During my life I've had several OOBEs, especially in the period where I was doing daily meditation, up to three or four times on some days. My intent at the time was only to clear my mind and achieve a state of clarity, but sometimes, would inadvertently end up outside of my body in a confused state. The most memorable event was when I was meditating in my bedroom in the late afternoon, somehow during my meditation, I must have slipped into a state which was more conducive to an OOBE, because when I opened my eyes I was sitting on the sofa in the living room. Although, my eyes did not really open, it felt more like I had just blacked out and the blood had rushed back into my head as I regained consciousness, with the similar whooshing sound of blood rushing into my head! At the time I did not realize that I was out of my body because I was as conscious as I am now typing this, but a few things did not feel right - firstly, I felt drunk or very stoned because whenever I tried to move I swayed with a slight loss of control. The kitchen was in the adjacent room, and I heard my parent's voices coming from behind the kitchen door, and at that point I panicked because I feared that they would suddenly walk in and see me in this drunk/high state, and I had no idea how I had gotten there. Once again, I want to stress how real the state was, the total experience only lasted perhaps a couple of minutes, but was completely distinguishable from a dream; I had complete control of my thoughts, and the scene did not shift or morph, but stayed as still as it would if I had actually sat in the same room in waking life for two minutes. Near the end of the experience, I felt like I was blacking out again, in my confusion, I thought that perhaps I had smoked some weed earlier which caused my amnesia, and marijuana has the effect of making me black out. My vision started to darken and I began to panic, fearing that my parents would walk in and find me lying on the floor, so I tried to fight it and stay conscious, as I did so, I felt my body tingle as if it was dissolving, then blackness. Next second, I was staring at the ceiling, lying on my bed in my relaxed meditation position, arms at my side, facing upwards. I didn't feel as if I had just woken up.
I will try not to recount too much in this post, as I know that these stories can quickly get boring to those who have not had an OOBE, although people who have had the experience can get really excited talking about them no matter how uneventful the experiences might have been. My other strange experience also happened during a meditation session. Once again, I was lying on my bed, on my back, eyes closed. Suddenly I was staring at the ceiling, the ceiling in my bedroom is recognizable because it is covered in an embossed ceiling paper pattern - it felt as if my nose was almost touching it, as I could see the pattern up close. I was a bit confused at first - what happened? - had my bed suddenly risen or had the ceiling fallen down? - this was how 'awake' I was, to be able to reason and not accept it as if it was a dream (in dreams you tend to accept the extraordinary or bizarre, where in a waking state if you see something strange, you question it.) Anyway, I realized I could not turn my head or move my body, so I was staring close up to the ceiling for about five seconds, when suddenly the ceiling moved, or more precisely I was moving, the patterns blurred, and then the ceiling changed and I was staring at a different texture. I recognized the texture as the ceiling panels of the bathroom in the adjacent room to my bedroom, and then I saw bathroom tiles, then the next few seconds I found myself in the bathroom staring at a row of toothbrushes hanging on the wall. This time, I knew that I was out of my body, perhaps the strange journey beforehand helped me to realize this, and at that point I got excited, as soon as this happened, once again I saw the ceiling all the way back to my room, and I was in my bed again. Perhaps a boring story, but provides reason for further study of this strange phenomenon.
The final story that I want to share with you, I'm not sure if it is astral projection or a hallucination, or a combination of the two, but I want to add it in my recollection because at the time, I felt fully aware and could see my room clearly without the morphing or shifting that is peculiar to a dreaming state. Once again, I was meditating. I meditate with my eyes closed, but sometimes (and I have not had anyone help me verify this), they may open slightly during the process. During this meditation, I felt that I had achieved about 90% clarity of thoughts and felt comfortable where I was. Suddenly I could see the room quite clearly as if I had opened my eyes - I assumed that I had opened my eyes, and I was aware that I was lying down on my bed in my usual position, but I felt quite relaxed so I decided to stay like this and not think about it. In the next moment, it felt as if someone had grabbed my ankles and began trying to yank me off the bed, pulling my ankles in an upward motion - it felt they were trying to pull me out of my body! It sounds bizarre and crazy, but I was fully conscious and struggling to stay inside my body. 'They' kept tugging, and in my desperation, used all my strength to cling to my body. This struggle seemed to go on for what seemed like ten minutes, until the mysterious force gave up and let go. Immediately, I physically sat up in bed, and my whole body felt tingly, when I stood up, it took me a while to regain coordination and align myself.
When I share my experiences with other people, they either stare at me in disbelief, thinking that I am lying or making it up, which causes me to doubt my own sanity, or they will attempt to explain the experience as some kind of hallucination or dream. If people do not believe my experience, then it is fair, because if I were them, and someone told me those stories, then I probably would think they were lying too. On the otherhand, people who try to dismiss the experience as a hallucination or dream, I ask them if they feel they are dreaming there and then, and they say no, and I ask them why? and then they say they just know that they are not dreaming; I tell them that is how I felt in my OOBEs - I had the same waking consciousness then as I do in my daily life.
Another set of people I've met and talked to about such experiences, tend to be composed of liars or those who actually believed that they had an OOBE when they hadn't really. This type of people, for whatever reason, like to associate themselves with the occult, whether they do it for attention or for monetary gain, they often believe in things like spells and magic potions. Often, it is the person who was bullied at school, or the one who is socially awkward, and who withdrawals into this world of magic, to feel a sense of control of their reality, a type of psychological safe-haven to retreat to. But at the same time, these people can be detrimental to those of us who have had true experiences, because we often get lumped in with them, and then we are not taken seriously or laughed at; it becomes a hindrance to a proper academic study of this phenomenon.
I am so confident about my experiences, that when I discuss OOBE with others, I know whether they are genuine or not. I've met plenty of wannabe 'sorcerers' or Wiccans, who recount stories of travelling to mystical realms where they talk to strange beings who give them objects of power, or visit different levels of hell, etc, and I believe that they are talking about Lucid Dreaming, which unlike OOBE, is more like a type of induced hallucination, and is more creativity related. This type of hallucination can actually be induced with hypnosis or the ingestion of psychedelic substances, and I think that the practitioners of Lucid Dreaming perform a type of self-hypnosis to enter this creative right-brained state.
In future, I may cover more on this topic, but personally, I don't feel I know enough about it, but my own experiences convince me to believe that there is a huge scientific gap in understanding this phenomenon which has been reported worldwide. The OOBE, is also known as a near-death experience, as countless people have experienced an out of body experience on an operating table - most of who are not religious or into the occult. So it seems that aside from our physical body, everyone has a second energy body or consciousness which is able to co-exist in our reality state.
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