OBE astral travel

[OldBastard]

Just wanted a kind of poll type discussion.
I myself have left my body on 2 separate occasions, and please don't scoff: once you have experienced this you'll know
it wasn't a dream, Lucid dream (although they are the most confusing), or other state of consciousness

The last one, I was awake early in the morning (I have bad insomnia) and I tried going back to sleep. After encounters with a loud buzzing noise a few times, I entered into a state where
I could control the perspective of "me" in relation to my body.
Right away I was in someones house (neighbor across the street) and since I'm pretty privacy oriented . I felt bad, and like that- zap- back into my room. I was still in this state, and recognized what was happening, and thought "want to go somewhere far away, very fast" . Off through a medium I call
maybe space/? with an intense feeling of high velocity. It was
VERY exhilarating.
Bam, there I am in a cathedral with huge ceilings, partly carved out of rock, but with stone work in arches and a floor of polished stone. The room is partially lit by an intense white light, at the far end, and candles at various places.
There are little "offerings" of fruit or other personal items
at various places, and usually candles are at these places too.
Having heard of beings of light before, I just have a thought about the light in the room with the arch, and just like that I begin moving towards the room, and I'm traveling over the candles trying to avoid them out of habit (you're SO conscious
during this, you have a hard time thinking you're still in a body) and as i'm entering the room I think "do I want to be in this beings presence (if it is indeed a Being)?"
Bam, without the feeling of traveling fast (as when I went there) I'm back in my room/body.

Let me tell you, it was all I could talk about for awhile.
I had gone back to school in my old age (50 at the time) and
I couldn't even resist talking about it to a counselor I had a meeting with the day after.
Any similar stories?

[Dream of the iris]

Intense. Thanks for sharing.

My experiences are limited, but it started about two years ago. I was very into yoga at the time and spent some time alone during this period, meditating and things like that. I used to get stoned while I was doing this as well. A few months into the yoga practice, I noticed getting high was different. I would be laying down listening to music stoned and my body would vibrate. At first it wasn't intense, but as I progressed, the intensity grew. I began reading a book intitled "Journey's out of the body" by Robert Monroe. A great read, btw. In the book, he explains some of the signs that you are about to leave the body astrally. The first one is vibration.

I began toying with this for a while, using some of the techniques outlined in his book. For example, one technique suggested bringing about the vibrations and moving them up and down the body in a wave like motion. I did this and began to get very INTENSE vibrations. I capitalize intense because it literally felt like every molecule in my body was vibrating extremely fast. It was like I was turned into a human sized vibrator :p It was quite amazing and was sometimes too intense. This happened for a few weeks before I finally was able to lift myself out of my body. BTW, at this point it is probably a good idea to have good control of your mind so you can control your thoughts. As your thoughts influence the environment in this dimension, so too do they in that dimension.

So, one night I was laying down, letting the vibrations come naturally. At this point I was able to control them enough so I didn't feel like I was coming apart at the molecular level. I began to hear strange sounds. Buzzing, as if hornets were at my ear level. This common phenomena is really strange. It quite literally is like a hearing hornets. I can't explain it better then that. You also begin to hear ringing. At this point I am in a near sleep state, but still very conscious. This part is really strange and only when I look back does it hold true meaning. I heard a voice. It was a womans. She asked, "Are you ready?". I nodded tried to leave my body, but was unsuccessful that night.

The next night, I began again. I started to vibrate and entered a semi conscious state. Leaving the body is the hardest part of this. You cannot "think" yourself out. You have to know you are out. Same with seeing in the astral realm. You cannot just open your eyes physically. You have to know you can see. Kind of like peter pan :p You have to believe you can fly :D After vibrating for a bit, I began to "feel" I was ready and started to feel around. I felt the ceiling of my room. Well, I felt it with my back. It was a strange sensation. Very rough. I "believed" I could see and was staring down at the couch I was laying on. I could not see my body, however. But I was conscious that I was laying on the couch. Very strange. I floated around a bit in my room and went through the wall into the darkness of the basement. That was strange. Going through walls. Suddenly, I began to think. This is why I say you should have good control of your thoughts int his realm. I was thrust into, what you described, OldBastard, a vortex. A million things were popping up in my head and I was seeing a million things at once. I immediately came back to my body and ended the session. Haven't gone back since.

[hazetwostep]

this phenomena intrigues me greatly. i have had two out-of-body experiences (OBEs) that were both short and without vision. i have researched OBEs (including Monroe's book) and have been personally working toward deliberately inducing the experience. i have been unsuccessful as of yet so i speak from an informed angle yet highly limited on the experience end.

my current stance is that the defining lines for levels of consciousness (ie: waking, dreaming, astral, enlightenment, or what have you) are more blurred than we picture. instead of consciousness being whole steps between completely distinct levels, it is more like frequencies on a radio with "main stations" but an infinite variety in between with some even mixing two stations at once (?vibrating state of OBEs?).

some say that OBEs are just lucid dreams (LDs). i believe OBEs are connected and related to (LDs), the difference simply being frequency of consciousness. so they are similar but not really the same. it is a higher frequency of consciousness making you aware of different things like switching from normal vision to infrared. You are looking at the same "space" but you see very different worlds simply because of the frequency of light you are perceiving.

i personally describe this OBE phenomena as "other-body experiences." i don't believe you "leave your physical body" but you are just not aware of that scope (frequency) of your consciousness. you are perceiving a distinct yet equally real body in these altered states. the physical, dream, and astral (OBE) bodies all exist simultaneously, just our awareness of them shifts. sometimes you can view one body from another but that is ""simply"" explained with bi-location.

