Difference Between OBE and Lucid Dreaming???

Okay, so obviously lucid dreaming is a very real phenomenon. I've experienced it, and so have many others. Out of Body Experiences though, I'm not so sure. I'm a firm believer that anything is possible in the right situation, so I'm very open to the possibility of OBEs. BUT, I've noticed when reading about people's OBEs that they're almost exactly the same as lucid dreams. I'm starting to think that maybe these experiences are not OBEs, but just lucid dreams. But the people who claim to experience them also claim to be able to differentiate between lucid dreaming and having an OBE.

SO, my question here is for anyone who claims to have had multible OBEs and lucid dreams and who ALSO claims to know the difference between the two. I'd like to know, with as much descriptive detail as possible, what you think the difference(s) are between lucid dreams and OBE. How can you tell which is which?

I appreciate all answers, please do not get in an argument amongst yourselves, thank you! :)

I feel the same way, I can't see a clear difference between the two.

The only difference I noticed was experiencing vibrations, feeling my astral body, seeing my physical body in bed. Besides those 3 things everything else is dreamlike.

I could open/close doors and turn on/off the light switch. Some say in this state you shouldn't be able to interact with anything just observe.

Also, I have no clue how to get to astral planes. I'm just at my house each time.

Thanks for replying!

I feel vibrations when transitioning into a lucid dream and have also seen my sleeping body while in a dream, but I'm not sure what you mean by "feeling" your astral body. Does this body feel different than your "normal" body when dreaming? Whenever I WILD or DEILD I'm almost always in my bedroom, getting out of bed.

Not this again.. I'm sorry, but there are so many threads about this topic, and they all end up in the same way: a flame war on whether or not OBEs are real where everyone is trying to convince others that their own personal beliefs are true.

Well then what was the point of you even saying anything? So negative.

OBE: Out of Body EXPERIENCE

Nothing in that suggests they are not lucid dreams. They are experiences of being out of the body. Just like any flying object you can not identify is a UFO. It does not imply alien space ship.

With that in mind, here is the difference: Regular LDs take place in strange versions of the world, or even odder locations. You see right away that it is a dream and not real settings. While, in an LD that is OBE (real magical event or not) the setting seems very stable and is a familiar area in which you know the area. This is likely your house and surrounding yards. As you move through it the setting remains reasonably true to life and few bizarre dream like features exist.

^^ Sivason pretty much nailed it, but:

I've had many experiences that I imagine fit the popular definitions of OBE's, and, in all honesty, I was never impressed.

OBE's to me are the dullest experience on the lucid dreaming menu. Mine rarely ranged beyond the confines of my house or neighborhood, often with restricted movement, always with dull local scenery, and never with anything interesting to do. Just floating around my house is not my idea of a good time, I guess.

I would take even the dullest LD over an OBE any time, I think, because at least something new is happening, and my imagination is getting far more challenge and stimulation. As an extention to that: the potential for creativity, exploration, and imagination in a LD makes its experience vastly more valuable than an OBE. It could be me, but I have never understood the fascination with OBE's.

The point of saying it is that it's true..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sageous

^I would take even the dullest LD over an OBE any time, I think, because at least something new is happening, and my imagination is getting far more challenge and stimulation. As an extention to that: the potential for creativity, exploration, and imagination in a LD makes its experience vastly more valuable than an OBE. It could be me, but I have never understood the fascination with OBE's.

---

Haha, I must agree and admit, OBEs are typically rather dull and even boring sometimes. But mainly when there's no one around, I've had some interesting experiences interacting with other things.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by blobularwindmil

Thanks for replying!

I feel vibrations when transitioning into a lucid dream and have also seen my sleeping body while in a dream, but I'm not sure what you mean by "feeling" your astral body. Does this body feel different than your "normal" body when dreaming? Whenever I WILD or DEILD I'm almost always in my bedroom, getting out of bed.

---

Feeling the second body is like trying to lift your body up without actually moving any muscles. It feels like an energetic body that you gradually lift out of your real physical body.

