Messages

Aries, I don't see how the government knowing that I own a firewall helps them or hurts me.  Can they blast through my firewall?  Probably.  Can they do it without me figuring out that an intrusion happened?  Probably not.

I'm certain that the government already knows all about me, and has plenty on info on me.  I'm a strong proponent of strong cryptography (something the intelligence agencies dislike), I own guns (the ATF database), I'm a republican, have posted for years on anti-snooping pro-privacy quasi-hacking (and black hat cracking and spoofing) forums, and I've visited the doctor using an insurance card (lots of medical info in databases).  So without a doubt I'm in the government databases. However to date I've yet to get a nasty letter from the government, or a job offer, or a veiled threat.

And *even if* I did somehow rate interest to them, and they took the trouble to blast through my router and software firewalls, what would they find?  A lot of MP3s (the government couldn't care less), a lot of programming tools, and (gasp) my dream journals.  That's certainly enough to risk a Watergate-style scandel over.

I have to end this now as my doorbell is ringing.  And what is that black helicopter doing outside?  Hey!!  Whadsa da eas e342sssssssssssss
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It's a interesting suggestion kozzi, and I'll look up the book when I can afford another book purchase (after Christmas budget slump).  The only thing I wonder about is that I don't see why OBE training and LD conditioning has to be seperate.  When I try to OBE I'm not trying to fall asleep so it's not likely to interfere with potential LD.  If I'm asleep I've already passed my ideal time to attept an OBE (awake), and so recognizing the dream and turning it into a LD wouldn't interfere with an OBE.  The LD reality checks and dream journals can't have much effect on OBEs, nor the OBE excercises (muscles/focus/concentration/energy) likely to interfere with any of the LD exercises.

But, as I haven't had OBEs or LDs, I'm not much of one to talk either.

If the discussion is topic-locked, and you feel it is unfair, it is very easy to take the discussion off-forum.  There's mailing list, alternate forums, usenet newsgroups, yahoo discussion groups, and web-page annotations (blog-like).  In all of them James can't lift a finger to stop you.  Depending on your strength of view and how much effort you are willing to put into it you can discuss/recruit/inform at least as much as you do here.  

I don't call it abuse of power until entire catagories of threads are nuked (not just frozen) on the basis of the poster's identity, then banning the poster, then poster's IP, anyone who mentions the poster, or the original issue.  That's not happening here.  

Let's face it.  Some threads need to be frozen.  We've all seen it - out-of-control threads, threads severely off-topic, trolls, misinformation, and newbie chum (aka munchkins).  It's the moderators job to keep the forum neat and clean, removing these annoyances, and *anything* else that annoys the *majority* of the forum readers.  Performing that job, while it my annoy you to the nth degree, keeps the forum stable for the majority.

Remember the saying "Do not meddle in the affairs of moderators (or dragons), because you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."

quote:Originally posted by Aries

Wow, I ONLY access this site from work.. actually I am at work and "working" right now..
[]
I dont see what the problem would be... not like he is checkin out porn. I think a person should be able to look at what ever they want from whereever they want. Unless its not appropriate, like say porn..
-Aries

At our workplace, porn is instant termination.  Internet sites devoted to gambling, religion, politics, "hate" groups, hacking, or terroristic sites are grounds for termination with cause (misuse of internet).  Our workplace watches the server logs, the workstation logs, and monitors us with closed circuit cameras.  Our employer does psyche (and drug) screenings before hiring, and deviation from the norm is not permitted.  Its a harsh workplace, but pays well.  What's worse, a lot of companies are adopting the zero-tolerance rule.  In other words, its coming soon to an employer near you.

Well, I'm a roman catholic also, and I'm not surprised.  Whatever our views are there is *strong* catholic doctrine that is specifically against "new age" concepts.  I really don't want to start a debate over catholic doctrine, but lets say that the church has a right to define its own tenets of faith, as you do in determining what your relationship to the church will be.  You probably would have gotten the same reaction if you had used the school computer for anything else the church doesn't agree with.  

What I'm curious about is why you would research this on a school computer?  I never access this site from work, and all my dream journals are kept encrypted on my own hard drive.  To put this in perspective, if my employer found out about this, I would probably be fired, and no arbitration panel would help me.  If you expose your viewpoints in public, don't be surprised when people will hold them against you in the worst possible way.  You could have accessed it from a more private place, like a public (not a school) library, a internet cafe, a friends house, or simply cache all the information onto disk and read it offline on any computer.

