I've been practicing lucid dreaming alot these past few weeks. I've had more these past 2 weeks (maybe 5 or so) then I can remember ever having. Dream journal is a big part, it's helped me remember then alot more in the morning. I've have good results with the wake back to bed method, waking up after like 5-6 hours of sleep...staying up and focusing on lucid dreaming/reading about it...then when I go back to sleep just repeating "I am entering a lucid dream" or something along those lines, and visualizing the dream i become lucid in as I fall asleep. Its been a WILD a couple of the times, which is pretty weird. Its like Im still partly aware of myself outside the dream and have to focus to totally merge. Rubbing my palms, saying "I am becoming more Lucid now", and spinning inside the dream help when your on the verge of waking.
My friend has some calea coming in soon so Im excited to try that. I've been experimenting with Damiana, passionflower, mugwort, wild lettuce, valerian, and am getting mixed results. Not really sure which enhance the best out of those. But meditation and a clear mind helps a lot.

Lucid Dreaming is amazing... some of the most profound experiences available to people are to be had through its focused use.

Some people claim to prefer entheogens or meditation, but seeing as you can do both of those things while lucid dreaming, I would say dreaming actually encompasses all of that and more.

As for the original posters who talked of becoming bored, or "playing chess with yourself," this can surely occur if you are too focused on lucidity for lucidity's sake and don't allow yourself to have normal dreams at all. One need not be rigid or clinical about dreaming. It often takes a passive openness to receive keys to the more advanced gates of dreaming. Being too controling or yang, can cause you to become stuck in a cul de sac of your own mental masturbation.

The fact is, that very few of the people I know who get bored with lucid dreaming have ever even broken out of the low level fantasy gratification stages. Lucid dreaming can be so much more than just flying around, manifesting things and control dream characters. At higher levels, you can meet other dreamers, dream masters, ascended beings, astral project into this world, travel to distant alien worlds, find answers and solutions to waking life issues, learn material you never knew (including actual studying), practice techniques, dialate time, channel novelty from dream worlds into this one etc. etc. I was rather shocked to learn that after decades of kung fu practice, my sifu informed me that "dream work" was considered the highest level of our kung fu systems. He actually did the majority of his practicing kung fu, pa kua, hsing i & chi kung while lucid dreaming.

If these type of high level lucid dreaming experiences could bore you, than I have no idea what could excite you. Simply being able to experience years of existence in the course of a matter of seconds is enough of an incentive I would think. Qualitatively, an advanced dreamer can be 10's of thousands of years old... or more.

The trick is to get out of your subconscious created dreamlands and explore realms where other sentient beings are also travelling. Once you have met a dream wizard or a buddha, you will never be able to doubt that they are not merely your projections and creations. In fact, it becomes rather easy to differentiate between your creations and other conscious beings.

I have been able to meet with, and joint lucid dream with, friends here in "reality" where we both unequivocally were in the same place and both remembered all of what we did together. That alone negates any chess with yourself feelings.

I won't drone on and on. I will simply wrap this up by saying that lucid dreaming IS difficult. Not necessarily to just realize you are dreaming, or even to develop the willpower to manifest, levitate and teleport etc... but to get to the point where you can design universes and converse with cosmic intelligences takes practice. We in the west want instant gratification. My sifu often reminded me that it takes 20 years to become a beginner... and after more than 20 years of practice, I can confirm that. This is despite having had very intense experiences all along the way.

Wow, very intriguing post hyperspace fool. Any insights or tips to one practicing lucid dreaming?

I have come to feel that we as human beings, have many challenges for our perceptual cognition, understanding and for lack of a better way of saying it, our need to find FREEDOM. The juxtaposition between our ego's desire to gratify itself and our soul's need to transcend the ego... we are in a Cosmic pickle from the day we first draw breath.

