Super-vivid Lucids Are Obe's?

I'm just wondering, and I'd really like to discuss this: What's if the highly vivid lucid dreams, that feel more real than life, are simply an Out of Body Experience?

In my experience, I have had two high-reality dreams, where I was lucid. Very real and vivid; unbeleivable. :shock: But they were less than five seconds long. :( I'd really like to know, if these are really lucid dreams, or if they are like some kind of astaral projection - which might explain why they are so short and hard to achieve. But the problem here is, I think that OBE's are a theory on their own.

One of my experiences, was when I was sleeping early in the morning. I suddenly was standing and moving, in darkness into a clothes-rack in my laundry, which I gently bumped into. It was incredible, the cold, the smell, the dark, the feeling of the plastic rack and clothes... was very real. I became lucid, realising that I didn't remember going to the laundary. Then I slowly and silently woke before I could take further action, with warm tingles all over my body - how could that have been a lucid dream?

When I checked the laundary, the rack was in another room, as before I went to bed.

What are your thoughts?

I flip that on its head; OBEs sound to me like super vivid lucid dreams.

Don't be so shocked that the brain can render such a lifelike environment. You're really underestimating the computing power of the 100,000,000,000 neurons inside your skull there.

If you think about it, then if they have the ability to interpret and render all of that stuff in waking life, then isn't it just as easy to render it in dreams?

In fact, it might even take less effort, as it doesn't have to unscramble a load of garbled data first, from your eyes etcetera; that all comes from inside your brain in a pure form, now.

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Originally Posted by Xei

I flip that on its head; OBEs sound to me like super vivid lucid dreams.

Don't be so shocked that the brain can render such a lifelike environment. You're really underestimating the computing power of the 100,000,000,000 neurons inside your skull there.

If you think about it, then if they have the ability to interpret and render all of that stuff in waking life, then isn't it just as easy to render it in dreams?

In fact, it might even take less effort, as it doesn't have to unscramble a load of garbled data first, from your eyes etcetera; that all comes from inside your brain in a pure form, now.[/b]

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You have a very good point there. The brain can process dreams even faster because no input has to be rendered. It can take everything from the memory. And that is in my opinion faster (hah computers). And because of this the brain can render it better, making a dream more real than real life.

EDIT: I had to read the post twice to realise that we have the same opinion! :D

So no, I dont think that super vivid dreams are OBEs. They are just super vivid dreams. ;)

Sounds good, I agree with you both. The main reason why I suspeted these were OBE's was because they are so rare, and real. But it's ok now. :)

I have always thought the same as you two, dreams possibly being real-er than life, because there is no physical messages, only absolute ones. Like, if you can see only less quality through your physical eyes, its because you have used them a lot, causing wear and tear. lol But not if they are found in your brain in the first place, hopefully a healthy one.

Do you have any experiences of your own to share, similar to mine?

I dont have any OBE experiences, but definately a few hyper reality lucid dreams.

they were some of my first lucid dreams, and they were nightmarish just by being realistic. In one of them, I was telling my sister my nightmare - when I realized I was still dreaming by there being an extra window in the living room. Everything else was so hyper realistic - down to the carpet, the humming of the fan, the sound of my breathing - and my sister

she blinked, I could count all of her eyelashes, see the pores on her face, every strand of hair - there was nothing fuzzy about her appearance. and her movement was natural, not static or odd. I was so frightened to realize this person I had been talking to for ten minutes was not my sister!

I even said "youre not my sister!!!"

and the DC said to me "no, youre right, im not." and it smiled and cocked its head at me. damn. I could have pissed my pants, I thought some evil entity came to visit me. I couldnt understand how else a DC could be so life like.

I had another hyper realistic lucid dream this year - this time with understanding lucid dreams better :bigteeth: I flew to a field. I looked down at the grass, realized I was dreaming and I wanted to sense everything as if it was real. And I nearly did!

When I looked up the trees, the forests, the sky were proportionate! *in a lot of my dreams nature has a fake feeling, like its a miniature* The wind was blowing, making the clouds move gently and the leaves rustle. I could feel and hear the wind blow, which was new for me in dreams. And I could hear the rustling of the leaves. It was so realistic it was like I teleported to a real physical field! The only difference was that I was weightless.

But in terms of OBEs, I think you should only concider something an OBE if nothing in the bedroom is out of place *even hyper realistic dreams tend to have things out of place, like maybe a dirty cup on your desk was missing in the dream* In the OBE however, everything should be EXACTLY as how it was when you wake up. OBErs like to confirm their OBE by visiting other bedrooms and witnessing events, and then later telling those people what they saw :bigteeth:

I have had many "OBEs". Remember what that means now; it doesn't imply that I believe it to be astral projection.

