An OBE (I think)

A couple of nights ago I was lying in bed doing the MILD technique and must have slipped into the hypnagogic state. I suddenly seemed to be rolling backwards, like the bed was rotating 90 degrees with the crown of my head still touching the mattress at the bottom and my feet in the air. This sensation lasted a while along with a sense of euphoria. Then there was a rush of blood to my head and the white noise that accompanies it, a very loud ‘whooshing’. It was a very lucid-non-lucid experience, I know I didn’t levitate but it was so real that I’m still baffled by it.

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Any dreams after that experience?

Not that I recall. Before the experience I had had a dream where I met Charlie Morley. A week or so ago my brother, who is also trying lucid dreaming, had a dream about Charlie Morley and then later that night had his first fully lucid dream. So, maybe there’s a connection of sorts there?

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I have had two experiences in the last few months where I physically left my body and was somewhere else…a specific real place, fully aware of where my physical body was and fully conscious of where “I” was. Both were crystal clear experiences.
Everything I read about OBE’s suggests that you end up in the room looking down at your body. My experiences were not at all like that and your does not sound like it was either.
My theory is that when we are approaching lucidity during hypnagogia we are also energizing our subtle body. I have actually been consciously working on that since my experiences. I think that our “energy body” may be able to separate from our physical body (inseparably) under the right circumstances.
Have you ever felt yourself lifting an arm during hypnagogia while your body was still immobile?

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No, I don’t remember anything like that. I quite often wake up stroking my own hair, but that’s something else.

I have often had the feeling of moving my arms during wake induction (WILD).

Last night I had another VERY strong experience of being separated from my physical body. These types of experiences differ from normal lucid dreams in that there is a definite strong physical sensation when leaving or returning to the physical body.

It seems that the energy body can be released like this. There are certain practices that I have been working on that may enhance this and I am researching as much as I can into this.

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What kind of practices?

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I have been working on a number of ways to bring consciousness to the subtle body at night but in the last month or so I have been working with Tummo. Just in the last couple of weeks I have been incorporating Tummo into my WBTB protocol.

I have found some interesting documents that suggest that Tummo (Inner Fire) is foundational to what we are about here.

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Perhaps an OBE . . . ?

I don’t think so. Certainly not a classic OBE from what I understand they are. I was not floating above my body and looking down on it. I was…elsewhere. :slightly_smiling_face:

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When I “returned to my body” last night it was a visceral experience. I felt it and it woke me up. It was quite strong. I was immediately wide awake and clear headed.

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Jade Shaw, in her Lucid Dream Summit talk indicated that OBEs do not have to be of the floating over the body type and can be similar to I what I think you described. One way to tell is if you look at your hands it won’t be like a lucid dream, but more like an outline or translucent. What Tummo documents are you referencing?

This sounds so similar to two experiences I have had - one of which happened this morning, and one a few weeks ago. In both cases, I had woken up (or been woken up - thanks to a certain fur poof) and gone back to bed, and felt myself drop into this deep tingling state. The first time it happened was after a series of semi lucid dreams. The tingling increased and approached near ecstasy, and was accompanied by this strange sound - what I can only describe as an alien electronic music sound scape. As I leaned into the feeling, the “music” gave way to a roar, a wind engine of sorts, with higher frequencies mixed in. I felt myself float upward, beginning to rotate in a slow barrel roll. The speed picked up slightly and there I was, this rushing sound in my ears, body tingling, weightless and floating, rotating gently, fully conscious that I am in bed, and that my cat is sleeping next to me.

This morning was similar, but less intense. I heard a loud “oh”! - a full on auditory hallucination, and then I suddenly felt my self sink into the tingling sensation again. This time instead of the rushing sound and alien music, I hear more voices talk over each other - one of which was saying words but I can’t recall them now. I feel myself float upward slightly and attempt to “roll out” of my body, but I don’t think I let the feeling settle enough. I then had a series of dreams/dreamlets, semi lucid again, in and out of waking. Came out of it feeling great and deeply rested.

