RTZ OBE = Boring?

[clandestino]

Well, each to there own. The OBEs I've experienced in the past 15 years or so have generally been fantastically exciting !!

For you, checking out rooftops may be boring....for me, flying over the neighbourhood and skimming the rooftops is pretty amazing.

Mark

[cube]

Try teleporting somewhere like the Bahamas and watch the babes walking around in bikinis.

Also, try shining a flashlight light on a picture then when you project, walk into it and into that picture's reality. Robert Bruce calls this a Virtual Reality projection.

There are plenty of things you can do beyond standard issue flying and spying.

[Phong]

Cube, I mean specifically real-time zone. Going into a picture is fine, or better yet, a movie screen. Some of the best experiences I've had involved the use of some type of video game system. These aren't classic real-time OBE's, though, and fall more into line with dream experiences - they're also more fun.

I still think flying is fun, clandestino, but after a while it stops becoming an end in itself. Is flying and spying all that RTZ's are good for?

[Mystic Cloud]

Try flying into the sun or a black hole. Might be fun [|)]

[stephen~]

I wouldn't exactly describe rtz as boring, but I agree largely with Phong. I think once you get over the initial thrill, it does seem a bit empty and pointless, especially if you think about it longterm.

All these things like going to the Bahamas, flying inside a black hole, once you've done that how many more times are you going to want to?

If we had to spend eternity in the rtz I think we'd go mad, waiting around someone's home for them to get up and turn the TV on because you can't do it yourself, and there's nothing else to do. Watching girls go by because all you can do is watch, how sad is that?

It's very exciting because it gives you the first glimpse that there may be more to existence than 3 score years and 10 or whatever, and being able to confirm it with various tests. But after that it's kind of lonely and strange, not being able to interact with anything. I don't think we really belong in the rtz. A bit like walking around a museum, once you've marvelled at all the exhibits you want to get back to real life objects and people doing real life things in which you can take part. In the rtz we are out of context.

[Kazbadan]

I think that it is related with what you think about life: if i dont like to see the same things everyday, let´s say, if i dont like to be walking always near the river because that it is boring (all the same thing), so i will think that RTZ obes are boring too. That because of my attitude towards things.

Now, in real life i really love to be always walking the my beautiful river, near my home. I am never tired of it. I am never tired of looking into the amazing flowers, trees and plants that i see everyday. So, i conclude that if such everyday things are not boring, i suppose that obing in RTZ will be an amazing experience to me. When i look to the little leafs in the top of the trees, with a fantastic sky behind it i stay gazed, so i dont want to imagine the experience if i could do the same flying!! Must be...i dont know, great!

Fly to the top of the trees or to the roofs, feel the wind, look into the moon, reach the clouds with a jump and fly free as a spirit of fire around the world....thats poetry, that´s amazing!! Feel the world and the life.

I think that first you must learn to love things while in your body, only then you will feel pleasure in obes. I see many friends of mine that are blind. Sometimes i see a tree or a little thing imbued with great beautyness but no one seems to care about that. This kind of attitude stops people to breath the nature and it´s essence.

[stephen~]

I have to disagree and infact I find it a little insulting lol[^]. What you are saying is "You don't appreciate the world we live in so you don't appreciate it out of the body"

On the contrary, I have spent 7 years of my life by rivers, photographing rare wild flowers, going to extraordinary lengths to preserve wildlife being both payed to do so and doing it for free. I appreciate this world plenty, there's nowhere I'd rather be than walking through a wood full of bluebells. In the end you start to live by the changing seasons, the early wildflowers, migrating birds, and swarms of clouded yellow butterflies arriving on the warm southern winds in summer. In otherwords, you stop looking at clocks as a mark of your life going by because you get so absorbed in nature, it takes over as your sense of time passing.

But as far as rtz goes you can't do anything other than see it. You can't smell it or feel it. Astral projections however have all the tactile appeal of the physical world, and there are things to communicate with. Rtz is the real world through a veil, with numbness and silence (imho), fascinating but lacking so much.

So stick that in your pipe and smoke it![]

[gravy]

OK think of it like this, NASA just launched that mission to Mercury, it'll take 7 years, you can do that overnight

You need to appreciate the extra mobility really.  But everyone has their own preferences.  I see the RTZ as nothing more than a training ground to help you gain experience during your OBEs, might as well enjoy it.

[upstream]

You can't project bored. OBEing and boredom excluding each other. If you want to fly you should learn to walk first...or something like this...hihihi. I mean you have to ground yourself by developing RTZ-perception before you could reach the astral.

[Phong]

I suppose you're right. I really don't appreciate the world outside me. I guess that's a little immature, isn't it?

I used to be very much the opposite - thinking leaves were beautiful, a plastic bag dancing in the wind (before "American Beauty"), even the mundane architecture of my school (someone designed it and people built it, how is that not beautiful?). This was around the time I discovered lucid dreams, actually.

