[Wavgbtif]

I have some interesting results from my early experimentation with supplements. Last night I tried the "Brilliant Dreams" supplement for the first time, which contains galantamine, choline citrate, vitamin B5, and some melatonin. I tried it the way Mr. Yuschak from the book Advanced Lucid Dreaming recommended - sleep for about 4 hours, then wake up and take it. I had what I would call a very sloppy LD/OBE. I think I was trying to impose my old way of OBEing (WBTB -> LD -> OBE) on this supplement that I didn't quite understand. Mr. Yuschak says to try to do a WILD or wake-induced OBE, not a DILD to OBE, like my old way is. I'll try a WILD next time. Since all my OBEs have been induced from the LD state, I tend to closely associate the two, whereas other people may not.

It's supposed to be somewhat hard to go back to sleep after taking galantamine, but I can't count it on this try because it was my first ever try with galantamine and I was kind of scared to take it when I woke up at 3:40am, but I gave it a try. This stuff is very trippy!

It took about an hour or so to take full effect. At one point I was totally swimming in vibrations. I could phase out of the vibes and make them less intense or concentrate on them and make them more intense. I looked at my hands two times. One time they were vague and transparent. That time I touched my non-physical face and it was solid (or "solidish") - very strange. Another time I looked at my non-physical hands and my non-physical arms and hands were outstretched as if I were flying. It looked like I was flying through space with stars and everything. It only lasted a few seconds. It was very trippy and realistic but only for a few seconds! It was also absolutely impossible to control. I kept having all these OBE phenomena but I have to classify it as a lucid dream with OBE symptoms because I never "exited" my body. It all felt like it was going on inside my head in a LD. I was too connected to being in my head in bed, unlike my other OBEs where, from my point of view, all of my consciousness is in my non-physical body, wherever it happens to be. Also, during a certain period, I heard this strange unintelligible voice babbling in concert with other strange sounds. I can't remember if the sounds were a type of music or just background noise. At some point I got frustrated at not understanding the voice and I called out to it and said "Speak up, fool!". There is absolutely no doubt about how intense the feelings were - it felt like I was on drugs! However, I guess I kind of was Wink. However, I got up at least twice to go to the bathroom and while I was going back and forth both times I experienced no symptoms at all. It was only after I got back into bed and then after I started to fall asleep that I felt these sensations. It wasn't like when you're drunk and you feel bad no matter where you are. I had almost zero symptoms. I think since my stomach was mostly empty at 3:40am that it maybe felt a little bit funny while digesting, but otherwise everything is normal. The dose of galantamine in Brilliant Dreams is only 4mg, and the maximum dose (for Alzheimer's patients) is 24mg per day.

A question worth asking is this: Since the supplements helped me achieve these phenomena (which I'm sure I'll refine into more typical OBEs with more practice) does this somehow reduce the validity of the metaphysical/paranormal/supernatual explanations for OBEs? Are these phenomena merely experiences of the brain which can be made more profound with certain chemicals? Or, did the chemicals merely give me more awareness which allowed me to experience metaphysical environments? I came to this OBE journey looking to find some spiritual truths about the soul transcending the body and I hope that my further exploration of this topic will strengthen that viewpoint - not weaken it. Stephen LaBerge from the Lucidity Institute (from what I heard Dominic Attisani say in an interview) takes the position that OBE does not equal human soul leaving the body. The Monroe philosophy is that OBE does equal the existence of the human soul. Are some OBEers, including Monroe, too quick to accept the paranormal explanations? Or, have I just not had enough experiences profound enough to convince me of the paranormal viewpoint? I so greatly want to believe the paranormal and not the biochemical viewpoint, but I must be convinced. I'm not going to believe it without enough personal proof.

Here is my plan for the next supplement OBE attempt:

1. I'm going to wait a few days so the galantamine gets out of my system (it usu. takes 48 hours).
2. I'm going to take it again hopefully with a little more choline bitartrate - Mr. Yuschak recommends like 600mg I think.
3. I'm going to take it around the same time - 4am.
4. I'll try to go back to sleep for a while until I start feeling symptoms, maybe an hour.
5. Once I start feeling symptoms, I'll go to my lounge chair in the other room and lie back and do WILD meditations and try to have a WILD or an OBE.

I know a lot of people are against supplementation, and I'll probably go through this supplementation phase for a while and then drop it. However, unlike some people, I see it as a sort of "training wheels" (not a crutch) for beginners (like me) who are having significant trouble getting to experience these phenomena, or a boost for people who are in a slump. It can help re-acquaint people with what these feelings and sensations feel like so that later they can induce them without the training wheels. It's important for people to realize that these supplements are best used infrequently and, in my opinion, shouldn't form the basis of anyone's OBE practice. Having said that though, I want OBEers to know that there's an available option when all else fails.

