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.

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!

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.

(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 :-).

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 :-).

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.

Not a whole lot going on right now… But I do manage to keep myself busy. My current projects are as follows:

1. Win MegaMillions. The jackpot is below $45 million, so I’m not playing right now. My current strategy is to just pick numbers off the top of my head, with no overall understanding or strategy. This is based on the idea that I’ll never fully know how it works, but I just have to trust that it will work. I’m also working on my lottery machine, but since it’s construction won’t help my current strategy, it’s not a priority.

2. Video tape myself having an out of body experience. I’ve started getting into the habit of training myself to OBE again. I’ve noticed that my OBEs have dropped in frequency over the past months, and that bothers me. So I’m resuming my training, and also video tape myself at the same time, with the idea that if I have an OBE during a training session, it will be on camera.

3. I’m reading the book, Science and the Akashic Field, by Ervin Laszlo. It’s interesting, but it really hasn’t captured my interest completely yet. Perhaps in the later chapters it will do so.

4. Unrelated to the paranormal, I’ve been working a lot on another site of mine, codetank.com. It’s purpose is to teach programming, and provide a nice and fun environment to learn programming in. I have a few games online, and it’s slowly growing. Fun :-).

Nothing terribly exciting this moment, but maybe I’ll start seeing results with the lottery or start having some OBEs again. I’m beginning to have consistent lucid dreams (I’ve had an LD every night for the past three or four days now), which is usually a sign that my training is having an effect.

I had an OBE this morning.

According to my logs, my previous one was August 5th, so I was certainly due for one.  I used to have them about once a month, but now it’s more like once every two or three months.

Even though I hadn’t had an OBE in a long time, I was fairly confident that I would have one.  I fell asleep accidentally watching TV at 8pm, and woke up at 2am.  Then I spent 5 hours messing around on my computer, and doing laundry.  I fell back asleep at 7am, with the intention of sleeping for 3 hours.  I knew it was likely that I would have an OBE because of the awkward sleeping schedule I was demanding from my body.

Whenever you change your sleeping pattern like that - whether it’s accidental or on purpose - it increases your chances of having an OBE drastically.  The trick is to sleep about 1.5-3 hours less than what you are comfortable with.  I usually sleep between 7.5-9 hours a night (which is a lot compared to most), so when I only slept for 6 hours because I fell asleep early, my body was very confused.  Was that my “night”?  Should my body be prepared to be awake now?  Or are we going back to sleep?  What the hell was that?

By staying awake for another 5 hours, but not really doing that much physically, my body stayed confused.  Finally, when I lied back down, my body hesitantly went back to sleep… but didn’t go into deep sleep.  This is perfect for OBEs.  It might not be too healthy :-P, but every once in a while it works flawlessly.

During my OBE I floated around quite a bit.  Since I was expecting it, I remained calm, and didn’t try to “control” anything.  I just drifted.  I went up through the ceiling, then drifted back down… then through my apartment, and close to my kitchen.

My vision faded in and out during that time, and I was playing with just trying to remain as passive as possible.  This helped my vision a lot.  When I relaxed, and didn’t try to force my vision, it would gradually fade in.  Everything had that trademark gray glow that is normal in OBEs :-).

At one point, while floating through my kitchen, my feet started to get pulled back towards my body.  I didn’t fight it, because I didn’t really care, so I slowly went back.  I woke up back in my body, and looked around without moving.  I played around with the vibrations at this point, and just observed them.  At one point I remember thinking the vibrations were too intense, so I stopped playing with them, and forced myself to wake up completely.  Upon waking and moving around, I noticed my right arm had been numb from loss of circulation.  Perhaps that’s why I got yanked back?

Overall, it was a fun experience.  I just moved into this apartment about a week ago, and it’s cool to have an OBE in it so soon :-).  I enjoyed the passive attitude I had, and it made the OBE less frustrating, and more like a calm roller coaster.  Perhaps I’ll have another one soon, because usually they come in groups of two or three.

Ah, hearing voices :-).  Is there anything more creepy and weirder than that :-P.

I’m sure there are psychotic people in the world who claim to hear voices, but are really just insane in the membrane.  I honestly don’t believe I’m one of those people :-P.  But talking about voices in your head is a good way to get people to question your sanity, which can really spice up a conversation :-).

The types of experiences I have - I believe - are somewhat normal, just slightly more frequent and extreme.  Everyone hears a tiny voice in their head they call a conscience.  Everyone gets gut feelings.  Everyone has dreams.  When I talk about voices in my head, I’m talking about the same exact phenomenon - only more frequent, and more clear.

Lately I’ve been putting emphasis on paying attention to my dreams.  I’ve been going to bed earlier (due to new work hours), and this has altered my dreaming experience.  I’m having longer lucid dreams, with different feels to them.  Nothing drastic… just a slightly different vibe.

The reason I’m talking about all this is because this morning, I had a weird experience :-).  I don’t think I’ve ever had an experience quite like it in the past.  It wasn’t mind blowing, but it did strike me as interesting and unique.

