Hi everybody,
last night it happened, my first classic OBE, it started with a dream:

I went to bed, and as usual let my thoughts run, mind awake, body asleep. I then thought of R.A.Monroe, and to my surprise I saw his face very clearly right before me, similar as I had seen it on a photograph (never met him physically). This was unusual, in my "normal" mind journeys I had met him (or imaginated it) only occasionally. This time we talked for a while, can't say exactly what it was. The feeling I picked up from him was that much was going on in his mind but he said not much, but what he said was right to the point, he let me think first and gave his comment then, in a bit ironic but honest and lovely way. Also I felt a great self-centeredness, in the positive meaning, as he was very clear and serene. He had sharp long wrinkles at his forehead and had this beard between upper lip and nose.
Then I must have fallen asleep.

I found myself in a big city, a different one than my hometown. I had travelled there to meet some people of TMI, but couldn't recall what it was exactly. I then stood before a building where this TMI meeting was, together with another guy with whom I talked a bit. Then he said he must go to bed, because the program will start tomorrow early in the morning. I realized I wasn't a participant in this program he mentioned, and I wondered why I traveled here. Only to chatter some minutes with that guy? Or have I been at this meeting already but only forgot it? As I stood there, in a little sidestreet, I noticed a stand with poster-sized pictures, like a flipchart. I looked closer, and I flipped the pictures on it. It were handmade paintings, very colorful. One showed a group of people sitting in a circle. I had the impression that a female person must have painted these pictures for the TMI, and they were standing there as a sign where the program/meeting was taking place. Then I went off.

I was in a hotel in the same city where I left before the TMI place. In the lobby there was a night-porter, dressed in a uniform like a security guy and besides him a pitbull dog. Must be a bad quarter here when they show up like this I thought. I moved ahead to go to my hotel room when I wondered if I had already my door key, and where my room was? So I asked the porter, and he gave me a key and guided me. I noticed I was carrying a basket, and in this basket another pitbull dog was sitting! I placed the basket on something, and the dog jumped out and wanted to play with me, which I did. But I worried about that these dogs can bite quite a lot and that it's not right to leave them run around here freely. Meanwhile, the porter showed me a paper plan, where the rooms were drawn on and pointed at my room on the paper, then he pointed at the door of my room in the actual hall.

I was lying (on my right side) on the bed in my hotel room, looked against the wall. No furniture, no pictures, an old wallpaper with a faded pattern. I was becoming to feel strange here. I didn't remember why I was here, nor where I was exactly (I still knew all that has happened in this dream, but that was not much). I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, I was in my own bedroom in my appartment, lying on my own bed, looking over my room with it's many things inside. I was relieved, "I've already guessed that it was just a dream, everything's allright." I closed my eyes, opened them again and I was back in the hotel room! I was so scared, the reality had broken down! I for sure was going insane! I did it again, and the same happened. (Please note that I was convinced that this was NOT a dream!) Then something even more odd happened: With my left eye I saw my own room and with the right eye I saw the hotel room! I concentrated on my left eye and made the right eyes' view somehow fading away. I saw clearly my own familiar room. All the many things which were there. Near to my bed there was a plastic bag, made of very thin plastic foil. It dawned to me what that all could mean. Still lying on my bed on my right side, I reached out with my left arm and tried to grab the plastic bag. My hand moved through it! But when I attempted to grab it, it moved a bit as if touched by a little breeze. I looked at my arm and hand, and it looked as it always looks. I then tried to reach the chair which was beyond an armlength and couldn't reach it, but I couldn't see my hand anymore as I stretched it out to the chair. Then my arm and hand became visible again. I then looked down directly below my left eye and saw another left arm of mine. Looked the same as my active arm. I then moved my active arm to a stack of magazines beside my bed and pressed my hand on it. In the beginning it felt like solid, as in normal physical reality, but then I pressed harder and my hand went into the magazines stack! When I moved my hand more down inside the stack I could feel from time to time a stronger resistance, as if I could feel the material. Boy was that odd! I pulled my hand out of the stack and tried to touch my head (or where I thought my head has to be), my view blacked out briefly but I felt nothing. I then decided I had to write this down and to awake fully in the physical. It was a short break in the moment I opened my physical eyes, and in my view was exactly what I had seen before, as if you would blend identical pictures, the only difference was that it now was a bit brighter and more colorful. It was morning, and since I laid myself down to sleep 2 and a half hours were gone.
I had to think about this the whole day long.

