OBE's and false awakenings

[jzinser]

Hello everyone!

So I started M.A.P. 18 days ago, I've read 4 OBE books in the last 3 weeks including Astral Dynamics and Journeys out of the Body. The last week I've had like 4 OBE's, none of them has been completely deliberate. They have all happened suddenly during sleep. The following "exits" have happened:

1- I suddenly see myself rising to the floor.
2- I find myself standing next to my body.
3- I woke up at about 4 am feeling strong vibrations, I asked for help and something pulled me by my legs
4- I thought about the hallway and started floating towards it automatically

I have found some similarities among the OBEs which have made me doubt a little about them (if they are just lucid dreams or actual OBEs). At the beginning the setting looks extremely similar to what my room looks like, the light, the objects, the position of everything, etc. But it seems that after I move to another room or place suddenly there appears to be many inconsistencies with the physical world. Why is this?

However my experiences have felt extremely real, for example yesterday's night I tried to fly and fell at first, I could feel the soil and grass after I fell.

Also, I have had lots of false awakenings, I "wake up" and talk to someone about my experience, but then I realize i am still asleep. ANy thoughts on this??

Thank you for reading!

[CFTraveler]

The changes in your surroundings are due to what are known as 'reality fluctuations' or 'the Alice in Wonderland' effect- one has to do with your subconscious mind interpreting what is perceived and changing the perceptions to suit what it's used to seeing. The subconscious mind constantly compares the images that it gets with what is in memory and sometimes adds or subtracts what you see in 'regular' waking consciousness- something we're not aware of, to make up for the glitches in our imperfect perceptual senses. The blind spot in our eyes, the ocassional optical illusion is constantly adjusted for by the brain and/or subconscious- and it also does it when you're in a nonphysical experience.
Add to this what Robert calls the Alice in Wonderland Effect- you are no longer perceiving with the limited range the eyes afford- around 200 to 220 degrees of sight- and now are perceiving with a 360 degree range- front and back, right and left, up and down are now meaningless, and it's easy for objects to appear in the opposite side of where it normally would be. This all adds up to confusion.
Fred Aardema in his Explorations In Consciousness book experimented with this effect, and found tha the longer you're out the more reality fluctuations happen, and when he did target experiments, he had more accuracy before they set in.
FWTW.

[jzinser]

Thank you as always!

Do fluctuations include seeing people that is not actually there in real time???

[CFTraveler]

Yes. It could be that they were there before, will be there after, or you're interpreting some sort of energy (or stimulus) as 'people' and your mind has decided it's 'that', for whatever reason.
Sometimes the overlay makes sense, sometimes it doesn't.

[jzinser]

Thanks!

Also, during projections I seem to have conversations or some sort of interaction with people and animals. But they are obviously not doing that consciously. I found this similar to many situations in Robert Monroe's books where he talks to people bu they don't recall it. Is this the subconscious speaking and acting for them??

[CFTraveler]

Depends on who you ask. I do think this is a subconscious process, but I think it has to do with the many self-aspects we create during our life's development- the 'child' self, the 'scientist' self, the 'artist' self, etc. Depending on how you change your way of thinking and life changes, the more personalities you create, all integrated in the conscious mind, but observable as 'other' in the trance state. Of course, this is my hypothesis, no one (that I know of) has said so in academia.

[Mattleh22]

Hi jzisner i just had an obe last night but nothing yet has led me to believe that it's anything more then a type of lucid dream just yet like u I have not been able to bring them on consciously through meditation so I'm hoping I'm able to see all this amazing things I read about with Practice !!!

[jzinser]

Thank you both!

Yeah Leyla, I think Im gonna go with the Beyonce theory... haha

No but seriously, that does help and it makes a lot of sense, thanks for the video. However, many times is not just the positioning of items but the items themselves. For example, today I woke up at 4 am to practice, I did some trance work and energy loosening and then it was extremely easy to get out of body. I went down to the garden (I normally direct myself here after separation for some reason) and went with the specific objective of observing an area that has a small roof and a table.

The table that was there was not the actual one, it was replaced by a table I had in my childhood house... how can these sort of variations be explained?? Is it just that we interpret the energy around us and give it certain shapes?