I saw my own body

[Dan4487]

Around 3:AM last night I was dreaming that I was lying in bed listening to the TV, and all of a sudden I became lucid. So I rose out of my bed, but felt very groggy. After I gained my balance, I looked around my bedroom and noticed that things didn't look quite right. My room was bigger than normal, had items misplaced, and it seemed bright as if I had left the light on, but I knew I hadn't.

Out of curiosity I wanted to quickly look at my bed just to see if my body was there, and my body was actually laying there sleeping! It freaked me out. What was also weird was that my body didn't look very solid... it almost looked a ghost. But it looked exactly like me, even wearing the sleeping eye mask I always wear. Then I thought about exploring, so I just kept reminding myself that I was in another realm and calmly walked through the wall to enter the street. My street looked identical to real life and the night was pitch black. I floated to the ground, and I remember walking on the sharp, harsh ground as if I was in bare feet. I reached about 100 yards from my house, then I couldn't go any further and woke up.


I don't know if this was a lucid dream or an astral projection. I don't know what it was. I'd sincerely appreciate anyone's thoughts on this experience, because I am very confused. The moment I saw my body was one of the most eerie things I've ever experienced.

[Volgerle]

The moment I saw my body was one of the most eerie things I've ever experienced.

I agree! It only happened to me once and then never again. It was my first conscious and intended projection.

It will not be in your case as you wore a sleep mask: What I remember most and til today strikes me as eerie and funny alike is to see your own face with closed eyelids because when do you see THAT? It is really 'strange'. You don't even see it on photos unless you accidentally have your eyes closed on a snapshot or s.o. filmed/photographed you sleeping.

That was really highly 'memorable'.

[Dan4487]

I agree! It only happened to me once and then never again. It was my first conscious and intended projection.

It will not be in your case as you wore a sleep mask

Thank you for the reply. I was just wondering what you meant by this part because I don't want to interpret it incorrectly. Are you saying that it was just a lucid dream because I wore a sleep mask? Do I have to see my eyes closed for it to be a projection?

I'm not sure if it was just a dream that I astral projected because I read about it just before I fell asleep. Maybe I was so determined to have one I just imagined it. I don't know. My room didn't look right but my street outside was 100% accurate. It's confusing. In all the dreams I've had in my life I never saw myself sleeping, though....

[Volgerle]

Are you saying that it was just a lucid dream because I wore a sleep mask? Do I have to see my eyes closed for it to be a projection

You wrote this:

(...)  it looked exactly like me, even wearing the sleeping eye mask I always wear. (...)

I understood it in a way of you stating that you saw yourself with a sleepmask on which normally covers the eyes (which is what it's for actually). So I thought that you could of course not see the eyelids if they were closed or whatever because the mask covered it. It's a logical conclusion. It's that simple, right?

Let's not make things more complicated than they actually are.   

[Dan4487]

That's fine. No problem.


It was just so weird seeing myself lying there. For a moment I wondered if I might have died...

[Szaxx]

You can see your eyelids through things like a mask. It's also possible to see through walls ect. Lets not forget we can see our room through closed eyes, this is common.
To make things seem more impossible, you can also examine an object and instantly see everything it comprises of, this includes all its inner workings too..
An alarm clock at my grandparents house being one of my earliest experiences of this multidimensional seeing. I was around 6 years old at the time.
Most of the beginners of the art are way too involved with the basic 5 senses from the waking state.
Flying is accepted from many sources being read already. Examining objects is also there perhaps less frequent and more exists too.
You can become very small too in your experiences and this gives a perception of everything being larger than normal. It's relatively easy to become microscopic in size and get into tiny places or just to experience the visual effects. Being the size of a planet is possible too. This gives a boring view of stars and tiny details are not percieved until you zoom your sight onto them.
Its all relative to what size you intend on being and dropping the physical limits is a must do.
Sleeping bodies are not something I looked for in the days of RTZ experiences. I didn't like the thought of it and once you see yourself made of smoke in a depression made in the bed, you'll not bother again. It's incredibly creepy as already said.
The light in your room is normal for an RTZ projection, it's typically golden too.
If you didn't know this beforehand, I'd say it was no dream. You had an RTZ experience.

