..but in my opinion, it raises uncomfortable questions for the whole OBE issue.

So, having been thinking about it for the last several days, I decided to give the whole OBE a try last night. Having read up on it through AquaNina's very well structured, if controversial paper on the subject, I felt confident that I could elicit an OBE, or its closest approximation, through a WILD. I tried the night before, as well, but was not able to stay lucid as I fell asleep.

The point at which I knew I was going to succeed was when I started getting what I call "the swings," which is a very distinct sensation of motion, specifically of swinging back and forth across a vast arc. When it is associated with visuals, it seems like each swing takes a quarter mile or so across the landscape, but in this case.

I was retaining a sort of back-burner lucidity, sort of separating myself from that "scattered thoughts" stage, where your brain starts answering its own questions about things it really ought not to know, and with answers that don't really make sense, but I sort of indulged it a little bit, not wanting to disturb the transition. I had this phrase, "going for a walk," but I didn't actually repeat it to myself, I sort of...sucked on the phrase, like a lozenge, if that makes any sense. It made sense at the time, is all I can tell you.

I did find myself in my room. I wasn't floating above my bed, though, not yet. I was staring at my ceiling, as if I were lying on my back, but I had been on my side when I started to drift.

I could hear my wife breathing, and I turned to look at her. And that's when it became very clear to me, that I was at least not lying on my back. Rather than turning over, I sort of swung, up and around, so I was floating over her.

I glanced at myself, but only very briefly. I was there, lying on my side, but it was a little bit disturbing, and I didn't linger on the sight.

I looked at my son in the co-sleeper, who was sprawled a little, which he usually is, and I felt a distinct pang of affection for him, which I usually do.

For a period of time which was not clear, I looked around my apartment. I don't remember exactly what I saw, except my boots and uniform by my desk, and the copy of Different Seasons by Stephen King on the dining room table, which I have been reading.

At some point, I floated up a floor to my upstairs neighbor's apartment, with the vague sense that it would be fun to hang out, even though I was in some sense aware that they would not see me.

I want to interrupt the narrative, briefly, to clarify that when I started this experiment, I did not believe in AP or OBE, which I have made clear in other threads. Yet, I would also like to take pains to insist that, during this experience, it never occurred to me that I was interacting with my environment as anything but an observer. Furthermore, I honestly took my surroundings at face value, and regardless of my conscious beliefs, I was fully immersed in the idea that this was the actual world, and I was actually observing it.

So, I floated straight upward. I did see some sort of layers between the ceiling and the next floor's carpet, but I honestly don't remember anything particular about what I saw there.

I floated up into my neighbor's living room. He, his girlfriend, and some three friends of theirs--whom I also knew--were sitting around his coffee table (a beautiful thing that is made from a cross-section of an enormous stump) passing a bowl of grass and listening to a girl playing folk songs on an acoustic guitar. (This is a perfectly reasonable thing to have seen in this apartment at 4 am on a Wednesday morning, incidentally.)

I recall looking with some longing at the glass pipe, having been forced to give up such habits when I joined the service. I even toyed with the idea of going back to my body to wake up, head upstairs, and joined them, but never did I seriously consider it. I lingered for a while. I think I remember the girl playing Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue," but I can't tell for sure, because the music was hard to focus on.

The apartment, on the other hand, was rendered in exquisite detail. My neighbor has an impressive art collection, which I have always enjoyed, and each piece seemed to be were it was supposed to be, although at the time, I'm not so sure I would have known.

I flew around downtown Minot for a while, the traffic was very sparse, as would be expected, and I thought I should try to end the experiment then and there, before I lost my lucidity and forgot everything.

I started shouting, as loud as I could, trying to force myself awake. It was more than just shouting, but it's really hard to describe the other aspects of it, which is too bad, because I'd like to. I discovered this technique for forcing myself awake in the heat of a nightmare I had shortly after my son was born, when we were afraid for his health. This was the first time it has come in handy since then.

I did wake up, hit a wall of SP, and managed to get myself to moan load enough for my wife to shake me out of it. (I have SP frequently, and I don't enjoy it. I have trained myself to moan, not loudly, but audibly enough for my wife to hear, and she knows enough to help me wake up.) I thanked her, came to the living room, and recorded a spoken description of the dream on my computer, which I have just transcribed roughly into this post.

BUT:

It was not until I was describing the dream that I remembered that my upstairs neighbor is moving out, and when I visited him last weekend, all of his furniture was gone except for a cabinet, computer desk, and entertainment system. Even his artwork had been gone long before my dream, and he no longer sleeps or spends liesure time there.

No, obviously, this does not disprove anyone else's claims of having out of body experiences. But, it does demonstrate, I think quite effectively, that a realistic facsimile is quite easily possible. In other words, you are capable of dreaming something that is practically indistinguishable from a so-called OBE.

Considering this fact, coupled with the fact that real OBEs, if they existed, could be demonstrated fairly easily in controlled laboratory conditions, but have not been, it seems reasonable to me to conclude that the phenomenon does not exist as described by occult sources.

I am open to the hypothetical possibility that such evidence could appear, but until it does, I see no reason to take the idea seriously.