OOBEs and Lucid Dreams - Are they the same?

[blis]

It's all subjective. 

I think thats about the only thing we all agree on.

Out of curiosity, what, if anything, would constutite being "different" in your opinion? Have you had any non-phyisical experiences that you would classify as being different from a very lucid dream?

[NoY]

how much of this is just people wanting to sound clever,
does any of it help a beginner, or support anybody in there travels




:NoY:

[Xanth]

how much of this is just people wanting to sound clever,
does any of it help a beginner, or support anybody in there travels




:NoY:

That's really the end point here... this website is about teaching beginners how to astral project.

Limiting them by telling them that their experience is in "this" or "that" category really doesn't help with that goal.

And seriously... we have people here whom either can't project or who have lots of trouble doing it telling other people what their experiences are!
I'm sorry, but honestly... who the hell are you (not anyone in particular) to tell someone else what their experience was?  You can make suggestions to them, definitely... but TELL THEM?  No... if you're telling anyone anything, you're on the wrong forum.

Let's work together on getting beginners to experience the non-physical, not dividing our time trying to defend our beliefs, because doing that is asinine and helps nobody but yourself.  And that's an ego issue.  Drop the ego... help others before yourself.

Thank you Noy for bringing that up. 

[Summerlander]

Yes, I agree. Feel free to express your opinions but don't force them on others...especially when the experience is not yours. You have no right to tell someone what their non-physical experience was when you are not even 100% sure about your own.

By the way, I have visited my stepfather, who is dead, in an OOBE. He felt sentient and real. He has also surprised me in a lucid dream. Again he felt sentient and real. How characters feel does not determine what is an OOBE and what is a lucid dream. This sounds more like preference to me and a belief for personal comfort. The more you fuel a belief the realer it becomes and let's not forget that anything can be simulated.

Also, in non-lucid dreams characters can seem pretty sentient and convince you that they are real as you are immersed in the plot. Your reason for believing what you believe in is completely baseless to me, blis.

Anyway, it's about time I locked the poll.

[Selea]

LOL!  

Selea...first of all, you have massively misunderstood my post and I think you should re-read it.  I don't say it should be and besides I never said Mode 1 = OOBE and Mode 2 = Lucid Dream.  This is what you never seem to be able to get.  I am saying that they are all OOBEs.  In case you haven't noticed there is usually a word in front of the type of mode:

Your thread has a title, isn't it? Then in the thread, to start the poll, you list the "Modes". I know you think they are the same, but still, to start the thread you used a subcategorization by the "modes", so this is the way you would look at the issue if you would have to made a difference. I was referring to this.

Morover, my post was not meant explicity for you, personally, but on a general note. Usually, in fact, many authors refer to what you call "Modes" as if they are the only parameter in there. I tried to let see the thing from another point of view, where also the way you enter (or approach, or execute) the experience (what you call the Phase) create a parameter in there that's usually not either taken in consideration (mostly because these authors know only one approach or way to enter it, so they cannot, obviously, have other parameters outside of it).

Secondly, what you say is your terms aren't really, are they? The terms you just posted are Kabbalistic terms, not yours, and I care not to address them because they are rooted in Judaism and I despise religion altogether. You have to give your opinion based on your EXPERIENCE, not religious belief or esoteric teaching.

A) Neither your terms are yours. I used the word "mine" in the sense that I think they were the most appropriate in this case, to explain what I wanted to say. Then, if I really used MY terms, how could you understand them? How would you know of what I'm talking about? You can refer to a terminology only if the one you relate to know it too (and in this case it's why I used the Kabalah one, because it is widely know, at last in the terms).
B) From where they come it doesn't matter. You missed totally the point, as always. Terms are just words, not experiences. I used those terms to evidentiate a point, but you instead preferred to dismiss it altogheter and became all tangled up with the terms I used.
C) My experience I've given, I even said it so. Re-read my post. The point was to make you notice that you don't consider at all the approach to the experience (i.e. how you create it) in your parameters and terminology. Then how can you relate an experience if not with words and terms? What you say makes no sense at all, I'm sorry.

On the meaning of Modes...whoever said I was talking about "planes" and "subplanes"?  Whoever said they were places or regions or zones?   The Modes I talk about have more to do with perception than anything else, and, as I've said to you before, I never claim to know for sure that separation from the body really occurs.

Why instead of becoming all angry at what I said don't you just read?  You are missing completely the point of what I said and continue grabbing up in this battle of planes vs. not-planes, when it has nothing to do with what I was talking about.

