Thread: Darkness in OBEs

Hello traveler
Do you travel only at night? I found that when I travel at night it is nearly always dark in astral. Traveling at the daytime produces nearly always daytime in astral.
Now, you should not feel to be scared. Train balance and unattached observer attitude.
I ave the same experience as yourself, dark surrounding, but I was advised in astral by probably my subconscious self that : There is light. You have to learn to see it Everything shines with weak inner light, you only need to find way to see it. I also found, that I produce very strong aura, which I can extend to large volume... to even 50+ meter in diameter. It can be used as light source, but it functions also as passive weapon against everything. It is possible to manipulate it... its strength, its shape... I didn't manage to manipulate its colour ... yet.
I don't write many of my experiences in DJ, only if they were interesting for me. Here is a few experiences with darkness: http://www.dreamviews.com/blogs/psio...riences-67637/

Ok, so heres the solution. When you are in your room and its dark, you must realize that this is because you went to sleep in the dark. Its YOUR obe, Its YOUR dream so YOU control it. State out loud 'Lights!' or 'More Clarity' and expect it to happen ... and it will!

Ezzo

Originally Posted by Psionik

Hello traveler
Do you travel only at night? I found that when I travel at night it is nearly always dark in astral. Traveling at the daytime produces nearly always daytime in astral.
Now, you should not feel to be scared. Train balance and unattached observer attitude.
I ave the same experience as yourself, dark surrounding, but I was advised in astral by probably my subconscious self that : There is light. You have to learn to see it Everything shines with weak inner light, you only need to find way to see it. I also found, that I produce very strong aura, which I can extend to large volume... to even 50+ meter in diameter. It can be used as light source, but it functions also as passive weapon against everything. It is possible to manipulate it... its strength, its shape... I didn't manage to manipulate its colour ... yet.
I don't write many of my experiences in DJ, only if they were interesting for me. Here is a few experiences with darkness: Serial Out of Body Experiences - Dream Journals - Lucid Dreaming - Dream Views

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Ok, so heres the solution. When you are in your room and its dark, you must realize that this is because you went to sleep in the dark. Its YOUR obe, Its YOUR dream so YOU control it. State out loud 'Lights!' or 'More Clarity' and expect it to happen ... and it will!

Ezzo

Thank you guys for telling me this. I wasn't aware that it's normal to have a dark projection despite it being dark outside at night. I thought my astral eye would accommodate and brighten things up on its own for some reason. I guess I'll just have to learn to cope with this situation and not be intimidated by the darkness.

Originally Posted by davethewarrior

Thank you guys for telling me this. I wasn't aware that it's normal to have a dark projection despite it being dark outside at night. I thought my astral eye would accommodate and brighten things up on its own for some reason. I guess I'll just have to learn to cope with this situation and not be intimidated by the darkness.

No, you misunderstand. You dont have an astral eye. you are simply having a lucid dream that begun in your bedroom. The last thing you saw before you went to sleep was your dark bedoom and so this is the scene that your dreaming mind has begun with. If you fall into a lucid dream before your dreaming mind has created a 'normal' dream scene then it will start off in the last place you went to sleep.

Next time, dont accept limitations of darkness. TELL your dream to turn the lights on or walk through your house to another room. The only limitations in a lucid dream are the ones you create. You should read some tutorials of 'teleportation' to learn to creat a different scene. I hope this helps

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

No, you misunderstand. You dont have an astral eye. you are simply having a lucid dream that begun in your bedroom. The last thing you saw before you went to sleep was your dark bedoom and so this is the scene that your dreaming mind has begun with. If you fall into a lucid dream before your dreaming mind has created a 'normal' dream scene then it will start off in the last place you went to sleep.

Next time, dont accept limitations of darkness. TELL your dream to turn the lights on or walk through your house to another room. The only limitations in a lucid dream are the ones you create. You should read some tutorials of 'teleportation' to learn to creat a different scene. I hope this helps

I really don't believe that these experiences were lucid dreams but real OBES. The reason I say that is because it didn't start like a dream where I have the hypnogogic imagery and then fine myself in a spectacular dream scene. What happened was I entered the vibrational state, heard all kinds of buzzing and felt my astral body disconnecting from my physical body. I could barely move though since I haven't learned how to move around well in my astral body yet.