This is not to say that OBE/AP is bad.  I believe that it is good, useful for self-insight, and can be fun.  The sensations that I get as I try to OBE is incredible.  However, as with everything there is a price.  You just discovered one of the unplesant ones.

HTH

Let me try simplfing things here.  There is a simple test that could easily prove government interest.

I don't think the NSA takes job applications (they recruit), ditto the FBI, but a case is for someone (not me) to walk into the Pentagon (in real life, not OBE), to the visitors desk, and ask to fill in a job application and list your primary qualifications as your various psychic abilities.  Give a valid address and phone number.  Most likely you'd get either blown off as a crank, or get some kind of low level, casual test.  Either way it would show whether or not the government is interested in AP/OBE abilities.

Why not me?  Am I voluntaring someone else to bell the cat (or act as a stupid mine-detector)?  I'm not psychic, yet.  I'd like to be.  I've gotten some interesting effects, but I don't think the govt is interested in kinda-sorta-maybe psychic.  If I was I'd give it a try.  My profession, Information Technology (Programming), is dying in the US.  A nice safe job at the Petagon sounds nice.  I actually would consider doing it if I could solidly prove it without looking stupid.

I don't see why the government would hire/coerce regular citizens for.  They already have barracks full of young recruits who have signed binding contracts for a long time with the government.  The government can poke, prod, test, yell at, force teach, threaten, punish, reward, and send those soldiers however they like (AS LONG as it falls within the officers code of conduct manual).  The government has a lousy track record in keeping regular US citizens quiet, but they have a GREAT track record in making sure soldiers stay very very quiet (how many people who works at Area 51 can you discover?)  The government would have no problem getting a soldier to fill out a vague psychic appitude test.  If the soldier shows potiential, I can see all sorts of ways the governement could transfer that soldier to some special program, AND STILL keep that soldier happy (and as tightlipped) as a clam.  So why bother with the cloak and dagger with hunting psychics on the internet?

quote:Originally posted by no_leaf_clover

Just because some people use government computers for casual surfing doesn't mean all people working for the government do. Maybe most people are just surfing around from a government job, but the government could just as easily use this forum to create records on individials if they could find out who we are, and I don't suppose that would be too hard for them.

Okaaaay...  and how exactly are government agents going to find out who we are?  I know of four ways it could be done, maybe five, none of them feasible.  Unreasonable paranoia can be so fun.

1)  Get the astralpulse weblogs of ip addresses from RB himself (not likely for obvious reasons)
2)  Get the weblogs of ip addresses from whoever hosts astrapulse.com (I'm feeling too tired to look it up).  This actually is possible, but they would first go to the press.  Remember what happened when Comcast said 'NO' to the govt, and AOL said 'YES' (and turned over pedophiles records).  Both were very public matters and not done lightly.
3)  Get the cooperation of the major ISPs to turn over their IP logs of all users and parse it for people who happen to go to astralpulse.com (extremely unlikely).  There is no way this could stay secret.  Can you say major uproar from the general public and civil libertarians.
4)  Do something sneaky with the OS or the browser to monitor peoples activities on the internet and report it directly to the government.  This doesn't seem to be happening as I've got a packet sniffer and well configured hardware and software firewalls, and nothing has been flagged as going to a government agency (*.gov) and there is no suspicious data leaving my computer.
5)  Use the member profiles that we created when we signed up here.  The problem is that very few people are entering their first and last names in their profile making it somewhat difficult for the government to locate people based on that.

As I said, I'm certain that there is filtering (I used the term targeting) being used, and that Echelon either exists, or shortly will - in either case being possible.  The point I was trying to make is that the more you monitor, the harder it is to extract data.  Most people don't take this into consideration and become paranoid that the government is listening.  I've had relatives call me (me being the tech wizard of the family, not saying much) asking how to get off the governments 'black list'.  A few years ago people were sending emails with supposedly hot keywords the government watches, under the theory of flooding the system.  Me, I try to stay sane about what the government can and can't do, and not worry excessively about it.

If a significant number of people here were 'high risk' (I'll leave it to you to define that term) to the government, then the NSA probably would monitor this forum.  But somehow I don't think that's the case.

