Is all of this real: Lucid Dreaming, Out-Of-Body Experience, Astral Travel, Sleep Paralysis?
Those subjects normally polarize people into two groups on opposite scale sides of reality perception. Those practically, and logically minded will dismiss it as a drivel and scam. People inclined to spirituality will often attribute it to myriads of occult and obscure beliefs. None of the sides will even consider looking for a common ground.
However, I believe that such common ground not only exists but is also quite solid and can be experienced by anyone, regardless of whether they are a natural scientist or a ghost hunter. Providing such a common ground or an entry point is what I have been doing with my practical course since 2012. And I have always been offering a money-back guarantee for any participant, who won’t be happy with the results. So far nobody claimed it.
So let me explain how Lucid Dreaming, Out-Of-Body Experience (OOBE), Astral Projection or Astral Travel, and Sleep Paralysis are related to each other and what are physiological and psychological reasons behind them.
Let’s start with lucid dreaming, which is the least controversial subject and is scientifically proven. For me, this is also the most exciting one. Have you ever had a dream where you suddenly realize that it is a dream? Most people had. And most people will wake up the next moment after that realization. What happens if you don’t wake up and continue to see a dream knowing it is a dream? There are simple techniques for this one can learn.
First of all, you regain your perception of yourself and your memories. You don’t have them in a normal dream, where you are rather a passive observer without any clear intentions and very limited possibilities to influence the storyline. Your conscious perception of yourself and waken life memories will give your dream a totally other dimension. You realize it is YOUR dream, you are literally the mastermind here and there are only your rules applied. You are not limited by any laws and conceptions, physical or social and you can do whatever you want or rather whatever you can imagine.
Second, you will get your waken life perceptions. You see, our consciousness is not used to be without our physical appearance. So, your conscious, but dreaming mind will give you a body. A body with senses of tactility, taste, and smell. Skeptics probably want to stop reading right here but think about it. You see dreams with your eyes closed and no real images transmitted from your pupils to the brain. The sheer brain power is inducing those vivid moving images. Simulating tactility and other senses doesn’t require much more.
Imagine the possibilities you have in a world where you decide on everything and have all the perceptions to experience that world of yours… Got it? Now add here that in this state you have direct access to your creativity, your thinking is not obstructed by routines and your subconsciousness is not so sub anymore. The possibilities and implementations are the subject for an article of its own.
Now let’s speak about Sleep Paralysis. It is also a well-attested state many people have experienced or even experiencing regularly. When we fall asleep, we all have a protective mechanism that switches off our muscles and prevents us from acting out our dreams. In rare cases when this mechanism doesn’t fire, we have sleepwalkers. On the other side, in some cases, when you wake up, the muscles can be still immobilized and then you experience sleep paralysis. You feel awake, but can’t move your body. You are panicking without knowing what’s going on. Your mind is still half asleep and combined with the panic can create demonic figures in your room, maybe holding you, whispering in your ears. Those “demons” had a name in old English – Mare, Night Mare. In our age of sci-fi, it is often manifested as alien abduction.
Episodes of sleep paralysis can last up to a few minutes. As awful as it sounds, it’s completely harmless and only is frightening, when you don’t know about its nature. It is also closely related to Lucid Dreaming.
Both lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis are happening on the verge of REM sleep and being awake. It’s a borderland of the two states, where you can be at the same time in a dream and have an awake consciousness, while also having your muscle functions switched off.
This borderland can be entered from being awake with rather simple, kind of meditation techniques. You learn to keep your consciousness when your mind starts producing dreams. What also happens at that point is that your muscles get switched off as for regular REM sleep. Remember that our consciousness is not used to be without a body? The mind needs to somehow interpret that the body (muscles) has switched off. As a result, we have a feeling of leaving our body, a separation, but just to realize the next moment that we have a new body, one functioning in lucid dreaming, a so-called astral body. And you just had an Out-Of-Body Experience.
Whatever your actions, whatever you decide to do from that moment, it can be called an astral projection or astral travel, but it is still a lucid dream after having an OBE.
All of it can also happen without any intention from your side. It happens quite commonly to people with sleep problems. Having a hard time falling asleep means that your mind swings many times between being close to a dream and waking up again and so on. At some point, you can enter that borderland without realizing it and feel being separated from your body.
What I’m giving in my courses is this background knowledge and practical techniques to enter this borderland, to remain there for some extended time (normally 5-10 min of perceived time, probably less of the real-time), and techniques to get the most of your time there.
I see this as a common ground, a common entry point both for people who are content with the physiological and psychological explanation of the phenomena, but also for those who want to see it from a more spiritual or supernatural point of view. The possibilities are truly fantastic for everyone!