Originally Posted by davethewarrior

I really don't believe that these experiences were lucid dreams but real OBES. The reason I say that is because it didn't start like a dream where I have the hypnogogic imagery and then fine myself in a spectacular dream scene. What happened was I entered the vibrational state, heard all kinds of buzzing and felt my astral body disconnecting from my physical body. I could barely move though since I haven't learned how to move around well in my astral body yet.

In my opinion an OBE is simply a form of a lucid dream which is just as life like as it can possibly get because so much sensory information comes from your real body and not only / mostly the dream body. At least, this is my opinion, but it doesn't really matter how you call it... Vibrations are just one of the forms of HH, sometimes you'll get a combination of vibrations and visuals or any other sensory combination. HH is just "fake" sensory input - when it comes as visual input you'll see lights / fractals, when it comes as auditory input you'll hear stereo sounds / noises / voices. Balance and proprioception input, coupled with tactile sensations, give the vibration affect as well as the floating / sinking / being thrown from side to side... Hypnogogic imagery (HI) aka pre-dreams, is something different - these are dream scenes that (sometimes) start to appear prior to a full dream.

I had several of these successful "body exits" but usually something is going wrong when go too far - like the whole scenes shakes or shutters or some unknown force literally drags me back (usually by my legs, not fun) - and I just wake up or jolt up. But about the darkness - it's all about the conditions where you do the OBE - since much of the sensory input comes from actual senses (which is what makes it so realistic). Still, it is possible to add light, you just need to believe it will work. If just giving the mental order doesn't do it, just use the light switches in your house, or find a flashlight. OBE scenes are remarkably realistic, so the light switches and flashlights will be usually in their RL place (if you can't just "summon" them).

Yes ive had dozens of these. I lay there then mad crazy and powerful vibrations and then i get out of bed into an 'obe'. An obe is simply a lucid dream that has the dream setting as your bedroom. plain and simple

Youre not actually out of your body floating around. Thats impossible

Look at it this way. Imagine that your dreaming and your on Jupiter. You suddenly realize that youre dreaming!. You explore that planet, flying and doing crazy stuff in your lucid dream. You then see planet Earth in the distance so you rocket towards it, you fly above your city then your house. You are still lucid so you decide to enter your house and go into your bedroom, you walk around your bedroom still lucid ... and you are now in the exact same situation as you describe above as an OBE

They dont exist - its just a lucid dream. There are people that actually belive you have left your body (astral projecting) This kind of thinking in my opinion belongs with fairytales.

Its a dream, your dream - you can control it

Ezzo

Obe may be form of lucid dream. I agree. Yet it feels different. In lucid dream you know that you are dreaming. In OBE you know that you are NOT dreaming. That perception of not dreaming may be false, play of changed consciousness state... Maybe product of brain. But in OBE I have from time to time visions of things I couldn't have know otherwise. In dreams there are no visions. LD is just a dream with added lucidity.

Originally Posted by ezzolucid

Yes ive had dozens of these. I lay there then mad crazy and powerful vibrations and then i get out of bed into an 'obe'. An obe is simply a lucid dream that has the dream setting as your bedroom. plain and simple

Youre not actually out of your body floating around. Thats impossible

Look at it this way. Imagine that your dreaming and your on Jupiter. You suddenly realize that youre dreaming!. You explore that planet, flying and doing crazy stuff in your lucid dream. You then see planet Earth in the distance so you rocket towards it, you fly above your city then your house. You are still lucid so you decide to enter your house and go into your bedroom, you walk around your bedroom still lucid ... and you are now in the exact same situation as you describe above as an OBE

They dont exist - its just a lucid dream. There are people that actually belive you have left your body (astral projecting) This kind of thinking in my opinion belongs with fairytales.