In my own small experience, I have noted that to be a well rounded humanoid, we need to unite the contrasting hemispheres of our physical brain. This is the goal of any practitioner of meditation or contemplation. I humbly suggest that when we see the value in the use of entheogens, the mental training involved with regular meditation (sitting and/or moving methods), cultivation of reasoning intelligence and the exploration of our deepest dreams... we are bound for a more unified mind and spirit.

I first embraced the practice, yes practice, of lucid dreaming when I was a naive teenager. I was wildly inspired by the writings of Carlos Castaneda. I began this journey 33 years ago and have come to surrender to the fundamental truth, in terms of lucid dreaming, that when I attempt to exert control... my capacity to actualize awareness and freedom of movement are most hindered. Every time I would find myself awakened within a dream, I would awaken back into this "reality".

In other words, if I applied that very same approach of consciousness, which I routinely project (as a 21st century person), I would lose the plasticity and endless POSSIBILITIES which are offered to our imagination, on the "other side". Such expansive states of hyper lucidity bring life to the Vedic proclamation: "As you think so you become." I might add, "As you dream, so too, you become."

Both conscious and unconscious aspects of the self utilize willpower. The supraconsciuos, on the other hand, gives a new dimension to the concept of individual will and our mindful intent. Whose will immerses into the Oneness? And whose mind merges into the Unified Grid? :idea:

All I am saying is that we should ideally use a number of head-sets to accomplish the seeming purpose of our existence. That being, to find the core essence in all of our varied experiences. I suggest that if one is open to the idea, a synthesis of half a dozen or so elements can ignite a period of great growth. These primary aspects of consciousness are not some unattainable mystery, they are the symbiosis of rationale, imagination and intuition. I have personally found great benefit form these aspects and for myself they are: meditation, contemplation, self inquiry, creative visualization, lucid dreaming and the respectful use of entheogens/psychedelics.

I don't really feel that only exploring one of these aspects can yield the best results (in terms of finding the interconnection of all levels of awareness). I am open to all of these really fascinating ideas expressed in this thread. Isn't is a wonderful opportunity we face? We are called to voyage beyond the known and surrender to the unknown. Ultimately, I suspect we will all be learning the lessons we each seemingly need to learn, whichever path we choose to tread.



Ditto. I have been drawn to flying, while dreaming, since I was a little kid. Isn't it an intriguing thing to want to take wing and rise above the force of gravity? I feel that we each long to fly because we have some deep remembrance of flying through alternate levels of consciousness, as purely thought-energy based entities. Long before we grew material bodies. Mind is an open expanse of possibility.



Peace, love & light

Rising Spirit, thank you so much for sharing that. Very insightful. Your experience helps connect realizations I have come to. Namaste

I used to try to control my dreams but I don't anymore. I prefer to stay in an almost lucid state. What I mean is I can experience the dream as if it were a lucid dream, but I don't actually do anything to alter the flow...I watch it like a movie but I'm aware it's a dream. The only time I actively participate is when I meet friends in my dreams. It's interesting to talk with them, ask them questions, and see what my brain comes up with as answers.

I remember when I was little I would always try to tell people that they were in my dream. For instance, when I experimented with flying, I tried to show my friends / family in the dream. I would tell them it's a dream and that they could do anything they wanted. The usual response was confusion and ignoring me flying around.

Just last night I dreamed that my old college friend was living with me in student housing again. I realized it was a dream because he is long gone by now in some distant city. I asked my friend, "what made you come back to university?". He replied:

"Well, I didn't finish my program because the university went into secrecy. Because of that I couldn't pay and had to leave. They are still in secrecy but I found a different way to pay."

Absolute gibberish but the general idea is there.

Well, without scribing a treatise on dreaming here (there are plenty out there if you're really interested http://lucidology.com & http://lucidity.com have a ton of FREE resources) I would recommend starting with dream recall. Once you can remember 10 dreams every morning upon awakening, it is likely that one or more of them will be lucid.

