OBEs in the Dark

by Matthew
Perth, Australia

I used to be afraid to go to sleep. I would leave the light on, sit up in bed and try to stay awake all night.

The strangest thing was happening to me night after night, causing my fear. I'd be drifting into sleep, or out of sleep, when I'd suddenly be seized with these bizarre sensations – I'd be completely paralysed and it felt as if my bed was shaking.

Sometimes it came on very abruptly, and I'd be lying there feeling wide awake when this feeling just overwhelmed me, and I couldn't move, talk or understand it. I'd worry I would not be able to move again and wondered what kind of force could cause the intense vibrations I was feeling. Whatever it was, I felt very uncomfortable and powerless to stop it.

Sometimes I had the feeling there was something else in my room, and I heard and sometimes felt something nearby. Other times I would suddenly find myself lying in another position. I'd get a shock then abruptly be back in the old position again. To my astonishment, once I touched my face with my right hand, as I looked down and saw my right arm lying immobile on the bed!

I was literally and figuratively in the dark, unable to understand what was going on, control it or do anything about it. Lying alone in the dark, having these baffling things happen to me was really frightening and I didn't know who to turn to or how to even talk about it with anyone, without them thinking I was losing the plot.

But I knew what was happening to me was real, as real as anything else that had happened to me, and if I were to believe it was all in my head I would have to believe my whole life could be. I just didn't know what to do.

Eventually I reached a turning point. The lack of sleep was affecting my health and I was becoming a nervous wreck, always on edge, getting jumpy at the slightest sound as soon I was alone in my room at night. I couldn't go on like this forever and I just had to get to the bottom of it somehow.

One positive outcome of all this was that it left me more open to possibilities. I began to realise I knew so little about life; all the conclusions I'd made, and was comfortable with, could be wrong. It was daunting how little I, and seemingly the world, really knew about this. So all my false certainty eroded and was replaced with the desire to find out what's really going on. I wasn't sure where to start, but I figured I couldn't be the only person going through this, so there had to be some information out there.

I did some research on the net, but the scientific sites I initially came across weren't very helpful or informative. By conventional wisdom, my experiences were classed as a ‘sleep disorder'. I found that a bit alienating, because ‘experts' who really had no experience with this were classifying it as an illness – basically, it was all in my head and just a vivid dream/hallucination. But I noticed the theories scientists and psychologists had invented were drawn from narrow assumptions about life's possibilities, rather than evidence. They seemed more interested in explaining this phenomenon from a materialistic point of view, than investigating, studying and understanding it.

So I continued my search and eventually came across a website that had a more investigative and methodical approach, created by the very same group behind this website.

One thing they explained agreed with the scientists – that the body becomes paralysed when we sleep to limit its movement, so we don't act out dreams and sleepwalk. This explained one part of my experience, but not the other strange things that went with it.

But I kept reading and learned about out-of-body experiences (OBEs) and how they relate to sleep. Apparently, every time we sleep we depart from our bodies; as this happens, it's normal to become paralysed as movement transfers from the physical body, to what they called the ‘astral body', which is the body we dream in. As this process takes place, it is normal for there to be strange sensations, such as intense vibrations.

They called this process of leaving the body ‘astral projection'. Well that explained a lot. It was encouraging to read something I had no prior knowledge about, which corroborated exactly with my personal experiences. I wasn't so weird after all! In fact I was lucky, because I was on the verge of having an OBE, that is, being conscious outside my own body. Looking back, I realise that many times I had come out of my body, but not realised it, such as when I touched my face with my ‘astral' hand.

By trying their techniques, I was able to float out of my body when I felt these sensations, by relaxing my body and focusing my mind. It was just a matter of falling asleep in a conscious way, to catch the moment when I naturally left my body. I also discovered the other things they talked about were true - that we can move around outside the body, fly, pass through walls and solid objects – I even passed through the planet once and came out on the other side!

I found a whole new side to life, and sleep became a great adventure, a time for discovery and exploration. Now my nights are much more interesting – and I don't leave the light on either.