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Science is always trying to disprove phenomena that do not accept as possible. Science is by definition concerned with logic and provable fact.

Science never ever tries to disprove anything. Science tests an hypnosis, and then determines its truth from the recorded observations. Other people can test the hypothesis too. Science does not actively accept (or reject) anything at all. It is simply a method of observation, nothing more or less. I’m not specifically picking on you Mustardseed, but I’m shocked at the lack of education, especially on the scientific method, which is found on the majority of boards which purport to ‘spiritual practices’. This then results in people being negative about science (which is caused by their own lack of understanding of the subject).
It might surprise you Mustardseed, but philosophy and indeed metaphysics by definition are concerned with logic and fact, such features are their very bedrock and foundation.
Provable fact is nothing more than shared consensus reality. If you really wish to do away with provable fact, then even spiritual subjects become meaningless, as each person defines their own term’s and perhaps even language to talk about those terms in. Why is there such negativity towards finding a commonality in which to share experiences? Being anti-science is being against the sharing of experience, being anti-science through lack of education is worse.

Having a OBE experience is more than a physical sensation it is a spiritual condition.

What exactly is a spiritual condition? What exactly is spiritual? If we refuse to use logic and ‘provable fact’, why are we even sharing experiences on this forum?

An interesting experiment would be to use this technique on a person who knows and are capable of conscious exits and ask him/her if the sensation is the same. This however is not accepted, as it would require them to have faith in such a person.

Faith is useless in the scientific or even objective domain, as irrationality is at its core and it stifles any attempts at defining a commonality. Such as I can have faith that OBEs are actually the cause of clockwork elves polishing my toenails and so causing them to irradiate orgone energy which dissolves my body and places me in the zozo dimension. Another person might believe me mad based upon their faith in OBEs being aliens beaming holographic simulations into their head.
Faith is a dead-end as it ignore anything to the contrary of faith held beliefs, even if those beliefs could be proven to be 100% wrong (I’m not saying such a feat is possible).

It is easier to use it on a person who has no experience with such things and then make various conclusions and insinuations that supports their own postulate.
 

What conclusions or insinuations (a biased word) did this article actually state? Why are your own ‘faith based’ experiences and consequent conclusions reached from your own OBEs any less wrong or negative than the results of this experiment?
People fail to see that this experiment was about ‘out of body sensations’ not about the ‘out of body experience’, but it seems many are so desperate to hold on to their own beliefs they attack anything they perceive to counter their own desired faith held beliefs.

  Yes, I do respect that approach,

      But surely, if you admit the existence of such phenomena as astral projection, you are recognizing that the modern scientific community is essentially flawed.

My stance on AP is that as an actual experience, it is real (such as people do experience it as a distinct state), although as my own experiences have grown, I’ve moved away from astral philosophies which presume to explain the experience, and now I’m looking from a more rationalist mindset.
Astral philosophies will generally draw links between perceptions of being outside of the body meaning consciousness can exist without the body. From this they will presume consciousness survives death as it doesn’t actually reside in the body.
I personally will not draw such conclusions on a subjective interpretation of an unknown experience. Whilst AP appears to take place outside of the body, we do not actually know that it does.

I wouldn’t say that the scientific community was flawed; more that it focuses on areas which it can study. Currently the AP area is shrouded in a lot of occult terminology, and this is perhaps another reason for little research.
I don’t believe anything is ultimately beyond science (science being a rational methodology to study reality). If a human physical brain can experience AP, and if there are spiritual worlds beyond the physical in which AP takes place, then there is a mechanism by which they connect and can communicate information. A so there is a point at which science can study the phenomenon.
If we eventually discover AP is a brain induced state, so be it. If we eventually discover AP exists in other places of existence above physical reality, then great.

You would be hard pressed to find any reputable scientist that would support the existence of the spiritual world.

This is no different to people on these forums not giving credence to concepts such as the spaghetti monster actually existing. This is not meant as a slight, but simply to display that beliefs which fall outside of our own are generally not given consideration. With science it goes a bit further, as scientists require evidence that belief alone cannot supply. If the spiritual world truly exists, then science will ‘eventually’ find trace of it.

