I often dream of floating or flying, not in a lucid way particularly, but then I started reading about OBEs. I've never had one. My mum has, when she was in ITU. Have you ever had anything like that happen to you? Do you believe in it or is it all a hallucination?

[Lost_in_the_woods]

All the time but i suffer from DP/DR... so i guess this question isnt really for me.

Not so much as an adult - but they do happen. I frequently had these 'dreams' in my childhood and they seemed vividly real. I saw things from a perspective that I couldn't possibly have otherwise seen or known about. Like when I was five, I can recall sitting on top of the china cabinet and writing my name in the dust. Or floating on the ceiling and looking down on the light fixture to see the dust and dead bugs. How the heck would I have seen these things to simply be dreaming about past experience?

As an adult I have seen myself from unusual persepectives. How would I have otherwise seen what I look like from behind?

All this has only happened though while I sleep

[vonmoxie]

I think it could be either, or any combination of, hallucinatory experience and a set of genuine sensory data. These things are not so black and white. I also think there are those who want so badly to experience the extra-sensory, and perceive they will be made special by it, that their experiences can become deeply informed by desire and imagination; my mother is very much this way, and it made a pure skeptic out of me for the longest time. So really, it's at least any combination of hallucination, genuine information, and imagination, that can inform a person's sense of experience.

However.. I have had experiences which could be described as out of body, although for me it has felt less "out" of body than expanded beyond, in which I do not necessarily feel separated from my body, but part of a larger dimension. The way I see in those moments is sort of differently 3D, in that I'm not seeing from one spot but from this larger and lighter space where I am not as much bound by gravity or the material world.

I happen to think that for me this has to do with connecting with spiritual energies that continue past life. I can't quantify that of course, but based on my configuration of experiences I believe it is by far the most likely explanation, that in those moments I am connecting with that love and with the space it occupies.

As it happens I've got a lot of loved ones on the other side, one of whom I was with when she gently passed over, and felt the movement of her spirit rising and expanding into higher space.. perhaps that has significantly contributed to my consciousness of and connection with those spaces. (Because once you know where to look, things are easier to find. Like when you learn a new word and suddenly you hear it everywhere.) I don't think it would have been the same had we not been so close, but I so genuinely loved and cherished her, and she me, I was so with her in that moment even as she was in those last days, in a coma, that it was perhaps only natural I would experience her ascension.

While it is nice to have a sense that there is more than what we see and to feel connected with greater spirit, its value in the practical world is slim at best.. it gives me information that is naturally difficult to share without questions of sanity and credibility arising, hence I mostly keep it to myself. It's certainly the type of thing that likely has to be experienced in a tactile way in order to be believed though, so I get that.

[Nihil]

I had a really vivid experience of floating one night after waking up, that was the only time though.

Originally Posted by Lost_in_the_woods

All the time but i suffer from DP/DR... so i guess this question isnt really for me.

i was going to say something along those lines

those things can't be avoided really for me either

[eastofeden]

I almost had one once. It was like 20 years ago. I was on my bed after taking a shower, just lying there under a ceiling fan (it was super hot out), and I had the weirdest feeling of my soul slipping out of my spine. Then I could see it -- but more in my mind than by way of my eyes if that makes any sense -- and it looked like a sheet of translucence, like a soap bubble, but in a sheet, coming out of the length of my spine. I remember thinking to myself "That's my soul leaving my body" and then immediately after that I thought "But that's impossible" and just as I had the thought that it wasn't possible to be leaving my body I felt my soul sucked back into my body, almost as if a very powerful vacuum had sucked it back in. It was weird. I'll never forget it. It never happened again.

[ComfortablyNumb5]

I always have dreams where I'm watching myself it instead of being in it. They're pretty weird.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No, but I'd like to have one

[*Laurie*]

Originally Posted by Lost_in_the_woods

All the time but i suffer from DP/DR... so i guess this question isnt really for me.

^^^ My answer is the same.

My answer is the same as Lost's and Laura's...

[Onward2wards]

I used to have OOBEs on occasion. I see them as a form of lucid dreaming and remember them as quite pleasant overall.

[Travelinglady]

Yes, they say I was "disassociating." I'm not scared of them anymore.

[PsychohcysP]

I've experienced OOBE once. I overdose some drugs. I looked at me, my friend and the room from the top. I came back to my body after a while. I don't remember what was happening "down" while I was out. Before it happened I thought I'm dying. Still, I believe I was died for a while.

[Djinn8]

Sort of. Sometimes in dreams I fall back into my body as I wake up. Not often though. It's a very strange feeling, a little unpleasent and disorienting. The best way I could describe it is that it's like when you look at one of those pictures of a vase but it's actually two silhouettes of faces if you shift you perspective. Imagine the shift of perception from one to the other, but instead of a shift of focus it's spacial movement.