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I used to have chronic back problems until I did a combination of all of the following: deep tissue massages 2x/month, yoga 5x week, 4 mile walk daily, memory foam mattress (not just a topper), sleep with pillow under or between my knees and occasional chiropractor visits. Now I'm pretty much pain free. Don't despair, it took me 20 years to figure this out!

I'd rather drink myself into a coma every night or just stay awake. 

You had back problems for 20 years?

I like this question.  Honestly, I'm not sure.  Most of my non-waking memories fade very fast and I often can't recall them.  However, when I do recall them, it seems I can remember them with greater clarity than waking-life memories.  I have mental access to far more waking-life memories, be even these fade in time.  I can remember pretty much everything I did yesterday and if given a quiz on it, I would probably do pretty well.  But these memories, while accurate, aren't particularly sharp or vivid in my mind.  Meanwhile, some of the non-waking memories I have, while most are fragments of larger experiences, are very clear and vivid in my mind.

I wonder what that means. 

I'm probably the worst guy to ask. 

Firstly, I have to make sure I don't drink too much caffeine during the day.  My coffee in the morning is usually 8 ounces of regular, the rest decaf if I feel like drinking more. Anything more than that and I can have problems later at night falling asleep. 

Secondly, there is NO position I can lay down in anymore in bed that doesn't eventually lead to a lower back ache.  I slept on my front for many years but my back just couldn't take it anymore.  I had to learn a couple years ago to sleep on my back and sides.  I used to be able to sleep on my back okay but now I have to be on my side.  Right or left doesn't really matter.  Problem is, I lay my head on my arm and almost always wake up with a sore shoulder or a COMPLETELY asleep arm (which is scary at first but kinda' cool once you get used to it). 

I bought a new mattress last summer thinking my old one was the source of my backaches but it hasn't changed anything, even though it is a bit more comfortable.  To make matters worse, I almost always have one or both of my little ones climb in bed with me at some point during the night and they like to move around in their sleep. 

Add it all up, and I have a terrible environment for AP practice.  Doesn't stop me from trying though.  What's going on in my mind when I fall asleep is interesting.  These days, I usually fall asleep watching TV on the couch, crawl upstairs after I wake up, and just crash without anything really going on in my head.  If I don't do that, however, what I like to do (and used to do very well) is just get comfortable in bed (however hard it may be) and let my mind wander.  It can be about anything but what's happening is that I am imagining myself somewhere doing something, always in first person.  When I AP, the scene in my head become real and I find myself there, usually after the fact without having ever noticed any AP symptoms.  I'm just there.  What happens 99.999 percent of the time nowadays, however, is that I just black out and wake up early in the morning, half the time not being able to remember what I was dreaming about.  Kinda' sucks.

Any advice on the backache thing?  I've tried just about everything.  Foam covers, pillow under my knees and between my legs.  Some positions are better than other but I still get the backaches.  Try to AP with a backache.  It doesn't work.   

@Simo: That book reading thing is absolutely brilliant! I have to try that.

I second that motion.  I've never thought of that before.  So what book in particular do you imagine reading?  Are you just skimming the lines to find concrete words but not really reading a coherent story?  Are you imagining putting the words in yourself as if you are the writer?  I'd like to hear more about this.

I don't rely on any particular method to be honest.  I just let my mind conure up some interesting scenario or other and I get absorbed by it.  Can't really explain it any better.  I start getting involved in the scene, it becomes more real as time goes on, I get less and less aware of my physical body lying in bed, and I either fall asleep (failure) or I suddenly realize at some point that I'm there, in the scenario which has very much become my current reality.  I don't bother with pulling vibrations or raising enegry (unless I happen to feel like raising energy but it's not for AP purposes, just feels good) and the transition is seamless.  You're just - there.    Only thing it takes is practice maintaining awareness while falling asleep.  That's all.  There's nothing really to "do", you just set an intent to stay aware and follow through. 

