Experience description 3308:   

The questionnaire is aimed at one specific experience so I will begin with that particular experience and follow it up with several other OBE experiences I have had throughout the course of my life.  A little backstory.  I have had OBEs pretty much as long as I can remember.  As a child they were always involuntary, suddenly finding myself out of body during the nighttime.  Even then I knew the difference between a regular dream and being out of my body in a conscious state.  I remember one time I find myself at the top of my driveway, floating above the street power lines.  It was exhilarating as I knew I wasn't dreaming...I was truly floating in that moment above the power lines.  I remember telling my friends about it and they looked at me like I was nuts.  I just assumed everybody recalled their Out of Body adventures at night.  Nope.  So I kept them to myself and as the years rolled on I didn't recall too many.

Things changed after my sister was killed in December 1990.  Always intrigued and attracted to the paranormal, her death really became the genesis of a true spiritual awakening.  I became obsessed with the survival of consciousness beyond physical death.  One sure-fire way to reinforce my beliefs was through Astral Projection.  It's one thing for humans to place their faith in words on a page but when you can directly encounter objective experiential phenomenon that defies scientific explanation, that goes so much further than any religious words in a book.  You can't prove Jesus literally walked on water and turned water into wine, but you sure as hell can prove to yourself that you don't need your physical body to experience full consciousness able to explore incredible vistas and dimensions outside of time and space.  THAT gets your attention.

So I digress...On to the specific experience.  I was living in Seaside Heights, New Jersey at the time.  It was 1993 and I was attending a computer technical school so I always set my alarm for 7:00am on weekdays.  One morning I distinctly heard my alarm clock go off (always hated that thing...One of those noisy BEEP!! BEEP!! BEEP!! kinds that shocks you into your day).  I remember quickly sitting up from the waist up.  I instantly became confused because the alarm was no longer going off and it was still dark.  Dawn was coming so I could make out shadows and shapes in the room.  I looked at the clock and it was like 6:10am or something like that...I thought, "Wait a minute?  Why did I hear the alarm go off?"  It was then that I noticed somebody in my bed sleeping.  This REALLY shocked me because at the time I slept alone in a small twin bed.

I turned my head around slowly and saw a person lying in bed, apparently sleeping.  Then it like a jolt of knowledge, I immediately realized that lump of flesh was ME!  Upon that awareness I was slapped back into my physical body and woke up for real.  I then became sad that I didn't take advantage of my conscious OBE state to go off on some great adventure.

OTHER OBES:

I began keeping an OBE journal to document my adventures.  I have too many to experiences to list here so I will highlight a few to spare the reader a novel, lol.

One morning while my wife was in the bathroom blow-drying her hair getting ready for work I found myself in that perfect "Mind Alert/Body Asleep" state that is so vital to OBEs.  The familiar vibrations started and I began doing my "roll out" technique.  This is where I am lying on my back and begin the sensation of rocking from side-to-side.  With luck, the rocking gets longer and more dramatic until it feels like I am about to roll off the bed.  Eventually if I am lucky, I finally pop out of my body and begin floating like a balloon with about 1/3 left of helium.  I remember slowly floating to the floor where I reached out and grabbed the leg of the bed.  It felt like cold metal, no different than if I was doing this physically. 

I could still hear the drone of my wife's hair dryer.  I was extremely alert.  It was dark in the room but I could see enough.  I remember wanting to go on the roof to check out the weather.  I looked up and saw a hole about 3 feet in diameter awaiting my ascension.   I remember going through this hole and as I floated higher I saw the attic (I lived in a townhome at the time and had never been in the attic), the support beams, insulation, every conceivable detail.  Finally I was on the roof.  I remember sitting on the roof taking it all in.  It had been raining for days on end and I expected it to still be raining but it wasn't.  In fact I saw the moon in the Southeast just above the tree line in the distance.  I took note of that and then I looked up and saw the most beautiful, brilliant display of stars I have ever seen.  I don't recall when I made it back to my body but I remember my wife came into the room almost ready to leave for work.  The blinds were still closed.  I asked her to check to see if had stopped raining and she looked out the window and said it had.  I then asked can you see the moon in the Southeast above the trees?  She said yes she could.  The fact that I had not looked out the window physically nor would I have not even know the moon's cycle or where it would be at that time of morning was a nice little verification that I indeed just spent a few lucid moments out of my body that morning.

