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An atheist shouldn't disbelieve in a second life, they should simply view the probability - based on current evidence - of such a thing existing as being extremely small. A seasoned atheist would also not view one or two personal experiences (in seclusion) of astral projection as conclusive proof, due to the many unknown factors in the experience, how it occurred and our current knowledge of mind and brain. It's perfectly possible to project and be an atheist, it simply means you remain open minded and don't buy into any particular belief system regarding what AP is.

Hey rygoody,

i'm not sure that magnetism as we currently understand it can explain gravity, as magnatism has very specific effects on only specific local materials/particles. The graviton is also only one hypothesis of gravity, but with all things in QM, there is no such thing as an absolute particle due to wave-particle duality. We can find remnants of energy which suggest the big bang, but nothing is still flowing from the big bang itself. At the point of the big bang, no matter existed, and forces (and energies) as we know them now (including magnetism) either didn't exist or behaved differently than they do now.

Regarding Magnetoencephalography (MEG), this technology simply detects the magentic fields produced by electrical activity in the brain i.e. focused will is the result of the activity rather than the cause. All electrical activity causes a magentic field (electromagnetism). Findings produced by MEG are challenging our views of consciousness and are progressively explaining how consciousness (as we understand it) could arise from the brain alone.

 

How can we explain culture and the development of different languages in organisms with the same DNA and brain structure?

One way of looking at this is that the brain has a predisposition to communicative methods, the methods themselves are irrelevant, but societal and cultural conditioning would give preference to what those methods are.
Interestingly, research has also shown that areas of the brain used for language generation and comprehension have a very small window of development, such as children who haven't learnt to speak by a certain age will never be able to produce fluid sentences. They might be able to use words, but the ability to string them together into a narrative will forever be beyond them. Most of the research was developed from 'wild children' who had no contact with humans during their childhood.
As an aside, it's also been shown the various personality traits also require specific stimulus for the brain areas responsible for them to develop correctly. Such as the absence of one parental figure during a child's life has been shown to have effects on developing brains, and there are now increasingly evident links between certain mental illnesses and such parental absence.

How do we explain Elizabeth Loftus' work on false memory implantation where nothing physical in the subject is changed? So not only physical means can effect our perception of reality but mental ones also.

Agreed, research has shown that neuroplasticity (the ability of the brain to restructure itself) can occur from thought alone. But when we look at a thinking brain with technology such as Magnetoencephalography, we can see the initiation and cascading of thoughts throughout the entire brain. So while the metal seems separated from the physical, it's hard to actually draw a dividing line.

I think we have reached a point where trying to explain everything by physical means is simply not adequate enough.

And this is where ambiguity sets in. By the very definition of 'physical' we cannot ever experience something 'non-physical'. Every experience, memory, emotion has it's roots in physical matter. Some might argue that such roots are products of some energetic (soul) interaction, but for such an interaction to occur, that energy/soul etc must have a way of interacting with physical matter. This renders it physical too (by definition), but as yet, simply undetected.

Most people are dualist's nowadays. What's needed in monism and dualism is a discovery that identifies how these two worlds interact with one another. What else can ended the debate? There must be some medium.

Agree with you fully. Any spiritual experience must have means to interact with the physical for it to become known or experienced. I think there is a lot of 'fuzzy thinking' in spiritual philosophies which make finding such mediums a lot more difficult.

Unless of course it's all an illusion created by mind, which the transcendental solipsists would have you believe.

And if solipsism held any kind of truth, such discussions as these are pointless !

I suppose it comes down to hardware software debate. The soul/mind/mental universe acting as the software and the body/physical universe acting as the hardware. If the computer breaks down or dies, can the information on it be transferred or stored on the internet? Likewise when the body dies, does consciousness move into something bigger that connects us all?

But to be stored, there has to be a medium to store it on and a mechanism to allow such transference. And even so, we have to ask if information can be stored, what of the operating system that run it? Without such a thing, would information be anything more than mindless symbols only intelligible to a still living human mind/brain?

