[Xxmlqevq]

Uh oh, CF stepped it up a notch! Dang, I didn't realize you were such a pool of knowledge...wait, yes i did. Haha

A lot of your argument was confusing...not to say it wasn't brilliantly written, which it was, I just had a hard time understanding it because of its complexity! So I am going to respond to it as best I can, and pray that I don't accidentally end up reinforcing your argument.

Ha ha. Most psychological theorists used to believe indeed that the dreamstate only consists of expected (or previously recorded) stimuli, until they discovered that some dreams had information the subjects couldn't have known unless they received the information from a nonlocal (for want of a better term) source. Then they started using the word 'confabulation' which means that with what we know, our brains can invent stuff we haven't done yet. So there goes that theory. Not necessarily so! We are quite capable of doing things in our dreams that we have never experienced! It's all a matter of how much of "reality" you have experienced, and your subconscious remembers. So you see it's quite different from person to person. I have never jumped in the air and started flying before, yet I am able to do this with a degree of realism, simply because of other schemata supporting my environment. Common sense tells me that the further i soar into the air, the smaller the ground will get, because i'll be further away from it, similar to watching a house disappear slowly in a rearview mirror of a car. I will also see the clouds and the sky getting closer to me. I will feel the wind blowing against me. It's an entirely realistic and believable experience, and how? Because my brain is putting together all the past experiences I have had to PREDICT the outcome of a new experience that I have never experienced!

How magnificent the functions of the brain!! I get very excited when talking about the wonders of the mind, sorry. Haha. You see, during an OBE, you are supposedly capable of receiving information that is not generated by your own mind, which means it is actually happening, and your mind creates a visual which is a form of interpretation, ie senses, so that you understand what is happening. Given that information, who's to say that OBEs aren't just lucid dreams in which there is heavy telepathic activity? That would explain out of body validations, and it would be consistent with the concept of having stimuli that respond to external events, and take on the form of vision or even physical sound!!! It's mind blowing! So get a load of this...

You could write a sentence on a sheet of paper, ask me to project RTZ and read it. So you go and AP to the RTZ (sounds like a rap song doesn't it? LOL) or you could WILD, go into the room where the paper is supposed to be, read it, wake up, and report what you saw. OBEers claim to have the ability to project their CONSCIOUSNESS ...OUT OF THEIR BODY.......READ a sheet of paper....and RETURN to their body, and give an accurate account of what happened! Now, keeping in mind that I SUPPORT the idea that OBEs exist, that sounds COMPLETELY unrealistic, especially given the fact that I could argue that the entire experience was a lucid dream, with added TELEPATHIC internal/external stimuli.

In other words, I have a lucid dream. I can decide to be in my house. Go to the room where the paper is, read it, report back, and be correct. How? Telepathy. Then one could argue, "well if you're telepathic, why can't you just 'know' what the paper said?" Well that's simple. Many people's minds are unable to simply "know" things, so their mind uses the dreamstate to create a "reason", if you will to know the desired knowledge. It's interpretational perception! Just as lucid dreams are all in the head, I argue that an OBE is nothing more than a METHOD for the brain to attain information without going crazy because it can't justify how it attained this knowledge!!!!!
If I just confused the hell out of everyone, feel free to ask me what I just said! It can be confusing I know, and I'm not entirely good at explaining things. But I think I'm on to something with this.

Your move CF!

[Haibundadam]

I have an argument against the telepathy thing...

In the beginning of astral dynamics Robert Bruce describes a time when he had an internal projection when he was in the trance state. His relative had his first OBE and came into the room, Bruce saw him, and waved. The next day they both remembered it happening.

Now if it was telepathy and an interpretation of the mind as being out of body, then how did he SEE his relative?

[jeargefef]

My move, eh?
Ok- In my understanding, telepathy is the ability to get info from someone else's mind (brain)- like a radio signal, etc. But if I use telepathy to get the info out of your brain (like when you wrote it) I am not getting it from the paper, I'm getting it from your brain. So technically, telepathy and projection are not the same.
But- I believe that Monroe and others had different types of experimentation, in which the person that brought the paper in didn't know what it said (like picked from a deck of cards that are upside down without looking and then placed on a place hard to look at (or difficult, I think.) If it wasn't Monroe it was someone else- I just don't remember at the moment. So making it a double-blind (or whatever they call it) study would show that in order to get the info, the consciousness would have to get the info from the paper, which means there was no one to think about the number (suit or whatever) so no telepathy.
But technical questions aside, think of what we're talking about- that consciousness is not confined to the body exclusively, that it can exist outside the body. So to me, the only diff. between telepathy and projection is of point-of view- literally.
It's almost saying that there is a difference between playing the piccolo and the guitar- very different for the experiencer but different ways of doing the same thing (playing music) for everyone else.

[Xxmlqevq]

I don't mean literally telepathy...I just figured that it was another way to say "psychically". So psychically, they'd perceive the paper, or card. I think OBEs are a way for people to attain information a certain way. So if you wanted to communicate with someone, and you met on the astral, I think the projection is just a validation or justification for how you connected to the person. You need to see it happening a certain way, or you'd go crazy cause your mind can't process what's happening. It needs to create a process that it can comprehend. Since you believe in the concept of OBE, your justification or process is what you believe to be an OBE.


