The Out of Body Experience - subjective perceptions

[ingerul9]

Hi there. I've posted this long post in another forum but thought that it may be useful in here as well. This was a response to someone as to what is an OBE and what is not - regarding preconceptions and belief systems about the process. For reference Bashar is an entity channeled by Darryl Anka whom I regard to be one of the clearest channel in bringing high quality information.

I wanted to share a few tidbits of my own experiences with OBEs and lucid dreaming. First of all the different degrees of awareness make the difference between OBE's and lucid dreaming. In OBE you maintain the whole awareness during the whole process. That means that as you are going to sleep you retain your awareness and you seem to notice when you change from a reality frame (our day to day physical reality) to another reality frame (dream reality). You are conscious from the beginning to the end (until you return back to waking physical reality).

In lucid dreaming you are losing your awareness in the beginning and you suddenly are in the dream state as if you just popped out of nowhere without being conscious of the process. Remember though that losing of awareness is still a judgement on your part of how it should actually needed to be done. It is often made when you wake up and try to understand it rationally and you say to yourself - I must have slipped somehow in the process and awoke in the dream as if I hadn't been aware of the process. Just because your perception of awareness changes doesn't mean that you aren't conscious of it.

I mean by judging the experience you are saying that it doesn't feel like waking experience in which you are so focused and fine tuned to a narrow frequency.

As Bashar says by living in the moment you stop using your memory in the traditional way and start using it in a different way. You know every moment that what you need to know is right here and right now. That's why one of the reasons he says space and time is becoming more fluid, more slippery, more conducive is because we are learning how to do that.

And bit by bit you realize sometimes that you trust yourself so much that you even cannot realize that you've arrived from point A to point B without being aware of the in between. But it's ok. You don't even need to know. All you need to know as always is right here and right now. If it isn't there then you don't need to know it. Trust it.

That's why people are experiencing nowadays subjective time more than objective time. When you are doing something that you really like time seems to fly by. But as Bashar says the reality is that you don't need to create as much time as before.

Now going back to OBEs. Your brainwaves are always characterized by beta, alpha, theta and delta frequencies. When you are going to sleep your most dominant brainwave goes from beta (waking state) to alpha, theta and delta (dreamless sleep).

Most of the experiences of OBE's are in the range of theta and delta. From my own experience what happens when you are going to sleep is that your body starts shutting down your 5 ways of physical perception (sight, sound, smell, taste and feel).

This experience of going from normal waking state to a state of sleep is accompanied by a range of different sensations. How you get those sensations are different from a case to case basis. They are highly subjective and that's why so many people are saying different things about them. There are general models (like vibrations, hearing voices, strange sounds) but that doesn't mean that you automatically need to have them.

Your experience is translated into your own symbols so that you can relate to it.  You have your own database of knowledge (your experience with physical reality, your desires, your beliefs) and it colors very much the experience you are having. Let me give you an example of why so many people encounter the vibration state because it is one of the hallmarks of going to OBE.

Suppose you start to read about books from other people who have gone out-of-body.  They say that in order for you to reach the OBE state you will get the vibration or it is highly likely.  Most of the times I haven't experienced the vibration state.  It was one or two times in which I had a mildly vibrating state.  The rest of the experiences I had were without vibration.

Another one that is again stressed out in many books is the silver cord attached to your body. I have never seen this cord.  But so many people do see it. Now what does it tell you about people who experience both of these categories. It would seem as people have different perceptions of the experience. But why you may ask. It is because in what they believe in.

If you believe that you need to have a marker point and it is the only way to acknowledge yourself that you've gone OBE is to experience vibration then until you experience vibration you will dismiss your experiences although they may be valid.  And your desire can become so strong that you eventually create this delineation from waking state to sleep state.  Others because they don't know what that means and so their belief is not so strong they don't achieve the vibration state and often ask themselves why it keeps so long to achieve it. At one time I was one of them.

Remember what Bashar is saying about his meditation. When going into a guided meditation he emphasizes that whatever you get in your perception is how the experience is attuned to your own imagination and you should not dismiss it. If you get a feeling that's ok, if you get a knowing that's ok, if you get a symbolic image that's ok, if you get it in the way of the sounds that's ok; whatever mode of perception you get it is specifically keyed into your own imagination template and it can be experienced subjectively in multiple forms.

