About once every month or two, I have a night where my dreams are exceptionally vivid. Where I attain 100% lucidity, and I see the environment so clearly that I’m in awe of it’s clarity. I just had such a night.
I’m sure there are others out there who have experienced such vividness in dreams, though I suspect it’s somewhat rare. I believe it’s a more “extreme” form of lucid dreaming.
It’s different from an OBE. OBEs have a very unique taste of their own :-P. Perhaps what I’m describing is what people call astral projection? And OBEs are etheric projections? I don’t know.
What I experience does seem real, on some level though. But it’s on the same continuation as dreaming… whereas an OBE is definitely a thing of it’s own. Let’s see if I can map it out…
That’s pretty :-). So anyways… about once every month or two I have an OBE, and once every month or two I have a “hyper”-lucid dream.
It’s the “real”-ness of the experience where things get weird. While experiencing each phenomenon, how “real” it feels is very different, and the types of experiences I have are very different:
1. Laying down in bed. 100% real :-).
2. Trancing. I have definitely experienced a lot of bizarre things here, but most of the time it feels pretty solid. I’d say 95% real here. You can experience hypnagogia here as well, but it’s not especially vivid, and you are clearly rooted in reality.
3. Blackout. Loss of consciousness. Can’t really evaluate this spot :-P.
4. Sleep Paralysis. This is where you return from a blackout, and can’t move your body. There can be some really strange hallucinations here (Old Hag Syndrome). It’s about 70% real.
5. Out of Body Experience. This is where you perceive your consciousness outside of your physical body. There are definitely hallucinations here, but the realness is still high. The experience simply feels real. I’d say it feels 100% real while experiencing it, and 60-70% real after we return to our bodies and reflect on the experience.
6. Light Hallucinations. If you can get to this stage, either by skipping over the blackout, or just waking up afterwards, you’re on your way to a WILD. Hypnagogia takes over, and the experience looks more vivid, but it clearly feels fake. Around 5% real here.
7. Normal Dreams. This is your run of the mill dream. You may experience some precognition, or talking to dead relatives here… which (in my opinion) means that they have some “real”-ness in them. And dreams normally feel real while they are happening, but upon reflection they don’t feel real at all. I’d say feels 80% real at the time, and 15% real after we wake up upon reflection.
8. Lucid Dreams. This is a dream where you are aware that you’re dreaming, while still inside the dream. There are different levels of lucidity… for the average lucid dream, I would say it feels 80-90% real at the time, and maybe 15-30% real after we wake up upon reflection.
9. Hyper-Lucid Dreams (maybe Astral Projection?). This is what I experienced last night, and is somewhat rare. The dream is 100% lucid, and exceptionally vivid. There is detail in everything, and it has crystal clarity. It’s very awe-inspiring to look at and absorb. It feels 100% real at the time, and feels about 40-60% real after we wake up upon reflection.
There we go :-). That’s a pretty good map of the things I’ve experienced, and I hope it paints a clear picture on how the experiences fit together, and how real they feel while they are happening, and after the fact. I’d be interested to know if anyone has experience with astral projection, and can either confirm or deny my relation to them. Comments and questions beloved :-).
September 11th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
Very interesting. I know what you mean by it feels real and then after its over its “less” real (I assume you mean clear when you say “real”). Its sounds silly when you haven’t done any of that before: how can you tell is was vivid then when you remember it as foggy or foggier now? Its hard to explain. Any way I know there are ways to improve recall for LD, OBEs and I’m betting hyper-real LDs as well.
I’ve read (but I’ve never done it, I’ve only had one partial-separation OBE)that you can AP from an typical OBE so maybe you should try that and see if it is like the hyper-real LD.
Here is a weird link that might help www.astraldynamics.com with that.
Also, would you mind describing your hyper-real LD a little better because it sounds fascinating.
September 11th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
I can relate to what you are saying.
I have had an experience that kept my memory of the experience around 100% real. It was actually my very first attempt at lucid dreaming. I’m not sure how to classify the whole thing… I think it might be somewhere in between an OBE and an LD, but since I have never attempted an OBE, I might just be full of it.
Here is a full retelling of the experience:
LD With Full Recall
Basically, I began using the WILD technique, and shortly there-after returned to my body without ever actually breaking the stream of consciousness. I could recall the experience as if it had just happened in real life with 100% clarity, and I still do today.
So I would have to assume that an unbroken stream of consciousness is the key to vivid recall as it commits the events to memory in the same fashion as normal experiences.
I think that the stream of consciousness while falling into sleep must be just as important as remaining conscious while waking up. I quite frequently remain conscious upon exiting my dreams, but never attain the same vivid recall as when sustaining consciousness on both entry and exit.
September 12th, 2007 at 11:10 am
mhhh, there is this book I’ve been talking about in another comment, by J.H. Brennan, Astral Projection.
He says that dreams are created of the same “material” than dreams or lucid dream.
He further states, that there a different bodies, the material body, the ether body, the astral body, the spiritual body, etc, etc., each of them packed one in another like those Russian puppets.
If you leave your body in an OBE, you are in your ether body, but take all the “other” bodies with you. When you go even further and leave your ether body, you are leaving this world and enter the astral world, a parallel world to the our earth, with a consistent form. Remembering your Hyper lucid dream might be a key to find out if you were in the astral world.
I just can recommand you this book: http://www.amazon.com/Discover-Astral-Projection-Out-body/dp/1855381079/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-8509417-5108646?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1189609610&sr=8-1
See you.