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60s psych from the 13th Floor Elevators:

Postures (Leave your body behind)

"You're moving, keep climbimg.
You're moving, keep climbimg.
You're wonderin'
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
What's on your mind
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
It's the one keystone people keep trying to find
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
The state of mind that puts you there
And evolution's everywhere,
it's creeping back from the affair.
So leave! Leave! Leave!
Leave your body behind.
Leave, Leave, Leave!
Leave your body behind.
Yes, yes, yes,
You can always come back
To live the desire you want on your track
Live the love that gives it's return
The higher you're livin', now, the purer it burns.
So keep climbin'
(Ooo, that energy's higher)
Keep on climbin'
(Your sun catches on fire)
Keep climbin' and bathe in the sun
The dawns and the darkness
Watch, the journey's begun
Remember, remember, Why can't you remember?
Remember that we're fallin'
Indifference from the love
It's only habit circumstance that fits you like a glove
Remember, that we're callin' in every cast to learn
It's spoken in the voices of the holy sound you earn
You've got to remember, remember.
You're form' can move,
You're shape is composed of edges.
You're form you can move,
Edges and ridges of your own energy!
Your own energy!
Your own energy!
Just a motion you feel.
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
And you're wonderin'
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
Who searched for this?
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
Only higher resistant consciousness and bliss
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
By feeling more love for the sense world you're seeing
You raise sense your income and your level of being
By finer and finer,
And finer agreeing you Leave!
Leave, Leave!
Leave your body behind!
Leave, Leave, Leave!
Leave your body behind!
Yes, yes, yes attention comes back
You focus on anchors,
You have what you lack.
Live the love each thought form returns.
Graze in the judgement of the ether that burns!
So keep climbin'
(Ooo, your energy's higher!)
Keep on climbin'
(Your sun catches on fire!)
Keep climbin'
The sun fills so soon
And gathers the clouds into a heavenly moon.
Remember, remember, Why can't you remember?
Remember we're bombarded,
The downpour of the word.
The outside means lock us in so all else seems absurd.
Remember things regarding,
Are terminals like you.
For terminals discharge against each other,
And balance syphoning through.
You've got to remember!
Remember!
You're form' can move,
You're shape is composed of edges.
You're form you can move,
Edges and ridges of your own energy!
Your own energy!
Your own energy!
Just a motion you feel.
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
And you're body and mind are one.
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
Your heart like cool ashes,
(You're moving, keep climbimg.)
The life sprays through your nippled eyes
Like ribbon through your lashes.
It ripples down with your heart's clear
you're mixed in two,
The poisoned ear.
The love you feel is love you hear.
You leave!
Leave! Leave!
Leave your body behind!
Leave! Leave! Leave!
Leave your body behind!
Remember, Remember, Remember, Remember
Keep on climbin'
Keep on climbin "

Do you not feel the usual vibes upon your return? When I come back often it is just as it was before I left, strong vibe. It's not always like that, but enough of the time for me to have noted it as not unusual.

I feel a spin often, moreover I have felt a definite 'bouyancy'. Often vibes kick in when I'm laying face down. I then flip over and have the slightly disorientating effect of facing upwards while also being aware of facing down at the same time. The pull to flip over is strong and automatic, just like when you hold a bottle with air in it under water and it wants to come to the surface. The spin can be slow, cannot it not, and somewhat hard to tell what exactly is doing the spinning and where, often a sense of spin not easily located - that's my conclusion? I'd agree that these are tangible feelings that we are witnessing fully consciously. There seems no control over them for me, I can't stop the flip or the spin, can't alter them in any way. I enjoy the fact that we are able to analyse these effects while they are happening in a clear way, perhaps without being able to exactly say what is happenning.

I have believed I have opened my eyes and spoken to people in the room, only for them to tell me I was asleep and quiet the whole time. Unless you video yourself I don't know how you can be sure one way or the other that you open your eyes. In my upsidedown projections they don't seem to have hampered my vision, although I hesitate to make a distinction between vision in the accepted sense of the word and awareness, which is a kind of knowing, spacial awareness, without technicolour pictures as such.