I went to bed with a lot of life-problems on my mind, trying to sort them all out.  I tossed for about an hour and a half, just thinking about life.  When I finally went to bed, I had some cool lucid dreams, that consisted of flying around, and teaching my dream characters how to alter their dreams.  This is a common theme for my lucid dreams.

I woke up about 15 minutes before my alarm.  I came back slowly on purpose, playing around with my mental state, like I normally do.  I was fading in and out, and all of the sudden, a clear message started getting transmitted to me, out of the blue.  It started to form a dream, but I was on a border-line state, so the dream didn’t take hold.  The message repeated itself two or three times, and it felt like it was urgently trying to be sent to me before I woke up.

The message was basically that solutions arise from action.  I have a tendency to think about things too much (gee, ya think?), and over-analyze things.  Sometimes my thoughts paralyze me, and stop me from acting, because I don’t see any correct paths.  So I don’t take any path.  The message that repeated to me was basically: when there are no correct paths, just take action, and the correct path will reveal itself.  Then you can hop over to that path.  There’s no need to see the correct path before taking action.

Pretty basic lesson, which I’ve certainly learned and studied in the past.  But it was interesting to receive it in a border-line state of mind.  It felt like the message was coming from outside of myself, being urgently sent to me, and repeated on purpose.  Just to ensure I would get it before waking up.  I would like to think that there are “spirits” out there watching my back, and this definitely gives me that feel.  Maybe some day I’ll be able to figure out the validity of the experience.  Until that day arrives, it will have to be cataloged as: “Important message received from unknown source, by questionable means.”

I get a lot of e-mails. I read them all, and I always feel bad when I don’t reply to one. So I’m going to reply to some of the shorter ones here.

Hi Sean,
I’ve read your blogpost about extending your blog to a community website
this morning. I’ve been thinking about this a while and came up with the following
idea.

…

My idea was to let everybody create their own blog inside of your
community, where they can express themselves and write about weird
stuff, experiences, etc. To an initial post, one must be able to write a
response (again, cf. youtube) in one’s own blog.

This is now kept very short, but can be developed to a whole
community-system. I like the idea and it may serve ALW’s purpose.

Finally, I want to thank you for your blog as it contains some valuable
thinking.

See you,
kiepmad

That is an interesting idea that I may use at some point. I thought about doing something similar back when PsiPog was active, but never got around to it. I like the idea of people talking about weird experiences they’ve had in one central location, because that makes it easy to start categorizing and studying phenomenon - seeing when two people experience the same thing, and they couldn’t have influenced each other - etc. Good idea… I may do this one day…

Hi Sean.I have a question that i really want answered.here it goes:
when your trying for an OBE do u have to try to leave your body,or does it happen by itself?if you answered it would be highly appriciated.
Thanks,Ian

Some OBEs happen completely by accident and you don’t have to try at all. However, if you want to induce an OBE, then you will have to put forth some effort. The effort is usually in the form of progressive relaxation (meditation) technique. You can find some how-to information on both PsiPog.net and in the How-To category on this site.

Or… you might be asking: do you have to try and leave your body after the progressive relaxation? Meaning - after all that stuff, and you are on the border-line… do you have to actually TRY to leave at that moment? The answer to this is: usually no. Sometimes yes. But most of the time (especially when you’re first starting out), you’ll almost “stumble” upon the right state of mind, and find yourself out of body. A lot of my OBEs I didn’t even realize I was out of my body at first. I certainly was trying to have OBEs, but I wasn’t specifically trying at that exact moment, so I wasn’t expecting it. (Hopefully that makes sense :-P).

So I remember that post you wrote a while back about how you were waiting around to win the lottery to start doing all the things you really wanted with your life. I think SteveP’s current article jives pretty well with what you were writing about…

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/08/a-better-life/

Enjoy, if you haven’t already seen it.

-Fred

Thanks for the link :-). That is a pretty good article. Honestly, I’m sort of sour on the whole “personal development” scene lately… I don’t know. Part of me just thinks it’s all bullshit :-). However, the link is helpful, so thanks for sharing :-).

Hey Sean,
This is Maila (pronounced My-lah), aka Mari, from your ALW site (BTW you did pronounce it correctly in the video, yay you ). I have an acquaintance who recently started broadcasting a show on Blog Talk Radio (don’t know if you’ve ever heard of it). I thought almost immediately of how cool it would be to be able to talk “on air” in real time with you and other members of ALW about , well, whatever the varied topic du jour. Thought you might be interested in checking it out so I figured I’d pass it on:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/faq.aspx

Later,
~Maila

That’s an interesting idea. We used to use Skype back in the PsiPog days, with some of the moderators, and chatters. It was fun :-). It reminds me of Coast-to-Coast-AM. It’s actually a really cool idea now that I’ve sat and thought about it some more :-P. This is another idea I will have to keep in my head. Thanks :-).

Hi Sean!

Im a big fan of u!!!
I like very much PsiPog and ALittleWeird!!!
I read every day your blog!!!

But… i need a little help…

I know u say that telekinesis is real… in ur blog… many times…
but… i need to make this question direct to you… by this email…
and i want a sincere reply…
because im trying 6 months… and nothing…
now… i dont know if this is real and keep trying… or if this is a bullshit and give up…

Telekinesis is real???
If is… can u tell me some tips?

