How to be reasonably certain you are having an OBE rather than a lucid dream?

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Originally Posted by snoop

Wouldn't certainty be a very lofty concept to base one's beliefs on, then? It goes without saying that someone that is certain of something can be wrong. Nothing about what you've said here is untrue in anyway. However, when one becomes aware of other possibilities and dismisses them for reasons that aren't logical (or perhaps a better way of putting it is for reasons that are purposefully denying the existence of other possibilities for reasons such as personal comfort, because something is cool, because you want simply want to believe in it, etc.), I have to ask why? I guess it boils down to an individuals personality, but it is a mystery why someone would rather believe something they know may well likely be untrue for reasons of comfort, simplicity, or some other reason I can't fathom. Do some people really not care to try and know the "truth"? Even if the concept of truth itself is unattainable, does one ever stop desiring to actually understand what is going on around them?

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I feel most people who illogically cling to beliefs do so because they are either uncomfortable with the reality that the belief is masking, or they are simply uncomfortable with accepting what they do not know and would rather pretend to know the truth.

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he sad truth of the matter is that there are more people that would prefer to follow your line of thought, rather than mine. It isn't sad because it isn't "my" line of thought they follow in the self-centered sort of way, but merely that there are not equal parts those who wish to understand what is going on around them despite the answers that are readily presented to explain our experiences, and those who would rather experience life based on their concepts of contentedness and their baser desires. The two would balance each other out quite well, but there seem to be an astounding abundance of humans who would rather live complacently.

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Sure, some, perhaps even many, do not actively explore the nature of their "OBEs" and just take them at face value. There are others, however, who have good reason to distinguish OBEs from LDs, as countless experiences of both have made the differences between the two obvious. Of course, there are just as many assumptions made about aspects of the lucid dream experience that I see constantly going unquestioned, ones I can almost guarantee you yourself haven't explored despite claiming to be all about seeking the truth. It's very easy to take one's own beliefs for granted, especially when they are commonly accepted.

I raised essentially the same question as the OP on Robert Bruce's astral dynamics forum and got one interesting response:

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Flew to a party as a child and saw who was there and what some people were wearing. Told my mom, after she had an apoplectic fit (she thought I had somehow found a way to the party, sneaking there) she verified my observations.

My son and my husband went to a friends house- I stayed home, and took a 'nap'- flew to where they were going, and was amazed to see them playing on the roof of a very dangerous-looking treehouse. I was so upset it broke the trance. Later on, when they came home, they verified that his friend's dad had built him a new treehouse and he did indeed climb on the roof, for which he got an earful.

Another time my husband had gotten a new job, and I saw him in a white room with some weird looking pins and little round metal balls in what looked like a tackle box. I called him to 'say hi' and he verified that he had been changing the locks of his workplace, and the thing I had seen was a locksmith's box and the pins and 'balls' were differently-sized pins, that go on the inside of a lock. My husband is not a locksmith, but is a quick learner, and that's what he was doing.

A friend and I had the same dream, a somber thing, in which we were going up north to a funeral. A friend of us was driving. Even though we were not close, she did tell me about it, astounding me as I had the same dream, but had not especially thought it was anything more than a dream. Then a coworker of ours died and she had to be driven to her home state, and the driver in the dream was the driver in reality. We had the dream approximately a week before the event happened, but this one, although not a realtime RTZ projection, had some interesting elements in it. I only mention it because I am not precognitive, I believe what happened is that my friend might be, and for some reason I projected into her dream, making it a weird experience with various elements.

There are many many more, but I can't think of anything with such clear verifications.

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Of course, the possibility of these being ESP events rather than actual OBEs may exist, but I see no reason to assume this is the case.

By definition, if those people tell the truth, which is in now way guarantied no matter who and how many they are, what they are talking about IS ESP cause they didn't get those infos by some of the 5 body senses.

Now the question is : are those infos the result of a kind of remote viewing, (or telepathy or something like that), or is this because the ..what? soul? consciousness? - whatever, that can travel without being seen, able to capture some electro magnetic waves/photons without disturbing it (a visual observation is a capture of electro magnetic waves in the visible spectra) , able to hear things without any physical element that can capture any sound (sound is a acoustic wave, so it's mechanical) - so because their non physical "me" was here, observing the scene ?

I see some reasons (suggested in my last long sentence) to assume this is ESP.
But how ESP is supposed to work? I don't know.

