[Rocket Surgery]

I believe I astral project every night. I believe that most people do. The difference is not who can and who cannot. It's who is skilled at becoming conscious of being out of the body, and who remains in their safe coccoon of the dream or even lucid dream.

Personally, for reasons still unknown to my waking ego, I choose to remain in that safe coccoon. Only twice in my life have I caught myself astral projecting. Both instances happened during dreams that became lucid dreams. Both instances were years before I had researched such phenomena.

The first time, I became lucid within a normal dream cycle. The lucid dream lasted only a few moments, and then the dream universe was "pulled away" much as if a blanket had been swiftly pulled from over my head. I felt completely awake and physical with all my memories and current personality intact. Only problem was... I was standing on a deserted beach somewhere on the east coast. I noticed I was completely naked, but didn't really care because I was much too fascinated to have woken up in a place other than my bed.

The scientist in me took over, and feeling my time was limited, I investigated every aspect of my surroundings. I took note that I could see and feel the breeze and smell the salt in the air. I bent down and grabbed a fistful of sand, and marvelled at how it felt exactly like sand and behaved as sand should as I allowed it to pour through my fingers. I tried to conjure up other people as one can do in a lucid dream, but nobody popped into being. Nothing I tried to do to change my surroundings with thought had any effect on this beautiful and real beach setting. I woke up after about a minute in my bed and, as you can see, remembered every detail of the experience. No dream, lucid or otherwise, has ever felt to me EXACTLY like my waking existence as did that experience.

The other OBE I had happened the same way. I went from dream to lucid dream, to the "blanket pulled away" sensation. This time, I found myself flying low over a wet paved road. I existed as a bodiless POV, about bumper level of a car, and was accelerating up a freeway onramp onto a freeway. Sounds like a weird place to wake up, but I did feel completely awake and not in a limited dream consciousness. Other than my location, nothing odd took place, and the experience lasted less than 30 seconds. Next thing I knew, I was opening my physical eyes back in my own bed.

I have tried to attain this state on purpose, but have been unable to completely separate from my body while awake. The best I can do so far is achieve a lucid dream state, upon which I have trouble staying in the dream very long. When I wake up from that state, sometimes my "astral" body feels that it has not yet "snapped" back into place within the physical, and there is an initially frightening sensation of paralysis.

I remember first feeling this paralysis as a child, and would panic as I struggled to make my body fully awake. I would roll back and forth hoping to roll out of bed, thinking that hitting the floor would jar me into full wakefulness. Many years later, after reading the Robert Monroe books, I realized that what I was experiencing was actually separation from my physical body. I even rolled out and lightly bounced and rolled like a log in water just as he described doing in his early experiences. I just wrote it off to a bad dream.

But now that I know what the paralysis is, I experment with it and have been able to detach all my limbs, but not my torso from the physical. It's weird because many times my eyes are open, and I can see, say, my arm lying there, bent and still, but I can feel my arm moving to and fro as I'm willing it to do, even below and through the mattress!

Once, I achieved this state with my first wife sleeping facing me just inches away. I decided to see if I could cause her to stir or react by tickling her ear with my "astral" hand. I had to estimate distance since I could not see my astral hand, just feel it. However, she did not stir after several seconds of tickling. I was about to give up, when I noticed something unexpected: some of her hair that fell around her ear was moving! Not like it was being pushed by an invisible finger, but in the way that hair moves when you place a brush charged with static electricity next to it. For me, this was the greatest proof of existence beyond the physical that I had ever experienced.

Then I pulled my hand away from her, and she did stir and woke up. And that made me snap back into sync with my body, and I told her what had just happened.

I've been told my an "expert" that I would have more waking OBE's when I overcame my fear of being outside the body. So far, hasn't happened, so I guess now that I know what happened, I'm too chicken to be aware of it. Sort of like those people who want general anaesthesia for a teeth cleaning. "Just put me out. I don't wanna know!"