Forums that would be monitored by the NSA would be more like the http://www.cyberarmy.com (which had endless discussion about Echelon) (it appears to be down), the various phreaking groups, and the anarchists clubs.  

Let me start out by saying that I really don't put it past the US govt, or any govt, to illegally tap private or semi-private communications.

BUT a lot of what is being said here is physically impossible for any government, regardless of available resources, to accomplish.  The problem is *information theory*.  If they were to listen to a 100 million phone calls a day via computers, the computers would have to intercept, analyze, convert into machine text, parse into linguistic meaning, catalog it, archive it, and flag it for relavance in a database whose size would be beyond imaging.  The computer would have to understand the speech of everything from intoxicated people calling home, to a southerner with a heavy accent, to a foriegn student who doesn't know his english well.  At it gets worse, if you attempt to cross correlate the messages to find patterns, the problem grows not exponentially, but hyper-geometrically (n * t)^(x*n*t)).  Add to that internet intercepts, physical mail peeking, personal movement (joe went to chicago and met with jack), and banking transaction monitoring and the problem goes from impossible to loony.  Since there are less computers and people that the government has compared to the rest of the population, a *total* intercept is impossible.

You can do the math on it.  Even a 1% intercept would overload any system, even the systems of the NSA, whose famous quote is 'We don't measure computer power by the gigahertz, we measure it by the acre.'  The only way intelligence gathering can work is for it to be targeted to a limited population.  The limitation would be up to them, and I can't imagine what the criteria would be.  I'm quite sure that whatever it is (and I'm sure that they have one for info intercept) would make headline news on all news organizations.  Almost certainly all foriegn exchange students in the US.  Beyond that it would be pointless speculation.

So with a limited intercept, why would they waste their resources here where the probability of gaining useful intelligence or interesting data correlations would be low to non-existant?

As to why the web logs show government agencies, who knows?  Maybe we have a few OBE/AP fans within the govt, who are lurking.  

Or maybe the NSA psi-ops program needs new candidates.

I don't play any instruments, though I can appreciate the artistry and power of those who can.  

I also enjoy Celtic music and have quite a large collection of CDs (which Im not selling), but I don't have Arkenstone's CD.  If you are really big into Celtic music you should check out http://www.greenlinnet.com which specializes in hard to find irish/celtic music.

Other than that my tastes run to Rock Opera.  If you can't figure out what that would be, the TransSiberian Orchestra's 'The Carol of the Bells' always plays during Christmas. The best CD that I've seen in a while is 'Luca Turilli-King Of The Nordic Twilight'.  

Just a FYI

quote:Originally posted by dkj400

So I should stimulate/open the Chakras and I should automatically get vibrations without any exit techniques?

Um...  not quite.  It doesn't matter whether or not you stimulate your chakras for vibrations to occur.  I get light vibrations merely by lying down.  Exit techniques can be tried anytime, usually after strong vibration or heavy buzz, and again doesn't have much to do with chakras.  And the frustrating thing is that there is no 'automatically' to it, sometimes no matter what you do with your chakras you won't get your vibrations, and you just can't get anywhere close to hypnogogic.

Chakras merely raise your energy level, greatly increasing your chances of having enough energy to successfully exit.  For my first time I would be overjoyed on a complete exit, low energy or high.  I'd be happy with a distinct partial so that I'd know I was making progress.  I'd even be happy with seeing my astral hands that I'm using with my astral sight.  Chakras merely increase your chances.  I like them because they give the mind something constructive to do.  Instead of trying to kill all thoughts, I merely have to concentrate on a knuckle, circling and circling, back and forth, up the limb.  Trying to split the mind to tackle both limbs (either both arm or both legs) takes all the brainpower that I have.  Running the astral hands up one limb is easy.  The chakra concentration keeps the annoying thoughts away ('I wonder how much time has passed' 'Should I switch to a different technique' '(Yawn)' 'My legs feel like they need more attention').

What I'm trying to say is chakra development is sort of doing warm-up exercises before a sports game.  Not doing your exercises doesn't mean you'll fail, but you'll definately not be as ready and able as you would be if you had.

What are you supposed to do when you get the hypnogogic state?

