What do Buddhists consider the Astral plane?

[Cincy_Joe]

I read about the Buddhists 31 planes of existence and I am trying to see which one of their planes could be the astral that most of us here are familiar with?

Thanks-

[CFTraveler]

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ptf/dhamma/sagga/loka.html

[Cincy_Joe]

@CFTraveler.......huh? I already read a list similar to this. This link you showed me explains nothing in regards to my initial post. Please clarify....

[CFTraveler]

I wasn't trying to explain it, merely to illustrate how complicated it is for those who read the OP and didn't know what the question was.
I don't think it can be translated to western/hindu/new age maps of reality directly- some parts of the 'worlds/planes' can be translated, but since most of these regions are grouped according to the apparent moral character or view of the experiencer (and described as afterlife experiences) the translation can be a little fragmented.
If someone is going to do it, (and I can prob. find some similarities) it's not going to be a 'quick' thing.

[Cincy_Joe]

Ok, I'm not asking anyone to go to the lengths of deciphering and cross referencing the Buddhists system and the New-Age one. I was asking if it was already known/figured out by someone or some group. Apparently not...

[Stookie_]

I would say that there are several planes in the Buddhist model that overlap the astral, not just one. Reading through what CF posted I can quickly find many similarities.

[CFTraveler]

Yep.  For example, anything afterlife related is probably either in the astral plane or the mental plane, depending on who you see there. 

[Chaos Mage]

I don't believe that a Buddhist would consider reality to be 'astral/physical'.  It would be more complete and have a direct 'existential/potential' relationship.  They would actively create their entire experience, and live it out, having full dream, astral, and other intensities of the same type of existence.  This would then apply to a twelve element system which coordinates and calculates the exact parameters of any living object, or any existential flow of events.  They would essentially be 'time lords', capable of fusing, interlocking, breaking, or disintegrating any reality they so desire, without harming Cosmic Life.

[CFTraveler]

I don't believe that a Buddhist would consider reality to be 'astral/physical'.  It would be more complete and have a direct 'existential/potential' relationship.  They would actively create their entire experience, and live it out, having full dream, astral, and other intensities of the same type of existence.  This would then apply to a twelve element system which coordinates and calculates the exact parameters of any living object, or any existential flow of events.  They would essentially be 'time lords', capable of fusing, interlocking, breaking, or disintegrating any reality they so desire, without harming Cosmic Life.

I essentially agree, hence my first answer.

[Chaos Mage]

Here I would like to share some of my experience with Buddhism.
Aside from past life conditioning and spiritual reconstruction to become this specific living soul, I studied TMNT comic books under the Archie name and learned a lot about Buddhism from those books.
For instance, using Master Splinter as a general guide and indicator of wisdom or teachings.
The comics taught a lot of eastern philosophy simply by the merit of good story telling.
After Issue 67, I stopped collecting the comic.  I do not know if it continues to this day.
But philosophies like "I am One (with my weapon)." and then the blade breaks, and it shows a character flaw in Leonardo, even though Leo could face against Master Splinter in a sword duel, if it were a real fight, Splinter would win.
And there were other things that were taught in those books, which after what just happened RL, I can't quite seem to as readily recollect.
Other religious elements were intermixed with the progression of story.  I learned about Tori gates, which makes a lot of sense to my own gateway model, and was in fact adopted as now I avoid passing through too many gates.  But the Tori Gate in itself is like a teaching, where you learn how to pace yourself and plan your next move.  You don't want to cross a hundred gates into the demon world then find yourself lost and having nowhere to go but into the bottomless pit that is now before you.
I learned several techniques directly from reviewing Splinter himself.  I remember one night I was meditating as Master Splinter, and in my story, I was about to go and face Shredder directly.  The fear of facing Shredder with only a wooden stick was hard to overcome.  Knowing the frailty of Splinter, though quick and possessing greater wisdom, Shredder's power and pure technique would be difficult to overcome.  So as Splinter, I sat in meditation, and had some kind of fantasy adventure about beating Shredder, but suffering a mortal wound.  The Turtles made it just before Splinter died, and Splinter told them the greatest secret.  "Life is skill.  Treat others skillfully and do not hasten to end your battles, but learn the truth of your enemy before you make a greater mistake than death."  which isn't really the greatest secret, but at the time, it was profound wisdom drawn directly from the meditation.  Then I backed up in the fantasy time line, and seen that Splinter had actually had a prophetic vision about his final battle with Shredder.  So then it became a full meditation, and I actually relearned how to meditate, and gained peace, clarity, and other such.
Two weeks later, it was a saturday, and I was hyper about Darkwing Duck.  I said to myself, "Surely Darkwing must meditate, how else would he have what he has.  Every super hero has a mental discipline."  and I sat down, and meditated again.  The experiences had with Darkwing Duck and my red laser gun (which actually shot a laser, but on the radio frequency, a device used for a targetting game that involved the gun, and a box that opponents wore which responded to the correct aim with a gunshot sound, though I never had two of them and could not have an actual match) were enlightening and fun.

