Mind-split while awake?

This is something that happened to me when I was in highschool. I had to give a lecture, can't remember on what topic, but halfway the lecture I found myself as what I can only describe as a 'ball of consciousness' in the back of my head. My 'Ball Self' heard nothing of the world outside but only heard my 'Talking Self' giving a lecture. It was as if my Ball Self was looking through two tunnels which lead outside to my eyes from which I could view the classroom, whilst at the same time I could move about as this ball in my head and observe myself speaking and take a look at my own face from the side. I remember freaking out because I thought my Talking Self would 'stall', I couldn't comprehend how there were seemingly two 'me's' operating independently, so I guess I sort of forced my Ball Self to 'merge' again with my Talking Self.

Does anyone have any similar experiences?

Yes, several times. Just the other day, "part" of me moved about two feet upwards, and I was looking down at the back of my head, but the "part" of me that was functioning normally was going along just fine. It's hard to explain. I suspect this kind of thing happens with any development of psychic abilities, but especially OBE.

Yes, often. After years of meditating.

Absolutely, I call this the watcher (don’t know if it has another name). Your consciousness splits into two (or more ) parts where they watch each other in a chain. In the simple case described above, one part is the normal consciousness and the second part watches the first part.

I first stumbled on this while learning to lucid dream. I noticed that sometimes during a lucid dream you are right in the action. Other times, you are watching the action from ‘above’. After learning dream manipulation, one inspired day I decided to see if I could be both the dreamer and the watcher. After mastering split awareness in lucid dreaming, I was able to invoke the watcher while awake also.

Invoking the watcher while awake is a very good way to discover your motivations and biases. The watcher can see what the normal consciousness is paying attention to and why it chooses as it does.

<very advanced> For those that need a challenge, it’s possible to invoke a watcher for the watcher making 3 levels of consciousness. Base (daily awake type) consciousness is watched by a watcher and that watcher is watched by another watcher. Note that the second watcher does not see the primary consciousness, only the other watcher.

This has happened to me on many occasions, though not quite as described in the original post.

wstein, I'm going to try to invoke the watcher and the watcher's watcher. May take me a while, but what a great exercise. Thanks for the suggestion.

Thanks all for the feedback. It just happened spontaneous and I haven't experienced it while awake ever since.