Out of Body/ See clearly garbled words/Photoreading

[ArthurHung]

Intense experience.

As I described in another post (just yesterday) I recently bought the photoreading set that Steve keeps recommending and found it wonderful. 80% through the course I felt exhausted and decided to stop the program and sleep. I had previously learned about lucid dreaming/ out of body experiences/astral experiences through hunatrainer.com (a site I learned through one of Steve's posts about the blog's he reads for spiritual growth) and though I experimented with that through the hunatrainers techniques, I probably only accomplished 1% of an astral projection (not because his technique was bad, but because I was a newbie).

(Btw, I am using lucid dreaming/out of body experinces/ astral experinces interchangeably because right now I cannot tell the difference between the
3. In fact, I think they are one and the same. I don't know why but in my head right now I am certain that they are.)

Like I said I was exhausted after completeing 6 out of the 8 photoreading CDs, so I decided to nap for 10 minutes. I was completely aware that I was riding on a really large rhinocerous (spelling), a dinosaur sized rhinocerous! About 2 elephants combined was how big it was, but I wasn't afraid, and suprisingly, I had no clue that it was actually a dream. I was in an intensely curious state of mind, not exhaustion and when I woke up, I realized only then I had fallen asleep! Maybe I experienced a polyphasic experience? I don't know.

Then, I slept again to see if I could achieve similar results. But what happened was I saw very clearly a page that looked like the photoreading book in terms of its shape, and I could clearly read a sentence out of the book but then the words became unreadable (I could read them which I did enjoyably, but though all the words had proper vowels they had weren't any normal words such as one's that you could get out of the dictionary).

Very refreshing. I woke up and felt, like right now, completely refreshed and wanting with a strong desire to write something; you are seeing the results of this desire. These experiences have happened to me several times in my life, a lot more when I was much younger and I never understood them/tried to understand them. I simply shook it off as the brain re-organizing information. But now I'm not so sure, I feel intensely curious about lucid dreaming/astral projection/ out of body experiences and have a strong desire to have more of them.

Anyways, if anyone feels like making a comment on this supremely awkward but extremely enjoyable experience of mine, I'd appreciate any interpretations of it... because I for one cannot make any sense of any of it.

edit: 5 minutes after writing this post I realized that I had arbitrarily on a whim photoread and mindmapped within 1 1/2 minutes a dinosaur book in the library that randomly caught my attention (which may explain the huge rhinocerous). Also, I realized before I logged back in to make that dinosaur book comment that just yesterday I had photoread Steve's new "reality and perception post" which mentions astral projection. Don't know if that helps for any interpretations... hmm.

[Erin Pavlina]

Hi arthur,

Actually what you experienced was not a lucid dream or astral projection or an OBE. If you were having a lucid dream you would have been aware that you were dreaming and had knowledge and awareness that you were home in your bed sleeping and taking a nap. From the way you described it, it sounded like you had awareness that you were on a rhino. But did you, at any time, think, "Hey I can't really be on a rhino, tha'ts crazy. I must be dreaming!" That would have shown lucidity.

The three are not the same at all. Here is a blog entry I wrote about the differences between the two and how to tell them apart:

Does Lucid Dreaming Lead to Astral Projection?

[ArthurHung]

I distinctly remember thinking this instead of "Hey I can't really be on a rhino, that's crazy."--

I thought, hey I'm sleeping and I'm sitting on a Rhino. Cool. This... dream... heh... (Then I notice the colors of the Rhino which are only grey), and keep thinking little kid words of excitment of description such as: "cool", "this is fun" etc). I also look around and vaguely assume/think that I am surrounded by a beautiful luxurious greenery, which I only see vaguely as I am concentrating on the Rhino.

After reading your post and the link, this is probably "just" a regular dream. But I can't help thinking about how wonderful it was and the desire to have more of it. If this is was just a regular dream, but a wonderful dream... after considering what happened prior to me getting it I'm guessing that to get to this state more often would be simply to work 100% all my best effort at something important which will help me reach my main purpose/main financial goal (a "ridiculous" 2 million USD in 2 year goal).

[theonecanadian]

Hello
This is my first post onto the forum, so please be ok with the fact I might not know what the heck i'm doing.
I have a few questions when it comes to Lucid Dreaming,
I have been trying for several years now to have a lucid dream but so far no success, I've been trying it the same way you said on the podcast, meh, no luck. Is there a different way to be able to experience a lucid dream???
What I mean is, Is there another way to develop the ability to lucid dream

[Kaspian]

Search through the category Sleep and Dreams in Erin's blog, and you'll probably find the information you're looking for.

Also check out this podcast of Erin & Steve's.