Atheism is not antitheism, a-theism simply means that based upon the current body of evidence available, the likelihood of a God existing (theism) is quite improbable. It implies nothing else about life, or death, or what happens after death. If more evidence comes to light, then a current atheist might change their stance. In fact, unless people in this thread believe in all Gods from Odin, to Thor, to Yahweh, then all are atheist (or for fence sitters agnostic) in regards to certain Gods.
Regarding materialism, unless one wishes to forsake all else but personal desire for specific beliefs regardless of contradictory evidence, we cannot make any definite claims on this area. As physical beings, we interact with a physical world, our mind is affected by physical mediums (from neurotransmitters, to hormones), regardless of our beliefs on mind, damage to the brain produces specific changes in all who experience the same damage. This implies that at the least personality, moral outlook, and even interpretation of logic and reality have a basis in the physical brain. A person who is happy, sad, in religious or spiritual rapture is feeling the effects of physical mediums on a physical brain. Does anything exist outside of material? It all depends on the definition. Energy has a material basis, and so if the spiritual realms have any true reality, they must have a mechanism of action to affect the physical (else we wouldn't be able to interact with such realms/energies with our physical bodies), this also means they have a basis in the material.
I think the crux of all this for most people is, is there any reality after brain death? This is something we can't truly answer right now (one can happily hold faith held belief but that is restrictive), but we can at least make a few predictions. Going off neurological discoveries, it seems much of what we identify as human, id, ego, personality, is linked to a meat brain, and damage to specific areas can have drastic effects on the individual involved. Literally a saint can be turned into what society would label a deviant. This has serious implications for reincarnation, karma, and various other spiritual beliefs. It also has implications on what would survive the decay of the brain, and if something did, would it actually be aware of anything, or have any form of personality? Such arguments as energy not being destroyed are pretty simplistic in regards to this area as on the quantum level energy is generated and destroyed continually, and even if we ignore this, burning a leaf and scattering it's ashes to the wind does not maintain anything of the original leaf. Likewise, a decaying brain might destroy all traces of the individual, or the electrons which hold together consciousness might simply fade away.
For one to claim absolute knowledge of this either way is closing oneself off to all possibilities (even those which do not taste too pleasant).

Hey Mustardseed,

I havent got time to reply to you right now, so I will later . I've got housework to do .

I dont have a negative attitude towards science, but i think alot of scientists are like alot of religious people, they believe what they want to believe, they will see this POSSIBLE explanation and accept it.

This is a great misunderstanding about science; it does not believe what it wants to believe, it believes what the weight of empirical evidence points to, and what has been backed up in repeated experiments by other people (which shows that whatever phenomenon is the core of the research is repeatable and hence has an objective reality outside of the cultural and scientific constructs used to study that phenomenon).
This discounts they accept possible explanations and that's that. Also keep in mind that science will update its world view based upon new research, such as Newton's laws of motion being replaced by Einstein's laws of relativity.

This attitude is increasing in science these days...  Some people claim to have already proved life after death exists with real facts.  But science ignores them as if there facts was accepted it would change alot of science we currently consider fact.  In other words it would shake the foundations of modern science.

If there was anything objective about such facts, science would study them. Most claims of life after death are irrational or can no way be backed up or studied. A belief does equate to a truth or a fact.

Anyway, these guys didnt trigger a proper OBE.  But they did create some of the feelings and sensations.  But the articles ive read about it say clearly "they didnt trigger a OBE".

They never claimed to have triggered an OBE.

I think its good that there trying to learn about this, it would be nice for some more background on these scientist teams.

Have they ever experienced a real OBE themself?  Have they studied people who have?

Read into Charles Tarts papers regarding his studies on people who claimed to be able to induce OBEs at will (he even included Robert Monroe in his experiments).

OBE's are real....  This experiment doesnt tell us much.

OBEs are real in the sense we can subjectively experience them, or because we can objectively observe them?

[believe]

The article claimed that scientists triggered an obe in the volunteers not that they were able to trigger sensations of an obe. I think there is a distinct difference. As I've admitted and said earlier I have created some sensations in which I felt I was out but wasnt really.

As you state, the article said:

"Experts have found a way to trigger an out-of-body experience in volunteers."

This is the article writers (mis)interpretation of the research; the researchers have not actually claimed this.

The research itself (not a reports poor interpretation) states:

Two teams used virtual reality goggles to con the brain into thinking the body was located elsewhere

The visual illusion plus the feel of their real bodies being touched made volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.

Operative word here is 'sense'.

The volunteers reported that the sensation seemed to be caused by the pen on their virtual back, rather than their real back, making them feel as if the virtual body was their own rather than a hologram.

Even when the camera was switched to film the back of a mannequin being stroked rather than their own back, the volunteers still reported feeling as if the virtual mannequin body was their own.
And when the researchers switched off the goggles, guided the volunteers back a few paces, and then asked them to walk back to where they had been standing, the volunteers overshot the target, returning nearer to the position of their "virtual self".

Dr Ehrsson said: "This experiment suggests that the first-person visual perspective is critically important for the in-body experience. In other words, we feel that our self is located where the eyes are."

"Scientists have long suspected that the clue to these extraordinary, and sometimes life-changing, experiences lies in disrupting our normal illusion of being a self behind our eyes, and replacing it with a new viewpoint from above or behind."

The above talks about sensations of being out of body, no claims that they actually reproduced an OBE. To back this up further, the report also states:

the two teams, from University College London, UK, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, believe there is a neurological explanation.
Their work suggests a disconnection between the brain circuits that process visual and touch sensory information may thus be responsible for some OBEs.