1)  Enjoy it.  It feels very pleasant and I don't mind at all the condition
2)  Analyze it.  Be able to recognize it.  This is what you are aiming at during your regular OBE/AP attempts.  Hypnogogic should be a nice big landmark on your journey inward.
3)  Maintain it.  This is tricky and crucial.  Maintain the borderline between awake and asleep.  It's harder than it sounds.  Many people (including me) start getting excited and lose focus when interesting things start to happen during a normal OBE/AP attempt.  If you don't have enough exposure, you will blow it by either getting too excited, think too much (in either case becoming awake), or get bored and fall asleep.
4)  Deepen it.  Hypnogogic is not nearly deep enough for OBE/AP.  It is a good beginning, and being able to start there definately saves you a couple of steps.
5)  Power it up.  Start working on your energy centers.  It can't hurt and it gives your mind something quiet to do.  Fingers.  Toes.  Fingers to arm.  Toes to foot.  Arm to chest.  Feet to legs to solar plexus.  Full strokes from fingers to chest, toes to belly, and from the toes to the head.  If you are very very lucky you'll get a strong buzz.

But it shouldn't be so complicated.  At least enjoy it.  Making it over-complicated is like going to Disneyland to do crowd management studies, demographic targeting campaigns, and service utilization analysis.  You would be missing the forest for the trees.

In theory when you fall asleep your forearm should relax completely and should collapse forward onto the bed, waking you up just enough to use the hypnogogic state.

It can be a little tricky though.  For one, it will take you a lot longer to fall asleep the first couple of times that you try it.  Secondly, the arm tends not to cooperate with your intentions.  As you get closer and closer to sleep your arm will tend to hand at a leaning angle, sort of half-mast, and thus when you fall asleep it will hit the bed from a short distance, and softly, and not wake you up.  Third, even if you do everything right, if your subconcious doesn't feel like cooperating it won't work.  If you are too sleepy, worried, or tense it simply won't work.  The best way to proceed if this happens is to make sure you have gotten plenty of sleep the night before and avoid any stimulant long before you go to bed.  I used to be able to drink *liters* of caffine soda before bed without problem, but I couldn't remember dreams or hit the hypnogogic state till I cut it out after 6pm.

HTH

I was somewhat curious, as intolerance to astral viewpoints is unusual on this board.  The thread you are talking about here is http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=9604

The problem is that your thread confused everyone.  You use terms noone (including me) is familiar with, concepts that seems to make no sense (Lucifer was thrown out of heaven for being too good??), and support your ideas with unprovable theories.  In short, you aren't presenting your ideas well.  To put it another way - take any non-fiction book, erase the page numbers and shuffle the pages, and maybe remove a few key pages.  The book won't make sense, and noone who reads that shuffled book will learn anything, EVEN IF the book/idea was brilliant, astonishing, and well researched.

I also checked your webpage http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=celabsynth  This is not a web page of someone who takes themselves seriously or who gives a lot of thought to their writings.  The design is interesting, the art is nice, the information content is a big problem.  [oh yea..I got an artistic soul....and a katana...I am red..and in the seventh level of hell....plus..I can shoot an M16A2...XD] (huh??) If you don't take your ideas seriously, or take time to present your ideas with care, few others will make the extra effort to try to understand what you are trying to tell them.

My best suggestion to you is to go back over the thread and seriously listen to the kinder comments that you got.  In addition reading through a book on thesis/essay presentation style, and on business presentation wouldn't hurt.  Confusing your audience and then storming off is bad form.

BWGen has been discussed many times before, with long debates.  It is very useful for getting you into the correct mindset, but it can't actually cause you OOBE or AP.  A good analogy is sports performance and good shoes.  Expensive and good sports shoes does increase your performance, but its more important to practice the core skills necessary to win.  BWGen along with good relaxation skills, mind taming exercises, breath control, focus, exposure to the weird sensations (and the loss of fear), and concrete projection objectives (keep it simple) is all more important than the binaural tones you listen to.  For me personally BWGen does little.  For some strange reason I have more luck with the BrainSync and HemiSync CDs than BWGen.  But stick with whatever works for you.

Congratulations on getting so far.  I have yet to achieve astral movement on that scale.  

By the way, the first OBE/AP is supposed to be very scary, and very energetic, with lots of vibration (RB says some people don't get vibrations).  You still may have a distance to go.

I have something similiar to that.  I generally can't feel any vibrations during the normal course of the day.  If I break a OBE attempt (I have yet to be successful), I will feel vibrations afterwards while I'm awake for several hours.  I also feel some vibrations when I first lie down, especially if I lie down with the intention of OBE.  If I'm aiming for sleep the vibrations are much less noticable.

