The Astral Pulse

Hello everyone.

I have not posted here before, but i want to share with you an article i wrote on the subject of OBE/AP. Be warned though, it does not include the generally supported ideas of this website/forum. My goal is also certainly not to offend or to persuade anyone, i only hope to start a friendly discussion on this subject and exchange ideas on it. That said, the article can be downloaded here

http://home.wanadoo.nl/xetrov/obe.doc


With friendly greetings,
Xetrov.

[edit:updated with new version]

Hello Xetrov,

I hear and appreciate what you are saying in your article, however let me recommend the book 'Science and the Akashic Field' by Ervin Laszlo, then let us acknowledge that perhaps the transcendental phenomena is something far beyond both our understanding.

Yours in Love and Light,
-K

Xetrov:

People have the right to argue what they like, obviously. But it would be far more use, and their arguments would have much more of an impact, if they would inform themselves before deciding to put pen to paper.

It is obvious you have no real practical experience at all, and all you are doing, in the main, is arguing semantics. Anyone who is established at practising this art knows that we are on the borders of discovering a completely new science. As such, we do not (yet) have a concrete list of established terminology that is linked to however-many known definitions. Under such circumstances, and until such time arises, it should be fairly obvious there are going to be quite a number of misunderstandings when it comes to making comparisons between who described what, about whatever.

The term "Out of Body Experience" is today a blanket term used to describe any situation where you become conscious of being mentally focussed within any other realm but for the physical. So whether you "come awake" within a dream, or whether you find yourself floating on your bedroom ceiling looking down at your sleeping physical, or floating on the ceiling of the operating-theatre looking down at your dying physical, or whatever, whatever. If you find yourself focused within any other realm of reality other than the physical, you are said to be having an Out of Body experience.

But do realise that when we say, "Out" of Body we don't actually mean we have stepped beyond the physical in the sense of being outside of it. When we say "out" we mean out in the sense that we are "not in" or we're "not at home". In other words we are "away" or "absent". Anyone who is anyone in this field realises the physical is an end result. The knowledge of such is so basic, it goes without saying.

Unfortunately, a significant part of your argument appears to be primarily based on your confusion of the word "out" with "outside".

Your article is so lacking in structure I'm having difficulty following the thread of it. On the surface, it would appear you are in some way attempting to distinguish between what is a "real" obe and what you would say was merely a dream. Your narrative is confusing but, from what I can gauge, you are attempting to conclude the only "real" obe is one that takes place without physical brain activity. Well, if I may respectfully point out, you are wallowing in your own ignorance here. It is obvious you have no knowledge at all as to the true nature of the relationship between the mind and the brain.

I had to chuckle where you make a particular point of saying, "So an NDE-OBE occurs when there is no brain activity." Well, the person is undergoing a near-DEATH experience. After all, that's what the "d" stands for. I'm sure it must be obvious to everyone that the closer a person is to death, the less active his or her brain becomes.

In your conclusion, you talk about applying "common-sense logic". To be honest, I thought that is what the piece sorely lacked. I think a suitable display of common sense would be for you to get 5 or 10 years of hands-on experience under your belt, before trying to argue another case in public.  
 
Yours,
Frank

Hello everyone,

I will take my time to try and answer all of your critique and comments, because i enjoy a good discussion and i can only learn from it.

Quote from: MajorTom
I understand the argument though. That is, if there is no activity, and yet a person experiences an OBE, then something non-corperal must be going on, and therefore it is real. Conversely, if there is brain activity, then it must be brain (body) generated, and therefore it is not real.

Indeed, the first argument may provide an argument as to the reality of NDEs, but the second does not discount the reality of the other type of OBEs.

I Did not mean to say that Out of body experiences as described on this site are not real, just that they do not take place outside the body on the astral plane, but inside your brain. So there is nothing actually leaving the body in my view, as opposed to NDE-OBE's, where there has to be something outside the brain while there is no brain activity. So you see, i do absolutely not mean that OBEs have not got some sort of reality, or have any less validity in my theory! Not at all, i think it is still an incredible way to explore consciousness and other spiritual matters. And i only make a distinction between NDE-OBE's and the OBE's Bruce etc describe because (and this we can all agree on), they seem to be two different phenomena which might look the same but are surely not exactly the same. And of course i also use it to try and validate my theory.

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...brain acitvity occuring during an OBE to a conservative scientist (which I am) does not indciate the OBE is produced by the brain. In fact, neither would I necessarily see the absence of brain data as supportive to the reality of an NDE, but that's another discussion all-together.

This is of course true. I also admit that my theory isn't provable (yet) but that's why its only a theory for now. There is no way to scientifically prove either my point of view or that of Bruce etc. I am only pointing out a possible alternative way of reasoning and explaining, the scientific data i show are just to shine some light on a few points and do not show that either i or anyone else is absolutely right. In my opinion, my line of reasoning has as much validity as any other, like Bruce's, since both cannot yet be strictly proved in any way. But i do not want to cling to much to science, although from my article it might seem so. Science is only one tool we can use to form our ideas and theories. The other tool is experience, from ourselves and from others, and using logical thinking. In my article i have not mentioned my own experiences but i will return to this shortly because i have been accused of not having any. The point i am trying to make here is, since both ways of reasoning (Bruce's and mine) can hold as much validity as the other, we should not yet come to any conclusion at this moment! Unfortunately, from reading Bruce's work (his book and this site), it seems as though what he describes is the only possible explanation of the facts.

MajorTom, thank you for your constructive post, i look forward to continue this discussion.

Quote from: Frank
...their arguments would have much more of an impact, if they would inform themselves before deciding to put pen to paper.

Dear frank,

I am of the opinion that i have a rather broad view on this topic, i have read information of several authors including of course Bruce and others, so this accusation is just not true. But let me continue to write down a further response to your posting.

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The author of the document has no real practical experience at all, which is blatant, and he's doing little more than arguing semantics.

Frank, i would appreciate it if you would direct any critique to me, since i am the author of the article. Also, i do have quite some experience in Out of body experiences as described on this site, also i have extensive experience in Lucid Dreaming for years now, and in going into an OBE from there. It is actually my own experience and, i must admit, also that of a few other friends i know quite well that i have begun to doubt the general explanations as Bruce gives for these phenomena. So this accusation, again, is not true.

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Anyone who is established at practising this art knows that we are on the borders of discovering a completely new science.

I agree that, for western science, the different concepts of spirituality are a new terrain to be explored. However, this does not mean that these matters are new in general, and that we haven't got any good established terminology or definitions. Already for thousands of years people have been experiencing and talking/writing about experiences like OBE's. As such, there are two possible ways to define what an OBE means. The first is what you propose:

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If you find yourself focused within any other realm of reality other than the physical, you are said to be having an Out of Body experience... But do realise that when we say, "Out" of Body we don't actually mean we have stepped beyond the physical in the sense of being outside of it. When we say "out" we mean out in the sense that we are "not in" or we're "not at home". In other words we are "away" or "absent".

If you use this definition, then, of course, during a dream we are out of body. But as Laberge also said (see quote in my article), if you see it this way we are really never inside our bodies at all because we live in a mental construction, and always experience a world 'out' of our physical bodies (but 'in' our mental constructions).
What i propose as to the definition of an OBE, is the following (and let me quote from various online articles so i can proof to you that i am not just the first one making this up):

"when the etheric (invisible to the physical eyes) body of a person leaves the physical body" (www.victorzammit.com/book/chapter29.html)

or:

"When the consciousness leaves the body in this fashion it is virtually always in the here/now plane, and close to the physical body" (www.sgvpr.org/definitions.htm)

I could continue. but the point is, how i define an OBE (and as you see many others with me) is that our spirit/consciousness entirely leaves the body and is outside of it (so, do not confuse this with my definition of AP, which is remote sensing by a mind split where you do not leave your body). Of course we could continue about semantics and definitions but i assure you that this has not been my intention and if anyone came to that conclusion then i apologize for not have been more clear in my article.

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I had to chuckle where he makes a particular point of saying, "So an NDE-OBE occurs when there is no brain activity."

No need to be rude Frank, i just made this line of reasoning to show that there are differences between NDE-OBE's and OBE's as described on this site. Many of you know this of course, but not everyone who reads this article (it is not only published here), so i put it in there anyway.

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In his conclusion, he talks about applying "common-sense logic". To be honest, I thought that is what the piece sorely lacked. I think a suitable display of common sense would be for the author to get 5 or 10 years of hands-on experience under his belt, before trying to argue another case in public.

To me and to a lot of others (which you might be not aware of), this line of reasoning i have used in my article is actually following our common sense logic. Of course there are other ways to explain all these phenomena,  ways that of course also use some sort of decent logic (like Bruce's ideas) but that does not mean that you cannot try and seek out possible different explanations by using some sense of reasoning as i have tried to show. The whole intention of this article is to show that there is more then one way of explaining OBE's induced from sleep/trance. And yes, i think that my way of seeing things are closer to the 'truth' if there is any, but i am open to suggestions and ideas showing otherwise. This counts for me and many more others that all have extensive experience with these phenomena (for me, only 3 years, but some of my closest friends have experimented with OBE's and even NDE's for 15-20 years already).

As a conclusion i would like to point out that i have not come here to be insulted in any way, and that your post (Frank) goes a little into that direction. I treat everyone here with respect and also respect their ideas, and try to have a good discussion on the topic. If i have misinterpreted your post, Frank, then i am sincerely sorry but to me it sounded rather as someone who tries to bully me (if that is the correct expression, I'm not English you know, i can only do my best).

Looking forward to continue this discussion, with friendly greetings,
Xetrov.

I thought the article started out ok, while it was only on the done-to-death "APs are just vivid dreams" concept.

It's an old argument, but it's at least got some credibility.

Then it lost its way because of the "but there ARE real APs and sometimes during a dream-AP you have a real AP without noticing the difference" stuff.

At this point, you're simultaneously arguing both for and against AP, and it all falls down. In fact, your explanation becomes the equal of the one you're trying to disprove, in that any discepancies can be easily explained away. In this case, everything is always either "It was just a dream" or "It became a real AP at this point"

The other thing I disliked about the article, apart from the bad writing style, was the way it was presented as not "Here's an alternative hypothesis" - which is all it is - but as "Here's what really happens, everything else is wrong"

Lines like "there are a lot of people around that claim to have had (some) experience with AP/OBE, and do not fully comprehend what these phenomena are" don't do you any favours. You're not presenting an alternative view, you're making it vey clear that you're telling people "I'm right and you're wrong".

If you had compelling arguments and valid evidence, that might be justified. But instead, you've thought up a view with no supporting evidence other than the same "pink elephant" you accuse the common view of, and then argued it as though it were fact.

You need to drastically re-write that document before you'll get people giving it any credibility. The style is amateurish, the arguments tenuous, and the tone insulting. None of which will make the reader more inclined to your viewpoint.

Quote from: MajorTom
But what does "in" the body mean? What if consciousness is not in the body or brain? Why make that assumption in the first place? In other words, if you question on one end of the spectrum, it makes sense to do so also on the opposite end.

I agree that this is a very interesting question you raise, one which i have already pondered on quite a bit. The point is of course that there are roughly two possibilities as you say,  the two ends of the spectrum. I am of the opinion however that, since our consciousness seems to be connected to our body (i mean, we are conscious and we have a body), we should use the following line of reasoning: if we accept that we are as well spirit as body (which i think to be true), then consciousness can be either purely a 'spirit thing' or a combination of body-spirit. I don't consider the option 'consciousness is purely a physical body matter', because that would leave no room for a spirit, nor for any form of OBE or any other spiritual phenomena. So, we  have 2 options left, either consciousness is purely a spirit phenomena, or it is somehow spirit and also connected to our physical bodies. I argue for the latter one, because how else can consciousness of spirit be connected to our physical bodies? I mean, it must be connected for sure, since in our daily routines all the physical senses render their information to our brain, and it enters our consciousness. So there must be some connection right? Also, to us it looks very much as though our consciousness is located inside our heads (except perhaps during OBE's, if there are real ones). Lastly, if spiritual consciousness would not be connected to our physical bodies in some rather enduring way (it might be severed during OBE or NDE, but thats again a whole other story), our spiritual consciousness should be able to ALWAYS move freely around anywhere, also outside the body!
When i look at the way i have been arguing here, to me, i come to the conclusion that our consciousness might very well be inside our physical bodies and connected to it in some enduring way (i have an interesting theory about this as well, how this would be possible, i could post this idea in a later post perhaps). This does not mean that the opposite is not possible, however i do not see how that could be possible. Perhaps you could explain to me how, during 'normal waking life', you might consider our consciousness to be outside the body? I'm open to suggestions and ideas of course, perhaps you could point me to some other sources that explain, what you call, these far more interesting possibilities that start to come to the foreground by no longer trying to locate consciousness in or out of the body.

Quote from: MajorTom
...how far and deep does mental space go ... Some would argue, far enough to touch other people's (shared) mental spaces (aka astral planes), or this commonly shared mental space we are all so used to (waking life reality).

Quote from: astralspinner
At this point, you're simultaneously arguing both for and against AP, and it all falls down. In fact, your explanation becomes the equal of the one you're trying to disprove, in that any discepancies can be easily explained away. In this case, everything is always either "It was just a dream" or "It became a real AP at this point"

I will give my reaction to both these quotes here simultaneously, because these matters are related. What MajorTom wrote is very truly a possibility, however it does not have to invalidate my points i raised earlier. Let me briefly explain why, and how i see this particular idea. First of all, it seems that i have to explain (again) that i see OBE and AP as two different phenomena. It should be clear by now how i think about OBE's, but seemingly not how i see AP, which is probably my fault for not being more clear. AP is a word that, to me, describes a way in which humans can collect or gather information from a distant location, without the necessity for them to have or experience an out of body effect. This is possible i think, because, although consciousness in my opinion is located during our lives inside our physical bodies, we can extend, or split, our consciousness to include sensing remote places. This is something totally different from an OBE where our entire consciousness and spirit leave the body! I gave some examples in my article, where i state that being empathic, which many spiritually active people experience, is an example of this. If for example you feel a dear friend of you is in trouble or feels bad, and this person isn't close to you in a geographic sense (something that many empathic people can relate to as far as i know), you have a conscious connection to this person so you can actually feel from a remote location how she/he feels.  AP, seen in this way, is actually a way to expand consciousness beyond our normal daily spheres of being (the area that we can sense with our normal senses). So in this way, as MajorTom wrote, our mental space can extend far enough to include or touch other people's (shared) mental spaces.