Always more puzzles than answers, congrats on your breaking the dry spell, I'm still waiting!

Whenever I'm practicing, trying to have an OBE or AP, I always open my eyes to every sound, and think I see a shadow or something, and am usually too afraid to go on... I've always slept with my bathroom fan on, to block out sounds waking me up, or keeping me awake.
When I'm trying to clear my mind, I can always hear the fan, or other little sounds that keep me alert.  

I think there are a number of things you could do to try help your current alertness. If you keep opening your eyes perhaps you could try putting something light over them, like a folded T-shirt, folded in such a way that it doesn't cover your nostrils, and one that is light enough not to distract you with its pressure - takes a bit of experimenting that one.

I can imagine the conflict between you trying to clear your mind and the fan demanding your attention. I would use the fan, stop seeing it as this irritating thing that distracts you and focus in on it, listen to it, notice how it sounds in its cycle. Use it as part of your practise. The way to treat negative happenings that we have no control over is not to get agitated at them for ruining our peace, and trying to hide from them, but turn them around and use them. Think of the fan as neither good nor bad, concentrate on it, it just is. It's like touching a hot radiator, first time you flinch away, then you notice it is hot, but not so hot it will burn your skin, then next time that it's ok to touch for a few seconds etc. You learn to stop responding, and you will with the fan if you stop trying to avoid it mentally. And on a personal level, I have always believed that 'whirring' things are very good for projection and have often imagined myself in a factory full of noisey machinery or that there are bees around and this has triggered  projections (the whirr as I fall near to sleep becomes the buzz of vibrations).

Clearing your mind. I don't talk to myself in that "I am imagining nothingness" kind of way. Like with the fan, I wouldn't be thinking "It goes whirr, whirr" I would be looking at it without comment. The kind of state I go for is one of light interest. Two examples I can give, one is like a farmer leaning on his gate staring out at his field of cows. He's not thinking the words "What lovely cows, what a lovely day" he is just feeling it in that moment. The other example is when you watch TV and there's something on that you enjoy. You don't literally think about what the actors are saying, do you? Your mind is quiet and you are absorbed in the plot. You are undoubtably sucking all that information in, but you are not turning it over in your head word for word, you dont have to. Both are meditative states where the mind is alert, focused and fully functioning, but quiet, and both done naturally without any effort or learning! It's that kind of approach for me when I clear my mind, I'm looking to focus on something, an image, a sound real or imagined, my breathing, a thought, anything, but I'll just be 'looking' with my mind rather than 'talking'.

When I clear my mind I fully accept that I won't be able to do that completely anyway, I doubt very many people can. What I am after is to quieten it, lessen its 'talking' voice, and stop it wandering off to far. I also accept that however I do that my mind will still wander. If you find yourself distracted, forgive yourself and just go back to your focus, the more you do this rather than reacting frustratedly the easier it becomes.

Finally, in my experience such as it is, what is required to project is not a crystal clear mind like a pool of water with no ripples, nor a deeply relaxed body in which you can feel nothing. A mind that you could regard as still being awake, perhaps with dreamy imagery, but still awake enough to realise it, and a body that is comfortable, in a position that's not going to get uncomfortable and distracting later is enough foundation to project. It is easy to get hung up on thinking everything has to be perfect in regards to relaxing and the mind, when it doesn't, in my opinion.

My dry spell has gone on for over a year. I've been projecting since the late 80s, and I have prgoressively found it harder. In the first 5 years or so there were periods when I would vibe night after night. I reckon I was having vibes 7 nights out of 10. If I thought about projection during the day that would trigger something that night for sure. I could feel my astral body, or whatever it was during the day just by thinking about it. I remember being at a traffic junction once waiting to pull out, for some reason projection popped into my mind and I felt myself 'shifting' even then. Even as recently as 2 years ago I could lay on the sofa for half an hour and have six sets of vibes in a row, frustratingly though it has become harder and harder to project from them however many there are.

