Thread: Lucid Dream vs Out of body Experience vs Astral Projection?

They are basically the same thing I think of an OBE/ AP as a WILD. (Wake Induced Lucid Dream)

ohhh... i didnt know that, thanks

Lucid dreaming is real, whether or not astral projection and out of body experiences are too is controversial.

My personal belief is that Astral Projection is complete BS, OBE is real just all in the mind.
Lucid Dreaming is obviously real.

Definitions:
Lucid Dream - If you're reading this and you need a definition for lucid dreaming you should probably be searching this forum.
Astral Projection - A projection of your conscious mind into a dream body or ethereal body. Basically, it means you are separating your spirit from your body and walking around.
Out of Body Experience - Simply put, any experience that makes you feel as if you are not in your body.

Uh, I always, always wonder how comes people can't see the difference between this. A LD is a dream where you know you are dreaming.
In an OBE, people think/know/are/whatever OUTSIDE of their bodies, ie. not a dream, so it can't be a LD, because you "aren't" in a dream. Same goes for AP. Though some people lump them all together, since they believe that dreams are a form of AP/OBE <.<

Originally Posted by ebridge15

What are the differences between the three, how are they done (just the basic idea), and what are your opinions on them?

Those are different interpretations of the same phenomenon.

Originally Posted by Hukif

Uh, I always, always wonder how comes people can't see the difference between this. A LD is a dream where you know you are dreaming.
In an OBE, people think/know/are/whatever OUTSIDE of their bodies, ie. not a dream, so it can't be a LD, because you "aren't" in a dream. Same goes for AP. Though some people lump them all together, since they believe that dreams are a form of AP/OBE <.<

Actually "A LD is a dream where you know you are dreaming." is a layman definition. The real one is more complex and does cover thinking that one is outside of their bodies or AP.

Ah really? Please give me that definition, first time I hear of it.

Originally Posted by Hukif

Ah really? Please give me that definition, first time I hear of it.

No problem. It can be found in the article «Varieties of Lucid Dreaming Experience». I quote in this post the main relevant part and bold the essense:

Lucid dream consciousness, like waking and nonlucid dreams, is also framed by unconscious contextual elements. To understand the contextual structure of lucid dreams, we must look at the role played by consciously accessible memory across lucid dreams and waking. Lucid dreamers are able to freely recall details of waking life, to a greater or lesser extent, while within a lucid dream (LaBerge, 1985). Just as important, lucid dreams are remembered after awakening with a much higher frequency than nonlucid dreams, probably due to the presence of a mental set to remember in lucid dreams. Although it would be difficult to empirically ascertain, the anecdotal evidence suggests that at least some lucid dreamers remember their lucid dreams during waking at least as well as their waking experiences (LaBerge, 1985). In other words, lucid dreams contribute to the episodic memories of the waking personality. Therefore, in contrast to nonlucid dreams, there is a two-way transfer of consciously accessible memory between waking and lucid dream experiences. Thus, there is a relative continuity of consciously accessible memory linking lucid dreams and waking experience.

With repeated experiences of lucid dreaming, the associated memories of these experiences contribute to the formation of a stable and cumulative contextual structure in the mind of the waking self. This stable contextual structure we call the lucid dream context. The lucid dream context serves two complementary roles: (1) it serves as the global contextual structure framing lucid dream consciousness providing both precedent and antecedent structure to lucid dreams, and (2) it forms a situationally-dependent context within the waking personality. Regarding this latter point, lucid dreaming is a learnable skill (Moffitt, Hoffmann, et al, 1988; LaBerge, 1980, 1985; LaBerge & Rheingold, 1990). The full expression of this skill is dependent upon its occurrence during sleep, and is in this sense a form of situational cognition. The skill, however, belongs to the waking personality and shares features with other learned skills, particularly that it can be improved upon by learning and practice (LaBerge, 1980).

Thus, our distinction between lucid and nonlucid dreams is based on the contextual structure underlying dream consciousness: nonlucid dreams can be characterized by the formation of transient global contexts different from dream to dream, but lucid dreams are characterized by the presence of a distinct and persistent context, the lucid dream context. This lucid dream context belongs to both the waking personality and the lucid dreamer identity, serving as a bridge between them, and will continue to frame all future lucid dreams. The lucid dream context is susceptible to modification by learning and experience acquired in either the waking or lucid dream states.

There appear to be at least three essential components to the lucid dream context, each operating at a specific psychological level: (1) a “reference to state” operating as a metacognitive context, (2) a semantic contextual framework operating at the level of declarative knowledge, expectation and belief, and (3) a goal-option framework operating at the level of effector action.

And for the AP and OOBE here is the quote:

The semantic framework itself does not even have to be true. How lucid dreamers conceptualize their “non-waking experience” is a function of their general knowledge. Alternative modes of conceptualizing the lucid dream experience include the notions that one is undergoing an “out of body experience” (OBE) or an “astral projection” (reviewed in DeGracia, 1997). The forms taken by one’s reference to state depend on one’s semantic framework. So, the semantic component of the statement “I am dreaming” reflects a knowledge structure conceptualizing the experience as a form of dreaming. A reference to state can just as easily take the forms “I am having an OBE” or “I am having an astral projection”. As one of us stated previously: “…lucid dreams and OBEs [and we will add here, astral projections] are necessarily distinguished by only one essential feature: how the person interprets the experience at the time” (LaBerge, 1985, p. 234) In other words, these are not phenomenologically distinct categories of experience but are alternative conceptualizations of the intrinsic variety present in lucid dream experiences.

It's simple:

A Non-Lucid Dream is an event that you don't know is a dream until you wake up.
A Lucid Dream is an event that you know is a dream while you are dreaming.
An Out of Body Experience is an event where you get the feeling of going out of your body. THIS COULD EITHER BE A DREAM OR A PARANORMAL EXPERIENCE. Whether it is one or the other Does Not Matter, because if you get the experience of leaving your body (in that you can actually see it), then you are having an OoBE.
An Astral Projection is an event where your mind actually (allegedly) leaves your body. It's not open for interpretation because, by definition, your consciousness is actually leaving your body, by way of the Astral Plane. Whether or not this phenomenon is real is in dispute, because it has never been scientifically verified.

Ah, you realize that the definition you posted, uses lucid dreaming itself to describe lucid dreaming, right?
And if we take what they said, the "lucid context", refers to being aware of the dream being a dream, ie. being lucid of what is going on. And then you would have different types of lucidity, one for OBE, one for AP and one for dreams. Still don't see how that def changes anything.