Quote from: astralspinner
The other thing I disliked about the article, apart from the bad writing style, was the way it was presented as not "Here's an alternative hypothesis" - which is all it is - but as "Here's what really happens, everything else is wrong"

Ok, i can imagine this and i am terribly sorry if it looks this way (and yes perhaps i should consider rewriting my article then). But let me tell you that this was really not my intention at ALL, certainly not to insult people!!  The only thing is that, i am very much used to writing essays and thesis related stuff because of my study (in Anthropology, if you wonder). In such writings we always have to make sure that, if we make a certain point, we have to make it appear that we are certain about our ideas, and this might look like i say "everything else is wrong". But that is just part of the "bad writing style" as you call it (which luckily not everyone agrees on). One last point i want to say here is, that if you look at Bruce's articles on this site and his book, do you see anywhere where he doesn't use this "Here's what really happens, everything else is wrong" style of writing? Yes, of course he uses a different style as me, but still it seems from his writings (at least to me and i know I'm not alone on this) that he is convinced he is 100% correct. By the way, if Bruce would say "this is what i assume, but i might be totally wrong", i would never have written my article in such a way either, because i like to think that keeping an open mind and discussing about all the possibilities is a virtue, though from my article that might not have shown (again, thats why i consider your idea of rewriting it).

Quote from: astralspinner
If you had compelling arguments and valid evidence, that might be justified. But instead, you've thought up a view with no supporting evidence other than the same "pink elephant" you accuse the common view of, and then argued it as though it were fact.

The judgment if an argument is compelling is subjective. My line of arguing is compelling to me an at least a dozen other people. Furthermore, "valid evidence" (if that can exist in such a discussion), i have given at least in quoting several other (albeit scientific) sources to back up my ideas (scientific proof of the difference between NDE-OBE and the ones describes on this site, and also proof of my way of viewing AP (which by the way i added later on so perhaps you missed that)). The pink elephant is just a philosophical idea to make clear one of my points (which you might of course not agree with).

Lastly i think i should perhaps briefly explain my spiritual background, since this differs from the majority of the people (also at this forum i guess). Personally i have begun exploring a shamanistic path (albeit a modern version of it, more inclined towards Buddhism for example), where i explore consciousness, energy, meditation and related issues on a daily basis. The ways of thinking i am defending here come directly from this background. I just thought this might help explain some of the differences of opinion i and the majority of the people on the forum seem to have (i must admit this is the reason why i posted this article here also, not to insult but to get into a good discussion with people of different opinion).

Thank you for your attention (if anyone read so far), I wish you all a fine day.

Xetrov:

I would like to make clear from the outset that I draw a definite line between expressing a critique and being insulting. If I have given you any reason for you to think I was expressing the latter, it was certainly not intended and I am sorry for any misunderstanding.

I have reviewed my initial response word for word, and note that my critique remains focussed wholly upon the article in question. I also note that it was you who posted the article, and you posted it knowing it may be controversial.

You are at liberty to doubt whom you like. But please understand that if you begin publishing information contrary to two protagonists of the art, Bruce and Monroe, you are going to need a lot more evidence in your bag than experiencing a number of lucid dreams, and having a few pals who do the same. Otherwise, don't be surprised if you come under some serious critique.

You say at the beginning of your article about how you should always ask questions. Of course, asking questions is all well and good. But at some point, you should begin developing some worthwhile experiences. Coming awake within a lucid dream is a popular pastime; however, if doing that taught us all we needed to know, every last one of us would be veritable connoisseurs of the art.

You conclude your reply by saying the whole intention of your article was to, "show that there is more than one way of explaining OBE's induced from sleep/trance." Err, no it wasn't. The heading of your original article clearly states how in that article you are going to tell us what "real" OBE's are, and you are going to tell us what "fake" OBE's are, and how they are generated.

Of course, again, you are at liberty to make these claims and then change them later on. But in all seriousness, before doing so, I would strongly suggest you remain congruent and back up your original claims with actual hands-on experience, rather than just accepting quotes from those you feel are pro your stance, and rejecting those you feel are contra.

Regarding your reply:

I'm not talking here about exploring different concepts of spirituality vis-à-vis the current day western scientific method; in the sense of the western scientific method finally coming around to accepting and embracing old-age spirituality, et al. That's just your assumption. What I actually said was, "... we are on the borders of discovering a completely new science."

You make a case for saying we already have good established terminology and definitions on the basis that people have been writing about OBE experiences for thousands of years. And in the next sentence, you say, "As such there are two possible ways to define what an OBE means." That doesn't sound definite and established to me.

You talk about my definition of the term OBE in relation to us never being "in" our body in the first place. Well, I forget how many times I said this before on the forum.

You say, "... if you see it this way we are really never inside our bodies at all." Yes, that is correct. The mind is located in a totally different sphere of reality and connects to the brain by what is known as a Bio-Energetic Link.

Your sense of consciousness never "leaves" the physical body, because it is never "in" the physical body in the first place. The only thing "in your head" is your physical brain. The function of the brain is to run all the physical processes of the body and serve as an interface between the body and the Energetic Link. No memories are stored in the brain, no thinking goes on in the brain, the brain has no consciousness, and so forth. All these kinds of mental faculties are characteristics of the mind. The brain, in a sense, acts as a kind of central processing unit that runs the myriad of physical processes that take place within the body.

In the wider scheme of things, we are always in a state of being "out of body". Physical body that is. It doesn't feel that way to most people because they choose to engage a more or less permanent physical focus, and only knowingly disengage at the point of final separation.

This is why trying to fathom which types of experiences take place within the body, and which types take place without (as your article sees fit to do) is just a useless exercise, IMO. Because no one is ever "in" their physical body in the first place.

Unfortunately, much of what you say in your article is based on a false premise.

In any event, you are arguing over soon to be redundant terms. In the early days, people would project within the astral and that was all they could comprehend. As more and more people develop a progressively higher degree of proficiency, the blanket, catchall term Astral becomes inappropriate. If someone said to me they had an astral projection, the first question that would come to mind is to ask where they were. Monroe was a bit of a pioneer in this. But even his work is steadily being superseded. The non-physical region he originally labelled as Focus 27 is actually termed the Exchange Territories, for example.

The term OBE is now a broad-based term that I suspect will become redundant in time. Nowadays, people are beginning to identify their non-physical position from describing whichever particular "focus" they have engaged. Modern-day practitioners no longer "project" they merely engage a different focus. The term Astral is becoming redundant too, as people substitute it with the term non-physical. Though I (for one) when answering posts, lean towards using the older terminology, for now, as that is how people understand it to be. But as people's awareness expands to incorporate the more modern-day concepts, they too will make the switch in terms - as the two go hand in hand.

The term "Out of Body Experience" came about as it best described the typical types of experiences people were having at the time. Nowadays, however, people are discovering different types of experiences and developing new terminology to suit. Monroe talks of this in his later works, where he coined the term Phasing in place of his earlier "out of body" sensations. It became to him not as if he were projecting to anywhere, but as if he were "switching phase". Today, as I say, the word "phase" is being slowly replaced by the word "focus".

It is simply not possible to "exit" your physical body by taking a step "out" of it or "beyond" it, as is often depicted in the more traditional works. The physical realm is an end result. In other words, nothing exists beyond the physical realm. You can take steps back from the physical, but you cannot step beyond it. Though I can fully understand how people have come to conclude otherwise. Take a step back into the real-time zone, and it does very much look as if you just took a step "out" of your body. It's a perfect example of how looks can be extraordinarily deceiving.

In a way it's like when people once looked at the line of the horizon and thought it was the edge of the earth; or they watched the sun rise and set, and thought the sun revolved around them. Such mistakes are ever so easy to make when you don't have access to the big picture. Your article is a perfect example of that, IMO.

Stick your article in a drawer, go and explore the non-physical for 10 years and then read it again. You'll soon see what I'm getting at.

Yours,
Frank

This is one of the more useful and substantial threads I've read in a long time.

I don't agree with the article, but I will agree with Xetrov when he says "In such writings we always have to make sure that, if we make a certain point, we have to make it appear that we are certain about our ideas, and this might look like i say 'everything else is wrong'. " Anyone that has recently taken a college-level English course (and thereby wasted precious hours) knows this is true. Concrete. Say "I think" or "IMO" and you'll see red marker. Another example of how academic English doesn't communicate well with people other than academics.

But more on topic, I find Frank's discussion of focuses interesting. I've heard them before in Monroe's work, but not much from anywhere else. It's hard to see what kind of science can possibly derive from this, however, considering the subjective nature of it all.

Hopefully Frank will come out with some articles of his own soon. This kind of discussion is all too rare.

Quote from: Frank
If I have given you any reason for you to think I was expressing the latter, it was certainly not intended and I am sorry for any misunderstanding.

Ok, let that be bygones then.

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... if you begin publishing information contrary to two protagonists of the art, Bruce and Monroe, you are going to need a lot more evidence in your bag than experiencing a number of lucid dreams, and having a few pals who do the same. Otherwise, don't be surprised if you come under some serious critique.

I am not surprised at all, it is actually what i wanted. And yes, i know that i would need a lot of 'evidence' if i wanted to convince any of the people that share believes with Bruce and Monroe to believe otherwise. But convincing is actually not what i set out to do, as i have said earlier, i just wanted to open up a discussion on the topic. But as far as i see it, it is just my word (and that of my 'pals') against that of the rest. So far it doesn't look like there is any hard evidence for any of the viewpoints, so all we can do is exchange experiences, ideas and philosophies on the topic, which is what a discussion is about in my opinion. I also want to point out that it is just a matter of putting value and trust in other people's experiences, for example you decide that Bruce's and Monroe's experiences have more 'truth' in them then mine or that of the other people i spoke of. I sort of know what the experiences of Bruce, Monroe and a lot of people on this forum are (of course surely not totally), but you people do not know what my experiences nor those of my friends are and yet you dismiss them as not helping us to see any 'truth' (again, if there is such a thing) in this debate. And please, don't argue that, since my ideas are contrary to everyone else here, these experiences my friends or I had necessarily have to be limited and of less profound depth then anyone else's experiences.

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Coming awake within a lucid dream is a popular pastime; however, if doing that taught us all we needed to know, every last one of us would be veritable connoisseurs of the art.

I totally agree. Since the sum of all the spiritual experiences (including a lot of lucid dreams, OBE's, AP's, NDE's etc) of me and my friends are way beyond the scope to write here, i would ask you to shortly specify to what kind of experiences you are pointing at (experiences you probably have had yourself, since you state that having these experiences is necessary to be able to see the 'truth' as you see it) that could enlighten me, or which conclusions i cannot draw by the lack of certain experiences you and others have had.

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The heading of your original article clearly states how in that article you are going to tell us what "real" OBE's are, and you are going to tell us what "fake" OBE's are, and how they are generated...Of course, again, you are at liberty to make these claims and then change them later on.

True, but i have explained why i did this as you probably already read after you posted this, in my previous post (which we made simultaneously). I am not changing my claims either, and i still think my way of seeing things is closer to what's really going on then Bruce's etc, but i am as always open to debate, and who knows i will find information to change my viewpoints (a little or perhaps totally, i do reject to being dogmatic), that's not a shame, is it? In fact, it is one of the reasons i started this threat, because one can only learn from discussions.

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I would strongly suggest you remain congruent and back up your original claims with actual hands-on experience, rather than just accepting quotes from those you feel are pro your stance, and rejecting those you feel are contra.

I did that to show that there exists an, in my idea, congruent alternative explanation of what these OBE phenomena could be about. This is a normal way of putting together a point of view, collecting 'evidence' that one feels to supports their case. Everyone does that i think.

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I'm not talking here about exploring different concepts of spirituality vis-à-vis the current day western scientific method; in the sense of the western scientific method finally coming around to accepting and embracing old-age spirituality, et al. That's just your assumption. What I actually said was, "... we are on the borders of discovering a completely new science."

My mistake indeed.

Quote
The mind is located in a totally different sphere of reality and connects to the brain by what is known as a Bio-Energetic Link....Your sense of consciousness never "leaves" the physical body, because it is never "in" the physical body in the first place.....
It is simply not possible to "exit" your physical body by taking a step "out" of it or "beyond" it, as is often depicted in the more traditional works. The physical realm is an end result. In other words, nothing exists beyond the physical realm. You can take steps back from the physical, but you cannot step beyond it. Though I can fully understand how people have come to conclude otherwise. Take a step back into the real-time zone, and it does very much look as if you just took a step "out" of your body. It's a perfect example of how looks can be extraordinarily deceiving.

Quote from: MajorTom
Your question pertained to how consciousness would be located outside the body during waking life. However, I never said consciousness is outside the brain during waking life. My point is, that inside and outside are relative concepts, which are not hard wired or fixed....the senses may to certain extent lock us into a perspective where consciousness is experienced as being in the body

I am beginning to see now where a part of our differences lie. Seems to be a matter of definitions after all! So we agree on this; consciousness can be focused on a remote location, a fantasy, a real place, the astral dimension even. This means that, subjectively seen, the consciousness is placed 'outside' our own physical local spheres because we do not focus there, and therefor it is not in our consciousness (unless we do a mind split, where we stay conscious of 2 or even more locations). Subjectively seen, you can define this as an OBE, which people here seem to do. It comes very close to what i have defined as AP, but i saw (see) an OBE as a different phenomena (namely, NDE, ill come to that again in a sec).You see, during an OBE in your definition, consciousness is still being generated by an interplay of our physical brain and our spirit, by what you seem to call a Bio-Energetic Link. So when i was arguing that consciousness is inside our body, i actually meant the process of generating our consciousness (yeah, thats my mistake). This process takes place at least partially in your body (head most likely) , exactly because of this Bio-Energetic Link (if not, it wouldn't be linked now, would it?). And this was exactly what i meant to prove at  the outset of my article, that the generation of consciousness never ceases to come from this BE-link and therefor never leaves our physical bodies, as some of the people seem to claim (or even know for sure) when they experience an OBE from trance/sleep. I see it indeed exactly as Frank says "It is simply not possible to "exit" your physical body by taking a step "out" of it or "beyond" it, as is often depicted in the more traditional works". But in my opinion, this is what so many people seem to claim, although i also agree it is very understandable! To resume on what I defined as a "real" OBE, this is to me an experience where there seems to be a temporal severance in the BE-Link, when there is no measurable brain activity or electricity. This happens for example when someone has a NDE, but it can also be induced from a very deep trance state. Of course you can say here, there is no proof that there is no brain activity at all at an NDE, because perhaps instruments are to weak to measure it, or cannot measure this BE-link activity at all. But i would reply to that, that once you are dead, we can assume that the link will be permanently severed, and that it seems plausible that at NDE, there is at least a temporary disruption in this link (why else would people call it near DEATH experience?).