There were periods of nothing of course, usually weeks or a few months.

Today I rarely get vibes at all, and like Token there, I believe that coming here and talking about it, and keeping it in your mind helps to trigger it, so for me too it is one of the main reasons why I come here.

I wonder if it is possible that we are all affected, that there's a stellar, lunar or electromagnetic reason that we have these periods? Would be a bit frustrating if AP was affected by periods of sunspot activity or some such thing, wouldn't it!

How do you mean, take more seriously? Do you mean can you use them to your advantage to help with your projection purpose, or perhaps to learn something of yourself, of the OBE experience that is somehow more enlightening than the stream of lucid but ultimately dreamy insubstancial stuff you sometimes get with hynogogic imagery? Something that has genuine worth to you?

I think like any conversation you might have with someone you just met it can be rewarding, but I am not sure you can take them any more seriously than the hypnogogic experiences. Perhaps it depends on your perception of their origin. If you believe these are spirits coming to help you, or let you know something you didn't know before perhaps they would seem more worthwhile than if you just thought they were just better quality brain chatter. Perhaps if you are expecting the voices to help that's what you get, are they real then or self generated, how can you know? Because they seem relevent to you in a way that the hypnogogic ones don't doesn't mean maybe they are any more real. But if you believe they are more real it is going to have a positive effect on your life. But real, maybe.. Then again if they are self generated they can still be of value if this inner voice enlightens you in some way.

I can't make up my mind about them, because there's a paralel with projections in that some projections are more 'real' than others, yet do we say that the 'less real' ones are not real in any sense? How you value any experience is entirely personal, I think, so to me they (the vibe state voices) are just part of the mysterious side effects of astral travel because I have no way of proving what they are. I listen out to learn more, but haven't made up my mind.

I suppose the one thing that bothers me is that if you ever catch yourself slipping ever more into stream-of-conscious thoughts as you fall asleep, those thoughts/conversations/sounds/ dream imagery differ from the vibe experience only in that they exist in a time of vague lucidity. During the vibes we are bolt upright awake in a sense. More lucidity, more clarity, more sense versus less lucidity, less clarity and less sense. If it is only the level of lucidity that is dictating things then perhaps it is all brain generated, and the brain/consciousness whatever is perhaps better at creating a more stable sense-making scenario (conversations that make sense, that seem relevent) when it is close to being fully aware, perhaps to fit more comfortably with our expectations from our normal pedestrian waking lives?

Token thanks again, invaluable advice. I have decided to go back to the beginning as it were and accept that I know absolutely nothing and keep an open mind, like when I first started having these experiences, including whether I believe any of these experiences are actually real or not. Sorry MisterJingo for sidetracking your thread briefly back there.

Token, thanks for the advice. For years I've been telling people almost the opposite, that you should ignore the vibrations, think beyond them and the voices too, and just focus on being 'out there'! Perhaps I really need to rethink my whole thinking on this because clearly something is no longer working for me. So I'll take your advice and give it a real try, I particularly like the wrapping around mental image, like enclosing yourself in your own energy in a self-supporting way, positive mental images can only help.

Do you ever feel you are up against a time limit with the vibes? When I didn't know what the vibes were I'd just project. Over time I became familiar with the pattern, that rising in intensity out of nowhere then falling away again, and I think that has made me kind of anxious of getting it right before they fade away again, of their being a ticking clock, window of opportunity, call it what you will. I don't think that helps me. Rolling my eyes up into my head helps, but isn't successful in itself. I feel I have been going backwards in my projection abilities for a long time.

Going back to the voices, I find them fascinating at times and worth just listening to without projecting, wherever it is they come from.