I've made bold the important words above. The research itself simply reproduced sensations of being out of body, the researchers themselves make no claims that this proves anything about OBEs, although the reporter himself does. That's a huge difference: Scientists in the article make no claims or predictions, it simply states the results of the experiment. It doesn't dismiss, or even claim to have proven anything about OBEs other than the sensation of being out of body could have its cause in this visual disconnection between body and perspective. Is this different from OBE techniques which ask people to visualise various things, or stare into the darkness (until the body is asleep and visual sensation would be disconnected from body sensation)?

It was an observation that people who have had what most on this forum would consider a real full blown obe, does change most peoples opinions on the matters of life and death. Im sure perhaps there have been a couple who perhaps it didnt or a few that it scared more than actually helped. Lets say a group of 10 people have obes. Normally around 7 would walk away changed in a huge way (this is assuming that all ten werent too freaked out by it)

I agree it is usually a changing experience. What I personally would love to see is that people didn't immediately draw conclusions on the meaning of the experience (i.e. survival after death simply because they perceived themselves separate from their body), and that they research all angles and kept an open mind. For many, having an OBE or feeling vibrations somehow justifies an entirely new world view consisting of energy bodies, chakras, astral planes, reincarnation, and life after death. This does not follow from the experience, however exciting and mind opening it might be.

The article is assuming the reason in which people in their experiment felt as if they were out of body is the same reason those that do actually get out feel as though they are out.

The researchers suggest there might be a connection; it was the article writer who assumed. A suggestion is not a decision either way, it simply opens possible avenues of future research.

Each and everytime my body itself has been asleep. According to sleep professionals while the body is asleep you can not consciously feel physical sensations. At least that is what they used to claim. To be a purely physical illusion such as you suggest my physical body would have to be awake, would it not? In the experiement the volunteers were completely awake and capable of feeling physical stimulis. In my obes my physical body is asleep, paralyzed, and Im not capable of consciously feeling anything physical.

When one is asleep, one can still feel physical stimuli, generally though internal stimuli (dreams) are more dominant than the physical stimuli which gets filtered by the subconscious. Some of this can make it to dreams, such as an alarm clock integrating itself into a dream, or even things like nova-dreamer. This is a device which detects rem movement and then flashes a light into the eyes, through reality checking, one will notice the incorporated flashing and use it as a cue to become lucid.

 Its not my intention on arguing though. If you dont agree with anything I have to say thats fine. I know a lot of what I have to say usually seems abstract. There are times I admit though the way I word things is wrong, sorry about that. I dont have anything against science, without it the world would still be in the dark ages.

As my previous post, I am not arguing as such, I just saw everyone misreading the article and then attacking science as a bad thing. Most spiritual forums I belong to are very anti-science, and yet, I see the people most rabid are usually those without a true understanding of scientific principles. So scientists in their eyes become closed minded sceptics who seem to go out of their way to disprove the occult and similar areas, when in truth, scientists would happily research these areas given sufficient cause. Science never dismisses anything as it doesn't deal in absolutes.

  As a matter of fact in school it was my favorite subject and there was a year or two where I went without making one single mistake on any of the tests,quizzes or homework. I also dont think people should take what others say as fact until they experience it for theirselves.  All I ask is to let the possibility intrigue you, and a willingness to give it a try. I had some friends who have thought of me as being crazy, gave what I suggested a few tries and then admit to me they were succeeding and it scared the sh*t out of them. To me its fine if science never acknowledges obe's as a real thing, that is okay. It's also part of why it is so special. A good majority thinks it does not exist yet it still does, to me that's a special thing and why I feel so honored to have been able to do it as much as I have. I still remember when sleep professionals said that what some termed lucid dreaming was impossible because in sleep the conscious mind could not possibly become active.

Keep on learning in all areas and keep an open mind to all possibilities (which you seem to be doing), and really, that's all we can ever do .

[THE]

I believe that they will try to use this as the "final word" when it comes to obes though. If they dont thats great if they do then its laughable.

What grounds have you got to believe this? Why do you actually believe this? Don't you see you are doing exactly what (groundlessly) you accuse science of doing?

That is why I say that imitating something or duplicating an effect does not verify nor deny its reality.

Can you post any examples of things where shared repeatable experience does not prove the reality of those things?

Also it does not mean that the way you created the effect is how the effect is always created.

Agreed, but I've not seen anyone claim such a thing.

There are always different paths you can take to the same destination as someone else, and either one could not be considered the right or wrong way as you both ended up at the same place.

Once again, agreed, but I don't see anyone denying such logic.

Having said that a quote from the paper mentioned: "It gives you a very strong sensation you're sitting somewhere else" Okay Ive had a strong sensation I was some where else that did not mean I had a obe, once again its laughable.

A recorded observation is laughable because? The article is talking about out of body sensations, not THE out of body experience. Sensations in which one perceives themselves to be removed from their body is different from the perception of actually believing one is removed from their physical body.