So to resume my standpoints using terms and definitions people on this forum are familiar with (should have done so before, but you have to excuse me since I'm not familiar with some of your definitions); during an OBE your consciousness is being generated inside your body by the BE-link which is not severed or weakened at this time. So in some way you could also argue that, although consciousness is focused elsewhere, we define it still as being located in the brain. Your spirit doesn't actually leave your body, as real though as it might seem during an OBE. You are merely expanding your awareness to another level, be it the dream world/fantasy or "real time zone", or the astral dimension perhaps. Also, this way one could argue indeed that consciousness itself never really is "in" the body in the literal sense of the word. To me, an NDE-OBE is totally different from an OBE induced from a sleep/trance. I defined NDE-OBE as "real" because here, you sever the BE-link, your spirit leaves your body and ends up in the astral dimension. An astral dimension that is not prone to influence by thought, as opposed to the places you end up from sleep/trance OBE. Since for explaining what happens during these kinds of sleep/trance OBE's nothing "more" seems to be necessary then a simple theory of what sleep, dreams, REM etc is, i assume that no elaborate construction of an astral dimension is needed at this place where thought seems to shape forms, since in the astral dimension where we end up at NDE this is not the case. Although i do claim that we still can perceive the astral during a sleep/trance OBE through what i define as AP, this is still the same astral dimension as the one we go to in NDE and therefore any changes that happen by thought do not really happen in the astral but in our dream/mind/consciousness. Information from the astral just kind of "drips through" into your dream, and is mixed up with it. Nothing really changes in the astral itself. Although there is no proof for this there is no proof to the contrary either and this is where i invoked my pink elephant, i dismiss elaborate explanations for a simpler one (and to me more logical one) until evidence/experience proves me wrong.

Quote from: mactombs
This is one of the more useful and substantial threads I've read in a long time.

Thank you, also thanks for supporting my way of writing my article.

Also i would like to thank MajorTom for point me to some interesting information which i will surely digest as soon as I'm able to.

Xetrov:

I note all you say but it's largely based on a false premise, and I'm a bit long in the tooth for this kind of campus-style theorising. I prefer to sort out what's what through actual hands-on experience. Plus, all you appear to want to do is curve fit people's responses to whatever notion you happen to believe in at the time. And when you come out with blanket responses, like you, "... sort of know what the experiences of Bruce, Monroe and a lot of people on this forum are." That's just so presuming it's laughable.

You complain that I have decided to put more value and trust in Monroe and Bruce's experiences than I do your own. Which is correct. That decision was not just arrived at willy-nilly as you try to make out. I regard Monroe's experiences as having more merit than yours, for the simple reason I spent a number of years studying and replicating his work and found it to be highly accurate. I have also studied and replicated a number of Bob Bruce's experiences published in Astral Dynamics (the ones that cover my particular field of study) and found them to be equally accurate.

By comparison, all you do is say that your different way of thinking things is closer to what is really going on. Unfortunately, no matter which way I look at it, I see no merit in that statement at all. I think the mistake you made is to presume everyone is in the same position as yourself, i.e. pitching arguments from the point of view of having respective "pet theories". Of course, under such circumstances, who is to say whether theory "a" is any more or any less valid than theory "b" c, d, e... ad nauseum.

In the end, you talk about collecting evidence to support your case. Well, there is only one proper way to collect evidence to support your case and that is to drop all your fanciful theories in the bin, and get some actual hands-on experience.

Yours,
Frank

hi xetrov !

Interesting article, & welcome to the astralpulse !

I also disagree with your conclusion that there is a "real" class of OBE as opposed to a fake group experienced as lucid-dreams. There is simply no evidence to suggest that this is the case.

QuoteVan Lommel gives a good example from his studies; "she was put on the heart-lung machine, with VF, with all blood drained from her head, with a flat line EEG, with clicking devices in both ears, with eyes taped shut, and this patient experienced an NDE with an out-of-body experience, and all details she perceived and heard could later be verified."

While this one example may be true, you have conveniently left out the hundreds, possibly thousands of cases where patients have NDEs but cannot accurately describe their e.g. hospital bed, surroundings.

Thus, we cannot conclude that there exists a "true" astral realm that is "probably as solid as our physical world".

Although I disagree with your conclusions, I enjoyed reading your article. For science to accept non-physical reality, we need an agreed terminology & a way to measure such phenomena. Clearly, we have some way to go !!

Perhaps the astralpulse should set about re-defining the OBE experience, as the sheer quantity of terminology is mind-boggling & often apparently contradictory. To do this, we would need to break down the experience into components & come to a broad agreement on the process that takes place.

These are the issues that I see constantly plaguing our consensus understanding of the OBE :

1) NDE - OBE - Lucid dream - Dream
2) Astral projection - realtime projection
3) The "reality" or "validity" of the experience
4) The existence of a "true" astral world containing "fake" mind-generated objects.
5) "Leaving" the physical body.
6) the non-physical realms as a product of the physical realms, & vice-versa.
7) The classification of the astral into focus levels.
8 ) The Akashic records, often perceived as a giant database of information.

I believe that we can reach consensus on these issues by examining the evidence (our experiences & those of others). I feel we need to get our house in order before science takes us seriously.

Kind regards,
Mark

...

Frank:

I don't think my premise is false, but i acknowledge that first hand experience is important. Also, if you do not wish to continue this discussion, that's fine with me, but let us agree that we are both entitled to a different way of seeing how things are, and part ways in peace. I did also not mean that i would know all your experiences, but at least i do know what *some* of them are about, where as i meant to say you do not know mine.

There are actually a lot of people that, to a higher or lesser degree, agree with what i have been posting here. I am also not the only one thinking these things up, in my group of (spiritual) friends there are at least 5 others who are very regularly exploring these issues and debating on what they mean for our views on them, some for over 10 years or more. The reason that you will find none of these people at this forum is simple, most of them do not want to because they know an entirely different way of viewing things is supported by the large majority of the people here. A particular way of seeing things also mostly attracts people that think likewise. I however did not let that scare me away and tried to open up a discussion here, which i do not regret. I am sure that there are even many topics on which we DO agree, albeit not the ones i raised in this threat (for exactly the reason that i knew you would not agree, so to create a discussion on it). Let me conclude this reply to your posts, Frank, by pointing you to the fact that our (my friends and mine) view on things is close to the ways many Buddhist yogi's (who spend many lifetimes exploring consciousness and spirituality) see these matters. I know you will probably laugh about this but i wouldn't care and know it to be true.

Quote from: clandestino
While this one example may be true, you have conveniently left out the hundreds, possibly thousands of cases where patients have NDEs but cannot accurately describe their e.g. hospital bed, surroundings.

True, but i used just one example to show my points. There are many cases like this one and many cases where people indeed did not perceive anything in NDE (both probably thousands). However, i picked those cases in which people actually DO see their surroundings etc, because i think they can provide us with useful information about the properties of NDE-OBE's in relation to what i call the "real" astral (and you the RTZ of  the astral, if I'm correct). Other cases just don't divulge any information on this issue. Its the same as a sociological study to the properties of twins where one doesn't look at single born people. Also i did not say that this example in my line of reasoning definitely shows that my points are right, just that it shows (i think) that the direction in which we should explain these issues is different from the general accepted ideas on this forum. I came up with many other points to 'solidify' my claims. So, your conclusion is not correct i think ( this conclusion was: we cannot conclude that there exists a "true" astral realm that is "probably as solid as our physical world"). I say this because the example of the NDE-OBE doesn't lead us to any definite conclusion at all,  neither mine or your standpoints are definitely proved by it!

Quote from: clandestino
Perhaps the astralpulse should set about re-defining the OBE experience, as the sheer quantity of terminology is mind-boggling & often apparently contradictory. To do this, we would need to break down the experience into components & come to a broad agreement on the process that takes place.

I think  that would be a major job but seriously a good idea. Certainly for newcomers here (like me!) it would clear up a lot of "definition issues" to start with. I agree that we can come to some forms of consensus on many of the 8 points you mentioned, and that it would indeed help to solidify our experiences as being more "valid" towards science (although as yet, i don't relay put my faith in science totally, as it consists mostly of a lot of stubborn people that do not wish to know anything about spiritual matters). Anyway, thanks for your input, Mark.

MajorTom:

I quoted you and Frank there together because it lead me to conclude that there were some definition issues that lead us to misunderstand each other a bit (at last from my side). As to your claim, i think you are right in that consciousness isn't dependent upon the brain (else death would be finite, which i think it is not), but i do think there are clues to argue that it is PARTLY produced by our brain, as i have argued, as an interplay between physical brain and spirit (linked by the BE-link). But i have already put forward this point so i won't repeat it.

Xetrov> Have you read up Robert Bruce's explanation of the mind-split effect?

It's of relevance to your "No brain activity and yet an OBE was occuring" argument.

Xetrov:

People are free to believe what they like and, as far as I am concerned, they can debate their beliefs on the Astral Pulse all day and all night. Provided they do so in the appropriate forum and keep to the rules. Your criticisms of the Astral Pulse are duly noted. But do bear in mind that in the world of non-physical/spiritual forums, we are one of the most popular. So whatever we are doing, we must be doing it right.

Speaking of myself, as far as non-physical exploration is concerned, I think not in terms of beliefs but in terms of what is. After all, a scientist is what I am, not a mystic. All along you try to raise the old chestnut that one person's beliefs are no more, or no less worthy than another persons, etc. But our differences stem not merely from beliefs, or sheer differences in terminology, but from our respective degree of hands-on experience.

In all seriousness, I would strongly suggest rather than aligning yourself to some aged belief construct, you cast off your shackles, as it were, and simply go exploring. Hands-on experience is not merely important, as you say; it is an absolutely crucial, vital aspect. Without that, what else can you do but argue over semantics, talk about who said what to whom, and discuss the relative merits of one belief construct over another.

I am aware you don't think your premise is false and the reason, as I have already said to you, is you are not seeing the whole picture. You are doing the equivalent of looking at the line of the horizon and thinking it is the end of the Earth. The myth was blown away only when someone actually sailed out there and found out for themselves.

So again, and I keep saying this not to be insulting, but in an effort to be truly helpful: go blow away your own myths by getting some proper hands-on experience.

Yours,
Frank

Hey people,

This will be my last post (in this threat in any case), since i don't think continuing here has much use. I thank the various people for pointing me to their ideas and other sources of information.

Have a nice day,
Xetrov.

JHFC guys. This is so frign complicated. Seems the effort involved is not worth the end result, which of course is OBE. But how many have actually had an OBE with all the effort put in. Not bashing it by any means. I just read this stuff and it's as complicated as quantum mechanics IMO. But this is coming from a person who can't meditate, never get into a meditative state.

Kevin

I hate to argue, but if humans are deprived of dream/REM sleep for more than a few nights, their brains stop working.

You might not REMEMBER dreams, but you DO have them. . .

Hello Xertrov

I like your article, but want to make a critical argument (No experience just Logic):

One Key issue is, wether it is possible to perceive the physical during a Projection. You yourself, as well as Robert Bruce say it is possible. Now, if you fell your conscious outside your physical Body correctly perceiving things remote from your body, perceiving a whole world. There are now 2 options.

1) your brain (or conscious) is able to generate a complete realistic world and perceive things from the physical and integrate them into this world.

2) Scenario like Bruce describes it

Now, is 1) really more logical then 2) ? If 1) is true, it is logical to conclude that your whole world might be gerated by the Conscious and that there is no physical world at all (scenarion 3).

So what I'm basically trying to say is that not 1) is more logical then 2)



I'm actually tempted to say that there is no real difference between 1) and 2)! And that 3) is the most Logical.

Any comments welcome (@People who favour experience over Logic: I do as well! ;-))

Hello tombodenmann,

I said i wouldnt post in the threat anymore but since you're new to it and ask me some questions i will answer. I argue for your scenario 2) BUT give a different explanation. With 1) as you describe it (its all in your brain, so no outside info, just a mental generation of the world) one could never see things in the "obe" and then go and see in real life to check that they are valid observations, unless your scenario 3) would be valid aswell. I dont think  that everything is generated by our consciousness, so that there is a genuine world "out there" that we experience daily. But, there is no way to proof this point (Descartes set out to prove it once and he concluded that you can not prove it, the world might as well be an outside "movie" projected into our consciousness by a big hairy demon to annoy us). So indeed 1) and 3) arent more logical then 2). Also i do not think that there is a huge difference between 1 and 2 but that is just my presonal idea.

Hi Xetrov,
I read your original post and found it an interesting read.

QuoteDescartes set out to prove it once and he concluded that you can not prove it, the world might as well be an outside "movie" projected into our consciousness by a big hairy demon to annoy us.

I am always a little wary of language, Descartes 'last apple', which concerns doubting is merely a formulation of the human races grammatical habit. It can be seen as a form of linguistic camouflage that hides the 'truth' or the underlying essence of 'things' from us.

Language is a self-contained system, which can tell us nothing about the world outside of itself, we can only have thoughts that are 'trapped' inside of it.

Personal experience is the way to tear down these linguistic barriers, as William Blake wrote in 'The marriage of Heaven and Hell':

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narrow chinks of his cavern."

Cheers

S

Hello Xetrov, I'm glad your still around. I read your artikel carefully and want to make some remarks. I did not read the other replies so, I might repete things already said.

You say:


-It is possible to perceive info from the "real" world during OBE. cause a part of you conscious splits and travels ("shifts") there, (while one part remains in the body)

Now, I must say this is bascally what Robert Bruce says! I mean, you say a part of the conscious can leave the body to gather information! at least thats the way I understand you. If thats not what you mean you have to explain very clearly, how you believe remote sensing works cause thats crucial here.

Now you go on to say, that the brain creates the OBE-world and integartes the infos gathered.

What facts do you have, to backup that claim? Is there any real prove that dreams are created by the brain? Your argument seems to be that the brain is active. I would argue the other way: In NDE's conscious is still there without brain, so one can conclude that conscious is NOT a Product of the brain. This would mean that dreams, LD and OBE can NOT be a thing created solely by the brain.

On the other hand Nobody cliams that the brain does not play some part. The brain might be the converter that transfer the experiences to our body.

One can also ask of what significance that is for the person experiencing the OBE.  We experience a realsitic world and we know that some things in it are real, This fact remains whether one believs in Bruce scenario by Robert Bruce or in the one you created.

On the other Hand you say:

- There is a human spirit independant from the physical body (NED) able to perceive the enviroment like a point of conscious when seperated.

Folllowing this line of reasoning I actually find it more logical to assume that OBE and NDE are in fact the same thing, with minor differences explained very logical by Robert Bruce.
Like you said with the pink elephant, one should assume the most logical explonation.
If there is a spirit and if we can feel our conscious leaving our body and even gather correct info from the outside world while Obeing, then the obvious conclusion (at least for me) is that we (as spirits) leave our body during OBE.

Hey tombodenmann,

I read your questions and will try to answer them carefully. I have meanwhile been doing more research into Bruce's ideas and similar others, to get a better picture of the definitions used and the ways of thinking behind the ideas. I think this will also help me explain my viewpoints better.

Quote from: you
... you say a part of the conscious can leave the body to gather information! at least thats the way I understand you. If thats not what you mean you have to explain very clearly, how you believe remote sensing works cause thats crucial here.