I might seem ignorant, but this topic confuses me a lot:

Lucid dream: dream, meaning asleep: person knows she is dreaming;
OBE: any experience where you feel yourself "jumping out" of your body.

OBE is scientifically proven, there's no need to question whether is really exists or not: come to a certain lab in Europe (I think it's Europe) and you'll experience as many as you'd like. It's just an "experience", just like deja vu is an experience.

Personally, the question I'd like to see answered would be: are OBE always hallucinations? The answer is no, because people can experience OBE while not being awake. But how to these OBE (especially NDE) work? They do seem a lot like dreams with increased sensorial input.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoth

I might seem ignorant, but this topic confuses me a lot:

Lucid dream: dream, meaning asleep: person knows she is dreaming;
OBE: any experience where you feel yourself "jumping out" of your body.

OBE is scientifically proven, there's no need to question whether is really exists or not: come to a certain lab in Europe (I think it's Europe) and you'll experience as many as you'd like. It's just an "experience", just like deja vu is an experience.

Personally, the question I'd like to see answered would be: are OBE always hallucinations? The answer is no, because people can experience OBE while not being awake. But how to these OBE (especially NDE) work? They do seem a lot like dreams with increased sensorial input.

---

Are dreams always hallucinations ? :)

I think the reason why they are usually accompanied by increased sensorial input is because you are more aware of things around when you are in OBE, you can have that same sensorial input in any other dream if you let your self go. By saying 'let your self go' I mean you have to feel the dream instead of playing it like a computer dream. Think of it now, in waking life you are standing on a mountain top, you make a deep breath in and feel the air, feel the wind, feel the warmth of the sun, touch the grass, feel your self standing there as a whole. You should be able to do the same in your dream, actually this is more then enough to get lucid in any dream if you make it a habit, plus you are in a whole different place now, you are living in your dream instead of playing it like a computer game.

Quote:

---

Are dreams always hallucinations ?

---

I'm the worst at detecting rhetorical questions, so let me know if that was one :oops:

Dreams are never hallucinations, their only similarity is the fact that they show you something that doesn't exist in the concrete reality, but besides that they are mutually exclusive.

Quote:

---

I think the reason why they are usually accompanied by increased sensorial input is because you are more aware of things around when you are in OBE, you can have that same sensorial input in any other dream if you let your self go. By saying 'let your self go' I mean you have to feel the dream instead of playing it like a computer dream. Think of it now, in waking life you are standing on a mountain top, you make a deep breath in and feel the air, feel the wind, feel the warmth of the sun, touch the grass, feel your self standing there as a whole. You should be able to do the same in your dream, actually this is more then enough to get lucid in any dream if you make it a habit, plus you are in a whole different place now, you are living in your dream instead of playing it like a computer game.

---

I don't understand, are you sure you're not mistaking the terms? There's no way sensorial input reaches such levels in a dream, it's literally impossible. The only exceptions are sensory input occurring from proprioception, incubation, and even then, they can't reach the same degree of the perception you're receiving from the dream.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoth

Dreams are never hallucinations, their only similarity is the fact that they show you something that doesn't exist in the concrete reality, but besides that they are mutually exclusive.

---

If dreams are never hallucinations, then OBE's can't be hallucinations too. Or you can say that term 'hallucination' is imprecise when applied to dreams.

Are you sure that they do not exist in concrete(waking?) reality.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoth

I don't understand, are you sure you're not mistaking the terms? There's no way sensorial input reaches such levels in a dream, it's literally impossible. The only exceptions are sensory input occurring from proprioception, incubation, and even then, they can't reach the same degree of the perception you're receiving from the dream.

---

I am sure. Dream sensory input levels are no lower then waking reality sensory input levels.

And when we are talking about feelings, emotions and perception, I would put it the opposite. There is no way for waking reality feelings, emotions and perception levels/depth/intensity to reach what we can experience in a dream. Waking reality is a toy compared to thrust of a dream world experience.

