Why wouldn't NEGs exist?

[horaciocs]

Hi all. We've been over this subject a number of times already, and the main concept here is that negs are the product of our own unconscious. Right? Barriers made up of our own fears.

But why can't they be actual entities, life forms just like us? I believe we all agree to the concept that we astral-project and, when we do so, we can go around in the physical (rtz) doing whatever we please and often interact with physical living beings.

If we can do that, what about people who lack ethics and enjoy harrassin other people? When they die, wouldn't they wander around the rtz, doing whatever they pleased just like we do, except that they wouldn't have a physical body to return to? Wouldn't that make up what we think of as negs?

I mean, if I enjoy harrassing people, I could do that while out of body. Wouldn't I, then, be considered a neg?

[Xanth]

Oh definitely!
I don't say EVERYTHING bad people encounter are what I classify as "negs".  I might have said likewise in the past, but I've come to realize some things that have changed my opinion. 

Generally, I can point out to people when a "neg" is something they're causing themselves... or if it's an actual entity.
But sometimes, the line between those two things can be very blurry, indeed.

[skiax]

Ok, so some of them are real. Wouldn't then the issue be assigning them power and power over us?

[personalreality]

i'm starting to think the whole thing is in your mind, rtz and all.

[horaciocs]

i'm starting to think the whole thing is in your mind, rtz and all.

I know how you feel, once I began to join the classic concepts of obes with phasing, it all boggled my mind awfully. I've been trying to understand how they could work together and get that to make sense, but that isn't simple at all.

Ok, so some of them are real. Wouldn't then the issue be assigning them power and power over us?

I don't think we can assign someone power over us, I think all we do is let down our defenses and surrender to fear. They might have power or not, that's up to them. But this goes more towards the view of negs as a representation of your own fears, when you let them take over and keep you from moving onwards.

[Everlasting]

They exist that's for certain, there are relative harmless ones and then there hardcore evil ones. The most harcore evil (powerful)ones radiates pure fear wich can be felt even in fully awake state. You'll know when they are close.

[horaciocs]

They exist that's for certain, there are relative harmless ones and then there hardcore evil ones. The most harcore evil (powerful)ones radiates pure fear wich can be felt even in fully awake state. You'll know when they are close.

Feels terrible. Been there, felt that. It took me some time to realize what that feeling meant, but now that I do I find it unbelievable that I had considered that to be a "normal" feeling in the past.

[Stillwater]

i'm starting to think the whole thing is in your mind, rtz and all.

It is a foregone conclusion, I think, that a large amout of the experience is in the mind, probably the majority. The question is really more about exactly how much is in the mind, and what is potentially independent. With respect to the rtz type experiences in particular, people generally look to "validation" type experiences to give them a foothold in thinking that the rtz is in fact indepenednt. I guess the extent to which you place soundness in the studies and anecdotes that conclude validations are possible is the extent to which you might think rtz experiences are purely mental or not.

Most people feel that there is a "hyper-reality" aspect to the OBE that suggests that OBE are really a state with a greater amount of reality than waking life, but this is hard to use as evidence, since anything a human experiences in an altered mental state is suspect. I know that most people seem to look down on validations, but I really see no other way of establishing that OBE have objective reality to them. Having experienced OBE for myself, and the separation it seems to hold from the waking world does not seem alone sufficent to deny it is a physical experience. It is mainly validations and studies of the interaction of the physical and mental worlds, and discussions of what in philosophy is called the "Hard Problem of Consciousness" ( Read some of David Chalmer's ideas online)  that tend toward establising a non-materialist viewpoint for me.

[personalreality]

I'm reading a book now Stillwater (The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind) whose premise is that consciousness as we know it (a subjective experience through "ego") didn't exist until about 3000-5000 years ago.  before that, the author says humans had what he calls the bicameral mind which is basically a split mind.  There was the overt acting part and that person heard auditory hallucinations (as well as saw visual hallucinations) that directed him/her in their actions.  Now the overt side was incapable of introspection and therefore incapable of decision making, rather they waited until the "voice in their head" (which they experienced as the gods of mythology) told them what to do.  it's somewhat akin to a schizophrenic hearing voices that sound more real to them than the therapist they're talking too.  One of the other points made is that consciousness may be born out of language.  Our language is essentially all metaphor and that metaphor has created like a psychic field of reality.  Think about it, you are never actually describing your experience, you are creating mental metaphors that are the closest representation of the experience that you can find.  So all of our cognition takes place within this metaphor field, we never actually use consciousness in "objective" reality, rather our body and brain react to our experience and then consciousness recounts it later through metaphor.  Because the author puts the time of this developed consciousness only a few millennia ago, he says that this new subjective consciousness is still very much evolving and will continue to evolve as our language evolves (and therefore the arena of metaphor, which as you would imagine will shrink as we develop more specific words to describe our experience). 

