PsiPog.net : Out of Body Experience: The Handy How-To by Brandon

# Out of Body Experience: The Handy How-To

by Brandon

A few words before I begin: I've read very little on this subject, and as such, this paper will be written purely from experience. On that note, you might find some subtle incongruence to what I've experienced. This is OK. After all, if it works for you, use it.

Secondly, experiencing this might cause radical changes to your belief system and how you feel about the afterlife. The change in outlook is different for everyone I'm sure, so I won't explain any more on that. You'll be able to draw your own conclusions soon enough.

With that said, let's begin the actual lesson.

Passive Observation:

This may be self-explanatory, and for that I apologize. However, to those who don't get it, it means just let whatever happens happen. You have all the time in the world to analyze, dissect, and reflect upon the situation you experienced. While you're in the experience isn't the time for it.

No matter what happens in an experience, it must be viewed in a detached way. If not, you will find yourself back in your body and pissed as hell at your wasted effort. I cannot stress this enough.

Strange Vibrations:

Throughout the experience, you will probably notice some very peculiar vibrations. Some might be so weird that you'll instantly shift back to your body. Don't let this discourage you though. Eventually they aren't as scary, and don't cause you to shift back as often. Just try again next time you feel up for it.

One particular vibration that might take you aback at first is what I like to call the see-saw effect. This occurs before actually leaving your body and is a bit unnerving to say the least. The bed begins to rock back and forth as if you were on a boat with strong waves. If you try to make them stronger they stop. You have to just relax and keep your mind off your physical body.

Another vibe that I experience a lot is sort of a reverberation of your last surface thought. I liken it to a scene in "The Matrix". You know the part where Neo has that silver goop all over his body? Then it goes down his throat and makes a weird noise as he wakes up in his pod. Well, the vibe is a lot like that, and once you're out it takes a little bit of time to orientate yourself, and let the noise fade. Just enjoy the feeling until it stops and you shouldn't be kicked back into your body.

The last vibe I want to discuss takes place out of the body. Believe it or not, passing through physical objects can at first be scary, and send you back. The vibe I get from doing this is a cool cloudy air feeling. It won't feel normal at first. Take it from me, anything that feels weird will make you want to go back home so to speak.

Understanding each of these before hand might make your first experience last a little bit longer. Hopefully outlining them as I've done will give you the understanding needed.

Affirmations:

This seems a bit strange to include in my paper, huh? It's not like this is a self-help book or something. However, affirming your intent verbally works wonders towards your success rate. I'll discuss more on this in a bit when we start to learn about the actual method, but for now just keep it in the back of your mind.

Lucid Dreams:

I feel this is the appropriate spot to discuss this phenomenon. Lucid dreaming is where you are actually cognizant of dreaming. Surprisingly enough, when this happens you can affect the outcome, circumstances, and setting of a dream.

This can actually be a very powerful tool in the way of self development. It lends itself to a plethora of ways to leave your body in this state, however, you are better off accepting when it happens and acting on it than you are to consciously try to induce them.

I leave the choice up to you, and from this point on, I won't speak about lucid dreaming as a means to OBE any longer. I apologize for the confusion that might arise, but I feel it's important to learn how to induce it by other means so as to not rely on a lucid dream as a crutch. Besides, why waste such a pearl on an OBE when you can do it by other techniques?

Preparation for OBE:

A few things that are important to consider before even attempting an experience are position, comfort, attitude, and setting. I personally can induce an experience laying on my sides, or my back. I can't do it sitting in a chair. I also don't advise doing it on your stomach. From my experience of that, it left me feeling fairly cramped, and that's never fun to come back to.

You also need to be comfortable. One thing about my technique is that it will leave you sort of warm, and tingly. So, use covers and heavy clothing at your discretion. I personally just do it in sweat pants and a shirt. I also suggest you try your hardest to use the bathroom before hand. You don't want to be inches away and realize you have to pee.

The attitude of attempting this must be that of unwavering desire to succeed at inducing an experience while still passive enough to just observe what is going on with your body and everything thereafter. Just have fun with it and accept that maybe it won't happen for a few tries, but when it does you will be ready and enjoy the experience. You really can't be fearful of anything that might happen. This includes the pesky vibrations.

A big thing is also setting. Understand that if you aren't comfortable in your surroundings you're going to have a hard time doing this. If it's your thing to light candles, or say prayers, or have someone watching you, or whatever, then do exactly that. You will eventually find a sort of routine that you can't help but adhere to, to have success in this. It's not to say that you can't abandon the routine. It's just a lot easier to induce them if you do your routine to the letter.

Here is the relaxation technique used by many. It is quite effective, but a bit time consuming. Couple the 20 minutes it takes to relax your whole body, and the time it takes to OBE, you're probably running up close to an hour. However, it will get the job done so experiment and see if it works for you.

Relaxation Technique:

1. Starting from the feet, flex each muscle group for five seconds three times.
2. When done with a particular muscle group, relax it and affirm that you want it to go to sleep. Saying out loud "Go to sleep now (Body Part)." works pretty well.
3. Pay extra attention to the muscles in your abdomen.
4. Flex your face with hard blinks, frowns, smiles, and such.
5. By the end of this routine you should feel relaxed, and a bit floaty. This routine doesn't remain necessary forever. Eventually, you end up in a habit of full body relaxation just by affirming that you want to have an OBE.