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Originally Posted by VinceField

I feel most people who illogically cling to beliefs do so because they are either uncomfortable with the reality that the belief is masking, or they are simply uncomfortable with accepting what they do not know and would rather pretend to know the truth.

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I think you are right about that Vince. You hit the nail on the head, actually. My point here, though, is that it seems strange to me that when they become aware that what they believe may not be the case, that they don't even want to think about the possibility. Sometimes they even treat the notion that exploring that belief's factual validity as taboo. What's so strange about that is the inconsistency one has when it comes to this. There are some things people want to get to the bottom of, and there are somethings that people would rather live in blissful ignorance toward. Why is that? I've always figured it was because those bits of ignorance were something that some part of that person's identity hinged on. Something so crucial in affecting one's behavior, beliefs, and thoughts would be something one would be highly reluctant to believe isn't true. So many things you have been doing, saying, and thinking have all been based on what you thought you were so sure of all this time, and then you find out that in reality, you had been doing, saying, and thinking all those things based on essentially "nothing". I hesitate to say it was truly based on nothing, but that isn't my point. My point is that this is the reaction you would typically expect from really almost anybody. I have been guilty of this in the past, but once I was made aware that it was occurring, I decided to change my behavior. There is no reason that I shouldn't be able to admit that something that I believe in, no matter how strongly, could possibly be wrong.

To go a step further, to prevent my future inability to admit to wrong doing or mistakenly believing something and refusing to admit it and change my ideas, I have put an effort into not basing my sense of self on things that have the possibility of changing and then leaving my world and who I think I am fractured as a result. Not only does it keep me more honest and open minded, but it is healthier for me, in my opinion. There isn't anything that I know of right now that somebody could tell me about myself that would cause me to break down. My identity isn't composed of things that are temporary. If somehow it is, I am aware that it is temporary and embrace the fact that it will change and don't let that change what I think about who I am, unless of course I need to think about who I am and what I do, and it needs changing. They idea here is to provide the most flexibility to any situation as possible. Failure to adapt means I will slide down a slippery slope to complacency. What's wrong with being complacent? Well, if you get too comfortable with any one thing, you lose sight of things. You have to maintain a balance. Nature, your body, everything seems to function on the principles of never going too far in one direction at any given time without going, at some point, equally too far in the opposite direction. If you deviate too far to any one side of the poles on the invisible spectrum, you are going to suffer in one way or another. A very obvious example is death. If our body fails to maintain itself and operate within a set range of conditions, the result is death or something along the lines of illness. The point here is that when you get too far out of balance, bad things start to happen. Unless you can adapt to these things, you will keep suffering for it.

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Originally Posted by VinceField

Sure, some, perhaps even many, do not actively explore the nature of their "OBEs" and just take them at face value. There are others, however, who have good reason to distinguish OBEs from LDs, as countless experiences of both have made the differences between the two obvious. Of course, there are just as many assumptions made about aspects of the lucid dream experience that I see constantly going unquestioned, ones I can almost guarantee you yourself haven't explored despite claiming to be all about seeking the truth. It's very easy to take one's own beliefs for granted, especially when they are commonly accepted.

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You are right again. I haven't explored a lot of the aspects about lucid dreaming. To varying degrees I have, but for the most part it has been more or less limited to more PSI related phenomena or shared dreaming because they are more controversial and in a way more interesting and fun to explore. Now that you brought this interesting point up though, I'll probably be thinking about it more. See, that's why I love discussion! Now my awareness of something has been raised, and we all are going to win for it. How much we win is going to depend pretty heavily on a lot of factors, but let's say we had never had this discussion. The point you brought up here might never have been brought to my attention until much later on in life, or possibly never at all. Then, our ignorance on something as interesting as LDing might stay at relatively the same level for a much longer period of time, and that's a shame, ins't it?

