Thank you to Joe who sent this in….

‘Just thought I’d provide my own experience with OBE’s to aid you in your quest for the truth.

I had my first “projection” when I was younger (about 11 or 12 years old). It happened quite spontaneously after becoming lucid within a dream. I got the idea to see how high I could fly, and as I flew higher, I felt intense vibrations which only increased with altitude. I suddenly found myself lifting up off my bed. I looked around in awe and saw that I was still sleep under the covers. The experience only lasted about 20 seconds. At the time, and for years after, I believed it to be real (I can vouch that it definately felt very real, more so than a lucid dream), but was I too quick to believe it?

About 2 or 3 more similar experiences happened to me over the years. Recently, however, I had an experience that was not only much more intense than all the others, but really made me question what I was truly experiencing:

I was 21 living in my apt. and was studying lucid dreams and testing ways to induce them and prolong/maintain them. One trick which seemed to work well for me when the lucid dream was fading away, was to focus on my hands until the dream stabilized itself again. A sense of overexcitement is usually what would wake me up and that particular technique seemed to help me refocus and relax and be able to prolong my dreams quite well.

During one of these lucid dreams I managed to have another OBE. It had been a long time since I’ve experienced one and the realism was “too good not to be true”. I hovered through my livingroom and tried to remain calm knowing that getting too excited or scared would snap me back into my body. Note that this was the first time I was actually able to explore while “out of body” I had a hard time handling the intensity during my previous experiences. I went outside and started to float above the trees. I looked around trying to validate my experience. The neighbouring homes were (to the detail) as they should be but there were a few vehicles parked in front of the apartment building that I knew weren’t there normally. I started to feel myself getting pulled back to my body and instinctively began to focus on my “astral” hands. It worked! I immediately wondered why a technique designed to prolong lucid dreams was working to prolong my OBE. Or were these experiences one in the same only on different levels? Regardless I continued on with my experience, even went into a neighbour’s home, focused on my hands a few more times and eventually snapped back to my body or “woke up”.

Let me say that the experience of an OBE is without doubt real just maybe not in the sense that we think. It’s logical to think that our “soul” or “astal body” has left the physical body when this happens because it’s the only explanation that makes sense to us and the feeling is much more vivid than any dream, lucid or not. But does it make sense to think that it may only feel more real because we actually “believe” it’s really happening, forcing a heightened awareness and overall experience to take place? I really don’t know. I believe we may have jumped the gun on what’s really happening here, many (mostly those who have experienced them) are quick to belive it’s real and others (mostly those who haven’t) are just as quick to deny the possibility.

Whether it’s really is the soul leaving the body, or just some reaction occuring in the brain, there’s no denying that OBE’s are real, we’re just not quite sure in what sense, and until some hard evidence comes into play we should just sit back, relax and take them for what they are… a grand mystery!’