The difference is that I do not claim that the world you perceive once you are out of body (through trance/sleep), is the physical or the astral, as Bruce says. I say it is 'only' a mental projection which is created by you (whether in your head or not) , like a dream, it is purely mental space we explore here. This said, how do i define remote sensing (what i called AP earlier, this might have caused some confusion). You have to realize that in this explanation i have to use definitions and terms that i am familiar with, and others might perhaps not fully understand. Remote sensing goes like this, we connect through our subconscious with the unity that lies behind everything in the universe (the source of all), and this allows for a conscious direct connection (by feeling, especially emotion) to any place we can be currently aware of. So, we do not realy split our consciousness in 2 parts and send 1 part 'away', we merely expand it and use one part to make the connection. When we are in a mental projection, this information we have received about the remote location is transferred through our subconscious into our mental projection. The mental projection for a large part is also created by the subconscious, so in this way the information gets 'mixed with the dream reality of the OBE'. I hope this clarifies my way of seeing remote sensing.

Quote from: you also
...I would argue the other way: In NDE's conscious is still there without brain, so one can conclude that conscious is NOT a Product of the brain. This would mean that dreams, LD and OBE can NOT be a thing created solely by the brain.

This is actually what i was trying to say (if you got confused, my apologies). Consciousness is a 'creation' (or perhaps better, being maintained), by our brain + spirit, linked through the bio energetic link. When someone dies, or engages in an NDE, the link is (temporarily) severed and his/her spirit goes free, thus being able to perceive through the astral body's senses.

Quote from: lastly you
If there is a spirit and if we can feel our conscious leaving our body and even gather correct info from the outside world while Obeing, then the obvious conclusion (at least for me) is that we (as spirits) leave our body during OBE.

I agree that there is a very vivid sensation of our consciousness leaving our body, yet this does in my opinion (i explained why and how in the start of my article) not justify the statement that it is a fact. I have given all my arguments and explanations already now, so i hope you see why i claim this. But it comes down to 2 points: smooth transition from wake  into mental projection which creates very vivid OBE feeling, and remote sensing explanation through subconscious connection. So to me (and others) there definitely exists a plausible alternative viewpoint!

Have a nice day,
Xetrov.

Hi  Xetrov

Yes I think your Viewpoint is a plausible alternative. I guess in the end everybody has to do his exploration.

Keep in mind that the differences between RB and you are, I believe, Subtle. When you rewrite (If you do) your article I suggest to make very clear definitions. As I understand RB, the Astral is a Fluid Medium which reacts on thoughts which is close to a mental space like you describe it. The difference being that if there is a real Astraldimension, there must be some inprints that are stronger (the ones, a lot of people contributed to) and some that are faint (personel ones). So it should be possible to create places together (See Astral pulse island Board). In your viewpiont this things should not be possible. Also,  there is said that one can visit real Spirits in the Astraldimension, an other possible exploration subject.
Lastly I wanna say that I had one unique OBE-experience were I perceived colors not existing on earth, I know I could not remember them cause my human brain didn't know them and that's what happened when I awoke. I just remembered the feel of the colors. Strange
Well Anyways, if you wanna verify your theorie you have to draw clear conclusions that are in contradiction to an Astraldimension and roadtest them. Then post your experiences and people will listen, as long as you don't do that, It remains a "menal game" in the physical.

Thanks for the interessting discussion! Cheers Tom

Hi Tombodenmann,

I shall just shortly reply here, but in reality there's actually a very elaborate theory behind al these things you mention (could probably write a book on it... hehe). RB's Astral is exactly the same as my mental space. In my viewpoint a project like the astral pulse island could very well be realizable, remember i explained that remote sensing (what i called AP before) makes use of subconscious connections to places, but this can also be to other people/spirits. In that sense it would resemble shared dreaming, where mental space is (partly) shared through a subconscious link. Your experience with colors and linked emotions is very interesting, it shows that we are able to make (more) use of emotional sensing etc while we are not awake. I would for example categorize heightened musical abilities, which i often experience in LD's, in the same group of experiences.

By the way i just thought of something, RB seems to imply that you have to develop your astral senses, in a sense that if you don't, you will be astrally blind, deaf etc. So how does that relate to people, born blind, experiencing an NDE-OBE and being able to see (yes there are examples of this phenomenon)? Just a thought...

Xetrov.

Interesting thread. Makes me really hungry for some definitions. As far as I remember I've always tried to emphasize their role on these forums. Yes, I have done some weird experiments here but every time I saw some holy efforts to reach a consensus I was there.

However this conversation seems to reach its natural climax and I'm afraid there is no hope for fulfilling its true purpose. So far I see neither practical nor theoretical achievements and my hope for getting some solid definitions has been gradually diminished by time. (BTW, what the hell is that "BE-link"??)

I like definitions but not verbiage. Most of us know for sure that beliefs create our reality and this simple fact is either true in respect to the person and our society. However our individual thoughts are fairly powerless and they don't seem to be capable for more than mirroring our personal beliefs. Repetition of the current human knowledge is the only way I know through we can consciously and collectively mold the world around us. And this knowledge is based on solid definitions.

Now I'll show you one of my nightmare about consensus reality.

When a group of people reach consensus about something preferably within a field that previously was only a playground of hazy ideas then surely some brand new ways of further exploration will open up - seemingly by mere coincidence. For instance, there is an enormous number of instruments from detectors to CRT displays that seem to build on one simply principle, that is, using two perpendicular EM-fields in order to accelerate and deflect ions in vacuum. This principle may be laughably silly yet the number of instruments that have been constructed on it are astonishingly great. If it is not magic then at least suspicious. Is it really about one of the fundamental principle of nature or a collectively accepted belief of humankind?

I vote for the latter and my screenplay goes like this: when mankind as a whole has decided to substitute the old crystal balls with monitors a group of independent scientists somehow came up with this idea. It was not far for them because they have dealt with ions which they never seen. It was easy to convince each other by doing some math tricks within a system that define itself to build the first prototypes. Thought they were lame at first, at least they were worked and our new beliefs about the nature around us was further established. At the end of the day they assured some politicians to built more universities in order to teach us how to explain all this to our mothers.

At present times the more fluid playgrounds of humankind are simply out of our scope. They have sank into the mist of some coexisting past and future, or placed outside of the range of our instrumentally extended senses into the unknown of astral territories. Now we are at the verge of a new science, astral exploration and such things. But don't forget that astral projection as possibly the most direct shortcuts for our individual evolution is one of the oldest spiritual practice of humankind. However, this time will be the first in the known history of humankind when we are going to do it together without hue and cry.

We simply need a firm consensus on the basics to define our farest reaches we dare to believe in. Then we will gain enough coherence to rip those brand new ways around into the formless chaos - "unconsciously" and without "efforts." So just go on and do those definitions as generating a new belief system could be our most important job here at the Astral Pulse Forums.

Quote from: XetrovHi Tombodenmann,

I shall just shortly reply here, but in reality there's actually a very elaborate theory behind al these things you mention (could probably write a book on it... hehe). RB's Astral is exactly the same as my mental space. In my viewpoint a project like the astral pulse island could very well be realizable, remember i explained that remote sensing (what i called AP before) makes use of subconscious connections to places, but this can also be to other people/spirits. In that sense it would resemble shared dreaming, where mental space is (partly) shared through a subconscious link. Your experience with colors and linked emotions is very interesting, it shows that we are able to make (more) use of emotional sensing etc while we are not awake. I would for example categorize heightened musical abilities, which i often experience in LD's, in the same group of experiences.

By the way i just thought of something, RB seems to imply that you have to develop your astral senses, in a sense that if you don't, you will be astrally blind, deaf etc. So how does that relate to people, born blind, experiencing an NDE-OBE and being able to see (yes there are examples of this phenomenon)? Just a thought...

Xetrov.

Well I certainly find it fascinating that blind people can see within OBE's, could you give me any hint were I could read reports or more info on that matter?
As far as the astral senses are concerned I do not know about RB's viewpoint, but probably you missunderstood him. I suggest I go to the Question-Answer board and ask him directly.
Basically I must say I do not see any major differences between I and RB.
Ahhh.. One Question: How do you explain the following?

People having a OBE usually experience vibrations before the separtion, but People that induce LD from the waking state "WILD" Don't have this vibrations!

Hello upstream.

Quote from: upstream
However this conversation seems to reach its natural climax and I'm afraid there is no hope for fulfilling its true purpose. So far I see neither practical nor theoretical achievements and my hope for getting some solid definitions has been gradually diminished by time. (BTW, what the hell is that "BE-link"??)

I do see a personal achievement in this conversation, i found (and find) it relay interesting and educative. For one i have been pointed out that my definitions were totally different from the ones used here so i will have to consider that in future discussions. I do agree on your point that solid definitions are basic requirements for achieving knowledge (else we cannot share our ideas). Who knows where this exploration which is currently under way will lead? Perhaps as you say, to a new belief system (part of which is already under heavy construction)...
By the way, this BE-link we talked about is what was called here Bio-Energetic link, or the connection between physical body (most likely brain) and spirit.

Quote from: tombodenmann
...could you give me any hint were I could read reports or more info on that matter?

For one, research by Ring and Cooper have shown this to be true in many cases. They invested the phenomenon and wrote a book on it (Mindsight: Near-Death and Out-Of-Body Experiences in the Blind). Also, if you are interested read this page which is dedicated to their research: http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence03.html

I do not think i misunderstood RB's ideas on astral senses, but to be sure i will read up more on the topic and see what i can come up with.

Quote from: tombodenmann
People having a OBE usually experience vibrations before the separation, but People that induce LD from the waking state "WILD" Don't have this vibrations!

I don't really see why you raised this point, perhaps to show that LD and OBE are 2 different things? Anyway your claim is just not true. It depends on the method which is used to induce a LD or 'OBE' (which is almost the same phenomenon anyway, according to me and to RB who says they are very closely related, i just explain them differently). I'm also active on a forum on lucid dreaming, and according to the experiences of many people there, one of the experiences that is considered closely linked to WILD and to induction of OBE are these vibrations. These vibrations happen a lot when you go into a trance state and keep yourself conscious.

Hello Xetrov

I liked your article.

I was interested in your link (http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence03.html) about blind-from-birth people experiencing sight during NDE/OBE.

It's interesting to note that Robert Bruce actually disagrees with the idea that someone who is congenitally blind will be able to see during OBE.  His theory is that perception during OBE is dependent on the "learned sensory reception capabilities of the physical brain" (sic).

Here is the quote from p101 of Astral Dynamics:

Quote from: Robert BruceHowever, if the physical eyes had nothing to do with OBE perception, then people who have been blind since birth (never experiencing sight) should also be able to see clearly during dreams and projections - which unfortunately is also not the case.  Therefore OBE sensory perception must also be dependent on the learned sensory reception capabilities of the physical brain, not the current functioning or nonfunctioning abilities of the sense organs.  These principles also apply to profound deafness.

He expands on this and says that blind projectors are able to perceive their environment very clearly, but the sense used is not vision.  It is more akin to putting out "feelers" and feeling the whole environment as if running fingers over it.  Thus, a blind projector would be unable to discern the image depicted in a painting, but the texture of its surface would be clear.

This part of Bruce's book has always caused me problems.  He says that OBE perception depends on the "learned sensory reception capabilities of the physical brain".  So a blind person perceives his OBE environment in terms of the sense of touch, because he has learnt this method of sensing whilst using his physical body.  A sighted person perceives his OBE environment using the sense of sight, which he has similarly learnt using his physical body.  The logical conclusion must be that astral beings are "senseless" until they have incarnated at least once in a physical body, and thereby acquired a sensory framework.

This simply doesn't seem to "fit" with the idea of an objective "real" astral world.  Why would we be astrally blind until we learn to see using physical eyes?  Surely astral beings would be able to perceive using a suitable set of "astral senses", regardless of whether or not they have incarnated in a physical body?

So that's why the link you gave is very interesting.  It appears to contradict Robert Bruce.  It is also supportive of the objective OBE hypothesis, whereas Bruce appears to weaken the hypothesis.

catmeow

Quote from: upstreamInteresting thread. Makes me really hungry for some definitions. ...

Using mathematical terminology (like "plane" and "dimension") to describe psychic phenomena is inherently confusing. Many people who subscribe to the externality of the astral also tend to believe that our consciousness is actually part of a "God" consciousness which has divided itself in order to experience life.

Then why not use the word "division?" Saying, "I went to the astral division," makes sense to either interpreter. The spiritualist recognizes a division of the God consciousness, and the materialist recognizes a division of the self-consciousness.

"Division" may sound boring, but it's a soberingly apt word for the nature of the experience. Does anyone agree?

Hello catmeow,

I can tell you exactly how I and several others think about the fact that Bruce has claimed no visual sight for people in 'OBE' while NDE experiences show otherwise. This is because RB's OBE's from sleep/trance are experiences, like (lucid)dreams, that  take place only within our so called mental (construction of the) body. This experience thus takes place within the confines of our physical body, by which i mean that our astra-mental body (as Clark describes it) or spirit (as I would call it) does not separate from the physical body. So the Bio Energetic link between spirit and physical body is not severed, and as such we do not really find ourselves in the astral but in our mental constructions, or dreams. This is different from an NDE-OBE where our astra-mental body (or spirit) is temporally released from the physical body (which is logical since if you believe we do have a spirit, it leaves the body at death).

Whetter we are awake or asleep, we always experience consciousness from within our mental construction of the world (including a mental body). Part of this mental body is the 'blueprint' of our physical body, and with this i mean all the mental information we have about our physical body. How it feels, where it extends physically, what sight is, etc. Obviously, people blind from birth lack the mental construction of sight. As said, this mental blueprint of our body is taken with us when we go to sleep and dream. This can be proved easily, since in most of all our dreams we also seem to have a normal body, normal sight, etc etc. This is exactly what happens in RB's OBE's. Blind people have a mental construction of their bodies that does not include visual sight, so during (lucid)dreams and OBE's as described by Bruce (which are the same), they have no visual sight. However, when people really go into the astral, by separating their astra-mental body, or spirit, during an NDE-OBE, the mental construction of our bodies is (partly) negated by the real astral senses! At least, the mental constructs of physical sensory disabilities like being blind are negated, since those perceptions are taken over by our astral senses. As Ring and Cooper have shown, for blind people this is a pretty much confusing experience since they have never had visual sight before.

