“…In fact, I think that they (Astral Projection and Lucid Dreaming) are too related to be at war. Astral Projection is probably just Lucid Dreaming plus…” – Daniel Kelley – Behind The Veil – behindtheveil.simdif.com/index.html
“OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES – …Scientists Lynne Levitan and Stephen LaBerge counter that OBEs are almost the opposite of a lucid dream — lucid dreamers know they’re in a dream, while people having an OBE think everything’s real [source: Levitan and LaBerge].” – Excerpt from an article by Katie Lambert “How Lucid Dreaming Works” 21 May 2008.
“…professional psychiatrists and Stuart Twenlow compared OBE’s to several different phenomena in psychology such as lucid dreaming,…They concluded OBEs are different. As respected professionals, they did not speculate on what exactly OBEs are they just said they don’t fit into any of these categories, they belong in their own category. – obeoutlook.blogspot.com/2015/03/are-obes-same-as-lucid-dreams.html
“The OBE Outlook on Life” – By Bob Peterson – obeoutlook.blogspot.com/2015/03/are-obes-same-as-lucid-dreams.html
“17 Reasons Lucid Dreams and OBEs are Different”
– Graham Nicholls – June 27, 2017 – www.grahamnicholls.com/blog/17-reasons-lucid-dreams-and-obes-are-different
Hi Sam!
Thanks for your comment and link…looks like a very interesting article. I will review it further… 🙂
Britta
Hi Sam!
I like your article, especially your conclusion…”Both WPR and this other, or ‘dream’ space, can be experienced over a spectrum of consciousness that ranges from hyperawareness to autopilot to unconsciousness….”
Based on what I have read about other people’s experiences, it seems that what they perceive in their OBEs often seems very different than what they experience when they lucid dream, both in regards to consciousness levels and what they experience as their OBE or Dream ‘space.’ On the other hand, OBEs and lucid dreams have much in common as well. Therefore, I like to see those experiences described as a continuum. Someone recently suggested that it is time to come up with new ways to express all those states, and I think your article is going that way, too.
I believe it’s simply unknown what OBEs really are, and how they evolve. I myself have a very open mind, and think anything is possible, but feel that we don’t fully understand the phenomena of OBEs to come to conclusions. I’m very curious by nature and would like to see the different communities (OBE, Astral Projection, Lucid Dreaming) work together more so we can explore and learn from each other and hopefully find answers to all the questions we have.
Sam, thank you again for sharing the article. I wish you all the best for your future studies and the exploration of consciousness and dreams. Hopefully, we can exchange more thoughts and ideas.
Thank you for your reply. I’ve since read the work of Rory Mac Sweeney and Robert Waggoner on this same topic and will update the article in the near future to add their views as well (which are pretty much the same). I would love to see these different communities working together to understand these states more too, I think it’s happening slowly, definitely exciting times we live in! I can’t wait until we’re able to record our dreams (although at the same time it makes me a little nervous), this will go a long way to increasing our understanding about dreams and OBEs (can OBEs be recorded?).
To tell the truth, it is so frequent in my life when I see dreams closer to real life and when I can’t even understand if it was a dream or reality. I have always wanted to explore this theme and your article is the most effective manual in it. It is so interesting to learn what kind of difference between conscious dreaming and astral projection because I think we so often face it but we don’t even notice it. I, like you, totally believe in astral travel and I agree with the statement that it helps to feel an absolutely different world that is beyond us and our usual state. I think we need to practice it to explore ourselves and our mind. Of course, a lot of people don’t understand this difference between astral travel and lucid dreaming but it is a real fact that can’t be disputed because the Science of Sleep keeps so many fascinating unthinkable things in itself about which we are not aware of.
// Marina Teramond @ NMPL