There were some unusual things happening the days before which I hope I can post the next days.

Some may be a bit confused what I mean with "classic OBE" and what I mean with "mind journeys". Here's what I mean: In a mind journey I am aware of my physical body as well as what I'm doing nonphysically, with my mind or imagination. I can phase back immediately to full waking consciousness. Also, it is possible to use a voice recorder during mind journeys and tell into the microphone what you're doing (though I personally don't like that, but it's a question of practice I guess). Now in a classic OBE you can't do that, you are much more cut off from your body, instead you seem to have another body. Also, the surrounding looks like the physical without any effort to concentrate on it. It's just there, while in a mind journey you have to be much more focused and proactive to get such seemingly independent details in one view.

Spooky

These are beautiful descriptions, Spooky and Alysia!  They deserve to copied into our notebooks of "great significance."

Spooky, will this effect the way you go about other 'travels', say to a retrieval or a partnered exploration? Or do we use different layers of this 7 layer system Alysia has pointed out, or different senses in our different endeavors?

(Clerical interruption, please. Sorry to interrupt, spooky, the date on the PE in that section is in error. Today the 8th is the second Saturday already.  )

Hi Spooky It must have been a great experience for you ,i would like to try but i havent got the nerve to do that yet ,but i will one day.When i close my eyes at night i do see a lot of spirit faces  and visions of different places and scenery ,and last night someone was touching my arm and then holding my hand,i know thats my father watching over me. Love and god bless you juditha

Thank you all! Yes an adventure it is, absolutely.

Although this sort of reality breakdown when the rooms swapped wasn't funny at all when it happened, you know me, I'm curious, and in my next relaxation/meditation I tried to go OBE again! There was this vibration/electric feeling, but when I tried to move my left arm very slowly and patiently, at a point I noticed my physical body would move, couldn't separate the other body. I'll see what future brings.

Yes Alysia, Doppelgänger is a familiar German word (litterally translated: doublewalker), it means a person who looks the same like yourself, usually used when it's not a twin, or when the other person is not known to be your twin.
The different "bodies" is a concept I thought of. There's some things which seems to me not "right", I want to say I resonate not fully with it, it's a subject of research for me. For example, in some of my mind journeys I went "down" again, expressing my wish to explore the plane(s) very near to the physical. I then got a mix of what looks physical, together with people who were not physically alive but inhabitated still the physical (and some colored radiation and those things). However, these visuals were much different from my OBE. In the OBE it was as if looking with the physical eyes including the same feeling to be "in" it like in the physical, while in my mind journey it was like looking with the mind's eye, similar like having a daydream. Is it possible to perceive the same near-physical levels in different ways, one coming from somewhere "above" (mind journey), the other one from coming from the physical (OBE)? And what would that mean in terms of the 7 bodies concept? LOQ (Lot of questions, lol)
There's a particular question Alysia I have concerning your experience with the two bodies in your bed. It sounds as if you somehow were in a position outside your two bodies in your bed, in a observer's position. Did I understand you right?
I remember a situation about four years ago, I was asleep bodily, just woke up mentally from a dream and that wonderful cool feeling in my entire body, when I noticed "someone" was in my room, or better I knew it. I stayed bodily asleep and decided to observe (which was strange enough that I managed it to hold the fear down), and this "someone" came closer and closer. Then I was in a similar mode like I am in my mind journeys. I "saw" my position in my bed, it was like I reconstructed it and then saw it, and the someone came from behind near to my body (but who/what it was was not perceivable to me). I heard this someone breathing behind me, then melting with me. Then I decided to wake up my body to write this impressive experience down. Now, when you look at it, there's something which seems not to fit together: If this someone was one of my doubles, shouldn't my position of awareness be located there? Instead, it was located in or near my physical body in my bed, even when I was in "mind journey mode". (I don't think that it was a different earthbound entity which managed it to get into my physical body, the melting felt just too natural, it felt right.) Or have these doubles all a life of it's own and sort of gather together when it's time for the meal and then separate again? Well LOQ...
Alysia your interpretation of the dogs makes sense to me!