Then something happened. I'm not sure what it was - some really bad lucid dreams where I lost control and felt attacked, and another when I went to the buddhic dimension and saw the world was designed for pain and thought I'd go mad. I'm not sure if my changing views sparked those experiences, or if those experiences changed my views.

Because, the whole world can't be beautiful can it? What about the mentally ill people who have no comprehension of the world or themselves? What about all the kids who die before their 5th birthday in Brazil? Or the ones who grow up deformed and retarded because of malnutrition and dirty surroundings? What about the kids in richer nations with emotionally abusive parents? Or the daily inconsiderations we give to one another and act selfishly? None of this needs to happen - and that's not beautiful. I scorn a physicaly world system that allows such suffering and does not allow me to communicate this easily. I mean, Jesus healed the sick just by touching them, and what did he accomplish? An inspirational self-help book. Bestseller!

Sometimes nature is a sick freak, and the world is a wasteland. Changing your perspective doesn't change the fact that these things happen. People who lead the cause against these things thousands of years ago didn't make much progress (Jesus included), they certainly don't today.

How sucky is this world, where beauty is from ignorace? On the other hand, maybe I've just been watching too much pessimistic liberal TV :/

[Edit: You're actually right upstream. The experience changes on the onset of boredom, which it may have been itself conducive too.]

[Kazbadan]

Stephen, sorry, i didnt want to insult. It was just an idea that maybe you could not being enjoying life.

And it was just that, a theory, because i never Aped or obed, and maybe i will think that obes are boring, when i project for the first time.

It´s sad to hear that obe are boring, but i will ty it on the same way. Maybe tonight...[]

Gravy, your avatar is very nice!!

[michael]

I would never subscribe to the view that ONBE's are "boring"...next to life enhancing love/sex it is perhaps the most life affirming thing there is..proving that we are spiritual eternal beings...with a destiny only to be imagined, explored for aeons.that being said I have indeed found some OBEs I have had "mundane"...since we humans are easily satiated....but boring..not really...billions have not experienced this in the physical plane...shame..

[Phong]

Oh, stephen, I didn't realize you made two posts. That's a really interesting perspective on the RTZ experience - that it actually offers less freedom than waking consciousness. Even if we did have the freedom of manipulation, though, it would effectively nullify what the physical world stands for and make it like another astral experience. Is this worthwhile?

Would it not end a great deal of suffering caused by physical limitations? Are there any pleasures that would be lost? Is there pleasure in limitation of conscious manipulation? What would the future be like if everyone learned how to OBE? Would it be similar to computations based virtual reality, which Ray Kurzeil suggests in Age of the Spiritual Machines will happen inevitably?

(I hope that's not too many questions for this thread - maybe I should make a new one of the usefulness of objectively proving the the OBE phenomena?)

[mactombs]

At first I thought you'd have to be insane to not think the RTZ is amazing. The world as it is, I wish I could experience every part of it throughout all time. I'm very curious and would love to explore and observe (which the RTZ sounds ideal for). I guess nature can be thought of as cruel, too, but I am always just awed by it. But disagreeing with this wouldn't make you wrong, and neither would it make you insane.

Maybe what you see in the RTZ is a reflection of your own boredom, or maybe it is a part of you telling you that there are other places/realities that need your attention. I think it's something akin to the latter. I don't know what it would mean if I thought the RTZ was boring - but I do know it would mean something, and probably be important enough that it would get my attention.

[Phong]

I've had a good handful of RTZ exits. The sensation really is incredible and other-wordly.

But it's the same exact world. Nothing is any different than if you had just plain woken up. You're asleep, everyone's asleep, and it's dark. Sure, you go outside and fly for a bit, looking at the rooftops of all the houses, but the sky is barren, cold and windy. Go to the moon, fly into space? Even more barren. Go and spy on someone? All of a sudden the concept seems banal. Try to do something (even more) supernatural, like knock something over or appear to someone as a vision? That might be cool, but what purpose would that serve? You might as well just get up and knock that thing down with your real body for all the good it'll do, or meet that person while you're awake.

Although I've only had about 5 or 6 of these experiences, most of them very short, I always leave them with the conclusion that anything that's worth doing in a RTZ projection is worth doing in your normal body. That includes espionage (with its associated risks) and talking to people (with its assoicated difficulties with language). Sure, later on I think, "I wish I could fly to the top of that church," but once I've actually induced the experience, it's like "ok, what was that for?" No one can see you. And what if they could? What would that do but freak people out?

I mention this in light of all the recent posts regarding if OBE's are "real" or not, especially those seeking objective evidence. I'm increasingly feeling that this is a wasteful enterprise, not because I feel they're impossible - quite the opposite - but that they're so commonly dull that it's more exciting to study how grass grows then to RTZ OBE.

Not to offend the biologists of the forum, but I bet that sounded really insane and pompous.   What do you think?