OBE = an Hypnagogic Experience ?

[Amber]

Sometimes, very seldom, I get this doubt "what if all my experiences  are just hallucinations or average dreams?"
Like you, I had lots of hypnagogic experiences throughout adolescence and my teenage years. I would 'see' all sorts of frightening things in my room, and I hated it so much, I would be scared to take naps during the day, which was when it would usually happen.

But then I had one experience in which I affected another person in the 'waking world' during my out of body time. And it was so real, I just stood up out of my body and walked around. It felt just like that. And once you have had one of those experiences and even some proof from real life, you don't have much room for doubts anymore.

I would be interested in what modern science has to say about hypnagogic imagery and the experience, why it is caused and such. If you would...

Amber

[shaman]

Hey Chill,

I see that you start erasing your very own messages, and I found it is a pity that you have to do so, as these are very interesting and there are not many like yours in the forum...

So I am hurring up to answer your posts, before they dissapear...

The hypnagogic (hypnagonic?) state is really very separated from the dream. I often do have visions, pictures, sounds, music, voices from the hypnagonic state, either just before falling asleep or before waking up. The most impressing is when I wake up. I do dream and then after the dream ends up I do have pictures and sounds comming up, almost like a second kind of dreams, however with a subject completely different than the subject of the dreams. So the dreams and the hypnagonic state are either working separately in the brain and are taking place at very different locations, or really the hypnagonic state is a state of the mind where we are able to tap into the astral realm, and therefore whatever comes from there is not from us from outside. Anyhow, I haven't been to verify any of those scenarios.

For me too my few voluntary OBEs have turned immediately into lucid dream and then into dream.... So not quiet sure. From my own experience, the OBE is a state beyond the hypnagonic state. I have no difficulty to reach the hypnagonic state and from there I do not go easily into OBE, or do not go into OBE at all.

Sure there is something there to inverstigate and check out.

[tomparis2]

My reply to:

Posted - 16 July 2003 :  23:39:32              
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Sometimes, very seldom, I get this doubt "what if all my experiences are just hallucinations or average dreams?"
Like you, I had lots of hypnagogic experiences throughout adolescence and my teenage years. I would 'see' all sorts of frightening things in my room, and I hated it so much, I would be scared to take naps during the day, which was when it would usually happen.


To see if OBE is real, have someone place baseball card on your roof,
the with an OBE go up to the roof and see which cards are up there,
for example a Sammy Sosa, etc.

My fav trick is to OBE over to a used car lot and see the cars,
a corvette, an old geo metro, a new dodge viper, etc.

Then I ask a friend to OBE he has to tell me the color of the cars.
For example, the corvette is red, the geo metro is green, the
dodge viper is black, etc.

Easy to check...

[Jeff_Mash]

quote:Originally posted by chill
Do some of you, no matter how real it has felt for you to LEAVE your body, doubt that their OBE is only a hpnagogic hallucination ? I don't mean to bash the experience. I just want to share my feelings...

Hey there Chill,

To answer your question, I would have to say No, and here is why.

When I am looking at hypnogogic imagery, my state of consciousness is much different than when I'm having an OBE.

For example, in a hypnogogic state, my awareness is very passive.  It's almost like zoning out and not trying to concentrate on anything.  Then, an image, color, shape, etc. will pop to the forefront of my awareness.  I'll focus on it, but then it'll slowly go away, and my awareness goes back to a passive state.

In an OBE, the opposite is true.  My awareness switches from passive to proactive.  I focus on things, I concentrate, I think and use logical reasoning when conducting myself.  It's very precise, clear, and realistic.

There is no doubt in my mind as to what is only imagery and what is actual conscious exploration of the astral realms.

That is just my take on things, pulling from my own experiences.

[Kazbadan]

Many times i see people here talking in obes like if they were something just a little superior to a lucid dream, but not so real as real world. Now i´m confused, do you people really have obes?! Be honest please! Do you have obes or just dreams?!

[shaman]

I had an unvolontary OBE in the real time zone, with perfect vision, seeing my body, etc...

I had one volontary OBE but with not so good vision, and another one where I only raised up a little bit (that makes 2 voluntary OBE).

I had many Lucid dreams, and many hypnagonic states...

I had even more premonitory dreams... (that's my "specialization" if I might say)

And I have normal dreams everynight of course...

In addition I had one spiritual encounter with a tunnel almost like NDE, probably an unvolontary OBE where I saw deceased relatives worrying/caring for me, I had one experience in the "dark void place", and I had precognitions of death of people, etc...

Shaman The Dreamer (it says the dreamer, not the OBEr..)

[Kazbadan]

Hello Shaman! So you want to say that obes are real and very lucid (much as dream)?

If so, i´m happy to know it[], because i can have more guarantees that if i have a obe, it won´t be any illusion.

[shaman]

If you do have an OBE, it might be crystal clear or it might be with a very bad vision... but your consciousness and your memory should be as good as when you are awake.... if not better. And it is more vivid than dreams, because often you don't remember your dreams that well (though if you work on your dreams you can improve the memory of them).

By the way, just this morning, that is less than 3 h ago, as I woke up from my dream and the dream went away, I hear a nice music (a string instrument I think) and then on top of it a heard a few notes of flute (more the south american flutes, from Peru, etc...) and I had a picture of a landscape in front of my eyes. Then I got up. When I got up I could still remember very clearly the melody of the music I heard. So, again the hypnagonic state and the dream are two different things. There were many musicians/composers who woke up (in the night even) to write down the music they heard. I believe that would have been also the hypnagonic state. That is when I hear music, not in dreams.

[chill]

I found the Astral Dynamic's chapter on Sleep Paralysis very interesting. His theory that the presence we feel while paralysed is no one but ourselves, our own projected self or 'double' sure seems to make sense of it all. And Robert Bruce's own experience seems to validate that theory.

How we perceive that presence depends on what we personnally consider 'scary' : a ghost, an 'evil' entity, the devil hismelf [}:)], or an alien [], or some religious or mystical character we believe in. For me, it's an evil entity.

Sleep paralysis gets its own scientifical explaination in many legit books. I must admit that since I have read on the subject of sleep paralysis from medical sources, a few years ago, I have no longer felt an evil presence in the room ! Which would tend to disprove Robert's theory perhapse. And also, the whole experience of sleep paralysis was a lot less frequent after reading about it. I have had before thousands and thousands of those scary experiences, all through adolescence and my early twenties.  

Some skeptics will tell you that the hypnagogic state (that state between being awake and falling sleep) can be a time of visual and auditory hallucination, for some people, espescially for narcolepsics. Sleep paralysis and what is perceived as an OBE can happen during that state. Most of what we perceive then (our real-time sight and our travelling outside or bodies) would then be 'reduced' to mere hallucinations.

The fact that, for me, an OBE can so easily turn into a lucid dream (some people might say that I am then projected into some 'astral plane') makes me doubt the experience very often, after it has happened.

Do some of you, no matter how real it has felt for you to LEAVE your body, doubt that their OBE is only a hpnagogic hallucination ? I don't mean to bash the experience. I just want to share my feelings...