[Dan4487]

Thank you for the reply, Szaxx. That's very interesting about the size and feeling microscopic in a projection. That's definitely how I felt. It explains why I felt my room was so much larger than usual. I felt very unsteady when I first rose out of the bed, too. I don't know what that's about.

I guess the reason I'm having doubts is because some of the items in my room were on the wrong side. I know how my room is organised before I fall asleep, and some things just didn't add up. I have to say this though: walking through the wall felt incredibly self-empowering. I just felt that I could do anything. When I reached the end of my street I wanted to explore so much further, but everything disappeared instantly. I almost felt like I had been stopped.

[Szaxx]

The self empowering feeling you have is enough to get you hooked on AP.
Its also tiny in comparison to some of the feelings you'll experience.  The RTZ is safe, it gave me the impression of a type of training ground, a school where you learn control and manipulation.
Your initial unsteady feeling could be one of many things. Just ignore these feelings and concentrate on getting an experience in the NP.
I used to feel all sorts of wierd and wonderful sensations in the early days. I'd think on rising and go slowly upwardsand wait for that golden light to illuminate the room. Once this occurred I was free to do whatever. I do remember some item anomalies in my room but these appeared 4 years later, they were rare too.
Your time is limited initially and you can get pulled back. This slows down and becomes a sort of tugging, similar to waking up. You instinctively know it's times up.
Return slowly thinking of the experience, this will help you recall the trip.
The being stopped could be real but more likely an abberation of the time out tugging. Perhaps you can have extended experiences and this symptom is how they end lol.

[EscapeVelocity]

Once you begin having some Non-Physical experiences, you realize some are different from the others and you look around for categories to fit them into.

Like Szaxx said, what you had was the typical RTZ experience that most of us start out with.

In the Theosophical tradition it is known as an Etheric projection. You were occupying your etheric body and not your astral body. Your environment is a close approximation of the Real-Time Zone Physical (hence the name), but there can be widely-ranging differences, as you noticed; these are called 'reality fluctuations'. RTZ projections seem to require a good amount of our energy and are usually of short duration and limited range. Many people such as myself, are limited to their bedroom or house, and to go any farther risks fading back to the Physical, losing consciousness altogether, or shifting into their astral body and exiting the RTZ completely; others are able to extend their RTZ experiences and roam all over town, as it were.

Learning to control the etheric body early on is usually an awkward and amusing process. The thing just doesn't co-operate with what we want it to do because we treat it like the physical body and it just doesn't work that way. All we know is the Physical and that's not where we are anymore. It's all part of the learning process.

Once you've had some of these RTZ experiences, you'll likely accidentally shift consciousness at some point and have an Astral experience, which is another breathtaking event and epiphany of realization. And you'll scratch your head and wonder for awhile what category that should go into. In the simplest descriptive terms I've come to understand, the Astral can be divided into two parts: the 'personal-consciousness' realms and the 'collective-consciousness' realms. Depending on who you read and what theories you subscribe to, it gets progressively complicated from there.

And they all fall under the heading of Non-Physical or NP experiences.

Hope that helps some! Have fun!

[Dan4487]

Thank you for the replies, Szaxx and Escape Veocity. They are greatly appreciated and explain a lot for me. Now I understand why some items in my room seemed misplaced. I am researching information on the real-time zone, because I am still a beginner on the subject. Robert Bruce said that "The real-time zone can best be thought of as a buffer zone or intermediary area dividing the physical universe from the astral dimension proper."

That makes sense as well. So the other night, when I saw my body, I was more like a ghost? I read somewhere that during an RTZ projection someone who is a clairvoyant could actually see you. Someone how the next time I have an RTZ experience I'll try to travel to the astral realm.

[Szaxx]

With enough experience behind you the astral opens it's doors naturally in most cases. A few stay in the RTZ and others hardly stay there.
If you can fly at 40 degrees upwards at extreme speed you'll meet the astral. The RTZ is wuite limited in distance from the physical body. I think my furthest distance when learning was around two miles. Today I rarely enter the RTZ but can if I have a very strong need to. The last one was around 200 miles away, it lasted about 15 seconds. That is a pathetic time out for me, in the astral the experiences can last over an hour our time.

[Dan4487]

Wow, 60+ minutes is a long time. I'm glad that in the future my experiences will be longer than just a couple of minutes like the other night.