Question: The difference between LD and OBE

I have been thinking the difference between LD (Lucid Dream) and OBE (Out of Body Experience). Some say that theyre the same thing some say that theyre not. I havent had any OBEs (or maybe once started having one, but cant be sure about that), but ive had 5 LDs. So if someone has more information about this subject or wants to say an opinion, please post here :smile:.

– Lore “The Newbie”

This is my personal opinion:
OBEs are just dreams. But they are not LDs with less you believe that this is just a dream, because LDs are defined as dreams where you know that you dreams. You get it?

I believe once you have Obe youll know the difference-heh,and still you will not know where is it…very hard to answer your question.
My Obes happened while trying to have ld,in most cases thats what happens-so just keep practicing and you have fair chance of having one-most of them are spontanous.

It’s simple, really: A lucid dream is a dream that can be about anything, as dreams can. About flying, sailing, fighting, kissing, falling: All the stuff you do in dreams. In LD’s you do them lucid, meaning you are aware that you are dreaming.
An OBE is an experience where you feel you have left your physical body. You can discuss wheter this is possible or not, but anyway that’s the difference with LD’s: That you feel like you’ve left your body. Personally, I don’t care wheter that feeling is a dream or not. Experiences are experiences, and they’re all interesting in their own way. I’ve never had an convincing OBE, but I wouoldn’t mind having one.

Just a comment to confirm and perhaps clarify what Monkfish said. I’ve had both LDs and 2 OBEs. The LDs happen in the “dream world” and the OBEs happen in the “real world”.

In both cases for me there was a need to maintain lucidity to maintain the experience. There was definitely a different feeling, the OBE feeling more like waking life. However, I don’t have total control of my LDs, so there might be less of difference in feeling with people who have more control.

My first OBE was drug induced and very short, like a nano-second. The second occured during sleep and I just “woke-up” into an OBE. Mind blowing for sure!

Ok. Thanks for the information :cool: .

Almost all my LD’s happen in real world enviroment, 95% have started from the room I sleep. Some of them start during normal dream and some starts with great OBE-sensations.
Altogether, both are just dreams, lucid dreams.

After a while of browsing i found this brilliant site witch deals with topic.

spiritweb.org/Spirit/obe-vs-lucid.html

Check out, if youre interested about the subject.

The link didn’t work for me. However, it did take me to siritweb. I clicked on the “Out of Body” button on the left side of the screen, and that took me to a page that has several articles comparing OBEs and LDs

The link doesn’t work because obe small caps becomes OBE big caps when you post this word in a message… see? obe obe obe :bored:
My opinion about the article, written by a fervent OBE-believer:
I assume there could be some differences like different brainwaves, subjective experience etc but it is a step too far to say that in an OBE there is really “something” that “leaves the body” BECAUSE there are some differences between LD’s and OBE’s. This Bob Peterson seems to put the burden of proof on the skeptics, he says “you have to prove that OBE’s are LD’s”. Maybe not a bad idea and not that difficult: for example if you are able to move some object in an OBE and when you wake up the object is still where it was before the OBE then… it was a dream. So let’s do OBE’s and try to move stuff. Let’s throw our body through the window and then we should wake up on the street or in the garden -hmmm, a little too risky q= . Anyway, it is far more easy to prove that an OBE is a dream than that an OBE is really literally an experience OUTSIDE the body - even if you can proof that you saw something -a number on a paper or so- you never saw before the OBE, it could also be explained as telepathy (thnx Traumgänger for this idea)!

BrainHacker:

I haven’t read the article(s) yet but just a couple of thoughts for you. In an OBE many many people report seeing their body asleep. You seem to be suggesting that this is just part of the dream.

The proof of moving something in an OBE to prove you are outside your body won’t work. If I can’t “mentally” move something in real life, I won’t be able to do it in an OBE either.

There are some other proofs that seem to satisfy the criteria. And just plain having one leaves no doubt in the mind of those having the experience. At least that’s how I feel, having had one.

Is an OBE just a dream; of course it is. But then, Life Is But A Dream. :gni:

Of course, I don’t mean with that experiment that it would WORK, on the contrary. The importance does not lie in being able to “prove” telekinesis but to DISPROVE you’re having a REAL OBE. And, if you are able to move things in your OBE, that would already be a sign that it isn’t an OBE because that kind of actions are very difficult for a “non-material” soul. And I don’t mean just mentally moving something, I really mean taking something with your OBE/dream-hands and place it elsewhere, just like in an LD! It is very hard to PROVE that you have an OBE but to DISPROVE an OBE is rather simply, that’s my thesis! If you think you are having an OBE you could first test the state by just doing this little “reality-test”: normally you can’t move “real” things in OBE and even if you can and “astral telekinesis” is possible the object really would have to be moved after you wake up.