Again, please note that this is not necessarily my view, I'm just throwing things out there to consider. Maybe this discussion will help me figure out why I can't bloody do it still LOL.

[jeargefef]

Well, if you called me psychic I'd have to hurt you- JK! The word psychic has such negative connotations-memories of 'Miss Cleo' come to mind.

The reason that I like AP as a category is because if you put together all the things that have happened to me paranormally speaking, AP fits the bill, while the more broad psychic, (which just means relating to mind, btw) telepathic, psi, and other terms really don't.
I don't do pk (or never tried), can't tell you your future, can't even get the lotto numbers right, no matter how long I meditate, lol) I can't channel anyone else, or any other things that are thought of as 'psychic'.

What I can do is have other people's dreams, (used to be able to) project somewhere else and tell what was happening at the time (which could definitely be explained as telepathy)- I've also seen other people's astral doubles (which IMO can't be explained by telepathy) and other energy-related things. So to me it's a case of tomayto-tomahto.

And I have had info that could only be explained Akashic-records wise, since I didn't even know the Dr. that gave me the lecture. This I will only talk about in pm, because it's highly personal.

[Xxmlqevq]

Tomayto Tomahto. Agreed. But so what does that say for the existence of OBEs? lol I'm really trying here. I'm gonna do some serious reading. I wanna know how OBEs work, since I'm still bogus at them, even though I have had a few.

I have come to the conclusion that OBEs are entirely different than lucid dreams, even if there's a degree of [insert psychic/telepathy/other word here] in them, and even WILDs are entirely different than an OBE. As someone said earlier, I think OBEs for now are just plainly beyond science. Science proves things exist, but it cannot prove that things do not exist, because it's all relative information. We assume things because of the lack of counterexamples. Skeptics rely on science for their beliefs, which is a mistake, but they do it anyway. Therefore, OBEs and LDs are NOT the same thing.

Now if only I can learn how to do it. Haha. CF come pull me out sometime

[jeargefef]

The next time I project I'm coming to get you. If you see me I'll probably scare the bejeebers out of you. If I can.
I haven't had a real projection since the headaches started about 3 weeks ago, but I'll put it in my 'to do' list.

Science proves things exist, but it cannot prove that things do not exist, Exactly!

[Sheefeadalfuh]

Being a scientist myself, I think it would be very difficult if not impossible to prove conclusively that OBE's exist and then write a peer reviewed article on the results. Scientists like hard facts/evidence. The first step would be coming up with a scientific experiment to test OBEs. Maybe have someone in one room astrally project and then figure out things in another room? But then that may just prove that the person is a psychic, not necessarily astral travelling. We need some device that could record astral bodies to prove OBE's.

[jeargefef]

Being a scientist myself, I think it would be very difficult if not impossible to prove conclusively that OBE's exist and then write a peer reviewed article on the results. Scientists like hard facts/evidence. The first step would be coming up with a scientific experiment to test OBEs. Maybe have someone in one room astrally project and then figure out things in another room? But then that may just prove that the person is a psychic, not necessarily astral travelling. We need some device that could record astral bodies to prove OBE's.

In Journeys Out of the Body, Robert Monroe did just that, but still it only proved it to himself- there is always a theory to explain it away. Since this was back in the (50s or 60s) the idea of telepathy wasn't even considered- the researchers still wanted to say that he was a good guesser or that he somehow knew who was outside. Of course, these were not double-blind studies, but it was enough for Monroe to realize that he wasn't having some really interesting delusions, which is what he feared at the time.

[Xxmlqevq]

You seriously gonna gonna come get me? Do it! Cause I can't seem to get out on my own. I need your help! How does that work though? We'll have to plan it out

[Sillaycheg]

Being a scientist myself, I think it would be very difficult if not impossible to prove conclusively that OBE's exist and then write a peer reviewed article on the results. Scientists like hard facts/evidence. The first step would be coming up with a scientific experiment to test OBEs. Maybe have someone in one room astrally project and then figure out things in another room? But then that may just prove that the person is a psychic, not necessarily astral travelling. We need some device that could record astral bodies to prove OBE's.

That is the main problem. Sometimes the scientific method needs more tools to be able to prove something. For example: people knew germs existed (because people got sick), but they never saw the germs until a magnifying glass was invented.

Lots of people think astral bodies sound crazy; but that's simply because astral bodies are unknown to most people. It's just like how people didn't know the earth was round, so the people who called it round were called crazy, when in fact they were right.

The fact is astral projection exists; it happens repeatedly to people. Surely myself and Robert Bruce did not hallucinate the exact same things he explained in Astral Dynamics. Hallucinations vary from person to person. It's just annoying knowing something is real and most people don't even know it or ignorantly say it isn't real.

[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

[jeargefef]

Oliver wrote:
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! Something to add to this (to drive the point home a little deeper) is that some of these abductees had no memories of abduction until they went to get help for the PTSD symptoms- so if their memories were suppressed (or at least repressed to the point of suppression) conscious belief couldn't be the culprit here. But some scientists (not all, to their credit ) would rather invent another reason for these symptoms than deal with the obvious one.