I used the terms "planes" and "sub-planes" as a metaphor to let you understand (hoping at last) that you are missing up a fundamental piece in your "categorization" (whatever that is). Instead (and as you always do) you did care about the terms only, discarding their meanings and their use in the message. Oh, well...

You are talking to me about something which is so theoretical (such as planes and subplanes) while I have repeatedly mentioned the possibility that Modes might have more to do with the activity in the brain hemispheres according to experiments performed on split-brain subjects.

A) It is not theorical. It is just that experience (as mine) have let some people see that doing some things some results happens. In this particular case they have seen that the way you approach the "astral" changes the structure of the experience, and the structure of the experience can also have "directions" taken inside. For this they used the term "plane" and "sub-plane" and the terminology in there. The term "plane" to describe the structure, the term "sub-plane" the direction. Terms are just terms, they are not important. Go through them and try to understand their meanings, instead.
B) What they are or not, for the now 1000th time I've said it to you, it's not important.

On the approach to the experience that you talk about.  Of course it changes what you call "plane"!!! Erm...duh!  Belief and expectation come into play...

No, that's the "direction" (and only on the external term if it's casual). The structure it's another thing. Using sleep methods (as you do), offers a structure, using concentration another, and so on.

In case you haven't noticed, the term Phase is very pragmatic.  There is no real evidence that OOBEs and Lucid Dreams are not the same phenomenon.  But that is not what was intended with this thread and I think you missed the whole point.  This thread is for statistical purposes and an opportunity for people to voice their opinions, not oppose and ridicule the opinions of others to reinforce their beliefs as the absolute truth.

Where I ridiculed your opinion? You are acting emotively again.

Then, again, I don't care about the "evidence" you talk about, because probably there would never be. What I care is that things are different depending on the way you do them, and this is a fact.

As for your street and city analogy, it made no sense whatsoever, it looks misplaced and it is uncalled for here.  You tend to speak as though you know exactly what one encounters upon entering the Phase.  It's amazing...

The street and city analogy was to make you understand that in the way you look at things you care about a general direction, but not from where this general direction come from.

As for what I speak, I tell you what I experience and other people like me experience and what we have found. In this case you, however, was the  one that did not care about the "experience" related in it, but only on the terms used, and now you either pretend that I was the one speaking about theories. If you are the first one caring and looking only at the theoric part, then you cannot blame the other on this approach.

By the way...what did you vote for?  If you haven't, do it because I will be locking the poll pretty soon.  And next time, please ask decent questions and make sure you have read my posts properly.

I will no vote because the meaning of the terms as they are don't have the same sense I could give to the words, so my vote could be misleading, one way or another. For example, if I take care of the meaning of the terms on how they are used in the majority of cases then I would vote YES, if I would take care of what the experiences represents in them (and not considering what the terms in general means nowadays) then NO.

I did read your post properly, it is you that never do with mine, or you would have replied something to the point instead of totally missing it and becoming all angry for something that had nothing to do (if not externally and semantics) with what I was trying to let you notice.

P.S: I never asked a question,  it was a rethotic one, not requiring an answer, so it was not question at all.

Now this is a more logical way of looking at things...and I can tell this is definitely from experience.   

No, that's logical to you just because it is conform to your point of view. You have this bad approach to things that if something relates to your pow then it must be correct, if something is not relating you cannot cope with it, become angry, don't understand nothing of what's being said, and then pretend it's obviously false.

Do you act this way for *everything* you think you know in life? (Now, this is a question).

[Selea]

Limiting them by telling them that their experience is in "this" or "that" category really doesn't help with that goal.

I wonder if people read sometimes instead of pretending they do and just tie themselves around with words instead of the way they are being used. If what you said was not referred to me I apologize, but just in case (and because usually 1+1 = 2):

I say a thing, it becomes all another just because it has to be that way, I see.

But that's a reflection created by yourself about the thing or the thing in itself? Do you ever wonder?

Since, you know, I've reread what I wrote 5 times already and for the death of mine I couldn't see how one can interpret it as a way to imposing something or a way to declare specific "belief systems" or similar. The only way to read it that way is to have already a preconception on what's being written, without neither trying to understand the meaning beyond the terms used. But I guess that since you saw the words "planes" or "sub-planes" in the post you neither either cared about their use or why they were being used, isn't it? It was much simpler to just think "oh, this individual it's using these bogus terms, obviously all it is written it has no sense and it's just an imposition of a belief system", without trying to comprehend the context, am I right?