Vibartional state voices are eerily clear, it seems to me. It seems to me they are like listening to Radio 4 - FM quality, and they seem to be about something that makes logical sense, although they may have no direct relationship to me.  They often seem to be between two people who are discussing something that progresses logically, although I often have no idea what they are talking about, they seem so earnest that it is hard to believe it is not real - like eavesdropping on someone's private discussion from the past. A self-contained dialogue is another way of putting it, I guess.

On occasions, I am the subject and I feel a direct involvement, they are pulling me, trying to help me. I'm like a patient, talking about me as if I wasn't there, stuff like that.

I'm rather sceptical about them these days: perhaps it is just highly coherent brain chatter, a past memory of a real conversation from somewhere, even something picked up off TV. What impresses me is the clarity, and the apparent 'sense' they make. Trouble I find is recalling much of what is said, whatever my intentions when I wake I seem to have forgotten what it was all about.

It always interests me the way the vibrational 'push' causes a change in the intensity of vibration. If this is common to all of us who have the odd vibe or two, I wonder if it signifies something detectable to neurological instruments? To me vibration is like linning up all the wheels on a combination lock, even if you have all the numbers but one you can't open it no matter how hard you push. When you get it right you can sail out without effort. I cannot get out at all now, the last number eludes me.

Fair points, ECCO.

True, it is not and cannot be scientifically proven. I don't think there's a disinterest in scientific proof. You know people make a big assumption than none of us question these experiences. Of course we do, but what can you do? There's no easy way to prove it is real. You find that out pretty quickly, so unless you want to spend the next X years on tests you have to move on.

I think you have to be reasonable and look at what people are saying over and over again, just to list some:

I saw through my eyelids
I felt a strange movement
I heard a buzzing
There was a violent vibration
I could move my arms and legs
I could see my hands, they melted in front of me
The room looked right, except for...
I heard voices, very clear
I felt pressure on my chest
I felt my heart racing away like mad
I bounced off the celing
I moved, but it was hard
I floated through the wall
I couldn't go through the wall

I felt something pull on my ankles
I saw myself laying in bed
I rolled out
I flew out

Just some of the things that people say. I can accept it is possible to be deluded, but everyone deluded with the same delusion? If these are delusions why aren't they more erratic? There is such a continuity about people's experiences even when the experience themselves are very different. I'd expect people with delusions to be deluding other things too, like seeing Elvis or that there is someone out to get them. Why only this one quite closely matching delusion for us here?

And you can't say that all read about these things and they happened as a result. I'd never heard of, seen anything written about or heard anyone talk about astral projection when it started happening for me. There was no internet, yet I come along here years later, and people are telling the same story, a story that is very very familiar to me. How can you go on denying something very real is happening in those circumstances?

As for the bike/motorbike, well I think you can use your judgement as to how alike the drawing and your interpretation is. Two wheels and a frame, I'd think you'd allow that was pretty close, if I drew a cat then it would be way off for sure. Two wheels and a frame - proof no, common sense that it is likely to be a drawing of the same thing, yes.

Steve.

Strange, because I find rolling the eyes back intensifies the vibrations.

Perhaps if you rolled your eyes back towards the time, then it might not be such a shock?

Have you tried focusing your vision at the centre of your forehead and keeping it there? Like looking from inside your head up at  the area above your eyes.

but it (a lucid dream)  still doesn't feel totally real in the way projections do.

I hurried that post a bit due to cooking. What I meant to say is I feel they are both real,  but in some projections there is a clarity that is hard to dismiss. If you are looking for proofs it is easier to accept an experience that doesn't have a dream feel about it, and really shouts at you, in my opinion. But I don't think of any of them (dreams, lucid dreams, rtz and astral projections) as being 'unreal' situations, just differing situations.

I understand that most conclussions you will find here are unacceptable to the sceptic who wants rubber-stamped proof. To me what I have gathered over time is enough for me to say 'it's real', it's the accumulated ballast of experience that keeps my astral boat upright, as it were.

Steve.

Oh no, not another one! lol

Only kidding, but if you had been here the last week or so, you'd get my meaning.

