Is OOB unsafe spiritually? My intro into OOB and LD...

It all began with an OBE. It was the Friday night that I got my copy of Matrix: Revolutions in the mail and watched it then decided to sleep on the couch in the den rather that relocate my kids that had fallen asleep in my bed with my wife while watching a more appropriate movie.

I probably was asleep 2 hours when I was awakened by my wife opening our bedroom door (which is adjacent to the den).
I thought about getting up but decided to stay “asleep”. It was at that point I noticed a slight “vibration”. I remembered reading about these vibrations in a text file I had downloaded off Kazaa a couple years ago. I had practiced techniques for OBE back then with no results and had given up on the idea but I now realized I was possibly on the verge of one.
I focused on the center of my forehead (the “3rd eye” if you will) and visualized myself floating. The vibrations came on stronger and a loud static-like noise filled my ears. Suddenly I felt a “woosh” and I knew I was floating in my body. It was an incredible feeling. I could sense things better that I could actually “see”. I sensed exactly where and what my wife was doing. I sensed her pouring something into a glass.
I waved my hand in front of my face and at first saw nothing but gradually saw a greyish blue arm moving back and forwards as if I was waving it underwater. I decided to try and float out of my body but was unable to completely unattach myself. Before I could try anything else my physical eyes opened and I was wide awake.
I felt exhilarated! I finally felt like I was more than the sum of my parts. I knew I had a “soul self” and the possibility of their being a real God finally became possible. You see, I had been losing faith in not only the existence God but also whether I was any different or better, evolution- wise, than a common cockroach. Well this at least gave me something to think about.
Over the next couple of weeks I pursued the OBE with vigor. I downloaded every alpha-theta, hemi-sync, meta-music file related to OBE I could get my hands on. I started reading material offered on websites and text files. I meditated and tried every technique I could find. Nothing happened but I was not discouraged. I was so excited about this new adventure that I started telling family and friends. Big mistake. The ones that didn’t look at me like was a new-age kook told me I was dabbling in the occult. I was being told that by opening myself up to “latent powers up the soul” that I put myself in a position to be influenced or even possessed by demons and/or Satan. Fear is an amazing thing. Before you know it I start believing some of what I am being told and was / am afraid to outright attempt another OBE.
But I didn’t want to waste all of this other expanded awareness stuff I’d been learning and I recalled reading a little about lucid dreaming. Since OBE and LD are similar in nature I decided I would start focusing on that. Before you know it I have 2 LDs and am thoroughly immersed in the subject.
However there have been two occasions now where I “slipped” into OBE. I was practicing techniques of inducing LDs and have had the “vibrations” start and, against my best efforts, the “woosh” happens anyway. Once I rolled over out of my body and the other time I simply floated within my body as I did the first time.
Well now I have to wonder whether this is something truly evil or a natural God-given experience. I asked my friends and family that gave me these warnings to provide some kind of proof directly from the Bible but they have yet to show me anything concrete. I have found several scriptures that DO say it is good to meditate which is a form of expanded awareness like OBE. Should I pursue this and just let it happen or avoid it just in case there is some kind of evil involved? I still haven’t made up my mind.

Edited to correct by abbreviations.

Personally, i have had 2 spontaneous OBE and one AP (astral projection, which as you prob know is a consciously induced OBE). All were full separation. Non separation ones, ones that feel like youre floating inside yourself (what i call ‘floating state’) i have had too many to count at this point.

I have a dream journal in the dream journal section of these forums, if ur interested, its heavy into LD and esp AP stuff and tech. I tried through my own experience to write down a sort of map to AP from initially going to bed.

I can tell you right now that there is no evil stuff to be worried about. The evil connotations are just the result of society’s automatic, seemingly ignorant response to the unknown. Where does LD/OBE fit in our current society? Nowhere really, doesnt fit nicely like a cog in the machine, and thus it is rejected.

If that doesnt convince you, ask yourself this: How did you feel after you have had your first OBE?

My personal answer to that is ‘I felt completely more alive, more aware of my world, it was a very spiritual and transforming experience’. What is so evil about that? Most people, after having an OBE or Near death Experience feel better after it. Others just feel indifferent, think nothing of it or repress it even. Never do they feel worse, at least that i have heard.

Word of mouth and conveyance of experience. I dont know how much you are into scriptures and doctrine of any religion, but personally i believe in personal finding of truth through experience, and the open minded consideration of the experiences of others (be it friends, scripture, etc). But personal experience of what feels like ‘truth’ above all.