When I got my first out-of-body experience it wasn't how i pictured it should be going. After trying for 2-3 months one night I've gone to a party and drank a lot. I've come home to about 2-3 am and stayed at the computer until 5-6 am. I put my body on my bed and instantly I popped out of my body. How I did perceive it was that I've gone to a point of awareness  and slided from my top-center of the head through my body and reached out through my feet experiencing a 180 degree turn in my awareness.  Another good analogy is if you put your water into your bath and then you remove the plug. The water rushes and it's going down by being sucked through that little hole in your bath. That's how I felt and translated my own experience.

Until this time that I got one of the classical out-of-body experiences  I have dismissed other experiences like hypnagogia (or phasing called by Monroe), other sounds, other ways of perceiving non-physical reality. My Higher Self, All That Is,  The System, God call it what you will gave me the experience eventually in this form to make me realize - Hey you are more than the physical body. Before this experience I was somewhat frustrated that I hadn't gone OBE and I shouted to the universe - if there is something out there and if astral projection exists and it isn't something that people lie about please give me an experience, some proof that it is real.  I begged and stated my intent to the universe. Later on I have experienced what I have recounted as my first out-of-body experience.

But you see I had way more signals before but because I had a belief that that's how I should experience it I dismissed them. I had made the same mistake as so many others and I have borrowed others belief systems.  The expectations that I had got in my way of the experience.

From my understanding of the experience it was that particular way of sliding through my body because I have read it from a book and All That Is gave me the experience so that I can acknowledge myself and say - Yes I am really out there and not in this physical universe and it is ALL REAL.

If you read about people meditating and having different experiences one of the most commonly known is having the kundalini experience. Again if you are into that kind of a belief system (being that you are culturally born in that society or you read it from some book, or some teacher is saying how he perceived his experience) you are going sometime to experience it if you are clear enough in your intent and you have a strong desire to achieve it.

But you see all of the above it is not necessary. A trust that you always get what you need is all that is necessary no matter what your rational and intellectual mind is saying to you.

Now after several experiences of these kind I have made some astounding revelations.  And I think it keyes into what HighWistler is saying and others.  If you read of people who started to achieve OBE's on will they started to realize something incredible. They are not going anywhere. They are just shifting their perspective. And that you don't need to have all these baggage beliefs from others (vibrations, voices, popping sounds, visions, hypnagogia and so on) and you can experience it by just using your own imagination.

One of the common remarks about this is - "It Cannot Be That Simple - Come On. There has to be something more to it than that. I don't believe it".  Remember Bashar is saying that anything you can imagine is real and that you cannot imagine non-existence.

Now when you are using your imagination you would be saying - but I still can feel my body, my surroundings, I still can sense so many things around me - I am not really out there. But that's just your belief. Transmute that into "So what if I can feel it - that doesn't mean I am not out there". It is This and That.  It's not one way or another.  Your consciousness is used to your body and it is merged with it for lack of a better word. You don't need to have the experience of total disconnection from your body consciousness in order for you to see that you're out-of-body.

That's why so many people who trust themselves,  in Bashar meditations they experience so many wonderful things. Because they don't judge the experience in how it should be done.

Now if in your imagination you go really deep - you become immersed in it -  you will have a much higher degree of a portion of your own consciousness gone from your body. Imagine the radio analogy. Your physical reality is one station. Another reality is on another frequency.  When you go from one station to another you encounter static but if you go after the static you will get some low signal (sounds and static) and if you go exactly at the next station frequency you will hear it in full force.  The degree of how one perceives another reality is how you tune yourself into it. If you imagine strongly being there (by a high degree of color, sound, smell, taste and feel sensations in your imagination) you are leaping from your physical reality to the static to another frequency like in the radio analogy. Of course you don't need to go into these steps sequentially. This is just for the purpose of illustration. By how strong you immerse and trust yourself you will be on another frequency. Remember that the analogy of the radio is still an analogy and in your imagination the static can be perceived as the void - another reality unto itself - or as how people experiencing it- they say they are just being - beingness - existence itself  - All That Is is - White Light and so on.

Ok I will leave you with an explanation from Robert Monroe about phasing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPLwvidLqlA and a transcript from Bashar

Astral Projection and the Focus of Consciousness

Q: I understand that on your planet the males, for the most part, have no hair.

B: Yes.

Q: Have you ever considered going into the business of making toupees?

B: No.

