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Interesting! Your bagman reminds me of a dream I had not too long ago where I looked out into my backyard and saw a bunch of frogs and purple beings that also seemed to be in costumes, sort of like McDonald's Grimace character.

Anyway thanks for sharing, I love when people post pictures they drew of their experiences. Keep'm coming.

Anyway my questions:
What was this? (OBE, Liquid dream, or what)

Sounds like you had an OBE after gaining lucidity. (That's lucid dream, btw.)

They say when you have OBE's, you see yourself in your room at first, then you float around anywhere you want, so does that mean I didn't have an OBE?

Traditionally OBE is the experience of leaving your body within the physical plane... around here you could call any conscious non-physical experience an OBE or astral projection without disagreement.

Let's say I had an OBE and I floated to my neighbor's house, even though I don't know how their house looks like. If I see what I see, and end up going to their house in real life, will the house be similar to what I saw in OBE?

It'll depend on your ability to control your mind free of expectation. It can also depend on the nature of the plane you're travelling on... some portray the real-life counterpart more accurately than others.

Do you practice daily meditation by any chance? My dream experiences and AP opportunities are pretty lackluster without it.

If there aren't vibes to focus on I just imagine myself rising up or sinking/diving. I'd think unless you were using rope technique to begin with then it may be a bit distracting using it in the transitional state as it's a more complex physical action. Also, don't think about separating your astral body from your own. Think about simply moving your consciousness away from the physical... a lot less to worry about in paralysis.

Hey there and welcome...

It's easy to slip into the "what do i do now!? what do i do now!?" thought construct when you are going deep in trance. With practice you won't need to know what to do, you'll just do it... and that is continuing whatever meditation exercise you employed to get to that state.

BTW, I also have a similar deal where I'll get that wave of high activity and if I don't take advantage I don't typically get a second wave in the same sitting. You just have to keep practicing so you don't need the second wave. Sounds like you're doing well, anyway. Keep it up.

This always works for me... quickly switch your intent to falling asleep. Do you question where to place your eyes when you decide to fall asleep? Of course not, because it's not an issue. They'll just relax and you won't feel like you're looking in any one place. That's what you want, from my experience anyway. At that point resume your focus technique.

I get what you're saying. On forums like these you'll often find people pushing mind-numbing beliefs as ultimate truth "direct from the astral planes." Interestingly I notice these people are difficult to relate to from a communicative standpoint. They speak from "What I know" and not "What I've experienced" and draw crazy conclusions from random observations. However in forums like these it's protocol to have an open mind and respect all beliefs so this stuff isn't going away anytime soon. I recommend taking these ideas with a pinch of salt. If it doesn't make sense, fall back on your own intuition and discard it.

I'm afraid hatred of what Hawking said is a dead-give away pointing to your own fears about death - if you were 100% sure that you would survive death, you really wouldn't care what Hawking said. You only care because it threatens your belief system. The same reason radical Christians hate anyone who oppose their beliefs.

You're taking the action of caring about Hawking's belief and jumping to an illogical conclusion. Caring doesn't equate with fear. Disagreement doesn't equate with hatred. This is a forum where it's commonplace to state an opinion, debate, converse, etc. Using your logic, you're fearful for caring about the afterlife since you're here posting. But that isn't the case, right? Motivation comes in many forms... insecurity is but one.

Perhaps the better solution would then be to create more boxes.

To just give up and glom it all into one amorphous batter is half baked and un-digestible, imo.

I have all the boxes I need, tbh... etheric, astral and beyond for visual environment, dream or OBE (for level of awareness only), lucid or not lucid, etc. That's all I've needed up to this point... that and the power of description. If you have a grasp on the English language it's not too dificult to convey most non-physical experiences without using such words as OBE, astral, dream, projection, etc.

I love that picture, dude... captures the mystical earthy aura perfectly. Have you tried to return there?

Those who cannot differentiate between an LD and an OBE need to practice more and achieve an OBE instead of compromising on calling an OBE as a dream. Sorry no offense, just a friendly push.

It's not a matter of compromising, it's a matter of looking at one's own experiences and determining they can't be fit into two neat little boxes. I've experienced plenty of classic OBEs and other non-physical experiences to varying degrees of awareness and this LD/OBE differentiation doesn't resonate with me. So you're saying I need to practice more until it does? Ha!