I believe that everyone lucid dreams, it is just that most people don't remember much of what they dreamt prior to the last dream they had before awakening. Thus, most people are left with a vague wash of hypnogogic imagery and one or two events that stuck out for whatever reason. Should something in your waking life remind you of a dream you have had, you are likely to experience Deja Vu, or spontaneously recall the dream. This is inefficient. The main methodology for increased dream recall is to demonstrate interest to your subconscious... usually through keeping a dream journal, but there are other ways.

Lucidity is not a state, but a spectrum. No one is ever completely un-lucid unless they are completely unconscious. Likewise, no one is ever totally lucid... this is because you can ALWAYS get more lucid. That said, there is an accepted threshold of lucidity that is simply recognizing that you are, in fact, dreaming. You don't have to do anything with that information to be having a lucid dream. That said, there are only an infinite number of really cool things you can do while lucid.

As for how hard it is... well, it is. Most of the worthwhile things you have ever learned were difficult. Think of how much time it took you to learn to walk or speak. Chances are, you can still learn more in both of those fields even today. In terms of difficulty, dreaming is to walking, as walking is to lying in a crib.

The real trick to lucidity is being able to walk a delicate tightrope between enthusiasm and indifference... you have to be interested enough to not fall back into normal dreaming, but not so excited that you wake up. It is a very tricky balance, but like riding a bike... it can become second nature. You can solidify a dream that seems to be slipping away by spinning in circles. No idea why that works, but it usually does. Looking at your hands (the clichè) also helps to increase lucidity.

I recommend that interested people go to one or both of the two sites I linked to above, and learn to do some variation of the wake up & go back to sleep method. Setting specialized alarms and whatnot can also help a lot.

My biggest tip, though, has to be (some of you won't like this one):

Stop smoking weed.

I know.

It is what it is...

i think its endlessly fascinating how, without any conscious effort from ourselves, are minds have the ability to tap into and/or create convincingly real worlds in our heads where literally anything is possible.. And we spend literally about a third of our life in this altered state of consciousness! (although with this crowd i'm sure that a 'time spent in a ASC' statistic would be significantly HIGHer)

i've been lucid dreaming for years and i actually think marijuana can help stimulate vivid/ridiculous dreams, at least in my experience, when used in a certain way. If i'm smoking everyday, multiple times a day, i most likely won't remember that many dreams at all- they will usually be deep, however its hard to bring many back. On the other hand, if i instead only smoke sporadically, perhaps every few days or less- especially in high doses- i think it can definitely help increase the chance of lucid dreaming in the following days. but thats pretty subjective.. my good friend who smokes multiple times a day almost everyday has lucid dreams pretty often. so i guess thats different for everyone. me and him have also had, at times when we were hundreds of miles apart for days, extremely similar dreams about each other on the same night.

when i first started lucid dreaming i often would get so excited i was dreaming that my heartrate would skyrocket and i'd wake up. I found it helps a lot to focus on slow and deep breathes, and to sit down, close my eyes, and meditate for a while whilst 'in there', before i can begin 'plundering the palace'. usually this leads to extremely euphoric experiences that are extremely tryptamine like. a few times i've found myself lucid in the dream while simultaneously aware of my motionless sleeping body back on my bed. this is very enjoyable and usually things then get very tripping and the dream either falls apart and i start to wake up, or i eventually loose the awareness of my sleeping body after a while and continue dreaming.

Most of my best dreams involve really strange situations that unfold like some bizarre story made up in the head of a cosmic being with a weird sense of humor.. like 'oh! i wonder what ridiculous situation i can throw this little monkey into today! muahaha!!' many lucid dreams though i find myself doing things many here have said already like flying towards the moon or the stars, copulating with humans or aliens/trippy beings (odd but amazing). in some there are beings which are hard to focus on without getting lost into, who encourage me to create things in that space. i've had some where i begin creating objects to the point where it is like my imagination begins to fully exteriorize itself into the alchemical gold in front of my eyes. these ones can get seriously alarming as this thing just spins and grows and grows - so usually they don't last too long before my memory fails to recall it or i wake up.. but they are some of the best experiences i've ever had