Quote:

---

If dreams are never hallucinations, then OBE's can't be hallucinations too. Or you can say that term 'hallucination' is imprecise when applied to dreams.

---

The term hallucination is never applied to dreams, because like I said, they are mutually exclusive. In fact, after some thought about it, I think OBE are indeed always hallucinations: what may be happening when they are associated with lucid dreaming is a phenomenon compared to sleep paralysis in the sense that you're hallucinating in a sleep period prior to REM, which would explain the association with lucidity: just like in SP, you'd be having the experience before entering in a dream.

Quote:

---

I am sure. Dream sensory input levels are no lower then waking reality sensory input levels.

---

My point: dreams don't use sensory input. How can you be sure of something that we know for years not to be the case, we must be talking about different things :huh2:

Thanks all of you for your input! :)

The conclusion I have come to is that lucid dreaming and OBEs are basically the same thing. I think what people call OBEs are actually lucid dreams that began in the bedroom, mainly WILDs and DEILDs. I think some people place more emphasis on the difference because they believe dreams are NOT REAL, while OBEs are. As in: they believe OBEs take place in this waking reality or something VERY close to it. I for one believe that the dream world is A real world, just as real as the one we live in, except it has different "rules". So, in a way, the OBE "believers" are correct in saying that OBEs are real. BUT, dreams are also real in the same way, so my conclusion is that lucid dreams and OBEs are just different terms for slightly different variances of the same thing: taking trips to the "other" world! :) Also, I tend to think that this "other" world is the "thought realm" or "4th dimension" or "the collective unconscious"; take your pick of what term you'd like to use. I believe we can use lucid dreams and OBEs and astral traveling or whatever you'd like to call it to learn things from both our own subconscious and the unconscious mind of all sentient life. Oh, and I believe deep meditation while in a waking state can bring you to this world as well. I've experienced a few deep meditations that seemed like dreams in that I could no longer feel my waking body, but COULD feel my "mental" or "light" body. So, yup. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it! :cheeky:

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoth

The term hallucination is never applied to dreams, because like I said, they are mutually exclusive. In fact, after some thought about it, I think OBE are indeed always hallucinations: what may be happening when they are associated with lucid dreaming is a phenomenon compared to sleep paralysis in the sense that you're hallucinating in a sleep period prior to REM, which would explain the association with lucidity: just like in SP, you'd be having the experience before entering in a dream.

---

You are right, the term hallucination cannot be applied to dreams.
If you think SP is a hallucination, then OBE's and dreams are hallucinations too. If you think that dreams are not hallucinations, then SP is not a hallucination.
I think OBE's, SP's are all dreams.
In OBE, you are in a dream where you feel/see your self exit your dream-physical body. In other words, OBE is just a short way to describe what kind of dream you are having. And as I said before, the difference in feelings comes from more awareness of your body, as a result of one observing his own body.
In SP, you are partially sleeping. Your eyes are open and you are awake, however you are seeing your dream mixed up with your waking vision. The reason why people see scary dreams at this point is because fear is one of the strongest generators of that pure intention needed to control the dream. We usually fear the unknown, when we face unknown for us state like SP, when we see things that we should not be seeing, we are subconsciously afraid. Fear brings up your deep fears and you are generating a scary dream for your self. When people do not understand this process, it is getting even more scary for them. However if you know this is so called SP, you control your own dream in SP the same way you control your lucid dream. Summon whatever dream objects you want in your SP and you will have them. Plus SP isn't happening to you only when you are falling asleep, it can happen any time.

Hallucinating in a sleep? sounds like a dream. Not only SP is a dream, but there is one dream you are experiencing every night before you see your first REM dream. A dream that happens to you when you are just falling asleep, it is a nREM dream and it can be lucid too. Most of the time you do not recall it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zoth

My point: dreams don't use sensory input. How can you be sure of something that we know for years not to be the case, we must be talking about different things :huh2:

---

Even if dreams don't use sensory input, you do have sensory feelings in your dreams, right? That sensory experience in your dream is not lower then your sensory experience in a waking life. You are right, maybe 'sensory input' is wrong as a term here, however you still experience same senses, even if they are coming for a different reason then physical input.
As an example, you know there are cases of phantom pain, when people feel pain that is fake. In dream your brain can generate same senses that it does generate for you when you are awake. And when talking about emotions, feelings, perception and experience of life as a whole, they can be much more intense then they are in waking life.

