Hello,

Six or more months ago, I've experienced conscious sleep paralysis and it seemed so incredible to me that I decided to look for more information about the subject on the internet. This is how I've discovered lucid dreaming to be a really well known practice. After reading up a lot of stuff about it, I have been able to lucid dream quite frequently along with a couple more sleep paralysis episodes. I've been wondering for quite a long time what to do when I'm consciously awake in SP and this is eventually how I find about OBE/AP. At the moment, I would say OBE and AP describe the same phenomenom, are they not ?

During an episode of sleep paralysis, I've tried to focus and sit up on my bed. I imagined myself sitting up eyes closed for a few seconds, and when I opened them again, I saw a floating hand raising from my real one. However this led to nothing particular because I have indeed been able to sit up but vibrations were so overwhelming that I couldn't move any further. So I've looked up for more information about sleep paralysis and stumbled across robertpeterson.org/asp.htm. The last paragraph made me realize that I didn't kept my eyes closed long enough when trying to move, and I think that's why I saw this floating hand raising from my "real" one...

This morning I had to wake up early and went back home around 10 AM feeling a bit sleep deprived so I thought it would be a good try. It took me like 30 minutes trying before waking up in SP, and there I was. So I kept my eyes closed, trying to "push forward" my consciousness, really focusing on the will to move next to my kitchen (~3 meters from my bed). I felt my legs moving up mid air, like if they lost all their weight, they seemed to float in a weird way. But It was not really working as I was not able to get fully out of bed. And then I found the tiny missing step : trying to slip off my bed meanwhile. Like if I wanted to roll over, but without rolling you know. Success !

I felt like I was floating away from my bed to end up standing in front of my kitchen. I opened my eyes and I was still feeling vibrations through my body but in a really less intense way, and most importantly, totally in control of my movements ! I've just opened my flat door to discover what's next. I've even doubted a moment if this was reality or not but as soon as I noticed the building design was quite different I felt confident that I was safely in my mind. I kept walking, and found a lot more people on my way that there usually is in real life. They seemed to ignore me, but I didn't try to talk to them directly. I took the stairs down to the ground floor and arrived in a large room also filled with quite many people. I eventually woke up shortly after, I don't know for what reason.

So I don't understand, why do people think it could be a real experience (astral plane and stuff). For me it seemed pretty clear that all the environment was created by my brain when walking through my building as it was totally not identical to reality.