OBEs can, and do, happen at much lighter levels of relaxation than LDs do. Sometimes they happen when the body isn’t relaxed whatsover–like in cases of sudden trauma like a car accident or even fainting.
The WILD technique typically relies on reaching a mind awake/body asleep state. Yes, OBE practitioners also utilize SP; but there are techniques that don’t. People (not me) have reported having OBEs during times when they feel perfectly awake. Check out the literature.
My point is: SP is not necessary for OBEs.
However, SP is not necessary for LDs either. You can WILD from a lightly relaxed state; you don’t need SP conditions. So the presence of SP doesn’t discriminate between OBEs and LDs entirely.
We can argue semantically, though, and say that a dream by definition is an experience you have when your body is asleep. If the body isn’t technically asleep (and SP draws a pretty hard line), then what’s happening isn’t “dreaming.” The other options in our culture are: “OBE,” “vision,” “visualizing,” “hallucination,” etc.
Also, if we say that because OBEs share some qualities with dreams that they therefore must be dreams, then we tacitly assume (demand) that out-of-body consciousness must be like waking physical consciousness or else it’s illusory. Yet, why? Why assume that if projecting the consciousness beyond the physical body is possible that the experience of projection must be like embodied consciousness?
What if OBEs are possible and they diverge experientially from embodied consciousness quite sharply?
As far as I’m concerned, we can only run in circles until we decide what our personal standard of evidence is. Will you only accept the reality of OBEs if skeptics with PhDs, who are respected in the academic world, recruit thousands of participants for a study and scan thousands of brains and discover something statistically significant?
The trouble is, even if that happened, many people would still not believe. I once argued for a half hour with a person who didn’t believe that lucid dreaming was possible. I explained that it’s been scientifically validated, that I’d done it, etc., but he persisted in his non-belief. He believed that lucid dreamers only thought that they were aware of dreaming.
What, really, is the weight of scientific proof if an experience is only individually accessible? Ask yourself this question.
Yes, in an ideally logically evolved society, we would all nod and accept careful scientific studies and then adjust our worldviews accordingly–but that isn’t how it usually works. You may consider yourself a modern person, rational, enlightened, better than the idiots who disbelieve in evolution, but ask yourself–really ask yourself–if just one controversial, but reputable, scientific study (that was peer-reviewed, etc.) would prove the reality of OBEs to you. Wouldn’t you be tempted to say, “the methodolgy must have been flawed,” “the experimenters were biased,” “it was coincidence,” “the experimentee must have been cheating”?
What, really, would it take to prove it to you? A technological device that could induce the OBE state for you so you could perform some difficult experiment?
Regardless of what standard of evidence the greatest skeptics will accept, you can personally experiment with OBEs and seek objective validation. (If you disbelieve or doubt, though, you probably won’t.) Many have claimed to do it successfully. They’re doubted because no one else witnessed their experiment. Our cultural tendency to doubt experiences that aren’t confirmed through strict protocol and oversight is, I think, a positive tendency. Yet, being logical, I see that it’s possible for a (non-deluded) person to experience something and to report about it without lying or being mistaken.
So, listen, there are two valid levels in which you can experiment with OBEs (and possibly prove their reality). You can do it alone, or do it with oversight by another.
If you do it alone, you might succeed–and only people who are predisposed to believe you already will believe you. Everyone else will intimate that you’re a liar, or that you’re deluded.
Add:
I just thought of this: Have you noticed that those who disbelieve or doubt in the reality of OBEs insist on the one hand on a stringent scientific protocol for proving or disproving the phenomenon, but on the other hand will gladly accept anecdotal evidence that seems to disprove the reality of OBEs? That is, if someone has an OBE and concludes that it wasn’t real because, say, their bedroom appeared different, a skeptic would accept that as proof (despite the fact that it’s a subjective experience outside of a strict testing environment).
I don’t point this out to be curmudgeonly; I’m earnestly trying to ferret out the assumptions and biases around this topic.