Have you had an extremely unusual and lucid experience?

Tonight I had an experience fitting the description in this thread's title, and I would like to hear from anyone else who might have at some point.

So if you have had an experience that might fit that general description, please let us know the following

• 1. What happened.
  
• 2. Was it good or bad (if either).
  
• 3. Did you gain or lose anything or change because of it?
  
• 4. How recent was it (days? weeks? months? more?) ?

I do not wish to describe my experience just yet. I am developing a theory based on my experience, and any similar experiences others may have had would be very relevant, as long as they are real and interpreted independently from one another. (thus I don't want anyone to try and force a connection between their experience and mine for example).

I will explain my experience here later, and hopefully post my theory in ATS Skunk Works when it's ready as well.

In what way? The question's a bit vague.

I've had several experiences you could describe as 'unusual', I suspect, a few of them rather focused and attention getting.

Are you talking about things like "I'm bobbing around in the ocean in a storm in the middle of nowhere - where's the damned boat" or "oh crap that was stupid now I'm about to get shot" sort of unusual and lucid, or the sort of thing you feel when you confront something you really didn't expect that's just wrong sort of lucid (being pursued by what seems to be ball lightning), or OOBE sort of lucid? Maybe hypnogogic dream lucid?

reply to post by The Vagabond


well to me it felt like an out of body experience and i wasn't actually asleep. Just lying on my bed looking at the ceiling then out of no where my whole perspective changed it was like i was looking down on my self from the ceiling i could see my face my whole body and the room from an angle i had never known then a fear set in that i couldn't get back in my body as the thought left my mind i has back in my body awake and alert even scared. I remember what i was doing as well i know this may sound weird but i watched a move where the person lowered his vital signs and heart rate and breathing to fool the people into taking him to a hospital i think the movie was The Silence of the Lambs and i thought that was so cool so i tried to do it then grew board then bang out of body ex. i was 15 or so. after that i knew there is a soul what really scares me is this info i shouldn't know. like if i sin its even greater then yours because you don't know there is a soul and think its a bunch of mumbo jumbo like i used to think. Even now i wonder about it and that was over 13 years ago. sometimes i wonder if i died in that moment and if this is some kind of limbo or hell.

reply to post by The Vagabond


Are you referring to a lucid dream or to an actual conscious 'out of the ordinary' experience?

Does this include sexual experiences?

I am retired Navy so there are many situations from my young single days that would fit into this thread title.

Some of them I was actually sober to.

I had hoped to hear somebody else describe something similar before I gave too many details, as that would have been relevant in any number of ways to a theory I am working on now after the experience. However since that isn't looking like it will happen very easily, I guess I'll just set that part aside for the moment.

Anyway, what I experienced is what I am just calling an unusually "big picture" oriented perspective. I can see how, in the excitement of the moment at least, some people I know might have described it as a brush with enlightenment or a revelation, but I don't know about that. I'm content just to say that I had a better insight on things than I've ever had before.

It started out as just a very good day- the kind of enjoyably productive day that was pretty much normal for me before 2008, but has almost vanished from my life since. I got good work done easily, made someone who didn't get through the day as easily feel better (again quite easily with no stress for me), gave some decent advice, then went home to clean myself off and relax. That's how I ended up on the back porch with my MP3 player and a cigarette and nothing urgent on my mind. This is about as good as it gets for me, and the state in which many of my best ideas are conceived.

So I began to play with the various ideas that have been rattling around in my mind lately- debate topics, recent conversations, new people I've met, scientific theories I don't really understand, the police chase I watched from a hill the other day- and of course my own problems and impending decisions- those do still exist and do tend to intrude on my peaceful thought after 30-60 minutes usually.

It is normal in this state for me to eventually find an angle on one of the many things that goes through my head, and then pursue it all the way to its end, or as far as I can take it, and then to either veer off into my problems or to search for a new thought to pursue to a new end... in either case causing my thought process to begin declining from its peak, until I either decide to go to bed or decide to get on ATS and try to explain everything- usually resulting in an unsuccessful post that I never actually submit to the boards, but just backspace out of existence before retiring to bed.

That did not happen last night. I did not follow one thought entirely too far and derail quickly. Every little thing that began a thought, I took to was able to quickly find some meaning in, and connect both to other thoughts and a central theme. Everything seemed to operate on a single principle, and relate to everything else in a way that reflects other relationships. Math did not seem so different from language, society did not seem different from astronomy or even astrology. Everything just made a lot of sense. And from these abstract ideas I derived a few solutions to minor problems and perhaps the very nature of some larger problems, along with a clearer understanding of just how those larger problems can be appropriately dealt with even though they are not solvable per se. It also seemed as if many of the days prior events, including some that were fairly unlikely, occurred only because they necessary to the completion of this unexpected mental exploration of the universe that I later went on.

I would not go so far as to say that everything that I came up with was true, and even if it were that would not be the most relevant part of the experience in my mind, because if the model I came up with is correct, you really can't spread the idea to any effect (and if you could, it would likely be a disaster, for reasons I won't bother going into).

What made the experience remarkable to me was that for reasons that I don't fully understand, but which seemed to involve some synchronicity, my mind radically shifted gears on me. My consciousness seemed stronger, faster, more meaningful, and more enjoyable than I can specifically recall it ever being, and I believe that a portion, but not all of it, can be retained and used to do a better job with my life.

reply to post by pcrobotwolf


That's kind of in the ball park. Not the same thing exactly, but there was a component to it of wondering if I have happened across something which is to be handled with care. In my case I concluded that it would be difficult to do either good or bad with anything I gained from my insight but that both were quite possible, and that it would take a lot more skill to do good with it than it would to do bad.

So while I don't feel like I'm on very dangerous ground, I do feel like I've come upon something I have to treat with respect and not assume I can exploit.

What are you talking about here? Can you describe for me?
Thanks!