So, there is my own multifacet argument for OBE. Your call though, in the end. All the above is just my personal beliefs.

You live in America correct? Their big on that whole ‘fear of anything remotely different’ thing aren’t they? (Seen Bowling for Columbine? Go Micheal!) If you believe that society’s view of right/wrong evil/good is correct, consider the number of civilians killed by America’s army, the number of innocent people tortured and killed in the salem witch hunts and the recent wars. And remember those ridiculous claims that heavy metal backwards is the devil speaking? Almost anything that is different people are scared of. It is my belief that EVERYONE is capable of defining truth from injustice(though some choose not to) and that deep down our judgement on things like OOBE is correct.

I strongly doubt that OOBEs are evil, and encourage you to continue.

How can it be classed as evil when it renewed your faith? I personally wouldn’t seek out OBE but that’s just me. If it happened nothing evil could occur because God is With us.
(I will be quiet now … due to my lack of LDing experience )

welcome to the forum, and thanks for posting your experience

not that i’m a biblical expert by any means (pretty much turned away from christianity for that matter, long story) BUT i have had some people who know about biblical scripture speculate that experiences with god in the bible where fantastic events occured were dream-related. that might be a possibility you’d want to look into.

personally, i became interested in OBE for spiritual reasons, didn’t have any success and found LD. you asked whether LDs or OBEs are spiritually unsafe => define “unsafe”

take a car for instance… it’s conceivable that we could say a car is unsafe because of all the accidents people get into. the fact that a careless driver can injure him/herself and others… does that danger stop us from driving to work in the morning??? no, we keep our eyes open, we watch for pedestrians, we obey traffic laws (most of them anyway). for every accident we see on the news there are thousands… probably millions of people in the world who got from point A to point B without incident. but “motorist gets to work on time” doesn’t sell papers

i think of LDing and OBEing as a spiritual vehicle. i could walk… but i can get much further and much faster if i drive

i think you should definitely pursue this, and like moogle said… how can it be “evil” if it renewed your faith ???

excellent point… reminds me of a quote… something like

i hear and i forget
i see and i remember
i do and i understand

wattsnet, good luck w/ whatever you decide to do, and again, welcome to the forum

"Well now I have to wonder whether this is something truly evil or a natural God-given experience. "

I’m glad you are one of the sensible religious people.

Fact is, you OBE every night, whether you are aware of it or not.

It’s part of the sleep mechanism… if you stay awake while falling asleep you will enter parlaysis, you will feel vibrations, you will feel dissociation from your body, and you WILL eventually enter a “lucid dream” which to me there is NO difference between that and OBE at all.

I mean I’ve never seen the real world when I separate from my body, I’ve never seen MY body in my bed… sure sure the mind can trick you into thinking you see it, but it is still dream quirky like anything else.

Religion has a way of suffocating and stifiling creativity and growth of both the cognitive and spiritual level.

Believe what you want to believe, not what they want you to believe, if that means that eventually you outgrow christianity, all the better then, at least you grew… don’t let them do your “growing” for you.

I’m not saying OBE has answers at all though, as far as I can tell, not really… it’s just fun and lets you learn about yourself a little bit.

One thing I’ll tell you is that from my experience there are no demons, but if you let people tell you horror stories about demons, let them warn you about all that superstitious nonsense, IT WILL give you nightmares, it WILL make your OBEs scary, and it WILL put demons into your OBEs…

Becuase the unconscious mind gets nervous, it takes all the literature about demons it’s read, all the stories it’s heard, and it feeds them back to you while dreaming/out of body.

So if you so happen to see one, don’t think that makes them right… talk to it, stay calm, hold your mind clear, see if you can control it or make it go away.

But I have to stress, there is nothing out of body that you don’t do every night while “dreaming” the difference between the two only lies in you being conscious of the separation of body and mind.

Most people are unconscious while that happens, and most people only have a handfull of lucid dreams in their entire lives, so of course if they haven’t experienced and they are entangled in dogma they’ll tell you it’s evil, or dangerous, etc.

Religion has always told people new things are dangerous, science is dangerous, it’s of the devil… astronomy is dangerous, it’s of the devil… dancing is dangerous, it’s of the devil.

Don’t listen to them.