Tks in adv.

Ur big fan…
Frank

TK is real. However - that doesn’t mean you should keep trying the same thing for 6 months! If it’s been 6 months, and you’ve been trying the same thing with no results, then it might be time to try something new. I’ve never been particularly great at TK - I recommend reading articles by JoeT and Float on upconline.net. We tested JoeT’s skills using the geiger counter, and he’s definitely legit. We didn’t test Float, but I’ve known him for a long time, and I personally trust him. So track those guys down - they definitely have more experience at TK than I do.

ok sean, i thought you’d find this interesting.

in pychcology (a cource in our highschool), our class tryed to learn to read these little cards with stars and circles on them and send them to each other telepathicly and the to best two people would do it together at the end of class in front of everyone. unforunately im not in my telepathic buddy’s class but if i was we totaly would have stomped everyone into the ground and won.) anyways i just thought you’d find it pretty awsome that we actually got a chance to show off our telepathy skills in front of everyone in school.
your friend,
brad
P.s. did you get arrested for graffitting that sign? lol

Awesome! Sounds like Zener cards :-). Did anyone in your class have a significant performance? And no, I didn’t get arrested - actually we cheated and digitally altered the video to make it look like I painted the sign, without actually painting it in real life ;-).

Sean,

How do you think the video board is working out? I will probably get around to posting an actual video once I get settled into my new station in Utah (ugh). I admire the individuals who have been brave enough to post videos of themselves so-far.

I finally graduate out of this crazy school this Thursday. It’s a shame we couldn’t have had a beer together. It would probably have made for some of the most intriguing conversation I have had to date. Oh well, my thoughts flow better through text at any rate.

Ciao,
Myrmior

The video board is slowing down :-P. Partly because I haven’t been participating like I should be. I may post a video this weekend to try and get something rolling. I e-mailed some of the old moderators from PsiPog about the video board, and only stony was available to participate… so that kind of bummed me out a little bit. I was hoping I could attract a few more mods. Oh well.

Yes, a beer would have been interesting :-). However, like you, my thoughts are also better formatted for text :-P. Perhaps we’ll cross paths in the future.

Hi there , i;m from poland and i read all of your articles day by day . YOU MAKE MY WORLD BETTER !
thank You !

Thank YOU! And you’re welcome! I’m honored to have helped in some way. Now stop feeding my ego…!

Hi Sean!
I have 2 very important questions about the sub-c link, but first I have to tell you my philosophy….hopefully I won’t bore you to death but the main idea counts:
… I believe that if you can control your sub-c just like your conscious you can do ANYTHING you can imagine…..since then I read more on the net and that conclusion has grown stronger ……now I’m trying to find a way to control my sub-c but the only idea I have until now is that link…pls tell me what you think about it…..and now the questions:
1 When I read about the link with the sub-c I was very enthusiasmed about the idea and wanted to try…..but last night another thing came to my mind: If I make that link and the sub-c makes a personality of it’s own I won’t be able to get control of it like my conscious…..is it true? If it is then I can’t make that link……and that sucks! :((
2 If hopefully I can still get total control of my sub-c even if it makes a personality of it’s own, will I be able to ask it to make me different (after I make the link) …..I mean stuff like healing or making me stronger( I once read a story about a father who got
the strength to lift a car when it was about to fall on his child…..and I know for sure that the power came from his sub-c after receiving a strong emotion)? And did you ever ask it to change you?
Thanks and I hope you write more about the sub-c on your 2 sites…Bye!

To preface, I have to disagree with your philosophy. However, you might be right, and I might be wrong. But just in general, I don’t subscribe to the theory that controlling the subconscious will allow us to control ANYTHING imaginable. But who knows?

1. The subconscious doesn’t really make a personality of it’s own… I know when I write about my subconscious, a lot of times it seems like it has it’s own personality. Which it does in a sense. But it’s still just an extension of myself. It’s not like another PERSON inside of me. It’s me! Just a different part of me, that my conscious mind doesn’t normally have access to. Don’t worry about “losing control”.

2. Yes… sort of. You can ask your subconscious to change parts of you, and it might comply… however - probably not in the sense that you’re thinking of. I’ve used my subconscious to make more long term changes that took weeks or months to accomplish (like stronger muscles, or different psychological lessons). I’ve had very little success with rapid short term changes. For example, if I told my subconscious, “Send me adrenaline so I can lift a car”, I highly doubt it would work. (Though to be fair, I’ve never tried it :-P.)

As a tip for anyone who sends me an email in the future, the best way to get a reply is to be short and sweet, and not have overly complicated questions. And if you don’t get a reply - ask again in a week! I get a lot of e-mails, and I quickly forget when someone sends me an email unless I reply immediately after reading it the first time (which is rare). So send me another, and keep bugging me until you get a reply. I honestly don’t mind as long as it’s not TOO rapid :-P.

I also hope the authors of the emails that I shared don’t mind that I posted them publicly. If you do mind, then just throw me another email and I’ll edit it out of the post :-).

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 :-).