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"Out of body" experiences (OBEs) are personal experiences during which people feel as if they are perceiving the physical world from a location outside of their physical bodies. At least 5 and perhaps as many as 35 of every 100 people have had an OBE at least once in their lives (Blackmore, 1982). OBEs are highly arousing; they can be either deeply disturbing or profoundly moving. Understanding the nature of this widespread and potent experience would no doubt help us better understand the experience of being alive and human. The simplest explanation is that OBEs are exactly what they seem: the human consciousness separating from the human body and traveling in a discorporate form in the physical world. Another idea is that they are hallucinations, but this requires an explanation of why so many people have the same delusion. Some of our experiments have led us to consider the OBE as a natural phenomenon arising out of normal brain processes. Thus, we believe that the OBE is a mental event that happens to healthy people. In support of this, psychologists Gabbard and Twemlow (1984) have concluded from surveys and psychological tests that the typical OBE experient is "a close approximation of the 'average healthy American.'" (p. 40)
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OTHER WORLDS: OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES AND LUCID DREAMS by Lynne Levitan and Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.


On July 2nd and July 3rd of 2012 I had a OBE and lucid dream. I have had them multiple times throughout my life. Usually, they happen when I am about to discover something within, or when something external is about to happen. I have been noticing a lot of lower vibrations affecting me. This means looking into myself and meditating. Back on the subject of OBE and lucid dreams...So the experience which happened today was extraordinarily unplanned. I was taking a nap after being kicked down by lower vibrations. I started talking to myself to calm my head. I had my Blue Agate, Rose Quartz, Turquoise, and Citrine crystals underneath my pillow. As I was talking to myself I reached the Stage 5 of sleep in 12 minutes. In the dream I was supposed to be going somewhere with my grandmother. I heard her in my dream say, 'I'm going now.' In my dream I was aware I was asleep. Then it hit me. I'M ASLEEP and AWAKE IN MY DREAM. So when I heard my grandmother say that she was leaving in my dream I got up and walked towards her passing one of our dogs. I realized I was still dreaming. I was trying to wake myself up, but my sleep state wasn't allowing me too. I couldn't wake up. Finally, after talking to myself again and telling myself to wake up I did. My entire left side of my body was numb. When I opened my door, there was the dog. I go to the kitchen and my grandmother told me she was leaving. I made it just in time. OBE is my next venture. I had one two nights ago when I listened to a binaural beat for deep sleep. I got scared after 5 seconds of leaving my body. I am excited to venture on this new experience. I have done some research, but I can not wait to learn more in order for me to try these new experiences.


OBE ( source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience
Definition:An out-of-body experience (OBE or sometimes OOBE) is an experience that typically involves a sensation of floating outside of one's body and, in some cases, perceiving one's physical body from a place outside one's body (autoscopy). About one in ten people think they have had an out-of-body experience at some time in their lives.[28] Scientists are learning about the phenomenon.[29] Some work by neurologists suggests that such experiences are generated by the same brain mechanisms that cause lucid dreams[30].Despite some similarities in their phenomenology and induction methods, EEG studies do not suggest an equivalence between OBEs and lucid dreams. Lucidity is strongly associated with stage 1 REM sleep but OBEs are far less consistent, producing EEG traces that can variously resemble stage 3 sleep, a waking, eyes-closed state or other uncategorized states. 


LUCID DREAM (source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream
Definition:A lucid dream is any dream in which one is aware that one is dreaming. The term was coined by the Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860–1932).[1] In a lucid dream, the dreamer may be able to exert some degree of control over their participation within the dream or be able to manipulate their imaginary experiences in the dream environment.[2] Lucid dreams can be realistic and vivid.[3] It is shown that there are higher amounts of beta-1 frequency band (13–19 Hz) experienced by lucid dreamers, hence there is an increased amount of activity in the parietal lobes making lucid dreaming a conscious process.[4]Lucid dreaming has been researched scientifically, and its existence is well established.



