Messages

Think about what RVing is... it's the shutting off/down of your physical sensory input and receiving other sensory input.  That's, in effect, what an OBE is... that's what a Lucid Dream is... that's what an Astral Projection is... that's even what a dream is.

If I have to trust what Campbell says, it still is very fuzzy, blurred so everything
becomes the same.

I wouldn't be surprised if Campbell at some point will say that wakefulness in physical reality (PMR)
is fundamentally the same as an OBE. But that is like a physicist would say that any atom
is fundamentally the same as any other atom. It doesn't give room for any diversification.

If a carbon atom is fundamentally the same as an oxygen atom, just because both have
electrons and similar atom core, doesn't take into account that they in fact are different.

Different, but No Fundamental Difference ... I doubt such a statement helps anyone.

Here is a recent video that answers your question. The part you want to listen to starts at around the 45:00 minute mark. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lU7jEMMMvhI

"There are differences, but not fundamental differences..."

Jeez, and then he throws in RVing. Lionheart, do you think that there is no
fundamental difference between RV and OBE? If so, what exactly is meant
by "no fundamental difference"?

Her brain was COMPLETELY DRAINED of blood.

Do you seriously suggest that this brain can support "brain activity"?

Sorry to have to point it out, brain or not brain, but Pam's NDE started long
before her blood was drained, at least according to Wikipedia and several
other net sources:

Pam on Wikipedia
Some excerpts on the Pam case

So she had a fully functioning brain at start of her NDE/OBE, more than an
hour before the heart-lung machine was even connected to her...

James Randi must be soooo happy...

[difficult to detect]

... she was fully instrumented to make sure there was absolutely no brain activity.
There was no recordable electrical activity in her brain according to the sensitive instrumentation used.

Pam Reynolds was placed into a state of clinical death (zero brain activity).

EEG is not that sensitive, it's quite crude. For example Ph.D. S LaBerge has mentioned
the problems of the crudeness of EEG when measuring sleeping people's brains.

According to Wikipedia on Brain Activity:

"The electric potential generated by single neuron is far too small to be picked up by EEG or MEG."
"...activity from deep sources is more difficult to detect than currents near the skull."
"EEG determines neural activity that occurs below the upper layers of the brain (the cortex) very poorly."

I also highly doubt that _all_ blood was drained, as there always is some blood left.

Some source on the net claims that she was only without blood for 6
minutes, others claim a full hour. :\

. . . she had no brain activity. . .

Highly unlikely unless her brain cells had stopped metbolism and were dead.

Where is the book review? Or is this excerpt something aim at the Writers Corner Forum? Or a commercial?

I'm happy that your medication finally seems to help.

While this has improved my life incredibly since then and I no longer fear death.
It has forever changed my outlook on this world. I can't help but wonder if this
is how I should be or am I now a incomplete being wondering through a haze
dumbfounded. I believe this has closed my heart because I know no love.

Maybe there is still something inside of me that is crying for help.

I may sound a little bit technical now, but it could interest you to investigate
the act of retrieving an Aspect of Self (long thread).

And anyway, I get the impression that there lies something ahead of you to do,
perhaps that doing is more important in this physical world, than going seeking
something in the nonphysical?

One part of importance is to bond to others, to find friends, to get to know
others. Another part may be to get to know yourself. I can of course not
know much of you, but if you begin do sessions of any kind (meditations,
retrievals, OBE attempts or enter LDs), it could kind of rattle you to say
the least. One person was shaken when that individual realized that this
life was that person's first human experience, and all previous ones had
been in a completely different universe, which explained the alienation.

Most likely, you are also getting support somehow, but those helping you will seldom
interfere unless you at least make explicit requests to contact them, and sometimes
they don't even say anything even when you go look for them, but they act
nevertheless. Also, in my experience, my guides are not that much different
than I am.

