[Smittoh]

Robert's exactitude enabled me to have some proof for myself.

I first did Monroe tapes and Focus 12 exercises *before* I ever read AD. I had an inner projection, or was it etheric. Who knows...

However, I repeatedly encountered Astral Noise and Astral Laughter.

Many things I experienced I could not explain before I read Robert's books. Having read them after the fact was a very good confirmation for me.

The main problem is with the scientific community. I think OBE could be researched very well, if the assumptions and paradigms of the scientists we have would not be as dogmatic and encrusted.

I mean - one researcher proved that magnetic fields can trigger spiritual experiences (This was later proven not to be very reproducible, IIRC). Another could induce changes of point of view (in relation to our normal sight, as in astral sight). To none of these researchers it ever occurred that the spiritual experience could have been genuine, always be there, and just be triggered by the fields. Or that the brain may be just a transceiver, not the "thinking bone". Or that the point of view change could not have been simple mathematics by the brain because it has not all the information IMO to do this by computation alone.

Many neurologists believe we have no free will, because the brain lags behind actions we consciously trigger. There is not enough time for information to travel from the brain to your arm and leg to explain the lag and have a free will at the same time if the brain is really the place where your consciousness exists.

Measurements of the etheric field (and it seems there are indirect ways to measure it) is that changes in the aura happen before the changes in muscle activation. So, where does your thinking really reside? I had moments when I could relocate the center of my thinking down in my leg during meditation, so does my consciousness really reside in my brain? Or is it just storage and co-processor? You can see free will happen every day, but we have a scientific community questioning it because of a measuring, instead of questioning the role of the brain. Okay, as a brain researcher you don't question the role of the brain or you lose prestige...

Another example - alien abductees have all the classic symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. That was proven in a study. And then the explanation became that the experiences were believed so strongly or sth like that that the patients introduced the disorder into themselves. For any other experience the presence of the disorder would indicate what the patient describes really happened in a way, but here suddenly the thinking of the researchers took the "cannot be, find different explanation" turn and there you are. The disorder levels were similar to those of Vietnam vets!

So, as long as this biased approach with all its censorship - both of the minority opinions and within the researchers' heads themselves - goes on like this, it is very questionable if this science is a better tool for describing the world than my own mind and perception.

Unlike the scientific community I at least try hard to remove my perception filters and see what is there.

Oliver