WHAT ARE OBES LIKE? 
 So, we are saying that OBEs may be a kind of dream. But, even so, they are extraordinary experiences. The great majority of people who have had OBEs say they are more real than dreams. Common aspects of the experience include being in an "out-of- body" body much like the physical one, feeling a sense of energy, feeling vibrations, and hearing strange loud noises (Gabbard & Twemlow, 1984). Sometimes a sensation of bodily paralysis precedes the OBE (Salley, 1982; Irwin, 1988; Muldoon & Carrington, 1974; Fox, 1962). 

To the sleep researcher, these strange phenomena are remarkably reminiscent of another curious experience, called sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis occurs sometimes when a person is waking from or falling into REM sleep, the state in which most vivid dreams occur. During REM sleep, the muscles of the body, excluding the eye muscles and those responsible for circulation and respiration, are immobilized by orders from a nerve center in the lower brain. This prevents us from acting out our dreams. Occasionally, this paralysis turns on or remains active while the person's mind is fully awake and aware of the world. Some of the experiences people have reported during sleep paralysis are: "I feel completely removed from myself," "feeling of being separated from my body," "eerie, rushing experiences," and hearing "hissing in the ears," and "roaring in the head." These events appear to be much like the OBE sensations of vibrations, strange noises, and drifting away from the physical body (Everett, 1983). Fear has also been described as a common component of sleep paralysis (see the "Question and Answer" in NightLight, Vol. 2, No. 1 for a discussion of overcoming fear in sleep paralysis.)


WHEN DO OBES HAPPEN? 
 So, it seems possible that at least some OBEs arise from the same conditions as sleep paralysis, and that these two terms may actually be naming two aspects of the same phenomenon. As a first test of this idea, we should ask how many OBEs actually occur at times when people are likely to experience sleep paralysis -- that is, do OBEs happen when people are lying down, asleep, resting, or while awake and active? Researchers have approached the question of the timing of OBEs by asking people who claim to have had OBEs to describe when they happened. In one of these, over 85 percent of those surveyed said they had had OBEs while they were resting, sleeping or dreaming. (Blackmore, 1984) Other surveys also show that the majority of OBEs occur when people are in bed, ill, or resting, with a smaller percentage coming while the person is drugged or medicated. (Green, 1968; Poynton, 1975; Blackmore, 1983 )

Survey evidence favors the theory that OBEs could arise out of the same conditions as sleep paralysis. There is also considerable evidence that people who tend to have OBEs also tend to have lucid dreams, flying and falling dreams, and the ability to control their dreams (Blackmore, 1983, 1984; Glicksohn, 1989; Irwin, 1988).

I have had dreams where I was flying. I was able to control where I wanted to go. Most of my control dreams have to do with cleaning up my past. Making things right. I believe that in dreams you can't change what happened, but you can make peace with whatever situation you have been struggling with inside. I believe once you are on a spiritual path, or start practicing exercises to release the old within, your subconscious will start to heal itself in many ways. 


Because of the strong connection between OBEs and lucid dreaming, some researchers in the area have suggested that OBEs are a type of lucid dream (Faraday, 1976; Honegger, 1979; Salley, 1982). One problem with this argument is that although people who have OBEs are also likely to have lucid dreams, OBEs are far less frequent, and can happen to people who have never had lucid dreams. Furthermore, OBEs are quite plainly different from lucid dreams in that during a typical OBE the experient is convinced that the OBE is a real event happening in the physical world and  not a dream, unlike a lucid dream, in which by definition the dreamer is certain that the event is a dream. There is an exception that connects the two experiences -- when we feel ourselves leaving the body, but also know that we are dreaming.

In our studies of the physiology of the initiation of lucidity in the dream state, we observed that quite of few of the lucid dreams we collected contained experiences like OBEs. The dreamers described lying in bed, feeling strange bodily sensations, often vibrations, hearing loud humming noises, and then rising out of body and floating above the bed.

