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## Archive for the ‘Dream Phenomenon’ Category

February 14th, 2010 by Sean OBE, Dead Guy

Had an interesting experience this morning at around 7am.

I had fallen asleep on the couch earlier in the day for 4.5 hours (from 7pm-11:30pm), so my sleep schedule was a little out of whack. As per usual, this helped to induce an OBE when I finally got to bed the second time around 5:30am. The OBE wasn’t intentional, but I knew it was likely, because of how I restless I was.

It was fairly normal at first. I floated around my house, played with my vision, inspected my body parts, etc.

At one point, I decided to yell out for “someone”. I do this randomly in my OBEs. I’ve never gotten a response… but I don’t really see the harm in trying, so I do it a lot when I get out.

Usually when I try to talk, I use the same method as when I speak in real life. I use my mouth, and say things. For whatever reason, I decided to try another technique this time around… I specifically focused on my thoughts. I focused on clearing the gibberish in order to deliver a nicely focused non-verbal message. I thought the message “hello? anybody there?”, with a specific type of mental clarity/wavelength.

I then continued on my normal process of playing around in my environment. Sort of like when you walk into a dark room, and say “hello?” — you don’t really wait or expect a response… you just say it and move on.

To my surprise, I got a response. “Yes, hello?” I was blown away. It was an older gentleman.

I tried to remember my technique, and started asking questions: “Where are you? Why can’t I see you? Can you see me?”

“I’m right over here… Yes, I can see you.” (I still couldn’t see him.)

Me: “So what are you - a dead person or something like that?”

He took a moment to think. “Haha, yeah, something like that I suppose.”

Me: “A spirit?”

He kind of sent a confused shrug/nod.

At this point I was starting to get really excited… I started formulating a strategy. What would be the best thing to ask? Who he was when he was alive? Or tips for how to move around while out of body? He struck me as just a normal person, not like some spiritual sage or anything crazy like that. Imagine visiting a foreign nation… would it be appropriate to walk up to a random stranger and start grilling them with questions? But I should certainly ask something, or do something… Or was this some sort of dream? Should I do something that I can verify later?

By this time, my thoughts were all over the place. I think in the midst of all these thoughts, I heard him say he was leaving… so I focused on sending gratitude for taking the time to talk to me. I couldn’t really think with clarity from the excitement, so I hope he got the message.

I returned to my body. I still am debating about the best thing to converse about. But at least I know how to talk correctly now.

Posted in Dream Phenomenon | 8 Comments »

August 28th, 2009 by Sean“Virtual Out of Body Experiences”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PQAc_Z2OfQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xWowv7Qryc

I applaud scientists for investigating the brain and how our vision plays a role in sensing the location of our body parts.

However.

I do not applaud their use of the term “out of body experience”. What they are investigating is not the same thing as the traditional out of body experience.

The term “out of body experience” is broad enough to describe both phenomenon, but using it for these studies implies a relationship between the two phenomenon. There is no relationship between the optical illusion the scientists are playing with, and the OBE state of mind that Monroe and others have investigated.

What bothers me more is that the second video uses terms like “flashes of light” and “vibrations” - however, they’re just talking about the lights and motors attached to the subjects back! Not visions of flashing lights experienced during meditation (thought to be synapses firing in the eye-lids), or the classical vibrations people feel while having an OBE (which have no scientific explanation yet).

The blurring of terminology will create confusion. This means that if someone is genuinely curious about OBEs, they might read scientific articles about this optical illusion, and mistakenly conclude that OBEs are an optical illusion - for no logical reason… just because the terminology is the same.

OBEs might be an illusion - I’m ok with that. But let that discovery come from investigation of OBEs!

Optical illusions are cool - I’m ok with that too. But let’s stop calling this line of work “out of body experiences” because we already have a separate collection of phenomenon that already uses that term.