A good example was sitting in a chair staring at a full length mirror for an extended period of time, concentrating on the fact that perhaps I am not where I think I am to be instead I could be the person staring at me from inside the mirror. This was an exercise I thought of to practice consciousness/awareness placement or displacement. A good 20 minutes of this and with a little zoning off I was no longer sure which me was me. Sure it was a weird and confusing sensation but it was not life changing, truth be told I forgot about that exercise till just now when I was thinking of a close example.

Did you also laugh when you experienced this? Why has an experience got to be life changing oto have any merit or use?

  It certainly felt as though I was the other person in the mirror and sure it confused me. Such as the experiment mentioned confused the experiencer but I am sure they will not walk away from this with a life changing attitude.

Why has the experiencer got to walk away with anything to make the experiment useful? Data was gained, insight into our body perception was gained, so it was a success.

The main point was it was an physical illusion they witnessed. Now how many people who have had a full blown obe walked away from the experience completely changed especially in the way they view life?

Why the obsession with changing ones view of life? If I huff a load of chemicals which causes brain damage my view of life will be changed. Does that make it a good thing?
Also, how can you be so certain that your OBEs have not been a physical illusion? I mean really, how can you 'know'?

Probably around 90 percent and the others are scared to death but never-the-less changed lol, after all that is what motivates me to record my experiences and what keeps me here to talk about it with others to help them to achieve what I have, so that they too can be changed in this way.

To quote yourself:

That is why I say that imitating something or duplicating an effect does not verify nor deny its reality.

If you truly believe this, why bother keeping a log or sharing your experiences? You admit doing such things does not in any way verify their reality. You are honestly open to the fact that OBEs might be brain induced? Or is the quoted comment wrong?


Once again, I'm not focussing on you, but I get dismayed when I see people being so openly biased about something they either know little about or purposefully misinterpret that thing. Most people in this thread seem to be attacking their own misreading of the experiment. Such things make me lose hope that people are actually looking for any kind of truth, rather than happily wallowing in their own beliefs regardless of any new knowledge or facts.

[the]

Science is always trying to disprove phenomena that do not accept as possible. Science is by definition concerned with logic and provable fact.

Science never ever tries to disprove anything. Science tests an hypnosis, and then determines its truth from the recorded observations. Other people can test the hypothesis too. Science does not actively accept (or reject) anything at all. It is simply a method of observation, nothing more or less. I'm not specifically picking on you Mustardseed, but I'm shocked at the lack of education, especially on the scientific method, which is found on the majority of boards which purport to 'spiritual practices'. This then results in people being negative about science (which is caused by their own lack of understanding of the subject).
It might surprise you Mustardseed, but philosophy and indeed metaphysics by definition are concerned with logic and fact, such features are their very bedrock and foundation.
Provable fact is nothing more than shared consensus reality. If you really wish to do away with provable fact, then even spiritual subjects become meaningless, as each person defines their own term's and perhaps even language to talk about those terms in. Why is there such negativity towards finding a commonality in which to share experiences? Being anti-science is being against the sharing of experience, being anti-science through lack of education is worse.

Having a OBE experience is more than a physical sensation it is a spiritual condition.

What exactly is a spiritual condition? What exactly is spiritual? If we refuse to use logic and 'provable fact', why are we even sharing experiences on this forum?

An interesting experiment would be to use this technique on a person who knows and are capable of conscious exits and ask him/her if the sensation is the same. This however is not accepted, as it would require them to have faith in such a person.

Faith is useless in the scientific or even objective domain, as irrationality is at its core and it stifles any attempts at defining a commonality. Such as I can have faith that OBEs are actually the cause of clockwork elves polishing my toenails and so causing them to irradiate orgone energy which dissolves my body and places me in the zozo dimension. Another person might believe me mad based upon their faith in OBEs being aliens beaming holographic simulations into their head.
Faith is a dead-end as it ignore anything to the contrary of faith held beliefs, even if those beliefs could be proven to be 100% wrong (I'm not saying such a feat is possible).

It is easier to use it on a person who has no experience with such things and then make various conclusions and insinuations that supports their own postulate.

What conclusions or insinuations (a biased word) did this article actually state? Why are your own 'faith based' experiences and consequent conclusions reached from your own OBEs any less wrong or negative than the results of this experiment?
People fail to see that this experiment was about 'out of body sensations' not about the 'out of body experience', but it seems many are so desperate to hold on to their own beliefs they attack anything they perceive to counter their own desired faith held beliefs.

  Yes, I do respect that approach,

      But surely, if you admit the existence of such phenomena as astral projection, you are recognizing that the modern scientific community is essentially flawed.

My stance on AP is that as an actual experience, it is real (such as people do experience it as a distinct state), although as my own experiences have grown, I've moved away from astral philosophies which presume to explain the experience, and now I'm looking from a more rationalist mindset.
Astral philosophies will generally draw links between perceptions of being outside of the body meaning consciousness can exist without the body. From this they will presume consciousness survives death as it doesn't actually reside in the body.
I personally will not draw such conclusions on a subjective interpretation of an unknown experience. Whilst AP appears to take place outside of the body, we do not actually know that it does.