Cheers,
Atraveler

[Dyerryjex]

Preface: Atraveler has discussed this topic with me and the supplements are merely vitamins and vitamin compounds that are available over the counter. This is not a discussion of controlled substances in any way.- Admin

A question worth asking is this: Since the supplements helped me achieve these phenomena (which I'm sure I'll refine into more typical OBEs with more practice) does this somehow reduce the validity of the metaphysical/paranormal/supernatual explanations for OBEs? Are these phenomena merely experiences of the brain which can be made more profound with certain chemicals? Or, did the chemicals merely give me more awareness which allowed me to experience metaphysical environments? Good question and I have some thoughts: I believe we as humans tend to want to categorize things and in early parts of our 'civilization' we learned to look at life as a, or b, no room for gray areas. Therefore experiences tend to be classified with very little wiggle room for interpretation, and this is a shame.
We have the tendency to think that the brain creates what we perceive, that is, the images, sounds, sensations, etc. are creations of the brain according to what it processes in physical matter, and either leave it at that, or go the other way and consider the brain as something that is separate from the 'metaphysical world', (whatever it is) and reject consensus reality completely, and I think this is an example of linear thinking. I propose that the truth may be something in the middle- That the brain is a transducer as opposed to creator, that is, it processes our physical perceptions as well as it can depending on how well the 'plumbing' works, but the input it receives is not only from what we consider physical reality, that it also receives information from what we can call 'subtle' reality or 'nonlocal' reality and also process it as it can, and our perceptions and ability to take it in depend not only on our 'nonlocal intelligence' but also on our 'physical plumbing', that is, on how healthy our brains are. I will come back to this.

I came to this OBE journey looking to find some spiritual truths about the soul transcending the body and I hope that my further exploration of this topic will strengthen that viewpoint - not weaken it. Stephen LaBerge from the Lucidity Institute (from what I heard Dominic Attisani say in an interview) takes the position that OBE does not equal human soul leaving the body. The Monroe philosophy is that OBE does equal the existence of the human soul. Are some OBEers, including Monroe, too quick to accept the paranormal explanations? Or, have I just not had enough experiences profound enough to convince me of the paranormal viewpoint? I so greatly want to believe the paranormal and not the biochemical viewpoint, but I must be convinced. I'm not going to believe it without enough personal proof. This is a question that is hard to answer, because I think the answer comes from 'somewhere else'. I have strong reservations about the idea of the projected energy body as the 'soul'- I believe our existence to be more 'complete' than that- and that the OBE experience is one more look at how we exist- sometimes our perceptions come from 'in' the body and sometimes come from 'outside', it's just that the OB state gives us a conscious glimpse of when the info is coming from 'out' as opposed to 'in'- but you can also take the position (pun intended) that there is no 'in' or 'out' and that it's just a matter of how our bodies perceive it.
You see why this is hard?
The OBE can't prove the existence of the soul because there are too many ideas of what the soul is, but it does demonstrate the ability to receive information that is physically removed from whatever location your body is.
And if you are lucky enough (if you consider that lucky, of course) to be able to travel to the afterlife realms, and be able to receive information that is corroboratable on the physical plane, i.e. consensus reality, then maybe you can consider the idea that there is something that survives after death- what you want to call it is up to you.
But, isn't it fun to try?

[Dyerryjex]

I divided my answer because it would have been too long and hard on the eyes (mine are watering already)
I do believe that Monroe et.al., by using hemi-sync technology, already demonstrated that the brain's abilty to go to and stay in a certain group of frequencies (and to process anomalous data) has a lot to do with the ability of us to perceive the OBE state.
Just in another forum a fellow had a sleep study done when he was having OBEs and the techs told him that he was having 'alpha intrusions' when he went to Delta. This was just when he was OBEing, as he had someone help mark when things were happening. (LaBerge himself had methods of detecting this, I just don't remember the details). The person who had the tests was dissappointed. He thought that the fact that the brain was having 'awake' spikes in the middle of delta (think how weird that seems it should be- you're deep, then you're shallow, and you end up deep again. Shouldn't you wake up after if you were indeed 'just waking up'? To me it's almost obvious that your consciousness is being superimposed on your sleeping brain). We just tend to compartmentalize, and that's too bad, because I don't know how much longer this info will be available before it dissappears and someone else discovers it later on.
So why does the frequency have something to do with the ability to OBE and remember it? My guess is that it synchronizes your brain to the optimum perceptual abilty of the brain- that it makes it possible to process info that is on a frequency normally unperceptible to a brain that's awake.
What about galantamine? Well, the studies on people with alzheimers (and this is from memory, so I could be very very wrong) showed that it improved chemical connectivity of the cells that are responsible for sequential thinking and memory, IIRC. So once again, what is the most important thing to do when OBE? Experience and remember. And no matter what you do when out of body, if your brain's plumbing isn't working optimally, you ain't gonna remember it.
So I have no problem with any possibility- my problem is with the either/or tendency us westeners have in categorizing reality. Way too much gray area for me. And if you're not a westener, you've become too accultured.