I don't mean to imply this is easy.  Took me a LONG time to get to this point, and still, I fall asleep as usual FAR more times than I "fall" into the scene.  Lifestyle affects this alot.  So does working on dream recall (mine is currently lousy - stopped keeping a journal 'cause I'm lazy). 

i sure did you stupid smuck hehe

what's a smuck?

It's the difference between "perceiving" a non-physical environment and "experiencing" a non-physical environment.

Yeah!  Best desccription of how it works (for me at least) that I've found.  Couldn't have said it better myself. 

I lay down to go to sleep in one of my dreams and I wake up in my physical body. I realized that I hadn't moved yet so I hold still and wait for the vibrations to kick in. Low and behold they start and Im out of my body within 10 seconds. I was really surprised at how fast it happened.

How did you manage to do this?  Is it just easy for you?  I've been trying to do this for years but have never succeed.  It seems that the moment I wake up, I'm UP.  Whatever I might have been dreaming vanishes and it takes a lot of effort for me to remember what it was.  Is there some trick to realizing you're about to wake up and making sure you keep still?  I usually wake up several times during the night without an alarm clock so that's not the problem.  All the writings on this technique I've read really just boil down to willing yourself to do this which doesn't help much if you're already up and moving before you realize you're awake. 

Hmm.  This is an interesting thought.  Though I'm open to the idea, I can't really say that I believe in higher-selves or guides or guardian angels or anything like that, but I did have an interesting experience once.  I had been reading up on lucid dreams and really wanted to have one, and I had read somewhere that doing reality checks all day long was a good technique to accomplish this (I simply don't have the discipline for doing RC's all day long).  One of the RC's I read about was to hold your nose closed and try to breathe in.  If you can, you know you are dreaming.  So as I was going to sleep that night, I tried to set my intention to recognize that I was dreaming after I fell asleep and I specifically asked (out loud, if I remember correctly) for my higher-self or any benign beings that wished assist to help me to have a lucid dream that night.  Well, that night, I was sleeping and dreaming a normal dream about something or other and out of nowhere, in the dream, an unfamiliar figure walked into the scene, grabbed his nose and tried to breath through it, which of course, immediately reminded me to do it myself and lo and behold - I had a lucid dream that night. I suppose that could could be considered a higher-self type contact.

However, I have meditated to the point where thoughts would actually become real imagery as like open eyed so that was interesting.
I think the relaity of the inner vision increases with relaxation. However it can't be willed, it just comes on it's own when the astral body gets loose i believe.

Yep, that's what I experience also.  I don't know much about astral bodies but the idea of phasing, as I understand it, is that we have one spectrum of consciousness that encompasses both our waking everyday awareness and our "astral" awareness (and others depending on what you believe) and it's where we focus our attention that makes the difference.  So when I'm phasing, I start out visualizing something in my imagination.  At first, it is just as described earlier, like a memory of an event you perceive in your mind's eye.  It's not something I see with my physical eyes behind my eyelids.  As I get further away from the physical (drift off to sleep) it becomes more and more real until it's as real (even more so) than everyday waking consciousness.  Eventually, you're just there - 100%.

I'm pretty sure "actively passive" is noticing (active) without reacting (passive.) You basically keep your mind quiet and observe the blackness and any sensory input you may experience without responding through emotion or thought.

That's cool.  It's a little different for me though, at least as far as intent goes.  The activity may be the same. 

For myself, I lay down to go to sleep just like any other day and all I do is begin to focus on some story or other that is playing through my mind.  I try to focus as much as possible on what's going on in my mind and I try not to give any attention whatsoever to my body.  I don't care if it's relaxed, sore, itchy, vibrating, etc.  I give all my attention to the story in my mind.  What happens is that the activity playing out in my mind (could be replaying events of the previous day, living out some fantasy or other, fighting bad guys, whatever) becomes more and more real.  Something usually will snap me back out of my mind and to focus my attention back to the waking world a few times - I'm a very light sleeper and any kind of noise, movements of someone else in the bed, or even things going on outside can wake me up.  But these times where I snap back are actually pretty useful because I can get a sense of just how far into my mind I have gone I can tell that I'm getting deeper and deeper as the night goes on. 