Another time early one morning I felt the vibrations and successfully rolled out, did my usual floating around, saw myself in bed and walked into our bathroom.  I looked in the mirror to see what I would look like.  It is very hard to describe. I looked like myself (but it was dark) but I was comprised of what looked like sparks of electricity or vortexes?  Very hard to describe.  It was energy, a refined energy (my Astral Body) that kind of sparked with constant movement.  I could have stared at my hand the whole time but when I am consciously out of my body I usually want to go the space and traverse the universe.  With that thought I was shot up into space at unbelievable speed.  I am used to it by now.  I flew around amazing swirling galaxies, planets, stars...I can't get enough of it!  I have been to the moon several times (no I haven't seen any aliens unfortunately) and I have floated above earth (where earth is about the size of a giant beach ball at arm's length) just absolutely blown away by the clarity, colors and beauty of our physical home.

When I am out of my body consciously, one of my favorite things is to walk through doors and windows, and of course fly.  What always strikes me is how normal and familiar it all feels.  As in, "Oh yeah!  How do we always forget this is our natural state?"  I could go on and on so I will end with these highlights:

-- One time I was having an OBE and floated out one of our windows facing the front street.  I found myself standing in the middle of the street.  Suddenly a young female was by my side.  She seemed familiar to me.  She then said "I love having a friend from Planet Earth."  That's the last thing I remembered before being back in my body.  Drat!

-- Another time I floated out of my body and immediately felt and then saw a dark male presence in my room.  It was tall, shadow-figure with some kind of top hat.  I didn't get a sense that it was there for a tea party so I took off on another galactic adventure.  I never did see that figure again but years later my daughter started talking about the man with top hat that stares at her at night.  That's a story for another time. 

-- One time I was floating in space and wanted to go see my sister who died.  Suddenly I saw this bright light that began to look like it was beginning to explode towards me like a Super Nova...I immediately freaked out and found myself back in my body.  I was upset with myself because I allowed my fear to dictate my action where had I allowed the light to absorb me I probably would have had contact with my sister.  But the explosion of light was so startling it was a knee-jerk reaction.

-- Normally my OBEs are pleasant, thrilling, beautiful and sometimes boring.  Rarely are they negative or scary but one time I found myself in this very creepy place.  Looked like something straight out of a Tim Burton movie.  Dead trees, all twisted, randomly disbursed across a barren plain.  The sky was a yellowish brown...I found myself walking among these super creepy zombie-like people.  Not Hollywood grotesque so much as just without hope...Aimless.  I remember trying to fly away and I couldn't.  I kept trying to ascend above this place but I was having trouble doing so.  That's when I started to really get scared.  I felt these "people" really pleased with my fear.  Finally, some how, I was able to ascend skyward.  As I did, I asked "What is this place?"  And the answer someone told me was "This is the Fields of Sharrot". 

I immediately was back in my body and wrote that down so I would never forget it.  I do not know the proper spelling, but phonetically, it was 'Share-it' or 'Share-ut'.  I tried in vain searching the Internet for 'Fields of Sharrot' using all kinds of spellings but I never did come up with anything.  I just hope I never end up back there.  I didn't feel it was Hell, more like a place in the lower Astral realms where some people go to wallow in their own self-pitty and hopelessness.

Strangely, I haven't had a full conscious out of body adventure in a few years.  They seem to come in spurts.  What I do know is that consciousness does not require the physical body and hence, once we die, our consciousness continues on to the next adventure.

Experience description 667:  

Early in the morning I had woken up to the sound of my wife getting ready for work. I could hear the hair dryer as she was drying her hair in the other bathroom. I was laying there listening to the sound of the hair dryer when suddenly I felt the familiar "vibrations" which I now know are the precursor to Out-of-Body-Experiences and conscious projection (I've had several conscious OBEs throughout my life). 

I decided to use my favorite technique (The "Roll Out" basically imagining myself rocking back and forth, side to side while on my back) and it didn't take long at all. In fact, by the third or fourth "roll", I was out of my body floating like I usually do, slowly to the floor like a balloon that is just starting to lose it's helium. 

Once on the floor, I felt one of the legs of the bed. It was cold metal feeling. I then pushed myself by the window and I noticed I was having a hard time seeing things. I could make out forms and shadows, could see the lump in the bed that I knew was me, but that was about it. I tried to go to my wife to see her, but for some reason, I was unable to make it past the foot of our bed. 

