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Out Of Body Experiences (OBEs / OOBEs)

She turned around and said "I'm having an out-of-body experience".
 
Recently in this thread
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...umping-off-point-for-astral-projection.60765/
I mentioned having seen things during perceived out of body experiences that I wouldn't otherwise known. Since I have time to kill, I'll describe them here.

1. During an OBE one night 2003, I found myself near a church miles away, in an area I didn't normally visit.There was a set of steps that led down to the sidewalk, and I saw something shining in a crack between the steps and the walkway. I went in close for a look, and could make out small, shiny square shapes, though I couldn't make out exactly what they were.

Since I wanted to know if these OBEs were simply an altered state of consciousness or actually "out of body", I went to the site and (trying to be surreptitious :p) peered into the crack. Sure enough, there were square pieces of a broken mother-of-pearl bracelet with metal backing. It was nothing valuable, but I picked them out - so excited at that point I no longer cared if anyone saw - and saved them as "evidence". (I still have them today, stuffed away in a handbag somewhere)

I'll leave it up to reader whether this actually counts as evidence or not.

2. Approximately 2005, during an OBE I was "dragged" to an acquaintance's house (meaning I didn't have much control over my movements and was pulled there without meaning to be). There was no one in the house, but visible were two plane tickets to San Francisco. This acquaintance hadn't mentioned planning a trip, so I was curious, but 2 days later he mentioned that he was about to fly there.

The curious thing about this one is that the plane tickets I saw were more old fashioned than the ones that were being used at that time. That could either mean that I perceived this more symbolically, in an intuitive sort of way rather than truly "seeing" it, or it was just because of the way things can look very peculiar in the OBE state.

3. Around 2008, another OBE where I was struggling to gain control over my movements. I settled for just swooping in ever-increasing circles until I could pass through the wall of the house. I still couldn't gain control though, and ended up passing through the walls (that sounds so funny, doesn't it!) of the neighbors house, too.

I hadn't intended to violate our neighbor's privacy, but as I found myself in the back room of their house (where I'd never been) I couldn't resist having a look around. There was a very large antique mirror with a gilt frame and stacks of framed paintings against the wall. There was also an area rug, quite old, with small red and blue flowers on a dark yellow background. It was made of wool - I could tell because I passed my hand through it on one of my very slow swoops through the room.

That OBE didn't amount to much and came to an end, but a short while later, the neighbors asked for help moving some furniture into their back room, which turned out to look exactly as it had during the OBE.

There were a few other instances besides these, but less certain how well they correlated with waking life. For example, seeing a friend in a London club watching a band - which she indeed was, but I have no validation that the club really looked like the place I saw.

As I've said before, I have no idea what is going on with my body or brain or anything else during these experiences, just that they happen, and that they certainly feel like out of body experiences. I make no claim as to whether they truly are or not.

Make of it what you will.
 
I had an American horror comic in the 70's which had a story about OOBE. A man who was ugly and not a success with the ladies persuaded his handsome neighbour to practice astral projection with him. They finally managed it and set off flying about the city in 'ghost form'. While the handsome guy is checking out some women, the ugly one goes back and inhabits his body. He becomes a ladies man, as he had deviously planned all along but it doesn't end well for him.
It never specified what happened to the handsome ghost.
 
I had an American horror comic in the 70's which had a story about OOBE. A man who was ugly and not a success with the ladies persuaded his handsome neighbour to practice astral projection with him. They finally managed it and set off flying about the city in 'ghost form'. While the handsome guy is checking out some women, the ugly one goes back and inhabits his body. He becomes a ladies man, as he had deviously planned all along but it doesn't end well for him.
It never specified what happened to the handsome ghost.


Reminds me of a TV series back in the 90s, with a different occult/sci-fi theme each week. In one a convicted murderer can secretly astrally project and gets up to chicanery from his prison cell.