>:-|

Posted in Science, Dream Phenomenon | 2 Comments »

August 8th, 2009 by Sean OBE + Lucid + Monroe

I’ve been focusing on OBEs lately. I have equipment set up in my room, but I haven’t been able to get out of my body in order to experiment with it. Instead, I’ve been having pretty amazing/insane lucid dreams. Last night I slept about 10 hours, and just about all of it was lucid… it was so much fun :-).

Normally, it’s hard to remember dreams because they’re just blurry and fleeting. Lately, my problem has been the opposite - I have so many unique and highly detailed experiences, that it’s too much to remember everything. Waking life is incredibly repetitive, so it’s very easy to remember weeks of information, but dreams are individually unique moment to moment - one night can feel like the equivalent of five years of information. It’s just too much :-).

I’ve also been watching OBE videos on YouTube. One awesome channel is:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MonroeInstitute

They’ve recently posted videos of seminars with Robert Monroe. It’s very cool to see and hear him talk. Check it out.

I’m also still working on getting a new project up and running, dedicated to researching paranormal phenomenon. I have a lot of ideas, and I’ve talked with other folks who have great ideas too… so now it’s a matter of trying new things out, and documenting our progress. I don’t expect to figure everything out in a month - this is more of a long term project - but I hope it eventually turns into a useful resource. We shall see - I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in Website, Dream Phenomenon | No Comments »

July 15th, 2009 by Sean Timelessness

I’ve been trancing out before falling asleep lately, in an attempt to get back into OBEs. I haven’t escaped my body yet, but I’ve consistently hit a timeless state of mind.

I can’t pinpoint when I enter the state, but snapping back to reality is very distinct. I wake up with a sense of panic, completely oblivious to how long I’ve been in the state. The time is… lost. There is no sense for how long I’ve been laying there, stuck in this loop of non-awareness.

It’s not like dreaming, because I still have a sense of time while dreaming. My sense might be wrong (a five minute dream can feel like an hour), but the sense is there. Even with deep sleep, when I’m not in R.E.M., I still wake up with a sense of time. It’s not like an OBE, where everything might be blurry, but I still have a sense of time. This trance state is without this sense.

The reason this intrigues me so much is because the next question is: where am I while in this state? Which of course is a leading question. If I can be in a state of non-awareness, is it such a large jump to reason that death is just perpetual non-awareness?

Let’s say I’m a devout religious person who believes in life after death, heaven, hell, etc… I still can’t deny that this non-awareness state exists (because I’ve experienced it). So now I have an experience of non-existence. I have felt what not-existing feels like. How can I sit here and rationalize the existence of life after death when I’ve experienced death after death? Sure, life after death might exist, but what necessity is there for it? Not-existing already exists.

Thoughts?

Posted in Consciousness, Belief Systems, Dream Phenomenon | 14 Comments »

July 9th, 2009 by Sean Dreaming and Expectation

There are a few different theories on what dreams are, and how they work. I imagine that the various theories each have their own nugget of truth. One particular theory that has served me well comes from Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D., in his book Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming.

LaBerge believes that expectation drives the dream experience. By exploiting and controlling our expectations, we can take control of our dreams.

For example, suppose you are dreaming that you are walking down a hall. What do you associate with walking down hallways? Perhaps you subconsciously expect to see someone in the hall. Ok, who do you see? As you walk towards the stranger, details become more clear… this stranger has dark hair, slightly shorter than you, and a little heavy. Who fits this description? Who do you expect at this point? Maybe I expect to see my father… and the moment my mind expects an outcome, the outcome materializes seamlessly in the dream.

The important point is that the dream is built while you are experiencing it, moment by moment, based on your immediate expectations. My father wasn’t in the hallway at first… his presence was created during the experience, by stringing together a series of expectations.

It has been my personal experience that dreams aren’t solely controlled by expectation, because sometimes unexpected things happen. But for the most part, this theory rings true with me.

