[Mikal]

OBEs are particularly connected to the months and years following the experience of "spiritual awakening" and the experience of "NDEs or IDEs." I would say from experience it takes a healthy brain environment (active higher centers) to facilitate the OBE experience of the brain to enable the OBE. Mario Beauregard, PHD...stated "the brain is an organ suitable for connecting the mind to the rest of the Universe.
OBEs can be diverse experiences...travelling in the physical where you can see and watch your body in sleep from across the room or experience in the astral/spiritual realm where you cannot see or watch your body.
Probably the strangest experience is "to be in two places at once without knowing that."
I had this experience in 2004 and have still wondered about it. I went away for the weekend...a distance of over 200 miles. I left very early in the morning travelling with three friends. I fell asleep in the car...while I was asleep and back in the city where I work and live my teammates were just arriving for the morning shift. One of my co-workers said, I came up the stairs, had my usual work clothes on and my work smock. She said as I passed her she said good-morning...I did not answer her appently which she said was strange. She wondered if I was mad so watched me walk away to my work area. At coffee-break...in my absence she ask the team if I had missed the call for coffee. They looked at her and said that I was in Toronto for the weekend. She argued up and down that I was there in the store...she saw me...spoke to me and watched me walk to my work area. Returning after the weekend and her facing me with this accounting...rather shook me..I realized that according to the time it occurred I had been asleep in the car. It was quite strange to me to realize that I had been in two places at once.
OBE's do not just occur in the varied levels of sleep patterns as I have experienced an OBE while in a conscious moment coupled with moments of intense concentrative mental work. They happen spontaneously like flicking a light switch. In the OBE state I am never afraid that I will not reconnect back to my body...that just seems to happen.
As "spiritual awakening" and NDEs and IDEs proffer shards of perception we are not familiar with in normal consciousness I think they occur from the combination of emotional sensitivity, a strong reconnect with unified sensory system, higher states of perception and altered states of consciousness....