some things that seem to help lead me to lucid dreams/sleep paralysis/holy crap a flying dragonshark shooting flames at my lazer shooting barn spaceship: i can't emphasis how important it is, as others stated, to just go with the flow of the dream and not exert to much effort to do what you want to do. during the dream its like i am already deep in a part of myself that is creating/taking care of everything going on- so i mine as well just go with it. most of my best lucid dreams are where i just let it unfold as it wants to

yoga/meditation (especially before going to sleep). any dose of melatonin and/or harmalas taken before sleep (or other psychedelics) definitely help to increase my dream activity. And keep a dream journal!- this has been one of the most influential elements in cultivating not only dream awareness, but awareness of my subconscious/unconscious processes, and general all around weirdness, in 'waking life'. it serves to build a bridge between some aspects of your psyche that are very far removed from the waking-rational mind.

edit: 888th post woop woop! 3 infinite and beyond!

Yeah, @universecannon.

SWIM dreamed frequently and lucidly all during his lengthy and regular use of MJ. However, when he stopped, or took lengthy pauses... the dream recall went through the roof. This could be attributed to his rarely being able to use MJ "sporadically" as you say. He tended to either be on or off with it. Sure, he could puff once socially and then not get back into the swing of it. But he finds this plant too alluring and comfortable to be moderate with. It is like a fluffy goose down duvet, if you have it on your bed, you will use it... and it will probably be a bit harder to get out of bed in the morning than if you have a scratchy wool blanket. (perhaps this analogy only works if you are also allergic to goose down)

Anyway.

If you can solidify your awareness in a dream, then you can use your willpower with impunity. If it is not the least bit startling to you that you are dreaming, you won't get so excited that you wake up. Concurrently, if you can use your dream intent to do fascinating things, or at least get into dream worlds where fascinating things are occurring... you won't lose your lucidity.

A big tip for people who can LD... don't fly, run, walk, swim or otherwise conventionally travel somewhere if you actually want to get there. Teleport! This is generally the only way to make sure that you will actually get where you intend to go. As you attempt to fly to, say a dream monastery in the Himalayas to meet with some dream masters... you will inevitably see things along the way that will suck you in and, either sap your lucidity until you forget you are dreaming, or cause you to forget where you wanted to go in the first place. Once skilled a bit, you can simply blink your eyes or clap your hands to go anywhere you might be able to imagine clearly. If you are not at this level yet, you can use any doorway, gate, portal, mirror, space between two trees or whatever to become a teleportation vehicle. Simple touch the door jamb (or equivalent) intend that this portal will take you to your specific location, person, place, time, universe whatever... and then step through confident that you will be there on the other side. Surprisingly easy, and effective. Without this tool, it would be difficult if not impossible to navigate dreamlands effectively enough to do anything other than play around in whatever dreams you happen to find yourself in.

I can't stress this enough... not all dreams are created by YOUR subconscious. It is very possible to travel to consensual realities, hyperspace, this reality, or any other place that may or may not exist. As fascinating as your subconscious is... it is only a tiny fraction of a miniscule and insignificant corner of the dreamlands.

I remember I used to have lots of lucid dreams and wonder what changed. It is my favourite way of exploring consciousness and I miss it.
I have had very poor dream recall for about 4 years now and I've had no true lucid dreams in that time.
My sleep-wake rythm is heavily disturbed and irregulair, but it has also been that way when I did have lots of lucid dreams and had great dream recall.
I do remember that in that Lucid dream period I was much more excited about life and active, having fun & being adventurous than the 4 years of poor
dream recall following that period.

Somehow my nocturnal awareness is lower than it used to be in that lucid dream period. I also remember having alot more mental & physical energy and a much calmer mind back then.
I wonder what could have changed this and how I may change this back. Any thoughts?

Wow, you were not kidding.

I quit smoking weed for two days and last night I remembered more of my dreams than I have in years.