Its a dream, your dream - you can control it

Ezzo

Honestly, being that I have practiced astral projection and obes in the past and now that I'm doing lucid dreaming, I find it all is the same to me. Just different terminologies. Whether or not one agrees, in my opinion, astral projecting/dreaming in general are both the process of leaving the physical body, may it be the unconscious or the soul and delving into a new world/environment. To me it's the same thing just different words. There comes a great deal of a grey area when it comes to dreaming and aping/obeing

Existence to me is the act of pure experience. I do not agree that OBE's do not "exist". Though a lot of people would say that finding a pink dolphin with wings in a dream is only a dream and not "real" thus not being astral projection -- "cus one can only AP in a 'real' place" but I beg to differ.

Originally Posted by Psionik

In lucid dream you know that you are dreaming. In OBE you know that you are NOT dreaming.

To me, I find it is that one learning LDing is taught to only treat it as a dream thus why they learn to refer to the idea that they are in a dream. I personally wouldn't call my experiences "dreams" but it's what I gotten used to calling it, and it's easier for many to use that trigger word. Though stating something like "I'm really here", "I'm at such and such of place" can be used instead but dream for the most part, saves the breath. This is what helps me figure out the difference between being on Earth as opposed to being on another planet.

How people are trained to believe in a certain terminology is probably what makes the difference between dreaming and obeing "identifiable".

Then again...I astral project to go to worlds that are considered to be fictional where as most do it to reach "real" places on Earth and those who consider Heaven and the like as real. So my opinion my not be of the majority who may discuss it nor the most favorable.

Yes, OBEs feel different, but only because they're just the right amount of vividness and awareness to appear totally real. This doesn't mean that they are... Out of all the different dreams that are possible to have, some of them are bound to have the criteria of being exactly realistic - it's just a game of probabilities. Just like very dark and foggy dreams are possible and just as ultra-vivid dreams are possible (more than RL) so are dreams that are exactly realistic. On top of that, OBEs are by definition FAs (starting when you fall asleep) so they have a logical initial point. Plus in many OBEs your actual sensory organs are very active (like IRL active) picking REAL noises, smells, temperatures, possibly even visuals from your surrounding. So of course they feel totally real, and even if you understand that you're dreaming, you can't "prove" it. Well again, it's a very particular sort of dream with just the right traits...

Also, don't forget that your version of real is specific to you. Every other living thing, or even a mechanical sensor, sees the world in a totally different way. What you consider to be "real" is just a huge simulation that your brain builds based upon sensory input - just like a cellphone has sensory input, or a lizard has. My point is that people forget how much the of their reality is the product of their brain. The brain is what "runs" this simulation on a daily basis, so why is it so hard for you to believe that it is capable of creating a simulation just as believable based on "fake" sensory input instead?

And about "visions of things I couldn't have know otherwise". First of all, many people claim the same things about lucid dreams or non-lucid dreams or even reading in coffee stains and what not... I'm not saying it's completely not true, but again, this can be explained without the paranormal. First of all, you're assuming here that there is something you couldn't have known otherwise - but this is not necessarily the case!!!! The brain filters out a huge amount of sensory input - input that never reaches your consciousness. It is simply too time and energy consuming to process every bit of sensory input, so the brain uses loads of heuristics to circumvent around computing everything from start to finish. Many things are ignored or missed, others just never make it to our "system 2" (aka rational thinking). There are countless examples of reflexes, biases, assumptions, shortcuts, etc, that the brain does every minute - just watch "Brain Games" - it exemplifies many of them, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. So my point is that many things that your "system 2" doesn't know, are known to other "systems" of your brain or the subconscious. In dream state, especially a lucid state, and even more especially in a very realistic lucid state (aka OBE), excess information is much more likely to leak into the consciousness from the subconsciousness. So in these states, you might suddenly know "something you couldn't have known". Additionally there is the issue of real sensory organs staying very active - which means that the brain can approximate things that happen while you are in an OBE (like - "In the OBE, I saw my brother come home but then he left. I asked him later and he said it's true. How could I have known?" - well, that's how!). And finally, there is such a thing called coincidence... People have that bias, one of many, to consider coincidences to be less likely than they actually are...

So to sum up, the day I encounter something that science and logic can not explain, I'll think to consider other explanations (paranormal, theological, etc). Until then, I see no reason to jump into conclusions. Asking difficult questions is very important, but one must be ready to dig deep after the answers instead of just postulating the existence of a completely untestable mystical theory.