[OldBastard]

Thanks guys, those seem to echo what I went through.
I guess all anyone can say for sure, is that it's a real
alternate consciousness, but one where your cognitive abilities
are sharp and focused.
I haven't tried to "have" an experience. I thought what happened was cool as hell, but really have no interest in repeating it.
I did have a "kundalini" experience too, and that was a one time thing also, because the experience led to me not being able to relax like I could before doing TM meditation.
I anticipated it, and that ruined the TM. Kinda sucks, although
I might be able to try again now (it was in the 80's).

[Revanche21]

I had one OBE but it could have been confused with a dream about OBE's haha :)

[w4terb0ng]

Nice to see some input from people on this subject. It's been ages since i posted here, but i was googling vibrations, obe's, etc, and came across this thread. I recently became VERY interested in obe's and astral projection. I have been reading a book which i picked up a few months ago entitled "Astral Dynamics" by Robert Bruce. I have not finished the book yet.. I haven't even made it half way through. I have tried a couple of times to project, from the little information that I have received from the book. On one occasion, I experienced the very INTENSE vibrations just before completely nodding off to sleep (or so it seems). I don't recall projecting or whatever, but I know for a fact that I was not dreaming when the vibrations came.

But then, last night... well, 4am this morning, I woke up on my sofa, and headed up to bed. I laid down, relaxed, and briefly thought to myself "Wouldn't this be a good opportunity to attempt projection?" Shortly after that thought, I decided I was too tired to go through with it.
However, I decided to try to see if I could find these vibrations again, without following the exact process which I had been following for projection.
So I'm laying there, total silence in the room. I begin to shift my awareness to my inner body. I don't really know what exactly I had in mind, I guess I was just playing around with it. I began some energy exercises (like chakra exercises), pulling energy into my body, then "storing" it, if you will. I repeated this for several minutes. After that, I simply laid there and tried to keep all outside interferences away by keeping my awareness inside of my body. While doing this though, I did not recognize myself as a body, rather as an energy, or essence or whatever you want to call it. After just "being" (if that makes sense) for several minutes, I found myself DEEP within those same vibrations! Only this time, I wasn't so surprised by them coming out of nowhere. So I took a few minutes to just let these vibrations wash over "me". Focusing in on them, I realized that I could raise or lower these vibrations at will. The only way to describe how they made me feel is complete and total comfort/ecstacy. The thing is this... both times that I have experienced this, I only get a couple minutes into it, then I guess I just fall asleep. Then I wake up the next morning and have full memory of the event. I just don't know how to control it better. I would love to hear from some people who are familiar with this! please, if you have any info or stories to share, let me know!! :)

peace:smokin:

[Dream of the iris]

The vibrations are the start, but it's not really what happens the moment you leave. I'd like to think of the vibrations as "preparing" yourself for entry into the astral dimension. In Robert Monroe's book, he suggest at first, with your mind, feel around the room. So, for example, you are laying on a couch and nearby is a desk with a water bottle. Use your influence to feel the bottle. If you need to, lift your arm towards the bottle and begin to feel it. Hold it in your hand and massage it, feel the temperature difference, etc. Do this a couple of times. That helped me prepare to leave as it gives you a good practice on the "feeling" aspect of things. Dunno if that makes sense.

[OldBastard]

I guess all I can say for certain, is that everything is much much more than people generally think it is.
that vibration seems to be the entry point at whic you either
go to sleep or control it.
It IS pretty loud and off putting, isn't it?
You just kind of lunge into this wall of sound that engulfs all of you.

[OldBastard]

hazetwostep:
my current stance is that the defining lines for levels of consciousness (ie: waking, dreaming, astral, enlightenment, or what have you) are more blurred than we picture. instead of consciousness being whole steps between completely distinct levels, it is more like frequencies on a radio with "main stations" but an infinite variety in between with some even mixing two stations at once (?vibrating state of OBEs?)."

very astute and apropos analogy. Really, that was genius,
and put it in great perspective, since i think in the same fashion
and needed what you said to "put it in the right perspective"
that made absolute sense.
I've read a young guy's blog where he writes out all his experiences with this, and it seems that through involving his
carnate juvenile desires (sex, etc) in his obes, they started sounding like he was creating these experiences as an
on going lucid dream. before they had more of a real world
experience.
I hold to your theory, because it jibes with info I already know to be true.

[hazetwostep]

very cool OldB...

i've read a bunch of stuff about people using lucid dreams to catapult into astral projection... i have decent ability to induce lucid dreaming but i have not yet been successful with the methods.

OldB... do you have any experience with lucid dreaming?