If these are what you are talking about I have no good explanation of what they are.  I did go for a checkup at my doctors office and told him the vibration symptoms, and the only thing he could suggest was possible nerve damage or a general circulation problem, neither being indicated by secondary supporting symptoms.  

As a wild guess, it could be a pavlovian learned response of the psyche.  I lie down, the mind knows that this usually means I want a trance state and total relaxation, and decides to be helpful and attempts to give me what I want - vibrations.  In this case it isn't helpful.  For me the light vibrations are somewhat enjoyable but distracting.  I'm trying to put the body to sleep and lose the sensation of body, and light vibrations doesn't help.  Heavy vibrations is a different matter altoghter.

Whatever that is, so far it hasn't harmed me.

A picture is worth a thousand words.  This one (http://www.despair.com/bitterness.html) sums up my feeling perfectly that OBE should be kept very private.

Don't worry, its kid and work safe.

I haven't discusses this with anyone who knows me, nor ever will.  If I mentioned this at work I'd probably get an immediate drug test, HR review, and fired for instability (I checked, its in the employee handbook).  Every job I've had is pretty uptight, concentrated on making money, and have discouraged personal discussions (lawsuits you know).  Topics are generally safe and neutral - books you've read, movies you've seen, holiday plans, pets.  It would be pretty hard to steer conversation towards OBE/AP.  

The reason why most people adversely react to the subject is that its too sensational.  This leads to the easy jokes and gross misunderstandings ('Have you seen Elvis on the Astral?  hahah').  Anyone practicing it would indeed be labeled mad.  Maybe correctly so.  It begs the question from philosophy courses - 'A sane man is surrounded by a society of insane people.  Is he sane or insane?'.  Put another way, maybe the sighted man in the land of the blind will have to consider being blinded (The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells).

This is why I like a nice anonymous place to discuss OBE/AP.  Thanks RB for astralpulse.com!!  Many thanks indeed!

Look thru my past posts, for my post on a DIY-Novadreamer.  Link: http://brindefalk.solarbotics.net (the Kvasar dreammask).  Total cost about $60, tops (assumimg you already have a multimeter), and that's including the microcontroller programmer which I'm building mow.  Complicated?  Not really, his plans laid it all out.  Some basic knowledge of electronic assembly, some common sense on the use of a multimeter as a diagnostic tool, and some patience is all that is required.  Turning the prototype into a integrated circuit board is somewhat messy the first time around, as the inking and washing process of the board is tedious and somewhat expensive.  If you get to that point email me and I'll send you a component-less washed board ready for plugging and soldering.  Its no more expesive to wash one board than two.

If you start it and have difficulties let me know, and I'll give you advice, if you have a digital camera to post pictures of what you are seeing.

Ironic isn't it.  What I would give for poorer sleep and better dream recall.  The really funny thing is that some of the dreams are interesting, and I'd really like to know the first part of the dream.  After I recalled three dreams in one night, I was also 'WHOA!!  DREAMS!!'

I can't afford the NovaDreamer.  I am in the process of constructing a DIY electronics projects for a ND-alike, no computer interface in V1.  

What is really frustrating is that about a week after I had started the dream training, I woke up with no recalled dreams.  However, I did wake up feeling *great*.  I hadn't felt that good for *years*.  I felt great all that day, and I mean it was weird.  It still makes me wonder about just what I was dreaming about *that* night.  It hasn't happened since, but I hold out hope.

beavis, I'd have hard time characterizing every day as a nail in the foot, but for your analogy to be a little more accruate, it would be:
Choose to step on the nail today, and every day until you die, or step on ten nails every day for all of your next life.  If you are Christian, then its a million nails for the rest of eternity.  I'm being serious.

It's a moot point anyway.  If you are beyond caring for yourself, you aren't likely to care for the consequences of your suicide.  Suicide never has pretty results, and is always sad.

I will agree with the original poster about the problems that are present in todays society.  There is war, murder, callousness, dishonorable professions, and a host of other evils without number. However this is not a cause for the loss of hope.  Society always makes progress, in the fashion of 2 steps forward, and 1 step back.  Take a look at any country a hundred years ago, and the problems faced then.  Wars today, by whichever nation, are tame by comparison.  Go back 500 years, and life really gets miserable, simpler yes, but far more human misery.  Progress is slowly made by a horde of individuals slowly trying to make things better in their little corner of the world, even if that only involves surviving.