Originally Posted by Spock

Also, don't forget that your version of real is specific to you. Every other living thing, or even a mechanical sensor, sees the world in a totally different way.

I do agree that reality is subjective in that sense and that there is no such thing as "real" or one "true" reality.

Originally Posted by MobianAngel

I do agree that reality is subjective in that sense and that there is no such thing as "real" or one "true" reality.

Well, from a scientific point of view there is, or at least there can be (and that's why we assume it to be), one true reality. Thing is, every sensor or measurement tool is biased, including our own sensory organs - so in essence we see an interpretation of that reality. Luckily, the sensory organs of all humans are about the same, so disputes over who's reality is the true one are limited only to very specific concepts...

But, did you know for example that a certain percentage of the female population has two slightly different receptors for red wavelengths (instead of just one)? So these women can distinguish to a much larger degree of precision between colors (especially the ones "around" red). On the other hand, many colorblind people are missing one or two types of color receptors. And of course the are blind people - how does their reality looks like? Birds have additional receptors for UV wavelengths, cats and sharks have reflective layers in their eyes that effectively give them night vision, cephalopod eyes lack blind spots, and some snakes have thermal sensors on their face that give them a 3D thermal view of the world. These are some examples, of one sense we call vision. So that snake's vision isn't like ours just with the option to put on thermal goggles - it sees a completely different world.

As for consciousness- in lucid dream I have consciousness of equal or somewhat lower level than in common state of waking life.
OBE is different-even basic astral projection is with much higher level of consciousness (I often call it superconsciousness). Everything seems to be very clear, like I see into core of things without even trying, like consciousness is broader, encompassing ... like I can work with parts of subconsciousness. It is more profound when I reach higher dimensions for example mental one.

Originally Posted by MobianAngel

I do agree that reality is subjective in that sense and that there is no such thing as "real" or one "true" reality.

Are you sure about that? Couldn't there be one true reality, and we all perceive that true reality in our own subjective manner? Does our perception of reality really determine whether it is real or not?

What Spock said, that "your version of real is specific to you. Every other living thing, or even a mechanical sensor, sees the world in a totally different way," may be accurate, but keep in mind that every living thing, and even mechanical sensors, are all looking at the same world when they see it in their own unique way. That that perception varies from viewer to viewer only means that the viewers' interpretations of the world is at a variance, and not the world itself.

It seems that we've gotten so caught up in our subjective interpretation of reality (and serious collective misinterpretations of a whole range of modern thought, from Descartes to quantum physics), that we've come to believe that that interpretation is all that matters; that how we define the world is the way the world must be -- so therefore there can be no real world because we've all got our own definition. We've all become so absorbed in our subjective observations of reality that we've forgotten that there must be something real that we are all observing.

Something to think about, anyway.

And, just to stay sort of on topic: yes, our personal perceptions or fears of darkness form the basis for how we define it, so if we find darkness a scary, perhaps evil thing, it will be. But darkness by itself, in unperceived reality, is really just an absence of visible light... A real world of some sort is still there, even if we cannot see or subjectively define it.

I disagree when people say that astral projection/OBES do not exist. Believe it or not I've had more than one person tell me that they don't even believe that lucid dreaming exists. Just because someone hasn't experienced something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. My intention of this thread was not to get into a debate about this though so I'll just politely thank everyone for their input and ask on another forum.

DaveTheWarrior, if you wish, please request membership in this forum.

For the future: Feel free to define some parameters for replies. For example, you can state that you don't wish to debate existance/non existance of OBEs or AP, you only wish to discuss them with those that believe have similar experience.

Our nice members are usually good in following requests from OP, especially since forum has plenty of threads for those that want to debate and try to convince others about something.

Originally Posted by davethewarrior

... My intention of this thread was not to get into a debate about this though so I'll just politely thank everyone for their input and ask on another forum.

For members who wish to discuss the kind of "controversial" dream topics typically found in Beyond Dreaming, but who don't want to deal with debating skeptics and nay-sayers, Dream Views provides a private forum: Deep Dreaming.

This forum is located in the Beyond Dreaming section.