I wouldn't say that the scientific community was flawed; more that it focuses on areas which it can study. Currently the AP area is shrouded in a lot of occult terminology, and this is perhaps another reason for little research.
I don't believe anything is ultimately beyond science (science being a rational methodology to study reality). If a human physical brain can experience AP, and if there are spiritual worlds beyond the physical in which AP takes place, then there is a mechanism by which they connect and can communicate information. A so there is a point at which science can study the phenomenon.
If we eventually discover AP is a brain induced state, so be it. If we eventually discover AP exists in other places of existence above physical reality, then great.

You would be hard pressed to find any reputable scientist that would support the existence of the spiritual world.

This is no different to people on these forums not giving credence to concepts such as the spaghetti monster actually existing. This is not meant as a slight, but simply to display that beliefs which fall outside of our own are generally not given consideration. With science it goes a bit further, as scientists require evidence that belief alone cannot supply. If the spiritual world truly exists, then science will 'eventually' find trace of it.

Even spiritual scientific approaches that try to use the scientific method to explore the spiritual realms are dismissed by the greater scientific community.

The problem here lies in that most studies for paranormal phenomenon do not fully follow the scientific method. A double blind study which isn't truly double blind has failed before it's started.

    As far as I am concerned, if people give credence to astral projection as a real phenomenon, then there must also be room for theories such as hollow earth, seeing as both ask you to suspend your rational scientific mind, and ignore modern scientific findings.


                                                       Joe.

As above, I think AP can be considered with a rational mind (although not many of the philosophies surrounding it). But things like hollow earth fall apart when looked at rationally. When science does eventually take note of the many spiritual or psychic phenomenons, it will probably show many of them to having no basis outside of faith held belief. I don't see this as a bad thing, because it's simply progress of our view of reality, and it's something which has been happening for as long as there had been humans.

    "It's an interesting idea as far as ideas go, but that's all it seems to be."

    "All modern science generally refutes this..." 


  I'm sorry, Mr Jingo,

        But it greatly amazed me that you would so easily dismiss the theory of a hollow earth because modern science disallows its existence! This is a website dedicated to discourse on such matters as astral projection, phasing, and even ceremonial magick.

                                                                Joe.

Hi Joe,
One might discuss AP, phasing and ceremonial magick, but if you read the majority of posts here, they discuss it in a rational way. Science is simply rational thinking, and personally, I'd rather live my life through the lens of rationality – sorting the wheat from the chaff, than taking onboard everything what-so-ever in an irrational way with no method to differentiate between the useful and 'true' knowledge, and the downright crazy knowledge. The occult can, and has, unhinged people for failing to do just that.

If you wish to ignore basic things like:

*Earths tug on the moon is consistent with a body of earths mass. If Earth was hollow, it would tug on the moon less. These measurements are used for everything from satellite technology, to launching probes into space, to measuring earth's course through space. There is no such inconsistency in gravity which there would be with a hollow earth.

*When an earthquake occurs at point a on the earth's surface, the waves created by the quake propagate to point b and c. To do this they travel across the surface crust and through the deeper magma layers. Waves travel at different speeds through the brittle hard crust and the viscous deeper layers. Taking measurements at point b and c show the waves travelled through a solid and more viscous layer – rather than the outer layer of an hollow shell. You could built a model yourself to test this.

*The earth bulges at its rotational equator due to the viscous nature of the core being pushed out by centrifugal forces – if the earth was hollow this wouldn't occur.

*The earth has a very strong magnetic field, if the earth was hollow, or indeed had a sun at the centre of it, where would the magnetic core reside? If in some miniature sun (which would be too small for fusion to occur), we would see cycles in the field's strength like the 11 year cycles with our own sun.

*Tectonic plates (huge parts of the crust) are moving on the magma currents below them, creating earthquakes, volcanoes, mountains and various constructive and destructive phenomenons on their travels. Such migration would not be seen with a hollow earth.

*There are numerous experiments which are shooting various subatomic particles through the earth to detectors on the other side, all results from these experiments and consistent with a solid earth.

*We have countless satellites in orbit around our planet, which have (and continue to take) photographs of every square foot of earth. None have shown any form giant entrances at the poles – nor have any of the arctic/polar explorers seen huge holes on their crossings of these 'land' masses.

*One of the giant 'hole' entrances at the north pole would once have been pure ocean during ice free periods, and we didn't lose our ocean to into the hollow earth during such periods.

*The arctic is actually a landmass under most of the ice, it migrated where to where it currently is from the supercontinent 'Pangaea'. How did the hole form in the arctic landmass?