This is part of the reason why every society values children so highly and the mores of society bind them so tightly.  Children are the future.  We do our best to teach them, educate them, show them our mistakes, and open their eyes to what needs to be done.  Despite our efforts they don't pay attention, scoff at our old fashioned ideas, watch their favorite stars on TV, and laugh at our values.  So it has always been.  We do this knowing full well that our children, prepared well or poorly, must face the wolves someday.  The unlucky won't make it past their fifth birthday.  Some even more unlucky won't know a day of love even if they live past the age of five.  Yet we hope that some of the lessons would be remembered, and that progress will be made.

Suicide is the death of hope.  While there is hope, there is life.  To go thru life considering each day as suicide due to destructive living is pointless, and is called defeatism.  That attitude could just as easily be applied to anything.  Why bother building something when it will eventually be destroyed or rot?  Why bother giving birth and raising children, when they will only grow old and die also?  We build for the benefit of society.  We plant apple seedlings from which we know that we will never live to see the tree that will grow.  In our own very small way we must always strive forward.

A lot of what you posted reminded me of Nietzsche, which is a favorite topic in college level philosophy courses.  To give you a taste of FN writings, my favorite phrase of his is: 'The two saddest days in mans life are the day he is born, and the day he gets married.'  There are some very good rebutals to FN, though it is hard to argue against him.  The attitude that I found most useful is that you have a choice in what compass point you steer your life towards.  Steer by FN writings, and you'll certainly find enough despair and heartbreak to fill your life.  Find something brighter, God/Allah/Budda if thats your belief, or some philosopher with a brighter outlook, like Thomas Jefferson (who was big on 'Individualism').  Irregardless of which you choose, you will find what you seek.

So as such I will condemn any suicide.  I will not simply give up on a lost soul mired in despair as a lost cause, or justifiable.  I will always regard a human life, old or infant, sick or hale, rich or destitute, master or slave, as being equally valuable.  If I knew a person who was so depressed, I would talk to them, and do everything in my power to help them out of the deep woods.  The most terrible incident involving this was covered here (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/36928_jump29.shtml).  We must help each other.  To do anything else is to reject our humanity, and be as some of the uglier beasts in the wild, like the wolverine.

So to sum up, I strongly disagree that suicide can be noble, or that society is hypocritical in condemning it.  

But I haven't been suicidal myself, so as your post indicates, I can't have an opinion on it.  I've lost a few friends, and family to suicide but I still don't understand.  I've had quite a few loved ones die unexpectedly, and I will die myself sometime in the next 40 years or so, but as you say I don't understand the glory and majesty of death.  I once felt so bad that I had to pull over on the side of a freeway to sit underneath a tree to cry, and sat there for two hours until a state trooper investigated (I wasn't suicidal) (got a warning), but I don't understand despair.

-----------------------------------------------------------
Death be Not Proud - by John Donne
(don't worry, the text is out of copyright, and is legal)

DEATH be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

For me it was another sleep paralysis episode (rare for me), very terrifying.  Did some internet searches on SP, found some science papers which had some extremely interesting symptoms that brought to mind astral projection.  Started researching AP.  The irony is, started the research to find a way to ensure that I would never have another SP episode, ended up indifferent to whether I have a SP.

Ah...  the things you are talking about - the meanings and importance of messages, and the absorption of knowledge relates to something called 'Information Theory'.  You should do a search on it, its somewhat dry but it addresses your questions.

Now why you can't interpret the knowledge from a dream, that isn't information theory, and I don't know why.  I've had a recurring dream my entire life where I'm in a bookstore, and find a section of books that I've always wanted.  I greatly desire these books.  In the dream I can clearly see the books, the author's name clearly, and the cover.  And I always forget it upon waking.  Frustrating in the extreme.

Read RBs treatise that he provides for free on this website.  It has a lot of good pointers on where to begin.  Practice, relax, relax more, let the mind drift, silence, the mind is a leaf floating in a still pond, no thoughts, no expectations, no worries, patience...

By the way, the no worries and no excitement part that is the toughest.  When things start getting very interesting (weird and fun, and yes it is indeed) it's hard *not* to be a little worried, and a lot excited, and to stay very very relaxed.