What is the difference between lucid dreams and obes

This does not mean they are in fact identical. Lucid dreams and OBEs are reminiscent of intersecting Venn diagrams; they overlap in many ways. If we consider consciousness to play an active part in the construction of reality—a theory becoming more and more popular, largely thanks to quantum physics, and the work of the likes of Tom Campbell—then both possess a kind of reality; they both represent a truth about the world, just maybe not the physical world.

We should continue to test in these areas, in whatever way that makes sense for the kinds of places one accesses during these experiences, if we really want to understand what we even mean by reality.

This hypothesis is both exciting and mind-boggling, and could transform the debate. Sofia Andrewski BA Philosophy and Classics is a freelance writer and keen explorer of the mysterious and intriguing aspects of life. She writes extensively in the area of philosophy, ethics, spirituality, holistic lifestyles and nutrition, as well as dabbling in fiction.

These topics are the focus of her blog. To read more, visit www. So this was really informative to me. Though I still have a few questions, in hope someone here maybe could help me with; This term "Astral projecting" I came across the internet discribes also something like an OBE or a lucid dream.

But I've also noticed that people argue that it's not an OBE. So what do people exactly mean by 'Astral Projecting'?? And the other question is; I've read about people who experience paralysis during OBE's, or entitiy encounters during their sleeps, I don't know if these phenomena can ben classified as OBE's??

Why do some people have this, while others don't? I think the reason why some people class astral projecting as not a real OBE is because they assume that anything that doesn't happen in the Real Time Zone lacks any kind of reality, or they equate it with a lucid dream.

This is probably because many times during an astral projection the experiencer wakes up during sleep to find themselves already "out".

Because the exit signals were missed due to sleep, one may think it is a dream. However, most of my OBEs where I have experienced the classic sensations associated have projected me right into the astral planes. I often can't see my body on the bed even though I can sense it is there, suggesting I am not close tp physcial reality at the time.

An astral projection is simply an OBE where you find yourself in non-Earth realities, in the sense you are not in everyday life observing it. Now, sleeping paralysis is a complex phenomena.

I've had it many times, as did my mother and other family members. I don't know why only some people have it, but I suspect if one is experimenting with dreamtime phenomena one is more likely to wake during various points of the night in various states of consciousness, and it could be genetic. With sleep paralysis, the natural mechanism to keep us from enacting our dreams simply fails to switch off even though our mind wakes. The panic paralysis brings often triggers hallucinations of deep-rooted fears like being attacked.

However, this is the perfect time to trigger an OBE as the body is asleep and the mind awake, a key condition. Once I realised this no more nasty hallucinations, as I no longer feared it! He asked his guides why that was and was told that they lifted him out paraphrasing. However, he then asked to experience that and they obliged. I too have had an OBE where I requested not to experience that vibration and was lifted out. I don't mean to be flippant, but I can only talk about the experiences themselves, and what they suggest to the perceiver.

I am happy to admit I could be wrong, but my aim to allow these experiences room to talk in a free space where a closed system of reality isn't assumed. I have something to report about my sleep and dreams that I have been experiencing now for the past few years. I have another life in my sleep. I am still me and sometimes I see people from this life there, but there are many other people I know and see on a regular basis in my "dream world" that do not exist in this one. My dream world is vivid and obeys the laws of physics.

Only birds and airplanes can fly and there are no magical things happening. It is another plane of existence. There is a town I live in.

I know my way around and have several regular destinations. I work in a restaurant there. I have friends and acquaintances I know well who do not exist here when I awake. I don't have a car there. I am not scared and I do not view anything as unfamiliar. I do not think about my "real world" when I am there. The weather is fair and sometimes it gets cold. I don't remember there ever being snow. I have equal memories of both day and night sequences.

There is no repetition. The arrow of time exists. I recall a past and when I am there I am actively involved in the present. I am interested in being involved in a sleep study so that my other reality can be investigated. I can not express emphatically enough how vivid and real it is there. I have concerns about my paycheck and rent and my friends there and feel these emotions when I am there. When this happens it is as if I am getting a glimpse through a veil as an outside observer of myself while having no control of what I am seeing.

I am only able to see it happening. Anyone wishing to discuss further may reach me at mikerembis yahoo. Thanks so much for your comment. Sounds like you are trully living parallel lives… although, from what I hear, I am not sure you are just witnessing a life in your dream reality, or if you indeed have a free will there.

Do you feel you are just watching a movie, or do you feel you are capable of making decisions? It would be good if you could become lucid in there. Because if you became lucid, you would be able to find out more about this place, its inhabitants and whether it has anything to do with you, Mike, in your waking reality.

Have you seen Inception? They are always lucid, so they can get deeper and find out things they could not otherwise if they were just spectators. Do you experience other realities, or just the one? Dreams of a random nature as well as recurring vists to this other place?

I have begun having extremely realistic dreams of myself in other realities. In each one I am aware of the present moment, recent past events and can extrapolate possible futures based on my actions. The dreams are very boring and mundane. I am usually just living my life in the other realites, but not as myself, always someone else, but it is still me.