To me and really quite some others, this is a logical explanation of the discrepancy in Bruce's theories. This does not mean that OBE's from trance and dreams are less valuable in any way, just that they do not really take place in the astral, which really is a place that is not prone to the influence of the mind. Influence of the mind on shaping objects is something mental, which happens within our mental picture of the world (especially and mostly exclusively in our dreams). Bruce idea is very likely caused by the very real feeling that during an OBE from trance/sleep, one is really 'out of their physical body', like what happens in an NDE-OBE. I cant blame him though since it feels so extremely real. I also want to stress that perceiving different astral dimensions etc is still a possibility from within such an trance/sleep 'OBE', by means of what Bardon called 'mental wandering' and what i described as remote sensing. So what i tell you doesnt need to underminde any of the astral experiences people might have had (especially those of the more advanced 'OBE' people, who can discern between mental images and astral information). The difference is just in the fact that one goes not realy into the astral by means of their astra-mental body or spirit. I can also imagine that if someone comes around and tells that things are different (like me), he will probably not be believed at all and frowned upon as having no experience of himself. As some people have said (and with which i agree), hands-on experience is everything, so i must admit i have not yet experienced an NDE-OBE (if you read Bardon you see this is very hard, unless you get into an accident or so). However, some people I'm close with have, and their experiences coincide with what i wrote here. Perhaps i might talk some of them into adding their experiences to this forum. I wonder however, if there are any people on this forum that have actually succeeded in inducing an NDE-OBE as described by Bardon, and what their ideas on the topic are.

Hi Xetrov

What you are saying, to me at least makes a lot of sense.  

I believe there is a genuine OBE experience (what you call an NDE-OBE and I call an OBE) and there is a dream-like experience (what you call a Fake-OBE and I call a LD).

In my opinion, during LD, the mind operates at a low-level, has poor memory, impaired critical faculty, is prone to drift back into an unquestioning dream-consciousness etc.  The LD world is an internal fantasy construct, and as you suggest, the senses we use reflect the normal physical senses we use during normal physical life, hence non-sighted people do not experience sight during LD.

On the other hand an OBE is an external non-fantasy experience, in which individuals participate in a shared non-physical world.  The level of consciousness is high, often HIGHER than normal physical consciousnes.  It is sometimes described as feeling "utterly real" etc.  There is continuity of memory, critical faculties operate, there is no tendency to slip back into a dream-consciousness etc.  Also occasionally,  the senses are enhanced, for example 360 degree vision, new colours never seen in the physical world, new sounds never before heard.  There may even be new senses, for instance the sense of simply "knowing" pieces of information.

This distinction, between LD and OBE is classical.  I have been studying the subject for 30 years and have read most books on the subject.  The above distinction (between LD and OBE) has been made by several authors, eg Celia Green, Robert Crookall etc.  Even Sylvan Muldoon, one of the early pioneers, accepted that a person could be dreaming (for instance dreaming about flying) and then suddenly "wake" out of the flying dream to find that he is actually floating above his physical body.  If the dream state and the OBE state were one and the same thing, there could be no such awakening.

In fact Muldoon recommends this as a technique for actually inducing OBE.  The idea is to induce a dream about say, going up in an elevator.  This then actually induces the astral body to follow the dream and move "up", "out", to a different "focus", to a different "level" (whatever you wish to call it).  If you then have the presence of mind to "wake up" you will find yourself projected.

In recent years the perceived wisdom has been to blur the distinction between LD and OBE.  When I joined this board back in April I was surprise to find that so many people did not see a distinction between OBE and LD, whereas traditionally, in the past the distinction was clear.

I think this is part wish-fullfilment.  It is very easy to have a LD but hard to have an OBE, and to the many millions of people who regularly have LD's it is a very attractive idea to believe that these are real and magical experiences, when in fact they are really just fantasy.

In actual fact I do believe there is an entire sliding scale between LD and OBE.   At one end of the scale we have a purely internal fantasy experience and at the other end we have a vivid, real, non-fantasy  experience.

I think the sliding-scale is perhaps a function of your "level of awarenes", ie the level of critical consciousness which is operating.  An LD can be almost indistinguishable from a true OBE, because the dreaming mind is in a very receptive state and is privvy to information gathered by ESP.  Hence we could have a convincing LD in which we seem to travel to someone's house, observe what is going on there, and find when we wake up that the details collected are largely accurate.  I have done this, but considered the experience to be a dream.  The reason is as follows:

Personally I have had many thousands of LD's (OBE's?).  But I am still waiting to have one in which I can "see" in 3 dimensions.  Let me explain.  I was born with a congenital lazy left eye, ie I had a squint.  It's been corrected surgically now, but I have never learned to combine the images from my left and right eyes into a single 3D image.  Hence my world is "flat".  I do not know what it is like to see in 3 dimensions.  I have a tendency to double-vision.

When I first became interested in OBE's I knew that I would recognise the experience because during OBE I would SEE IN 3 DIMENSIONS.  Why wouldn't I?  The astral senses are not hampered by the disabilities of the physical body.  I really looked forward to discovering what this feels like - to see in 3 dimensions!  To date I have never experienced 3D vision during LD.  ALSO, I have a tendency to double-vision in my LD's, just as in the physical.  So, do I have the same lazy eye disability in the astral as I do in the physical?  I think not.

So it is hard to reconcile my non 3D vision experience with the idea that I am operating in a non-impaired astral body with its own set of perfect visual senses.  Because this isn't my experience.

I have had many LD's which appeared to be pure fantasy.

At the same time I have had a number of LD's with psychic content, in which I gathered information I could not have known.  I have had shared LD's in which I met another person and afterwards when we compared notes we had EXACTLY the same dream.  These however are the exception rather than the rule.  I can easily explain this by assuming that ESP is operating, and my dream-consciousness maps this ESP-gained information into my internal dream world.

When I experience 3D vision during an LD I will accept that it is a real experience of myself functioning in an alternate reality.  Until then the jury is out....!

I would say, in passing however, that this was in fact Monroe's position, expressed towards the end of Journeys Out Of The Body.  He couldn't say for certain that the whole thing was just a series of vivid dreams...

catmeow

Hey catmeow.

It is interesting to hear your story. Your 3d-disability in LD's seems indeed to support our viewpoint! You spoke of genuine and false OBE's, I would however not prefer such vocabulary since every experience is 'genuine' in my opinion. Besides that, people do really experience being out of their body (it looks real) so i would suggest we could call it RB type-OBE or LD. Anyway i know what you mean, and these definitions are a bit beside the point. I will react now to some of the things you wrote in your post.

Quote from: catmeow
In my opinion, during LD, the mind operates at a low-level, has poor memory, impaired critical faculty, is prone to drift back into an unquestioning dream-consciousness etc.

This is generally true, however, most really experienced lucid dreamers do have the ability to restore a lot, if not all, of their daily faculties and awareness into their LD's. All this takes is (depending on your talent) a sufficiently long time of experimenting and exploring. I count myself among those people who have at least come quite some way into being fully aware in their LD's (not in every LD yet, but still). When you do come this far (and a lot of people on this forum probably know and experience this), the things you can do in a LD increase tremendously compared to the time where you became lucid, and just went with the flow of it. This includes remotely sensing/viewing astral phenomena.

Quote
In recent years the perceived wisdom has been to blur the distinction between LD and OBE.  When I joined this board back in April I was surprise to find that so many people did not see a distinction between OBE and LD, whereas traditionally, in the past the distinction was clear.

Indeed, this was exactly the reason why i decided to write and post my article here. I cannot count the amount of times i had to explain to beginning LDers that their dream about floating out of their body isn't really  the same as actually your spirit leaving your body perceiving the astral.

Quote
In actual fact I do believe there is an entire sliding scale between LD and OBE. At one end of the scale we have a purely internal fantasy experience and at the other end we have a vivid, real, non-fantasy experience.... An LD can be almost indistinguishable from a true OBE, because the dreaming mind is in a very receptive state and is privvy to information gathered by ESP.

Yeah i see / experience it the same. To me the scale is actually as follows: There are at least 5 (and probably 2 more) stages of sleep/awareness, correlating to brainwave length. 1 being Betha, 2 Alpha, 3 Theta, 4 Delta, and 5 beyond delta. LD's and RB-style OBE's all happen above level 4, during REM sleep (REM sleep consists of a mixture of Betha Alpha and Theta). This is why they are so visual, they are actually dreams. In deep sleep, which is level 4 or Delta waves (this is scientifically prooved), if people dream here at all, those dreams are of much less visual quality (some say, black and white). So during a typical RB type-OBE or LD, no one actually normally goes this deep. You can know you are in deep sleep (if you are lucid) because of 2 factors, 1) The dreams if you have any as i said are extremely less visual in nature, and 2) waking up instantly from deep sleep is nearly impossible. I have traveled a few times myself lucidly into Delta sleep and my experiences are exactly as i described here. Remote sensing of astral phenomena also seems to become increasingly more easy at lower levels of brainwaves (as people in deep trance can relate too!). However, if you still go deeper than delta stage, you get into level 5 of sleep which is where you can be able to induce a NDE-OBE. Note that if you want to achieve this, you have to be extremely proficient in LDing and in keeping your 100% awareness during all stages of sleep. The Bio-Energetic link connecting spirit and body is so low here it is possible to (temporally) sever it and go totally beyond the physical body. A friend of mine has done this experiment by which he also measured his brain activity. He went into an NDE-OBE and when he returned later awake, his brain activity was virtually 0 at that time. This in itself doesn't 100% prove anything but all facts taken together does point in a certain direction. It also does have a certain logic to it, since when the body dies the brainwaves go to 0, so the closer you get in life (sleep stage 5 or deeper) the closer you get to death and to a possible NDE.

Xetrov and catmeow

Your ideas seem pretty inconsistent to me. I'll try to show why:

First of all you seem to agree but actually support conflicting ideas:

catmeow writes:

This distinction, between LD and OBE is classical. I have been studying the subject for 30 years and have read most books on the subject. The above distinction (between LD and OBE) has been made by several authors, eg Celia Green, Robert Crookall etc. Even Sylvan Muldoon, one of the early pioneers, accepted that a person could be dreaming (for instance dreaming about flying) and then suddenly "wake" out of the flying dream to find that he is actually floating above his physical body. If the dream state and the OBE state were one and the same thing, there could be no such awakening.

Xetrov writes:

don't really see why you raised this point, perhaps to show that LD and OBE are 2 different things? Anyway your claim is just not true. It depends on the method which is used to induce a LD or 'OBE' (which is almost the same phenomenon anyway, according to me and to RB who says they are very closely related, i just explain them differently). I'm also active on a forum on lucid dreaming, and according to the experiences of many people there, one of the experiences that is considered closely linked to WILD and to induction of OBE are these vibrations. These vibrations happen a lot when you go into a trance state and keep yourself conscious.

I could go on, but the point is you two do NOT agree! But,  you think you do ,which makes it quite confusing to follow the discussion...

Anyways....

The following points seem problematic to me:

-Do you have any studies that show that people born blind can't see during OBE but can during NDE? Are there really no born blinds that can see during OBE? (what would that prove anyway?)

Xetrov: You write:

"Whetter we are awake or asleep, we always experience consciousness from within our mental construction of the world (including a mental body)."

and

"However, when people really go into the astral, by separating their astra-mental body, or spirit, during an NDE-OBE, the mental construction of our bodies is (partly) negated by the real astral senses"

You assume that there is a "real" (Astral)world and I mental construct (Which in it self already is a assumption which one can not verify) then you go on  state that our waking life is inside this mental construct but the NDE's takes place in the "real" Astral outside the mental construct.  There is absolutely no logical reason to assume this! what criterion would you use to decide whether an experience is taking place in the mental construct or not. That I would really like to know!!!

then you go on...

"There are at least 5 (and probably 2 more) stages of sleep/awareness, correlating to brainwave length. 1 being Betha, 2 Alpha, 3 Theta, 4 Delta, and 5 beyond delta. LD's and RB-style OBE's all happen above level 4, during REM sleep (REM sleep consists of a mixture of Betha Alpha and Theta)"

and

"However, if you still go deeper than delta stage, you get into level 5 of sleep which is where you can be able to induce a NDE-OBE. "

Ermmmm

To assume what other people are capable of doing is not a smart thing to do, to say the least.
You actually believe that people could have a real OBE during sleep, but simply assume that most of them just fantasize a real OBE cause there brain still works but you have the know how to "really" do it.
You fail to support this thesis with any real facts.

your only arguments seems to be:

In NED's the environment is not prone to thoughts but in common OBE's it is. Well, this is just not true.
It is a well known facts that NED's seem to comply the expectations of the Person having the NED's (Christs have different NED's then Buddhists) No Evidence supports a solid, stable, objective World after dead, also people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.

and...Most OBE's are close to Dreams...

Well what are dreams anyway? Just Fantasy? It is well know that you can experience things in LD's that you never dreamed of being able to do. things beyond our imagination "split yourself into multiple persons" "be a flower" "experience unconditional love" "Know everything"  "experience unknown colors" etc..
Isn't it a bit easy to just say, thats all just a mental construct A simulation of reality by the brain?

Since when is a simulation more extensive then the thing simulated?

Cheers Tom

Xetrov and catmeow

Your ideas seem pretty inconsistent to me. I'll try to show why:

First of all you seem to agree but actually support conflicting ideas:

catmeow writes:

This distinction, between LD and OBE is classical. I have been studying the subject for 30 years and have read most books on the subject. The above distinction (between LD and OBE) has been made by several authors, eg Celia Green, Robert Crookall etc. Even Sylvan Muldoon, one of the early pioneers, accepted that a person could be dreaming (for instance dreaming about flying) and then suddenly "wake" out of the flying dream to find that he is actually floating above his physical body. If the dream state and the OBE state were one and the same thing, there could be no such awakening.

Xetrov writes:

don't really see why you raised this point, perhaps to show that LD and OBE are 2 different things? Anyway your claim is just not true. It depends on the method which is used to induce a LD or 'OBE' (which is almost the same phenomenon anyway, according to me and to RB who says they are very closely related, i just explain them differently). I'm also active on a forum on lucid dreaming, and according to the experiences of many people there, one of the experiences that is considered closely linked to WILD and to induction of OBE are these vibrations. These vibrations happen a lot when you go into a trance state and keep yourself conscious.

I could go on, but the point is you two do NOT agree! But,  you think you do ,which makes it quite confusing to follow the discussion...

Anyways....

The following points seem problematic to me:

-Do you have any studies that show that people born blind can't see during OBE but can during NDE? Are there really no born blinds that can see during OBE? (what would that prove anyway?)

Xetrov: You write:

"Whetter we are awake or asleep, we always experience consciousness from within our mental construction of the world (including a mental body)."

and

"However, when people really go into the astral, by separating their astra-mental body, or spirit, during an NDE-OBE, the mental construction of our bodies is (partly) negated by the real astral senses"

You assume that there is a "real" (Astral)world and I mental construct (Which in it self already is a assumption which one can not verify) then you go on  state that our waking life is inside this mental construct but the NDE's takes place in the "real" Astral outside the mental construct.  There is absolutely no logical reason to assume this! what criterion would you use to decide whether an experience is taking place in the mental construct or not. That I would really like to know!!!

then you go on...