LISTEN TO YOURSELF

as pointed out, how can it be evil if it increased your faith, anyway? Your subjective experiences with spirituality and “God” mean a hell of a lot more than any scripture ever could, don’t they? It’s one thing ot read other people’s experiences, not knowing whether they are true or not, it’s another to go out on your own and HAVE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCES, right?

That’s what it’s all about… YOUR experiences, not other peoples, those should just be used as information, perhaps guidelines if you will… but should not be given priority over your own experiences.

I mean you loved what you felt, it made you feel great, right? So even if the Bible said it was wrong (you said you have not found any scriptures which say so) would that make you abandon something truly spiritually awakening that you found for yourself?

if so, WHY?

What really matters is you… everything you ever knew could be lies… in the end, all that matters is YOUR EXPERIENCES… and if you find something that makes you spiritual, who is anyone else to say it’s “evil” ? They aren’t very good people to be getting advice from, I’ll tell you that…

I wouldn’t waste my breath on trying to tell them it is “not evil” though, since “evil” by nature is a concept invented by man… I think some things are evil that some people might not, etc… I would tell them that OBE is a natural part of the sleep process, most people are just unaware of it and don’t remember it though… if you are worried about what they think or want their approval.

There is scientific evidence to back those claims up, too.

But yeah, this is why I don’t tell my family/friends about what I do, not even lucid dreaming.

I looked quite a bit for the kind of info you all just shared and maybe I didn’t look enough but I found nothing.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your replies and wisdom on this matter.
I was in serious conflict and still am to some degree but I will work it out.
For instance it was mentioned that because it felt good that it must be ok and that because it renewed my faith how could that be bad.
I have to disagree on that point. I tried exctasy a couple years ago and that was extremely exhilerating and eye-opening, spirual-wise, but come to find out it might not have been very good for me if I had continued doing it frequently. In fact it may have had a helping hand in the serious depression I found myself in later. I mention exctasy in paticular because that same euphoria that I had with that I felt during my OBE.
My first inclination is to simply say to myself “all things in moderation” and go ahead and at least explore this phenomena.

Thanks again for your guidance and support.
And thanks for the welcome to the forum. I’m glad I found it. It has been a excellent resource.

Edited for some serious mispellings.

hmm… that’s a good point wattsnet… i’ve never tried ectasy though, so i couldn’t comment… but i have tried weed, which i thought was a very interesting experience, but nevertheless i didn’t like how it made my body feel… same goes for alcohol

as for the exhiliration i got from an LD or the two times i attempted OBE from an LD, that exhilliration seemed natural and “clean”… a natural high if you will… but i think the outlook of “everything in moderation” is a good one, even good things can be bad if done too much

i remember two times i got burned out from doing my sexual energy cultivation… now that was NOT pleasant, but it coulda been a lot worse in retrospect. both occassions were after some pretty serious energy highs. i’ve learned to balance it since then, build up gradually instead of too much at once

Moogle said: If it happened nothing evil could occur because God is With us.

And although my faith has been tested and found seriously lacking these past few years, I’ve always believed that logically you can reomove your self from God’s protection.
I believe that when you take part in activities that are deliberatly against Gods will, your saying “I know this against God (aka evil) but I’m gonna do it anyway” God, though a loving God, will not protect you. It’s all apart of the free will thing. If you choose to walk out in traffic you can’t expect God to shield you from becoming road-kill.

Thats what I’m afraid of now. Going into a situation with no protection and my sense of right and wrong malfunctioning and to get taken in by one of these so called “spririt guides” or “non-physical friends” and be led astray. Maybe a completely unfounded fear if OBEs are just a from of LDs.
I want to expand more on this but the bossman keeps checking me out.

In your statement you are equating OBEs with an evil act when there is no firm evidence. The only thing I can say is give some time to thinking about it and then follow your conscience. Then you can be sure of spiritual protection.

To test if they are a form of LDs maybe you could do some RCs (reality checks) then if these prove you are dreaming you can be sure it is a form of LD.

WOW there is nothing left to say… HAH… They pretty much covered it…

One thing I would like to highlight is, like oneiromancer said… many of the events written about in the old testament, and even the new testament are closely tied to dream states, such as OBE.

Something that may be a little extreme for you seeing you are from the bible belt, but there is strong evidence that ascending to heaven or falling to hell are OBEs cause by your dying body and your living mind. When practicing OBE you are attempting to put youself ina situations where you brain finds that there is no body attached to it because of SP and trys to explain it. This is similar to what would happen as you are dying.

