Has anyone ever had a successful out of body experience? Or been able to wake u pin a dream and realize that they're out of their body? I've experienced the latter, but still working on the first one;. I know a lot of people that have done it though and they all say it's excellent. It's pretty scary at first. So anybody?

I've had maybe 5 OBE's. The first was accidental.. i had no idea what was happening at the time. The second was also accidental.. but i'd kinda figured it out. The last three, i'd studied them and had been trying out techniques to recreate the experience. I had a problem with gravity and i couldnt get the hang of it until the last couple times. i felt REALLY heavy and i couldnt get my face off the floor. I figured out you have to get away from your body and gravity goes back to normal.. maybe 15-20ft. I also figured out you can go back to your body, if you start to 'fade', and leech off of it to stay out longer... dont do it too much though.. i did it bunches and got sick =P.

Also, there's a difference between OBE's and Astral Projection. I've Projected before; its similar but not the same.. In an OBE everything looks pretty much the same as when ur awake, except sometimes there are things there that arent usually.. and you can hear people thinking like they were talking it out loud if you get close enough to them.... In projection.. everything's all funny and morphy and wavy like a dream... gravity isnt as messed up, but its hard to control your movement. I was lying on the couch the first time i did it, and i moved around the house still lying down. there were walls where there shouldnt be.. and funny things walking around that didnt respond when i yelled at them. When i got scared everything started rushing and roaring and got real creepy.

I like OBE's better, but i can't figure out how to make it happen at will.. it has something to do with a feeling you get when you totally relax your body.. it kind of feels like your shaking only your not.. almost like an itch but more like ur vibrating... you JUST GOTTA MOVE or you think it'll drive you crazy.. if you can stay calm and relaxed and NOT MOVE-- just let it keep doing it, you'll feel a pop or hear a whoosh just when you think u cant take it anymore. That happened both times i MADE myself do it, but it's happened a few times where i just went to sleep afterwards, so i dunno.

wow..are you some kind of shaman or seomthing?

Nah, i'm just someone who has faith in the Great Unknown and won't stand by while i watch the Big Big Boring consume the world. There are huge gaps in our modern understanding of reality, and i'm one of the people who hope those gaps never close and trap us in.

Hmm, I've studied some of these things with gurus in the east, and find it hard to reconcile their teachings with science as we know it. I've gained a lot from learning with them, yet science as we know it offers so many answers to so many things. How does one reconcile the two, really? Mysticism seems to imply that science is flawed, while science seems to imply that mysticism is nonsense Any thoughts, anyone?

I've had two experiences that could be called out-of-body experiences and/or astral projection, but the man of science in me keeps telling me I was imagining things, hehehe.

I don't mind talking about them, though, if anyone is interested? And I certainly wouldn't mind hearing about some of your experiences as well, if any.


clergyq's posts were rather fascinating

I've done both projection and obe, but they were performed when it was natural for me to do it, when I was a child. I was also able to make myself invisible in a manner of speaking. If a camera was there, it'd have taken my picture, but I was able to remove myself from the vision of single people as well as groups.

I was a senior in high school trapped skipping advanced biology (because it bored the crap out of me) in the back room where I was waiting to escape after getting a hold of the attendance form the teacher hung out to be collected. In order to skip, and get away with it, I had to get a hold of that form and erase the filled in bubble so the computer wouldn't count the absence and leave without being seen before it made its way to the admin office. I was in between cabinets full of glassware when I heard the tell-tale sound of my teacher's cowboy boots approaching and there was no where for my to go. I focused on making myself a natural part of the environment thus not drawing his glance by turning and reaching for an implement on one of the top shelves while standing on a two-foot stool and imagining I was a part of the cinderblock wall. He walked right by without taking notice, and I was looking at him to be sure. I decided I was in the groove and since my back door exit was blocked I had no choice but to walk through class right in front of everyone who was positioned at about six small circular lab tables. I calmly walked straight through and even looked at everyone (about 25 people) when I did it, never making eye contact. Next day I went to class and asked people if they saw me walk through the previous day and they said they did not. I've been able to accomplish similar things since but not for a long time now.

It seems like the responsibilities and distractions of adult life remove some of our more esoteric abilities. Some people claim when they were in the jungle of SE Asia in the late 60's/early 70's they learned to project themselves forward and around corners to see ambushes to avoid them and survive. Truth or fiction? We may never know, but it seems quite plausible to me.

This post has been edited by Watermonkey: Dec 16 2007, 10:48 PM

I'm new in here, but I must have missed something, because it seemed to me that LightMage was totally within the scope of the forum topic. Hence, I didn't understand your opening comment to start a new thread instead of "hijacking" this one. Everything he said seemed to apply to astral projection or OBE even if his main issue is reconciling the differences arising between science and mysticism. A seeker must address these issues of mental obstacles and it appeared to me that this was all lightMage was doing. I just feel that if you really want to invite dialog about this mysterious topic, it is unfruitful to run off anyone struggling to grapple with it.

A decent book about this subject would be Robert Bruce "Astral Dynamics".

However this issues is taught in Tibetan Buddhism under the practice of the six bardos. Even if what is called OBE is not the main purpose, it happens while one is trying to have what Tibetan Buddhists call "clarity dreams".
The revered sage Padmasambhava went to a great lenght to explain this process in his teachings. A good book about it (a bit technical for outsiders) is "Natural Liberation. Padmasambhava's teachings of the six bardos" (if I'm not mistaken).
I believe this book is still available at amazon.

My experience with astral projection was always within the context of visualization.

In fact, in every esoteric society, I've ever explored, "astral projection" was always acting with "the body of light", not the physical body, and not on the physical plane.

Essentially, a mental process, rather than a physical one.

I know other people relate experiences which fall outside this catagory, and I am not invalidating them, but I think generally, the concept as it is taught in traditional orders, is much different than what is perceived to be the rule in modernity. I don't think it was intended to be so literal or physical.