That happened to me four nights ago and I could tell when I was leaving my body. My body reacted in fear and I was pulled back into myself. Last year in April of 2011, I had that happen to me, but I allowed myself to leave. I journeyed to a place I believe was the sun. It was beautiful golden and red sight. I felt the heat, but it didn't burn it felt comforting. I was soaring over and under the rays through the energy it gave to the planets gravitating around it. It was right before a major earthquake in Japan.


Those studies revealed that lucid dreams have two ways of starting. In the much more common variety, the "dream-initiated lucid dream" (DILD), the dreamer acquires awareness of being in a dream while fully involved in it. DILDs occur when dreamers are right in the middle of REM sleep, showing lots of the characteristic rapid eye movements. We know this is true because our dreamers give a deliberate prearranged eye-movement signal when they realize they are dreaming. These signals show up on our physiology record, so that we can pinpoint the times when lucidity begins and see what kind of brain state the dreamers were in at those times. DILDs account for about four out of every five lucid dreams that our dreamers have had in the laboratory. In the other 20 percent, the dreamers report awakening from a dream and then returning to the dream state with unbroken awareness -- one moment they are aware that they are awake in bed in the sleep laboratory, and the next moment, they are aware that they have entered a dream and are no longer perceiving the room around them. We call these "wake initiated lucid dreams" (WILDs). 



THE LABORATORY STUDY 

 The data we studied consisted of 107 lucid dreams from a total of 14 different people. The physiological information that we collected in conjunction with each lucid dream always included brain waves, eye-movements, and chin muscle activity. These measurements are necessary for determining if a person in awake, asleep, and in REM sleep or not. In all cases, the dreamer signaled the beginning of the lucid dream by making a distinct pattern of eye movements that was identifiable by someone not involved with the experiment. After verifying that all the lucid dreams had eye signals showing that they had happened in REM sleep, we classified them into DILDs and WILDs, based on how long the dreamers had been in REM sleep without awakening before becoming lucid (two minutes or more for DILDs, less that two minutes for WILDs), and on their report of either having realized they were dreaming while involved in a dream (DILD) or having entered the dream directly from waking while retaining lucidity (WILD). Alongside the physiological analysis we scored each dream report for the presence of various events that are typical of OBEs, such as feelings of body distortion (including paralysis and vibrations), floating or flying, references to being aware of being in bed, being asleep or lying down, and the sensation of leaving the body (for instance, "I was floating out-of-body"). RESULTS: MORE OBE-LIKE EVENTS IN WILDS Ten of the 107 lucid dreams qualified as OBEs, because the dreamers reported feeling like they had left their bodies in the dream. Twenty of the lucid dreams were WILDs, and 87 were DILDs. Five of the OBEs were WILDs (28%) and five were DILDs (6%). Thus, OBEs were more than four times more likely in WILDs than in DILDs. The three OBE-related events we looked for also all occurred more often in WILDs than in DILDs. Almost one third of WILDs contained body distortions, and over a half of them included floating or flying or awareness of being in bed. This is in comparison to DILDs, of which less than one fifth involved body distortions, only one third included floating or flying, and one fifth contained awareness of bed. 

I am looking forward to having more of these experiences and where I journey to next!









7/20/2012 03:50:45 am

It's sooo interesting. To me, I see it as my Mind, even though part of my "Body", is separate from my Physical Body. I can dream in my Mind, and I can think of things that are not part of reality, and I can think of the Past, and the Future, etc...However, it's not until I take the Action in my Body, in the Present, that it becomes part of "Reality", or part of THIS Physical World, and it has an impact on others around me.

So, I have "out of body" experiences in all the thoughts I have that have "no action".

To really really live in the Present, requires me to have My Mind and my Body working Together. Faith is required in my Mind, and Action in my Body. When they both work together, I call it LIFE. Other than that, my thoughts in my mind are "dead" to the world.

Hope that makes sense! :))))

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Ashley
7/20/2012 04:12:01 am

Yes, it does make sense! We're all energy and even our thoughts so the thoughts yes are dead in a sense, but they play the biggest part with our intention. I love the way you explained that because I see it and I relate to that so much daily.

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