Membership is by request only. In order to gain access to Deep Dreaming, just go to your User CP, scroll down and look on the left-hand menu, under the heading My Account. You should see an option called Permission Groups.

Click it, then select the group you wish to join ("Deep Dreamers" in this case). Then click the "Join Group" button, and enter a short reason why you would like to join. Your request will be processed as quickly as possible. It may be up to a week, so please be patient. (If you PM gab to let me know, I'll give access ASAP)

If you have any problems with these instructions, please PM an administrator.

NOTE: Members are expected to respect the purpose and nature of this private space. Those unable to participate in the open spirit of this area will be shown the door.

Originally Posted by Sageous

And, just to stay sort of on topic: yes, our personal perceptions or fears of darkness form the basis for how we define it, so if we find darkness a scary, perhaps evil thing, it will be. But darkness by itself, in unperceived reality, is really just an absence of visible light... A real world of some sort is still there, even if we cannot see or subjectively define it.

Darkness as I perceive it is full of peace... if I'm in balance. When there is something in my consciousness, generating fear, the OBE start to change into something less real(I feel it to take somewhat dream like elements). It happens very, very seldom. I train OBE for about 30 years, I have experiences with this kind of things.
I was curious whether there is darkness because in reality there is darkness during the night. Why I'm walking in day light when I travel during day... It seemed like connection to reality. Maybe it is. Maybe it is because I perceive light conditions through closed eyes. But it lost its importance when I learnt to see, and generate light from myself.
Similar thing- In meditation I find myself mainly as point of light in the black darkness without end. Hovering in zero G. Sometimes I'm hovering in the darkness even without body(dot of light). Sometimes I'm in gray infinity... a few times I was also in brilliant white infinity. But the feel is always the same, the consciousness is the same... and since there is no environment to interact with... nor will to do something it is of no importance to change this conditions.

^^ My experiences with darkness (or nothing, as it were) are very similar to what you listed, Psionik, except that I "hover" bodiless (always bodiless) in the darkness or gray mist during lucid exploration of Delta sleep/NREM. It is indeed a peaceful time.

Also, I wonder if darkness might be the "default setting" for reality, with light being the added condition. Indeed, I believe Big Bang theory includes the assumption that the universe was completely dark for about 300,000 years after the its initial expansion, and light only came after the physical cosmos began forming. So the universe, or the very fabric of reality, is darkness itself; the rest of the stuff of the cosmos -- stars, galaxies, us, etc. -- is simply an overlay of this fabric, shedding new light over some, but certainly not all, of that primordial darkness.

On the same note, I also believe that darkness is seen as a good or benign thing in some major religions, like Hindu. I'm pretty sure that the Tibetan Book of the Dead also sees nothing wrong with darkness, saying it is just part of the passage to the next life. Even in the Judea-Christian setting, Lucifer was the bringer of light, and not darkness.

All this sort of makes me wonder if, during OBE's or Delta LD's, we're actually having a moment of seeing reality in its purest form, as darkness or nothing... it certainly tells me that darkness during mystical experiences might be a condition worth appreciating rather than one to be feared.

I wouldn't go as far as to start of universe. More likely is darkness presentation of pure being... the identity is preserved yet, only purer form would be if also identity is lost. According to some philosophic texts.

^^ That assumes of course that there must be identity/being present; it seems reasonable to me that darkness or nothing could simply be darkness or nothing.

But none of this has to do with the topic, does it? I don't want to hijack Dave's thread...

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ That assumes of course that there must be identity/being present; it seems reasonable to me that darkness or nothing could simply be darkness or nothing.

But none of this has to do with the topic, does it? I don't want to hijack Dave's thread...

There is always the http://www.dreamviews.com/religion-s...ml#post2185457 thread.

Originally Posted by Sageous

^^ That assumes of course that there must be identity/being present; it seems reasonable to me that darkness or nothing could simply be darkness or nothing.

But none of this has to do with the topic, does it? I don't want to hijack Dave's thread...

haha, you're not doing that at all. I appreciate and thank you for your contribution. I was just a little puzzled earlier because I thought people might be discounting an experience I had, but it's totally fine. Gab already gave me a good suggestion for that.

