Below is an article regarding scientific research on the possibility of links between obe's and lucid dreaming. This article explores similarities between lucid dreaming and some aspects of obe's. I read the entire article, and it is the sort of information most people will likely be hearing from the scientific community.

Otherwise, one might hear the kind of "horrific" stories of hell, such as what was broadcast a few nights ago where I live. This description of "hell" from a near death survivor was given with very little context. If anything, it would do nothing but inspire fear in others who happened to listen.

How have those of you who have experienced obe's resolved your own questions about your experiences, if you have? What is it about your experiences that does or does not convince you that these are real, actual, "out of body" experiences?

This post is not meant to question individual experiences as much as to encourage continuation of efforts in these directions. I am interested in how you have resolved your own doubts, if you have had any?

All thoughts welcome.

love, blink

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www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html

[From NIGHTLIGHT 3(2-3), 1991, Copyright, The Lucidity Institute.]
========================================================================
OTHER WORLDS: OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES AND LUCID DREAMS
by Lynne Levitan and Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.
========================================================================

"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)

Our conception, also proposed by the English psychologist
Susan Blackmore, is that an OBE begins when a person loses
contact with sensory input from the body while remaining
conscious (Blackmore, 1988; LaBerge - Lucidity Letter; Levitan -
Lucidity Letter). The person retains the feeling of having a
body, but that feeling is no longer derived from data provided by
the senses. The "out-of-body" person also perceives a world that
resembles the world he or she generally inhabits while awake, but
this perception does not come from the senses either. The vivid
body and world of the OBE is made possible by our brain's
marvelous ability to create fully convincing images of the world,
even in the absence of sensory information. This process is
witnessed by each of us every night in our dreams. Indeed, all
dreams could be called OBEs in that in them we experience events
and places quite apart from the real location and activity of our
bodies.
   

WHAT ARE OBES LIKE?

(continued on link provided above)

Don, have you tried any other kinds of meditative aids? Is Gateway the only one you have used? I have been to a different online location today which offers what it considers a superior method of brainwave entrainment which supposedly uses mostly beta and theta frequencies in such a way that it is more generally successful. I was tempted, but I am also wondering what exactly is in all of these meditation aids. I am not completely sure what all these companies are doing with subliminals, although it is possible to be careful with your selections to work only with those which use words (if included) which are acceptable and heard by the experiencer.

I personally would not be inclined to continue with an aid which is not working for me, as you say you are doing. I'm just curious, would you be willing to try some different methods? I find that I would be willing to risk it, if only for the reason that I have done so before with various meditation aids in order to give me the personal results I wanted at the time.

I will, most likely, purchase a few different kinds of cds, as I have in the past. These technologies are advancing and perhaps more of us should be testing them.

love, blink

Here are a few factors to consider:

1) Often a person's spirit guidance will create experiences as a means of learning. The realm one experiences exists for no other purpose. Robert Monroe wrote in his second book Far Journeys that his guidance created such experiences for him.  I don't know if he always did an accurate job of determining if an experience was actual or educational.  One needs to consider the context of an experience in order to determine whether it is factual or a learning experience. I've found that clues are provided. For example, if I have an OBE and it ends in a bed other than the bed I'm sleeping in, I know that the experience was a learning experience. Especially, if the experience contains a lesson I need to learn. Such experiences show that beings who exist at a higher level than us, have a significant ability to create. I believe the same ability is demonstrated when they create dreams.

2) I've had experiences where it was obvious my guidance was creating it, but I'd cause the experience to change once I consciouly interacted with it.

3) Robert Monroe had out of body experiences for years, before he found out that he was being helped. I didn't intially realize that I was being helped.  The fact of how our spirit guidance gets involved even before we realize they are doing so, suggests that they tend to have a definite purpose in mind when they get involved with helping us. Because of this, they might not be as willing to help out when we mess around in a manner that doesn't match what we need, and what the divine plan needs. Therefore, when we venture on our own, we are liable to create imaginary experiences. When it comes to retrievels, I believe it it important to establish that light beings have it in mind to work with us.

4) Light beings don't see a big difference between OBEs, lucid dreams, and regular dreams. If something helps us learn, then it helps us learn.

5) We can be involved with activities while asleep, without us realizing it. Guidance will at times let us know about such activity. Sometimes through dreams that were clearly created by an intelligence other than one's own intelligence.

6) Once you establish that you are in fact communicating with spirit guidance, you know you can trust them, and that they don't tend to get involved with you without a definite purpose in mind, it becomes unnecessary to think in terms of verifications. The verifications help you intially, but eventually become superfluous.










4)

Recoverer and Doc, very nice posts.  Very well stated!


I'd like to add this and say to the skeptics...it seems to me that skeptics come from the belief that physical reality is THE place.  Where it all is.  Where consciousness resides.  The place against which all else must be measured and compared.  However, try to open yourself up to this way of thinking just for a minute...that physical reality is just one place to be, but is not the only place, or the beginning, or the ultimate to which we should base our experience of reality.  Physical reality is not where consciousness resides.  It is not home base or mission control.  It is but one aspect of our total conscious experience. Within the framework of physical reality and our conscious awareness which operates here, we conduct ourselves and that which we allow ourselves to experience by the limitations and capabilities that physical reality affords us.  Our physical senses are guidelines and tools which allow us to navigate and reside in this reality.  What Matthew has said is much better stated than what I could say to complete this thought, and he sums it up well. 