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That’s very interesting about the hands, Barry. At one point in the progression of all this development I got up from a near experience and I could see the glowing outline of my hands through closed eyes. I moved my fingers around and I could watch them move. That may or may not be relevant to this discussion.

Thanks for that about Jade Shaw. It makes sense that these would be OBE’s…if they really need a label at all. :wink:

I am getting some insight on Tummo from a couple of main places. One is a richly illustrated book by Ian Baker entitled, “The Six Yogas of Naropa, Principles and Practices”.
The other is a very interesting PDF that I stumbled upon during some pretty deep research. Translated and assembled by Richard Mullin, this manuscript contains a number of old writings such as:

The Oral Instruction of the Six Yogas
Skt. Satadharma-upadesa-nama Tib. Chos
drug gi man ngag zhes bya ba
by
the Indian Mahasiddha Tilopa

Here is a quote that Mullin translates from another of the manuscripts, this one entitled:
A Book of Three Inspirations and A Practice Manual on the Six Yogas
By Jey Tsongkhapa

Thus the foundation stone of both practices [sleep and dream yogas] is the inner heat doctrine…

I actually ordered a copy of that original Jey Tsongkhapa book that was written in the 14th century (if I have that right). Should be an interesting read,

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I once had two LDs in one night that started in a very similar manner. I thought I was lying awake in bed at night after just having woken, but then the foot of the bed suddenly heaved upwards to at least a 45 degree angle. I instantly knew I was dreaming. I started sliding backwards headfirst down some tunnel, eventually reached the bottom, and got up and went about my LD. Then it happened again same night, another LD :). Nice avatar, BTW :).

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Interesting insights already made here… I am wondering if the line between LDs and OBEs is very fuzzy or if OBEs are a type of LDs…
I once was visiting in Paris and stayed at a hotel directly at a metro station which was operative until early in the morning. The vibrations of the trains interrupted my sleep several times, so that I thought at first that I would not be getting any kind of proper sleep.
All of a sudden - I thought that I was lying awake in my hotel bed - I realized that I was dreaming but I saw my hotel room in great detail. Almost everything looked exactly like the real physical room, except for a head board at the front part of the bed, which was not there in waking reality. I voluntarily tilted my body backwards and held on to the head board until I was in a vertical position and did some vertical pushups against the force of dream gravity for fun.
When I woke up in the morning I felt refreshed and saw that the details of the dream hotel room actually did match to a high degree with the room.
I think that this was technically speaking a LD since I did not look down on my own body. Nevertheless it had elements of an OBE since the dream environment was almost exactly like in waking reality.
Interestingly, I learned only later that sleep interruption in intervals is a known technique that can get you into hyper lucid states…

@Dream_Hacker @Atma-Mu … and yes, you guys have indeed cool avatars :wink:

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@Atma-Mu: I’ve had similar experiences — the rolling, the whooshing, the sense of floating.

In most LDs I have, even in the few WILDs I’ve had, gravity is in effect. I can fly, of course, in my lucid dreams, but there’s almost always a “rule of gravity” in effect.

When I enter a non-ordinary state of consciousness from the waking state, with some awareness of my body in bed — and sometimes I wake up into these states — gravity is not effect, or is extremely light.

People can debate forever whether OBEs are simply a type of LD, but it seems the OBE experience has a number of features that don’t normally occur in WILDs or DILDs. For me, anyway, gravity is a feature in operation in dreams, even lucid ones, but a feature that’s not in operation (or not in operation in the same way) in OBE-type experiences.

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I’ve spoken to a few people who have had OBEs who report having both experiences, with each experience being qualitatively different. I haven’t had an OBE so I have no experience to doubt they are different. This YouTube video seems pertinent.

There is no “classic” OBE. Sometimes the body is seen, sometimes not.