One way to exploit this expectation mechanism is to create unknowns in your dream, and then fill in the unknown areas with whatever you choose to expect. For example, suppose you are dreaming that you’re in a building… but you’d rather be in a meadow during the Middle Ages. First, look for a door. Nothing has been created behind the door, because you haven’t opened it. Move to open the door, but first convince yourself that a meadow is behind it. Have confidence! YOU are in control.

Open the door, and let that confident expectation create the environment.

You can apply this concept many different ways… one popular method is to spin in circles in your dream, until the scenery blurs. This spinning essentially makes the entire environment an unknown. Then, while spinning, expect to be transported elsewhere. When you slow your spin, the environment is regenerated based on your expectations… building the new location for you.

So: create an unknown, expect an outcome, and investigate the unknown while holding this expectation. Works every time. Happy dreaming!

Posted in Dream Phenomenon | No Comments »

March 9th, 2008 by Sean Hacking Works Cited

Recently I got into an argument about whether out of body experiences were real or not. Whenever I get into such an argument, I always force myself to be as scientific and logical as possible. This usually pisses skeptics off, because they are used to being the scientific guy, and the other person being the religious nut job.

I insisted that scientific evidence - if studied without bias - actually supports the theory that OBEs are real. The skeptic was quick to jump on that claim. He stated that OBEs (and their close cousin, near death experiences) were nothing more than a brain going crazy from the chemistry. He presented me with recent scientific studies and articles as proof:

1. Scientists Induce OBEs in the Lab - A scientist used virtual reality goggles to trick the brain into thinking it was out of body.

2. Extreme Gravity Triggers OBEs/NDEs - A report stating that extreme G-Forces will induce an OBE because of the lack of blood flowing to the brain.

3. People have NDEs While Brain Dead

Seems a little daunting at first - I mean, how could I call myself a scientific guy, when there is scientific evidence that OBEs/NDEs aren’t real?

It turns out it was pretty easy:

1. Did the scientists really induce an OBE? No. The virtual reality goggles gave a creepy illusion of being out of body, but the OBE state of mind wasn’t actually induced. It’s an optical illusion. Just because you can fake it, doesn’t mean that the original isn’t real. I can create a fake video of me walking - that doesn’t mean I can’t walk.

2. All the report states is that lack of blood flowing to the brain can induce a near death experience. Well, that doesn’t really say either way whether the experience is real or not. It just says that when you do things that might kill you, you might have a near death experience. Which is actually pretty obvious :-P. I can induce a gun shot wound by shooting someone in the leg. Does that mean gun shot wounds aren’t real? Of course not.

3. The third piece of evidence was the best. How many of you read the page? Probably not that many. It turns out that article is in favor of NDEs being real. The person I was arguing against only read the title. I read the article.

I want to point out two things: 1. I am right about the evidence supporting OBEs being real. I may make a separate post with a list of evidence in the future. But more importantly, 2. skeptics are full of shit.

Skeptics hide behind citing work, and long articles, and scientific studies - but they can only get away with it because it’s very rare for them to actually be challenged. It’s a game of intimidation - not one of pursuing truth. The strategy is simple: argue the skeptical position, and when someone challenges you, just google the topic and paste a bunch of links to scientific documents. No real effort required, and you look smart in the process, and feel good about bitch slapping some “moron”.

And for the most part, science has figured a lot of stuff out, so this strategy actually works really well. For example, if you were to get in an argument about evolution vs. creationism, you could just google it, and find enough links on the internet that supports evolution, and throw them in the religious guys face. You win.

But the reality of the situation is that science hasn’t figured everything out. And when it comes to the subject of parapsychology, they are light years behind.

The down side to this is that you have to know your stuff if you want to challenge a skeptic. The skeptic won’t put in the effort, so if you want to sound credible, you have to put in the effort for both of you. It is an uphill battle, and I’ve yet to see a skeptic change their mind, but it’s an important battle because it teaches us that science is far from perfect, and suffers from the same fundamentalism as any other system of beliefs.