According to the strict Monroe school they should mostly only end up in Focus 22,
be it a world of their own, dreamish, hellish, heavenlish, so in some sense it
could resemble both F 23 or F 25 (but without other people, or other people
as thoughtforms only, with the exception for one or two guides). But findings
by Moen indicate that people might move further, or at least some part of that
person might move to other Focuses, possible beyond ELS.

This may be related to the Aspect of Self concept, which Monroe mentioned little of in
his books, but TMI programs existed already during the 1980ies with H-S exercises
related to Aspects. And one of the TMI Explorer's tape has a variant of Aspect
encounter relayed.

My guess is that the person in coma probably, in most cases, has very poor
awareness, so even if that person has consciousness in F 22, I wouldn't consider
it to be the high quality awareness of an OBE, but more like a kind of dream.

Moen has one simple thing you can do. Moen calls it "to-prime-the-pump".

You just imagine how you peel an orange, watching it getting peeled
with your mind's eye. Has helped me a lot to get retrieval scenarios
starting. If I do nothing I can lay for a full hour without getting any
impressions. So getting it starting somehow, with a simple and short
method has helped me.

Some time ago one guy succeeded after having tried for ten years, but there
is no certain time for anyone.

If you don't succeed within 1-2 months, it can take years.

Putting intent, doing a session every day, sometimes with slightly different goals,
may help. Author Jürgen Ziewe had an OBE after five years, just by doing meditation
every day, and he didn't even have the specific goal of getting an OBE.

Voyager, have you tried to ask any non-physical being what that all was about?

it looks like a brain

There's a lot of questions here. I think I've answered some of it already.

I'm not so sure I want to take a discussion on a how-to-LD-OBE basis.
There already exist lots of books and web sites on how-to topics.

Much of it doesn't work for me or work poorly, like the rub-your-hands-
to-improve-your-LD. I've been LDing and unable to show myself any "hands".
I've been hand- and foot-less. I've either had no hands/arms at all or I've
been unable to watch them or raise them into my view, and yes, I was lucid.
But I could see my stomach, hip and the upper part of my trousers & thighs
while lucid.

How do you perceive the shift from OBE to LD to regular dream?
What makes you realize (obviously after you've awaken that is)
that you've gone from an OBE to a Lucid Dream to a regular dream?

I can answer this as others may have the same experience and I want to share
what I have experienced.

First I should give some background.

As a child 7 or 9 years, I had a few LDs. They where short, then I had nothing
for almost a full life until two years ago.

SPs didn't start until I was adult and they are less common.

I've had one SP where I could hear astral noise, but at that time I knew little about
OBE so I didn't do anything. But the astral noise was so loud that I thought someone
had placed either several TV-sets or radios on loud volume outside my appartment
door or I had the ear-muscle-effect.

(The ear-muscle-effect needs some explanation. When we go to sleep, the ear relaxes
and we are able to hear finer noises, because the ear is not restrained by muscles the
same way as we are awake. This knowledge apparently lead me to not be afraid of
the astral noise. The voices were also of several young people, mostly women, and
at that time many young people lived in that house. So I assumed it either was several
TV-shows I heard or the voices of the women in the house at the time, which seeped
through because my ear was more sensitive in the SP state, due to relaxed muscles.

Now I know of the astral noise phenomena. )

I've had some very strange experiences as young mostly as a teenager, but I don't think
those episodes were OBEs but something else, so I'll leave the details out for now, but
I could sense presence of someone and I felt fear.
---

Well, my OBEs. OBEs started for me, for less than two years ago. They always start with
me waking up in SP, which is a rare event in itself.

I open my eyes, realize "ohh, it's SP", then look around. I open and close my eyes a few times.
Sometimes I try to use force to move my arms, body and legs, but nothing happens regardless
of how much "strength" I use. I'm often still tired/sleepy as I've woken up, but my mind is clear
and I'm aware, though a little sleepy.

I then try to will myself forward.

What happens next, if I'm lucky is that I start to move forward. I go OBE. I go steady as a boat, but
very slowly, like the slow movement as you move a cup of tea to your mouth.