Missed quite a lot in this thread...

davethewarrior, no one said OBEs aren't real... It is just our interpretations of OBEs that are different. All the people who commented in this thread who consider OBEs to be lucid dreams (including me) had OBEs before... I won't try to convince anyone in my interpretation, just wanted to clear this out... I originally brought this subject up to help with the darkness issue - just wanted to let you know that it's possible to solve this issue, and in your frame of reference (that considers OBE to be not the same as lucids), I'll say that the solution is "similar to the one for dark lucid dreams" (light switches, etc...).

Sageous, I have the same sort of darkness - just feels like my mind floats in a vast pool of nothing... It's very peaceful, and I assume that this is what people try to achieve (maybe successfully?) by using sensory deprivation tanks... I believe we are in that state because during that part of sleep we get no sensory input (real or dream one). Without the muscular sense, for example, the brain doesn't "know" it has a body. Without balance and proprio' it feels like floating. That is just how our brain imagines us when it is totally sensory deprived - at least that's my opinion...

About the darkness of the universe until 300,000 years of age - it's not exactly the case. It's one of these misinterpreted scientific facts... I'll try to "shed some light" on this since physics is supposed to be something I'm good at.
So the prediction of the big bang model concerning the decoupling of light (photons) indeed states that light prior to about 300,000 couldn't exist freely in the universe and was decoupled around the 300Kyo mark. This means that before 300Kyo, the universe was SOOO dense and hot that even photons that were created, immediately collided with other particles (at these times the universe was made of quark soup and later hardron soup - types of very dense plasma), got absorbed and immediately re-emitted again (and so on). Only when the universe expended enough the density decreased enough to allow photons to travel freely (mostly without being absorbed), so light that was emitted in that event (around 300Kyo) is what we measure now as "cosmic microwave background" (was originally gamma).
So it is true that non of the light created prior to 300K years survived, but if let's say we could teleport a sensor into that universe we would see light (all frequencies: visible, gamma, etc. so basically "whiteness"). However, that would only work if that sensor is impossibly tiny (smaller than at least an atom nucleus), and it would also need to be impossibly resilient to the immense pressures and radiation and heat... So basically teleporting anything "real" into that environment would immediately make a particle soup out of it, long before it can take a photo of that light... So essentially there was light (even very high frequencies like gamma), but the conditions were so hot and dense (before 300k) that light was very short lived, and asking to measure that light (before 300k) is impossible since everything that is capable of measuring light needs to be "bigger" than light, and that would make that detector even more short lived...

But, just before the big bang, there was in fact "total darkness" since our space-time didn't exist (there was essentially nothing from our frame of reference).

[note that I'm saying our space-time / our universe since most theories predict the existence of other universes and very preliminary evidence already have been proposed to support this. But I don't mean other realities! Not so long ago we only knew about our galaxy until others were discovered. These other galaxies also belong to our reality - the same applies to other universes in the hypothetical multiverse, or to other solar systems, etc...]

Sorry for going off topic again!

Spock It was 300k-400k years like Sageous said... I think it was somewhat similar to condition inside stars. Thermonuclear fusion is possible only in core. It generates very hard electromagnetic rays and bunch of different particles like neutrinos, neutrons... But since plasma is so dense the path of photons is very short. It is absorbed, then emitted in many times (photon can penetrate millimetres before it is again absorbed) while energy goes through hundreds of thousands kilometers of ionized matter. It was calculated that it can take many thousands of years till energy is released from Sun.
But neutrinos decoupled from the matter a few seconds after bigbang... If we would be ever capable to observe those relic neutrinos(very low energy neutrinos ) we will be able to see Universe at that stage...

MobianAngel Darkness is probably our inability to see I doubt there are photon equivalent and eyes equivalent in astral and higher dimensions. We see what our consciousness interprets as light... as we are used to from normal physical life. We are too much used to use our physical senses.

Davethewarior, you don't have to be afraid of darkness, you have to be afraid more of yourself. It is your consciousness and subconsciousness which can make your experience bad. Then again, to do OBE it needs special state of consciousness, concentration, balance... fear is detrimental, it will end your experience prematurely. Other strong emotions similarly.