I remeber reading Saint Ignatious(spelling?) and he talks lots about is evil and what is good. Like all theologian scholars will say, it is difficult to tell. Evil disguises itself as good. However, all of them agree that your relationship with God comes above all and if something strengthens that relationship it is not evil, unless it causes you to sin(for example spending too much time with your OBEs and not withyour wife and kids), but in that case your relationship isn’t strengthened, but instead is a false sense of security. Thats for you to decide

Hendrixlee: Americans aren’t more easily scared or caused to fear than any one else in the world. The major difference is that is the primary driving force of the American economy. Didn’t you catch that message in BFC? One of the reasons that his family reacted so harshly to his explainations of OBEs is that they are from one of the most religious parts of this country. Perhaps if he would have explained it in more traditional terms instead of an OBE.

Sorry if that post was just regurgitation… I see watts already came to those conclusions… but… these few thoughts might be helpful…

From the sounds of it I’m sure you have read and probably firmly believe that “Man was made in God’s image,” but I have an arguement regaurding the interpretation of this that may affirm that your OBEs and LDs are more closely related to God than you think.

Clearly God is not a human being, it is in corporeal and corporeal at the same time. It is everything that ever has been, is and ever will be in one. God is. Even by the traditional interbretation of Juawa(spelling???) in hebrew, which is the original name for god, it mean “I am.” So following this assumption of God, man being made in the image clearly is not alluding to the physical aspects of God, but instead the mind of a man. Throughout a human’s life they encounter millions upon millions of things from the outside world. Each and every single one of these in incorperated into who that person becomes. A human is not God, but instead an image because God is everything and they are a reflection of one slice of that everything.

From this I argue that while God is found all around, the only true reflection of God is found within. The ability to LD and OBE is the ability to completely imerse yourself in the image of God. While some people choose to ignore this and just have fun, your inner world can be the most spiritual place, because it is in fact entirely composed of your spirit.

I also wanted to comment on removing yoruself from God’s protection. Like you said if you turn your back on God bad things can happen, but bad things can happen if you don’t too. The point is that no matter how many times you turn your back on God he will continue to protect you and care for you. With regaurds to the OBE topic, turning within yourself is not turning you back on god ro wondering from his protection because you are going within yoru spirit and like I said your spirit is the closest you can ever come to knowing God.

Good luck

Now what I am about to relay is not necessarily my beliefs or opinions, only something I have been looking into since this inner conflict came up.

It is based on the writings of Watchman Nee (Nee Shu-tsu). Nee was a Christian writer in China that was eventually thrown in prison, where he spent the rest of his life, because of his Christian beliefs and teachings.
He theorized that abilities such at pychic awareness and astral travel are not supernatural at all but simply “latent powers of the soul”.
Before I explain that, let me also explain what most Christains believe about the make-up of a man, biblically speaking. We are made of three parts: the flesh, the soul, and the Holy Spirit. The flesh or physical body was breathed to life by God thereby infusing us with part of Himself, the Holy Spirit. The soul is that which binds the flesh to the spirit and also houses the things that make each of us unique (personality, etc).
Nee’s theory (or at least I think they are his) are as follows:
God created Adam with abilities tied to all 3 aspects. If we focus on soul powers like astral travel and expanded or super awareness there are reasons Adam had these abilities. God would never give his child a responsibilty he could not handle. He gave Adam dominion / responsibility over all creation. He had to care for (as well as name) all the creatures on Earth. Can you imagine what kind of task that would be? Obviously he had far more intellect, awareness, and abilities than we do today. But to Adam there was nothing supernatural about it. It was just the way he was created. But when Satan played on Adam and Eve’s sense of ego which according to Nee is related to the soul self, that is what caused the “fall of man”.
Because of that God took away the knowledge of how to utilize the soul or “put a stopper on it” because they were directly part of mans’ division from him and maybe because we were not ready for it. Nee says that because the soul is still exactly what it was when God created it, those abilities are still there and that we can tap into those abilities if we really try but advises against it because of its relation to the fall of man.

I have not read his whole book yet so I may have some of that wrong but I thought it interesting to throw in.

