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How to have an out of body experience?

Reivax

Critical Thinker
Reivax
Joined
Jan 6, 2011
Messages
259
For about the last 6 months I've been interested in alternate states of consciousnesses, in particular out of body experiences (OBEs). Admittedly my interest in such a strange phenomenon stems mainly from my boredom, but I do feel OBEs are a challenging meditation exercise and could be a somewhat valuable experience. I've done a bit of research, mainly on the internet and have come across a few sites that seem fairly genuine, but so far I have not had any success with the advice given. Unfortunately, most websites talk about what I believe to be the 'woo' aspect of OBEs, referring to astral projection and other such things, which I have little interest in as it is goes beyond common scientific understanding of the phenomenon and is often exaggerated, anecdotal and unsubstantiated. About 3/15 of my attempts I have felt close to achieving an OBE, but have failed.

I understand that some people have this experience regularly and it can be a hindrance to them and would prefer to have no such experience at all. It is understood that OBEs are associated with sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations.

So I was wondering if anyone could share some tips on how to have an OBE or at least point me in the direction of some decent books and/or websites that act as a guide to induce OBEs? I'd be interested to hear about peoples own OBE experiences. I'd prefer not having to open my medicine cabinet or having to hire out the God Helmet though :p. If I do end up in the grips of some greys on an operational table, so be it, I'll just have to tough it out and I won't blame anyone for this unfortunate experience. I'm also open to the possibility that it is not really possible that one can achieve an OBE through meditation alone.

The following video is James Randi talking about his own out of body experience which I found pretty interesting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwKkbd2e-c&feature=related

Thanks in advance!
 
I see two possible ways to do this:

1. Learn lucid dreaming (there are websites and forums with techniques, just Google)
2. Piss off a pack of Hell's Angels.
 
I grew up learning about these from my brother, thinking they were real and proven to exist.

When I was older, I had a dream state which I think accounts for these.
I was unusually exhausted after a long day shopping with my mother, about 14 years old. As i got home and laid down in my room on a bean bag, I pretty much instantly dozed off. The next thing I knew, I was drifting along about 2-3 feet off the floor of my room out to the hallway, where we had a secret room in the attic you could access via the hallway closet. My point of view drifted to the closet and then began rising up the ladder to the attic, when suddenly the phone rang.

I was sucked backwards and felt that falling sensation one sometimes feels as one drifts asleep, and sat up amazed by how real the experience felt.

Later, after experiencing hypnagogic dream paralysis, I'd say it was very similar, especially the sense of being awake with a simultaneous strange otherworldlyness. .
 
Thanks for the replies.

Eddie Dane said:
I see two possible ways to do this:

1. Learn lucid dreaming (there are websites and forums with techniques, just Google)
2. Piss off a pack of Hell's Angels.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think that's a good call (as far as point '1' goes :p). I'm guessing it's easier to learn lucid dreaming, than learning how to have an OBE. I think I've always been put off lucid dreaming, because it seems like a pretty involved and arduous process. For example, keeping a dream diary, or setting your alarm clock for interval hours. But I'm up for trying this if I don't get any results in the near future with other techniques.

Halfcentaur said:
I grew up learning about these from my brother, thinking they were real and proven to exist.

When I was older, I had a dream state which I think accounts for these.
I was unusually exhausted after a long day shopping with my mother, about 14 years old. As i got home and laid down in my room on a bean bag, I pretty much instantly dozed off. The next thing I knew, I was drifting along about 2-3 feet off the floor of my room out to the hallway, where we had a secret room in the attic you could access via the hallway closet. My point of view drifted to the closet and then began rising up the ladder to the attic, when suddenly the phone rang.

I was sucked backwards and felt that falling sensation one sometimes feels as one drifts asleep, and sat up amazed by how real the experience felt.

Later, after experiencing hypnagogic dream paralysis, I'd say it was very similar, especially the sense of being awake with a simultaneous strange otherworldlyness. .
Click to expand...

That's interesting, sounds like the kind of experience I am after. I've had plenty of vivid dreams and perhaps semi-lucid dreams (including ones when I've had the falling sensation), but I'm yet to have or perhaps recognize a genuine OBE. When you experienced 'hypnagogic dream paralysis' did you actively try to, or was it just another experience you had while sleeping?
 
