What are OBE's after all ?

Hello !

I’ve been reading a lot of things about OBE’s lately. I heard that you first must “exit” your own body. Sounds creepy enough. So I’m full of questions. I know the definisions and all that stuff, so please don’t post something like [OBE = Out of body experience - person claims to be out of theyr body…] and things like that. Please answer these questions at first:

  1. Does an OBE occur inside your mind like every ND or LD ?
  2. Is an OBE something like a LD, the only difference is that you enter yourself the dreamworld ? What are the differences between OBE and LD ?
  3. Why do you have to “exit” your body in an OBE, in order to do what you want ?
  4. Does the OBE have to do with spirituality and religious stuff ?
  5. What happenes if you do a RC during a OBE ?
  6. Can an OBE occur by itself ?

I’d like some answers from people who allready experienced at least one OBE. Please be specific on the answer. I don’t have anything against the long replies, those are the most meaningfull, but I wish to also have the exact answer of each question… if there is one.

Have a good day !

What is an OBE?

  • If you ask me, it’s a dream.

So… does this OBE occur inside your mind ? It can’t be a normal dream, as you must exit your own body… I’m scared to do such an OBE, as I think it might has something to do with spirituality, and I don’t want to get in touch with such thing.

Is an OBE as safe as any dream can be ?

1. Does an OBE occur inside your mind like every ND or LD ?
There’s no substantial evidence that it occurs outside of the mind, so Yes is the safer presumption.

2. Is an OBE something like a LD, the only difference is that you enter yourself the dreamworld ?
But in a Wake Initiated LD, you do enter yourself in the dreamworld. Some OBE’rs may say that their OBE always paints the scene of the room they were in at the time of the OBE, therefore it must take place there, but False Awakenings often do that too and that eventually shows itself to be a dream.

What are the differences between OBE and LD ?
From my experience, an OBE is accompanied by thuds in the air whereas an LD isn’t. New Agers call these thuds “vibrations,” which was no way to prepare me for the Jurassic Park T.Rex tapdancing somewhere offscreen, so I’m angry at them.

3. Why do you have to “exit” your body in an OBE, in order to do what you want ?
If what I want is to experience exiting my body, it’s kind of the definition, isn’t it? :confused: Maybe some of the things that OBE’ing fulfills, can be done in an LD. A lot of other things that a lot of people want can be accomplished in-body, while they’re awake, so you don’t have to do this.
Unless what you want to do after all is try to prove that OBE’s are more than a mental experience, in which case, yeah, I suppose that would help.

4. Does the OBE have to do with spirituality and religious stuff ?
An OBE was described in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 of the Bible, and (I heard, but am less formally familiar with) probably a host of other religions’ texts. But I’ve done it myself and seen no deities or guides at all, not even met a dead person to tell me I’d breached into the afterlife, or angels to tell me I’ve been hubristic by initiating this experience under my own steam.

5. What happenes if you do a RC during a OBE ?
I haven’t been able to try. I can’t find my hands in an OBE. :sad:

6. Can an OBE occur by itself ?
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: I think it can only occur by itself. The way I initiate an OBE, so to speak, is to go so far into mentally doing nothing that it becomes the opposite of doing something rather than the privative. Such a deep relaxation allows something else to break out. It’s like triggering a reflex, it’s not an action you can do directly, but you can do it deliberately (just indirectly.)

It can’t be a normal dream, as you must exit your own body…
So if you did already firmly believe this, why ask question #1? :neutral:

Is an OBE as safe as any dream can be ?
I would think the only people with the experience to accurately answer NO, is in no position to tell us. But I’m still alive! And Robert Monroe (in the video link answering question #6) lived to a venerable old age, that I know of, and he was having OBE’s quite frequently.

"An OBE was described in 2 Corinthians chapter 12 of the Bible, and (I heard, but am less formally familiar with) probably a host of other religions’ texts. But I’ve done it myself and seen no deities or guides at all, not even met a dead person to tell me I’d breached into the afterlife, or angels to tell me I’ve been hubristic by initiating this experience under my own steam. "

2 Corinthians chapter 12 doesn’t describe any OBE. This is what is says:

“I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth) such an one caught up to the third heaven. And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth). How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”

This experience is something very special. Tell me: where does it describe an OBE ? It says loud and clear: “whether in the body, I cannot tell or whether out of the body”. Let me tell you what I understand here: Out of the body means somethign like the “soul”, and in the body means that he just dissapeared to the third heaven like that, with his body.

Something tells me there’s something dirty with this OBE… I have one more question:

Is an OBE somesort of dream which you “enter conciously”, unlike the LD where in the middle of the dream you get lucid ? Or can you enter the dream conciously and have an LD which is NOT a OBE ?

PS: Can the OBE occur by itself when it wants to even if YOU don’t want it to take place ?

Dirty? How so?

Yes, you can have an LD at the beginning of the dream instead of in the middle that is not an OBE. That’s what a Wake Initiated Lucid Dream (WILD) is.

I’ve read of people who’ve had an OBE by accident, or got up in the middle of the night for a glass of water only to find that they can’t reach the doorknob and they turn around and see that they left their body on the sofa. I even remember reading a complaint from someone who kept having them.

But I get the general impression that the majority of people require an altered state of mind that can sometimes take several years of practice to develop, that the incoming OBE signs can usually be felt quite a while before the actual OBE, and if you put the slightest effort into resisting then the episode will break very easily because that state of mind is rather delicate.

Well, some people think it does, but some believe it’s more than that…it’s up to you to decide :wink:

The only thing that makes OBE different from a lucid dream is that in OBE your ‘‘dream self’’ leaves your physical body, and if you look down, you can see it lying in the bed.IN lucid dreams, this is not the case, it’s like in a normal dream.

You don’t.But then it’s not an OBE :wink:
You see? Out-of-body experience.

-It’s the same answer as to the first question.

Interesting question.I don’t really know.You should try it :smile:

Yes, it can.

I hope this short answer helps.It’s as simple as it can get :smile:

I think I read somewhere that OBE’s were experimentally confirmed…

now to find out where…

Charles Tart’s target number experiment was the closest I’ve read to something like that:

answers.yahoo.com/question/index … 531AA2h87x
near-death.com/tart.html

By “dirty” I mean it that the OBE is something like the line between the normal life and the spiritual life.:tempted: I’m not sure, but that’s what it seems it is…

I don’t think I understood everything right of your story with Miss Z, but I think she OBE-ed and in the OBE she looked at a number. That number was exactly like the number IRL. So it can not be “just a dream”… or can it ?

Lord Antares thinks I should try it… well that’s why I’m asking questions here, because I am afraid to try it, as it might have something to do with something that goes “outside” the mind… I don’t think God would agree to this. A LD is simply a dream, nothing more.

Now the RC thingy would prove it all, weather it’s a dream or not quite a dream. Does anybody know what happenes if you do a RC during an OBE ?