Personally I find NDE's OBE's completely inconclusive. Further, I feel that supposed OBE's are in fact just random thoughts popping in to the brain while it is active. I do not think we can trust and NDE unless the person is truely dead... for like... hours. If you can die for several hours / days and THEN come back to tell about it.... I may believe you.

NDE's cannot be used to prove the afterlife to anyone. It's gonna take vigorous spiritual medium testing to prove to oneself in the afterlife.

Incredible summative post, Don.  I'm looking forward to hearing what you come up with, and are sorry (in a way) to hear that you will be gone for a while to adventure on your own.  Take care, and please continue posting if you so change your mind.

Don,

I see you bumped one of your old threads again.  Your self-proclaimed lack of a certain "feel" to your OBEs, retrievals, and lucid dreams might be due to the fact that you're not as open as you could and should be.  You do hold quite a high bar for evidence, proof, and verification, even giving up personal merit and pride in satisfying your own curiosity in exchange for constantly hailing and praising Swedenborg for his accomplishments. 

If you were to ask Swedenborg how happy he is for your praise of his life's work, what do you think he'd say?  What if his response was, "Well Don, I really appreciate it, but I'd be more happy if you were able to accomplish your own feats so that you can finally really feel satisfied."?

Every time I read you telling of your disappointment in your own experiences, it just makes me wish you'd keep trying and go that extra distance.  But you seem to have a blockage that you cannot break down.  Bruce has great outlines for working through blockages.  Have you actually tried those techniques to see what you can discover is keeping you from going further in your explorations?  Have you ever given Bruce's Guidebook and CD's a try? 

Here's a tip from me.  I don't need the kind of verification and proof and evidence that you and a certain group of others here on the board continually talk about over and over.  The reason being, I've gotten over that hangup long ago and it propelled my ability to have the most amazing spiritual experiences and explorations that I never used to think were even possible.  I'm also not out to prove anything to anyone else, which is another reason I'm not hung up, stuck, dissatisfied, and unable to accomplish a certain feeling that's solely unique to real OBEs, retrievals, and nonphysical explorations.  Yes, I've had genuine contact with enough proof to myself that allows me to continue to do so.  Just once I'd like to see you open yourself up to having the same and then see you happily share and brag about it.  I think it would change your attitude completely. 

The questions you pose about distinguishing OBE states and lucid dreams is on the wrong track.  If you want to really be scientific and find answers to your questions, then you should take the proper test to be in the right position to find those answers.  I think you'd be surprised that instead of finding the answers you're looking for, you'll discover that you were asking the wrong questions to begin with. 

You might not like what I'm saying here, but I assure you I'm being sincere.  I used to be where you are.  I found a way to get past my own ego and blockages.  I found out I was asking the wrong questions too.  I found out I had the wrong focus. 

Here's another pointer I can give you.  "Going out of body" isn't a matter of going from your body to some place outside of your body.  It isn't going from the physical to a spiritual realm or nonphysical place.  It isn't a matter of point A being physical reality and point B being some real level of reality that can only be proven real if there is a distinguishable measurable amount of proof. 

Try to look at it this way instead.  OBEs, lucid dreams, retrievals, afterlife contact and exploration....they are all forms of traveling within levels of consciousness.  You can have an OBE in which you're level of consciousness is "lower" than another or "higher" than another level of consciousness.  As you can guess, different levels of consciousness allow for different kinds of experiences. 

One cannot fathom a higher level of consciousness unless and until one actually achieves that level of consciousness.  That "unique qualitative feel" that you have said you did not experience in your own apparent OBEs and retrieval has to do with level of consciousness....not with reality, proof, or routine verifications. 

Simply put, it's a catch-22.  In order to achieve such a state, you have to be open to and able to imagine such a state.  And once you do so, you won't be looking for the kind of proof and verification that you're looking for now, on the level of consciousness you're focused on now.  Once your focus changes, everything else changes too.  Including the questions and proof you're asking and looking for right now.   

The catch-22 for you is that you want to "find" that state while remaning in the same level of consciousness you're in normally.  You want proof of it before experiencing it.  It doesn't work that way.

  Very well said Vicky.