The reason I'm asking these questions is because I'm afraid that enough people are simply satisfied with their beliefs and choose to use the fantasy they have created for themselves that we will, as species, be prolonging our ignorance on things. If everyone chose to play house all their lives rather than explore, experiment, or learn, we would be failing to adapt as a species. None of what we have now, none of what we've learned, developed, engineered, dreamed of, invented, or created if everyone wanted to just be comfortable their whole lives, to be simple and plain or boring and quiet. There is a time for that in life, we all need breaks and to stop and reflect on things and to relax, but life is too big to obsess over pleasure and comfort. All in all, you can never convince everyone of anything. That's just the way it is. The people that go too far in either direction to try and convince people to be one way or the other are a lot of the time (though not always) just trying to get things moving more in one direction, because any change that happens in a big population is going to happen fairly slowly. It is foolish to think everyone could try and be in the middle on pretty much everything, but if nobody tried one way or the other it'd all be for naught anyway. In a way I could say that this discussion here is useless, but I know that's simply not true. To do something almost always is better than to do nothing. Not always true, but just look at this thread. Have we gotten anywhere near "proving" OBEs are OBEs or LDs at all, or "proving" that they aren't? Not in any direct way, no. However, all of our minds have been opened in the process, and I have learned things and had new ideas as a result of the discussion, so by no means is this wasted time at all. Not to mention it's fun and my opinions on a lot of the people who have responded have changed.

Kaan

If one obtained this information in the way that psychics generally receive information- like a direct download of information into the mind- then I would assume it was esp. If one obtained this information in an experience in which one's consciousness seems to leave the body and travel to the place where the future situation takes place, witnessing those events as if one is actually there, then unless one has a preconceived bias against the possibility of OBEs, there is little reason to assume that the experience was not an OBE. Regarding the senses used to obtain this information, it is possible that ESP senses are the same as OBE and even LD senses, but this does not necessarily make them the same type of experience. Note that I am distinguishing ESP from the OBE experience, although you could technically classify OBEs as a type of ESP experience. It seems likely that there are different modes or types of ESP, and I am essentially referring to "psychic knowing" as ESP and an OBE as a projection of mind/consciousness into a genuine reality. Tough to say exactly how ESP (non-OBE) works though.

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Originally Posted by VinceField

I raised essentially the same question as the OP on Robert Bruce's astral dynamics forum and got one interesting response:

Flew to a party as a child and saw who was there and what some people were wearing. Told my mom, after she had an apoplectic fit (she thought I had somehow found a way to the party, sneaking there) she verified my observations.

My son and my husband went to a friends house- I stayed home, and took a 'nap'- flew to where they were going, and was amazed to see them playing on the roof of a very dangerous-looking treehouse. I was so upset it broke the trance. Later on, when they came home, they verified that his friend's dad had built him a new treehouse and he did indeed climb on the roof, for which he got an earful.

Another time my husband had gotten a new job, and I saw him in a white room with some weird looking pins and little round metal balls in what looked like a tackle box. I called him to 'say hi' and he verified that he had been changing the locks of his workplace, and the thing I had seen was a locksmith's box and the pins and 'balls' were differently-sized pins, that go on the inside of a lock. My husband is not a locksmith, but is a quick learner, and that's what he was doing.

A friend and I had the same dream, a somber thing, in which we were going up north to a funeral. A friend of us was driving. Even though we were not close, she did tell me about it, astounding me as I had the same dream, but had not especially thought it was anything more than a dream. Then a coworker of ours died and she had to be driven to her home state, and the driver in the dream was the driver in reality. We had the dream approximately a week before the event happened, but this one, although not a realtime RTZ projection, had some interesting elements in it. I only mention it because I am not precognitive, I believe what happened is that my friend might be, and for some reason I projected into her dream, making it a weird experience with various elements.

There are many many more, but I can't think of anything with such clear verifications.

Of course, the possibility of these being ESP events rather than actual OBEs may exist, but I see no reason to assume this is the case.

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I described a room of one of my friends as I saw it during my OBE... rough outline :) I was never there before... Well, I admit she was surprised too :) I agree that it may have other explanation than me being there... Also I must admit that what I saw wasn't exact thing. There were things in the room which weren't present at the time. Some of them were there in past. Also, one interesting thing was, that she moved her bed a few weeks before and I saw it at the new place. (maybe I saw that room in many different time periods at the same time?)

Why can't I say that OBE could have remote viewing qualities? When I go out of my body, everything looks very real. What if some parts of what I see is intersecting with physical reality- when I'm moving either as spirit, or if I have only illusion of moving but in reality I only imagine it and see it like 3D movie?

Just small edit- the place where I fought energetic vampires- I was able to visit it a few years later, because before that it was closed to public. There are two ponds since then- for recreational fishing, where the pit with their den(lair?) was in my OBE experience.