Incidentally - the deeper I have gone into my mind before getting snapped back, the more of the typical exit sensations I feel.  It's not uncommon for me to have no feelings from my body at all while playing out my mind story (presumably because I'm not paying any attention to my body) to snap back and sense that my body has become very heavy or feels like it's vibrating, or my ears are ringing exceptionally loud.  It's pretty neat.

I go back to playing out my mind story and one of two things always happens.  Either I end up falling asleep normally because I couldn't maintain enough awareness (the vast majority of nights) or I'll be in my mind story and suddenly realize I'm there.  And when I say there, I mean REALLY there.  Things that I'm not consciously making up are happening around me and I can sense everything around me just like I can in waking life.  To be honest, feels even more real that "real" life.  Once I'm there, I'm off to do whatever I want, assuming I don't get too excited and wake myself back up. 

So to answer your question, I would say I'm very much active-minded.  I don't really just close my eyes and wait to notice things.  I actively make things up and participate in my imagination.  If I'm passive at all, it's with regards to my body.  The trick for me is to go ("phase" perhaps) from normal waking consciousness to total mind consciousness (that doesn't sound so good but I'm not sure how else to explain it) and my imagination is the doorway for me.  One last tidbit - I have tried many times to do Frank's noticing exercise where you close your eyes and just passively notice things but that only seems to either keep me awake or knock me out into a sleep coma.  It's seems that for me, my mind has to be actively engaged in something for me to fall asleep and maintain conscious awareness at the same time. 

Thanks.  Lots of stuff to read in here.  I'll get to it.

I read about this technique recently and tried it out: the results were pretty startling. The effect is so intense that I have trouble staying physically relaxed, so some practice is needed to get to the point where you're "bored" with it and can just go with the flow. Anyway, the technique:

1) Get into a relaxed state. The more relaxed, the better. I did this after getting about 70% of the way to Focus 10.
2) Try to clench your brain, as if it were a muscle, and then relax it.

This moves your focal point of awareness to your head immediately, with some weird effects. Personally I feel a burst of vibrations, like I'm dipping into sleep paralysis for just a second or two. If you're not feeling anything, play around with straining different areas of your brain until you figure it out.

Important: It's easy to accidentally tense up your face, neck, or shoulders, instead of your imaginary brain. Avoid this.

Can you guys elaborate on this?  I don't recall ever reading about this particular technique and I'm having trouble understanding what exactly it is that you are doing.

If  you have a spell on you to be immortal can you still do astral projection and lucid dreaming?

Huh???

I wonder if it's counted as Immortality if a person remembers & recalls every single life they lived since the very beginning. Sort Of Just a mass of consciousness inhabiting different bodies as vessels throughout it's existence, while incarnating. :S

On the surface, that's a pretty cool thought.  My gut reaction is that I'd love to be able to remember every single live I've ever lived since the beginning (assuming I have lived other lives - not saying whether or not I actually believe that). 

But when you think about it, would you really want to?  One of the most painful things you can experience in life is losing a loved one.  Imagine, if you really had lived other lives and could remember them, remembering all the loved ones you've lost over the centuries.  I'm thinking that could be pretty hard to bear.   

Is the ringing in the ears the actual vibrations of the universe??  Or is it something else?

I've always just assumed it was the normal biological processes going on in our heads.  I've always been able to hear this ringing sound, even when I was little and had no clue what an AP was.  I can hear it even in a crowded room if I try to.  Otherwise, I don't even notice it.  It's always there, I just don't normally pay any attention to it. It makes sense to me that if there are biological processes going on in our heads and inner-ear areas where vibrations are turned into signals and sent to our brains to interpret as sound that there would be some kind of noise we could tune into.   

Can you give us more tips on what to do exactly?? 
All you do is focus on the ringing, and thats it??  Or is there more to it then that??

I've gone through several versions of this, from having no success listening to the ringing while trying to keep my mind still, to listening to the ringing while reaching out for vibrations Robert Monroe style, to just doing nothing but listening to the ringing and letting it happen.  My personal opinion is that the whole key to this is to somehow actually get yourself to fall asleep (really asleep, not just really relaxed) while maintaining just enough awareness in your mind to be aware of what's going on.  If you can do that, everything else seems to just happen naturally. 

