms for a 90 JOURNAL OF NEAR-DEATH STUDIES period of eight to ten seconds at most, but then being forced to return to his body because of breathing difficulties. In his second OBE, he reported trying to follow the EEG cable through the wall to the equipment room but, to his amazement, found himself outside the building and facing the wall of another building, still following a ca ble. He later recognized a courtyard on the inside of the building, which had a three story wall and was 180 degrees opposite the equip ment room, as the place he had experienced himself. Although he had no memory of ever having seen this courtyard, it is possible that he could have seen it while in my office earlier in the afternoon. There was no cable in the courtyard, at least not on the surface, although there may have been buried electrical cables under the sur face connecting the wings of the building, and there were some cables from the laboratory room to my office, going most of the way toward the courtyard. Again we have that frustrating pattern of my research with Monroe of no ESP results clear enough to be conclusive, but not results so clearly inaccurate that I would feel comfortable saying nothing at all happened. The EEG prior to Monroe's reported OBE may be classified roughly as a borderline or hypnagogic state, a stage 1 pattern containing in stances of alphoid activity rhythm (indicative of drowsiness) and theta activity (a normal sleeping pattern, part of stage 1). This pat tern persisted through the first OBE, but was accompanied by a sud