10 ms·

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your

Anecdotally speaking, I have had 2 out of body experiences which were extremely vivid. Think about if your consciousness could be ejected outside and above your body somehow and you were looking down at your physical self. One experience was while awake meditating and the other was while sleeping. No drugs involved etc. While these were not technically NDE's, it definitely opened up for me the possibility that an NDE is potentially possible and that more research should go into this.

krazemon 12y ago
Does your username have anything to do with these experiences or is it just a serendipitous coincidence?
origin-unknown 12y ago
An out of body experience occurs when the mind is concentrated and the body goes to sleep. It's a skill that can be learned. It takes some people months of practice, while others do it on their first try.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
  Crap now I'm scared of meditating kind of.
  - origin-unknown 12y ago
    Haha! I know what you mean. It can be scary because we're essentially confronting the unknown, but concentration helps with that. Fear is a distraction that takes you away from a single pointed mind. When you recognize fear or worry popping up, you gently return to your object of concentration until it goes away.
nsxwolf 12y ago
Did you collect any information about your surroundings in that state? Do you feel you were you really "looking" at your physical self, through some other sensory capability, or was it a mental construction?
- origin-unknown 12y ago
  The environment is practically identical to your physical location. You have the same level of awareness that you have here, only you can walk through solid objects and fly, etc. However, you will often project things onto the environment subconsciously, so it may not be exactly in line with the physical world. It's like there is a description of the world there that we can access, but we can also overlay our own constructs on top of that description. An unbridled mind fills the environment with seemingly random imagery and we experience dreams, but a concentrated mind sees the environment itself. It's really not much different from being awake actually - sometimes you're fully aware of your concrete surroundings and other times you're lost in abstract daydreams, completely oblivious to what's going on around you. As for "looking" at yourself, I usually wouldn't see my body, but I'd feel a strong magnetic pull coming from that area of the room. If I got too close, I'd get sucked into my body and wake up. I believe data about the physical world is available during an out of body experience, but it's impossible to be entirely objective about it since, whether in the body or "outside" of it, we have no choice but to access that data through a mental construct, i.e., an experience.
hashberry 12y ago
I've read all of Robert Monroe's books on out-of-body experiences and I'm convinced OBEs are a dream-type state. Especially his later books when he discuses his conversations with other beings and trying to ignore sexual urges (erections are common in REM sleep).
- origin-unknown 12y ago
  Have you ever had an out of body experience? I would probably dismiss it all as a dream state too, if not for the experiences I had - including really impossible stuff, like seeing future events. You can certainly have conversations with other beings there, although I don't think there's a good way to discern the nature of those beings. They are intelligent anyway. Some people view sexual energy as a fundamental power that can be used for a variety of spiritual purposes, so they suggest that it be sublimated or transmuted. Maybe these things seem weird - and they are weird - but neither proves that the world experienced while "out of body" is fabricated by the brain, assuming that's what you meant by dream-type state of course.
Cybernetic 12y ago
About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed. I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream and I didn't have any desire to try to fly around or through anything, I was content to float there and observe. About a minute or two into the experience, I noticed something crawling across my pillow, towards my head. As I focused on it, it appeared to be a spider. This made me panic. I think the panic wasn't because of the spider, but that I suddenly realized I was floating in the air and looking at myself. I was overwhelmed with fear and felt myself suddenly fall into my body, at which point I woke up immediately. There was a physical sensation of light pressure when that happened. That experience felt like it lasted only a few minutes. I jumped out of bed, turned on the some lights and looked all over. I pulled the blankets off the bed, turning over my pillow, etc. I woke up my wife and told her there was a spider on the bed. We spent a few minutes trying to find it, but to no avail. I never had anything like that happen before or since. I don't know what actually happened, but the experience felt very real. There wasn't any alcohol or drugs involved, but I was in the Air Force at the time, so it could have been aliens. ;-)
- kijin 12y ago
  > at which point I woke up immediately. Could the whole thing have been a dream? Even if you remember waking up before it happened, that doesn't mean that it was not a dream. You can have a dream within a dream, or have two consecutive dreams that make you feel like you dreamed within a dream.
  - Cybernetic 12y ago
    It definitely could have been a dream. It was a strange combination of the physical sensation of floating and falling, but also observing myself in the third person that was very unusual.

krazemon 12y ago

Does your username have anything to do with these experiences or is it just a serendipitous coincidence?

origin-unknown 12y ago

An out of body experience occurs when the mind is concentrated and the body goes to sleep. It's a skill that can be learned. It takes some people months of practice, while others do it on their first try.

