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This this is amazing. The first and last sounds were the most convincing. And the Italian lady made me shiver! With the hair drier I actually saw the light change as it passed in front of the lamp on my desk. Is there anywhere I can find longer audio clips such as this one? I tried a couple of links, but there doesn't seem to be anything free nor paid.

If not I guess one could record these with a couple of microphones and a mannequin's head... mmmh.

In my limited experience, being able to recall dreams, lucidity and anything related to controlling dreams can be one way of approaching out of body experiences. I have a friend who played with his dreams trying to decide what he was going to dream about just before going to sleep, but the only success he has had has been during meditation, not sleep. Maybe you are right and remembering your dreams could be important as in training yourself to be more aware of what happens to your conscious mind when you fall asleep.

Have you tried lucid dreaming techniques just for kicks? It seems saturating your subconscious with 6 hours (!) of OBE videos kind of worked, so anything you can do to distract yourself from your everyday business might help.

I think that's what they call false awakenings. You just need to enhance your awareness somehow when that happens and I'd say you are pretty much there. After you finally woke up, had it felt "more real" than your usual dream?

Welcome!

Regarding the second question, I've had experiences like that when I was a child. It didn't feel like a dream at all. I would stumble around a room I could not see, with my limbs pointing in bizarre directions and my legs responding in strange ways. Everything was blurry and I remember thinking I was awake, but something was wrong with my eyes. I couldn't open them fully, and my eyeballs were all over the place. On top of that one moment I would be in one part of the room, and the other I would find myself back where I started, or somewhere else. It was very disturbing. As I wasn't dreaming, I didn't know how to wake up. It was very disturbing. Looking in retrospect I think I was experiencing sleep paralysis and uncontrollably popping in and out of my body. Does that sound like what happened to you?

Re... that is waaaaaaaaaay over-thinking things.  

Bu-- But, can't you see it?? You are all part of my mind!! You must be!!!



Well, I wished I could induce intentionally. Not to mention flying!

Do you think that we are all ultimately One? If so where do we draw the lines between subjective and objective, self and other?

Think about how, when you decide to do something, there's always something other that motivates you to do so. It can be something someone has said, or a thought that ultimately comes from your environment. Something you have seen or heard. So you decide to do something. This in turn has an effect in your environment that will make others think and act, and those actions and thoughts will end up influencing something else, and so on.

You may think what's going through your mind right now it's you, but in fact if I hadn't written this post you wouldn't be thinking what you're thinking. In fact it is Xanth who made me write this, and whatever motivated you to write your first post has modified my mind and the minds of all the posters even if in a very subtle and insignificant way, forever. Just as a train of thought can shape your personality from within, any exchange, and specially emotional ones, with anyone, will do so too.

So it's just a matter of drawing the line somewhere, but it's just arbitrary. Your thoughts shape you, your bodily sensations too, weather, insects, traffic lights and other people's actions and ultimately their thoughts make you who you are too, unknowingly. It's like the butterfly effect applied to consciousness!

Neurons carry electricity along their bodies, but use chemical reactions to communicate with each other. The fact that I'm using light to convey information from my brain to yours shouldn't make any difference, it's just making the chain longer, but we are in some way part of the same neural network.

From what I have read and experienced, the fast beating it's not your heart. I'm talking about some insanely high pulse rate. It's just one of the sensations that overcome you during the process, just like the vibrations. If you feel like spending one try to check it out, you can open your eyes as you start to feel that and check your pulse rate.

Thank you. I like reading!

I will continue down the line of the skeptic because it's the only thing I have enough experience with to try and do.

If it has been a lifelong thing, I assume you didn't have a clue at first on how to interpret it. Could it be you have stuck to it during your life, and out of your desire of getting a satisfactory explanation you have perpetuated it? As you learnt about things and could explain it more and more, you have adapted your experience to fit that belief system. As if you were killing an obsession by using all you have to give it an explanation at last.

I don't know if I'm talking nonsense here, and in any case as I don't know the personal details involved I hope I'm not being offensive.

Regarding my gremlin experience. I was a kid, it was the first time I went to the cinema, the movie I saw was Gremlins and it gave me the creeps. I think I can disregard it as a figment of my imagination.

I will be reading Adventures Beyond the Body. But for now, I've been reading Frank Kepple's notes, and I must say I find them very interesting. I'm usually skeptic about these kind of systems, but what Kepple writes... I really want to know more.

Is there anywhere I can read about other people's experiences regarding Focus 3? I have lots of questions I would like to try and answer for myself, but there's also a lot of information I miss. For instance, how does one pass from one focus to the next (more specifically, from 2 to 3)?

My point is, since F2 is a completely subjective and private environment (unless I misunderstood), how can you escape it? As I understand it, sleep is in a way a gateway to F2, and in F3 you are bound to find clues on how to go beyond it. But what about from F2 to F3? Where are the buttons you have to press? Are you bound to find them once you are there as well?

I'd love to hear about other people's experiences and opinions. And please excuse me if I'm being naive!

Remember, all that separates a dream from a projection is how consciously aware you are.

Then I'm happy. This was not a dream!