What strikes me is that my OBEs have similar characteristics. I leave my body, go through a tunnel and hear a wooshing type sound on exit and return. Of course, these OBEs are astounding in quality and are more real than waking reality. Normal lucids never involve leaving my body "like this".

All in all though, besides feeling like I have left my body, I have not enough proof even for myself to believe I actually do so (what a stretch it feels like). I classify these dreams in the "unknown" category and strive to reach this level as much as possible.

Easy way to test the validity of OOBEs - The Card Test (as mentioned by Robert Bruce):
Put a card face up on your top shelf (without looking!)
Next time you OOBE - have a look (or next time you LD, since you can apparently induce an OOBE easily from a lucid)

I've got a card waiting on a top shelf at home - but I haven't remembered to look yet in the few LDs I've had since I put it there. I've put another in my office if anyone wants to have a go... ADDRESS: Technical Studies Office, 5th floor, University of Westminster, Marylebone Road (opposite Madame Tusaudes and the London Planetarium dome which should be easy to see if you are coming by air), London, UK. The benefit of this site is that there is usually a light on 24 hours a day - not sure if your OOB eyes need light?

Have tried posting about the card test on OOBE/ AP websites - and nobody has yet claimed to have done it (apart from Robert in his book). I've been given other anecdotal 'evidence' - but nothing that couldn't be explained in a much simpler, scientific way :(

The US Military did some research about Remote Viewing - but the published results were mainly inconclusive and the methodology has also been questioned. I started reading the reports but got bored - the main document was HUGE.

I tend to side with Xei on this one, I have always thought what people mistake for OBE is in reality a highly vivid LD. The vibrations and all other sensations described by OBE are just too similar to those experienced when doing WILD.

I've read on wiki that OBEs also happen in waking states... So yes it could be hypnagogia, or a dream. But on wiki there are some neuroscientific studies conducted by Olaf Blanke and some others. As I understand an OBE is an error in some part of the brain which is important for the sense of spatial location of the self. I don't see a reason to think that those studies could be wong.

Could be Bonsay, I am not familiar with that study, however, I have difficulty believing you spirit leaves the body and wanders around. I've read about it for years and hoped to experience one for myself or see some hard scientific evidenc. I would really like to believe in them, really, really, but so far I am unconvinced.

Well as usual, we get into the what we believe zone when we start discussing about the mind and more. The only thing I personaly think I can be sure of is that I exist, everything else is speculation. The study doesn't try to proove that OBEs take you outside the body. It tries to explane them from the physical perspective. If we take out the souls and the spirits from the discussion, we are just a brain and neural connections. What we remember, see, hear is all just that, neural connections. If someone breaks them apart "I" should no longer exist (if we take the reality perspective). That means that the I is somewhere in the brain and is dependant of all the other parts, the visual, memory parts etc. So as I understand his research just tries to show the science behind these events.

Oh and if you really want to experience it, there is also a helment method, which uses some electromagnets or something to induce the OBE. That's what they used in the studies I think. As I said, this out of body thing, might aswell be the "I", the conciousness, the intelligence confused and getting stripped of the physical part of us. The hardware splitting from the software. Seems logical to me.

All of my lucids ,except for one or two, were because of OBE's. The reason why I believe that they are just a type of lucid dream because in every one there is something small that is always different about the room I am in than what it is in reality. Then I would notice that my body was sometimes laying the complete opposite from what it had been when I first fell asleep. All of these OBE's happened during SP and I use them now everytime to get out of SP and become lucid. It works everytime when I try to roll my dream body out of the real one. My first experience with this happened completely by accident when I was having an SP episode. Some thread on here mentioned just facing the monsters or whatever you were hallucinating head on and conquering your fear of them. Well I decided to fight the hallucination at that time and the next thing I know it was like I was taken out of my body and I looked over on the couch and saw myself still laying there except my feet were facing the opposite direction from what they were when I fell asleep. At the time I didn't even know the connection between OBE's and SP.

I wouldn't say so.

I've had crappy blurry experiences that I could throw over to the OBE side of things.

Usually I'll classify an OBE by the way it "feels" - a heightened sense of awareness, a feeling of an energy field around me, and sense of other objects in the area. These are rare though.

And I wish I had some validations but I never prepare any because they come at random when doing WILDs, so I also do not know like a few others.

OBE stands for out of body experience. its not a type of lucid dream, or any type of dream, anymore than its about a heightened sense of awareness. the problem is too many people think their lucid dreams are OBEs which is why no one will take it seriously.

you shouldnt call anything an OBE unless you have reason to believe your spirit really walked outside of your body. either OBEs are real (spirit walking) or either OBEs are fake. but either way, they are not lucid dreams - as much as people want to believe their lucid dreams are OBEs