Inducing an Experience:

Now that you have sufficient background on this subject it's time to actually try to induce one of these experiences. A big thing I stress is that whatever you were thinking about prior to attempting this will surface as you shift your consciousness. So, I suggest you forego any music, TV, or conversation before hand. In fact, if you like to meditate this would be a good time to do so. It helps clear your mind and give you focus on a task. Discussing meditation techniques is a bit outside the scope of my guide so you're on your own on that aspect.

After you feel you're ready to attempt this, get into a position that you find non-constrictive, comfortable, and most importantly doesn't cut off circulation to other limbs.

As soon as you feel you are in a comfortable spot, follow the relaxation technique outlined above, or use your own method that you figure might work for you. I suggest trying both if you can because every little bit helps.

Once you do this, it's time to affirm to yourself exactly what you want to achieve. In a clear state of mind, say aloud "I will go out of body tonight." Be sure that as you're saying it you believe every word of it, and let the words resonate in your head. You want to sort of hear a mental echo of what you said as you prepare to relax further.

This is where it sort of gets complicated to describe. You need to focus on one part of your body and move the awareness of that spot to other locations on you. Get creative with it. Swirl it around your stomach, down your legs, up your spine, around your arms, or whatever you feel like doing. It might stimulate nerves and cause you to heat up a bit, and get a little tingly. The reason I say to do this is because it will take your focus off your physical body and bring it closer to your energy body within. It also shifts your consciousness and allows further relaxation.

A funny thing you might notice when you do this is that you're hearing voices, or your mind is racing from thought to thought. It will just be hard to concentrate on the task. My theory on why it does this is because as you shift from a beta state to alpha and subsequent theta, your subconscious is dumping things out that you experienced throughout the day. Another theory I have is that as you move your awareness around your body, you're picking up the energy imprints left on you throughout the day and acknowledging them one by one. Whatever the case may be, just let the thoughts pass, and stay diligent in your attempt.

Once you've done this awareness shifting technique, move all your awareness to your entire body at once. If it helps to give yourself a mental picture of your position on the bed then do so, but the main drive is to move all the attention to your body as a whole. This is where the weird see-saw effect happens. Just go with the flow, and let things happen as they will. You might also get some very annoying itches, pokes, and voices. Again, let everything pass over you as if you don't care. If you move at this point, it will set you back pretty far.

Now, you just work on clearing your mind, and getting closer to sleep. When sleep hits, you will be thrown out of your body, and have successfully induced an experience. Congratulations on that. Now what?

Getting Familiar with New Surroundings:

Depending where you landed (assuming it did throw you out, and you didn't just float up or roll out etc) think yourself to be standing up and having your eyes open. Let that reverberation pass over you if that happened for the current experience, and see your new world.

I don't know about all that astral travel stuff so I can't go into details on it. What you should be seeing is physical surroundings that you probably look at every day. Take a few minutes to absorb all of it in and then begin to walk around. I say walk, but it's more of a thought of "I want to be over there now", and then you float over there.

Getting accustomed to all of this movement will at first be a little difficult. In fact, I can almost guarantee that you will be thrown right back into your body after just a few moments. However, eventually it gets a bit easier, and moving around doesn't spook you as much.

Once you've familiarized yourself with moving from one location to the next, try walking through something. I suggest a door because your mind can easily wrap around the idea of walking through a door. You might not even realize it was closed until you come back. If you do pay particular attention to what you're passing through though, it will feel a little wispy and cool. This too might send you back.

I suggest one thing that you shouldn't do just yet. Don't look at yourself lying on the bed. It will definitely freak you out. You can do that later, but now isn't the time. Just try to enjoy the experience because if you do something that sets you off from the idea of OBE, it will be hard to recover enough to want to induce more. While I'm on the topic of looking at your physical self, I have no concept whatsoever of the fabled silver cord that everyone speaks of. I either can't see it, or it isn't there. It might be self induced to provide a stable belief that you can go back to your body whenever you want. If that's the case, I don't need it.

When this all becomes familiar, a fun thing to do is think yourself to a different spot entirely. Personally, I seem to have mental hang ups with going too far (and this could be because of a cord that I just can't see) so the best I've done is moving to my back yard. You can do two different things to move like this. One would be to whoosh from one spot to the next which might freak you out as well, or you can close your eyes and think yourself at that spot and open them. Either one works fine, and it is largely a mental preference. In fact, you might only be able to do one or the other. The mental walls are hard to break down on this subject.

After the Experience:

Well, you had your OBE and are back now. It's time to reflect. Run the experience over in your mind and see if it was just a dream. Recall how cognizant you were out of body. Pay attention to how real everything was and felt. No weird dream things happened as you were out, and you probably will feel quite tired when you get back in your body.

A good idea would be to keep a running log of your attempts and journal your successes. Only through prolonged experimenting will you finally come to terms with the fact that you left the body. I personally don't log my experiences because I know very clearly that I leave my body. So, it's all your choice, but it'd be fun to look back at it months from now, and be amazed at what you've done, or just relive the experience.

Further Study:

When merely going out of body becomes an easy experience to achieve, try to work in your psychic skills while out. See if you can feel impressions of a room you enter, or receive thoughts of someone you're viewing. Make a psiball if you want.

It's now time for you to experiment with the newly available surroundings. We are writing the book as it happens, and as such, it's almost a duty to push the bar, share the findings, and move our understanding forward. This article is hopefully a catalyst for inducing these experiences, and furthering our overall understanding of this phenomenon.

Thank you for reading this article. I hope it benefits you greatly, and you can share your experiences as well.

- Brandon

Last Modified on May 21 2004

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