Both groups completed the questionnaire from January to February In a study investigating subjective sleep parameters, the gender factor can rationally be supposed to influence the results Schredl and Piel, ; see Schredl and Reinhard, Dream experiences frequencies and score of the PSQI have been compared across genders.

All of the variables in this study were compared between groups, this comparison is available in Supplementary Materials. This study was carried out within the framework of French legislation on ethics and data protection.

All participants completed a separate consent form that guaranteed anonymity, informed them of the scope of the study and the possibility of stopping it at any time. Participants were requested to fill in a question composite questionnaire online based on the study of Ribeiro et al.

Only questions pertaining to this study are addressed in the following section. The question concerning occupation concerned whether the participant was a student or not, and if they felt like their sleep schedule was constrained by their daily activity. In order to assess sleep quality, we used the PSQI total score which is based on 17 questions that evaluate seven components labeled as follows: sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, sleep efficiency, sleep disturbances, medications, daytime dysfunction Buysse et al.

The PSQI is the most commonly used generic measure in clinical and research setting and has been demonstrated to have an adequate content validity, a good construct validity and a good discriminative validity Mollayeva et al.

In the questionnaire, four questions on dream experiences concerned dream frequency, LD frequency, dreams with awareness frequency, and dreams with control frequency. These questions were reformulated in order to ensure a good comprehension in French language but were conceptually similar to those typically used in the literature Stepansky et al. It is possible to deliberately wake up or to control the dream action or to observe passively in the course of the dream with this awareness. The definition and frequency scale were extracted from Schredl and Erlacher The order of the questions concerning LD, awareness, and control was proposed in two versions the question of LD was presented after or before the two questions on awareness and control.

The original French wording for all questions are accessible as Supplementary Material of the present article. By clicking on the hyperlink associated with the recruitment text, participants were redirected to the questionnaire hosted on a Google form. Once the questionnaire was completed, all responses were entered into an online spreadsheet and transferred to an Excel spreadsheet where duplicate data were excluded. During pretest, the estimated time for completing the questionnaire was 20 min or more.

Results are presented aligned with our aims: description of the results, investigation of how dream experiences could be related to sleep characteristics as assessed by the PSQI, and sample comparison on each indicator of the present study.

All comparisons considered the effect of age and gender as these factors are known to potentially influence dream frequency Schredl and Reinhard, Summarized answers to questions about the frequency of dream experiences frequency of dreaming, LD, consciousness, and control are available in Table 1.

Summarized answers to questions about sleep quality as assessed with the PSQI are summarized in Table 2. We performed linear regression analysis to investigate whether the global PSQI score variance could be explained by LD frequency. Within this scope, dream experiences frequencies were recoded as a frequency per month using the class means. As indicated above, age and gender have been added as covariates and factors.

Summary for this analysis is available in Table 3. Noticeably, the model was significant with a p -value lower than 0. In other world, lucid dream frequency does not help to predict sleep quality significantly.

These tests were also performed for dream recall frequency, awareness, and control with similar outcomes suggesting that dream experience frequency does not predict significantly PSQI score. Table 3. Model fit measures and model coefficient for the regression analyses concerning sleep quality and lucid dreaming frequency. Linear regression tables for the comparison mentioned above and for separate regression analysis depending on the group are available in the Supplementary Material. This study was primarily conducted to evaluate how dream frequency could predict sleep quality in these two samples: a student and a general population sample.

The research also aimed at describing the frequency of dream experiences dreaming, LD, awareness, and control and sleep quality as measured by the PSQI in these two samples.

Concerning LD frequency, individuals in the general population group have a prevalence one or more occurrences during their lifetime of LD of In the same group, In the group of students, In other words, the frequency of LD is lower in this study than in a previous study, while instructions and timing of data collection beginning of the year are noticeably similar Ribeiro et al.

This discrepancy could be explained by the fact that in , students did not indicate which disciplines they were involved in, whereas the students in this study are all psychology students.

Another explanation could come from the fact that participants saw all questions about consciousness and control in this questionnaire whereas they had only seen LD ones in the other study. Concerning the answers to question about the dream of awareness and dream with control frequencies, participants were Participants were This study did not find links between dream experiences frequencies dream, lucid dream, awareness dreams, control dream and sleep characteristics assessed with the PSQI for the student and the general group.

Noticeably, the extent of the variance explained of significant models was rather low and only the gender predictor carried on this significance. Moreover, Schadow et al. We believe that the present investigation participates in an accumulation of studies that invite to consider general LD occurrence as innocuous for sleep characteristics, but more studies are still needed.

Some of these techniques can be expected to disrupt sleep parameters; for example, some dreamers use devices that randomly send a red light into the eye during sleep in the hope of waking the individual sufficiently to experience LD Stumbrys et al. Therefore, future investigation of relation between LD frequency and sleep quality should focus specifically on instances where there is an increase to its frequency Vallat and Ruby, ; Soffer-Dudek, In light of the present study, we believe that these future studies would benefit from using several operational definitions of dream lucidity to conduct their investigations.

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