Even spiritual scientific approaches that try to use the scientific method to explore the spiritual realms are dismissed by the greater scientific community.

The problem here lies in that most studies for paranormal phenomenon do not fully follow the scientific method. A double blind study which isn’t truly double blind has failed before it’s started.

    As far as I am concerned, if people give credence to astral projection as a real phenomenon, then there must also be room for theories such as hollow earth, seeing as both ask you to suspend your rational scientific mind, and ignore modern scientific findings.


                                                       Joe.

As above, I think AP can be considered with a rational mind (although not many of the philosophies surrounding it). But things like hollow earth fall apart when looked at rationally. When science does eventually take note of the many spiritual or psychic phenomenons, it will probably show many of them to having no basis outside of faith held belief. I don’t see this as a bad thing, because it’s simply progress of our view of reality, and it’s something which has been happening for as long as there had been humans.

    "It's an interesting idea as far as ideas go, but that's all it seems to be."

    "All modern science generally refutes this..." 


  I'm sorry, Mr Jingo,

        But it greatly amazed me that you would so easily dismiss the theory of a hollow earth because modern science disallows its existence! This is a website dedicated to discourse on such matters as astral projection, phasing, and even ceremonial magick.

                                                                Joe.

Hi Joe,
One might discuss AP, phasing and ceremonial magick, but if you read the majority of posts here, they discuss it in a rational way. Science is simply rational thinking, and personally, I’d rather live my life through the lens of rationality – sorting the wheat from the chaff, than taking onboard everything what-so-ever in an irrational way with no method to differentiate between the useful and ‘true’ knowledge, and the downright crazy knowledge. The occult can, and has, unhinged people for failing to do just that.

If you wish to ignore basic things like:

*Earths tug on the moon is consistent with a body of earths mass. If Earth was hollow, it would tug on the moon less. These measurements are used for everything from satellite technology, to launching probes into space, to measuring earth’s course through space. There is no such inconsistency in gravity which there would be with a hollow earth.

*When an earthquake occurs at point a on the earth’s surface, the waves created by the quake propagate to point b and c. To do this they travel across the surface crust and through the deeper magma layers. Waves travel at different speeds through the brittle hard crust and the viscous deeper layers. Taking measurements at point b and c show the waves travelled through a solid and more viscous layer – rather than the outer layer of an hollow shell. You could built a model yourself to test this.

*The earth bulges at its rotational equator due to the viscous nature of the core being pushed out by centrifugal forces – if the earth was hollow this wouldn’t occur.

*The earth has a very strong magnetic field, if the earth was hollow, or indeed had a sun at the centre of it, where would the magnetic core reside? If in some miniature sun (which would be too small for fusion to occur), we would see cycles in the field’s strength like the 11 year cycles with our own sun.

*Tectonic plates (huge parts of the crust) are moving on the magma currents below them, creating earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and various constructive and destructive phenomenons on their travels. Such migration would not be seen with a hollow earth.

*There are numerous experiments which are shooting various subatomic particles through the earth to detectors on the other side, all results from these experiments and consistent with a solid earth.

*We have countless satellites in orbit around our planet, which have (and continue to take) photographs of every square foot of earth. None have shown any form giant entrances at the poles – nor have any of the arctic/polar explorers seen huge holes on their crossings of these ‘land’ masses.

*One of the giant ‘hole’ entrances at the north pole would once have been pure ocean during ice free periods, and we didn’t lose our ocean to into the hollow earth during such periods.

*The arctic is actually a landmass under most of the ice, it migrated where to where it currently is from the supercontinent ‘Pangaea’. How did the hole form in the arctic landmass?

One could ignore all of this, but the evidence on the other side is little more than hearsay and belief. It’s one thing to hold belief; it’s another to hold a belief against a tide of insurmountable evidence.
I personally want to see through the words and ideas man has spun over such occult ideas (due to antiquated world views) to the raw ideas underneath. And to so this, one must be critical, else our knowledge would never  progress – and if we really took a non-rational view in these areas, we would still have the beliefs of man circa 200,000 bc.