He isn't disturbed because he does it at night while he is supposed to be asleep. However, eventually someone checks on him and finds him apparently dead, as his spirit is elsewhere, and before he can return to his body it is buried and he wakes up in his coffin.

I'd like to see that series again.
 
Smoking ghanji is reported to produce out of body experiences. :) , of course I wouldn't know.
 
I had an American horror comic in the 70's which had a story about OOBE. A man who was ugly and not a success with the ladies persuaded his handsome neighbour to practice astral projection with him. They finally managed it and set off flying about the city in 'ghost form'. While the handsome guy is checking out some women, the ugly one goes back and inhabits his body. He becomes a ladies man, as he had deviously planned all along but it doesn't end well for him.
It never specified what happened to the handsome ghost.

Reminds me of a TV series back in the 90s, with a different occult/sci-fi theme each week. In one a convicted murderer can secretly astrally project and gets up to chicanery from his prison cell.

He isn't disturbed because he does it at night while he is supposed to be asleep. However, eventually someone checks on him and finds him apparently dead, as his spirit is elsewhere, and before he can return to his body it is buried and he wakes up in his coffin.

I'd like to see that series again.

The 80's american adolescent girl version of these is Stranger With My Face.

image.jpeg


Classic, astrally-projecting evil twin story. ;)
 
Recently in this thread
http://forum.forteantimes.com/index...umping-off-point-for-astral-projection.60765/
I mentioned having seen things during perceived out of body experiences that I wouldn't otherwise known. Since I have time to kill, I'll describe them here.

1. During an OBE one night 2003, I found myself near a church miles away, in an area I didn't normally visit.There was a set of steps that led down to the sidewalk, and I saw something shining in a crack between the steps and the walkway. I went in close for a look, and could make out small, shiny square shapes, though I couldn't make out exactly what they were.

Since I wanted to know if these OBEs were simply an altered state of consciousness or actually "out of body", I went to the site and (trying to be surreptitious :p) peered into the crack. Sure enough, there were square pieces of a broken mother-of-pearl bracelet with metal backing. It was nothing valuable, but I picked them out - so excited at that point I no longer cared if anyone saw - and saved them as "evidence". (I still have them today, stuffed away in a handbag somewhere)

I'll leave it up to reader whether this actually counts as evidence or not.

2. Approximately 2005, during an OBE I was "dragged" to an acquaintance's house (meaning I didn't have much control over my movements and was pulled there without meaning to be). There was no one in the house, but visible were two plane tickets to San Francisco. This acquaintance hadn't mentioned planning a trip, so I was curious, but 2 days later he mentioned that he was about to fly there.

The curious thing about this one is that the plane tickets I saw were more old fashioned than the ones that were being used at that time. That could either mean that I perceived this more symbolically, in an intuitive sort of way rather than truly "seeing" it, or it was just because of the way things can look very peculiar in the OBE state.

3. Around 2008, another OBE where I was struggling to gain control over my movements. I settled for just swooping in ever-increasing circles until I could pass through the wall of the house. I still couldn't gain control though, and ended up passing through the walls (that sounds so funny, doesn't it!) of the neighbors house, too.

I hadn't intended to violate our neighbor's privacy, but as I found myself in the back room of their house (where I'd never been) I couldn't resist having a look around. There was a very large antique mirror with a gilt frame and stacks of framed paintings against the wall. There was also an area rug, quite old, with small red and blue flowers on a dark yellow background. It was made of wool - I could tell because I passed my hand through it on one of my very slow swoops through the room.

That OBE didn't amount to much and came to an end, but a short while later, the neighbors asked for help moving some furniture into their back room, which turned out to look exactly as it had during the OBE.

There were a few other instances besides these, but less certain how well they correlated with waking life. For example, seeing a friend in a London club watching a band - which she indeed was, but I have no validation that the club really looked like the place I saw.

As I've said before, I have no idea what is going on with my body or brain or anything else during these experiences, just that they happen, and that they certainly feel like out of body experiences. I make no claim as to whether they truly are or not.