I think focussing on the ringing is a really good way to keep your awareness alive while falling asleep.  What you can do while you're concentrating on the ringing is try to make it progressively louder.  This is hard to explain but I think it just comes down to the level of concentration you are giving to the sound.  The more or harder I focus on it, the louder it gets, and louder is good because the vibrations have never kicked in for me until the sound was very loud in my head.  Eventually, the ringing just turns into vibrations, starting at my head and running down to my feet.  Once that happens, if you can keep from getting excited and waking up, you should have an AP. While feeling the vibrations, you can use one of the seperation methods talked about on this site like the rollout, or just imagine a place you want to be in your mind and you should be there (I like this way better, it's easier and it doesn't feel so weird like physically seperating from your body).   

If you're laying there and focussing on the ringing and it's getting loud but nothing's happening, the Monroe way of reaching out with your awareness to pull the vibrations in has worked for me as well.  But honestly, I think it's just a matter of patience and letting it happen. 

[as far as we know]

Maybe it's not pointless, but if you look at the entire answer- "Validation" of extraphysical perception, then the answer can't be 'generated by the brain', as far as we know, because the way the physical universe as we know it is, the brain has no means of getting this information by the 'standard' physical explanations. 
I'm not saying AP 'proves' or even has anything to do with the afterlife, God, and other such things, but if you look at it as a method of gathering information in a nonlocal way, then the brain can't be the creator of the experience.  Of course, my opinion of this can change if what we know about it changes, but for now, I don't think so.

Yes, this I agree with you about.  If you have an experience where you are able to collect information through an AP that you are certain you could not have obtained through physical means, and this information was later proved to be true, this would be good evidence that the brain did not generate the experience and validation that the AP experience is something more than what most people consider a dream.   

So to get back to the original poster and to reiterate what has been said before, the best way to determine whether or not AP is real or dream (depending on your definition of real) is to have AP's yourself and see if you can learn something you could not have learned through physical means.  Given that many people spend years of their lives trying to AP without success, if you're wondering whether or not it's worth it to you to put in so much time and effort into something you're not even sure is real, this is probably not a very satisfying response, but it's an honest response. 

Whether the AP experience is in the brain (yes, it's in the mind obviously, but is it in the brain?) or not, is IMO a pointless question.  Everything we perceive is in the brain at some point.

But I think the point of the question is not so much whether or not the brain plays a role, because as either moderator or producer of experiences, I agree with you that the brain has a part to play.  I think the real question we are examining is whether or not the brain experiences AP or actually produces it.  And viewed in that light, I'd like to respectfully disagree that it is a pointless question.  For me, it is a critical question and the one that I'd like to have answered more than any other because it is applicable to more than just the AP experience, it is applicable to consciousness in general.  Am I just a smart animal or something more?  When my body dies, do I die or does at least some part of me continue to exist?  Perhaps I have misread the point of this thread but this is how I interpreted the question. 

Wow, this is a long thread.  I have some thoughts I'd like to share based on the original post but since I haven't read more than 4-5 pages, I apologize right now if this is redundant.  Moderators, feel free to delete this post if it is - I won't be hurt. 

Focussing on the ringing in my ears is actually the very first technique I used (I've probably tried them all over the years) that produced real results that forced me to change my mind from not really beliving in AP but being curious to beliving this stuff really happens to people.  What happened was that eventually (it was probably somewhere between 1-2 hours of laying in bed focussing on the ringing) the ringing just kind of became the exit vibrations.  And holy cow! They were serious vibrations.  Not the kind of subtle waves you feel when doing energy/body awareness type excercises.  It literally felt like a bucket of ice water was dumped over my body starting at my head and moving down to my feet.  Shocked me so much I forced myself to wake up (and then regretted doing that considering this was what I was trying to accomplish). 