Hollow earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth) is a view of the earth in which it contains either multiple inner hollow spheres, or even a sun. Beings (usually advanced masters of some kind) inhabit it with their advanced civilisation. I recall reading a book in which the author (whose name escapes me) trecked to one of the poles to find the 'entrance' (huge gaping holes at each pole - which all modern satellites miss* - or governments cover up). The book covers his adventures and details his experiences with these advanced beings (in their flying machines).
All modern science generally refutes this though, from gravitational force on sorrounding bodies being consistant with an object of the mass and consistency of a non-hollow earth, to satellite photos, to earthquake shockwave propagation through the surface crust and deeper layers, to modern knowledge of plate margins and tectonics and recorded movements of the earths crust.
It's an interesting idea as far as ideas go, but that's all it seems to be.

*There have been a few photos like this:



which seem to perpetuate the myth - but they ignore such things that satellite photos of the earth are made up of many single shots, pasted together to give a larger view, and satellites in certain orbits will not see the poles fully.

Current models of the universe incorporate something called 'inflation' (the universe underwent a brief period of rapid expansion shortly after the bigbang - which explains why the universe looks mostly uniform in all directions).
We can tell objects are moving away from each other by looking at the frequency of their light reaching us. Due to doppler effect, objects moving away from us have more of the longer wavelengths (red - redshift), and objects moving towards us have more of the shorter wavelengths (blue - blueshift).
The doppler effect is basically the change in frequency and wavelength of a wave source as percieved by an observer moving relative to that source. For example, remember the sound of a police car coming towards you, it's siren sounds higher pitch (wowowowowowowowo) but as it passes you and moves away from you, it's siren sounds lower pitched (wooooo woooooooooooo wooooooo etc). The same happens with light (and all wave sources).

You're also correct about light, such as if you look at the sun (not directly!) you're actually seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. A star one light year away, we are seeing it as it was 1 year ago. The further we look out into space, the further back in time we see.

Regarding supernovas, i've seen speed measurements of their outwards velocity at 10,000 km per second. This was a measurement of one. We have had supernovas quite close to us in the past (astronomically speaking of course!) and don't forget, our solar system was created by such a supernova billions of years ago.

Focus levels are simply markers for specific states of consciousness. In the phasing system, such states can be defined at the minimum by brainwave state at the time they are experienced. This is why hemi-sync (binaural beat technology) labels specific exercises as specific focus levels. The point of the CDs is to drive brainwaves to a specific state (which familiarity will reinforce), and for easy reference, these states are given a name F10-12-15 etc. usually the higher the F number, the more removed one is away from bodily awareness and the further one moves into the astro mental.
In the phasing models (which utilise F levels), one is not perceived to leave the body as described by the traditional OBE philosophies, one simply shifts awareness from the physical to another point on the spectrum of consciousness. Phasing models generally don’t believe we leave the body at all: the body (and physical) is a belief system (astral locale) which simply exists at a certain point on the spectrum of consciousness (as do all experiences, locales etc).
With this in mind, REM, LUCID, ASTRAL etc are simply points on the spectrum of consciousness. For example, F27 is considered the ‘after life’ area of this spectrum, other F levels might be slightly out of phase with the physical (F10), or experiencing inner planes etc.

Hi Snaipers,

it sounds like the altered state felt during the hemi-sync cd resulted in you becoming more aware of the hypnogogic stage of sleep. This is the point between waking and sleep, which is missed by most people. In this state, strange things can be heard or seen, and strange sensations felt.
Being aware of this state is a good thing when trying to project.
Something to keep in mind is that it seems relatively rare to have an OBE while listening to Hemi-Sync tapes, they are more tools to create triggers for specific states of consciousness. For example, once you get used to F10, you can easily recall it (without the cd's) by counting up to 10 - like the exercise (trigger) on the CD guides you.

