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Comment by sebastianconcpt | Hacker News Reader

He had interesting experiences. The best is to realize you can have them without requiring any infrastructure other than a comfortable safe environment, a bed and uninterrupted silence.

My firsts lucid OBEs were not even voluntarily produced but "emergent" from taking a random nap.

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> a comfortable safe environment, a bed and uninterrupted silence.

Luxurious!

No but seriously, a lot of people don't even have access to a quiet and dark bedroom. It was only when I bought my house some years ago that I had that, and it's not even perfect - I prefer to sleep with the window open, frequently there's background noise from the nearby highway (white noise). But depending on wind and atmospheric conditions it can also be deathly silent. Until I start snoring anyway.

When I first moved to Singapore my apartment was next to the motorway and port which runs 24/7, so it was quite noisy to listen to the cars and trucks and the odd container being dropped or banged.

When I moved the apartment block was dead silent with no road noise. I couldn’t sleep properly for about a month because It was so quiet. I couldn’t relax and ended up taking sleeping pills a few times just to sleep.

Since moving again I’ve always had background noise. I’m scared to move again to a silent place.

Did you consider getting a white noise generator?

At the time, no, but I haven't had a lack of noise since moving so I sleep fine, but if I ever end up in a quiet home again I will definitely do something to generate some sort of noise.

I too like background noise - I just use a noise generating app on my phone. My bedside clock has dock for the phone with some nice speakers - and I use it more for that than anything else.

There are all kinds of noise generating apps - if you like traffic/freeway sounds there are lots that provide that kind of noise. The best are ones that have multiple tracks playing at once with samples that start at random places so you don't get a repeating audio pattern. I found with simpler noise generating apps (or devices like from sharper image) that have repeating loops I will eventually detect the loop and then instead of using the noise to help me relax I'm counting the seconds until the loop repeats. Very counter productive!

Now that you mention that, I do remember more than one occasion being in an OBE that got interrupted by my own sudden snoring hahahaa.

If is not that bad, it can be used as a trigger for the kind of questions that will raise lucidity: where I am? how did I got here? These logistics questions work because OBEs will always fail to deliver the continuum of the memory back to when it started because they all start somehow in hypnagogia.

Uninterrupted silence is the biggest obstacle for many of us.

Same. I'm convinced OBEs are a form of dreaming, especially when comparing the techniques used for initiating wake-back-to-bed lucid dreaming (relaxing the body & mind, feeling vibrations, being amazed how "real" it is, etc).

That intoxicatingly calm space between awake and not-quite-awake-yet is about the best drug there is. The difficulty therein is knowing that the day's remainder will, at best, and rarely in sobriety, only approximate this magical state of bliss.

> That intoxicatingly calm space between awake and not-quite-awake-yet

...that space is calm for most people?

Being there is usually literally terrifying to me. Like whenever I finally come through to the awake side I'm drenched in sweat and crying on occasion.

you might also have sleep apnea, or some other treatable condition

I dated someone who had sleep paralysis and hypnogogic hallucinations. She'd wake up breathing hard and panicked sometimes; said she was awake but locked into her body and heard these incredibly loud, terrifying noises.

Maybe get a sleep study.

Sometimes, in that state, the "brain audio processor" gets disconnected from ears and connected to inner sounds - heartbeats and such. The texture to the sound is given by random thoughts, so if you happened to think about a waterfall, you'll keep hearing loud waterfall heartbeats. Even if you're well aware of what's happening, these sounds are still overwhelming. This is a common "OBE mode".

Completely calm for me. HR bpm ~55 to 60. Involuntary homeostatic systems (breath, heart rate, mind, muscles, sensory systems semi-on-offline, stable body temperature, especially temperature) are synced and calmly clocking along.

It does, however, take ~9.5 hours to get the pillow to behave to tolerance.

As for terrifying? Well, there's always real life to look forward to, and terrifying is an appropriate reaction to that impending doom, but I hope this isn't an everyday for you. You could have a sleep disorder, night terrors, PTSD, neurology problem, etc.

I had a few OBEs while falling asleep in the afternoon while maintaining awareness, and it is seemed to me that they were hallucinatory experiences triggered by sleep paralysis kicking in. And yes, they are likely a specific form of lucid dreaming.

Yep, sounds similar to a hypnagogic state.

The dream hypothesis can be discarded with the shared OBE.

Think about it, can 2 people's dream be synchronized from the perspective of each other? Because that's how a shared OBE feels.

Once you have some of these, you know these aren't dreams.

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