Hi,

Since no one else has given a response, I'll take a stab at it.  I love to talk about OBEs. 

I've had so many, and they happen in so many different ways, but you asked specifically about how I knew what was happening while it was happening and why it was proof to me.  So one that comes to mind was an OBE that happened spontaneously to me one night.  I had woken up after a couple hours of sleep and wanted to fall quickly back to sleep.  The trouble is that sometimes I have insomnia.  As I was lying there trying to let sleep come back to me, I just had the attitude of waiting patiently to see if I'd fall asleep again or not.  I think it was because of that kind of paying attention, that I was able to fall asleep and keep consciously awake at the same time.

What happened was that as I lay there, I felt something weird happen in my forehead.  I felt a feeling as if I were peeling away from my body.  It was a slow, slow feeling and it actually felt like a physical feeling.  It all took place in the spot of my forehead.  As the peeling sensation continued, what I felt was as if a gigantic gaping hole was opening up in the middle of my forehead that my whole "body" could pass through.

Of course I knew that my physical body was not passing through, but I felt completely as physical as I always do.  With this hole opening up more and more, I felt a strong sudden movement of moving forward through this hole.  It all happened so slowly that I could not mistake any of the sensations of what I was feeling.  And because I had not noticed any change between lying there awake and this process beginning, I felt as completely awake and alert as I do any other waking moment. 

So as I began to feel myself pouring through this opening in the middle of my forehead, the first thought that came to me was that this definitely was an out of body experience.  And yet at the same time, I also felt such a feeling of familiarity, as if I knew what to expect because I had done this about a million times, just was never able to remember what was happening while it was happening.

After I got even just the slightest bit out the hole, it was the feeling of an enormous area of space lay before me on the other side of that hole.  The expansive-space feeling of what was on the other side was too great of a magnitude to even describe.  It went on for infinity, for sure. 

I slowly poured through the hole and even though I could feel the vastness of that huge space, it also felt like I occupied every bit of it.  Like I owned it.  Compared to what it felt like inside my body, my body felt like a tiny, confined, tight, uncomfortable space, and this new place made me feel free and at home. 

It seemed to take a minute or two for this process to happen, but once I felt that I was completely out through the hole, then that huge 3D black space quickly felt like I was physically moving through it.  And suddenly within a few seconds I came to a stop because I mentally decided I didn't want to go too far too fast without knowing where I was.  When I suddenly felt myself stop moving, a clear color just-like-physical-eyesight view opened up and I saw that I was outside less than a mile from my house.  The lighting was dim-appearing, but I could see clearly.  I could see all the physical landmarks that I'd normally see if I were physically standing in the same spot, but I knew that I was nonphysical.  I knew I was out of body.  I could still feel that vastness of an eternity of space branching out in all directions, and the feeling I was feeling was that I could go anywhere, any place in a matter of just a thought, and I knew that I could be in all places at once if I wanted to be. 

This was one of the most unique OBEs I've ever had, and I don't have conscious memory of another one happening like this one.  But like I said, I knew that I had done this before because of the familiar feeling it gave me.  It was a very, very comfortable feeling, like coming home from a long long trip and really enjoying to be home again. 

So, there's no "real" proof for anyone else in that experience, but it was very good proof to me.  It was very neat for me to experience it the way that I did.  Consequently, I am working on trying to replicate it consciously, trying to open up that space in my forehead again.

I'm doing a lot of experimentation and documentation of what I know about it, particularly how it is connected to psychic perception like ESP and remote viewing.  It's all linked, in my opinion.

I had an OBE which was so similar to the physical that I at first thought it was the physical and thought I had to see the doctor as I found myself in a hotel room but with almost no memory of how I had come there, and in what city I was. But there were some things that really did not match with physical laws and I figured it must be an OBE. After a while I decided I had to wake up physically because I otherwise probably would drift off to sleep and forget the experience. I had almost to fight to wake up as my body apparantly was in deep sleep. When I finally opened my physical eyes, everything in my (messy) room was exactly as I had "seen" moments before while bodily in deep sleep, only the light was a bit different. It was as real as it could be. Other than in a normal dream, I had the same type of consciousness as I have physically awake.

Spooky