I'm not saying this is right, but it provides an interesting area to start.  If I have this relatively newly developed experience of consciousness that doesn't seem to have any objective counterpart at all (because it exists purely through what the author calls 'lexical metaphor'), but rather exists in a sort of "noosphere" or psychic metaphor field, then it doesn't seem so far off to be able to shift the focus of consciousness away from analyzing current experience or some abstract notion, to fully experiencing the metaphor of another "inner reality" as if we were experiencing our "normal objective reality". 

I can go further into this, but i'll wait a bit first and see where this goes.

[Stillwater]

I'm reading a book now Stillwater (The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind) whose premise is that consciousness as we know it (a subjective experience through "ego") didn't exist until about 3000-5000 years ago.  before that, the author says humans had what he calls the bicameral mind which is basically a split mind.  There was the overt acting part and that person heard auditory hallucinations (as well as saw visual hallucinations) that directed him/her in their actions.  Now the overt side was incapable of introspection and therefore incapable of decision making, rather they waited until the "voice in their head" (which they experienced as the gods of mythology) told them what to do.

This seems like something that would be very difficult to actually test. For instance, how would a creature that was "incapable of intropection", but directed by inner voices behave? Are non-human animals "incapable of introspection"? Dolphins and great apes definitely appear as though they are carrying out plans and making reflective decisions based on their environment. How would you really test whether they were picturing representations of the environment or not?

Furthermore, how would you actually establish a causal direction between subjective representation and language? Maybe it would be the other way around, and language formed because humans had developed a particularly sophosticed system of mental representation, and needed a way to communicate these personal representations to others. Animals, afterall do seem to understand things about the environment that they can't see or directly expereince, such as a hidden object that they are interested in. They understand that removing it from view does not remove it from reality, and it would seem that they would have to have a personal representation of the world that included that object in it in order to think this way.


This is not the aspect of the perceived separation between objective and subjective reality I was speaking of, though. I was talking about the more mundane question of whether our OBE experiences belong soley to the self, or exist in a realm which others can interact with and experience concurrently- the question mentioned of whether or not the real time zone experiences are actually representations of the world we seem to share in waking, or just an extension of our own inner world that is not accessible to others. What you have brought up is related, but not the concept in particular, since we would still not require "introspection" in order to have an inner subjective reality, since what makes that reality subjective is not how we consider it, but how we experience it (as representation of another reality- the world we seem to share, provided by our perceptions- bearing the marks of the mental equipment used to generate it).

[horaciocs]

I was talking about the more mundane question of whether our OBE experiences belong soley to the self, or exist in a realm which others can interact with and experience concurrently- the question mentioned of whether or not the real time zone experiences are actually representations of the world we seem to share in waking, or just an extension of our own inner world that is not accessible to others.

The old robert monroe's arm-pinching experiment, if held true, confirms the existence of a "public" rtz where we all can interact. Taking that sole experiment as evidence, though, doesn't give us any confirmation.

[personalreality]

you should read the book, cause i'm not doing the explanation justice.  the author gives some really good background.  he also explains very well how one could go about their day, performing many tasks on "auto-pilot".  this is how he says the bicameral man would have functioned and only in novel situations would the voice of the gods be heard.  it's a difficult thing to grasp from the perspective of the subjective consciousness we have today; it really is a whole new concept to try and perceive.  nevertheless, the point i was trying to make was that what people are perceiving as a rtz or ap or obe could well be the non-material/beyond physical 'thought-form field' created by our ever growing use of metaphor.  that's where we're going.  like i said, i'm not supporting this theory, i just thought it was an interesting idea.

i really do recommend the book though, if nothing else....it's novel.  *cue rimshot*

it's called The Origin of Consciousness in the Break Down of the Bicameral Mind by Julian Jaynes.

[CFTraveler]

I read about half of it and like the Holographic Universe, let the rest go- my problem with it is that at first you see reports of studies, etc (which would point out to a 'discovery' of how the mind works and it's conclusion) but at some point it almost turns into what seems to be his proselytizing, and it seemed like yet another author with preconceived notions and something to prove.
I guess I'm disenchanted with the whole 'new discoveries' thing.

[personalreality]

I mean, it was a 'new discovery' for this guy in like the 70's or something.  But from the introduction on i was less than convinced.  Something doesn't entirely sit right as a whole theory.  However, the parts are interesting and get you to think about consciousness and reality in different ways.  I'll see how I feel when I finish it. 

[The_One]

Bit much for me to take in, but are you saying OBE's are fake experiences made up all in the mind?

[personalreality]

you assume that anything of mind is fake. 

i don't agree.  just because it may happen in the mind doesn't imply that it's not real. 

in fact, i think that the "physical" is another astral realm that we are very very focused in.