In my dream last night I was sharing DMT with Cameron Diaz, Dave Mustaine from Megadeth and Maynard from Tool. Very trippy shit indeed.

I think I'm gonna lay off for awhile longer and see where this goes.

I had this bad relationship with my father, who was short tempered and not good with children. This is around the time I was six. We had this room in our house that he spent a lot of time in, and it had this big plush chair with square angles to it. Over this chair was thrown a blanket with an image of a lion in tan and brown.

I had this dream where I was in the hallway next to the room and I needed to get to the front door, which was across the room. I had to go into the room to leave the place I did not want to be, but the reason I did not want to be in this place was because in that same room was this dangerous lion. It was unpredictable and terrifying, it was in many ways my father and the blanket on the chair combined in dream into a single horrific obstacle.

I had this dream many times over a year, maybe 30 times, and it was always so realistic. But I started to recognize it, while I was in it. I thought to myself "I have been here before, and it was in a dream, so I must be dreaming"

As I began to understand it was a dream the lion became less and less frightening, the idea of going outside through the room didn't scare me anymore. I knew that the lion was not real, that none of it was.

Then over time I would have the same dream in terms of how it started, but knowing that I was dreaming allowed me to explore the dream, to do what I wanted.

I learned to do things in my dream, not god like things but I could fly, fight, converse with dream figures who claimed to be dead people meant to teach me, travel in strange ways like instant travel, etc. I have had many adventures and travels, interactions and experiences in dream.

Lately my dreams have had songs in them, songs I have not heard outside of them, often with lyrics. I don't dream as much anymore, but when i do it is a combination of my dream self and a specific dream environment that i can interact with in an amazing way, but i do not choose the form it takes in any determined way.

I am not sure if what I experience can be considered lucid, but it is very interesting.
One of the odd things... i have been lost and unable to navigate many many times in dreams because i flew too high and too far and was not able to navigate by city(s) below. When i would go back down to the street level i found find myself in an unfamiliar area, like a neighborhood or industrial park and I often have to wake myself up to get back to my body.


Once I was in the Andes and flew down a canyon all the way to the sea and then up the coast and found a city made of light where everyone wore white clothing and most of the people were brown people. It had strange buildings and architecture and was built atop some stone cliffs overlooking the sea. The only way to get to it was to fly as I had done, you could not visit it or see it in a physical sense.

Once i went to this giant tree where there were hidden stairs inside the trunk and on the stairs was a thin waterfall on either side, it was always running. I did not fly to this location, I had an appointment. At the top of the stairs was a door, on the other side of the door was a waiting room, with a secretary! She confirmed that I was to consult the "doctor" but it was part of the dream that the doctor was like a spirit, but not a dead person or one that lived as we do, he was adjacent to but not part of our world, he was also like a seer or sorcerer or something like that. He presented to me a box, inside it were two swords, he then told me that I was going to have to choose one of them, it was clear that I could not choose both.

I sensed them and one of them looked very much like european sword, it was inside a black scabbard. The other one was naked and was a katana. The purpose of the appointment had to do with a real life friend I had who had become deeply involved in the occult and things had started getting strange. I have always had these strange experiences where I can feel people I know in odd ways, including if they are nearby. I had this feeling a few months back for example that my girlfriends ex was at the house and i told her he was here, a moment later he knocked on the door. This friend of mine who was involved in the occult could drive to my house in the middle of the night and I would know she arrived and wake up and go meet with her. Other things like this have happened for most of my life, and I can see auras if i want to but usually ignore them, oddly I've been able to show them to many people too and think that everyone sees them all the time.

Anyway I was considering getting involved in the occult, as in ritual magick, which I had been studying but not practicing for many years. In the dream with the doctor in the tree my appointment was about a path to follow, and the sword in the scabbard represented ritual magick and it gave me a very uncomfortable feeling. The katana was more like the warriors path, but not the same as that, it did not hide the edge, being a naked blade in the dream and it did not give an uncomfortable feeling. In the dream it was known that the swords were symbols and I was not meant to choose one there, rather that i had a choice in life, so to speak and that I needed to consider this in a different way. I knew that the sword in the black scabbard, the ritual magick path, was not for me.