Ok, I'd like to ask of you, seeing as you said that projections can be like lucid dreams. Did you never have a projection where you were sure it was real? Because for me lucid dreams are less conscious excursions than 'astral' projections. I cannot speak for everyone, only myself, but in my experience a projection is different from a lucid dream in that I am aware completely who I am 'really'. In lucid dreams, although conscious, I tend to know I am in some kind of 'play' for want of a better word. Yes I can manipulate it, but it still doesn't feel totally real in the way projections do. I'm not saying it is always so, or that there aren't blurred edges where one experience can seem more like another, but for me the really sharp projections are unmistakeable as 'real', not a dream scenario I find myself taking a part in.

Just to correct your maths a little - there's a 51/1 chance of guessing, not 52/1, a small difference I know, but i feel like being picky today.

How can you be criticised for 'guessing' a bicycle, if the picture is a bicycle, I fail to see the logic in that! With a playing card you know in advance that it is a playing card, so a guess is always going to a 51/1 statistical chance. What are the odds on guessing an object from everyday life? There are literally thousands of things from socks to sherman tanks that you could draw.

Numbers, they are so hard to see, they don't remain stable, they mean nothing! Words and Numbers make the most difficult test possible, so perhaps yes it is harder to guess, but you rule out just about most people from doing the test.

Another question: what drives a nonbeliever to join an astral projection forum, I'm just curious?

I'll go and get my nail gun

Steve

I think a lot of what you say is true. I do think though, if you have a method and it doesn't work, you have either got to give it time and keep persisting at it, or change. But stick to something at least for a time ('a time' is vague term, I know).

I don't think it helps, perhaps you were saying exactly this, to keep absorbing all kinds of ways, theories or whatever - too much info overload. It just gets confusing. You know someone says chakras, someone else says energy centres, there are vibes, there are no vibes, potatoes po-tah-toes etc. At first ignorance can carry you a long way, in my opinion. You can always go digging for the truth later.

I'm a spontaneous projector too,  but I have found that it helps to steer myself in the direction of projection when I want to have one, so I see it as having a few tricks up your sleeve to help you along, a few methods and bits of methods.

Effortless intention I like the sound of, I'd say also indifferent enthusiasm - meh, what do I care if I project? Salivating over it though drives it away, I am sure. Like you, based on my opinion relative to me.

Steve.

Tombo -

A picture book sounds fine, infact better because of the sheer number of pics likely to be in it. So long as it is simple, not too coloured. My thinking is you want something basic, like a line drawing of a tree or a guitar, something you would have a very hard job misinterpretting. I think when you add colour you just make another load of info the consciousness has to experience,

What you say about tactile senses is also something I have been thinking of. It was really that crazy data thread where he keeps asking for proof and says it's easy without really appreciating why it isn't. It inspired me to have another crack at some RV pics last couple of days.

I found I got the dominant colour right of the three photos I looked into, when I did so I remembered what I had read from RV literature about getting minimal information, such as colour and texture and slowly building up the picture from there.

To me this kind of ties in with feelings during some APs: like it is much easier to sense a wooden door than to actually describe or see the wood itself. Difference being with RV you have time because it is not a big effort to practise it, you can build the info at leisure. With projections there's a definite limit to how long you've got and you are aware of that during the projection and nerves play a part because of that.

That's what I think is wrong with the card test, there's too much information to be sorted in a short space of projecting time, you rush, well, I do. If I read you right, you also felt the dent rather than saw it during the projection. And shows that touch is just as valid a sense for proof as sight. We are so used to using our main sense perhaps we tend to forget the others!

It surely can't be a coincidence that RVers get the basic info first, I think that's what we should be aiming for with these tests, minimum info that is nevertheless clear enough to be able to say roughly what it is you saw, or felt etc. Picture books seem a good place to start.

I've had mixed results witht he card test, and come to realise it is not the brightest  of methods for any kind off proof.

Here we have something very small, and you can roughly divide the cards into 2 types, face and numbers, faces all look alike, and many of the numbers are alike too.

