Lucid/OBE Descriptive Analyses:
The first set of analyses focuses on the incidence and distribution of the focal experiences, lucid dreams and out-of-body experiences. The diary entries sent after the class finished were included in this set of analyses in order to show the changes in frequency of the experiences across time. Thus 9% of the 310 total experiences were not also examined by the class.
With the additional years entries Father X sent, it can been seen in this bar graph that there was a gradual decline in experiences from 1981 to 1995. Specifically they peaked in 1982 and spiked again in 1989 but otherwise showed a rather smooth decline in frequency as he commented..
Distribution as a function of month of the year showed a marked dip in July. In terms of days of the month there was a slight dip in the middle of the months with 26.5% experienced in the middle third versus 36.5% for the first third and 37.1% for the last third.
OBE's were slightly less represented (42.6%) in the bulk of the experiences than lucid dreams (46.8%) with the remaining small percentage taken by experiences which were difficult to identify as either an OBE/lucid dream (8.1%) or nonlucid (2.6%) dreams. It was clear from his diary that Father X appreciated the differences between OBE's and lucid dreams as can be seen from this Sept 23, 1984 quote, "A couple of out-of-body experiences after I had returned from a short lucid dream." In the vast majority of his experiences he clearly indicated if it was an OBE or a lucid dream. Several times during the course of one night he had both types intermingled and clearly identified each. However, there was the occasional mixed experience. Here is an illustration, "When I got out of bed to walk over to the door to flick the switch lucidity hit me and I knew I was in an out-of-body experience. (Oct. 9, 1989)."
Thus four categories were derived for some additional analysis (OBE, lucid dream, OBE/lucid, and nonlucid). Two one-way ANOVA's were calculated with these experience categories on number of lines per experience (an estimate of elaboration) and sequence number in the diary. It can be seen in this bar graph of type of experiences as a function of sequence number that the significant finding (F(3,309) = 2.53, p = .0575) was due to the nonlucid dreams occurring later in the diary while the OBE's tended to occur earlier in the diary. As time went on despite his decision to not include nonlucid dreams he felt compelled to include these few. It will be seen as the discussion progresses that this may be of some conceptual importance. As for degree of elaboration of each experience, this significant finding (F(3,309) = 3.87, p <.01) was accounted for in the main by the more detail spent by this monk in describing his lucid dreams than in describing his other experiences.