But the thing I wanted to add relates to the focussing on the blackness behind the eyes.  This has never worked for me - it just keeps me awake, which kinda' makes sense because by doing this, you are deliberatley keeping at least a part of your body awake.  I tried doing this when I used this ear-ringing method, along with trying like heck to silence my mind of all thoughts, and nothing ever happened.  When it finally worked, I had given up on staring into my eyelids and keeping my mind silent, and instead, kept focussing on the ringing, which got progressively louder, while just letting my mind wander like it naturally does when I go to sleep at night. 

My personal opinion is that this technique could be really good for you but if it's not working, try forgetting about using your physical eyes to stare into the darkness while trying to AP.  Either let your mind wander on it's own (tricky though, could make you just fall alseep like usual) or imagine something in your mind's eye and concentrate on that.  In other words, you've got to go from physical sight to mind's eye sight (not sure how else to describe it).  At least, I do.  You can even just imagine looking into blackness in your mind as if you were staring at your closed eyelids with your physical eyes, but you've got to eventually make that subtle shift from seeing blackness with your physical eyes to seeing blackness in your mind (whatever "mind" is  ). 

Well, there's not much I can add to what's already been said but I'd still like to throw in my own thoughts.  I agree with the general notion that we just don't know what these experiences are.  Could they be elaborate dreams or fantasies produced in our "mind" by a functioning brain?  Sure, why not.  Perhaps there are no astral planes.  Perhaps there is no other side, reductionist materialism is the correct paradigm, and when you die, that's it - you no longer exist. 

But then again, perhaps not.  After all, what is consciousness anyway?  No one seems to know.  For myself, I don't believe that consciousness is some sort of epiphenomenon produced by all sorts or biochemical reactions in the brain.  It just doesn't make sense to me how any level of complexity in any  system, biological or otherwise, can somehow suddenly produce consciousness.  And if consciousness is in fact more than a substrate of physical processes, and our brains are more like receivers of consciousness than producers of consciousness, than it's very possible (in fact necessary) that there is more to reality than the physical world we perceive when we're awake. 

I like Frank's idea that there is a spectrum of consciousness that we can train ourselves to "travel" up and down.  That's really the whole idea of phasing I think - that awake consciousness is just one part of the total spectrum of consciousness and we have the ability to associate our awareness with other points along the spectrum (or phase into them like a 180 degree phase change of electrical signals) if we want to. 

I'd also just like to throw in one other point, that most people who don't believe in AP that I've listened to simply dismiss it as unreal.  They say people are just making up stories or under the influence of mind altering substances or are just hallucinating.  I used to believe that too but fortunately there was enough curiosity in me to try to find out for myself.  I don't know what AP's actually are (are we going to other "real" dimensions or stepping outside of our bodies in the "real" world or some sort of ethereal in-between world).  The jury is still out on that one for me.  But that these experiences are "real" in the sense that they do actually happen is indisputable.  So for anyone who's reading this who has been trying to AP for a while without success and is ready to toss in the towel or label AP's as nonsense, my advice is to keep trying.  No matter how long it may take, I believe you will eventually experience enough to prove to you that these things that people describe are really happening to them, whether they are all in the imagination or not. 

Here's something you guys could try.  This is by far the easiest way I've ever found myself on the other side.  It's tricky, but pretty easy.  Not sure if you'd call it phasing but I like to think so. 

Basically, you lay down in bed at night, get comfortable, and begin to let yourself drift off to sleep just like you would any other night.  No worrying about energy raising or exit methods or pulling in vibrations or anything, just let your mind wander like you normally would when going to sleep.  The difference is that you try to keep enough presence of mind to tell when you are falling asleep (this is the tricky part - very easy to just fall asleep).  For me, my mind will be wandering about and I'll realize I haven't been paying any attention to my body for a while.  This usually wakes me right back up to a fully awake state but this is the place you want to be for this to work, right when you know you could easily drift off to sleep but are still awake and your body feels heavy. 