@ flowofmysoul , blobularwindmil, and Zoth : I think you are saying the same thing but with some kind of different terminology.

I agree with what you say, even if I don't see the need of speaking about another realm for dreams/OBE/SP/AP to happen (blobularwindmil).
I also use the word "hallucination" for a more general meaning.
Since our brain is creating what we directly perceive from the sensory inputs that are just electrical signals, (I'm not saying that the brain creates the reality but he creates our perception of the reality), I consider our waking life as a hallucination.

Look, Our brain is totally isolated in the cranial box and is absolutely in the dark, but we see light, we see the external world.
Obviously, this light is a hallucinated transcription of complex electrical signals that the brain receives from our eyes, that are like web cams. Same thing with the other sensory organs.
The brain only receives electrical inputs, but we don't see electrical inputs, we see complex images, feel concrete sensations, smell and feel kinda real stuffs.
So, we are not perceiving what our brain really receives (electrical inputs) but a complex multisensory realm.
This way our waking life is a hallucination.

It's like we sat in an armchair, in a closed room, looking at the painting of a painter that is looking at the external world through the window (he is the only one who can see something though this window) and who is painting on the board we are looking at what he can see through the window.
We have always been on this armchair and we have never seen anything else than this animated painting which is not the reality but a graphic representation of the world that only the painter can see.
For us, reality is the painted board.

To me, if I use this symbolic of the Painter, Dreams,LD, OBE's, Partial hallucinations(mixing things that are really here with things that aren't, like it can happen on SP),Astral Projection, everything is drawn by the same painter (by the brain), on the same board (in the brain).
When we are awake, the painter uses what he can see through the window, when we are asleep, he uses his imagination, but for us, it seams as real as the reality because we just see a painted board.

There is no need for another room (realm) for this to happen. Only the external world, a dark room, a window, an armchair, a painter and a board. (so we just need a body with a brain, sensory organs, our consciousness, and obviously a real world for our waking life).

@Kaan: I agree with what you're saying. I believe what you've said and what I've said are equally true, even if they seem to contradict. Because technically, everything (and I mean everything) is part of one big whole. So I guess the "other world" thing is an inaccurate way to put it. I think it's just a different way/type/level of perception in the same "world".

This has been discussed before. Rather than repeating myself, here are some links to my view of the issue from my experience:

http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...ml#post2127348

http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dreaming/156466-do-you-believe-astral.html#post2151055


http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dreaming/156466-do-you-believe-astral.html#post2150971


http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dreaming/140076-michael-radugas-phase-8.html#post2147416


http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dreaming/140076-michael-radugas-phase-9.html#post2147568


http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...ml#post2152914

I would add one argument to explain why I think there is no reason to consider that some non physical realities (like astral plan or whatever) are needed for Dreams or so called OBE/AP to happen : When someone is having hallucinations, this time I'm using the definition Zoth uses for "hallucination": someone seeing things that do not exist inside a real place, like when you suffer from some kind of severe mental disease, or when you are having hypnopompic hallucination, just after waking up, you see your real room but you also see some horrible bugs or monsters, that obviously don't exist, on the wall for few seconds.

In this case, where is supposed to be the "non physical reality" that allows these non real things to exist?
There is obviously no need for such parallel realm, because the support is you real room, you real walls, the physical reality (at least the mental construction of the real world that you brain is building thanks to the sensory inputs) but the bugs or monsters are just the creation of your brain because some parts of your brain aren't totally turned off (disattenuated images).

So this shows that your brain is absolutely able to create real-like things, experiences, landscapes, dream characters, without any need for a so called astral plan or whatever "other" realm you can imagine.
There is simply no need for this, cause it is what the brain is doing during all your life.