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should try to have an OOBE, but at that point I lost my thread of consciousness, and only remember waking up a while later, feeling that the experiment was a failure. A week later I received a letter from a colleague in New York, the well-known parapsychologist Doctor Stanley Krippner, and I began to wonder if it really was a "failure." He was writing to me about an experience his stepdaughter, Carie, who I am quite fond of, had the same morning I was having my "dream." Carie had spontaneously reported to her father that she had seen me in a restaurant in New York City on her way to school that morning. This would have been roughly about the time I was having the dream. Neither she nor her father knew that I was on the east coast. What do I make of this? This was the first time in years that I had consciously attempted to have an OOBE (I have never, to my knowledge, succeeded), and while I had no conscious memory of having one, a friend reports seeing me in a restaurant in New York City. Even more puzzling, I would have no desire in the world to go to a restaurant in New York City, a place I dislike intensely, if I were having an OOBE, although visiting Carie and her family is always very pleasant. Coincidence? Again, something I would never present as scientific evidence of anything, but something I can't dismiss as meaningless. This last incident illustrates an attitude toward OOBEs that I nave observed in myself, although I do not like to admit it, which is that I am somewhat afraid of them. Part of me is very interested in the phenomenon scientifically, another part of me is excited at the prospect of personally experiencing it. A third part of me knows that an OOBE is something like dying, or opening up part of my mind to an unknown realm, and this third part is not at all anxious to get on with it. If OOBEs are "real," if the things Mr. Monroe describes cannot be dismissed as an interesting kind of fantasy or dream, our world view is going to change radically. And uncomfortably. One thing that psychologists are reasonably sure of about human nature is that it resists change. We like the world to be the way we think it is, even if we think it's unpleasant. At least we can anticipate what may happen. Change and uncertainty have possibilities of unsettling things happening, especially when that change doesn't take account of our desires, our wills, our egos. I have tried to talk mainly about straightforward scientific studies of OOBEs in introducing this book, but now we get to what may be the most important aspect of the subject. Mr. Monroe's experiences are frightening. He is talking about dying, and dying is not a polite topic in our society. We leave it in the hands of priests and ministers to say comforting words, we occasionally joke