I woke up and knew that my path would soon part from that of my occult involved friend, and it did through circumstance alone.

So much of the doctor in the tree dream was lucid and realistic, but it was not a lucid dream per say.

I have had multiple dreams where people I did not know appeared to me, sometimes took me places but often just stayed with me, and they taught me, they also identified themselves as dead people, in one case a person taught me who said he was named something a lot like Immanuel (that sounds close but is not the same, there are 2 glottal stops and a slightly different vowel sounds), but that we called him Noah. Sometimes it was not just one person but many. they all wore white clothing, often robe like, and they all had brown skin, including 'noah'

This was all while I was fairly young.

My wife had dreams where a black winged angel appears to her and teachers her, not wings with feathers... and 'he' does not flap them to fly. he appeared over and over across many years. He told her strange things, that she was like an angel too, that she had a throne and a position and that she would return to it at some point, but it wasn't like she was god or gods wife or anything like that. He told her about her and I, and our children, that she was meant to prepare me (for what?) and to be a mother to our children, who were special, that these things were part of her mission in life, but that there was more as well.

Dreams can be strange indeed.

I try not to kid too much.

@AlbertKLloyd

A pleasure to make your acquaintance.

It sounds to me like you are an accomplished dreamer who might only be remembering a tiny fraction of your dreamworld activities. (Not to worry, nobody remembers even the smallest fraction) I would consider much of what you described in the purveiw of Lucid Dreaming. The fact that you may not remember being extremely active with your lucidity doesn't diminish anything. Flying, (actually doing anything volitional) is already an indication that you realize you are dreaming on some level.

Going to Dream Doctors is actually already fairly advanced stuff. To be able to make such an appointment and keep it says everything.

Anyway, I wish you well on your journey. Perhaps you might consider actively practicing the art of dreaming at some point. I would if I were you. Approach it like a discipline and hone your dream awareness. You will be surprised at what you can accomplish with your nascent willpower.

Blessings.

Thank you for your consideration.

Dreams did teach me some stuff about moving energy with mind that has worked out in waking states.
Basically the energy of intent is strong stuff, and it can be expressed through deliberate use.

For sure

Was just going to add to this and say that although some people are able to attain lucidity while smoking weed every night, it does significantly reduce time spent in REM sleep and increase deep sleep duration. So one would certainly have less opportunities to become lucid while smoking weed. On the plus side upon cessation of use you can enjoy REM rebound where you'll get way more REM sleep than you normally would! Perhaps alternating use of weed could actually be used to boost lucidity.


I've found this an absolutely fantastic thread and a highly informative read. Hyperspace fool I find your experiences and advice of tremendous value, being that I am recently getting into lucid dreaming again after a 5 year break. I am certainly going to experiment with galantamine and nicotine patches as well as lucidity I always found very hard to attain through mental focus alone, and had to rely on altered sleep states (such as that from weed withdrawal).

Interesting concept about the alternating use. I won't put it to the test, but I'd be interested in anecdotal reports.

You can try dream herbs, galantamine etc. and might get decent results. Calea and Silene Capensis both have noticeable effects. People also report good results from nicotine. I don't usually bother with these things. Of course, I have no problems getting lucid.

I would try a dream alarm method first before resulting to the patch. You can do the old wake up a few hours too early and go back to sleep a minute after the fog clears (but before you get completely wide awake). Another one is to have a moving alarm sound at larger and smaller intervals that your subconscious won't be able to anticipate. You can get a computer program to do this.

Maybe trying WILD methods would be superior to the going lucid from a normal dream method for you.

Lastly, doing dream checks regularly throughout the day begins to work wonders in your dreams after a period of time. If you get in the habit of asking yourself if you are dreaming during your day and testing it (by flipping a light switch or looking at your hands), then you will eventually do it in a dream... and you will nearly be guaranteed to go lucid. You may not be able to prove you aren't dreaming, but you certainly CAN prove it when you are.