If you are interested I just found his book transcribed online here:
fellowshipofthemystery.com/l … esoul.html

Those points are definetly something to digest, toadstool. Particularly the part about Gods reflection being within us. That made me feel warm all over. Thanks.

this might help

cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/09 … index.html

wattsnet, i know you said this wasn’t your view, but i am thoroughly dissatisfied with watchman nee’s theory as interpretted by you…

i don’t see how naming the world’s animals or having dominion over them shows that adam had any more intellect, awareness, or abilities than we do today. i don’t see how coming up with names for animals is any more fantastic than say… our ability to read and write posts on this forum. both tasks require that one recognize and respond to something… adam had to recongnize an animal and respond with a name he felt suitable… we recognize the meaning behind the words in posts and respond accordingly

didn’t god give us free will ??? so why does he put a constraint on our ability to exercise our free will ??? as if to say “you have free will… it’s just that doing action A is going to be REALLY hard, but you are still free to attempt it if you like” what for ??? if this is true, i think it likens god to a manipulative gambler rather than a benevolent creator

also… if god put a stopper on our soul self and my ego is part of my soul self, then why can i so readily access my ego ??? why can other people so readily appeal to or injure my ego ???

this sounds like the tree of knowledge in the garden of dilemma… only this time instead of a tree, we are being forbidden from accessing something that i argue is our birthright (just like knowledge of “good” and “evil” was our birthright)

if god gave me a soul, why shouldn’t i use it ???

i’m not satisfied at all that the biblical creation story is even true, i see way too many problems with it, but if i were to put those aside and assumed the story of genesis to be true, then i wouldn’t call what adam and eve did the “fall of man” but its inevitable evolution

I was taught that man is comprised of three elements. The physical body, the soul, and the spirit. I mentioned once before that unlike humans, animals have a soul but do not have a spirit. This is because man alone was created in God’s image who also is a spirit.
Since part of God’s spirit is in man, similar to God, man becomes imortal. He cannot die.
His spirit lives eternally.

Astral Projection and Lucid dreaming do not involve the spirit of man. These are embellishments of the soul which include the five senses and the imagination.

When we LD or AP, the spirit does not leave the body. The soul however which controls the dream world and the imagination convinces the mind that one has left their body when in reality they have not.

LD’s, AP’s, and Obes, are not in themselves evil. They are gifts given to man by God to enjoy. It is God’s will that it should be this way.

That did make any sense… lol… you can’t talk about the spirit and the sould and which is involved in LDing like it is fact.

Like I said, I am researching several points of view at the moment I definetely don’t think Nee had it all right. But I do think he had some interesting points that might give some insight into the soul of man.
And while I agree with you, oneiromancer, on some of your points, I have to disagree with the following:

If I was suddenly transported to a different reality and a higher being gave me the task of taking care of and naming every animal on that planet I have no doubt I would fail at that task. Come on, were talking about millions of different animals covering an entire planet. Are these animals going to be neatly lined up for me while I sit in a lounger. Probably not. I would have to cover a lot of ground.
Instead of me trying to put all this in my words, here are some exerpts from the online version of his book:

To say we, today, are equal to the Adam written about in Genesis is really stretching it.

Because the old testament is primarily an oral tradition that is thousands and thousands of years old that was final written down, I would have to say the the original story is absolutely nothing like the one in the bible. Second, I would have to say that the old testament is just a story book with meaning all over it. It is like how Jesus talked in parables, but the ENTIRE old testament is a parable.

But that is neither here nor there, I don’t think it matters what you think about adam or what some one else does… It is too easy to get distracted by talking about just the religious aspect of it all, I think that what you are most concerned about in your LDs in religion.

So on that topic, another point about altered states of conciousness. Repeatedly through the bible you are told to drink and be filled with the spirit. That is talking about drinking alcohol. All ancient religions used altered states to commun with the Gods and Judaism (the old testament) is no different. Additionally I would argue that, considering every major religion on earth practiced diviing through hallicinatory asacraments, that the hebrews like recieved their devine visions from starvation and posibly ergot poisoning or the mana mushrooms they ingested.

To rule out the likelyhood that the hebrews where a mushroom cult goes against science in every way. There is even mushrooms throughout their ancient art.

I don’t know if you have eaten mushrooms before, but I believe that the burning bush could easily be attributed to this. Every tree looks like it is on fire.

What I am getting down to is that altered states of conciousness are the fundamentals of all religion, whether we have forgotten than or not. In the east they meditate, in mesoamerica they hallucinate, christians drink the blood of christ. Lucid dreamers experience LDs, OBEs, and AP.