Hey Birdy,

Welcome to the forums! I was an active OBE'er and LD'er as a child, and like you, I started keeping my experiences to myself after finding very few others have experienced anything like it, and many did consider such experiences 'weird'.
There is a waelth of knowledge here, and I look forward to your contributions .

Chris

DMT is a very powerful and short acting psychedelic, not a dissociative - it is also produced by the brain under certain conditions. An interesting book is "DMT: the spirit molecule" by Dr Rick Strassman, in the book Rick gets the funding and go ahead to carryout DMT experiments on willing participants, and the resulting experiences are strikingly like OBEs and NDEs - even down to low level doses producing something which sounds exactly like 'the vibrations'.
In regards to the substance itself, it's something one has to be very careful about as it is very powerful in effect (As above, full OBEs, NDEs, Ego Death, merging with the source/universe etc). Definately one to research deeply before even considering it. I haven't tried it personally, but do have friends who have, they've posted experience reports over on erowid gttp://www.erowid.org.

I've got a few favorites such as 'a day in the life', 'baby you're a rich man', 'strawberry fields forever'. Although tbh, I tend to go through phases of liking various other tracks too .

I normaly dont eat meat more than twice a week not counting eggs and fish. There was also research that if animals were on no grain diet their meat did not have adverse effect. So that excludes almost all meat in market. Raw meat also did not have adverse effects but decidedi never tried that nor i really intend to. There are many researches advocating for or against meat. I think it depends on your body type if it's good for you or not.

Could you direct me to this research? I’ve not been able to find anything which claims or proves this – but I might be looking in the wrong places. AFAIK the diet of the animal has little consequence (other than diseases such as BSE etc) on the reasons why meat is bad for human physiology in large amounts.

Some meat industry practices are horrible..i agree with that. It could be changed for the better. I dont know if you will agree with me but i believe that each animal soul know what it will go through when it incarnates as a cow or chicken and they could choose to incarnate or not.   

I don’t believe in souls in the traditional sense (but that’s a whole other discussion), I believe in consciousness. So I don’t believe a cow, or chicken, or a human who is attacked and killed, or who will die from a disease etc has any knowledge prior to this life.

It's impossible to tell exactly what kind of emotions they feel. Here is a short description of Clive Backster's experiment.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/LucyRhiannonRuth/CB%20ground%20breaking.html

The plants were reacting on death of other living beings be it other plants, microbes or animals. They are also affected by the mood of surrounding people.

Such experiments have been carried out in recent years (MythBusters on the Discovery Channel actually attempted it themselves too and found no response from the plants they used), and no such reactions have been found. So at the least, we can’t assume that plants react, or feel, or have any awareness at all (other than what people who wish to believe imbue them with – but then such people will be interacting with their own created plant thought form rather than the plant).
Perhaps future experiments will clear this up either way. I personally get worried when a pseudo-science book from the 70’s which has not been validated in any experiment since (quite the opposite) still has such a large effect on peoples beliefs.

If anyone is really interested in this area, check out something like:

The action plant: Movement and Nervous Behaviour in plants. by Paul Simons.

It shows how amazing plants really are (without the need for emotions or sentiency), and the complicated actions evolution has imbued them with. There is also a section which shows how the original claims of plant sentiency/telepathy etc published in ‘The Secret life of Plants’ cannot be scientifically substantiated.

In Italy in Damanhur they are doing some very interesting experiments with plants. For those who understand Croatian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swFf4psr1_Y&e 

The music you hear is played by plants. One electrode is connected to the leaf and the other to the root. With them the electric potential is measured and so the electric circle is formed. It is connected to the analog digital converter which converts electric impulse to musical. Electric impulse travels to the synthesizer where you can choose the instrument for a plant to play. The plant is running the system and plays harmonius meditative music. If a negative person comes to the room they sometimes stop playing. They need about a week or two to learn playing the music and this is done with letting them listen to melodical music mostly classical. After some time they get it they can produce the sounds with changing electric impulses. At first the sound is static but with time there are more variations.