I move in a straight line and I can't change the direction of my view, meaning I can't move
my nonphysical eyes. I feel absolutely _no_ separation sensation, not even vibrations.

I'm near-sighted (I've glasses) so I've tried to pay attention to if my sight is without sight impairment.
But the few times this has happened, I've always started moving in the direction of the wall nearest
to the bed. If I would make a guess I would say that I think I'm not sight-impaired when I start to
move, but the sensation of moving itself is so overwhelming each time that I have difficulties
experiencing anything else than joy and excitement.

At this stage I feel as aware as a day. I am not dreaming.

This moving steady-as-a-boat without being able to change the direction of my sight was experienced
by me before I read Muldoon's first book so I don't regard it as a result of any "front-loading".

Then..

Eventually I move into the wall and sometimes I've been able to feel some inner physical structure of
the wall. Everything goes dark inside the wall as there is no light there.

And somewhere here I lose it into an LD, inside the wall. My best guess so far is that once I lose
non-physical eye-sight, my physical body shuts down to sleep mode and the SP turns into normal
sleep, but with me entering an LD.

When I've been able to turn around, inside the wall, and been able to move back into me bed room.
I'm already in a dream state with the poorer kind of awareness typical of my LDs, and almost all
times I soon start to experience dream world fluctuations (I don't want to use the expression reality
fluctuation, as I'm dreaming and not OBEing any more).

Twice I've continued forward and (in an LD state) entered the entrance door to my _previous_ apartment
which I had several years ago.

So, when entering the wall I'm fully aware and now regard that state of mine as an OBE state.
Somewhere inside the wall everything gets dark, I lose my vision, and when I exit the wall
(or enter through my old, closed apartment door) I can feel my awareness has shifted into
an LD state, I know that I'm dreaming.
---

Exactly how the LD later turns into a regular dream varies. I either stay in the LD, experiencing more
and more decay in lucidity, being unable to improve my awareness or I suddenly wake up in a false
awakening (in my previous apartment).

It's really, really hard for me to stay lucid and remember what to do. Shouting "Clarity Now!" has _not_
helped. And I only once managed to hear my own voice shout, the other times I was only able to
think the words (as thoughts) before losing it.

Strangely enough, later when I wake up, I can remember most of the initial part of my LD,
but as it gets more non-lucid, my memory starts to fail on the later parts.

This was perhaps little too long a writing and not so interesting, but you got an answer.

This thread has shifted from the original topic and for me to give any further replies is wrong.
But I'll respond in due time on your follow-up questions, when other more appropriate threads
appear. I just wanted to give one answer, but I can see now that it became too long.

Let me ask you, Pauli, and everyone else here...
Do you feel exactly the same first thing upon waking in the morning
compared to later in the day when you're "more awake"?

Probably not, but the difference is very small compared to the less aware 'me' I am,
when I LD.

First of all, it probably is of importance to note that I have never ever managed
to induce an OBE on my own. All my (few) OBEs have started after I have woken
up in SP, just mentioning it as I think it bears some importance.

Secondly, when I wake I may still feel tired, not being completely awake, but
still, I know that I'm aware in a much clearer way than in an LD.

[[ --- Sidenote --
Also, at a few times when I wake up and don't realize where I am or have
to figure out that I'm awake, is not to be considered totally aware by my
standards. It may take a few seconds after having awoken for me to realize
that I'm awake. But, when I've realized that I'm awake, and often that
realization comes in an instant, specially if I fade out from an LD, I'm
always aware that I'm awake and also in almost full awareness compared
to less aware 'me' while LDing.
-- end of Sidenote --- ]]


When in an LD and my longest LD so far has probably been over 2 minutes
(more than 120 seconds), I'm _not_ tired, not in the way I can be when I
wake up, but I'm at the same time _not_ completely myself in my LD.
My mind is kind of slippery, lacking something and I'm just not myself.