Q: Well. . . you haven't got any money on your planet anyway, so you don't have anything with which "to pay" for it. . . toupee? (Groaning from the audience: "Back to the camera!") (Note: the pun-maker is Ken G., the cameraman.)

Q2: One of the things that I do in a waking state – physical waking state – is that I will imagine myself moving out of my body, sometimes above it, above the rooftops. . .

B: Yes.

Q: I can move around. When I re-emerge with my body, I get a rush – like a rush of energy is occurring.

B: Yes.

Q: And in this state I don't have a visual perception. It's more of a knowingness perception, where it's as though it's dark out and I can't see anything, but I just know that I am above the tops of the roofs. . .

B: Yes. Sometimes because, once again, simply by the habit of being in physical reality, it may take a little while for you to get used to the idea of how to open your astral eyes.

Q: Okay.

B: To really know you are seeing. Because, understand, you are not seeing in the same way at all. Because you do not have eyes, as you understand them, in the astral state.

Q: Right. Well, that bears on a related area of this question. And that is that while I'm doing this, I also have full perception of what my body is experiencing. I can still feel my body lying or sitting, touching, tasting; whatever it might be experiencing.

B: You can form relative degrees of disassociation from your physiological reality.

Q: Well, what I'm saying is that I'm doing both at the same time. I'm aware of being out, and also in – not really in, but out and still feeling.

B: Yes.

Q: Is this technically astral projection?

B: It can be, because, once again, technically, your body is inside your consciousness, and therefore, it is always contained in any expansion of consciousness. Let's look at it this way: physiologically, as a mechanism, think of your consciousness for now as a sphere. All right?

Q: Yes.

B: Think now, when you are physically focused, that the sphere, let us say, is simply in the shape of your body. All right?

Q: Okay.

B: Then when you go out of body, it is not that you are actually exiting the body; it is that you are expanding the sphere, so that your consciousness is now out here, further and further and further. You follow me?

Q: I do understand that concept.

B: Your consciousness, therefore, is actually always 360 degrees around your body, which is at the center, so to speak; or physical reality, in a sense, because it is so dense, represents the center of your consciousness. You collapse and condense inward to form highly solid reality. You expand and go outward like a bubble to go into the more ethereal realm.

This is why, when you expand the bubble of your consciousness, you can travel here and there, and here and there, with absolutely no time involved between traveling, because your consciousness is everywhere – 360 degrees. And all you're doing when you go from this point on the bubble to that point on the bubble is closing your eyes here and opening them over there, to see a different point of view.
So, if you perhaps use this mechanism in your imagination, and continue to expand the bubble and assume that you are the consciousness always moving with the skin of the bubble – and yet, at the same time, you can always be aware of what is contained within the bubble – then you can jockey, as you say, back and forth, back and forth. Or remain in the skin; or go into the physical reality, or expand the bubble as large as you wish, or as tightly as you wish.

This is a direct mechanical analogy of astral projection. It is not simply just the idea of a spirit leaving the body. It is an expansion of your entire consciousness, so that your focal point is now on the skin of the bubble moving outward. You follow me?

Q: Yes, I was aware of this concept.

B: Yes.

Q: And when I said I was leaving, I didn't mean to imply that I thought my consciousness was actually my body.

B: Oh, we did not mean to imply that you were implying that. We are simply giving you, perhaps, the idea of a mechanism to explain the effect you are feeling.

Q: Okay.

B: So technically, yes.

Q: Technically, I'm astral projecting.

B: Yes. It just depends upon the idea of where you choose to focus the mainstay of your consciousness. Many individuals, in other words, would assume that it is not completely astral projection unless you lost the realization of the focus of your physical form.

Q: Yeah.

B: It is still astral projection, but it may simply be that your consciousness is not focused in the skin of the bubble, but throughout the entire thing.

Q: Multiply focused, certainly. Well, I understand the whole phenomenon of perception, anyway, is the selection of a viewpoint. . .

B: Yes.

Q: . . . in a created space.

B: Yes. So astral projection is simply one of those viewpoints, in the sense of being completely disconnected from the body. That is simply another point of view.

Q: Okay. Well you're saying that astral projection technically would require this disconnection, or apparent disconnection, from the sensations of the body? Or does. . .

B: It doesn't have to.

Q: Oh, okay.