Buddhism since, and the things learned from what I learned in TMNT / Archie, have stayed with me my whole life.  Buddhism seems like the most logical solution to religious practices.  Pure, honest, dedicated meditation and training the focus to sustain specific charges of energy lead to increased empathy and a deeper, more meaningful fantasy experience.

[Contenteo]

From a good 20 minutes read through combined with all the countless hours of frame working and modeled I have accomplished so far, I believe:

It seems the Sensuous world matches up with what we know as the "phasing process".
There is a couple of States that sound quite like they are describing.
For instance, Where they say the Bodhisattva lives sounds uncannily like a F21 state.

That would put us in a nice line up for the rest of the model too.
Where the Fine material world would be the lower/mid levels of astral. This would have everybody living in their belief structures.  F22-F26ish

The immaterial world would be past these belief structures, ~F27+, when you start experiencing the great oneness. This would be we would find the elusive Akashic records and so forth. Most have described this as a completely immaterial oneness. A whole new level of being "pluged in".

Anyway, that's what a brief analysis looks like too me. Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Contenteo

[Contenteo]

Oh, so the the most common plane would prob be around F22, or the bottom rungs of the Fine material world.

Cheers,
Contenteo

[CFTraveler]

From a good 20 minutes read through combined with all the countless hours of frame working and modeled I have accomplished so far, I believe:

It seems the Sensuous world matches up with what we know as the "phasing process".
There is a couple of States that sound quite like they are describing.
For instance, Where they say the Bodhisattva lives sounds uncannily like a F21 state.

That would put us in a nice line up for the rest of the model too.
Where the Fine material world would be the lower/mid levels of astral. This would have everybody living in their belief structures.  F22-F26ish

The immaterial world would be past these belief structures, ~F27+, when you start experiencing the great oneness. This would be we would find the elusive Akashic records and so forth. Most have described this as a completely immaterial oneness. A whole new level of being "pluged in".

Anyway, that's what a brief analysis looks like too me. Hope it helps.

Cheers,
Contenteo

This is great.  Someone should sticky it.

[Rudolph]

...
The immaterial world would be past these belief structures, ~F27+, when you start experiencing the great oneness. This would be we would find the elusive Akashic records and so forth. Most have described this as a completely immaterial oneness. A whole new level of being "pluged in".

Anyway, that's what a brief analysis looks like too me. Hope it helps.

Before I started trying to go OBE I would have spontaneous projections that went to a variety of places related to work on Consciousness and Awareness exercises that I was doing at the time.

I believe they were mostly way beyond the Astral realm.

Since I have started trying to project I find that most of my projections go right into the "Real Time Zone" as Robert Bruce describes it, the thin etheric layer next to planet Earth. To reach the Astral or Causal requires a special kind of effort beyond the common RTZ projection.

Reading in various forums I get the impression that 95% of projections go to this RTZ realm. So slicing it up into dozens of layers is really not very useful for most OBEers.

I think RTZ--Astral--Mental/Causal--Atmic--Buddhic/whatever,  should suffice 99.9% of the time.