Differences in my Dreams, OOBE’s, LD’s Ap’s

[djed]

My dreams can vary in clarity, usually they are not too clear, there is not much peripheral vision, and everything seems to be in close proximity to the action. Other times they can be extremely clear, with heightened color and sharp images; these are the times when I think I have unknowingly phased to AP.
One thing about my dreams is that they are usually bizarre, unbelievable, not in accordance with reality of the physical world we live in.
My OOBE's can also vary in clarity, but allowing for 'fluctuations in reality', they are usually very believable, closer to the physical in reality.
My LD's are mostly extremely clear with no bizarre episodes, just flying around lovely countryside, very rarely see people, (but maybe that's cos I live in NZ, lol.) 
My AP's are usually quite clear, similar to normal, but they can be 'contaminated' by 'dream stuff' which can cause bizarre happenings and distort reality.
djed

[Summerlander]

It's how focused you are and also, the fact that you've got two different brain hemispheres may play a role. Take a look at this:
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/awareness-t34077.0.html

Also, it is interesting to see the type of dreaming that split brain patients have. They can also teach us a lot about the so-called "astral projection" phenomena if you ask me:

http://www.macalester.edu/psychology/whathap/ubnrp/split_brain/Behavior.html

"Split-brain patients have also taught us about dreaming. Scientists had hypothesized that dreaming is a right hemisphere activity, but they found that split brain patients do report dreaming. They found, therefore, that the left hemisphere must have some access to dream material. What was most interesting was the actual content of the dreams of the split-brain patients. Klaus Hoppe, a psychoanalyst, analyzed the dreams of twelve patients. He found that the dreams were not like the dreams of most normal people. " The content of the dreams reflected reality, affect, and drives. even in the more elaborate dream, there was a remarkable lack of distortion of latent dream thoughts. The findings show that the left hemisphere alone is able to produce dreams...Patients after commisurotomy reveal a paucity of dreams, fantasies, and symbols. Their dreams lack the characteristics of dream work; their fantasies are unimaginative, utilitarian, and tied to reality; their symbolization is concretistic, discursive, and rigid." (Segalowitz)"

Hmmm...

[djed]

Thanks Summer, thats a lot to take in, food for thought in relation to OOB, Ap etc. I had never heard of split-brain people, or there was an operation that is performed.
Being a musician and artist and hopeless at maths, I guess I am a right-hemisphere brain type.
Cheers djed

[Summerlander]

In severe cases of epilepsy, surgeons will sever the corpus callosum and both hemispheres act like two independent brains. The question is, if we could place both hemispheres in separate bodies...would we get two different people? Very likely. It seems consciousness is more complex than we can imagine.

By the way, at times I'm a right type, other times I'm more of a left type. I'm very fickle. But yeah, in the case of split brain people, there is definitely food for thought there.

[Lizelle]

Thanks Summer, thats a lot to take in, food for thought in relation to OOB, Ap etc. I had never heard of split-brain people, or there was an operation that is performed.
Being a musician and artist and hopeless at maths, I guess I am a right-hemisphere brain type.
Cheers djed

Perhaps you are, Djed, but when I was in high school band a lot of the best musicians were in honors math & science. Physics and math explain music scientifically. If you know what "Pythagorean tuning" is you'll understand just how much mathematics is woven into the sounds we perceive as music. Our enjoyment is subjective, of course, and somewhere between the two is some truth about brain waves, frequencies, and universal language. Whew - didn't mean to get too profound there!
They say music invokes the three key aspects of the individual: the thinking part (reading & interpreting music, learning the instrument), the will (practice, the desire to create art) and the heart (the emotional involvement). This is why it's a crucial, inseparable part of several educational movements such as Anthroposophy. Do it because you like to, and get the "brain benefits" as a plus. Or the reverse.
Music is the very definition of an art and a science.

[Xanth]

I guess the idea that dreams don't even originate in the "brain" is outside their realm of possibility, eh?

Hmmm

[CFTraveler]

Remember that at the very least certain types of dreaming is how the brain indexes and stores experience- because of the holographic nature of the information, to store a memory it has to be cross-indexed so that it's stored in various locations at the same time (whether it's in the 'meat' of the brain or the synaptic cleft (field theory) is besides the point) but the important thing here is that the source of the experience originally doesn't have to be physical.  So the dream may originate in the brain (or rather our perception of it is), but the information that caused the dream may not be.
Just my opinion, obviously.

[Summerlander]

There is still a possibility that dreams and even memories for that matter, originate elsewhere other than the brain. The brain could still 'pick' them up like frequencies. Sheldrake's "M fields" could be a possibility. This could be the role of the calcite crystals that were found in the pineal gland. They exhibit piezoelectric properties.

Now...imagine that there are different types of frequencies of "data" which make up reality. It's just data until it is received by the brain and an interpretation is made. Like bits inside a computer. 0s and 1s represent on and off "switches". 8 bits is a code for something. Like 01000001 represents the letter "A". The same thing could be going on in the brain but with a lot more complexity and the data arrives externally. Then, of course, the human brain could have its own RAM.

We can't concretely say that the brain produces dreams originally yet, just like we can't say that Ayahuasca and other psychedelics merely distort the reality produced inside the brain. If this was so, religions and spiritual practices would be annihilated. Therefore, there is no right and wrong in interpretations. For scientists, the nature of such experiences are unknown. For shamans, they are getting in touch with spirit realms, for others it is worlds of possibility, and then you have the theory that chemicals and electrical impulses in the brain alone somehow produce the whole shebang.