"There are at least 5 (and probably 2 more) stages of sleep/awareness, correlating to brainwave length. 1 being Betha, 2 Alpha, 3 Theta, 4 Delta, and 5 beyond delta. LD's and RB-style OBE's all happen above level 4, during REM sleep (REM sleep consists of a mixture of Betha Alpha and Theta)"

and

"However, if you still go deeper than delta stage, you get into level 5 of sleep which is where you can be able to induce a NDE-OBE. "

Ermmmm

To assume what other people are capable of doing is not a smart thing to do, to say the least.
You actually believe that people could have a real OBE during sleep, but simply assume that most of them just fantasize a real OBE cause there brain still works but you have the know how to "really" do it.
You fail to support this thesis with any real facts.

your only arguments seems to be:

1) In NED's the environment is not prone to thoughts but in common OBE's it is. Well, this is just not true.
It is a well known facts that NED's seem to comply the expectations of the Person having the NED's (Christs have different NED's then Buddhists) No Evidence supports a solid, stable, objective World after dead, also people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts as well.

and...2)Most OBE's are close to Dreams...

Well what are dreams anyway? Just Fantasy? It is well know that you can experience things in LD's that you never dreamed of being able to do. things beyond our imagination "split yourself into multiple persons" "be a flower" "experience unconditional love" "Know everything"  "experience unknown colors" etc..
Isn't it a bit easy to just say, thats all just a mental construct A simulation of reality by the brain?

Since when is a simulation more extensive then the thing simulated?

Cheers Tom

hello Tombodenmann,

Quote from: tombodenmann
Your ideas seem pretty inconsistent to me.

Sorry if that looked so, this is because when i replied to you (the piece you quoted) i meant RB-type of OBE, which is the same as LD to me (and mr catmeow). Catmeow however, in the quote you gave of him, speaks of the 'real' OBE (which i prefer to call NDE-OBE). So you see, we actually agree but because of the different terms and definitions we are using it becomes all a bit confusing. However i knew exactly what Catmeow meant in his last post and i can tell you it is the same as i see it.

Quote from: tombodenmann
I could go on.....

Please do. I don't think you can find them. I do however again apologize for the inconvenience the use of different terms has seemingly caused you (and probably others).

Quote from: tombodenmann
-Do you have any studies that show that people born blind can't see during OBE but can during NDE? Are there really no born blinds that can see during OBE? (what would that prove anyway?)

First of all I showed you a study that shows most blind people (in that study, 15 out of 23 people were able to)  CAN see in NDE-OBE. This fact alone is NOT explainable by Bruce, since he claims it would not be possible. There certainly are blind people that cannot see during a NDE-OBE, but that was beside the point of the argument. However, i agree it would be interesting to check out more studies in this area and see what they can tell us.

For a view on Bruce idea's on astral vision: http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14813.

Bruce writes here:

Quote
Note that OBE visual abilities like clairvoyance and etc will not work for all projectors. The abilities of the physical body/mind seem to control whether or not higher levels of OBE vision are possible. This relates to how a blind since birth projector will not gain optical sight during dreams and OBE's, etc. But if a person has sight ability and then becomes blind, then they will dream and OBE with full sight, because that person's mind has learned sight ability.

By and large, examples of people born blind might show us that during an RB type – OBE, they cannot see. This is probably why Bruce writes the above in the first place. I am not aware of people born blind that perhaps have visual abilities in their dreams and RB-type OBE's. If such people do not exist, Bruce and me are both right since I say that these RB-type OBE's are dreams, and in dreams our mental blueprint considdering the senses isn't negated  by our astral senses (i will come back to this in a moment). Bruce in his idea is also right because for him it proves his point (people born blind cannot see). But what if people born blind could see in RB-type OBE? This would disprove Bruce's theory in the first place. For me it would be new information too, and i should think carefully to incorporate this in my view on these things. (On)fortunately there are no researches that i  know of  that show us any people born blind can see in their dreams or RB-type OBE's.

Quote from: tombodenmann
You assume that there is a "real" (Astral)world and I mental construct (Which in it self already is a assumption which one can not verify) then you go on  state that our waking life is inside this mental construct but the NDE's takes place in the "real" Astral outside the mental construct.  There is absolutely no logical reason to assume this! what criterion would you use to decide whether an experience is taking place in the mental construct or not. That I would really like to know!!!

Ok, i shall elaborate a bit more on what i meant here, since my ideas didn't get through to you as i meant them. First of all what proof is there we perceive the world through a mental construct? Well, i would say, we  have a mind! Do you think that we perceive the world as it really is? (Or, if you are versed in philosophy, that we can see the "ding an sich", that which is the objective truth?). Of course not, awareness by definition is being subjective, and being subjective is seeing things "your way", as it were, which is a mental construction. But enough about this. I did not say that an NDE takes place outside the mental construction. Not at all. I said the following

Quote from: Xetrov
...the mental constructs of physical sensory disabilities like being blind are negated, since those perceptions are taken over by our astral senses

So a partial negation of the mental construct means, that this part is being replaced by a new piece of mental construct, namely the ability to see (astrally). Upon entering NDE-OBE, a person born blind can all of a sudden see and this new vision ability is then incorporated into his or her mental construction, thereby negating the previous construction of being totally blind. That's what i mean. Of course not that the whole mental construction falls away (although i would not know to which degree this mental construction stays put after death, since obviously I'm not death). To make an easy comparison, if you thought that the Chinese people's skin color was pink, but you see a Chinese guy and his skin is not pink but yellowish, your old mental construction of the Chinese will have been negated. That is what i meant, not that the mental construct is gone.

Quote from: tombodenmann
To assume what other people are capable of doing is not a smart thing to do, to say the least.
You actually believe that people could have a real OBE during sleep, but simply assume that most of them just fantasize a real OBE cause there brain still works but you have the know how to "really" do it.
You fail to support this thesis with any real facts.

your only arguments seems to be:

In NED's the environment is not prone to thoughts but in common OBE's it is. Well, this is just not true.
It is a well known facts that NED's seem to comply the expectations of the Person having the NED's (Christs have different NED's then Buddhists) No Evidence supports a solid, stable, objective World after dead, also people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.

I do not assume anything about anyone, at least no less then any of you people do. There are so many examples of RB-style OBE's other people have had, but which you have never experienced yourself (perhaps this includes your following comment: "people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.") Still you assume they are truthful. That's the same I do, I just happen to know people with other experiences (NDE) then you do. But i can tell you something from within my own experience too, which i will come back to in a second.  Also do I not say  that people fantasize everything, it comes all down to an experience that looks so real that by most people it is taken for granted to be what it looks like.Your reaction also shows that you might think that i think these RB style-OBE's to be of less value or in some other way demeaning, but that is not the case. I am just arguing that it is not what it looks.

Do you think it is coincidence that when people's visual center in the brain is active, during RB-type OBE, they can influence the astral by thought? Like, just as in dreams, which are the same or very close, not  only to me but also to RB? Do you say that, it is coincidence that when you go to deep sleep and beyond where this visual center is not active (if you want proof ill search it for you), this is no longer possible? Go and try this experiment: In your next LD or RB style-OBE, go and meditate. Try to sink deeper into yourself, into deep sleep. Try to wake yourself up quickly, if that doesn't work, and there are also NO visuals whatsoever, then you know you are in deep sleep stage. Now when you are here, induce your kind of RB type-OBE, and tell me what happens. I have tried this as well (as have several people I closely know, some even while monitoring brain waves so they were 100% sure in deep sleep) and i can tell you, no OBE whatsoever can take place here. Would it be coincidence that the visual brain center is not active here? To me, not, yet I agree it doesn't prove anything beyond doubt, it just shows in which way we should seek the answers.

Besides this, I also strongly believe indeed that inducing a 'real' NDE-OBE from beyond deep sleep is possible, although i have not yet experienced this yet (i am working on it though). But the fact that REM sleep is so completely different from deep sleep and certainly from stages even deeper shows that there must be differences between RB type OBE's and NDE-OBE's. Also take note that reaching this level to get into NDE is very hard and might take years to learn. I can further underscore this by taking Clark into my argument (some nice articles i lately read, his comments on Bardon's work). His ideas are very similar to mine and his astral wandering is what i call NDE-OBE. If you read carefully you will see that free astral wandering can only be reached after many years of intensive training. Yet the RB type OBE can be done by almost anyone, in any case many people do not even need to practice it at all. This is logical since to go lucid beyond deep sleep (or like Bardon, in very deep trance), takes ages of practicing, unlike RB type OBE's.

Lastly your point about expectation and NDE experiences which you claim can not point us in a direction of an astral dimension that would be solid. 1st of all there are a lot of striking similarities between NDE's all over the world, not depending on what religion anyone has. These experiences are all different from an average RB type of OBE. This in itself shows us only that we might be on to something which is actually not the same at all! So well  now on to the astral, when people die. I cannot really tell you what all the stuff is what is going on there, but people frequently report at NDE that they are welcomed by all kinds of astral beings, be it their lost families or friends, etc. Who says that any of the astral beings can't take the shape of Jesus? This might sound hilarious, but before you laugh at this, let me make my argument here. I meant to say, the astral is not prone to the CURRENT thoughts of the person experiencing NDE. As far as i know people in NDE have never been able to THINK jesus away, or to change his appearance, etc. So although the astral might in some sense confirm to the mental image someone has of it, it is not prone to change by thought whenever this person experiences NDE, which is what the argument was about. Namely, to show that during an RB type OBE you can shape  the world mostly as you wish (depending on skills though), and during an NDE you cant.

Quote from: tombodenmann
It is well know that you can experience things in LD's that you never dreamed of being able to do. things beyond our imagination "split yourself into multiple persons" "be a flower" "experience unconditional love" "Know everything"  "experience unknown colors" etc..
Isn't it a bit easy to just say, thats all just a mental construct A simulation of reality by the brain?

Its indeed easy to say but that doesn't mean its not true. I'm not sure why you would give these examples anyway? To show that a mental construct doesn't exist? I can give you some idea however in what direction you should seek the answer. During sleep and dreams you are in a closer connection to your subconscious self, which allows you to give significance to dreams in the first place. Creativity is extremely increased for example, many people including myself have reported being able to make the most wonderful music in their (lucid)dreams. Would it be so hard to imagine that your dreams can take form according to a mental model you have of how it should approximately feel to be a flower, or to be multiple persons? Also i have never said that in a dream you cannot experience things alien to your mental model. First of all your subconscious can bring on such experiences, second of all contact or a connection with others (astral beings perhaps) can bring you sensations like  unconditional love.

Well sofar my thoughts on your critique on my thoughts, have a nice day anyone who dared to read this far, and to the rest of you also ... :)

Hello tombodenmann

First of all, in your critique, could you please address myself and Xetrov separately.  In this way I can answer questions directed to me and Xetrov can answer questions directed to him.  The following observation:

Quote from: tombodenmannFirst of all you seem to agree but actually support conflicting ideas:

is utterly meaningless.  Xetrov has his opinions and I present mine independently.  To attempt to negate our opinions by combining them and then saying that we disagree with each other is meaningless.

I have not researched NDE-OBE's so I am not in a position to align or mis-align myself with Xetrov on this particular aspect of his discussion, and it does constitute a major part of his analysis.

At the same time, I would say that I have a lot of respect for Xetrov's opinions and I think he has a very valid viewpoint.  He is entitled to express his ideas without, as I see it ungracious, and frankly, rude (I don't direct this at you tombodenmann) critique.  I think his ideas are interesting and certainly worthy of attention.

Personally, I think I have presented a consistent and valid analysis, ie that of a "sliding scale" from LD to OBE.  To me it is self-evident that when I am LD'ing I am dreaming and this is a subjective reality, shared only by myself .   On the other hand OBE is an objective (ie concensus) reality, shared by other consciousnesses.  

I do not say that OBE doesn't happen.  It does.  I just happen to believe that LD is NOT a collective reality.  In my opinion LD is a personal experience.  This is not to say it isn't a marvellous experience.  It is, I know I've had thousands.  They can be extraordinarily detailed and quite frankly, beautiful.  I had several this morning (as usual).  These were brought on by going through an "exit procedure" involving vibrations, floating (apparently out of my body) etc.  But I am pretty sure these were just personal dreams.  So to me - LD seems very similar to OBE but is really just a personal reality.

I can't see why this should be such an emotive concept to some members of this board.  As I said, this is the traditional viewpoint, and has only recently been superceded by the notion that LD and OBE are one and the same thing.

Now, changing tack slightly. tombodenmann, I will comment on one remark which I think you directed at Xetrov:

Quote from: tombodenmannXetrov: You write:

"Whetter we are awake or asleep, we always experience consciousness from within our mental construction of the world (including a mental body)."

I can't speak for Xetrov, but my own opinion is that our entire world is clearly a "mental construct".  This probably applies to all lower states of being - eg physical waking consiousnes (PWC), LD and OBE.  Our subconscious minds actually construct a representation of the world, and our conscious minds then experience this construct.  This construct is based on the information we gather from our senses.  During PWC we use the physical senses.  During OBE we use astral senses.  During LD there is not much sensory input and the experience is largely fantasy (IMHO).  But basically the world we experience is a mental construct.

The situation may be different in higher states of existence.  I couldn't possibly know.  But this is my interpretation of what Xetrov meant.

Changing subject slightly again, the following is an interesting article on EEG and OBE, using subjects such as Monroe and Ingo Swann:

Good article -> http://www.psywww.com/asc/obe/faq/obe17.html

And this is a quote from the article:

Quote from: psywww.comDuring the penultimate session Monroe managed to have an OBE. Tart concluded that Monroe's OBEs occurred in the dreaming state; but this idea presented him with a problem. Monroe claims that for him, dreaming and OBEs are entirely different. Tart finally concluded that perhaps the OBEs were a mixture of dreams and 'something else.' This 'something else' might, he thought, be ESP.

Xetrov, your reply was intelligent and interesting as always.  You said:

Quote from: XetrovHowever, if you still go deeper than delta stage, you get into level 5 of sleep which is where you can be able to induce a NDE-OBE.

Do you have any research you can recommend on this deeper stage?

Finally, a question to anyone who has actually read this far!  Several months ago I started a thread about 360 degree vision, and nobody was able to confirm that they had experienced 360 degree vision during LD/OBE.  360 degree (or "spherical") vision is reported occasionally by spontaneous OBE'ers, ie people who suddenly find themselves "out-of-body".  RB describes this on page 460 of (the excellent) Astral Dynamics.  This is a visual affect which you might experience whilst OBE'ing.  Please refer to RB's book for a discussion of this.

Has anyone on this board ever experienced spherical vision (ie seeing in ALL directions at the same time) whilst LD/OBE'ing?

catmeow

Having not read the thread in full yet... I'm curious if you have heard of the work carried out by Rick Strassman MD concerning diemethyltryptamine (DMT) release during traumatic experiences - focusing on the NDE experience? DMT is a natural neurotransmitter (which has a much greater affinity than serotonin to certain receptor sites if I remember correctly) and is one of the most potent psychedelics known to science (also being Schedule I in the US!)
In his experiments Strassman administered varying doses of DMT to subjects whose consequent experiences bared striking resemblance to OBEs. Lower doses also produced 'body-loads' which from description, sounded exactly like the classic 'vibrations.'
Perhaps a factor which can differentiate NDEs from normal OBEs is this (potential) release of DMT during such a traumatic event which then progresses/evolves the experience?
To clarify a point: the body is very efficient at cleaning up DMT from the blood stream/brain and has natural enzymes which destroy it. Traumatic experiences seem to override the bodies natural 'clean up' system - which is why people don't constantly feel the effects of this chemical.

