A Year of New OBE Tricks - Part 1

A Year of New OBE Tricks - Part 1

by Bob Peterson

Wow. It's hard to believe it's already been one year since I published my fifth book, Hacking the Out of Body Experience: Leveraging Science to Induce OBEs. It was well received in the community. So far I've sold about 2,200 books and 200 audio books so far, and readers have consistently given it stellar reviews on amazon. Thank you guys! (And if you think you're going to get rich writing an OBE book, think again!)

Many authors, like me, never seem to actually "finish" a book. They just force themselves to draw an arbitrary line in the sand, press the "Send" button and within a week, regret they didn't add one or two more little things. So what else should I have added to Hacking? With 350 pages of OBE techniques, what could possibly be missing? Unfortunately, a lot. Sigh.

In the OBE-oriented world, ours is a journey not only of discovery and growth, but of learning, so it might be more important to ask: what new OBE tricks and tips have I learned or discovered in the year since the book's release? What new advice can I offer the would-be astral traveler?

I want to share some of those with you in this article. In fact, I want to share so many that the article got too big. I decided to break it into multiple articles. If you're seriously dedicated to inducing OBEs, I know you won't mind. So let's begin.

Take naps

I've found that taking a nap in the middle of the day really helps induce OBEs. While I may have mentioned napping in the book, I don't think I placed enough emphasis on it. Napping also gives your brain a break so you can interrupt your sleep (with WBTB/Wake Back To Bed) without suffering too badly the rest of the day.

Try different relaxation techniques

One shortcoming of Hacking the Out of Body Experience is the way it presents relaxation techniques. I wrote a few pages about it in chapter 16 ("Preparing for Liftoff: Physical Preparation") but I feel I didn't go far enough. I wrote a blog article about relaxation techniques to present some of my favorite techniques, and I recommend you read it if you haven't already.

Harness unfamiliarity

Similarly, I wrote a blog article about harnessing unfamiliarity that should have been in there as an entire chapter. (Click this link to read it.) If I ever publish a second edition of Hacking, I'll definitely include it.

The bottom line is: When you're in an unfamiliar setting, such as a hotel room or a friend's house, you sleep lighter. Your conscious awareness stays just a little bit on edge, just below the surface, and ready to react to the unknown, and that makes OBEs more likely.

You can harness this principle even in your home by making some simple changes, such as turning your bed, sleeping in a different room, opening a window to introduce unfamiliar sounds, and so on.

Try fasting

In Hacking, I wrote about dietary considerations, such as the effects of wheat gluten, vegetarian diets, and other food considerations. I talked about how you should eat very lightly and how it's best to not eat anything after 3:00pm, but I didn't really say anything about fasting, and I regret that.

I remember when I was young I used to not think about food until my body insisted. Eating was an inconvenience, even an annoyance. I used to think about eating as some kind of bad habit like smoking or drinking, and how someday I'd like to give it up, even though I knew it wasn't really practical. My friends and I would skip meals because we simply "forgot" to eat. (Oshara still forgets to eat!) Nowadays my body whines and complains about not being fed for two hours, and that's not only an annoyance; it's a bad habit.

It can be very hard to resist eating a snack before bed, or eating a big dinner at 6:00pm (18:00). A lot of Europeans customarily eat supper at 7:30 p.m. (19:30) or later. There's comfort in a fully belly, but fasting is worth it because it makes OBEs much more likely, especially if you fast at least 7 hours before bed. Remember: the reason they call it "breakfast" is because you're breaking your nightly fast.

Some people have reported great success inducing OBEs after a simple one or two day liquid-only fast, which may be even more effective.

The bottom line is: having food constantly in your stomach will hold you back from having OBEs. It's definitely worth enduring the hunger. Your body is basically an animal, a creature of habit, and animals can be trained.

By the way, the converse is also true: Some people ask "How can I stop having OBEs?" My answer is: keep something, however small, in your stomach at all times, or eat a big gluten-free meal before bed.

The four-hour WBTB trick

The Wake-Back-To-Bed technique has been a staple for many authors on astral projection, OBEs and lucid dreaming, but they often disagree about how long you should allow yourself to sleep before the alarm goes off.

Different authors recommend different amounts of sleep. Some, like Albert Taylor, recommend 4 hours, while others recommend 5 or 6. While it's important to experiment and find out what works for you, I've always preferred six hours, as I wrote in this WBTB blog article, because my consciousness is still very groggy after only 4 hours of sleep.

But let me tell you a story. In the first week in July, my wife's parents invited us to stay for free at their timeshare in Las Vegas. On the last day of our trip we needed to get up at 5:00 a.m. to get to the airport for our flight back home.

Making the most of our last day, we stayed up late and didn't get to bed until about 1:00 a.m.. I was exhausted. The alarm went off 4 hours later. I sat up and tried to get my bearings. As I sat there, I let my eyes close for a minute and had some of the most vivid, fun and wild 3-D visions I've ever had in my life. Unfortunately, time didn't permit me to explore the state, but it was enough to convince me to do more exploration.

With my brain-intensive computer job, I normally can't afford to sacrifice that much sleep, but I definitely need to revisit the four-hour WBTB, and I suggest you do too.

Read about OBEs before bed

In part 3 of Hacking, I detailed a lot of different ways to inundate your subconscious with OBE messages to coerce it into giving you OBEs, including reading OBE books and narratives. But I failed to mention that the best time to do that reading is right before bed. That way, OBEs are on your mind when you go to sleep. So:

• First thing in the morning when you wake up, try to remember your dreams and do your OBE affirmations. ("I slip out of my body easily.")
• Throughout the day, do your suggestions and place your intentions. ("Tonight I'm going to have a conscious out-of-body experience.")
• Last thing before you go to sleep, read a few pages from an OBE book (or, hey, my blog!).

Conclusions

When I started thinking about all the things I've learned over the past year, the article got to be too long. So I decided to break it into multiple articles. On my August 11 blog post, I'll cover more OBE tips and techniques from the past year. Until then, practice, practice, practice and never give up!

Bob Peterson
28 July 2020


If you have ideas for blog articles related to astral projection and out-of-body experiences, send me an email: bob@robertpeterson.org.

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