And this is a thing I've seen in these two years here, over and over again: people that presume and pretend they are more "open minded" and less tied up in "belief systems" usually are the ones that really cannot go beyond them, no matter what. Same as some kind of atheists that, while in theory declaring they should go beyond the concept of God as in the chrisitan view, when hearing the word "God" cannot go beyond the term as being used only in correlation with its christian connotation.

And seriously... we have people here whom either can't project or who have lots of trouble doing it telling other people what their experiences are!
I'm sorry, but honestly... who the hell are you (not anyone in particular) to tell someone else what their experience was?  You can make suggestions to them, definitely... but TELL THEM?  No... if you're telling anyone anything, you're on the wrong forum.

Again, the only one "imposing" something here is you, because you pretend to impose that the way you looked at my post it is the way it was. Actually, it was exactly the contrary and, since I always do so, it was meant to help people understanding a point. You naturally missed it, but it doesn't really matters. What I don't usually tolerate, however,  is those people that "defend" others while not really either understanding from what they are "defending" them for. You neithe either really cared to read what I wrote seriously, with no bias to start with, and now you either tell me that I was "telling other people what their experiences are".

In fact, if there are people that REALLY do harm to beginners, they are those that pretend to say what's "real" or not in things they neither either experienced themselves and neither cared to for a personal intellectual approach on the matter, and then pretend to teach others the reality of what they don't either know. People that REALLY do harm to beginners are those that pretend to teach them "how to exit in two days" but then explaining absolutely nothing on what they should do, or they way they should behave to begin a learning process in there, as if that would be a good thing to do. People that REALLY do harm to beginners are those that insist that a thing it's only a way and all the rest, no matter the way you do it, it's the same. People that REALLY do harm to beginners are those that, given the points above, teach a bad habit to them to only care about what they intellectually care to, because all the rest it's obviosuly not "pragmatic" or have little sense, and that throw them in the middle without absolutely no point of reference in there.

The point of my post, btw, was to let understand users (*especially* beginners, in fact) that the way you approach the experience is what changes the structure of the experience and that in the structure there's either a direction (that should be willingly decided, and not on "case"). Btw this simple point is much more important in practice than simply knowing how to "exit", *especially* for a beginner, because they way you approach your work at beginning it is the way you will continue your approach with more "advanced" things, and if you learn to behave without a structured approach in the beginning, you will keep the bad habit till the end, and this will result in an either worse outcome than not learning at all. Without direction and structure you will never have real practical results, only meaningless pieces, interesting maybe, but of little practical value, and those "pieces", outside the structure, would give you an outcome that could do you more harm than good.

It would be like if, for example, if you would strive (paradoxically) to enter the physical body only to find yourself "out" in a late stage of Alzheimer instead of a fully cognitive body. What a great practical value all you experience would have, isn't it? Fun, maybe, at beginning, but only nonsense would come from it, if you want to speak of practical applications, and the "pieces" you acquire will give you a picture that has no sense at all, while giving the outward impression of doing "great things".

What this forum really lacks it is another point of view from just "exit and that's enough" or "exit and experience everything as it comes, then draw your conclusions". If you really care about beginners then let them understand that sometimes having an experience just to have it, it's not the best way to act. Or even better, let them understand that after having the experience there's something more than just "having fun" with it.

A real "scientific" approach is one that explore the experience in a structured way, not on casualities, same as a real learning approach. But maybe people in this forum think that when you go in an academy you are teached to use the tools the way they go by themselves, or on your whim of the moment, without a structured path on the teaching, I don't know.

If you want to act like a moralist, at last know what "unmorality" you fight against. Elsewhere instead of Kant you look as the clochard in the street that yells: "The end is near, repent".

[Selea]

how much of this is just people wanting to sound clever,
does any of it help a beginner, or support anybody in there travels




:NoY:

Oh, it does help beginners, a lot more than just saying "oh, I throw in you in the middle, have fun with it".

in the same way that if you want to teach someone how to swin you don't throw him/her in the middle of the ocean with no points of reference whatsoever.

[Xanth]

Well, first Selea, my post wasn't aimed at you.
And for the rest of your post... thank you for the opinions. 

[blis]

Your reason for believing what you believe in is completely baseless to me, blis.