0xdeadbeefbabe 12y ago
Crap now I'm scared of meditating kind of.
- origin-unknown 12y ago
  Haha! I know what you mean. It can be scary because we're essentially confronting the unknown, but concentration helps with that. Fear is a distraction that takes you away from a single pointed mind. When you recognize fear or worry popping up, you gently return to your object of concentration until it goes away.

nsxwolf 12y ago

Did you collect any information about your surroundings in that state? Do you feel you were you really "looking" at your physical self, through some other sensory capability, or was it a mental construction?

origin-unknown 12y ago
The environment is practically identical to your physical location. You have the same level of awareness that you have here, only you can walk through solid objects and fly, etc. However, you will often project things onto the environment subconsciously, so it may not be exactly in line with the physical world. It's like there is a description of the world there that we can access, but we can also overlay our own constructs on top of that description. An unbridled mind fills the environment with seemingly random imagery and we experience dreams, but a concentrated mind sees the environment itself. It's really not much different from being awake actually - sometimes you're fully aware of your concrete surroundings and other times you're lost in abstract daydreams, completely oblivious to what's going on around you. As for "looking" at yourself, I usually wouldn't see my body, but I'd feel a strong magnetic pull coming from that area of the room. If I got too close, I'd get sucked into my body and wake up. I believe data about the physical world is available during an out of body experience, but it's impossible to be entirely objective about it since, whether in the body or "outside" of it, we have no choice but to access that data through a mental construct, i.e., an experience.

hashberry 12y ago

I've read all of Robert Monroe's books on out-of-body experiences and I'm convinced OBEs are a dream-type state. Especially his later books when he discuses his conversations with other beings and trying to ignore sexual urges (erections are common in REM sleep).

origin-unknown 12y ago
Have you ever had an out of body experience? I would probably dismiss it all as a dream state too, if not for the experiences I had - including really impossible stuff, like seeing future events. You can certainly have conversations with other beings there, although I don't think there's a good way to discern the nature of those beings. They are intelligent anyway. Some people view sexual energy as a fundamental power that can be used for a variety of spiritual purposes, so they suggest that it be sublimated or transmuted. Maybe these things seem weird - and they are weird - but neither proves that the world experienced while "out of body" is fabricated by the brain, assuming that's what you meant by dream-type state of course.

Cybernetic 12y ago

About 10 years ago, I had an experience that felt like I was out of my body. It occurred during the night while asleep. I woke up to find myself floating over the bed, just below the ceiling and against the wall opposite the bed. I remember looking around the room and I could see myself and my wife asleep. It didn't register to me at that time, that I was looking at myself from outside my body. It felt like a dream and I didn't have any desire to try to fly around or through anything, I was content to float there and observe. About a minute or two into the experience, I noticed something crawling across my pillow, towards my head. As I focused on it, it appeared to be a spider. This made me panic. I think the panic wasn't because of the spider, but that I suddenly realized I was floating in the air and looking at myself. I was overwhelmed with fear and felt myself suddenly fall into my body, at which point I woke up immediately. There was a physical sensation of light pressure when that happened. That experience felt like it lasted only a few minutes. I jumped out of bed, turned on the some lights and looked all over. I pulled the blankets off the bed, turning over my pillow, etc. I woke up my wife and told her there was a spider on the bed. We spent a few minutes trying to find it, but to no avail. I never had anything like that happen before or since. I don't know what actually happened, but the experience felt very real. There wasn't any alcohol or drugs involved, but I was in the Air Force at the time, so it could have been aliens. ;-)

kijin 12y ago
> at which point I woke up immediately. Could the whole thing have been a dream? Even if you remember waking up before it happened, that doesn't mean that it was not a dream. You can have a dream within a dream, or have two consecutive dreams that make you feel like you dreamed within a dream.
- Cybernetic 12y ago
  It definitely could have been a dream. It was a strange combination of the physical sensation of floating and falling, but also observing myself in the third person that was very unusual.