There's just too much opportunity for chance guesses. We really need to make the test infallable. A test that leaves a window for self-doubt to creep in is not a very usefull test.

Like Sarah, I have little will for repeating these tests (I started in the early days by reading the labels on products  in the bathroom, with mixed results again). I think a better idea for anyone thinking  of trying this kind of test for the first time would be to ask 5 friends to sketch anything they like with a large nibbed marker pen on a piece of paper. Don't tell them why, and get them to place them in an envelope. Wthout looking put them up somewhere without looking, maybe 1 per room.

My thinking on this is that  it negates the need for boring multiple tries that playing cards require, even then you cannot rule out the statistical chance, as unlikely as you may feel it, that you can guess 3 or 4 or more playing cards right in a row.

One vaguely right interpretation of a simple individual sketch is worth more in my opinion  than half a dozen near misses with playing cards.

Btw Sarah, don't bite me! your card test was more conclusive than my most recent, and still about the only one I have seen that looks valid just about anywhere on any forum.

I am currently working on an idea for a test I can show to the forum where the results are checkable by anyone in the world, all date stamped and unedited. It's RV rather than AP, but if it works it might encourage some more immaginative attempts among others. We'll see, it is early days...

Steve

Yes for a minute I had you down as signed: Projected, of Tunbridge Wells.

No way I can think of how to return, unless you become lucid in another dream maybe and try to steer it back towards Mandalay and another encounter with the good Doctor and K9, Molly (if she is not too 'below stairs' ? ) Ruth, who no doubt dropped by in the old jallopy, and the first Mrs De Selski.

Actually, all silliness aside, it is a cracker of a lucid dream and maybe it will be possible to encounter them or some of them again, perhaps in another location. Perhaps you have started something, a connection, by establishing a rapore with the Doc. I haven't noticed before someone get such close envolvement from the characters inside a dream.

Something else I notice from my own experiences - how we accept people who are obviously not the people they are supposed to be, despite being lucid enough to recognise they are 'wrong'.

It must have been a dream though -  getting a doc to make a house visit in England? Who ever heard of that in reality!

Cracking indeed.

Is molly real?

When you said the Dr was coming, I kind of wondered if it might the one that gets persude by mechanised wheelie bins with sink plungers and have bad attitudes - you know the ones lol.

I liked the way you fully engaged them in your dream, that they took part in the 'experiment', for want of a better word. Also to return to it like after an ad break was pretty cool too.

Will you try to return to get more out of them?

Steve.

I can't really offer much as I am questioning myself a lot lately. However I'd try and put behind you that negative thought about all projections being that creepy, that could hold you back. And no they are not always like that, some are quite mind numbingly boring. You are never in any real trouble though whatever happens.

My feeling is that what you experienced you probably did have as lucidly as you think. true after a space of time there's a tendancy to play it down and write it off, but as it was your first of the kind then you may well have remembered more accuratlely than you thought because as you say were thinking clearly.

Obviously it is hard to interpret your own experiences accurately, let alone someone else's, but it seems  real enough, if only because you are not used yet to the perspective and movement. - At first I bounced around alot, now I don't think about it at all to remain on the floor (or in the air).

I'm only suggesting this, but I think if it was more 'false' as you call it, then perhaps it would have been more perfect? You know, no problems that you noticed in the same way that in a dream you tend not to notice weird things as weird till you wake.

Noticing stuff at the time is an indication of lucidity, and perhaps something to go on when  trying to sort out whether you think it was true or not. (By true I don't mean in a literal sense, but as to what you interpret to be true or not, if you get my meaning.)

rc-

What a fascinating post, thank you very much. I do and can communicate, only

a) not ever in the RTZ in 16 years, and

b) When I do I have very good awareness and recall, only I haven't a clue who they really are!

And these are not of course in the same league as yours, meaning I am conscious but not in a experimental frame of mind at the time. My RTZs are, as I have stated here and elsewhere, pretty realistic, perhaps dull, and I do find them unrewarding in that nothing happens very much. Maybe I am stuck in an RTZ rut. I enjoy what are termed astral projections much more, but have fewer of them, but that's where communication happens for me.