Posted in Belief Systems, Science, Dream Phenomenon | 9 Comments »

February 7th, 2008 by Sean The Green Room

Sorry for the lack of posts - a lot of my time spent recently has been on the stock market, and on watching politics. I’m continuing to train in OBEs and play the lottery, but I haven’t had noteworthy results (a few small OBEs, but no video).

Either way, the other day I was reading Mad Hatter’s blog, Dreaming to Infinity. In it, he talked about a cool sounding shared dreaming project being set up call the Green Room, by DreamPort. The basic idea is to get some people next week, and try to meet up in a shared lucid dream. I thought the idea was cool, so I signed up for it. I’ve attempted shared dreaming in the past, but never had any luck. Perhaps this time we can get some cool results :-).

If you want to join the project, be sure to check out DreamPort, and see the registration thread here. The deadline is this Friday, February 8th - so hurry!

Other than that, nothing too crazy going on in my world at the moment. I’ll be sure to continue to document my progress in my blog. Maybe I can think of some more cool things to put online, like a psychic game or something. Have fun!

Posted in Dream Phenomenon | 7 Comments »

January 24th, 2008 by Sean My First OBE Video

My previous post was made just a few hours ago, so please don’t forget to read that if you missed it.

Cutting to the chase: I got a video of myself having an out of body experience, but it doesn’t look like anything amazing is going on from the video :-P. I suppose I should be bummed out or something, but honestly I just feel really excited! I can’t believe I was able to catch the experience on tape - even though there isn’t anything amazing in the video itself.

I’ve uploaded the uneventful video to YouTube, for those that really want to watch it. The second half is a zoomed-in high-contrast version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxyy8ulhkQw

(Note that in my excitement, I accidentally typed the timestamp of 3:55am, when it was actually 3:38am - I must have been thinking of my previous night’s OBE when finalizing the video).

I had been trying to get an OBE on video for about a week, and had just recently perfected my technique. Last night I had an OBE, but it turned out my camera ran out of tape mere minutes before the OBE actually happened. This night, I tried again. I found another setting that extended my tape length from 92 to 94 minutes (by changing the sound from 16-bit, to 12-bit). I pushed the record button, and jumped in bed ASAP - in order not to lose any time on the tape.

I tranced out from 2:05 to about 2:45, listening to music. I shut the music off, then did some more meditation for another 30 minutes. Then I rolled over to my side in order to get more comfortable, and attempt an OBE.

I fell asleep and started dreaming. I was dreaming I was laying in one of my old beds, trying to trance out :-). My mother came into the room and laid next to me. She started talking to me about my sister, and I was getting annoyed, because I was really focusing on trancing out, and wanted to get the OBE on video. My desire to OBE was so strong that even my dream-self kept the mission alive :-).

Eventually I told my mom about my frustration, and she didn’t say anything - just gave me this really strong bear hug. It was really painful, because it wasn’t a nice hug or anything. She grabbed me and started squeezing the breathe out of me. This snapped me out of the dream state, and propelled me into having an OBE. I “woke up” out of body, but laying inside my body.

My right arm was free to move. I checked the clock (while out), and it was 3:38am. I did some quick math and realized I only had a minute or two left on the tape! I started to frantically wave my right arm, and tried to escape my body, but I was mostly stuck (probably because I was trying so hard :-P). All I could do was wave my right arm. So I just kept doing that. After about a minute of that, I jumped back into my body, and wiggled around to wake myself up. I got up, waved at the camera (with my left arm, instead of my right), in order to show the camera where I had just been waving.

I got over and looked at the camera - Tape End! Oh no!, I thought :-). I was about to flip out, thinking I had just missed my OBE for a second night in a row. When I checked the tape, I saw that the tape actually ended right after I had woken up and waved at the camera. I literally had about a 10 second buffer :-). The end of the video on YouTube is the exact end of the tape itself (I just trimmed off the first 92 minutes of trancing out).

