About
September 18th, 2006To share knowledge and experienced on the topic of OBEs (out of the body experienced or somtimes called astral projects). Want to join and share your experienced? great, the more people we have to help the better and the more exciting this website wil become. This page will evolve in good time, just like you and me….
February 20th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
Hello,
I just stumbled onto your site. I read your rather skeptical and cynical post regarding OBEs and was a bit disappointed. I’ve been exploring the phenomena as objectively as possible, making distinctions from lucid dreams and OBE/astral experiences.
Consistently for the past month I’ve been able to induce at least the beginning stages of an OBE nearly every morning. Contrary to your instructions on your site, I don’t recommend trying to OBE at all at night before going to bed as I’ve never had any results with that. Some authors say that because your DHEA level is low (alertness hormone) and your melatonin level is high (drowsiness hormone) it’s like the least likely time you’ll OBE. There are also interesting subtleties I’ve noticed about fears and and anxiety about inducing the experience and how that directly affects the ability to produce it. I’ve found that I have to cultivate a kind of confident fearless relaxed expectation that it’s going to occur and then it does.
I’ve found this to be consistent with my experience. I’ve had some difficulty completely leaving the body but have emerged part way and at the most gotten to sit at the side of my bed. where I was able to probe some of my experience.
Regarding authors who you feel may be just trying to sell books I imagine some of them are out there for sure. However through comparing my experiences with their own testimonies I’ve found 100% of my experience congruent with many people’s accounts and testimonies.
Now does this mean I’m travelling outside of my body? Perhaps different mental processes are overlapping creating some illusion of exo-bodily travel. I don’t know. The phenomena itself is compelling enough to investigate further on it’s own merit even before assuming I may be travelling outside of my body.
The trickiest bit that I’m trying to figure out is gauging the actual value of such a skill.. Is it just a form of entertainment or is there any practical application (psychological, spiritual, or otherwise).
After I master the phenomena or at least have the ability to induce it with some consistency I’m planning on creating some tests to verify any objective elements to the experiences themselves. Even if I can’t locate objective elements and that perhaps the OBE is “all in my head” it’s fascinating enough. I think it’s good to discern OBEs from
Anyway that’s my rant on the matter. I’d just be interested and “not know” and keep the skepticism (which is often cynicism) at bay. I mean the new-agers make the whole thing look like pastel rainbows and cotton candy, which I think is a total joke, don’t let that interfere with your own inquiry though.
Good luck,
Paul
February 21st, 2007 at 11:44 pm
Thank you for your constructive comments Paul.
In some of my posts I may give the impression of being skeptical, and yes, I have recently started to have my doubts. But do not get me wrong, I have had at least 2 semi-obe experiences and spent a couple of years reading many books on the subject.
To be honest about how I came to start doubting these things. I am fascinated by the mind and read many books on a wide range of mind/brain related topics. More recently I started studying Hypnosis and NLP - and from this I can start to understand just how subjectable the mind can be (sorry for stating the obvious).
And something I cannot seem to shake from my mind is this. In at least a few OBE books, the Author states that you need to have no doubts, and be willing to believe anything. Then he goes on to explain about visualization techniques, stating strongly that if it fails, then just ‘imagine’ it is real. I mean, it does not sound very convincing to me.
And another of my favorites (in fact, almost all OBE books state this one) ‘…but do not take my word for it, learn how to do it and proof it to yourself’. Sounds like a catchphrase from a marketing book.
And I need to state this one too. After reading some of James Herbert’s books (pure fiction) it shows just how easy it is to write something fascinating and almost real sounding, but just total fiction.
Sorry, I’m getting carried away again.
But I take you point, that there is most probably a few people around making stories up, and possibly given credible Authors/Explorers a bad name. I’m not 100% convinced it is all fake, but need something more substantial to highten my beliefs again. I will continue on my journey and hope someday I will know for sure.
Best of luck Paul, please let us know if you achieve a full OBE or discover anything intersting. Thanks for your tips, I’ll give the early morning experiment a try!
February 20th, 2008 at 11:11 pm
Let’s make an obe society on the Internet to popularize this idea so that many people also try it. I forgot to mention that i to experience an obe, but just for 5 seconds.