Out-of-body You have two bodies. An earthbound body and an astral body. These two normally stay together but it is possible to consciously separate your astral body from your earthbound body. This is called astral projection or an out of body experience (OOBE) I think this has happened to me although I'm not sure of it. I think that a "real" OOBE means that your environment is the same as when you are not out of your body. When I stand next to (or float above) my bed and sometimes see my body in it, my room doesn't look the way it should and neither does the environment. There are gardens where there should be houses, and so on. In a lucid dream you can try to have an OOBE. Sometimes it is quite scary and you don't succeed because you are too frightened. But sometimes you really end up in the most amazing worlds. When you try to leave your body there are several signs that you are succeeding. A humming or a high pitched noice in your ears, the feeling that you are being pulled, or a feeling of total paralysis. The moment I leave my body (or at least I think I do) I hear a noice that is best described as "snok". I then have the feeling I'm suddenly cut loose of something. I Used to practice lucid dreaming quite intensely and in that time I often found myself half awake with the feeling of spinning around my axis really fast. Or sometimes I felt myself speeding through a tunnel. I have several astral projection methods in a dream. (It sounds like I do this daily but in fact I rarely get an OOBE) One is the fly-as-high-as-you-can-method. You try to fly really high and in the mean time say to yourself: "higher, up, out of my body". Sometimes you really feel yourself being pulled out of your body. Another method is to imagine that you are under water and feel yourself floating to the surface. If you are really interested in OOBE's and want to know more check out Through the Window. On the links section are links to OOBE sites too. There is also a related newsgroup: alt.out-of-body