One could ignore all of this, but the evidence on the other side is little more than hearsay and belief. It's one thing to hold belief; it's another to hold a belief against a tide of insurmountable evidence.
I personally want to see through the words and ideas man has spun over such occult ideas (due to antiquated world views) to the raw ideas underneath. And to so this, one must be critical, else our knowledge would never  progress – and if we really took a non-rational view in these areas, we would still have the beliefs of man circa 200,000 bc.

Hollow earth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollow_Earth) is a view of the earth in which it contains either multiple inner hollow spheres, or even a sun. Beings (usually advanced masters of some kind) inhabit it with their advanced civilisation. I recall reading a book in which the author (whose name escapes me) trecked to one of the poles to find the 'entrance' (huge gaping holes at each pole - which all modern satellites miss* - or governments cover up). The book covers his adventures and details his experiences with these advanced beings (in their flying machines).
All modern science generally refutes this though, from gravitational force on sorrounding bodies being consistant with an object of the mass and consistency of a non-hollow earth, to satellite photos, to earthquake shockwave propagation through the surface crust and deeper layers, to modern knowledge of plate margins and tectonics and recorded movements of the earths crust.
It's an interesting idea as far as ideas go, but that's all it seems to be.

*There have been a few photos like this:



which seem to perpetuate the myth - but they ignore such things that satellite photos of the earth are made up of many single shots, pasted together to give a larger view, and satellites in certain orbits will not see the poles fully.

Current models of the universe incorporate something called 'inflation' (the universe underwent a brief period of rapid expansion shortly after the bigbang - which explains why the universe looks mostly uniform in all directions).
We can tell objects are moving away from each other by looking at the frequency of their light reaching us. Due to doppler effect, objects moving away from us have more of the longer wavelengths (red - redshift), and objects moving towards us have more of the shorter wavelengths (blue - blueshift).
The doppler effect is basically the change in frequency and wavelength of a wave source as percieved by an observer moving relative to that source. For example, remember the sound of a police car coming towards you, it's siren sounds higher pitch (wowowowowowowowo) but as it passes you and moves away from you, it's siren sounds lower pitched (wooooo woooooooooooo wooooooo etc). The same happens with light (and all wave sources).

You're also correct about light, such as if you look at the sun (not directly!) you're actually seeing the sun as it was 8 minutes ago. A star one light year away, we are seeing it as it was 1 year ago. The further we look out into space, the further back in time we see.

Regarding supernovas, i've seen speed measurements of their outwards velocity at 10,000 km per second. This was a measurement of one. We have had supernovas quite close to us in the past (astronomically speaking of course!) and don't forget, our solar system was created by such a supernova billions of years ago.

Focus levels are simply markers for specific states of consciousness. In the phasing system, such states can be defined at the minimum by brainwave state at the time they are experienced. This is why hemi-sync (binaural beat technology) labels specific exercises as specific focus levels. The point of the CDs is to drive brainwaves to a specific state (which familiarity will reinforce), and for easy reference, these states are given a name F10-12-15 etc. usually the higher the F number, the more removed one is away from bodily awareness and the further one moves into the astro mental.
In the phasing models (which utilise F levels), one is not perceived to leave the body as described by the traditional OBE philosophies, one simply shifts awareness from the physical to another point on the spectrum of consciousness. Phasing models generally don't believe we leave the body at all: the body (and physical) is a belief system (astral locale) which simply exists at a certain point on the spectrum of consciousness (as do all experiences, locales etc).
With this in mind, REM, LUCID, ASTRAL etc are simply points on the spectrum of consciousness. For example, F27 is considered the 'after life' area of this spectrum, other F levels might be slightly out of phase with the physical (F10), or experiencing inner planes etc.

Hi Snaipers,

it sounds like the altered state felt during the hemi-sync cd resulted in you becoming more aware of the hypnogogic stage of sleep. This is the point between waking and sleep, which is missed by most people. In this state, strange things can be heard or seen, and strange sensations felt.
Being aware of this state is a good thing when trying to project.
Something to keep in mind is that it seems relatively rare to have an OBE while listening to Hemi-Sync tapes, they are more tools to create triggers for specific states of consciousness. For example, once you get used to F10, you can easily recall it (without the cd's) by counting up to 10 - like the exercise (trigger) on the CD guides you.

Hey Birdy,

Welcome to the forums! I was an active OBE'er and LD'er as a child, and like you, I started keeping my experiences to myself after finding very few others have experienced anything like it, and many did consider such experiences 'weird'.
There is a waelth of knowledge here, and I look forward to your contributions .

Chris

DMT is a very powerful and short acting psychedelic, not a dissociative - it is also produced by the brain under certain conditions. An interesting book is "DMT: the spirit molecule" by Dr Rick Strassman, in the book Rick gets the funding and go ahead to carryout DMT experiments on willing participants, and the resulting experiences are strikingly like OBEs and NDEs - even down to low level doses producing something which sounds exactly like 'the vibrations'.
In regards to the substance itself, it's something one has to be very careful about as it is very powerful in effect (As above, full OBEs, NDEs, Ego Death, merging with the source/universe etc). Definately one to research deeply before even considering it. I haven't tried it personally, but do have friends who have, they've posted experience reports over on erowid gttp://www.erowid.org.