[Xanth]

That's pretty much what I believe.

*ALL* of this is just in our minds.
So by the initial logic, none of this is real...

Yet, *EVERYTHING* is real.  "Real" is a term that humans don't understand.

[Stillwater]

Yeah PR, on the subject of books and such, if you are interested in all this evolutionary anthropology / psychology stuff , you might enjoy reading some of Joseph Campbell's books on the relationship between early religions and human development. I liked his "Masks of God" series, and thought it was somewhat insightful, even if every single word was not a necessary truth, as mentioned.

*ALL* of this is just in our minds.

Well, it depends on what you mean by "all" ( all OBE experiences, all experiences people have, the whole of the entire universe).

You would need to adopt a different metaphysical view based on how inclusive you wanted this "all" to be. For instance, you could be a materialist, and say that all OBE are mental fabrications from a physical brain; you could be a certain type of mind-body idealist and point out that the only contact people have with a supposed physical world is through mental reconstructions of it, and that we never truly come in contact with a physical at all; you could even be the sort of mind-body monist who feels that there is not really a physical world at all, and that any appearance of one is merely suggested by our ideas and perceptions.

[horaciocs]

Bit much for me to take in, but are you saying OBE's are fake experiences made up all in the mind?

We're discussing actually if there is a common, shared astral realm or if all we experience is only inside our minds. Then we branched into what consciousness is and how it relates to a shared outside reality (that is if there is a outside reality, if it's not ALL inside our heads)

[kurtykurt42]

Like I have said on here before, reality is a term that will confuse just about everybody on here. The individuals reality changes depending on the planet that you were born on, the species of humanoid you are, and many other variables. Without the technology to measure these other dimensions (i.e. astral plane), we can't know for certain that they exist. Many of these APs / dreams may be us accessing conscious visuals from our minds that is inhabiting a physical body in other space/times.

you assume that anything of mind is fake.  

i don't agree.  just because it may happen in the mind doesn't imply that it's not real.  

in fact, i think that the "physical" is another astral realm that we are very very focused in.

[personalreality]

We're discussing actually if there is a common, shared astral realm or if all we experience is only inside our minds. Then we branched into what consciousness is and how it relates to a shared outside reality (that is if there is a outside reality, if it's not ALL inside our heads)

i'm of the opinion that at a certain point, all consciousness is shared.  so it's still your mind but it's also everyone else's.

[shineling]

I think at some point ... individuals loose their form and become their own consciousness. Nothing can touch them... they are free and luminous. Their horizon, "what's out there", is the unknown and comforms to their wishes.

Loosing one's form is one of the greatest achievements in a warrior's life. Then once you learn to travel well you can travel to your own dynamically created realities. Like the Nexus in Star Trek: Generations. It's a movie for a reason... Star Trek rules.   It starts in your dreams at first... and then it slowly bleeds into your physical reality. Miracles are an everyday happenstance.

[bluremi]

Perhaps it's more helpful to tackle this question at a point where the rubber meets the road.

If everything is subjective, made of thoughts and perceptions, and there is no true objective reality, why is there only one of the multiple "realities" subject to immutable laws? Why are all astral experiences characterized by shifting time, space, inconstant memories, random inconsistencies...and why is what we call the physical world sturdy, unchanging, absolutely uniform to everyone who lives in it?

Why can we all look at an orange in the physical and agree it is an orange, but in the Astral some may think it's a banana or a postcard?

[CFTraveler]

why is what we call the physical world sturdy, unchanging, absolutely uniform to everyone who lives in it?

Habit of perception.  But ask any quantum physicist and (s)he'll tell you it is not uniform and unchanging, it just seems that way.

Why can we all look at an orange in the physical and agree it is an orange, but in the Astral some may think it's a banana or a postcard?

Provided the account is indeed of an objective nonphysical reality, the answer would be "Because of the uncertainty principle".  In solid reality, the uncertainty principle is very small, due to the slow frequency of what we see.  As frequencies become higher, the uncertainty principle gets bigger, until, if things get fast and/or small enough, the uncertainty principle makes it impossible to know everything about an object's location, and this, according to Schrodinger's theory, is virtually the same thing as saying that it may or may not exist as what we believe we know about it.
If you apply this reasoning to the astral, you will see, that if you go with the perception that the astral is a state of high/frequency or what has been called 'quantum scale', then it would seem that the astral behaves exactly the same as matter would, given known physical laws.  Or hypotheses, anyway.

[Killa Rican]

Wait i dont understand the train of thought. Do most of the people only believe Negs Dont exist? Or other astral or spiritual Entitys in general dont exist? What's the deciding fact over choosing one over the other?

I never encountered a "neg" but i did encounter a non-human entity and i KNOW for a FACT she existed "outside" from me.