Good luck.

Thanks for the tips I've started working on them already and managed to perform a reality test in my dream last night - unfortunately I didn't manage to recognise I was dreaming but next time!


I was wondering from your experiences in lucid dreaming do you also practice astral projection? I am curious to know how this is different from lucid dreaming as does one not go to the astral world when they dream? I am currently reading a book on the astral world by CW Leadbeater and he states there are 7 levels to the astral world. Might it be assumed that dreaming tends to take place on one level whereas astral projection allows one to travel between these levels? I am fascinated by astral projection and would love to learn more about it.

Once you have read a dozen or more books concerning astral projection and OOBE's you will see that the terms are not always defined the same way. Different people mean differnt things when they talk about astral projection.

In my experience, there are 4 kinds of OOBEs that I am familiar with.

Lucid Dreaming is the recognizing that you are dreaming (and thus not in a material body) in any dream world/ This includes a lot of what people call astral projection, as those so-called "astral worlds" are still dream worlds as far as I can tell. Many people have fine distinctions and terminologies... even grand schemata for various realms. I don't debate these things, but for me, qualitatively there is little difference between the experience of being out of your body in any number of the myriad realms that one can go with one's dream body.

I do differentiate, however, between dreaming and being Out Of Body here in this specific material world. When one is WILDing or using other OOBE techniques it is possible to chose to or simply find yourself out of your body in a ghostly form here. This is often (but not always) accompanied by the actual sight of your physical body lying in bed. In order to make sure one is not simply in a dream that resembles one's "real" life, it is possible to go and observe something that one is NOT aware of in one's reality, but could be checked on later as a proof that one's vision was real. It is not dificult to find something that will work as a proof. (privacy issues must be addressed by your own sense of morality) Once you have had a few OOBE's here in this world, you can distinguish between them and dreaming fairly easily and without testing. The ghost body effect is generally not present in normal dreaming. One CAN will themselves through walls and whatnot in a dream, but one's dream body usually feels and appears more like a "real" body and it is not always apparent that one is outside of one's body at all... even when one knows that they are dreaming.

The other two types of OOBE's that I feel require distinction are entheogenic experiences and meditative or yogic expeiences. There is a fair amount of overlap in these 4 types, but they are different enough to warrant their own categories. With entheogenic and meditative OOBE's often one is still aware of one's physical body while having these extra sensory experiences as well. Even when one goes so far out that one has no more awareness of one's body, there are still characteristic differences in the experience.

Entheogenic travelling is usually accompanied by visual hallucinations and patterns that are characteristic of the substance ingested. Spice, for example, has its unique and breathtaking visual style. Also, the realms visited are more specific to the substance. Once spice has shown you a hyperspatial realm, though... you CAN go and visit there with Lucid Dreaming. As I mentioned before, you can even smoalk spice in a dream. But simply intending to go to hyperspace and teleporting there can work on its own.

Meditative or Yogic OOBEs tend to be blissful and spiritual... colored by one's preconceptions of the method used. They are not usually like the ghost body OOBEs but rather more of an expansion of consciousness to include areas outside of your body. It can be 360 degree vision. It can be a bubble of consciousness that includes a few square blocks... or miles. It can be a type of universal omnipresence even. Often it feels subjectively like one's mind has expanded and one is not travelling in any specific body. Though, having said that, meditation can lead into any of the other types of OOBE as well.

As I said, there is considerable overlap in these categories. Especially if you combine the techniques together. Meditating while tripping, and then applying WILD techniques on top can literally give you access to any level of existence (past, present, future, pre-causal, post eschaton, archetypal, abstract, fantastic... whatever).

Anyway. That is just my 2 trading beads. If anyone's definitions or maps of extra-corporal realms makes sense to you or resonates with you... go with it. Once you have enough experience of your own, it won't matter what anyone else has to say about it anyhow.