Destruction of souls

[Summerlander]

Sure, skiax! I read you. The physical world can obviously be more dangerous and has much more of an impact. My father used to beat my mother up almost daily when I was a child and once he nearly killed her. She was in hospital. I hated my father and I was in a lot of pain...emotional pain. I also had a lot of nightmares.

In time my mother divorced him and I dealt with that pain. My mother helped me to come to terms with what happened. I also learned in my experience that one should not run away from nightmares. Nightmares are there for as to come to terms with certain issues...particularly anger and fear-based ones. The mind is a complex thing that always tries to make sense of the world around us. Metaphysical experiences could well be one way for it to come to terms with what's gone on. The pain won't go away until we face it and remedy it.

So, emotional pain in this respect isn't exactly harming. It is a symptom which let's us know that something must be done. there is fixing to do. I don't see it as harm. The only real harm I see is that which can potentially threaten your life or even that which can permanently change the way you lead your life for the worse. Physical reality has this potential.

You may argue that mental illnesses can harm you. Sure! I agree that mental illnesses like schizophrenia can lead to physical harm and even premature death. But if you treat it, it becomes less of a problem. I still maintain that OOBEs are not harmful even if they turn unpleasant. If they do turn unpleasant I recommend that people face them and attempt to understand what's going on rather than avoid them. I never worry about OOBEs turning unpleasant and I never fear that demons might come to get me. I have no doubt in my mind that the reason why I don't experience demons is because I don't believe in them and I usually focus on positive experiences.

When you have OOBEs you will understand what I am saying here. 2nd phase OOBEs, what a lot of you call "astral projection", is when you enter the dream world through the back door so to speak. You become aware of all this imagery which is otherwise part of the unconscious in your mind. Usually, upon the sensation of separation, you encounter slightly inaccurate replicas of your bedroom/house or wherever you are projecting. this is a matter of fact! The sensation of separation and movement might as well be illusory because the reality you encounter is one made of thought. Everything is made of THOUGHT! Literally! This is something that I have realised after many experiences. Even the perception of space there is a thought. The distance between you and an object is just a thought there which is amplified to emulate physical space.

This metaphysical realm, although it often resembles the physical one, it has nothing to do with it in terms of its nature. I also suspect that you may view other constructs there which are not your own, but essentially, because of its very representational nature, no harm can come to you guaranteed - despite the fact that the way in which you have entered this realm allows you to lucidly experience it as though it were physically real. False awakenings are the perception of the same realm. This realm is where you can experience dreams, nightmares, hallucinatory worlds, abstract worlds, ideas manifest in all their glory, potentials etc etc.

Despite the lies that you might have heard and read about where people astral project and are attacked by demons and then demons chase them in their waking state or they are possessed etc. etc., I can tell you with certainty that OOBEs will not harm you or place you in any danger. In fact, OOBEs and lucid dreaming should be used for therapeutical purposes because, at the moment, all they are doing is drugging patient and numbing their pain while the problem remains. Metaphysical journeys allow you to tackle the problem first hand - GUARANTEED! I know this because I know that it can give you so many different perspectives. I would urge your sis to get back into it and tackle it head on.

I'd also like to remind people that the idea for these forums is to encourage people to have OOBEs and to let them know the potentials that can become available and the doors that can open to them with this phenomenon. It truly is a powerful tool. The mind is amazing...but you must shed your fear or at least not focus on it. There's a lot of rubbish being published out there and I feel like I should caution people.

[CFTraveler]

This is precisely one of the matters I was considering when I presented Socrates' argument- the wiped clean bit. Perhaps that part of us which exists might be an indestructable whole, which has no parts, and cannot be altered. But people seem to think that a "soul" can change, and one of the ways a soul could change would be to take on memories; but in the same hand, taking on a memory would be a change, and a change would require that the soul should have parts. So hypothetically, it may be that while the "essence" of existence is an inalterable thing, and cannot be changed or destroyed, the memories which a soul may take on may be annihilated, or separated from it at least.

Just a thought, but worth considereing I think.

Are you describing the 'soul' + 'spirit' theory?  (Spirit being the indestructible whole, soul being the changeable (therefore destructible part) of the psyche?
Just curious, this convo has gotten more interesting (to me, anyway).

[Summerlander]

I suspect that the self is nothing but thoughts. I think that's all we are. And these thoughts may originate in unconsciousness before they slip into consciousness. In Tibetan Buddhism, ultimate reality is of a "radiant nothingness". There really is no observer nor observed. I think science is coming to this conclusion too if one considers the subatomic world. Everything is more like waves of potentiality than anything else.

Scientific experiments have also shown that activity in the brain's motor regions occurs about 350 milliseconds before a person is aware of deciding to move. Hmmm...it's definitely something to ponder about. It seems like things are decided in the unconscious mind which will then result in a symptom observable in the brain before we become aware of what has been decided in the waking state. This seems to make sense when I consider that when I have visited people in 2nd phase OOBEs, I have seemingly seen what's on the minds of others or slightly inaccurate replicas of what they were doing in waking life. I even had conversations with their unconscious selves while the conscious part of them was unaware of this. Stranger still was the fact that a friend of mine I visited felt strange while he was meditating at the time of my experience. He even reported to his girlfriend the feeling and added that he felt as though he was supposed to remember something or someone...

I also thought a lot about the possibility of an afterlife or at least the survival of consciousness beyond death:
http://astralviewers.com/random-chat/summerlander-there-is-an-afterlife/
Hypothetical but worth a read!

If the self is made of thought, then quite possibly it goes on the reside in the realm of thoughts post-physical death. It is also interesting to see that the description of the intermediate state of death in The Tibetan Book of the Dead is akin to a lucid dream or astral projection where one acquires a "mirage-like vision".

They also believe that ultimately, the karma that the dead person has accumulated during their earthly life will propel them to the next rebirth and not necessarily as a human being (this, according to Buddhism, is uncontrollable). The spiritual practitioner, however, knows that rebirth in cyclical existence always entails suffering. This is why their aim is to become liberated from rebirth and to experience no more i.e. the cessation of being (a very hard thing to achieve and even if you do achieve it, there is a good chance that you may spring back into existence).

All of this, plus my experiences is what makes me strongly suspect that dreams, OOBEs and NDEs are a dress-rehearsal for death. You may even think of them as "temporary deaths". On the "destruction of souls" theme, I'd say that there is no such thing as it would mean the cessation of being and therefore the cessation of suffering. According to Buddhists, you don't get that given to you on a plate. What do you think guys?