I'm also curious as to how other people who are familiar with the OBE state (and with Strassmans and similar work) integrate the effects of DMT (and their seeming instant OBE experience generation) into their perception of the OBE state?
I'd be very curious to see results of blood/DMT levels before and immediately after an OBE and NDE. The fact that DMT is a drug means its effects have a certain duration, which seems contradictory to the OBE state which can be terminated at will. A possible explanation could be the deep relaxation/trance state would make the body more perceptive to very low levels of DMT in the blood stream, which would easily be overridden by the full force of baseline (C1) sensory input.

Strassmans research was recounted in the book "DMT: The spirit molecule," if anyone is interested.

Quote from: tombodenmannSince when is a simulation more extensive then the thing simulated?

Quite often, actually.

Postmodernist philosophers have labelled this phenomenon "hyperreality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality)." Some philosophers, like Jean Baudrillard (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html), go so far as to claim that our original reality is gone and has been replaced with the hyperreality of modern commercialism, where everything has a sign-exchange value to something that isn't real.

Some examples of hyperreality from Wikipedia:

Quote
• a sports drink of a flavour that doesn't exist ("wild ice zest berry")
• a plastic Christmas tree that looks better than a real Christmas tree ever could
• a magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer
• almost all video games
• a well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal)
• Disney World and Las Vegas
• pornography ("sexier than sex itself")
• The stock market

All that's left, according to Baudrillard, are simulations and simulacra. Actually, this was the book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0472065211/qid=1101756042/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-0644098-5567148) that Neo used to store his data disks in the opening scene of The Matrix. (That was the joke -> it was a book being used to simulate a container for data. In doing so it was no longer a real book that contained data on its pages, but a hyperreal book that housed more varieties of data on optical disks.)

Edit: I'm convinced AP et al has something to do with humanity's tendency towards hyperreality. Lucid Dreamers often comment that their dreams are "more real than real," regardless of whether they believe it's the product of their imagination. I don't know quite how to describe this relationship, however - other than lucid dreaming can be skillfully used to simulate something you want to do in real life (giving a speech, etc.).

Interestingly, however, there is a group of posthumanists who believe that technological advancement is heading towards a "singularity," where artificial intelligence achieves our level of sentience and becomes, as Badrilliard would say, hyperreal human. We ourselves would also become hyperreal as our brains and biological systems are augmented with nanotechnology. Aided with nanotech, we would be able to communicate wirelessly in a virtual reality. The way these posthumanists describe virtual reality, you'd think they were talking about the astral plane. Ray Kurzweil seems to gather the most press about this prediction and has a very extensive website kurzweilai.net (http://www.kurzweilai.net), along with a few books. My username in the forums over there is "Cyprian."

More Edit: If you want to get really gee-whiz on simulation being more extensive than the object simulated, check this out. (http://www.ipt.arc.nasa.gov/gallery.html) That's a NASA gallery of carbon nanotube models. Scroll down to where they simulate proteins and neurons. They're intended to perform better than the object they're simulating.

Hello all,

Quote from: catmeow
He is entitled to express his ideas without, as I see it ungracious, and frankly, rude (I don't direct this at you tombodenmann) critique. I think his ideas are interesting and certainly worthy of attention.
.....
I can't see why this should be such an emotive concept to some members of this board. As I said, this is the traditional viewpoint, and has only recently been superceded by the notion that LD and OBE are one and the same thing.

First of all Catmeow thanks for your effort in this discussion. I would like to make a small comment to your observations. I have to agree with you when you state that some of the critique I received here tended look somewhat ungracious and rude, at least in my personal opinion. I will however never return this to anyone since my respect for others leaves no room for that, and also since my interpretation of someone's intend might be wrong (perhaps they really did not mean it that way). But enough about that. You also said you can't see why my ideas invoke such emotions. I think i know why. If my ideas were to be true, the whole concept of the RB type-OBE (i will keep this term to differentiate between it and NDE-OBE) would have to be changed somewhat, at least to a degree that it does not take place in the astral dimension but in mental space, although through ESP there is still a sense of exploring the astral. This, i think, is for many people here (those who have been supporters of Bruce's ideas the longest) utterly unacceptable. People will claim my arguments make no sense and that I lack experience. They are right in so far that I clearly had to get used to using the right terms and definitions to make myself clear among this particular public. Also, more experience is never a bad thing, but let me be the judge on my own experiences. I can however imagine why people would say such things, and I dont hold it against anyone. I am just here to show that there is an alternative congruent viewpoint on RB type-OBE's, and as long as the discussion continues I will put my effort in it to be as clear as possible to explain this viewpoint, and answer any questions or points of critique.

That said I have also read the article you linked. I have to say it was very informative and does show a few interesting facts. For example that all the RB type-OBE's happen during non-delta sleep, something I pointed to in an earlier posting. To me this shows it has large parallels to (lucid)dreams, which happen in the same way. The difference seems to be the lack of REM during some of the reported RB type-OBE's. I think the fact that we stay lucid (aware of ourselves), plays at least partly a role in this. From my experience and others, it shows that in this stage one can most of the time control breath and eye movement, when focusing on the physical body. I once actually tested this and concluded during a LD that I was having no REM. Also Laberge tested several people in his dream lab and he found that those people have full control over their eye movements (they even used it to signal information to the researchers). REM seem more to coincide with (subconscious, normal) dreaming, when the dreamer is non-lucid. However, this does not mean dreams can only happen during REM, since they are reported to happen during non-REM too (but not during deep delta sleep). These facts show me that the RB type OBE can most likely best be described as a special kind of LD, from which ESP is possible, and from where probably deeper exploration for more advanced people is possible too.

Quote from: catmeow
Do you have any research you can recommend on this deeper stage?

Unfortunately most research into NDE has either NDE caused by accidents or RB type of OBE as their subject. Trying to locate research on this topic is extremely hard, a google search on this subject showed me that there had been some research into yogi's when they stop their heartbeat (Margnelli, M. and Gagliardi, G), however no further information is given. I have been once ridiculed on this forum for adhering to certain ancient yogi wisdoms and techniques, but these do show us in which direction we should look. I can also add that the 'astral wandering' as described by Clark in his notes on Bardon resembles very closely this type of NDE, albeit from a 'magician' perspective. You an find a very thorough and extensive read on that here:

http://www.abardoncompanion.com/IIH-Step1.html

Be warned though that on that page a lot of different terms and definitions are used, but after careful reading I think you can understand most of it. Besides describing similar processes, what both Bardon and the Yogi's show us is that to induce this type of NDE-OBE in ourselves takes an extreme amount  of practice and time, and I must admit I have (not yet) experienced such an NDE myself. However a close friend of mine has done this multiple times (he even measured his brainwaves with EEG, which showed it to be flat, which means it occurred deeply beyond delta sleep, the same which Yogi's and probably also people performing Bardon's astral wandering experience, since that all happens in deep trance beyond delta waves). His experiences are in line with what I describe. Argue what you want and say that this is no first hand experience, I still adhere great value to my friend's experiences which he has build up during the past 20 years. I might ask him to explain his own experiences on this forum. Another thing, this all shows that inducing NDE-OBE is very hard and unless you go into several long years of training yourself it will be nearly impossible. So I dont think its weird that most of us western people have never experienced this yet (exept as caused by accidents, and yes, I count myself extremely lucky to have a friend who has done this from beyond deep sleep). Concluding I would say that it would indeed be a very wise thing to try and seek more information, research etc on this subject (if anyone can point to it I would be pleased) as it is of vital importance to keep an open mind and include all possible experiences in a model that explains NDE type of OBE.

MisterJingo, I have not read that book, but i did a fast search on its contents. I think DMT or other drug experiences can show some valueable insights into the whole OBE phenomenon, although I dont know what the conclusions of Rick Strassman exactly are. Did he manage to create exact NDE-OBE's in his subjects after giving them DMT? Or did they more so look like RB type OBE's? Perhaps that is hard to say anyway since the exact difference between those 2 probably eludes anyone who hasnt experienced them both.

Telos, thanks for your philosophical insights on these matters. I found your link on the significance of hyperreality quite interesting. I think you can even argue that nothing has an inherent meaning, even things without an exchange value, since being aware is by definition being subjective. Does this perhaps mean we have to give meaning to everything we think and talk about? I would even wonder, is it even possible for us to perceive beyond the veil of hyperreality?

A nice day to you all!

[EDIT: some part of this post somehow mysteriously disappeared (my reaction to MisterJingo), so i edited it and put it back again. probably a forum glitch]

Hello Xetrov

I'll make this brief because this is my night off!

Yes I did complain about the "graciousness" of some of the replies to your posts.  I didn't originally mean to say anything and I won't mention it again, but I felt I needed to say something.

Regarding the threat to people's personal "mindsets" about OBE.  I don't think your ideas about NDE or my ideas about LD are a threat (or should be a threat) really.  We all agree that something interesting is going on.

Please take a look at the works of Susan Blackmore to see a really tough critique about OBE and NDE...!

http://www.susanblackmore.co.uk/
http://www.psywww.com/asc/obe/whois_bl.html
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/experts09.html

btw, Bardon's work does look very interesting.

:D
catmeow

Don't you work ;-) o.k. I'm a student too (Physics), so I'll take some time to reply.
First of all, I do not wanna sound rude! If I do it is cause my English isn't good enough and cause I'll try to come straight to the point.


"Sorry if that looked so, this is because when i replied to you (the piece you quoted) i meant RB-type of OBE, which is the same as LD to me (and mr catmeow). Catmeow however, in the quote you gave of him, speaks of the 'real' OBE (which i prefer to call NDE-OBE). So you see, we actually agree but because of the different terms and definitions we are using it becomes all a bit confusing. However i knew exactly what Catmeow meant in his last post and i can tell you it is the same as i see it."

O.k. I'll consider you two to agree then.

"First of all I showed you a study that shows most blind people (in that study, 15 out of 23 people were able to)  CAN see in NDE-OBE. This fact alone is NOT explainable by Bruce, since he claims it would not be possible. There certainly are blind people that cannot see during a NDE-OBE, but that was beside the point of the argument. However, i agree it would be interesting to check out more studies in this area and see what they can tell us. "

That is true the studies indicate some problems with RB view. However That doesn't mean that Roberts comments about OBE and LD are all wrong.  It would be very interesting to see what Robert replies to this. I would suggest you sum up some key points and post the questions direct at the Q/A- Board. Robert usually comes up with some very good explanations.


"By and large, examples of people born blind might show us that during an RB type – OBE, they cannot see. This is probably why Bruce writes the above in the first place. I am not aware of people born blind that perhaps have visual abilities in their dreams and RB-type OBE's. If such people do not exist, Bruce and me are both right since I say that these RB-type OBE's are dreams, and in dreams our mental blueprint considering the senses isn't negated  by our astral senses (i will come back to this in a moment). Bruce in his idea is also right because for him it proves his point (people born blind cannot see). But what if people born blind could see in RB-type OBE? This would disprove Bruce's theory in the first place. For me it would be new information too, and i should think carefully to incorporate this in my view on these things. (On)fortunately there are no researches that i  know of  that show us any people born blind can see in their dreams or RB-type OBE's."

I really wonder if there are born blinds that can see in dreams, that would be quite important. After all there still would be a possible explanation if they can't. This could be that as long as the physical Body is alive the Experiences in the Astral are somehow limited but once it is dead that limitation is gone. Robert has some good explanations on that as well but I can't exactly remember.
For some more interesting imputes see

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_2_64/ai_67718675

"So a partial negation of the mental construct means, that this part is being replaced by a new piece of mental construct, namely the ability to see (astrally). Upon entering NDE-OBE, a person born blind can all of a sudden see and this new vision ability is then incorporated into his or her mental construction, thereby negating the previous construction of being totally blind. That's what i mean. Of course not that the whole mental construction falls away (although i would not know to which degree this mental construction stays put after death, since obviously I'm not death). To make an easy comparison, if you thought that the Chinese people's skin color was pink, but you see a Chinese guy and his skin is not pink but yellowish, your old mental construction of the Chinese will have been negated. That is what i meant, not that the mental construct is gone."

I see. So what is generating the mental construct in the NDE's then? the Brain is out of the game. So I would then consider possibility that the same thing that generates the mental construct in the NDE's also generates the mental construct in waking life. Which I believe is not the brain but the mind itself.



"I do not assume anything about anyone, at least no less then any of you people do."
There are so many examples of RB-style OBE's other people have had, but which you have never experienced yourself (perhaps this includes your following comment: "people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.") Still you assume they are truthful."

Yeah but I wrote "claim" to indicate that.

".Your reaction also shows that you might think that i think these RB style-OBE's to be of less value or in some other way demeaning, but that is not the case. I am just arguing that it is not what it looks."

Yeah but it feels demeaning cause it would mean that they are generated by our brain which would limit their scope somehow. It would mean that we should strive for the real Astral and all our efforts so far were "in vain"
At least it kind of fells so and that's one of the mean reasons people don't like your ideas, to me they just don't feel right, but this is of course no argument (or is it?)

"Do you think it is coincidence that when people's visual center in the brain is active, during RB-type OBE, they can influence the astral by thought? Like, just as in dreams, which are the same or very close, not  only to me but also to RB? Do you say that, it is coincidence that when you go to deep sleep and beyond where this visual center is not active (if you want proof ill search it for you), this is no longer possible?"

That would actually mean that OBE's are indeed Dreams and that Dreams are indeed produced by the brain (and spirit). But is that really so? I would need to know the exact experiments that have been done the results and the numbers of people involved to draw such conclusions, So please could you give me the link.


"Go and try this experiment: In your next LD or RB style-OBE, go and meditate. Try to sink deeper into yourself, into deep sleep. Try to wake yourself up quickly, if that doesn't work, and there are also NO visuals whatsoever, then you know you are in deep sleep stage. Now when you are here, induce your kind of RB type-OBE, and tell me what happens. I have tried this as well (as have several people I closely know, some even while monitoring brain waves so they were 100% sure in deep sleep) and i can tell you, no OBE whatsoever can take place here. Would it be coincidence that the visual brain center is not active here? To me, not, yet I agree it doesn't prove anything beyond doubt, it just shows in which way we should seek the answers."

