From: janice@mailinator.com   
      
   In article ,   
   this.email@dont.work says...   
      
   >If I'm awake   
   >in my bed one moment and out of my body and floating or lurking in my   
   >bedroom (or what appears to be my bedroom) the next, I call it an OBE.  If I   
   >simply wake up in a dream or I have no recollection of leaving my body, I   
   >call it a LD. Short and sweet. -- Lonnie   
      
   It's not quite that simple for me, because there are several ways in   
   which I've entered dreamlike states consciously from waking.  Besides a   
   fwe different ways involving seeming to separate from or to be separate   
   from my body (which we'll call OBE variants), there are what I call   
   "reverse false awakenings."  If a false awakening is a case of thinking   
   that you woke up when in fact you're still dreaming, a reverse false   
   awakening is a case of thinking you're still awake when in fact you've   
   started dreaming.  These are similar to OBEs in that you find yourself in   
   your bedroom, but different in that there's little or no sense of sleep   
   paralysis, and your dream body is usually already fully formed and ready   
   to go.  If it is not ready, it is possible to apply OBE techniques to get   
   started, but the "separation" happens exceptionally quickly.  Lots of   
   times I think I'm having an OBE at the time, but when I wake up I decide   
   that it was more likely one of these hybrid states because it was just   
   too easy.   
      
   Getting away from anything resembling an OBE, another common method for   
   me to enter a dream consciously from waking would be watching hypnagogic   
   imagery until it becomes a full-fledged scene that I can enter.  Less   
   commonly, I've simply suddenly found myself in a full-fledged scene,   
   either after visualizing one or just randomly popping into one.   
      
   In my view, all of the above, including the OBE variants, are means of   
   entering the dream state from the waking state.  Despite the alternate   
   types of transitions, after they get going my experiences attained by   
   remaining conscious during the transition into sleep don't seem   
   significantly different from the ones that I get by figuring out that I'm   
   dreaming during an ongoing dream or false awakening -- the more ordinary   
   lucid dreams.  It's like getting to the same point from two different   
   directions.  But I would say that the ones involving remaining conscious   
   tend to be more lucid than the ones involving figuring out that I'm   
   dreaming, and also more tenuous -- less vivid and briefer in duration.   
      
   --   
      
   "I am a person who recognizes the fallacy of humans."   
   --George W. Bush   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)