The next thing I remember, I "see" this hole in our ceiling, just to the left of our bed. I instinctively floated towards - and up - through the hole. I remember vividly seeing pieces of wood structure you would expect in the attic, then all of a sudden I am sitting on the top of our roof. We lived in a town home at the time, so the homes were connected. I remember thinking how cool it looked up here. All the pointed rooftops. I looked up and the stars were AMAZING. One cluster in particular seemed alive somehow. It's hard to explain really, but it seemed like it had consciousness. I remember thinking I wish I had a camera. I could also see a very bright star in the Southwest. 

Then, I was back in my body like the snap of a finger. My wife came in the room and I excitedly told her of my experience. I asked her to go to the window, open the curtains and tell me if she could see the stars, especially a bright star in the Southeast. She opened them and said in fact she could! The reason this was a bit shocking to both of us was because it had been raining for days, and all through the night, so I would have normally assumed it was still raining, or at least cloudy. Yet, it was in fact cloudless, just like I saw moments before, in my astral body, on the rooftop.

Any associated medications or substances with the potential to affect the experience?     No      

Was the kind of experience difficult to express in words? No      

At the time of this experience, was there an associated life threatening event?          No      

What was your level of consciousness and alertness during the experience?           Fully alert. Only my vision was a bit dim, especially in the room.

            Was the experience dream like in any way?   Only in the sense that it is entirely unusual for the ego to deal with being outside of the physical. Otherwise it felt just as real as normal waking life.

Did you experience a separation of your consciousness from your body?     Yes     Just a lump on the bed which I knew was me.

What emotions did you feel during the experience?            Elation! I wanted to explore!

Did you hear any unusual sounds or noises?           No, just the continued sound of my wife's hair dryer in the other room.

LOCATION DESCRIPTION:  Did you recognize any familiar locations or any locations from familiar religious teachings or encounter any locations inhabited by incredible or amazing creatures?    No           

Did you see a light?           Uncertain      Just the star cluster that seemed incredibly vibrant and alive.

Did you meet or see any other beings?           No      

Did you experiment while out of the body or in another, altered state? Yes    

I touched one of the bed legs which is steel or aluminum. It was cold to the touch.

Did you observe or hear anything regarding people or events during your experience that could be verified later?          No      

Did you notice how your 5 senses were working, and if so, how were they different?          Yes            Everything seemed normal except my eyesight was a bit fuzzy, especially in the bedroom (it was still dark).

Did you have any sense of altered space or time?   Uncertain      I felt like time was distorted. When I was on the rooftop, it felt like I was up there for a few hours or a just few seconds all at once. Very hard to explain.

Did you have a sense of knowing, special knowledge, universal order and/or purpose?    Uncertain            I would say yes, but there was no specific knowledge imparted in me that I am aware of, yet the cluster of stars seemed to have intelligence which made me realize we are all part of the same thing and connected (GOD).

Did you reach a boundary or limiting physical structure?             No      

Did you become aware of future events?       No      

Were you involved in or aware of a decision regarding your return to the body?       No      

Did you have any psychic, paranormal or other special gifts following the experience that you did not have prior to the experience?   No      

Did you have any changes of attitudes or beliefs following the experience?   No      

How has the experience affected your relationships? Daily life? Religious practices? Career choices?       I'm open with my wife and my friends about my experiences. They know I am drawn towards spiritual and metaphysics. I'm not one to shy away from them because I'm afraid of ridicule. I'm proud of them and attempt to get others to learn more about their true natures.

Has your life changed specifically as a result of your experience?         No      

Have you shared this experience with others?         Yes     My wife believes me, and my friends are mixed. Some believe, some are interested, while others don't know what to think at best, or think I'm weird at worst.

What emotions did you experience following your experience?  Elation. Joy. Wonder. Awe. Peace.

What was the best and worst part of your experience?      The best was sitting on the roof looking at the stars KNOWING I wasn't dreaming, but was in fact AWAKE, fully CONSCIOUS and OUT OF MY BODY. The worst was not being able to go outside of the bedroom to see my wife blow-drying her hair. For some reason I couldn't get myself to project there.

Is there anything else you would like to add concerning the experience?        This was one of my latest OBEs, but I've had at least 5 others that were fully conscious, and many others were I was semi-conscious.

Following the experience, have you had any other events in your life, medications or substances which reproduced any part of the experience?         No      

Did the questions asked and information you provided accurately and comprehensively describe your experience?               Yes