Why Astral Projections Feel “More Real” Than Physical Waking Life

[Xanth]

http://www.unlimitedboundaries.ca/2015/01/28/astral-projections-feel-real-physical-waking-life/

Some people, especially individuals new to Projection, upon having their first Projection proclaim that it was "more real" than their usual physical reality experience. Let me try to explain how this sensation works.

If you really think about it for a second, saying that something is "more real" is a strange comparison to make with something else. If something is "real" then how can something else be "more" real? It's either real or not real. It's one of those statements that has no gray area. It's very black and white, on or off, 1 or 0. The better way to describe these experiences is that when compared to your physical reality perception they are simply "different". Why are they different? Because while you're physically awake you're experiencing this reality *through* the filters (5 senses) of your physical body.

When you're projecting, you're not using those 5 physical senses. Now, understand, for your ENTIRE LIFE up until now, you've been using those 5 physical body senses and they have formed your entire reality for as long as you can remember. You've become entirely used to how your physical body feels when experiencing this physical reality. So what's different about it when you're projecting? While projecting, for the first time in your experience, you're using "other" senses/perceptions to experience the reality through.

So, what's going on is that you're experiencing a reality with different filters on, perhaps even LESS filters than you're normally (physically) used to. This is why a Projection FEELS so "different".

Let me try to put it another way. Have you ever bought a brand new pair of shoes? The first time you slip those shoes on, they feel very strange on your feet. Don't they? They feel completely different because they're filtering what your feet are feeling compared to your old shoes which were very familiar to you. It doesn't make them any more or less "real", it just makes your perception of them "different". This "different" perception is all that's occurring when you're projecting. I've found that the "different" perception is also directly tied to "how aware" you are compared to your waking self. The more aware you are the "more real" people tend to describe their experiences.

I hope that helps a bit with understanding your experiences.

[Stillwater]

Yet another language issue I think.

I understand what sentiment people are invoking when they say "it feels more real". The fact that "reality" doesn't admit of degrees, and that nothing that is experienced could be unreal asside, what I think people are talking about is the hierarchy of realities. Most realities are not "base" realities in the sense that they are grounded in the substrates of another reality.

For instance, take the computer game example that Tom likes a lot (and for good reason)- the computer game character's reality is dependent on and grounded in our own reality. There is a one-way direction of that dependence. Mario depends on this reality for his own reality, but this reality doesn't depend on Mario's reality (thankfully).

I think this is the concept people are expressing when they say that... that they have discovered that our current reality is lower on the dependence hierarchy chain by temporarily living outside of the illusion.

[floriferous]

Nice thread. I like to look at it this way...

There is only one thing you can say definitively about you own reality, "I am having an experience in the present moment." That is the only thing you can't argue with but you can only say it about yourself (am I wrong? Can anyone think of another?) Every other facet is debatable. For example, I don't know that anyone else truely exists. They may be my imagination as with everything else . After all, what we perceive is just electrical signals interpreted by a brain (apparently). So truly all a person can say is I am having an experience in the present moment. What that experience is I don't know.

So based on this logic reality can only be where our awareness is focused in the present moment. Whether that be watching tv, visiting the akashic records or tripping balls on magic mushrooms. All of these are having an experience in the present moment. That is where your consciousness is focused in the present. So that is real. That is reality.

Also like to quote frank Demarco who said if something effects change in me is that reality? Makes pretty much everything reality

[Xanth]

Yet another language issue I think.

Oh it's definitely another one of those "language issues", but I wanted to try and explain why people feel the way they do when they're projecting in an effort to get them to think slightly different about the nature of Projection.

And also, because of the language issue, I wanted to explain why using the descriptor "more real" is a poor way to describe your experience. 

[Stillwater]

There is only one thing you can say definitively about you own reality, "I am having an experience in the present moment." That is the only thing you can't argue with but you can only say it about yourself (am I wrong? Can anyone think of another?)

Yeah, there are really aren't THAT many things you can know definitively.

Another though that most people agree on is Descartes' "Cogito": "I think/perceive/experience, therefore I must exist".

Many people take for granted that if you are starting from a foundation of no knowledge, that proving you exist is a necessary  first step.

Other candidates may include the laws of logic. Many philosophers believe it is impossible for a reality to violate one of the basic logic laws and be stable (quantum physics asside). For instance, it is hard to picture a reality where the law of non-contradiction doesn't apply. Namely, that the same statement cannot be both true and false at the same time in the same circumstance in reference to the same thing. As an example, Mark has 3 apples / or plates / or protons. If that is a true statement, it cannot also be a false one too, otherwise "interesting" things happen logically, and every false statement simaltaneously becomes true according to the laws of logic.