outer body experience

I get this weird experience almost every night at the same time. It's always right before I'm ready to doze off. or maybe I've already dozed off and didn't know it. It seems to be an inbetween awake and sleep state. Hypnogogia is it called? Anyways, my thought process is still turned on as if I were awake, and consciousness as we know it remains intact... but my body is already either asleep or falling asleep. I don't know how exactly to put it into words except to say that all of a sudden I have this realization; I feel like I am losing part of myself? Like part of my brain is maybe dying or like part of "me" is slipping away? I know that is going to sound CRAY~ZEE. It feels so weird this feeling that I am losing myself, that I get freaked out and get scared by it but simulatneously saddened by it. I become CONVINCED in these moments that my very soul is dying somehow? (the more i type the more I probably seem psychotic..lol.. bear with me This experience only happens at night in between me falling asleep and being really sound asleep. Like I just got stuck in some kind of altered state? I end up getting out of bed and getting a drink etc... from the kitchen faucet to try and "shake" off the experience. Usually after only a few minutes of being awake, turning on the TV for a bit or just surfing the net for a few, I feel completely back to normal again. Does this sound even vaguely familiar to anyone? For all of you who are spiritual, this nightly experience almost seems like accidental disencorporation? (soul disengages from corporal being) if there is such a thing...can you accidentally have your soul kinda leave your body, and then quickly realize it? and that's why one feels like you are losing part of yourself, in this case, your body is now missing because you are hovering over it? Just now, as I was writing this post I remembered something similar to this but different growing up. When I was a little kid sometimes I'd go to sleep and then in the morning just before I would wake up, my mind would wake up before my body and I would be trapped in an unconcscious body (like locked-in syndrome) I would be naturally panicking and in a perfectly logical stream of thought i'd be telling myself, "you need to wake up somehow Pam!" you gotta find a way to just jarr yourself awake, your still dreaming!" I've been told that the temporal lobes have historically been involved in matters of emotion, memory, and spirituality. There is anecdotal evidence as well as scientific (brain stimulation and resultant religious experiences) So it seems like there are a few possibilities, either scientific or spiritual. Could it be that I am having some kind of nightly seizure which originates in my temporal lobes and the way my brain processes it is that my soul is dying/and so any damage to that region that what makes me perceive "ME" is dying? or perhaps actual neurons are dying from lack of oxygen and my brain knows this? Or is it that this region actually metaphysically "houses" our soul, quite literally? and somehow seizures can thrust one's soul out of our corporeal being even for a moment? Please, any replies !!!I am desperate to hear others similar experience. And putting this out there is hard because I am not even able to describe it very well...one of those truly ineffable things. pamela