I just had my first intentional OBE tonight. Although in the past I occasionally had spontaneous OBEs, I could never do it on purpose. I could induce lucid dreams, but not OBE’s. A few times I could go into an astral realm from a lucid dream. When OBEs happened spontaneously, I usually woke up in the middle of the night and started feeling vibrations. I let the vibrations take their course, and it usually ended in separation, so after I felt I’m out, I stood up, and moved away from the body.
However, I couldn’t induce this state on my own at will.
So recently I started practicing lucid dreaming again, and I also have made 6 OBE attempts on different nights, all of them failed.
I tried to relax my body, lying on my back, don’t move and wait till those vibrations arrived. They usually did, but I just couldn’t let go, and separate, my mind would become alert and pull me back. I also tried the phasing method, I was noticing the blackness behind my closed eyelids, and waited till images emerge, until I would be immersed in an environment, but that didn’t work either, the images never become vivid enough, or when they started to become vivid, I would become alert and fully wake up, back where I’m started, so all attempts failed.
Looking for other options, I read a book, by Michael Raduga, “The Phase, Shattering the Illusion of Reality.” There are many techniques in there, one of them is called phantom wiggling. You should focus on your hands or feet, and move them in your imagination, trying to get a tactile sensation.
I tried that too, but it didn’t work at first. I set my timer for 4 am, went to the bathroom, then back to bed. I tried to get out of my body, cycling different techniques, but none of them worked. Then I gave up, changed position, and tried to fall asleep. I couldn’t however, my mind was too alert. I was lying on my stomach, in my usual sleeping position, one of my hands was palms down touching the floor. It seems my palms are more sensitive to touch than other parts of my body, I could really feel it touching the ground. I remembered the phantom wiggling exercise, however this time instead of just moving the hand, I was rubbing it against the floor, trying to amplify the sensation I felt physically, but in my imagination. The sensation became very strong, at first, I wasn’t sure if I’m doing it with my real body or is this just tactile imagination, but in the book the author warned about this specifically, so I continued with the process. After my arm felt real, I stood up. At first, I partially felt my real legs touching the real sheets, while simultaneously fully feeling my “astral” arms, so I tried to ignore the legs, and just stood up. Once I stood up, I wasn’t sure if I am using my physical body or dream body, so I did the nose pinch test to confirm my state, and then rubbed my hands together to stabilize it. Finally, there I was standing out of body. However, there was a problem, I couldn’t see anything.
I tried to use some techniques I usually do in lucid dreaming, the first one is to take the blinders out of my eyes with my hands. That did not work at all. Then I tried to look at my hands and rub them together, but that didn’t work either, although I could feel them, I couldn’t see anything. Then I tried the visualization method, I tried to see images emerge behind my closed eyelids, and an image started to emerge, once it was vivid enough, I switched and looked at my hands instead. It kind of worked, but the sight was still very hazy. Then as some sort of reflex I opened my eyes and started to see fully. It turns out my astral eyes were closed if there is such a thing. I could see my hands, they came into view very sharply, I also saw the room. It was dark, so even though I had a very realistic sight, the environment was not well lit.
In the past when I had spontaneous OBEs, I usually walked to the window and jumped out of it. This time I tried to do it too, fully expecting success, however it was different, there were curtains! In spontaneous projections, I never saw the curtains, but there they were blocking the window. I tried to move them away with my hands, but it didn’t work. I was like a ghost, my hands passing through the curtains without moving them. My expectation was that the curtains would move but they didn’t. I saw the room as it truly was, without dreamlike distortions. So maybe my previous spontaneous projections were not real projections at all, maybe they were lucid dream projections, or wilds, where I went into an internally created imaginary version of my room, and not the real one.
But this time it was just like the real one, curtains only slightly opened, the room dark. At this point the state fell apart. I woke up and looked at the room, it was 6 am, and like I just saw it, dark, curtains slightly opened.
I was disappointed it ended so quickly, but upon some reflection, I’m thrilled, I had a very different experience from my usual lucid dreams.
They say the first time is the hardest, hopefully I will be able to have many projections using this method.