B: But because of the habit your society is in – and I'm not saying that this is the way it has to be with you – many individuals will not allow themselves to believe that it has actually been done, unless they are capable of forming that apparent disassociation. To know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that they actually can shuttle their focus of consciousness back and forth between the physical and the
non-physical.

Q: Okay.

B: When you are, quote/unquote, physically dead, that is when the disconnection apparently happens naturally. Although, again, when you elevate to higher and higher levels, you will once again re-form the connection that you are feeling now. So in a sense, what you are doing, in order to still feel the connection, is you are expanding astrally to a much broader realm than the immediate sphere just around your planet. You're actually passing through that, so that you can maintain an awareness of the connection all the way through the different levels.

Q: Uh huh.

B: You follow me?

Q: Yes. How would one go about learning to open the astral eye, as you said?

B: Again, there can be many ways. You can use the analogy of your own physical eye; and while you are expanded, simply begin, bit by bit, to remove your focus from the physical. One thing that can assist many of you is to assume that you can also turn around on the skin of the sphere and look outwards.

Q: Huh! Certainly.

B: See what that does. That is one way. Use your imagination, as always.

Q: Okay.

B: And also there are many suggestions within some of the literature on astral projection that individuals in your society have already written about.

Q: Okay. Thank you very much.

B: Thank you. Sharing!

And for the ones who have arrived at the end of my long posting give yourself 5 stars and congratulations.

Have a good day,

Ozzy

[Summerlander]

For reference Bashar is an entity channeled by Darryl Anka

Allegedly.

In OBE you maintain the whole awareness during the whole process. You are conscious from the beginning to the end (until you return back to waking physical reality)

Erm...actually, not always. OOBEs can turn into dreams and vice versa. I've experienced the taking over of the unconscious mind towards the end of an OOBE many times. A great deal of my awareness was lost and with that, lucidity. Also, about lucid dreaming, it appears to be a 'hybrid' state of consciousness from looking at the areas of activity in the brain. Check these links in order to read about higher order and basal aspects of consciousness and how lucid dreaming incorporates both part of the waking state and non-lucid dreaming. Activity in REM is different when one is lucid from when one is non-lucid:

http://www.mpipks-dresden.mpg.de/~codybs09/POSTER_ABSTRACTS/dresler.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19750924

http://www.journalsleep.org/ViewAbstract.aspx?pid=27567

In lucid dreaming you are losing your awareness in the beginning and you suddenly are in the dream state as if you just popped out of nowhere without being conscious of the process.

You seem to be specifically referring to DILDs here. What about WILDs?
http://www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html

Now going back to OBEs. Your brainwaves are always characterized by beta, alpha, theta and delta frequencies. When you are going to sleep your most dominant brainwave goes from beta (waking state) to alpha, theta and delta (dreamless sleep).

Right...ok...and after delta back to theta and so forth...what else? Oh yeah! Both OOBEs and lucid dreams occur in the REM stage. This is why having a kip prior to inducion helps majorly. Interrupting sleep cycles can make the brain hungry for REM to the point of reaching it as quickly as possible at any given opportunity, like in narcolepsy.

Suppose you start to read about books from other people who have gone out-of-body.  They say that in order for you to reach the OBE state you will get the vibration or it is highly likely.  Most of the times I haven't experienced the vibration state.  It was one or two times in which I had a mildly vibrating state.  The rest of the experiences I had were without vibration.

I experience vibrations quite often, lately violently! Recently I even felt like electricity was being channelled through my pons and medulla oblongata.

Another one that is again stressed out in many books is the silver cord attached to your body. I have never seen this cord.  But so many people do see it. Now what does it tell you about people who experience both of these categories. It would seem as people have different perceptions of the experience. But why you may ask. It is because in what they believe in.

I agree with this. In three years of OOBEs I have never seen a cord.

If you believe that you need to have a marker point and it is the only way to acknowledge yourself that you've gone OBE is to experience vibration then until you experience vibration you will dismiss your experiences although they may be valid.  And your desire can become so strong that you eventually create this delineation from waking state to sleep state.  Others because they don't know what that means and so their belief is not so strong they don't achieve the vibration state and often ask themselves why it keeps so long to achieve it. At one time I was one of them.

If I don't experience vibes I get a pulsatile hiss in my head. Most times I get strong vibes but I have also separated without experiencing anything but a sense of paralysis followed by a slipping sensation.