I'm guessing they were the wrong lottery numbers?

Perceptually dissociating from the body is as much a mental exercise as a physical one... laying dead still helps but it's not enough. You need to remove your focus off the thought "when will I project? i'm doing everything i'm suppose to!" and onto a focus exercise, simple as that. There's no special trick that will allow one to bypass the practice you need to put in, as was already stated.

Well, I don't recall anyone claiming that there were any "exclusive" properties. So no one is beholden to the request to supply such.

When you say that recognizing an LD from an OBE is analogous to recognizing strawberry from chocolate ice cream it's pretty much implied. If you're saying LD and OBE lay on a spectrum, it's still a fair request that the extremes on this spectrum be identified or else what merit does it have?

I think the bottom line is that there are many aspects of a non-physical experience. Some people experience these aspects in groups and categorize accordingly (LD and OBE.) Others, like myself, experience these aspects as independent from each other without pattern and so categorize based on the two most important aspects (awareness and lucidity.) Neither experience is wrong, neither is "deceiving" the novices. Both beliefs should be showcased and like urshebear mentioned, let the experiences categorize themselves. No need to force belief as fact.

NOT THE SAME -Not even close. Maybe I should put that in my sig

Mind explaining the exclusive properties of an OBE and LD, then? Nobody actively supporting this distinction seems to want to explain it based on their own experiences.

A toddler could make the distinction between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. What are the exclusive properties of an LD and OBE that warrant this analogy? I still haven't heard a clear distinction between LD and OBE accept the way in which the non-physical is entered... that's like paying before or after you get said ice cream... not a distinction of ice cream flavor.

Is it possible that this has more to do with the way in which the non-physical was entered (ie. consciously vs. becoming lucid after) then it does about the nature of the experience itself? I mean the only thing this is evidence of is that people are in REM sleep when they're dreaming (already known) and stay in that stage after having gone "out of body."

^ How did the researchers determine whether test subjects were having an LD or OBE enough to conclude patterns in brain activity?

I think that may be a confused mix. "Astral Projection" is an implied type of projection while actually arriving in "The astral" is the end result. AP... "P" is the how and "A" is the destination.
And WILD is not just 'how' ... the W_I_ is how you get there, the destination is in the _L_D state.

The "A" in AP and the "LD" in WILD are two different destinations in my book. I know the lines are blurred at the edges but this attempt to glom it all together and say its all the same just muddies the waters, imho, and is not constructive in the end.

The thing is projection is traditionally "will induced" for all intents and purposes... no special tricks separate the two terms as far as viable methods into the non-physical. So why would the same method take you to a different destination just because you're using a different word to describe the process?

My opinion... I'm an advocate for getting semantics right but it seems some of you are arrested by it. As long as you're lucid and fully aware that's the ideal non-physical experience, why this forum was made, etc.

your the one that claimed to be on a mission in a OBe state after Osama B L and ya didnt know people could do this... LOL

Yea I am the one that claimed that, more or less.

^ Well said. Using an analogy from the "LDs are not OBEs" thread... people want to know if what they had was chicken, beef or pork. Try to think of it as one chicken cooked at varying temperatures in different ways and with different spices.

Sounds like a world I'd like to visit some day.

I've actually had a similar realization recently... the non-physical experiences I called "dreams" from my childhood seem mind blowing compared to even the most vivid projections I get these days. I figure they probably were projections without the lucidity attached.

Proof?

You still take this quack seriously enough to ask?

The way I understand phasing (the method) there is no break in waking consciousness. It sounds like you fell asleep into the transitional state and didn't regain full consciousness until you became lucid. Having had very similar experiences I'd call it an OBE without typical separation.

Also when you phase do you still experiance the whole roll/crawl/float out of body thing?

I've phased from the transitional state and it's sort of like when a movie 'fades in' at the beginning.

Ah, I have to ask out of curiosity. Hypothetically speaking of course, if you personally were capable of transcending time through outer body means and got the numbers for me what language would you have chosen?

Well I know I'd pick Chinese Mandarin for myself since I'd love to visit China one day, and it's a modern language so I would've gone with that.