It’s 5:40am now, and I really need to get ready for work. I just played the tape again, and it’s getting corrupted for some reason. There are large green bands across the video. Luckily I was able to extract and watch the end before the data corruption took place. I’ll have to mess around with it to see if the tape is really corrupt or not. At least I have the digital data :-).

Posted in Video, Dream Phenomenon | 13 Comments »

January 23rd, 2008 by Sean More on OBEs

I had another out of body experience (OBE) last night. Three in a week! This one was induced voluntarily. I’ve mastered the technique :-).

A good portion of the questions that people ask me are concerning OBEs. The question might be, “I can trance out, but then nothing happens!”, or “How do you know when it’s time to actually leave?”, or “I had a weird experience… do you think it was an OBE?” These are all great questions! Unfortunately, my honest response to each one is: “I don’t know” :-P.

Maybe I can be more helpful than that though…

The hard part about learning how to have an out of body experience is that it is so dependent on feel, that it’s very hard to teach. There is a certain feel that goes along with the build up to having an OBE. Whether that “feel” is a brainwave frequency, or chemical imbalance, or some other weird thing in the brain - I don’t know. What I do know is that I can usually predict within the first 5 minutes of a trance whether I’ll be able to navigate to the correct feel required for an OBE. Not intuition, not talking with my subconscious… it is a feeling in my mind.

Having an OBE is just one of many outcomes of trancing out. In order to have an OBE, you must navigate your trance towards the OBE-feel. So, if you’ve never had an OBE, how can you figure out where to navigate your trances towards? Basically, brute force. You trance out, try new things, mess around, and just hope for the best. Yes it sucks, but I can’t think of any better way (maybe hemi-sync if you want to cheat :-P).

Once you have your first OBE, then you have a basic idea of where the OBE-feel is. But it takes practice to really pin-point it down, and possibly years to get there willfully. I don’t know why it’s this hard, but it is what it is.

I can have an OBE using a lot of different techniques because I know where the OBE-feel is located, and I can use the techniques to help control my mind to get there. If you don’t know your destination, you can have all the control in the world, but it won’t really help you :-P. Only until you start to lock on to the OBE-feel can you start having them consistently and willfully.

My OBE last night was induced via a Wake-Back-To-Bed method (those in the Lucid Dreaming circles will know the basic idea). What I did was fall asleep at 8:00pm. I told myself to wake up at 2:00am, but my body must have hit the snooze on my internal alarm clock, because I woke up at 3:00am. I got up, walked around, surfed the net, thought about my future OBE, etc.

At around 3:15am, I felt awake enough to have confidence that I wouldn’t just zonk out once my head hit the pillow. I set up my camera, with hopes of recording my OBE. I found some new settings on it, which allows for (crappy) night-vision, and changed the settings from SP to LP - which basically meant I could record for 92 minutes (instead of 64 minutes). I put it on record, then laid down.

I listened to some Daft Punk music - specifically, their live album. My alarm was set for 6:00am, which is the time I get up to go to work. I got a decent trance going for about 30 minutes, and then decided that the music was distracting more than it was helping, so I shut it off and went solo.

I fluttered in and out of consciousness for quite a while. I kept trancing, and nearly fell into a dream state, but managed to keep myself from falling asleep. Between black-outs, I noticed I was in the right state of mind to have an OBE. I left for a short while and had a lot of trouble with my vision. I didn’t remain passive, like I had been on my previous OBEs last week. I was really disorientated, and having a hard time in general.

I floated over to my door, then back to my bed, and then it dawned on me: I’m filming this! So I quickly floated towards my camera. I couldn’t see anything, but I knew I was where it was pointing, and I tried to do crazy stuff with the intention of being caught on film. I went back to my body, woke up, and checked the clock - 4:55am. I made a mental note to myself that my OBE was probably around 2-3 minutes long, and made sure I wouldn’t forget the time frame. I needed to remember exactly when my OBE occurred so I could check the tape when I woke up for that exact moment.

