I just had a very vivid OBE during a SP episode (posted details in the OBE topic).
I’ve read a ton of info about AP and OBE, but I had never heard of the sense of touch being as dominant as what I just experienced. The physical sensations were so strong that I kept wondering if my physical body was somehow floating around and trying to move through walls, like a weird sleepwalking/floating phenomenon. Even though I knew better, it just felt so convincingly tactile.
Has anyone else ever experienced this during an OBE? I had heard the opposite about AP, that hearing & vision were overwhelming, whereas physical senses are usually minimal or not present.
I also wonder if it has to do with being in the Real Time Zone vs. the Astral Plane, Anyone have any insight into what senses you may have experienced strongly in either of these instances?
In his book Astral Dynamics, Robert Bruce quotes a person that has been blind since birth. And when he AP’s he “feels” everything instead of seeing it. I’ve had 1 or 2 OBE’s. In one i had no sight but i somehow knew exactly where i was in my room. But it was kinda dreamlike so I’m not sure if it was an OBE.
Well, hearing and vision are physical senses too. Technically, if our astral body is invisible, then light is going right through it or bending around instead of bouncing like it should, so we should also be blind. So I’ve heard from people (who frankly seem to overthink these things. )
I wouldn’t say my sense of touch in an OBE is stronger or weaker than what I feel in-body, just that they’re weird because the tactile doesn’t match the visual. For example, I float through a window and feel no resistance at all. But when I witness nothing but empty space in front of me, I feel a repelling force like a riptide-- but not cold, not wet, not flowy, just purely forceful. I don’t feel warm in sunshine, but I do feel stung in rain because it’s like cold needles going right through me. I think another astral body is sitting on me, but when I try to remember what the weight felt like-- it’s like it’s hardly there. On the other hand, if I sit out of my body instead of float out, I can feel a rind where the two points of view still attach, that’s more vivid than a dream I had of the same thing happening. (This is all in what I would consider the Real Time Zone.)
When it gets more dreamlike, sight and touch start to match up more and overall that gives me-- I guess-- the illusion of touch being far more vivid?
The next 10% if your able to relax in step 3
the vibrations will stop and stillness will occur
then thats when you have separated soul or conciousness from body
and need to just move it and u should be astral
Apparently I just needed to do more reading on the topic. I’m almost finished with Robert Monroe’s Journeys Out of the Body, and he clearly describes everything being tactile, especially at first.
I had another OBE last night, and the way I exited was really weird, I slid down the length of my bed feet first, and the whole time I could feel my face dragging along the rough-woven texture of the bedsheets. Not very pleasant, but definitely memorable.
What I want to know now is, if we are out of body, then why do things sometimes feel like physical barriers? I feel ceilings, walls, & surfaces in the same concrete, physical way as in waking life. It takes a great deal of concentration to remind myself that I can indeed pass through them, but only if I want to. This contradicts Monroe’s account of his experiences. He is constantly saying things like “I reached for the doorknob, but my hand unexpectedly passed though it.” I always have the opposite problem, expect to pass through things easily but I don’t. Maybe I just vibrate more densely, or my subconscious is more actively trying to recreate physical aspects of experience? Thoughts/experiences, anyone?
@WASD, Astral Dynamics is next on my list to read. I can’t wait!
In my experience, OBEs can quickly become dreamlike if we stay away for too long or venture too far from our bodies. The astral body naturally wants to go to the astral plane where it belongs, and you are much more likely to fall into a subjective dream experience there if you lose concentration or have the smallest stray thought. Several times I was sure that I had consciously projected out of my body, only to wake up in a dream with no memory of what happened in between. Now I am trying to follow advice and start with short trips away and gradually build up the length with each one, and I find that the experiences are just as vivid as waking life when I am able to remember them clearly.
So if you think you had an OBE, you probably did. It’s like Robert Bruce always says though, if you can’t remember it then it may as well have never happened.
Some years ago when I experienced an OBE the senses I felt was so strong and vivid, kind of difficult to explain but I will try… In a short sentence, what I felt back then was something far more vivid then life itself…
It started with me thinking that I failed to sleep, so I opened my eyes in order to just pull myself together and try to induce a lucid dream or whatever, anyhow, very soon I notice that I am floating upwards over my body, I turn around and see myself sleeping…
I look around and decide to try flying through my table, I manage with doing that, but once I decide to fly outside the house I very soon realize that EVERYTHING is “dead”. I was aware of that in reality the trees had already bloomed, but here in the OBE they had no leaves… That just pissed me off. And there were no sunshine, only grey clouds…
Oh yeah, why do I tell you this? I am telling you this because I don’t want you to believe that me saying that it felt more vivid than life itself would mean that the OBE I experienced would be a proof of that OBE actually exists, but me floating over my body is the term of me having an OBE, at least in this case. Hope you found this helpful.
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