To All,

This is a excerpt from a thread in the Dreaming Section.  I thought it might be of interest to many of you.

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Hi Jeff!

Last week, I kind of followed your interesting discussion on "earth bound exp." as opposed to "dream scape exp.". I feel the way you do, i.e. LDs feel like a dream world, even if the scenery looks like the physical world, but during OOB I feel like I am in the physical world. My OBEs always start in my bed where I exercise, LDs start within a dream at any location. Maybe you read that I never was able to leave my bedroom during OOB, very often not even the position of my physical body, but I started to explore what I could reach. When I was able to see (only sometimes I was blind), the surroundings looked just normal, book shelves, the pattern of the sheets, etc. But there are so many weird things that I cannot make sense of. (Ill use the abbreviations a- for astral and p- for physical, okay?)
When I lifted my a-arms, they were invisible. Sometimes I could see my p-arms still lying there. In two instances, I got out of my p-body completely. In one I was blind, in the other I could see, but looking back, I couldnt see my p-body, but only the impression on the pillow. When I was "damned" to stay where my p-body was, I started to touch it with my a-arms. With my a-eyes open I touched closed eyes (weird feeling, because there is no feedback from the p-body. The feeling is in the a-fingertips only). Now, does this mean that I can touch the physical world? I dont know. Also, to lift my a-arms, I usually have to get through the cover, because my p-arms lie under it. I never had a problem to get through, maybe because I never thought about it during OOB. During this blind OBE, I left my bed and walked towards the bedroom door. I found it where it was supposed to be, but it was solid though I expected to be able to reach through it.

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Susanne,

Very interesting what you described about your OB experiences.  I have experienced some of the same things.  However I have never felt I was "out" but unable to see.  Although several people on the forum have described this, so it seems to be a common exp.

The main focus of your post seemed to be the question of seeing and/or touching the physical world as opposed to the astral/dream world.   Again I have had some of the same experiences, both of being able to touch and not able to touch what was seemingly the physical world.  In my close to body, OB experiencs I too have touched a wall and it felt solid.  And I have reached up with my arms and felt my hands touching together, but I couldn't see them, I could see my body still lying there arms under the covers undisturbed.  So in this case we seem to have physical eyesight, but astral "feel".  And that may be the simple explainatioin of the experience.

When we exp. the seeming physical world as solid, (while OB) it could be that what we're reallying feeling is the astral or etheric counterpart of the physical world. (Which seems most likely to me.)  This would explain why sometimes it would be solid and sometimes not.  The etheric or astral worlds are much more plastic, and mold to our expectations.  Like in a LD, sometimes I can usually move though objects if I want to, but the rest of the time they are solid.

An explaination of looking back at your body and not seeing your physical body, but only the impression in the pillow, could be that to actually see the physical world from the OB state requrires a kind of reverse clairvoyance, which may not always be available to you.  Since you could "touch" your p. body durring that exp. it suggest again that you may have had the physical "touch" clairvoyance, but not sight.

Anyway that's my thoughts... Thanks for sharing your experiences.

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