Betson, in theory, in approach, it would not change my mind journeys, retrievals for example, but in practice, what will happen in the future I cannot say. I can imagine (and believe) it could have an effect (especially if I will have more OBEs in the future) concerning the ability to realize in which level you are, in the quality of perception as well as bridging my mind journeys stronger to the physical, and in turn, the physical to the nonphysical experiences.

Ryan, I would call it my first OBE, but I had this experience with that "someone" entering my room as I told above, and one time when awaking from sleep I could see my room, but with closed eylids, when I realized it I immediately woke up physically, it probably was something like the beginning or end of an OBE.

Juditha, I think I occasionly have something like you told of, running visuals, but the visuals are changing very fast, I can't hold them. This in my terms I would locate somewhere between mind-journeys and OBEs, a state of openness to messages of spirits and/or events. To feel like being touched, that is I guess something what is "near" to an OBE, as it seems that your focus of awareness was at your etheric body- but I'm not really certain about it. I don't think OBEs are essential for the work of a medium, but guess it could be useful.

Mairlyn, I for sure too haven't heard about that!

Spooky

Hey,

I've been reading Robert Monroes books a lot recently and I think it was his second one in which he found he had 2 etheric bodies when going OBE, the first one was just like an alligment one? A in-between body for his physical body and etheric body. He moved into this aligment one to seperate and then once seperated he could move to the etheric/astral body and explore. Has anyone experienced this before?

I must go look into this more after what you guys have been saying, I have never seen any of my doubles, well i saw it once in a mirror on my first OBE experience, but I wasn't in a real-time OBE so it was my imagination probly. It looked physical, just without a head! I have seen my physical once when i was OBE but it was dark. I didn't notice an alligment or any other double bodies there. But i don't normally check, maybe I should do. There are so many things to do, The list is getting bigger!

Ryan

Alysia,

Doppelganger-hmmm. I’m feeling so lost right now after the adventures of the past few months and having no clear direction regarding what to do next so when I finally looked in on the board this morning, I was surprised to see the word Doppelganger jump out at me.  Brings a little magic back into my life since Saturday when I was watching some PBS show and a linguistic expert was discussing words some of us don’t know the meaning of.  When she defined Doppeganger in her 5 minute discussion, all I could think of was that I must mention this to Alysia.  Friday you responded to Spooky’s wonderful post, Saturday I caught the word and thought of you and by Sunday I read your definition and am responding  For me, this is another example of how we are all connected. 

When I was in a coma in May, one of my experiences included the offer by a person who reminded me of Opra, that if I wanted to test my courage, a concern I harbor, would I be willing to take the place of another individual on the other side of the world who was in the process of being captured for slavery by the side of a railroad track, I think I experienced a good death there.  I remember agreeing to do this and getting the job done with courage but I wonder now if this is an example of work done by a  doppelganger? I’m a little embarrassed to mention the second part of the deal, that I was assured to coming back here would be easier for me in the next phase of my life, because my belief system still tends to include life is a struggle.  So far, I’m just as confused as I ever was as I face going back to my previous routine at work but a part of me feels more confident regarding challenges.

Jean

wanted to add a thought to Spooky's description of merging with the double which walked up behind him but it felt natural, the merge.

in the beginning of obe experiences I too felt the presence of my other body to be a spirit separate from me. I think this is natural to feel this way at first as it is strange to be so disassociated from one's own self. remember Monroe thought there was something seriously wrong and went to doctors to learn of what was happening to him.

I remember looking at myself also and communicating with myself. its so unforgettable it  blows your mind. 

Jean, I remember being in almost a coma like condition a few years back and I felt the way you do now, that I could face the challenges better after getting well. or a calmness was upon me. maybe u have been gathering strength out there. did you have more memory of more mind journies during this time? would be glad to hear about it. love, alysia

you might try picturing yourself in one of the rooms of your house where you feel comfortable. maybe in your favorite chair relaxing. its less fearsome to obe around the house than flying in space somewhere..at first. this is what some books will say to keep it simple. add to that image a feeling..maybe a feeling of wonder..can you do it? what would it feel like to do it? the more you can imagine, the more chance you have to have successful obe.

hugs, alysia