Well BrainHacker, you are certainly living up to your name. I feel like my brain has been hacked to pieces :oof:

I’m assuming that you have never had an OBE, but please confirm that.
Remember that I have had one good solid one.

Reviewing your last two posts:

Are you saying that someone could have an LD that he mistakenly thought was an OBE, dream he went to an office and looked at a number on a piece of paper; and when he woke up, explain what happened by saying that through telepathy the Dreamer subconsciously inserted the number on the paper in his dream? Interesting. :dozing:

You tests seem to be designed to disprove OBEs. Admittedly, I have only had the one experience, but I can’t imagine someone having an LD and mistakenly believing it is an OBE. If this has happened to someone I would like to know.

I have had dreams that I thought were taking place in reality, but that’s not the same thing. Those were times when I should have done a test to get lucid.

If the number on the paper test doesn’t prove OBEs, is there a test that would prove them to you? :shrug:
(don’t ask for telekinesis. I’m not up to it :spinning: )

I think LD’s and OBE’s are related, because the similarities are striking. It may, however, be the case that dreaming itself is a spiritual act, as opposed to the mundane, brain-chemical explanations.

The disproving idea might not work. Maybe the obe-dreamworld is a muddled version of reality, in which there are certain direct correlations and certain fantasized elements. Or maybe you might mistake a LD for an OBE (if there is a difference). I just think it’d be a shame if you disproved it and were wrong…

Here’s something for all you OBEr’s to look into… www.fork-you.com
It’s about spoon bending. I have a pet theory right now that spoon bending happens when the dreambody partially emerges from the physical body, just a tiny sliver poking through. The state the author describes (one of “focussed inattention”) seems to fit with how I do my OB things. I’ve never actually done the spoonbending thing (yet), but I’ve read other peoples experiences (on informal sites, personal homepages, etc), and it seems to be a real thing. So try it!

Yes I have had OBE’s Dust Mote. More than one.

Another example of a guy who has experienced OBE’s himself but doesn’t automatically say “hey I saw myself out of my body so I WAS out of my body” is Stephen LaBerge. Here are some articles from him about the LD-OBE-connection:
lucidity.com/LD9DIR.html (chapter 9 of his first book, Lucid Dreaming)
lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html
home.no/lucid/lucid/remobe.pdf

Yes, I think it’s very hard to prove an OBE with the current state of science. Remote viewing could be an explanation of a so-called OBE-experience, and it’s difficult to find a method in which you exclude the possibilitity of “in-your-body”-remote viewing experienced as an OBE. One of the big problems of the “really-out-of-your-body”-thesis is that it departs from a separation between matter and mind, on the one hand you have matter, on the other there’s mind. Maybe you suppose that I am just a grumpy old skeptic “materialist” but in fact many mystics have always emphasized the difficulties with this “dualistic” division between “matter”-stuff and “mind”-stuff. There is no “in” and “out”, the “in” is just the sensation of our ego wich supposes itself to be an totally independent piece of consciousness in a sack of flesh. Dreams, OBE’s and waking reality are all models of our mind, and every experience is in this “big mind”, as some zen-buddhist masters call it.

Finally, a quote from the conclusion of OTHER WORLDS: OUT-OF-BODY EXPERIENCES AND LUCID DREAMS:

I have had few experiences which i classify as Obes.Here are my thoughts(i have said it few times allready,but since the topic raises again i thought ill share)

I personally do not believe that Obes can be proved to anyone without personal experience with it.While having an Obe we are not being in our reality like many believe.Either we are not in a dream world.I believe its something like “next” dimension-in between of reality and dream.many people reported that even tho their obes were taking place in familiar enviroment ,there were slight differences- they met ppl who were not supposed to be there,room was furnished somehow differently,instead of night it was a day…so on.
There is few similarities and few differences compared to lds-obes seems to be more vivid and clear,time works in a different way,there is a feeling of “reality”.

Anyways- keeping above in mind you must be pretty nonsceptic and entusiasthic trying to prove anything.
Out of all known experiments none really proves anything-like you said in the post above telepathy might be a reason.
In other cases-like putting some card on the top shelf,and trying to see it while having obe has also weak points-main is repetitivness(hmmm…spelling).If we want to prove something we need few people capable of Obe`ing for longer period of time.Its almost impossibile.
Secondly- like i said on the beginning-i think we make mistake thinking that we can influence real world while having Obe-its not like we just pop out of our bodies to see the normal world,i personally believe we also travel in dimensions and open our eyes to similar but definetely not the same reality.

Ps.Im not saying all that as a fact-it all comes from just my personal experience and represents my personal point of view.