I read a book on the subject many years ago... The fellow (who I can't recall) gave detailed instructions on the meditation-like techniques one was supposed to use.

I think there are essentially two things going on. One is the apparently infinite capacity of humans for self-delusion.
The other is known psychological phenomena which are related to "dissasociation", sleep-paralysis, and the like.
As noted, the experience can be quite real, but alas all attempts to prove that one is doing anything other than being in a suggested-dream state have failed.

As I recall, Randi for years kept a secret message in a box held near the ceiling in his offices. The top of the box was open, and he even obligingly furnished a light. The idea was that anyone capable of astral projection, remote viewing, or other such things could simply read the message and win the million bucks.
No one ever did.....
 
I fell out of a tree when I was a kid and had the wind knocked out of me so bad I couldn't talk or move at all for a few minutes (which was terrifying, I thought I was paralized), and though I wasn't knocked out I was disoriented and seeing stars. I then found myself floating up out of my body and looking down at myself on the ground. This lasted for less than a minute and then I just blinked and was back in my body.

Not that I actually thought I had a genuine OBE. I just think it was a hallucination caused by the disorientation of the fall.
 
I have had two 'OBEs', both on pethidine following accidents. I know that they were hallucinations rather than anything real.

I do not advise that you have a serious car crash and request pethidine from the medical staff, so learning lucid dreaming is probably the best idea.
 
Schrodinger's Cat said:
I fell out of a tree when I was a kid and had the wind knocked out of me so bad I couldn't talk or move at all for a few minutes (which was terrifying, I thought I was paralized), and though I wasn't knocked out I was disoriented and seeing stars. I then found myself floating up out of my body and looking down at myself on the ground. This lasted for less than a minute and then I just blinked and was back in my body.

Not that I actually thought I had a genuine OBE. I just think it was a hallucination caused by the disorientation of the fall.
Click to expand...
I recall an identical fall. (Trees don't like boys much.) Landed on my back and was completely winded- unable to talk or breathe in. I got very light headed, dizzy and disorientated, presumably being significantly anoxic. My pals said it lasted a couple of minutes before I started breathing, but I suspect half a minute was closer. I wouldn't call it an OBE, but certainly a bit out of my head.

ETA- In his book "Paranormality", Richard Wiseman describes Prof. V.Ramachandran's simple OBE setup:-
Place 2 big mirrors a few feet apart, angled so you can see the back of your head in one when looking in the other.Now stroke your cheek with a finger, while looking in the mirror.
"Your brain 'feels' your cheek being stroked, 'sees' a person standing in front of you being subjected to simultaneous stroking, concludes that 'you' must therefore be standing there and constructs a sense of self consistent with this idea."

I have not tried this myself. I try never to get between two mirrors.
 
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Bikewer said:
As I recall, Randi for years kept a secret message in a box held near the ceiling in his offices. The top of the box was open, and he even obligingly furnished a light. The idea was that anyone capable of astral projection, remote viewing, or other such things could simply read the message and win the million bucks.
No one ever did.....
Click to expand...

That's interesting, didn't know that. I wonder what the message says...? It must be something fairy long and random, otherwise I'm sure eventually that someone will coincidentally guess it and be 1M richer.

Agatha said:
I have had two 'OBEs', both on pethidine following accidents. I know that they were hallucinations rather than anything real.

I do not advise that you have a serious car crash and request pethidine from the medical staff, so learning lucid dreaming is probably the best idea.
Click to expand...

What was that? Pethidine, let me write that down...

Were these experiences extremely vivid, compared to say a standard dream?
It seems like lucid dreaming is the way to go. I wonder if there is any evolutionary explanations for OBEs in near death or traumatic situations?

So far I've got 'falling out of a tree' and 'pethidine' on my list.
 
The mirror idea may be less painful as well as legal. But don't do it in a shopping mall .
 
As I recall, Ernest Hemmingway had a OOBE as well, an example of the "disassociative state". In the war, hit by enemy fire, he was on the ground and as I recall, his clothes were on fire. He recalled seeing this from a "third person" viewpoint and telling his body to calm down and roll to put the fire out.
This worked and he resumed a normal POV. A fairly common occurrence in emergencies.
 
I have had them, and other wake-up hallucinations. Unpleasant. Nothing you really want to have, it's like a waking nightmare. Lucid dreams are cool though.

