A Failed Out-of-Body-Experience (OBE)

While sleeping, my body tensed up and I couldn't break away from it. In other words, I had what a lot of people occasionally experience - a sleep paralysis. To the uninitiated, this is a horrifying experience...like having a waking nightmare you can't free yourself from because you can't move. It feels like you won't come out of it alive. I get this occasionally...like twice a year and unlike my previous struggle to free myself, I simply let go and allow the sensation to take me wherever. To me, it's like a thrilling roller coaster ride, taking you to an unknown journey into the expanse of your subconscious.

After having read a chapter in my Astral Dynamics book that touched off on this, I was quick to think that it's possible to use this sleeping paralysis to trigger an out-of-body experience (OBE). Since a waking paralysis is a form of lucid dreaming, I gain awareness that I am inside a dream and have full control of my mind. While being "awake" inside my dream, I tried to break free from my physical body but I could not. It felt like there was an elastic band pulling me back. At that moment, I was trying to remember what I read in the book: look at your hands. I did and I saw my forearms without my hands...like it dissipated into black space - that's a good sign. While struggling to break free, I tried to look back hoping I would see my physical body. For some odd reason, I couldn't even turn my head.

Long before this happened, I left a stack of cards on top of my storage shelf with the top card facing up. I didn't look at the top card. The whole idea is to look into the deck of cards during an OBE, remember the top card and go back immediately to your body and wake up. You then go see what the top card is. If it matches what you saw during your OBE, then that essentially confirms that you had an OBE and not just dreaming. That's what I was aiming to do. While struggling to break away, I had my focus on the deck of card above the shelf, just in front of me...almost within reach. And suddenly I woke up.

I came so close to having an OBE with the means to confirm it...but no cigar. Heck, maybe I was just dreaming all along...dunno.

--- TheLoneRider

Reader Comments:

Faz
(8/30/2002) While I have never experienced sleep paralysis I am some one who regularly dreams and remembers dreaming. On occasion I have lucid dreams and some of these take an all together different sort of format. I am dreaming lucidly but I am not me. I have a these few occasions "woken up" to find that I am conscious of my actions and surrounding but situated in surroundings unfamiliar. On these occasions I had an immediate awareness of a different sense of who I was and yet a certain retention of I. I have even ventured to mirrors in on these occasions to see a reflection that is indeed not the one I typically think of as mine. I cannot confirm or even support these states as OBEs apart from the lucidity of them and my own feelings. I can accept that they were in fact just particularly odd and vivid dreams but I do not believe so. On still more occasions I have felt similar sort of departures without the lucidity of control. These are indeed frightening and I have torn myself from them forcefully to awake terrified and disoriented. We still know so little about the frontiers of our minds and the reality of consciousness. It is an exploration fraught with fear and full of wonder. Sweet dreams and happy landings.

Steve Shikaze
(8/29/2002) I've read a number of books by Carlos Castaneda, and he talks about lucid dreaming, and the ability to find your hands in your dreams. I've found that when I read one of his books, I have an easier time attaining awareness in my dreams. I've only once been able to 'see' my hands in my dreams, and when I did, they were very blurry. I sometimes think that may be due to the fact that I wasn't wearing my glasses/contacts!

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