Lucid Dreams And OBEs

Abstract

I was recently at a conference on vision—real vision that is, not the vision of mystics or lucid dreamers. There, over a few litres of Bulgarian beer, I got talking about lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences (OBEs). "But why are they interesting?" asked one of the visual scientists. I began muttering about how nice they are; how difficult to induce; how exhilarating if you succeed; about the clarity of consciousness. . . . The trouble I had answering the question made me realise how unclear is my thinking about lucid dreams and OBEs. So what I would like to do today is to try answer that man’s question more effectively. Lucid dream research will be of interest to other scientists only if we can develop better theories, better integration with the rest of psychology and better experiments to test those theories. So why are lucid dreams and OBEs interesting?