Fair enough. I guess we just dont feel energy the same way. I'm always noticing the energy in places and people(physical and non-physical). Different people have a different feel to me.

NoY's right as usual.

I dont know why I even bother reading these threads. Each time I see one I think, "pointless, not going to waste my time". But I always do.

People are going to keep asking the diffence between LD's and OBE's. The question is what are we going to tell them so that we dont keep replaying these same arguments again and again. None of us can claim to know we're right. Maybe we need a sticky outlining the most common views.

[Summerlander]

Yeah, thank you for the opinions even though your posts are so long and they say so little, Selea.  

Fair enough. I guess we just dont feel energy the same way. I'm always noticing the energy in places and people(physical and non-physical). Different people have a different feel to me.

NoY's right as usual.

I dont know why I even bother reading these threads. Each time I see one I think, "pointless, not going to waste my time". But I always do.

People are going to keep asking the diffence between LD's and OBE's. The question is what are we going to tell them so that we dont keep replaying these same arguments again and again. None of us can claim to know we're right. Maybe we need a sticky outlining the most common views.

It's ok.  You believe in what you want.  But there is no need for a sticky.  Look at the poll.  It appears that is the most common view so far.

[Xanth]

Fair enough. I guess we just dont feel energy the same way.

That's just it.  No two people "feel energy" in the same way. 
No two people have the exact same experience with anything.  It's entirely individual, subjective and unique.

I mean, sure, we can describe things to eachother and we might think, "hey, what that person experienced sounds like what I did"... yeah, it may SOUND like it, it might even be REALLY CLOSE too... but in the end, it's still ENTIRELY different. 

Each persons experience is entirely unique to them.  This makes describing this stuff and coming to agreement upon terms and definitions as being *REALLY HARD*.  I mean, look at this thread and the last three... we can't even come to terms on what a Lucid Dream is.  ROFL

[c0sm0nautt]

From my experiences, they are two sides of the same coin. I've never perceived the real time zone without reality fluctuations. I've become lucid in "dreams" which took me right to the real time zone. I've "rolled" out of my body to the real time zone. I could have been expecting to be in my room or my neighborhood, perhaps subconsciously, and that is why my experience turns out this way. I won't rule out that the RTZ could be, to use an analogy, the subtle body (or energetic counterpart) to physical reality.

I think our spontaneous night dreams are all over the place, or focused into different locals in the non-physical.  Some may be entirely subjective spheres, others somewhere in between, and some even locals which are objective to the inhabitants - or they are OBES in the sense they take place in realms where other consciousnesses creates a degree of objectivity.. Of course these experiences are always being filtered through our minds so there is always a subjective component - i.e, one person may see an ET where another sees an angel.

But yea, in short I don't think there is a fine line between the two. I think we can use lucidity gained in any nonphysical experience as a launchpad to anywhere in the imagination. I'm only speaking from limited experience. My experience may change as I have more experiences.

[Summerlander]

And that is a very genuine response and great way of looking at things. Shall I unlock the poll temporarily so you can vote? 

[c0sm0nautt]

I voted "I'm not sure - I have to be neutral." 

[Summerlander]

Cool!  Very honest with everyone and yourself.  Well done! 

[Xanth]

Let's keep this on-topic please and NOT resorting to personal attacks.
Thanks.

[Summerlander]

19 July 2011 - 2.37 pm:

Absolutely - 100% = 2 (14.3%)
My experience seems to indicate so = 6 (42.9%)
I'm not sure - I have to be neutral = 2 (14.3%)
My experience seems to indicate two completely different phenomena = 2 (14.3%)
Absolutely NOT! - 100% = 2 (14.3%)

Total Voters: 14

Well, those are the results so far.  I will probably lock it on page five to give others a chance of voting as well as expressing their opinions.  

[c0sm0nautt]

I don't understand the point of keeping a poll locked? Don't you want to hear everyone's opinion? 

[ether2]

yeah SL why ya locking it, ya mis ya Moderators job on AV's or something ...

good luck

love all

[Summerlander]

I don't understand the point of keeping a poll locked? Don't you want to hear everyone's opinion? 

It's not locked any more.  I thought I'd lock it on page five so that this thread doesn't go on forever.  But if you don't want me to lock it I won't. 

yeah SL why ya locking it, ya mis ya Moderators job on AV's or something ...

good luck

love all

Nah...I'm past it.  I wasn't a very good one anyway.  If I was I would have been picked as a Mod here already and I've already been told my CV is not good.