Make of it what you will.
They truly are. Where were you at the time of these OBE's? I mean, were you laying down, asleep maybe? Were you in the same location each time?
 
Hang on, do you spend a lot of time OBE-ing in branches of WHSmiths?
No, but we do seem to have carpet on the brain here, lately. :D
'Out-of-body carpet touching skills' sounds wonderfully perverted.

Heh. It does. :p
Given how clumsy I seem to be in an OBE state, if I ever did try to do something perverted, no doubt it would all go comically wrong. :D

This is an interesting difference from lucid dreaming, at least IME. In lucid dreams, the dream body is a given, it behaves the way you'd want (or expect) it to. In an OBE, this "astral body" (or whatever it is) is something that you have to manage and work at controlling. Instinctually, you try to use it as you would a normal body, but of course it isn't, so naturally it doesn't behave as expected. Things can go even more peculiar than they are already.

Which all sounds very weird and whacky (just like the concept of OBE's themselves) but I have read and heard of similar things over the years. For some, an OBE seems to be a feeling of complete freedom but it has not been that way for me.
 
They truly are. Where were you at the time of these OBE's? I mean, were you laying down, asleep maybe? Were you in the same location each time?

All my OBE's begin with sleep paralysis, so they began with sleep and become...whatever state is occuring during sleep paralysis (a sort of awake while asleep?)

Sleep paralysis was a problem for many years until I learned to induce an OBE by increasing the feeling of vibration that occurs in the body during SP. Which enabled/created (or whatever) the sense of having left my physical body, also perceiving an environment that was recognizable as "the real world" but also quite different.

So tne pattern goes from sleep, to sleep paralysis, to awareness within the sleep paralysis, to OBE.

These OBEs happened in different places and different times of day or night. In short, any time sleep paralysis can occur, so can an OBE.

BTW, i've had many OBEs over the years, due to the sleep paralysis issue (which doctors have kept insisting is "no big deal" :eek:) Ive mentioned these few above because information learned in that state matched up with information learned in an ordinary state.
 
All my OBE's begin with sleep paralysis, so they began with sleep and become...whatever state is occuring during sleep paralysis (a sort of awake while asleep?)

Sleep paralysis was a problem for many years until I learned to induce an OBE by increasing the feeling of vibration that occurs in the body during SP. Which enabled/created (or whatever) the sense of having left my physical body, also perceiving an environment that was recognizable as "the real world" but also quite different.

So tne pattern goes from sleep, to sleep paralysis, to awareness within the sleep paralysis, to OBE.

These OBEs happened in different places and different times of day or night. In short, any time sleep paralysis can occur, so can an OBE.

BTW, i've had many OBEs over the years, due to the sleep paralysis issue (which doctors have kept insisting is "no big deal" :eek:) Ive mentioned these few above because information learned in that state matched up with information learned in an ordinary state.
Thank you Ulalume, this is very interesting. If your OBE had occurred whilst in the same location, then I would have guessed at the existence of a perpetually open Dimensional portal. This can happen and can also be closed by those with the wherewithal and ability to do so. Yet its not that. I believe that you've had this 'condition' and engaged with it for such a long time, that you have become able to achieve Astral Projection almost at will, much in the same way that some people are aware of dreaming and can consciously engage with their dreams.
I need to think more about this issue and will comment more at a later date.
 
All my OBE's begin with sleep paralysis, so they began with sleep and become...whatever state is occuring during sleep paralysis (a sort of awake while asleep?)

Sleep paralysis was a problem for many years until I learned to induce an OBE by increasing the feeling of vibration that occurs in the body during SP. Which enabled/created (or whatever) the sense of having left my physical body, also perceiving an environment that was recognizable as "the real world" but also quite different.

So tne pattern goes from sleep, to sleep paralysis, to awareness within the sleep paralysis, to OBE.