I have experimented a little with online RV. I surprised myself with my results in that I did manage to draw cirlces in a pattern that was, If I remember rightly, an arrangement of crop circles (these were photos on a website) but perhaps the best hit I had was when I drifted slightly and saw elephants, rejected that as I thought the drift was making me make stuff up, I was expecting a bridge or a building and when I looked I saw it was elephants. So perhaps I do have some slight abilities in this bilocation area that I could improve on.

I really enjoyed your contribution (I don't want to contaminate your mind as to what the object by the window might be, let us know if you get it?)

Steve.

I'm kind of forgetting, there was an incident last year, not a spoken one, but where I saw someone in a projection and knew they were looking at me smiling, that the smile was for me. I felt very bad about this, that it was not a good sign and woke myself up.  It is kind of too personal/close to the event to talk about what happened then and later,  but this is one of only two times I can remember having a projection and experiencing someone communicate that I knew was doing something else...  So great, I just contradicted my earlier posts.

Well I could be wrong, but the way I interpret it is that an OBE is a blanket term for anyone that 'leaves' their physical body, or has perception away from it, this may be dying, remote viewing even, and astral and RTZ projections - On a side note I think you will see there is a pretty good argument that we don't leave anything at all, however that's another issue,  so for this explanation assume you do.

An astral projection is also a blanket term but generally projectors talk about astral as a specific (but loose) set of projections that fall within a range of experiences. As distinct from RTZ projections that are generally a mirror of the physical world.

An astral projection therefore is a particular type of OBE with characteristics that make you think 'astral'.

I think these terms, all terms related to the subject, should be taken loosely, because the experiences can vary during their course from more one thing to more another.

While I definately wouldn't claim to be a master, I have projected alot over the last 15 years. And while I am well accustomed to reality fluctuations while in my local RTZ, this is the first time that I have met and spoken to my wife, while being out. I have of course seen her reguraly lying next to me when I do exit.
This episode of meeting and talking to her, has thrown a spanner in the works, and made me question the validity of other OBE's that I've had.

I too regularly see people on my RTZs that are doing exactly what they were doing, sleeping, reading etc, but also I have never had that experience either where they have engaged me in conversation.

I think what Tom says about 'bleedthroughs' between different levels of reality is correct, it is a better way of saying reality breaks down. Perhaps it is the case that we get used to these local RTZs to such an extent that we have built a pretty good and stable picture of the environment within our consciousness.

When a bleedthorugh occurs it is perhaps easy to be fooled just to how much we are experiencing bleedthrough, thinking ourselves at first more in the familiar stable 'reality' than perhaps we really are, because it appears so accurate/familiar at first.

I am not sure I am understanding Frank correctly, but these bleedthroughs would appear to be peopled with other aspects of people that are no less valid than the parts you know in every day life. Part of me thinks I already know that, but maybe I have been thinking about these kinds of things for too long. It is possible to think yourself into some confusion such that you lose the little voice that knows what it knows.

That's pretty much how it started for me too. I can particularly relate to the part about keeping alert. I did that, watching out for the vibrations (possibly the unpleasant things you are feeling in your head) when falling alseep. The first time it happened to me I thought I was having a brain haemorage, it scared me that much. But it  is not painfull, although I thought it was to start with (when you wake does the sensation disapear in your head and you feel quite normal, if a little shaken?). It is not nice (or necessary to have them to project, which is good news). There's also often a feeling of pressure in different  parts of my body, that again can be mistaken for physical pain.

I didn't realise it at the time, but the alertness was making things worse, because I was keeping myself conscious, therefore more likely to vibe and project. Most people don't experience this ever, i think, or maybe a few times in their lives. They fall asleep and lose consciousness. I was 'watching out' and getting more and more vibes. Consciousness means you are more likely to witness your own vibes coming on.