Also, to look at OBEs and think that all they are is "being out of body but still functioning/seeing/navigating in physical reality" is really such a narrow and frankly illogical viewpoint.  I would say that that kind of OBE is one possibility, but I can also add that there are many types of OBEs.  Not all of them are about navigating the physical plane.  And I still maintain from personal experience and belief that we are not actually "in" our bodies to begin with. 

The article posted above suggested that once we go out of body, our minds create an illusionary world which we believe is the real world, but it is only a trick of the mind based on the brain's ability to replicate images.  However, couldn't the same thing be said of how we experience the waking world?  Our physical senses pick up information and our mind/brain interprets this and presents us with images, ideas, thoughts, etc. from which we build a framework of understanding of our world.  We create memory and a storehouse of this information and build expectations and assumptions of the world based on what we've experienced so far.  But are we truly experiencing what is "really out there" at any given point?  Does our awareness experience reality, or is reality created through experience?  Who's to say that nothing else exists "out there" just because our physical senses are incapable of experiencing more.  My awareness is only capable of "knowing" what I experience from within the framework of my own awareness.  It isn't possible for me to step outside of my own awareness and experience "what is really out there" and be able to report it back to my self and see it for what it really is.  I can only experience anything from within my own conscious awareness.

Berserk2 wrote on Feb 21^st, 2008 at 1:55am:


Don, Very Interesting your above reply....Does this mean the human mind, especially the
Sub-Consciousness, is really an advanced imagery script-writer, actor(s), director, and
teacher, etc, etc, .... Regards. Lars.

The term OBE seems to have broad descriptions/definitions that make it difficult to understand if one was truly out of body. OBEs described in NDE the person has let go of their physical body. Two things strike me in my own experience. One is the ability to see and hear all around me simultaneously. The sights and sounds are a part of me and I’m a part of them. The other is a lack of concern for the physical reality including the physical body.

I’ll also mention here that I have had these same experiences while wide awake, clearly centered in my body. I posted about hearing celestial music that stayed with me and was a part of me most of the day one morning last December. The only way I can describe this is to say it was like the boundaries between physical and higher spiritual consciousness was somehow integrated that particular day because there was nothing I did to make it happen. The music stayed with me as I went about my daily activities and faded later that afternoon. I’ve not heard it since.

Following a line of consciousness to the higher levels of our being is another way to define OBE. This can be done while in a meditative state, or while dreaming or when you’re wide awake and fully aware of your normal physical surroundings. Many times during meditation I’ll have what I call vision flashes or mini movies. Sometimes I’ll receive information as well, especially if I have asked a question or am focused on a particular problem, but most of the time I don’t know what these visions mean if anything.

While dreaming various things can happen in the dream that prove to be accurate or even only partly accurate upon awakening. For example in a dream I will be flying over a fault line that is quaking only to hear about an earthquake that took place at the same time as my dream. Last night I dreamed of my family room and my dog peeing on the carpet. Neither of my dogs have ever had accidents in the house so this was something unexpected. The carpet in the family room is green but in my dream it was red. When I got up this morning I went into the family room. No wet spots. Went into my bathroom where there is a red throw rug. It was soaked.

Often while sleeping I will be moving through darkness toward what appears to be a star, which is actually a non-physical being. I’m not out of body like in a NDE; I’m following a line of consciousness to interact with the level/world that being exists on. I think Albert knows exactly what I’m describing. These light beings emanate the most beautiful love you can possibly imagine. I consider them to be guides helping me on a personal level. I can ask questions, but they don’t always answer me. It’s like it is on a “need to know” basis. When answers come they usually come via ESP where I just know it or suddenly understand something. Usually what I understand is ineffable, but relevant to a circumstance.

As Albert mentions you get to a point where you don’t need or even think about requiring proof. You just accept “what is” for whatever it is. There’s a trust that grows like being in a state of acceptance, but it is more than that and I can’t find the words to describe it except to say you know you are connected to the inner source that animates all of us.

Kathy

Kathy:

If you don't mind me asking, how long have you been in conscious contact with spirit guidance? I've been in conscious contact for about three years. I specify "conscious," because I've found that guidance was always there, even before I realized it.

Remember, I believe in an afterlife and am eager to find adequate ways of exploring it and defending it.  I just think that posters here are substituting implausible doctrine based on self-serving interpretations of experiences for valid insight.  In short, posters are constantly begging the question.  That does not mean that they should alter their experiments with altered states.  Many scientific breakthroughs happen through revealing accidents and mistakes; and states of consciousness are worth studying in their own right, regardless of their irrelevance to postmortem survival.  But psychological certainty counts for nothing; verifictiton and replication are everything!     This discussion could profit from two other topics:

(1) a grasp of just how powerful and profound the unconscious truly is.  A Jungian approach strikes me as the most productive (the animus, anima, shadow, archetypes, the ego, 4 functions, etc.), especially as this demonstrates the directorial role of aspects of mind.  Such a study would reveal that guidance attributed to external agents in the New Age movement should instead by attributed to aspects of the self which have nothing to do with postmortem survival and external guides.

(2) a grasp of the significance of paranormal research on ESP: I think posters on this site underestimate how seriously the reach of the mind challenges the legitimacy of postulating contacts with discarnate minds.  This inadequacy can be demostrated by the right package of critical research and acecdotal evidence.  In my view, no threads have done justice to this problem.  Even OBE adept Ingo Swann is horrified by claims that OBE research and remote viewing demonstrates the reality of the afterlife.

Don