These OBEs happened in different places and different times of day or night. In short, any time sleep paralysis can occur, so can an OBE.

BTW, i've had many OBEs over the years, due to the sleep paralysis issue (which doctors have kept insisting is "no big deal" :eek:) Ive mentioned these few above because information learned in that state matched up with information learned in an ordinary state.

This is *fascinating* Ulalume, I have suffered from sleep paralysis on and off for many years now, plus other odd sleep events. I had never considered that it might be possible to use it as a trigger for something useful - it still just scares the crap out of me! (I am led to believe that the 'malevolent presence in the room' feeling is perfectly typical in SP events?). I would love to try this for myself, to gain control of something which is quite literally a total loss of control...
 
This is *fascinating* Ulalume, I have suffered from sleep paralysis on and off for many years now, plus other odd sleep events. I had never considered that it might be possible to use it as a trigger for something useful - it still just scares the crap out of me! (I am led to believe that the 'malevolent presence in the room' feeling is perfectly typical in SP events?). I would love to try this for myself, to gain control of something which is quite literally a total loss of control...

Sorry to hear you've been suffering all these years, Moonglum. Sleep paralysis really is awful, isn't it?
The easiest way to break the paralysis seems to be to twitch a finger or toe, but (for me, anyway) the struggle to do that is a nasty, overwhelming feeling. I nearly drowned once, and the struggle reminds me of that.

Next time you realize you are in sleep paralysis, try going deeper into it instead of struggling to get out of it. If you get the "vibration" feeling in your body, try consciously speeding it up. Even if it doesn't lead to an OBE the first time, in my experience, these things can help reduce the fear.
 
For those who are interested in experiencing astral travel I recommend getting a couple of friends to try out the procedure described in "Windows of the Mind" by G.M. Glaskin, which is said to enable you to "travel" in both space and time. As the book itself says, there's no drugs or hypnosis involved - all it requires is massaging the "third eye" region of the forehead and the ankles and some guiding talk. One is awake during the whole experience.

In the 70's when the book came out, I tried it on literally dozens of friends and everyone was able to travel. As for whether the experience involves actually moving in a disembodied state or is simply a means of generating dream imagery while awake, I will leave to each experiementer to decide.
 
I had an American horror comic in the 70's which had a story about OOBE. A man who was ugly and not a success with the ladies persuaded his handsome neighbour to practice astral projection with him. They finally managed it and set off flying about the city in 'ghost form'. While the handsome guy is checking out some women, the ugly one goes back and inhabits his body. He becomes a ladies man, as he had deviously planned all along but it doesn't end well for him. It never specified what happened to the handsome ghost.

Sounds a lot like "The Thing on the Doorstep" by H.P. Lovecraft, one of his more racy stories, except there the bad guy is a sorcerer in the body of a young woman.

I have had no luck with OoBE. Any pointers for a NOoBE?
 
Is not astral projection the same thing? Ive read several books that describe it like an oobe.
Perhaps the scientists involved should get some spiritualist groups in to help as they some times claim to have this extrodinary ability.

The term 'astral projection' is widely used but not universally specific to a single context for describing the phenomenon / experience.

The older, more formal, version frames things in terms of a spirit, soul, or equivalent ephemeral component of oneself that effectively disengages and travels 'elsewhere'. This version pretty clearly correlates with the notion of an OBE / OOBE.

The informal version doesn't necessarily rely on the spirit / soul aspect, focuses on perceiving or experiencing things 'elsewhere' without dwelling on 'how you got there', and therefore sometimes refers to something more akin to remote viewing. This version doesn't necessarily correlate with the concept of OBE / OOBE.
 
As an adjunct to the conceptualisation of the spirit/soul/body paradigm, in the context here of OOBEs, and informed by recent scientific pronouncements regarding the survival of consciousness 'post mortem' (or at least after a heart stops beating): I wonder how firm believers in a quasi-Christian afterlife manage to reconcile the apparent retention of the soul within a physical corpse, despite the expectation by them that it would be transducted into an afterlife location?