As Sarah says, a lot of people wantttt to feel what you are feeling, so you could say you are lucky if you wish to explore this fine natural phenonema.

I'd say gift not crazy too.

Steve.

A contradiction in terms surely, to have a 'real time' projection in which a person you know to be otherwise engaged doing something else, later confirmed, is having  a conversation with you?

Sounds like it started as an RTZ and reality broke down, into something else.

it is typical what you report even for OBEs. I wish more OBE authors would have reported much more on these phenomena, but of course, there is a little bit of ``selectivity`` to only report the most `real` experiences in the RTZ.

With questions of proof what does it serve to report the bits where reality fades? As you know, it is never all correct or all wrong, and the most important things are weight of (or general feel of)  those that are correct when trying to assess the perceived validity of the real-time part of the experience. I.e - Is this a real-time projection, or am I experiencing something else?  The earlier in the projection, the more 'real' for me.

That's why we talk about real time projections, I think, because they have bearing on the personal validity of the projection in the way astral ones can't. You know you can go back and check with the original scene, if you have to. The term RTZ would be meaningless in projections that had no basis in real time, I think. At some point you have to accept that it is no longer 'real time' when you start having conversations with someone who is looking after a baby in reality. Perhaps I am being a little too dogmatic about terms and where they start and end though.

Sounds like a step in the direction of AP. You get a a varied amount of sensations that feel physical at first but aren't. There are shifting sensations in the astral body, mild vibes and powerfull full on vibes that are unmistakable when you have them.

I don't think it is so unusual that you had a first time result of some kind. You were listening to coast to coast, presumably not by accident but because you are curious. It will have set you in the mood, and did you ever try to get these sensations before? Maybe if you had tried you would have done.

As for actual projecting, well it is a little bit farther down the road from where you were at. But it is a good start nontheless. I'm fond of the rope, it really does put the pressure on your astral body. There are so many methods, I don't want to weigh you down with all the alternatives you could try, I would think if you carry on with your method and see where it leads, and try to be relaxed about it. Don't expect success too soon, or the sensations to happen every time.

After a decent amount of time sticking to the one method (a month, maybe?) if it is not taking you further, you could do worse than delve into some of the methods here - Frank's Phasing to name just one seems to be growing in popularity, but give your own some time too and see where it gets you.

Steve.

Hmm well if it is possible to dream anything, which seems to be the case, then it is possible to dream vibrations. The thing that normally makes me sure it is not a dream is that I have consciousness, which is not easily fooled.

The difference is when you wake, then if you don't feel different, then it is real. Coming out of a projection for me is like that - it's kind of like a mental 'short walk' where you end the projection and wake yourself up, and the sense of consciousness is continuous from one to another.

That's different from a very real dream, when you are convinced it was real without a doubt until you wake when you realise it wasn't.

I have long thought though that there can't be much difference between a 'real' projection and a dream, it would be pretty bizarre if they were not 'of the same stuff' as they share so many characteristics. My assumption is that dreams are less conscious forms of projection.

In your case you will never be sure one way or the other, as you committed the cardinal sin of thinking you would write it down later, but when you woke too much time had passed I think for you to trully assess what happened. I think we have all done that many times and regretted it.

Steve.

I am sure others get communications. Can you remember what was communicated? I bet you can't, but there is a sense that you have taken whatever was said in and acted upon it. I don't know if it is that way for everyone, but that's how it seems to me, that the things that are said are crystal clear, but almost impossible to remember afterwards. You are just left with the 'gist' and even that's not easy to put into words.

Speaking of reality checks, I ask outrageous questions. If the person doesn't react in the way you'd expect them to in 'real' life then I assume I am dreaming. For instance I was once in a traffic incident and there was a policeman. I asked some stupid question that a real policeman would have asked what the hell i was on about. When he answered as if my question was the most reasoned question in the world to ask, I knew I was lucid dreaming and free to run amock.

Nice detailed experience btw, congrats!