Hello, another newbie dying to share experience :)

My name is Theo and I'm from Romania. I had my first LD when I was five years old.
I dreamt I was in an weird city and I realised it wasn't real so I tried to wake up by closing and reopening my eyes. Eventually it worked.. it was three in the morning.
Only last year I became interested in lucid dreams and the mechanisms that trigger them. Partly because I asked one of my teachers if dream control is possible and he was more than skeptic about it... That made me pretty furious because I trusted what I had experienced.
One of the many reasons I chose psychology was that I wanted to show the world that LD is possible. At that time though I didn't know about LaBerge... :) thanx Seeker for directing me to the Lucidity Institute site ( www.lucidity.com for who doesn't know), LaBerge is trully a genius and a great scientist.
It's nice to find more people interested in this... though most people I asked had lucid dreams at least once. I hope to learn more from more experienced lucid dreamers.
Have any of you done some experiments on dreaming? would be interesting to share some ideas... :)

Hello and welcome to Dreamviews :D .

I used to be able to lucid dream at will when I was a child buut sadly I had lost the ability at 10 years old. Just like you I have tried to prove to pepole lucid dreaming exists. Though it has rarly come up in discussion I was only able to prove to one skeptic that lucid dreamingis real. I had an OBE (Out-of-Body-Experiance) and saw him staying up one night writing stories. The next day I went to him and said to him how the story was coming and named a few charecters. He was amazed because he never shared his stories to anyone yet I new that he had written them and knew their plot.

If you have any question please feel free to ask me, I will be happy to answer any and all questions I can :) .

I have to admit, I have always been skeptic about OBE's... I'm usually a skeptic about what can't be explained scientifically (yet :) )...(or what I didn't experience myself) still your story shatters that belief.. I'm going to read more on OBE's.
Still, are you sure that there is no other explanation, no other possible way you would have found out about the story? And if not, then how did the OBE make you feel? Any different than a non-lucid or lucid dream? Can you give more details please?

Welcome to Dream Views, SeptCore :) We're glad that you joined us!

Well, we do have a research forum under the "Off-Topic Forums" area. You can take a look at that or even just search around for other non-official research projects. And again, if you have any questions just let us know. I'm considering taking a course in Psychology just to hear what they have to say about dreams... and correct them in they're wrong... and possibly do a little promotion *wink wink*

I, too, am fairly skeptical about OBEs, just because there's no real clear-cut definition. I have experienced something that may have almost been one, but I'm really not sure. I also haven't been lucid enough to experiment with it. That's just my two cents.

See you around.

-Amé

Hmmm... I can't really see any other way I could have found out about the story because he kept that stuff to himself. No one but him knew about them. And for the OBE itself, it kind of felt like a lucid dream but I couldn't change or conjure anything. But it felt really cool, while flying to my friends house I could see eveyone that was still out.

My knowledge on OBE's is limited but I would theorize that the strength of mind required to control a lucid dream and the strength of mind to maintain an OBE is the same. By strength of mind I mean like having a telekintic/conjuring ability in you'r imagination. Though it sounds simple, it really isn't. As a test, try to imagine while awake with eyes open an object or person. Everyone can do this but I mean actually shift it into view and not just imagination, try to make it like it is right there, like it exists right in front of you. You can also do the same with sounds and feeling. By feeling I mean like producing a heat or cold sensation on a body part without doing anything to it but imagining. This I find is the easiest.

A way to improve strength of mind is to do meditation. Find a dark place where no one will disturb you for a while. Sit down and close your eyes. Allow your mind to go blank. If random thoughts continue to interfere coordinate counting with your breathing. Then after five minutes with eyes still closed try to produce feeling, sounds, images, etc... This I promise you will increase your ability to control lucid dreams when I was child and could lucid dream I did this and it worked.

If you have any more questions or want to share experiances with me go right ahead I enjoy helping people in anyway I can. :biggrin:

welcome m'lady :)

perhaps one day you will unearth the nuerology behind lucid dreaming..
enjoy your stay.

oh, and archseraph, that is a very interesting story. i am still on the fence concerning OBEs, even though i've had a strange experience myself (not a prototypical OBE, but perhaps a telepathic link between myself and an old friend while lucid), and heard some anecdotes which keep me wondering. nothing definitive, though yours is one of the most compelling i have yet heard.

i'd love to hear any more relevant experiences you may have had...

ArchSeraph,
Do you constantly have OBE's or was it a single experience?
Is there anything different between an OBE and a LD besides not being able to conjure anything... maybe a weird feeling in your body, anything that could tell you that you are having an OBE and not an LD, so you could recognise it?...
Do you think that you can learn to have OBE's? Do you know any method of induction for OBE's?

Sadly I only had two OBE's.

The diffrences between an OBE and a LD (at least for me) is that you can't conjure things, it is usually extremely more clearer (in viewing and recall), and time passes by normally, it doesn't seem like time warped and you'r awake again.

It's not that hard to spot a OBE. For me, it felt like I was awake. I could feel everything normally. The only reason you can differenciate an OBE and being awake is that you can defy the laws of physics. For instance defying the laws of gravity and flying or phasing through solid objects. The strangest felling to ever feel is to phase through an object because you feel the object as you pass through it, one of the strangest things in the world.

I do believe it is possible to learn Astral Projection (OBE's) but as for how I do not know. It is something I have been interested in for awhile. I will search around for some information on how to attain the ability, I'll let you know what I find :).

Hello dreamers

Firstly I tend to think of astral projection as an experience where the spirit moves out of the body and can be in any realm other than this one. OBE however is projecting the spirit into this reality. However that's just for me to define the difference in feelings and not to lay down the law of what others should think!

I induce OBE's through sleep paralysis - not always successfully I hasten to add but it is the best way for me.

Usually this is characterised by the following - the onset of sleep paralysis, loud buzzing and/or cracking sounds, the sensation that my heart is beating incredibly fast followed by suddenly opening my 3rd eye and seeing the most beautiful mandala that spins and shifts and changes just like a kaleidoscope. Usually it's red and green.

Once I see this I know I can focus on it - it's just as though my eyes are wide open although I know they are not. I am perfectly consciou of what is happening though. I then move towards the mandala and suddenly I shoot upwards and I'm outside my body.

Sometimes I am just in the room or stuck on the ceiling (annoying!) and other times I'm taken elsewhere.

This is a completely different experience for me to waking up in a dream.

There is an excellent online book which I believe is still freely available called A Treatise on Astral Projection by Robert Bruce (if I remember correctly) which goes through inducing this step by step and is very helpful reading.

Bright Blessings
Leah

Wow i duno...i do believe in lucid dreaming..only because it seems very possible to be aware that you are dreaming, plus ive had it happen. But all this OBE stuff just doesnt sound like its possible. It sounds like you could just be having a dream that seems so real..or else u just have one insane imagination. but who knows.