Does this peri-terminal 'In-Body Experience' not nullify their collective prospect of eternal existence beyond death, in effect grounding a soul/spirit to being a localised instancy of being, rather than a demountable (survivable) overlay. Intrinsic to the physical, and unavoidably not extrinsic?
 
The term 'astral projection' is widely used but not universally specific to a single context for describing the phenomenon / experience.

The older, more formal, version frames things in terms of a spirit, soul, or equivalent ephemeral component of oneself that effectively disengages and travels 'elsewhere'. This version pretty clearly correlates with the notion of an OBE / OOBE.

The informal version doesn't necessarily rely on the spirit / soul aspect, focuses on perceiving or experiencing things 'elsewhere' without dwelling on 'how you got there', and therefore sometimes refers to something more akin to remote viewing. This version doesn't necessarily correlate with the concept of OBE / OOBE.

Master Enola, you know that I am a big fan of your Aristotelic ways (and this IS a compliment), but I suspect that the separation between categories of OBE (the Fortean phenomena, not the chivalry title) don’t take in account some moveable boundaries when we actually live this kind experience.

I had some episodes of what I am about to present as OBE, some very young (maybe 8 or 9 years old), some as recent as 4 years ago (I’m 58 now). With very little variations, I wake up in the morning, get out of bed, drag myself to the bathroom, and suddenly I realize that I “forgot my body”, doing that. Suddenly I kinda “reboot” the whole thing and find myself in bed, getting up and doing all over again. In some cases the process repeats two or three times in a row, until I actually check that I am moving my fingers and toes and then my legs, etc.
I remember one time in special, I was a teenager then, when I kept coming out of the bed, just to be “rebooted” suddenly, to realize that I never left the bed at all. This time it went beyond 5 times and I was panicking. Specially because I arrived by my bedroom door and turned back, to actually see me lying in bed. Each time it happened, I “rebooted” the experience once again. It lasted what felt just some minutes and ended when I applied my routine of moving fingers, toes, limbs before trying to go out of the bed. It felt REAL, it was actually happening, I smelled the breakfast in the kitchen, I heard my siblings voices elsewhere in the house. One can talk about vivid dreams, but I was feeling this kind of link to my physical body, that pulled me back into my body every time I realized that I wasn’t physically getting up. It was increasingly frustrating to find myself back on bed.

So, should we talk in terms of “the conscience of my Self, getting out of bed and forgetting my physical Self in bed” ? Was it my conscience that was walking (or moving) to the door ? If so, what was left there, back into my physical Self ? Was my Spirit rambling out of my Body ? And what, finally, “reintegrated” the conscience of me and my physicality, was it my Will. I know about teenager’s beds that become quite crowded, but that particular morning, my bed was starting to feel like a streamliner cabin on a Marx Brothers film.

Let me add something that can be relevant to the discussion : I am a good asthmatic and, being born in 1960, I was lucky to test many “definitive” treatments to this condition. Most of them deal with corticoids, but when it happened I was using beta-oriented amphetamines (plus the corticoids) as an aerosol. And, yes, when I have an asthma episode and I take the medications, it increases my tendency to have this kind of morning dissociation. I don’t use beta-amphetamines anymore, since the last century, but sometimes this kind of experience happened after this. Would it be the bad oxygenation of the brain (I never arrived that far when I have a crisis), even in small percentages? I don’t know.

The case is : I’m not ready to categorize all manifestations like mine as astral projections or remote viewing and I really would like to understand the hows and whys of my OBEs on a broader spectrum.
 
Master Enola, you know that I am a big fan of your Aristotelic ways (and this IS a compliment), but I suspect that the separation between categories of OBE (the Fortean phenomena, not the chivalry title) don’t take in account some moveable boundaries when we actually live this kind experience. ...