I've got a few favorites such as 'a day in the life', 'baby you're a rich man', 'strawberry fields forever'. Although tbh, I tend to go through phases of liking various other tracks too .

I normaly dont eat meat more than twice a week not counting eggs and fish. There was also research that if animals were on no grain diet their meat did not have adverse effect. So that excludes almost all meat in market. Raw meat also did not have adverse effects but decidedi never tried that nor i really intend to. There are many researches advocating for or against meat. I think it depends on your body type if it's good for you or not.

Could you direct me to this research? I've not been able to find anything which claims or proves this – but I might be looking in the wrong places. AFAIK the diet of the animal has little consequence (other than diseases such as BSE etc) on the reasons why meat is bad for human physiology in large amounts.

Some meat industry practices are horrible..i agree with that. It could be changed for the better. I dont know if you will agree with me but i believe that each animal soul know what it will go through when it incarnates as a cow or chicken and they could choose to incarnate or not.   

I don't believe in souls in the traditional sense (but that's a whole other discussion), I believe in consciousness. So I don't believe a cow, or chicken, or a human who is attacked and killed, or who will die from a disease etc has any knowledge prior to this life.

It's impossible to tell exactly what kind of emotions they feel. Here is a short description of Clive Backster's experiment.
http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/philosophy/Personnel/susan/LucyRhiannonRuth/CB%20ground%20breaking.html

The plants were reacting on death of other living beings be it other plants, microbes or animals. They are also affected by the mood of surrounding people.

Such experiments have been carried out in recent years (MythBusters on the Discovery Channel actually attempted it themselves too and found no response from the plants they used), and no such reactions have been found. So at the least, we can't assume that plants react, or feel, or have any awareness at all (other than what people who wish to believe imbue them with – but then such people will be interacting with their own created plant thought form rather than the plant).
Perhaps future experiments will clear this up either way. I personally get worried when a pseudo-science book from the 70's which has not been validated in any experiment since (quite the opposite) still has such a large effect on peoples beliefs.

If anyone is really interested in this area, check out something like:

The action plant: Movement and Nervous Behaviour in plants. by Paul Simons.

It shows how amazing plants really are (without the need for emotions or sentiency), and the complicated actions evolution has imbued them with. There is also a section which shows how the original claims of plant sentiency/telepathy etc published in 'The Secret life of Plants' cannot be scientifically substantiated.

In Italy in Damanhur they are doing some very interesting experiments with plants. For those who understand Croatian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swFf4psr1_Y&e 

The music you hear is played by plants. One electrode is connected to the leaf and the other to the root. With them the electric potential is measured and so the electric circle is formed. It is connected to the analog digital converter which converts electric impulse to musical. Electric impulse travels to the synthesizer where you can choose the instrument for a plant to play. The plant is running the system and plays harmonius meditative music. If a negative person comes to the room they sometimes stop playing. They need about a week or two to learn playing the music and this is done with letting them listen to melodical music mostly classical. After some time they get it they can produce the sounds with changing electric impulses. At first the sound is static but with time there are more variations.

Could you post or detail any papers or publications these results appeared in? I've googled but only managed to find details of experiments by artists to make sounds from plants.

It could be said the same for animals.

But only if one has faith in certain belief systems which imbue everything with souls on some form of cosmic progression to some perceived 'higher state' (which is all subjective and relative to only the ideas of said beliefs). In a world where people evolved just as animals and plants evolved, such logic as above dictates humans have evolved to be eaten too.
To me personally, knowing that I am inflicting death, pain, fear, terror on a sentient life form 'right now', simply to satisfy a desire which could be satisfied in other ways, would not be quieted by a subjective belief I hold on how I 'think' reality works. Especially when such a belief has only blind faith at it's core.

But who would eat feel good eating neighbours flesh? I wouldn't. I have just read about cannibalism on wikipedia and cannibalism was more spread than i thought. Acts of cannibalism were mostly commited during severe famine. I guess your mind think differently then.

The point of my comment was to show that the person stating this quote literally implies that anything is justified (however terrible and depraved) as long as the person carrying out such actions doesn't feel bad about them. That is exactly what the logic of the statement dictates. This is all about ego satisfaction above all else. To me, such views are not those from a more advanced being.

It was not just a chanelled quote but also by Dr. Len. There were also spiritual masters who did eat meat.

Just because there were 'spiritual masters' (a relative and subjective term) who did certain things, it doesn't imply those things were truly good. There are well documented spiritual masters (as considered by their followers) who abused children, murdered, and committed incest. Just because they were considered spiritual masters by some, I would never consider those actions 'right' or just.