I think mirtazapine gave me the wake-up stuff but the heavier sleeping killed off lucid dreams.
 
I had them too .. in dreams. I did some LD training .. which never worked. But I had 2 OBEs few months after I stopped it. Or at least I had a dream I had OBEs. It's pretty hard to distinguish these two :-D
 
Agatha said:
I have had two 'OBEs', both on pethidine following accidents. I know that they were hallucinations rather than anything real.

I do not advise that you have a serious car crash and request pethidine from the medical staff, so learning lucid dreaming is probably the best idea.
Click to expand...

I don't know.
My suggestion to insult a pack of Hells Angels still seems the fastest route.
Learning Lucid Dreaming is quite time consuming.
 
Susan Blackmore says that LSD induced such an out of body experience in her (her "astral" body being connected to her real body by an elastic shimmering silver cord).

She also keeps a code word in her kitchen for "astral projectors" to try and read.
 
It seems to me that an OBE is actually a type of lucid dream.

Having experienced plenty of what might be considered both, the only way I might differentiate this into two experiences is by when and how the experience begins.

Lucid dreams usually happen while you are in the midst of a dream, complete with dream scenery, plot and characters.

What feels like an OBE in fact feels exactly like a lucid dream except that it often starts while you are drifting off to sleep or awakening and seems to involve the actual scenery surrounding you. Even so, it is the dreaming brain that is re-creating your bedroom, etc., the same dreaming brain that creates the dream scenery you find yourself in during a lucid dream.

So I suspect the 2 experiences are similar. If you can awaken while in the midst of dream, you will probably eventually also begin to "wake up" before you have actually gotten very far into a dream and this will seem like an OBE.

That has been my experience anyway.

I read recently that the frontal lobes, usually dormant when sleeping, show activity on MRI in the brains of people dreaming lucidly. Possibly this is the reason for the difference in the level of conscious awareness and the sense of having the ability to make more logical dream choices than in a normal dream.

Once I had an OBE while drifting back to sleep on a rare morning when I could sleep in. It seemed as though as soon as I closed my eyes I felt a sensation of moving rapidly backwards (through my wall) and all went dark, and then I emerged into a meadow, flying. Very cool. I was never even aware of falling asleep, it happened so fast. Even cooler was that I was able to awaken and then repeat the experience more than once. I call that an OBE because it felt like I left my body through the top of my head, went through the wall and emerged into some amazing meadow. It was a dream, though, and felt just like a lucid dream; it just started very differently. Back in the day, I would have considered this to be my spirit or soul actually traveling.

A lot of people seem to think Stephen LaBerge's lucid dream methods work well. He does mix some woo in with his philosophy, in the sense that he seems open to the possibility of actual spirit or soul travel. I guess if you can overlook that, you might find his methods helpful.
 
Thanks for replies so far.

I'm keen to at least get to the lucid dreaming stage. In this respect it would be good to learn how to walk before learning to run. Thanks ExMinister, I'll give Stephen LaBerge's method a spin.
 
I am affected by both sleep paralysis and hypnagogic hallucinations. I am absolutely convinced that it is what accounts for people's mistaken belief in alien abductions, spirit visitation and OBE's. Having been subject to them from around the age 12 I have learned a few things about the states. Firstly I can induce the state by being over tired or simply by going to bed before emptying my bladder (odd but a full bladder brings on the episode most times). While in the state I am convinced I am awake and can freely move around my bedroom, time of day seems consistent and all my senses seem intact.

There will come a point however where something will seem out of place (walls shimmer or shadows darken, walls change colour or a 'presence that feels threatening will be near but not visible). At this point you become aware that you are still in bed and are in a state of sleep paralysis and that's when the struggling begins to gain control of your body. I often get the sense of a malevolent presence above me or in the room, occasionally sitting on my chest or with hands round my throat.

The really odd part is that as you struggle to gain control and finally succeed to come awake you actually come awake into another dream and have to start all over again but the second time tends to be much shorter in duration. During an episode though I would be hard pressed to differentiate between the waking world and my Hypnagogic episode. So, if you want an OBE aka Hypnagogic episode I recommend going to bed with a full bladder but don't blame me if your waking dream takes you through to the loo to relieve yourself :D
 
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