I completely agree there's a disconnect between how we experience such incidents (I have, for the record ... ) and how we describe and explain such incidents.

That was the implicit basis for my earlier comments about astral projection.

Just so we're clear ... I didn't say anything with regard to categorizing OBE's / OOBE's per se.

I was noting that the phrase 'astral projection' is sloppily invoked to cover distinct types of (or, more appropriately, distinct descriptions / explanations of ...) personally experienced incidents. In some cases it's used to connote 'going somewhere else in person', whereas in others it's used to connote no more than 'seeing somewhere else.'
 
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Occasionally i go to sleep listening to binaural beats on youtube. They make claims for treating/healing/helping/creating any manner of specific physical and mental states....which largely seems bollocks to me, but I accept that they purportedly alter the brain waves in general. More interestingly they were discovered/developed by Robert Monro, the man who introduced the concept of astral probjection and oobe's to the general pubic. So listening to one Binaural Beat recording which promised to be incredibly powerful for inducing OOBE's seemed worth a go.

I'd listened to this one once before and had a very peculiar dream experience which I reported on here in which I felt dizzy and disoriented, then found myself getting up and out of bed and wandering about the room while simultaneously aware that my eyes were tightly closed and i couldn't open them..a contradiction that had me wondering, with no conviction, whether this was more than a coincidence given what i'd be listening to before sleep. Well that was over a year ago i think. I'd not listened to it since because of the nausea/spinning.

I did last night in bed. And reading the comments under the video about people either claiming or hoping to have oobes obviously gave my internal dream factory material to work with. So ive no idea if the following actually happened or I merely dreamed that it did...

All I know is that passing effortlessly from a regular dream scene i believed myself to be cosy but awake in bed with my eyes still closed, and a sense of relaxation that had me thinking maybe i could leave my body now. Surprisingly there was no fear. I decided to/felt my self raise my "astral" legs and lower half up into the air...but my upper half and head stayed put. I tried things I'd read previously.."rolling over" out of my body. or pulling myself up on an imaginary rope...didn't work, but throughout i genuinely felt my "other" legs were raised up out of my body. I don't know if i can distinguish between saying i felt it and merely that i could strongly visualise it. I kept my eyes closed throughout...realising/supposing that to open them would wake me up and I would see nothing special..there'd be no ghostly legs in the air.

As i say i may have simply preprogrammed my brain to dream on the subject...but it struck me as interesting that on both occassions that ive listened to this recording which is mean to induce these things, something suggestive of the experience has actually happened.
 
Occasionally i go to sleep listening to binaural beats on youtube...As i say i may have simply preprogrammed my brain to dream on the subject..
You're happy to let people you don't know simply mess with your head? Sometimes I think it would just be too easy to become a cult leader. Just be glad I am too ethical to put subliminal suggestions into a binarual beats video on Youtube.
:evillaugh:o_O:fnord:
 
I have been enjoying this YouTuber UFO's shows but this is completely different from him and be it true or not It's interesting.
 
obe's

ok dunno if this is the right thread for this but..
ive heard everyone has the ability to have an out of body experiance well ive read things on sites about it and so far it appears to be a load of - dare i say it? crap
if someone could give me more infomation it would be great as i am genuinly interested in it
whether or not one can have these experiences at will is certainly plausible, there was some inquiry done by the US military in conjunction with the monroe institute back in the day, the results being and I quote " the program has produced statistically significant results" though they hit some road blocks with practical application of their findings. I think we would need more data to verify the results, another more recent study conducted has been by professor sam parnia with his multiple AWARE programs, which tried to test the vision of those who claimed to have an OBE during cardiac arrest, he concluded that at least some of the patients they were able to interview had memories consistent which events that had happened, though more investigation may be required due to the limited sample size.

On a personal note though, I've experienced similar sensations during meditative practice as well during a medical situation in which I was close to death, though it would be difficult to verify it as an actual OBE rather than an active mind.
 
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