Perhaps I'm worthless at keeping awareness in my LD state, but that's how
my LDs are. So those of you who have LDs over the length of 20-30 minutes,
maybe awareness is different for you? But I'm at such a poor awareness in
my LDs, that even if I'm not feeling tired, and fully aware that I'm lucidly dreaming,
I'm still less aware compared to when I have been drunk from booze IRL. When
I'm drunk I can still make some sane decisions.

My awareness when I've OBEd from SP, has been at least as good as when I wake
up in the morning and becoming aware that I'm awake. Loosing awareness in OBE has
then happened quickly for me and I go from OBE -> LD -> regular dream in less than
(half?) a minute, perhaps in less than 10 seconds. So at least I have a huge problem
keeping awareness. (I've hoped to start a thread on that matter, but right now I'm not
sure how to go about it, so it will have to wait. One problem is that I have to wait for
those rare occasions of SP I get, to try OBE.)

I would compare the difference of awareness like going from an LD, where I try to talk
to people (dream figures), but forget to do my important stuff (LD experiments, gaining clarity, etc),
to waking up. The 'me' that has woken up, is suddenly aware of what I forgot to do while I was still LDing.
The LDing 'me' may just be running in circles, enjoying the LD experience, sometimes
trying to do something sane, but more often quickly giving up when nothing really
happens. The LDing 'me' is also having severe problems with keeping consistency
in my actions, even when I seem to have put an intent into exploring my dream
surroundings.

And the lucid 'me' in my LD doesn't have the same awareness as the 'me',
moments later, when I'm awake.

The 'me' which I am when I OBE, has always been at least as aware as the
'me' at the time I wake up and realize that I'm awake in the morning.

phh... I probably should stop iterating over the same things I'm saying right now.
I probably can't make my response much better. Anyway, I experience a difference
between LD awareness and OBE awareness. Where OBE awareness is much closer
to physical life awareness.
---

Also there is something more than just awareness. There is a difference in perception
between my LD 'me' and my awake. I just seem to perceive my 'world/mind' so much
better while OBE or physically awake, compared to my perception of myself and dreams
surroundings while LDing. I perceive much clearer in the physical.

Maybe I also should point out that there is a slight reduction of my perception (and possible
awareness) when I do retrievals Moen-style (which he learnt at TMI courses like Lifeline,
so maybe it's more correct to say that Moen-style retrievals really are TMI-style.)

I use the word 'perception' here as a means to observe myself more than observing my
retrieval surroundings, which can by quite blurred as I only "see" them by minds-eye to 99.5 %
(a few extremely rare times I have got actual visuals with my physical eyes).
---

Anyway, perhaps there are two parts to the OBE - LD difference: Awareness and (Self?) Perception

What I've experienced is that when I become lucid in a dream I know that
I'm dreaming. It's just a dream and I'm lucid, nothing special about that.

But the few OBE separations I've had, even if they only lasted a few seconds,
were completely different. My mind was clear as during a normal day.

The bed movements could be a variation of the vibrational state, which
sometimes (according to Buhlman - often) proceeds an OBE.

Sleep paralysis (SP) is not vibrations, the vibrations are in my experience
a separate phenomena. SP is just a normal paralysis of everything except
the eyes and eyelids.

I would guess that you had an OBE and managed to separate.

The touch you felt, could that have been a guide who tried to help you
exit a little easier? I think that sometimes we get help.

Also if you heard any strange sounds besides the rain, that's just astral noise.

Perhaps you already know what you want to do next based on your intuition.

The radioactivity in the Baltic Sea is higher than normal, mostly due to
the Chernobyl leak and to radioactive waste dumped by the Russians
over the years.

At this particular site the radioactivity was 20 times higher than normal.

The formation could be a broken nuclear sub or just some reactor waste which
has been covered with a huge concrete lock. And the originators may not be
too proud of being revealed.
---

Also, there is a second site...

At the second site a few hundreds meter away, there is some kind of
underwater pillar at the center of a rectangular structure, which seems
to be made up of two different parts, like two separate buildings.