I guess a lot of this comes down to absolving personal responsibility for our own actions to beliefs we hold. I've come to the point where I'm dropping all beliefs which require nothing but faith to support them. To cut off a few arguments:
Some might say OBE requires belief, but I'd say only explanations of OBE or extrapolations of it's meaning (such as survival after death etc) need belief. I can quiet happily project, as the experience itself is real (whatever its source), I simply don't impose beliefs on the meaning of the experience anymore.

Hey jseses,

Sending positive thoughts and energy her way.

"snap" misterjingo! 

Sarah

i see...

but take it this way, then.. you ask someone what time is it. and they might say, for example, 8:00:00. if the time stops, that is the present. but after he says that is 8:00:00 time will go on so the sec will be 01, 02... when u asked - that was the past and when you found out what time it is , it's future already.  am i right?

does present exist?

i see...

but take it this way, then.. you ask someone what time is it. and they might say, for example, 8:00:00. if the time stops, that is the present. but after he says that is 8:00:00 time will go on so the sec will be 01, 02... when u asked - that was the past and when you found out what time it is , it's future already.  am i right?

does present exist?

If time stopped there would be nothing, as the electrons in your brain would freeze, no processing would occur, and any space in this 'no-time' would effectively not exist.
As above, the present is a concept, as even 'now' has a latency due to nerve impulse speeds and processing of information (we are effectively living slightly behind the rate of change (time)).

it's always present, future and past are just concepts used by humans to explain present they aren't experiencing at the point they are now, like me talking about tomorrow, im experiencing today and tomorrow at the same time but the me that's experiencing today is not aware that it is experiencing tomorrow, and vice versa,  get it? we create time because we are not aware that we are experiencing the eternal now or present, if you are willing to believe i think the all, universe, or people call it god, is aware that it is experiencing all presents at the same time(the eternal now), hope you're not confused

I pretty much agree with b12145. Past, present, future, time, they're all concepts to help us structure and understand our direct experience. Ultimately, all there is is change (time itself is possible entropy of the universe – moving from a highly ordered state, to a more disordered state from the point of the big bang), this increasing entropy and consequential changes of state is conceptualised as the passage of time by us. Luckily, we have a means of recording these changes and we classify them as the past, and due to self-awareness and possible evolutionary advantages (foresight and planning), we can project change ahead (the future) of the current rate of change.
The present is all there ever is.

Just wanted to add that the above isn't meant in any negative manner, more a friendly exchange of ideas - trying to clarify where I was coming from with my first post .

though its true that some "ghosts" that linger here close to our plane (physical) are just playing back the actions of the individual over and over, and some others with a measure of interactibility, the idea that all people who died and are left on the astral to interact are all just faded memories of themselves seems shortsighted.

But this viewpoint is coming from one ingrained in the standard view of the astral state. If we take a fresh look at the concepts such as ghosts, physical planes, astral locales etc they are all remnants of dogma from an age when man viewed the weird through superstitious eyes, translating phenomena from outside of their sphere of knowledge as 'super natural'.
Your first post seemed to be questioning the tenants of accepted astral philosophies, but now I see you were simply switching around a few ideas of an ingrained belief.
My first point concerned the fact that we don't know what consciousness is, we don't know what free will or self awareness is (we just presumed to have it), and yet, we suppose fantastical ideas on this non-understanding.
As a crude example, brains can produce multiple personalities (as can be seen with people suffering from such multiple personality disorders), and brains filter and generate our perception of the entire universe. Please note that I am not saying brains actually create it, or even consciousness, I'm pointing out that they can do amazing things. So if they can support multiple personalities on the surface mind, and entire worlds and universe in the sub-conscious levels, it's not hard to imagine that whatever mechanisms 'might' produce self awareness might also easily animate an emotional shell of memories into seemingly autonomous and sentient being. At our core, we are experiences and memories built upon this conscious shell.
If somehow minds are connected, then this vast power house could easily maintain all the dead.
This might sound ludicrous, but no more so than the other philosophies which only have belief as their foundation too.

Everytime we goto sleep we all enter into a low-level astral state for dreaming and psychic balancing. Could it be said that we "die" when we sleep and only wake up because our bodies are still "working"? Sure, I can go along with that. Like those who were asleep when an earthquake hit in india a while back and they never woke up. Their astral bodies severed the connection to the physical and moved on. I'm sure some of those "souls" never even knew they died living in their own reality moving along growing and interacting.

As long as a disembodied astral person can still think, grow, understand, and adapt I would consider them far more than faded memories on the astral who are just playing out a part in a repeating "movie".

One again, the above is viewing my comments from a position ingrained in a belief system – discovery comes from challenging our beliefs, not judging other ideas from the comfort of our own. I was supposing that we might not survive physical death, that the engine of consciousness is the same in every sentient being, fuelled by a brain built in a universe with conscious potential. The only differentiating factor being experiences built from different vantage points and genetic predispositions.

NB these are ideas to be explored, not necessary statements of fact – such as all astral philosophies .