Well, for those of you doing the math, I’ll cut to the chase. My tape ran out at 4:47am. My OBE started at around 4:52am. Noooooo :-).

I checked the tape, and I didn’t see anything noteworthy. I’ll check again, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The good news is that I have locked on to the OBE-feel, and I am confident I can OBE at will. This should make future experiments much easier, and tonight I may even catch myself on camera :-).

Posted in How-To, Dream Phenomenon | 6 Comments »

January 16th, 2008 by Sean Night Time OBE

I’ve been training in OBEs lately, and I think I just had an OBE last night.

The technique I used was to sleep for 3 hours (around 5:30pm to 8:30pm), wake up, and then go back to sleep around 1:00am. I’ve done this the past couple nights. Upon going to sleep the second time, I will listen to music in order to trance out. After trancing out for a good 30-40 minutes, I’ll remove my headphones, and go to sleep.

If I had an OBE, and it wasn’t just a dream, then this marks a significant milestone - I haven’t had an OBE during the night time in what feels like years. Almost all of my OBEs occur during the transition from sleeping -> wake. It takes a lot of training for me to accomplish an OBE from the wake -> sleep transition.

I’m learning to better control them, and make them longer. I’ve finally figured out the key to a long and clear OBE: remaining passive! HA! I always thought that I was passive, but I’ve realized that in the past, I was never passive enough. In the past, when I had an OBE, I would try to be passive, but also have strong motivation to explore and take advantage of the OBE. Now, I have removed these underlying motives, and have a true passive feel - I don’t care if the OBE lasts a minute, or 30 minutes, and I don’t try to force myself to experience anything. If my OBE consists of floating immediately outside of my body for a few seconds, then so be it.

The downside to having an OBE on the wake -> sleep transition is that I had a couple hours worth of dreams after it. So my memory of the OBE is extremely foggy. I remember leaving, remaining passive, floating around in my apartment, and looking at my hands. I remember playing with my breathing, and being confused whether my breathing pattern was actually being used by my body - or if it was just inside my head. I had lost my connection to my body, so I was unsure if what I was doing was affecting my body at all, or if I was just floating around, pretending to breathe. I’ll have to attempt to remember more.

Fun fun!

EDIT: I wanted to add a few more comments, just for the sake of having it documented. After thinking and remembering the experience, I am now positive that it was an OBE and not a dream. Specifically, I remember trancing out, and “swinging” my awareness around in circles, around my body. I also was playing with shifting my awareness to the left, which made me feel like my lungs where breathing to my far right (instead of below me). I remembering thinking at the time, “Oh cool, I’m probably going to have an OBE, because usually when I can get my awareness to fudge around like this, it means that I’m close.” I may post more on this technique in a future entry…

EDIT II: Another one! Two nights in a row :-). My technique was nearly the same - sleep early for a long time, wake up for a few hours, and then go back to bed. This time around, I didn’t listen to trance music as I fell asleep the second time. I just went to bed, and tossed for an hour or two restlessly.

The OBE consisted of falling through the floor at rapid speed, after which I said, “That was cool, let’s do it again!”. After that, I stumbled around without vision for a few minutes, feeling my way around my room. I returned to my body, and had a creepy feeling that there was another “presence” in the room with me (though it could have easily been my mind playing tricks on me). I played around for a few minutes longer, then fell asleep for good.

W commented, asking if I got a video of my first OBE. This made me think about how to video tape my second one. I didn’t attempt to video tape my second one for two reasons: 1. my room is dark. It’s night time, and it’s pitch black. 2. my OBEs take a long time to prepare for - I was tossing and turning for about an hour and a half before I began to trance slightly, and then it probably took another half hour to trance. My video camera can only record for an hour, maximum. I will have to see if I can think of some solutions to these two problems.

Posted in Dream Phenomenon | 14 Comments »

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