yes! another member of the BIG topics
This topic is from now on known as the big OBE topic. Please post all your OBE related stuff here.
When this topic becomes too big (+50 posts), we will continue with part II
While reading here about OBE’s I suddenly remembered a strange experience I had when I was 17 years old.
I was sleeping. The doorbel rang and I woke up. To open the door I ran (still half alseep ) down the stairs.
Then I suddenly realized I was looking at myself running down the stairs. As if I was walking behind myself. As soon as I realized this strange thing, everything was back to normal.
I have to admit I smoked lots of weed in that period of time. :}
Maybe I was in a sort of half-dreaming state of mind when it happened. Maybe it was another mind-trick…?
Well you were half asleep and a heavy pot smoker so that could be an explanation . One of the OBE-explanations I like is Susan Blackmore’s self-image-construction-thesis: sawka.com/spiritwatch/luciddreams.htm
Wow. I never knew there was a term as OBE. Sometimes in my dreams I’d see myself sleeping. Does that count as an OBE? How is it possible for the spirit to go out of the body? What’s the significance of that? And is it good or bad? BTW I’m new, hence the many questions
I think its realy up to you to decide if its an dream or OBE or what, but i have heard that OBE is diffrent from dreams, more real-like if you know what i mean… You should check out www.mysticweb.org, im shure you will find ansvear to many of your questions there.
I’ve got an OBE-FAQ that covers allmoust everything about OBE, a very big document, havent read it yet, but is sure is big (220Kb plain text) U’ll find it on my web page home.no/lucid (out of body experience - FAQ by: Jouni A. Smed)
My strong opinion about OBE’s is that they’re just LD’s with very cool starting phase.
I’ve had these OBEs quite a lot, they can come when trying WILD.
At some point during the hypnogogic-state your body may start to vibrate violently, that’s when you should try to get up to start LD, other type of OBE starting is when you suddenly feel yourself weightless and start to float towards the ceiling, in this case you should wait until you’re high enough to make controlled landing and you’re in high level LD.
I thought of a way to finally proof if a obe is real or just an imagination of our brain…lol…
But first i will go by all the postings of the forum…Lol…
however this could be done by real scientist and very hardcore ober’'s or real sceptics…
Same for near death experiences…
“Or maybe a form of false awakening, in the sense that the starting environment is the same as wherever you fell asleep, and that the dreamer believes it to be real (no lucidity).”-dunlar
I think that is a great point you make dunlar, that if someone had an OBE, it couldn’t be an LD because they think that what is around them is real. Hence, even if it is an FA, they can’t become “lucid”, because the definition of lucidity is knowing that you are dreaming. Hah hah.
I have a friend that claims to be a pro OBEr. I put an obect in the centre of my room (a cactus) and told him to tell me the next day what was in the room.
The next day he said he had an OBE, flew over to my house (just down the road) went into my room and saw … a vortex. Then i told him it was a cactus I put there.
Although it was an interesting experiment, I don’t think this neither proves nor disproves astral projection.
It could be taken 3 ways:
he failed to see the cactus, therefore astral projection is merely a dream located within his own body.
he saw the “true” nature of the cactus. Carlos Castaneda would probably have something to say about this…
He made it up. Knowing the guy, this is the most likely explanation.
i think ultimately it is impossible to prove or disprove astral projection but i am interested in your proof jeff.
mighhtyamoeba, you wouldn’t have personally felt that astral projection had been proven (well supported) if your friend told you about the cactus? Why don’t you feel that it could or could not be proven?
Id add number 4 to your list Mighty-
4.OBes take place in different dimension.Similar enough but different.
I believe in it strongly since my few experiences.This is actually why i doubt obes could be proved-some things stay real and some are different.You never know which one will be which.
And i think about as dimension so close to ours that things are similar.I e you “wake” in your house.You know its your house,looks same…but…some things are moved some are not where they supposed to be,some furniture dont fit…so on.
How to prove anything with it?
Jack - that is sort of what i was trying to say in 3 but you explained it better.
KMCdonald - if my friend had reported that he saw a cactus (and I knew he hadn’t cheated) I would have been very amazed and yes, considered this to be proof of OBE.
However, because of Jack’s no.4 i think it is unlikely he would have seen a cactus even if OBE is true. If no.4 is the case then it makes OBE unprovable scientifically. I think in the end it comes down to a matter of faith whether or not you believe it. I’ve never experienced a proper OBE so I’m more inclined to believe they are just dreams.
MightyAmoeba, if no.4 is the case, then how would you explain the fact that people who have OBEs tend to see things similar to what they have already seen. (ie, it is the same time of day, everyone is wearing the same clothes, etc) but they tend not to experience correctly things that they have not experienced? (I just though of another explanation, no.5, OBEs are temporarily influencing your will on every single subatomic particle to the point that you control reality the same way as a dream, and this would mean that when there was a “vortex” instead of a cactus, there truly was a “vortex”).
Hi
I think proofs are impossible.I already said it somewhere,but anyway:
Even if your friend see the cactus (without cheating,and not by incident) you are not sure that OBEs are true.Cause if you believe that OBEs can happen then you can´t simply say that e.g clearvoyance is impossible.So the only thing that you can prove (when you had someone who could do this test so many times that all the statistic fanatics are satisfied…) is that “something supernatural” exists.
But anyway,is there a different in an OBE where you see your real surroundings cause you left your body,and a LD where you can see your real surroundings by clearvoyance?
I like to think about it quite simple:
Whatever it is,enjoy it
Good points you all bring up. Having experience with OBE, my opinion is that it CAN be real, but that sometimes, probably even a majority of the time it is not. I have had one, maybe two OBE experiences but they were both incredibly short. My opinion is that with a great enough amount of concentration you can leave your body and travel in this world, and go to a friends house and see what is in their room. The problem is that this level of concentration is very hard to reach let alone mantain. That is why my experiences were so short because I lost concentration quickly. It is also interesting to note that after one of these experiences I went directly into a non-lucid dream. So many of the OBE’s that people talk about could have started off real but then they lost it and went into a dream, explaining all the weird stuff that goes on.
) down the stairs.