I also kind of enjoyed dragging myself down the bed on my back. It was ridiculously fun. I will practice other ways of going out. I can't hang a rope above my bed, but there's plenty of other stuff I can do. I also want to make myself capable of simply floating and/or flying away. I obviously can't practice that, but through phasing maybe I can?

So the answer really is... we can't know for absolute sure... rite?  

I just worry because I don't want to get bad karma messing around with another being's experience.

For example... last night I chased a couple of girls down the street for fun. I scared the pants off them and ran after them making all kinds of rediculous sounds. 

Some people speak of helping others in the OOBE world as they travel to the lower planes to rescue them. But if they aren't real...? 

If you worry about karma, you must know it's supposed to be affected even by negative feelings and thoughts, not just actions. So it wouldn't matter if it's real!

There's little to no advise I can give, but I've experienced "jumping out of bed over and over" and resetting too. I couldn't speak. And I either couldn't see or I saw everything blurry. And it felt very real.

Today I've had a similar experience, except I could see perfectly and I have only reset once (http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/first_time_got_bitten_by_a_bunny-t32050.0.html). I'm convinced it was an OBE, but I'm waiting for experts to review

Whenever I'm attempting projection, I get all kind of funny and weird sensations. Usually right before or after vibrations (if any). Could they be related to hypnogogic hallucinations, only much more wide in sensorial terms?

It's complicated. I'm very skeptic about all this being real, but not by choice. I actually like to think everything about the astral is real, I like to think God or some kind of god-like entity exists too (slightly off-topic, sorry), and I go with it as far as I can, but it ultimately crumbles. I'm an atheist, and very skeptic, but not by choice. The thing is, I believe your mind can make you feel anything is real when it is not, so how would you know? Actually, I think I may be an agnostic! I've never thought about it...

I some way (and excuse me for doing this banal simile) it's like being in the Matrix. As long as you are inside it (your mind), you can't tell what is real and what is not. Unlike the Matrix, you can't be taken out of your prison (the mind) to tell the difference. Or can you? How would you know you are really "outside" and it's not your mind constructing it?

All in all, I can identify myself with what you say about "piecing together the information", and starting to doubt about what you "know" about things. But I will always doubt about my own doubts and end up not being able to reach a verdict.

I experience hypnogogic sounds and images every time I go to sleep, every day of my life.

This hypnopompic thing (I didn't know it had a name), happened to me once, I woke up and there were several gremlin-like creatures in my room. All around the furniture, and even one on my bed. I was a kid, and was terrified. I rushed my hand to the light switch beside my bed and turned it on. When I looked again they were gone.

Well, I think I may have finally made some progress trying to OBE. Actually it was while NOT trying to, but whatever.

I usually become conscious during sleep paralysis, specially during naps or in the morning. It is something I've been used to since I was a child. It's no longer scary, just plain annoying, and every time it happened I would start struggling without further consideration and finally wake up completely.

I have been thinking lately that I might be able to use that state to my advantage, and this morning it happened again. At first, I followed my habit and tried to shake it off. I stopped, however, when I realised it was an opportunity, so I stopped fighting and thought "OK embrace this, c'mon".

It was late morning. I relaxed, "eyes" fully open, and started to feel a gentle wavy sensation right away. Then it stopped. I tried to move my arms and surprisingly I could. Only I would not see them moving in front of me, just a faint after-image of them. Time to leave my body, I thought.

OK, what techniques do I know? At first I tried the rope thing. I've been told you have to be determined and just do it. The thing is, to be laying down and start climbing a rope just with your arms is not something I would just "do" without some mental preparation. It's a fairly intense physical activity, rope climbing. In short, it did not work. I tried the "ladder" variation, but I still wouldn't convince myself I was doing it.

So I tried rolling. I rolled all the way to the edge of the bed and my body dropped to the floor. But not the head. It stayed as a pivotal point around which I could roll all I wanted, but I wouldn't separate. Somehow I "snapped" back to my original position.

Now what? I couldn't just float away no matter what, but I remembered something about sliding yourself along the length of your body and come out through your feet. I started to try and "slide" using the power of my mind, just as if I was laying on ice and someone pushed me. To no avail. So I tried the power of my limbs instead. Using arms and legs, I dragged myself on my back all the way to the end of the bed. I could feel a tingle in the back of my neck as I dragged my head around. I thought it was my hair against the sheets, naturally

Finally! I got my feet on the ground. I'm usually uncomfortable with the thought of seeing yourself lying on the bed, but I think is something I just HAVE to do, at least in my first OBE. I was also expecting a "dweller" messing around with me. And just as I was expecting, before I could turn around, a 2-feet tall white bunny bite my hand and wouldn't let go. I knew my mind was doing this because I was expecting it, but there was nothing I could do. "Damn dweller!", I thought as I grabbed its mandible and tried to fight it. Big mistake, I woke up all excited. I realised I had one of my hands under the pillow, hurting because of the weight of my head on it

It didn't feel like a dream at the time, but the more I think about it, the more I suspect it could have been. What do you think about it?

Also this is my first post, so hello everyone!