Could you post or detail any papers or publications these results appeared in? I’ve googled but only managed to find details of experiments by artists to make sounds from plants.

It could be said the same for animals.

But only if one has faith in certain belief systems which imbue everything with souls on some form of cosmic progression to some perceived ‘higher state’ (which is all subjective and relative to only the ideas of said beliefs). In a world where people evolved just as animals and plants evolved, such logic as above dictates humans have evolved to be eaten too.
To me personally, knowing that I am inflicting death, pain, fear, terror on a sentient life form ‘right now’, simply to satisfy a desire which could be satisfied in other ways, would not be quieted by a subjective belief I hold on how I ‘think’ reality works. Especially when such a belief has only blind faith at it’s core.

But who would eat feel good eating neighbours flesh? I wouldn't. I have just read about cannibalism on wikipedia and cannibalism was more spread than i thought. Acts of cannibalism were mostly commited during severe famine. I guess your mind think differently then.

The point of my comment was to show that the person stating this quote literally implies that anything is justified (however terrible and depraved) as long as the person carrying out such actions doesn’t feel bad about them. That is exactly what the logic of the statement dictates. This is all about ego satisfaction above all else. To me, such views are not those from a more advanced being.

It was not just a chanelled quote but also by Dr. Len. There were also spiritual masters who did eat meat.

Just because there were ‘spiritual masters’ (a relative and subjective term) who did certain things, it doesn’t imply those things were truly good. There are well documented spiritual masters (as considered by their followers) who abused children, murdered, and committed incest. Just because they were considered spiritual masters by some, I would never consider those actions ‘right’ or just.

I guess a lot of this comes down to absolving personal responsibility for our own actions to beliefs we hold. I’ve come to the point where I’m dropping all beliefs which require nothing but faith to support them. To cut off a few arguments:
Some might say OBE requires belief, but I’d say only explanations of OBE or extrapolations of it’s meaning (such as survival after death etc) need belief. I can quiet happily project, as the experience itself is real (whatever its source), I simply don’t impose beliefs on the meaning of the experience anymore.

Hey jseses,

Sending positive thoughts and energy her way.

"snap" misterjingo! 

Sarah

i see...

but take it this way, then.. you ask someone what time is it. and they might say, for example, 8:00:00. if the time stops, that is the present. but after he says that is 8:00:00 time will go on so the sec will be 01, 02... when u asked - that was the past and when you found out what time it is , it's future already.  am i right?

does present exist?

i see...

but take it this way, then.. you ask someone what time is it. and they might say, for example, 8:00:00. if the time stops, that is the present. but after he says that is 8:00:00 time will go on so the sec will be 01, 02... when u asked - that was the past and when you found out what time it is , it's future already.  am i right?

does present exist?

If time stopped there would be nothing, as the electrons in your brain would freeze, no processing would occur, and any space in this 'no-time' would effectively not exist.
As above, the present is a concept, as even 'now' has a latency due to nerve impulse speeds and processing of information (we are effectively living slightly behind the rate of change (time)).

it's always present, future and past are just concepts used by humans to explain present they aren't experiencing at the point they are now, like me talking about tomorrow, im experiencing today and tomorrow at the same time but the me that's experiencing today is not aware that it is experiencing tomorrow, and vice versa,  get it? we create time because we are not aware that we are experiencing the eternal now or present, if you are willing to believe i think the all, universe, or people call it god, is aware that it is experiencing all presents at the same time(the eternal now), hope you're not confused

I pretty much agree with b12145. Past, present, future, time, they’re all concepts to help us structure and understand our direct experience. Ultimately, all there is is change (time itself is possible entropy of the universe – moving from a highly ordered state, to a more disordered state from the point of the big bang), this increasing entropy and consequential changes of state is conceptualised as the passage of time by us. Luckily, we have a means of recording these changes and we classify them as the past, and due to self-awareness and possible evolutionary advantages (foresight and planning), we can project change ahead (the future) of the current rate of change.
The present is all there ever is.