At this point, go back to falling asleep again but instead of just letting your mind wander, you need to do something to keep your awareness in place as you're falling asleep.  This really could be anything, even just a strong intent to do so, but what has worked in the past for me is that I will begin to imagine looking at my right hand in my mind's eye and seeing a symbol of some sort tatooed on it.  I say to myself (in my mind of course) that when I see this symbol, it will remind me that I'm awake in a dream.  I then let my mind go back to wandering (at this point, I could be anywhere doing anything in my imagination) but I make a point to occasionally look at my right hand and see this symbol to remind me that I'm awake in a dream.

What happens next is that as I actually do fall asleep (when this works and I don't lose awareness and just fall asleep like usual), I will be somewhere doing something in a dream, see my hand, and suddenly I'm just there - fully aware but asleep and in a dream.  From here, the sky's the limit if you don't get too excited and just wake up.  You can go with whatever you were doing, change the scenery, initiate a more "traditional" type obe with vibrations, or whatever you want.  The last time I did this, I just said to myself that I don't want this to be a dream anymore, I want it to be real, and I was standing outside my body in my bedroom looking down on myself.  No vibrations or weird sensations or anything. 

This probably sounds more like initiating a lucid dream that phasing but to be honest, I don't really know what the difference is besides a heightened state of awareness in an obe as opposed to a more low-level awareness in a lucid dream with less control and a more "just go with it" mentality.  I know in the past there have been some strong opinions on the differences between lucid dreams and obe's and I don't want to open that can of worms.  But if you like, give this a try for a few nights.  You may be surprised.  Works even better if you use the old sleep for a few hours first and wake up early routine. 

It is very much something you see with your 'mind's eye', like your phasing experiments, however there are various methods for achieving this state. One of them is to *start* by looking into the blackness behind your eyes and eventially, as your body settles into a relaxed state and your mind stays aware, you will notice a subtle mental switch, where the darkness begins to take on perpective, it has distance and is 3D. At this point, you are not using your physical vision, but your mind's eye. You have switched between the two in a smooth manner.

Okay.  Stated this way, it makes sense.  I didn't know if I understood correctly or was perhaps missing something.  Thank you Gandalf. 

Well, I'm a little confused now.  I haven't tried to see the 3D blackness but after reading this, I think I'd like to.  By some descriptions, the 3D blackness is something you see with your physical eyes, by others, it is something you see with your mind's eye (imagination).  Which is it?  Is it different for some people.  Most descriptions start with looking into the dark behind your eyelids with your physical eyes.  I think that would just keep me awake.  Does it start with the physical staring and transition into the mind's eye behind the scenes without you realizing it as you fall asleep?   

Usually, when I'm not too tired and just fall asleep, I just start "daydreaming".  This is entirely mental.  In fact, if I am aware of any physical sensations or input, I just stay awake.  This would (I think) include feeling my physical eyes or looking at my closed eyelids.  But when it works (extremely rare these days) at some point, I'm far enough into the daydream where I just suddenly am there.  I literally look around and say "Hey, I made it".  No vibrations or physical sensations of any kind.  It is very much like Frank describes phasing.  I just phase into the other reality in my mind.  Unfortunately. I usually get so excited I wake up.  Either that or I just fall into a normal dream and wake up angry that I forgot to take control. 

I haven't yet found a suitable rundown for me.  Mostly, I think, because I find it difficult to think about any specific thing for too long.  My mind likes to "branch-out" so to speak.  

I do, however, allow myself sometimes to get sucked into my own imagination in a way that sounds remarkably similar to what you guys are talking about here.  It works like this: I'll have just woken up in the middle of the night for some reason (snoring, toddler interference, bathroom break, etc.) and when I lay back down to go to sleep, I'll either start thinking about whatever it was I was just dreaming about (if I can remember) or I'll start thinking about something else that is interesting.  

After a little while, one of three things will happen: I will get too involved in my thoughts and not fall back to sleep, I will fall asleep right into the dream and not realize it until I am waking up again (most common), or I will fall asleep into the dream and realize I am no longer awake in my bed but conscious in my dream.  At this point, I can take over the dream but I usually don't get very far as the excitement typically wakes me up.  

Anyhow, it sounds like what I do is like phasing but without the control.  Anyone else do this?