Lucid dreaming may be one way of accessing information from the recesses of your mind or participating in a dream but sometimes, it involves even more. Lucid dreamers and those that practice dream control sometimes find themselves viewing places and people that exist and situations that occur miles away. Those that have this form of lucid dream actually advanced to another level, the accomplishment of out of body experiences.

A lucid dreamer knows they're dreaming. Some of the clues that one has a lucid dream are noting odd occurrences in the dream. Lucid dreamers recognize they're in a dream state when they read text, turn away and the text changes; see people that couldn't possibly exist such as historical figures or three headed men; watch people perform feats that don't occur in nature as flying without the aid of a mechanical device or note a mythical land and land formations. The dream controller already has a firm grasp of the lucid dream and now, sometimes through magical methods, changes the face of the dream.

People that have out of body experiences, however, are neither dreaming nor awake. They have the power to see scenes occurring outside their environment. They view reality rather than a dream.

An out of body experience does not include storybook or fictional characters but real people. While most OBE, out of body experiences, occur on this plane in the same time span, the person doesn't have to remain in their own time and space.Theoretically, you can move forward or backward in time, just as you move about in space.

One quite accomplished person in OBEs was Edgar Cayce who allowed himself to fall into an almost comatose sleep, view other's physical problems sent to him by mail and make recommendations for healing which were recorded by his secretary. Cayce went back through time to the "mythical" city of Atlantis and viewed outer space. Whether you believe the many recorded OBEs of Edgar Cayce or not, there is no doubt he helped thousands of people to achieve wellness.

OBEs occur at various times but often under the same conditions as sleep paralysis. Sleep paralysis often occurs when a person wakes or falls into REM sleep. During that time, only the eye muscles and those that cause circulation and respiration are active. The nerve center immobilizes the other muscles to prevent acting out the dream. If the dreamer wakes during that time, they find themselves paralyzed. Those that have OBEs also have lucid dreams according to studies done by Blackmore in 1983 and 1984, Irwin in 1988 and Glicksohn in 1989.

Scientists created a helmet that sent magnetic impulses to the temporal lobe. It created vivid images and was supposed to explain OBEs, but neglected one fact; sometimes people gather information during an OBE that they have no other means of knowing. This form of OBE is phenomena not explained by any scientist at this time and leaves one to conclude there may be true projection.

Each level of lucid dreaming seems to act as a stair step for the next level. Once people learn to recall dreams, the next level, the lucid dream begins. After lucid dreams come dream control and astral projection. While there's no scientific data to prove any of the levels conclusively, there is convincing anecdotal evidence that it does exist. The fact that you can train yourself to attain each level is also proof that everyone is capable of mastering the mind to achieve these phenomena and potentially tap into psychic powers that lay dormant in the mind.