My first awareness of OBE's

I was first introduced to the idea of out-of-body-experiences by my father, who happened to own two of the classic books written on the subject. One of these was called 'Journeys Out of the Body,' by Robert Monroe. It was a fascinating book which outlined Monroe's many experiences where he found himself floating outside his body. He could induce such experiences at will, and even performed such feats under laboratory conditions. I was about twelve or thirteen at the time, and devoured this book with a passion. I remember practising some of the methods he teaches in the book, with mixed results. As a narcoleptic, there was always something interesting that happened during that liminal stage between waking and sleeping. It didn't usually follow the pattern outlined in this book.

In the book Monroe talked about a device he had designed where a slightly different tone was played into either ear, through headphones. When he listened to such tones while lying down, he found himself being spontaneously projected out of his body. When the mechanism of this was looked at more closely, it was discovered that that such sounds synchronised both hemispheres of the brain, and from this state initiating an OBE was easy. He went on to develop this discovery into a complete system of training using a combination of binaural sound and guided practices to teach people how to do OBE's. He founded the Monroe Institute for this purpose. My dad and I were interested in this stuff, so we purchased Monroe's 'Gateway Program,' and some of his 'Human Plus' tapes. I never had the discipline to get into the gateway program very far as there were many tapes to listen to. I do remember using the 'Human Plus' tapes to good effect, however.

These tapes combined the binaural sound effect with a kind of hypnotic autosuggestion which was programmed into the subconscious while you listened to a kind of white noise. You could buy all kinds of different functionalities which gave you control over all kinds of areas of your life. The one that worked for me was one which enabled me to control blood flow to my brain. After listening to this tape a few times all I had to do was breath deeply, repeat the programmed autocue, which were the words "plus,flow,better" and breath out. When I actually remembered to do this as I was having a sleep attack, it often worked quite well, somehow offsetting the zombie effect. I was about twelve or thirteen at this time and I never really made it a real part of my life however. It was just an interesting effect.

Anyway, Monroe went on to write a few more books, all classics on the subject of OBE's and my dad and I purchased and enjoyed them. The other book which my dad happened to own is called "The Projection of the Astral Body", by Carrington and Muldoon. Carrington was another character who found that he could quite easily and often spontaneously find himself floating outside of his body.  He found it fascinating and began to experiment with and investigate the mechanisms involved. I remember reading his descriptions of what he calls the silver cord (the non-physical cord he saw linking his astral body to his physical) and the strange intelligence behind what he called the 'cord activity range'. The plates used to illustrate this are still etched in my memory. Many books have been written on the subject of OBE's since those days, but at the time there wasn't much out there. 

I guess the reason why I am writing about this topic is because it is actually one many narcoleptics are naturally familiar with. The experience of looking at the physical body lying on the bed and the associated sleep paralysis is such a common one reported by narcoleptics, yet so far I have never seen anyone posting or writing online about the obvious connection between this and the subject of OBE's. I know that for me, exposed to such a subject at a young age, it lessened the fear associated with such experiences, and I began to investigate them for myself. What so many narcoleptics experience as something fearful, sleep paralysis, is actually something many 'normal' people try hard to induce, in order to initiate an OBE. For example, Monroe's methods first require you to learn how to enter what he calls the "mind awake, body asleep" state, a kind of voluntary sleep paralysis. After you can enter this state at will, then you can try various methods to get out of the body. I remember Monroe's 'rollout' method, where one simply rolled over in the astral body like a log in the water, finding oneself outside the physical.

Given the natural ability of narcoleptics to maintain awareness during the hypnagogic state and into sleep paralysis, it is my opinion that they have an ability for OBE's which should be valued for what it is, a gift. Of course it is a gift most narcoleptics would rather do without, but in my opinion it is more healthy to look at it positively, than negatively. After that can be done, a whole new world opens up and things get interesting.