Some distance away there also seemed to be some kind of heat source,
possible one of those natural underwater volcanoes.

The currents are probably very strange as the divers measured -1 (minus one)
degree Centigrade where they would have expected +4 degrees C at the
first site.

They only took a couple sonar images so far...

If you view the video link and the photos, you may notice that the photos
and moving video clip by the divers are more than "sonar images".

The photos released have been taken by the divers.

Rocks have been handed over to geologists and the divers are waiting for
a response.

A 4 meters high and 55 meters wide round saucer formation has been found at
87 meters depth of the Baltic Sea. In the middle there is one half a meter big hole.

There is speculation that this formation was made of burnt concrete by the Nazis.

...or by Aliens.

Formation
With video

Ocean X Team blog

[A. If you can still feel your body, you havn't gone past F10 yet.]

What's your source ---v

A. If you can still feel your body, you havn't gone past F10 yet.

Reports from various TMI trainers and participants (Atwater, Moen, DeMarco, Caudill etc)
invalidate that claim of yours, so I have to ask:

According to what source?
---

Pauli2- I love ya, but please go have a projection, gather some subjective data,
and then start pouring on the objective questions.

I'm sad to say it, but that won't help your claim.
---

Also, your claim below requires someone to:

A. Have been able to measure the exact brain wave pattern of the OBE person.
B. Got a verification from the OBE-person that an OBE has happened.

All Focus Levels from F 3 to F 27 are defined by specific brain wave patterns.

Contenteo, where is your source for that claim of yours below?

- When you pop out in a world that looks like your room, but things are slightly different, that's F21

Cheers,
Contenteo

What source do you have for this definition?

You are providing a completely new, never heard before claim. Are that your
own homemade one?

In your next post you merely repeated your claim, but didn't answer the most
important question.

So? According to what source? What source (and neurological brain wave measurement
to verify the F 21 entrance) qualifies your claim?

1. Very little difference to me, unless you really decide to define OBE and AP
to be different things.

S Muldoon defined AP as a sort of environment we sometimes call RTZ OBE as
he didn't seem to enter any "astral"/nonphysical reality while out of body.

Perhaps during the 1930ies, AP got competition with the concept out-of-the-body,
as no one really could say what the "astral" was, other than it seemed to be of
nonphysical character and possible marked by religious connotation. Oliver Fox
is one OBEer, I think, who used the concept in that way as he did experience
both RTZ, reality fluctuations, Astral Wind and astral worlds similar to Monroe's
F 25 (towns with the typical electric trams of his days).

Today people seem to use AP as the word for going directly into a nonphysical reality
without moving through the physical or RTZ. And often OBE is used for both movements
in the RTZ and in the nonphysical, possible because Monroe used the word OBE in such
a fashion.


2. Can you define a little more exactly what you mean with sleep paralysis? Reason to
my question is that in recent time some forum members have used the expression without
any paralysis at all and (to my surprise) have gotten moderator support for that new
definition.

The wiki is not complete but is more close to my experience of SP ->
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis

- When you pop out in a world that looks like your room, but things are slightly different, that's F21

What source do you have for this definition?

Moen uses the method of being transparent. Everything goes right
through him so he doesn't need any shielding.

Any shield will attract attackers.

No shield is the best shield.

TMI has further expanded their focus levels?
Is there anything describing these levels from TMI?

I don't know the details or which courses, but apparently TMI has a couple
of courses or programs which go beyond F 49. So TMI acknowledges their
existence. But also, Focus Levels beyond F 49 are not mapped in the same
way as the Focus Levels were mapped by Miranon.

Also the numberings on the Focus Levels, shall not be seen as "higher"
or "lower", but perhaps just different. Caudill indicates that the
Focus Levels shall not be seen as hierarchical.

My impression from the book is that perhaps a higher Focus Level can in
some sense be seen as farther out, maybe because you will have to pass
other Focuses on your way to that higher Focus number.

Maybe if someone starts a mail conversation with TMI we will get more
answers from the source?