this phenomena intrigues me greatly. i have had two out-of-body experiences (OBEs) that were both short and without vision. i have researched OBEs (including Monroe's book) and have been personally working toward deliberately inducing the experience. i have been unsuccessful as of yet so i speak from an informed angle yet highly limited on the experience end.

my current stance is that the defining lines for levels of consciousness (ie: waking, dreaming, astral, enlightenment, or what have you) are more blurred than we picture. instead of consciousness being whole steps between completely distinct levels, it is more like frequencies on a radio with "main stations" but an infinite variety in between with some even mixing two stations at once (?vibrating state of OBEs?).

some say that OBEs are just lucid dreams (LDs). i believe OBEs are connected and related to (LDs), the difference simply being frequency of consciousness. so they are similar but not really the same. it is a higher frequency of consciousness making you aware of different things like switching from normal vision to infrared. You are looking at the same "space" but you see very different worlds simply because of the frequency of light you are perceiving.

i personally describe this OBE phenomena as "other-body experiences." i don't believe you "leave your physical body" but you are just not aware of that scope (frequency) of your consciousness. you are perceiving a distinct yet equally real body in these altered states. the physical, dream, and astral (OBE) bodies all exist simultaneously, just our awareness of them shifts. sometimes you can view one body from another but that is ""simply"" explained with bi-location.

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"Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die? And instead of saying all of your goodbyes, let them know you realize that life goes fast. It's hard to make the good things last. You realize the sun doesn't go down, it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning round." ~Flaming Lips