From Lucid Dreaming to Pure Consciousness: A Conceptual Framework for the OBE, UFO Abduction and NDE Experiences

Abstract

In order to gain a theoretical understanding of the lucid dream, out-of-body experience (OBE), unidentified flying object abduction experience (UFO), and near-death experience (NDE) it is necessary to place things in their series, as William James, author of the 1902 classic The Varieties of Religious Experience, emphasized. That is, identify the similarities and differences between experiences in order to understand their nature. The goal of such an inquiry is to identify a common state from which they derive and/or common mechanisms or structures. In this paper, lucid dreaming will be framed with the apparently different but related phenomena of three of the cases presented in the June 1989 issue of Lucidity Letter: the OBEs of Father "X," the UFO abduction described by Felicia Payne, and the NDE of Mark Block. A fourth case from the same issue, the witnessing experiences of Anja Savolainen, is also relevant later in this discussion.