Until this time that I got one of the classical out-of-body experiences  I have dismissed other experiences like hypnagogia (or phasing called by Monroe), other sounds, other ways of perceiving non-physical reality. My Higher Self, All That Is,  The System, God call it what you will gave me the experience eventually in this form to make me realize - Hey you are more than the physical body. Before this experience I was somewhat frustrated that I hadn't gone OBE and I shouted to the universe - if there is something out there and if astral projection exists and it isn't something that people lie about please give me an experience, some proof that it is real.  I begged and stated my intent to the universe. Later on I have experienced what I have recounted as my first out-of-body experience.

And yet the OOBE is not proof that we are more than just physical bodies.

But you see I had way more signals before but because I had a belief that that's how I should experience it I dismissed them. I had made the same mistake as so many others and I have borrowed others belief systems.  The expectations that I had got in my way of the experience.

Many beginners make this mistake. At first I also thought that vibrations had to be experienced before the OOBE. The truth is, before my "first OOBE", I'd already been in that state a few times before.

From my understanding of the experience it was that particular way of sliding through my body because I have read it from a book and All That Is gave me the experience so that I can acknowledge myself and say - Yes I am really out there and not in this physical universe and it is ALL REAL.

Thoughts emulate physical reality on that level. It has nothing to do with actuality. It is a different realm that apparently goes by different rules according to mind states. I have also realised that even space, distance and movement are not actual either. They are a thought in their own metaphysical right and that, when we supposedly separate from the body, we may not be separating or going anywhere at all...at least not in this reality frequency anyway. If the worlds we visit when we project are not existent extentions of reality, then they are nothing but hallucinations concocted by the brain.

If you read about people meditating and having different experiences one of the most commonly known is having the kundalini experience. Again if you are into that kind of a belief system (being that you are culturally born in that society or you read it from some book, or some teacher is saying how he perceived his experience) you are going sometime to experience it if you are clear enough in your intent and you have a strong desire to achieve it.

But you see all of the above it is not necessary. A trust that you always get what you need is all that is necessary no matter what your rational and intellectual mind is saying to you.

Agreed! I despise kundilini anyway.

Now after several experiences of these kind I have made some astounding revelations.  And I think it keyes into what HighWistler is saying and others.  If you read of people who started to achieve OBE's on will they started to realize something incredible. They are not going anywhere.

LOL! Dejavu!

Now if in your imagination you go really deep - you become immersed in it -  you will have a much higher degree of a portion of your own consciousness gone from your body. Imagine the radio analogy. Your physical reality is one station. Another reality is on another frequency.

I often think of one possibility besides the idea of brain generating thoughts. I tend to think that the realm of thoughts is very realm and may lie beyond ultrasonic frequencies. It may even be quantum in nature or it may tie in with M theory.

Ok I will leave you with an explanation from Robert Monroe about phasing

Great video, btw! Robert Monroe makes a lot of sense with the "phasing" term. In fact, lately I've been using the term "Phase state" to mean both OOBEs and lucid dreams (you can blame Michael Raduga). If I want to be specific about the type of experience I will still employ the latter terms though. Anyway, I think we are literally everywhere and it is a matter of where we are focusing the most.

I can move around. When I re-emerge with my body, I get a rush – like a rush of energy is occurring.

Yep! "Q" has experienced the Phase.

It can be, because, once again, technically, your body is inside your consciousness, and therefore, it is always contained in any expansion of consciousness. Let's look at it this way: physiologically, as a mechanism, think of your consciousness for now as a sphere. All right?

I like where this is going...

Your consciousness, therefore, is actually always 360 degrees around your body, which is at the center, so to speak; or physical reality, in a sense, because it is so dense, represents the center of your consciousness. You collapse and condense inward to form highly solid reality. You expand and go outward like a bubble to go into the more ethereal realm.

Hmmm...adapting to different frequencies of reality...focusing the "mainstay".

And for the ones who have arrived at the end of my long posting give yourself 5 stars Smiley and congratulations.

***** + congratulations, Summerlander!

[Contenteo]

***** for Contenteo too 

Awesome post. Usually long posts that hit on many different subjects tinkle me off, but I have to give this topic the

-^-_-^-_-^-CONTENTEO LONG POST SEAL OF APPROVAL-^-_-^-_-^-

Theres a lot of good stuff said here that makes it worth a read. Props! 

Love the part about the sphere of awareness and us existing in the center of that. WOnderful way to describe the phenomenon.

Cheers,
Contenteo