Thread: How to be reasonably certain you are having an OBE rather than a lucid dream?

Originally Posted by VinceField

It sounds to me like you are the one being fooled! Why? Because you are completely ruling out the possibility of these experiences being genuine without sufficient evidence to do so. The truely intellectually honest approach would be to accept the possibility that they are genuine, as there is absolutely no proof that they are not, and there is enough subjective corroborative evidence to suggest that OBEs are different in some way than LDs, therefore placing an acceptible level of doubt on the notion that OBEs and LDs are the same exact phenomenon. You are essentially guilty of the very same wishful thinking as those you are speaking out against.

The question pointed out in this thread is "How to be reasonably certain you are having an OBE rather than a lucid dream?" , not "is there a chance that it could be possible".

my answer to the second question would be yes, maybe.
My answer the the question of this thread is that I don't think the subjective certitudes are something you can trust with any doubt as the brain is absolutely able to produce these dreamlike experiences called OBE or LD, as well as it can also produce a scary and real like Sleep Paralysis scenarios.
It's really not an issue for the brain to make you live a fucking real like experience and making you persuaded that what you are living is the real shit.

yes, you can say that " there is absolutely no proof that they are not (legit)", as you can say that there is absolutely no proof that there is not an enormous alien spaceship behind the hidden side of the sun, but this kind of argument has no real value.
That's the kind of tricky argument you can use when you want to defend a belief, presenting it as a fact but without the beginning of a proof that it is a fact.
So you attack the opposed position telling them that they can not prove that the magical thing you believe in is not legit.

OBE and LD have a lot more in common that what you suggest.
One of the differences you pointed out is the impossibility of changing environment.
I had OBEs where I could change the environment, and I had a LD where I couldn't change anything.
So this is not big difference between both.

When You try a WILD, sometimes it starts like a classical LD, but if you are too focused on your body sensations for example(real body or dream body), you have chances to live an OBE, but a part from the scenario, the context, the expectation, I don't see a serious reason to be certain that OBE are something else than a Dream scenario, except this tricky certitude you have when you live it, which could be an hallucinated feeling.

What I wanted to add is that some people think that if they can bring back some checkable objective data from their OBE, then this is the evidence that OBE is a real out of body travel of the self.
But if you accept the existence of ESP, like telepathy, remote viewing (let's be opened mind) then you can not pretend anymore that the OBE must be real if such data are reported, cause you still can see the OBE as a special dream where checkable Data from the real world are projected in the dream scenario.

So, to be certain that OBE/AP are something else than some special kind of dream/LD, you can think it, you can be persuaded of it, but for me this is far from being an objective fact.