Yes in RB view it should in fact be possible to have OBE's  in deep sleep if that is not the case your viewpoint seems more logical, but remember. In RB's viewpoint  LD and OBE are not the same, there are multiple copies of conscious possible, there is a dream mind and a copie of conscious having the OBE, So he probably would say that your experiments are done with your dream mind which can not operate in deep sleep but that OBE's are possible in deep sleep. Now one would need to do alot of experiments with brain wave monitoring and people that say they can differentiate between OBE and LD to see which viewpoint is true.

"Besides this, I also strongly believe indeed that inducing a 'real' NDE-OBE from beyond deep sleep is possible, although i have not yet experienced this yet (i am working on it though). But the fact that REM sleep is so completely different from deep sleep and certainly from stages even deeper shows that there must be differences between RB type OBE's and NDE-OBE's. Also take note that reaching this level to get into NDE is very hard and might take years to learn. I can further underscore this by taking Clark into my argument (some nice articles i lately read, his comments on Bardon's work). His ideas are very similar to mine and his astral wandering is what i call NDE-OBE. If you read carefully you will see that free astral wandering can only be reached after many years of intensive training. Yet the RB type OBE can be done by almost anyone, in any case many people do not even need to practice it at all. This is logical since to go lucid beyond deep sleep (or like Bardon, in very deep trance), takes ages of practicing, unlike RB type OBE's.

See above, RB says LD and OBE are not the same LD are easys and OBE's hard to achieve cause they need deep trance

"Lastly your point about expectation and NDE experiences which you claim can not point us in a direction of an astral dimension that would be solid. 1st of all there are a lot of striking similarities between NDE's all over the world, not depending on what religion anyone has. These experiences are all different from an average RB type of OBE. This in itself shows us only that we might be on to something which is actually not the same at all!"

Well there certainly isn't! the Body is dead, which in RB view (well probably I should say as I understand it since I'm not RB and I don't want to misrepresent him here) it means that the dream mind is gone and that alot of subtle energy is transfered from the physical body to the Astral body which gives him a lot more stability.

"So well  now on to the astral, when people die. I cannot really tell you what all the stuff is what is going on there, but people frequently report at NDE that they are welcomed by all kinds of astral beings, be it their lost families or friends, etc. Who says that any of the astral beings can't take the shape of Jesus? This might sound hilarious, but before you laugh at this, let me make my argument here. I meant to say, the astral is not prone to the CURRENT thoughts of the person experiencing NDE."


As far as i know people in NDE have never been able to THINK jesus away, or to change his appearance, etc. So although the astral might in some sense confirm to the mental image someone has of it, it is not prone to change by thought whenever this person experiences NDE, which is what the argument was about. Namely, to show that during an RB type OBE you can shape  the world mostly as you wish (depending on skills though), and during an NDE you cant.

O.k. good point which actually makes me think something completely different, sorry for changing subject but: What thinks anyway?! I always thought that the brain thinks and that one can measure this with brain waves now if people with no brain activity can think.........well I'm confused. What does the brain do anyway? it is not needs for mental constructs it is not needed for thoughts hmmmm is it only needed to transfer info's from the physical to the mind in vica versa?

"Its indeed easy to say but that doesn't mean its not true. I'm not sure why you would give these examples anyway? To show that a mental construct doesn't exist? I can give you some idea however in what direction you should seek the answer. During sleep and dreams you are in a closer connection to your subconscious self, which allows you to give significance to dreams in the first place. Creativity is extremely increased for example, many people including myself have reported being able to make the most wonderful music in their (lucid)dreams. Would it be so hard to imagine that your dreams can take form according to a mental model you have of how it should approximately feel to be a flower, or to be multiple persons?2

No is not but it is somehow strange for me to assume that the brain can do all this, the mind yes but the brain?

"Also i have never said that in a dream you cannot experience things alien to your mental model. First of all your subconscious can bring on such experiences, second of all contact or a connection with others (astral beings perhaps) can bring you sensations like  unconditional love.

Well so far my thoughts on your critique on my thoughts, have a nice day anyone who dared to read this far, and to the rest of you also ... "

are you always this polite ;-)
Just one last thought. People knowing nothing about OBE's and dreaming for years , suddenly report that they wake up floating above their bodys which lay in the bed. they get very scared and don not understand this at all, never the less it happens from time to time (I know alot of this people) No if We assume that OBe's are Dreams , we would this experiences all be so alike why should the brain suddenly simulate this which is really not like a dream were events happen usually like you expect them to happen (in a way, you are afraid and voila there is the monster...) but this experiences are completely against their expectations and alike, why does this happen i wonder.

Cheers Tom

PS your viewpoint is after all very good and I respect it.

Don't you work ;-) o.k. I'm a student too (Physics), so I'll take some time to reply.
First of all, I do not wanna sound rude! If I do it is cause my English isn't good enough and cause I'll try to come straight to the point.


"Sorry if that looked so, this is because when i replied to you (the piece you quoted) i meant RB-type of OBE, which is the same as LD to me (and mr catmeow). Catmeow however, in the quote you gave of him, speaks of the 'real' OBE (which i prefer to call NDE-OBE). So you see, we actually agree but because of the different terms and definitions we are using it becomes all a bit confusing. However i knew exactly what Catmeow meant in his last post and i can tell you it is the same as i see it."

O.k. I'll consider you two to agree then.

"First of all I showed you a study that shows most blind people (in that study, 15 out of 23 people were able to)  CAN see in NDE-OBE. This fact alone is NOT explainable by Bruce, since he claims it would not be possible. There certainly are blind people that cannot see during a NDE-OBE, but that was beside the point of the argument. However, i agree it would be interesting to check out more studies in this area and see what they can tell us. "

That is true the studies indicate some problems with RB view. However That doesn't mean that Roberts comments about OBE and LD are all wrong.  It would be very interesting to see what Robert replies to this. I would suggest you sum up some key points and post the questions direct at the Q/A- Board. Robert usually comes up with some very good explanations.


"By and large, examples of people born blind might show us that during an RB type – OBE, they cannot see. This is probably why Bruce writes the above in the first place. I am not aware of people born blind that perhaps have visual abilities in their dreams and RB-type OBE's. If such people do not exist, Bruce and me are both right since I say that these RB-type OBE's are dreams, and in dreams our mental blueprint considering the senses isn't negated  by our astral senses (i will come back to this in a moment). Bruce in his idea is also right because for him it proves his point (people born blind cannot see). But what if people born blind could see in RB-type OBE? This would disprove Bruce's theory in the first place. For me it would be new information too, and i should think carefully to incorporate this in my view on these things. (On)fortunately there are no researches that i  know of  that show us any people born blind can see in their dreams or RB-type OBE's."

I really wonder if there are born blinds that can see in dreams, that would be quite important. After all there still would be a possible explanation if they can't. This could be that as long as the physical Body is alive the Experiences in the Astral are somehow limited but once it is dead that limitation is gone. Robert has some good explanations on that as well but I can't exactly remember.
For some more interesting imputes see

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_2_64/ai_67718675

"So a partial negation of the mental construct means, that this part is being replaced by a new piece of mental construct, namely the ability to see (astrally). Upon entering NDE-OBE, a person born blind can all of a sudden see and this new vision ability is then incorporated into his or her mental construction, thereby negating the previous construction of being totally blind. That's what i mean. Of course not that the whole mental construction falls away (although i would not know to which degree this mental construction stays put after death, since obviously I'm not death). To make an easy comparison, if you thought that the Chinese people's skin color was pink, but you see a Chinese guy and his skin is not pink but yellowish, your old mental construction of the Chinese will have been negated. That is what i meant, not that the mental construct is gone."

I see. So what is generating the mental construct in the NDE's then? the Brain is out of the game. So I would then consider possibility that the same thing that generates the mental construct in the NDE's also generates the mental construct in waking life. Which I believe is not the brain but the mind itself.



"I do not assume anything about anyone, at least no less then any of you people do."
There are so many examples of RB-style OBE's other people have had, but which you have never experienced yourself (perhaps this includes your following comment: "people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.") Still you assume they are truthful."

Yeah but I wrote "claim" to indicate that.

".Your reaction also shows that you might think that i think these RB style-OBE's to be of less value or in some other way demeaning, but that is not the case. I am just arguing that it is not what it looks."

Yeah but it feels demeaning cause it would mean that they are generated by our brain which would limit their scope somehow. It would mean that we should strive for the real Astral and all our efforts so far were "in vain"
At least it kind of fells so and that's one of the mean reasons people don't like your ideas, to me they just don't feel right, but this is of course no argument (or is it?)

"Do you think it is coincidence that when people's visual center in the brain is active, during RB-type OBE, they can influence the astral by thought? Like, just as in dreams, which are the same or very close, not  only to me but also to RB? Do you say that, it is coincidence that when you go to deep sleep and beyond where this visual center is not active (if you want proof ill search it for you), this is no longer possible?"

That would actually mean that OBE's are indeed Dreams and that Dreams are indeed produced by the brain (and spirit). But is that really so? I would need to know the exact experiments that have been done the results and the numbers of people involved to draw such conclusions, So please could you give me the link.


"Go and try this experiment: In your next LD or RB style-OBE, go and meditate. Try to sink deeper into yourself, into deep sleep. Try to wake yourself up quickly, if that doesn't work, and there are also NO visuals whatsoever, then you know you are in deep sleep stage. Now when you are here, induce your kind of RB type-OBE, and tell me what happens. I have tried this as well (as have several people I closely know, some even while monitoring brain waves so they were 100% sure in deep sleep) and i can tell you, no OBE whatsoever can take place here. Would it be coincidence that the visual brain center is not active here? To me, not, yet I agree it doesn't prove anything beyond doubt, it just shows in which way we should seek the answers."

Yes in RB view it should in fact be possible to have OBE's  in deep sleep if that is not the case your viewpoint seems more logical, but remember. In RB's viewpoint  LD and OBE are not the same, there are multiple copies of conscious possible, there is a dream mind and a copie of conscious having the OBE, So he probably would say that your experiments are done with your dream mind which can not operate in deep sleep but that OBE's are possible in deep sleep. Now one would need to do alot of experiments with brain wave monitoring and people that say they can differentiate between OBE and LD to see which viewpoint is true.

"Besides this, I also strongly believe indeed that inducing a 'real' NDE-OBE from beyond deep sleep is possible, although i have not yet experienced this yet (i am working on it though). But the fact that REM sleep is so completely different from deep sleep and certainly from stages even deeper shows that there must be differences between RB type OBE's and NDE-OBE's. Also take note that reaching this level to get into NDE is very hard and might take years to learn. I can further underscore this by taking Clark into my argument (some nice articles i lately read, his comments on Bardon's work). His ideas are very similar to mine and his astral wandering is what i call NDE-OBE. If you read carefully you will see that free astral wandering can only be reached after many years of intensive training. Yet the RB type OBE can be done by almost anyone, in any case many people do not even need to practice it at all. This is logical since to go lucid beyond deep sleep (or like Bardon, in very deep trance), takes ages of practicing, unlike RB type OBE's.

See above, RB says LD and OBE are not the same LD are easys and OBE's hard to achieve cause they need deep trance

"Lastly your point about expectation and NDE experiences which you claim can not point us in a direction of an astral dimension that would be solid. 1st of all there are a lot of striking similarities between NDE's all over the world, not depending on what religion anyone has. These experiences are all different from an average RB type of OBE. This in itself shows us only that we might be on to something which is actually not the same at all!"

Well there certainly isn't! the Body is dead, which in RB view (well probably I should say as I understand it since I'm not RB and I don't want to misrepresent him here) it means that the dream mind is gone and that alot of subtle energy is transfered from the physical body to the Astral body which gives him a lot more stability.

"So well  now on to the astral, when people die. I cannot really tell you what all the stuff is what is going on there, but people frequently report at NDE that they are welcomed by all kinds of astral beings, be it their lost families or friends, etc. Who says that any of the astral beings can't take the shape of Jesus? This might sound hilarious, but before you laugh at this, let me make my argument here. I meant to say, the astral is not prone to the CURRENT thoughts of the person experiencing NDE."


As far as i know people in NDE have never been able to THINK jesus away, or to change his appearance, etc. So although the astral might in some sense confirm to the mental image someone has of it, it is not prone to change by thought whenever this person experiences NDE, which is what the argument was about. Namely, to show that during an RB type OBE you can shape  the world mostly as you wish (depending on skills though), and during an NDE you cant.

O.k. good point which actually makes me think something completely different, sorry for changing subject but: What thinks anyway?! I always thought that the brain thinks and that one can measure this with brain waves now if people with no brain activity can think.........well I'm confused. What does the brain do anyway? it is not needs for mental constructs it is not needed for thoughts hmmmm is it only needed to transfer info's from the physical to the mind in vica versa?

"Its indeed easy to say but that doesn't mean its not true. I'm not sure why you would give these examples anyway? To show that a mental construct doesn't exist? I can give you some idea however in what direction you should seek the answer. During sleep and dreams you are in a closer connection to your subconscious self, which allows you to give significance to dreams in the first place. Creativity is extremely increased for example, many people including myself have reported being able to make the most wonderful music in their (lucid)dreams. Would it be so hard to imagine that your dreams can take form according to a mental model you have of how it should approximately feel to be a flower, or to be multiple persons?2

No is not but it is somehow strange for me to assume that the brain can do all this, the mind yes but the brain?

"Also i have never said that in a dream you cannot experience things alien to your mental model. First of all your subconscious can bring on such experiences, second of all contact or a connection with others (astral beings perhaps) can bring you sensations like  unconditional love.

Well so far my thoughts on your critique on my thoughts, have a nice day anyone who dared to read this far, and to the rest of you also ... "

are you always this polite ;-)
Just one last thought. People knowing nothing about OBE's and dreaming for years , suddenly report that they wake up floating above their bodys which lay in the bed. they get very scared and don not understand this at all, never the less it happens from time to time (I know alot of this people) No if We assume that OBe's are Dreams , we would this experiences all be so alike why should the brain suddenly simulate this which is really not like a dream were events happen usually like you expect them to happen (in a way, you are afraid and voila there is the monster...) but this experiences are completely against their expectations and alike, why does this happen i wonder.

Cheers Tom

PS your viewpoint is after all very good and I respect it.

@Xetrov

Don't you work ;-) o.k. I'm a student too (Physics), so I'll take some time to reply.
First of all, I do not wanna sound rude! If I do it is cause my English isn't good enough and cause I'll try to come straight to the point.


"Sorry if that looked so, this is because when i replied to you (the piece you quoted) i meant RB-type of OBE, which is the same as LD to me (and mr catmeow). Catmeow however, in the quote you gave of him, speaks of the 'real' OBE (which i prefer to call NDE-OBE). So you see, we actually agree but because of the different terms and definitions we are using it becomes all a bit confusing. However i knew exactly what Catmeow meant in his last post and i can tell you it is the same as i see it."

O.k. I'll consider you two to agree then.

"First of all I showed you a study that shows most blind people (in that study, 15 out of 23 people were able to)  CAN see in NDE-OBE. This fact alone is NOT explainable by Bruce, since he claims it would not be possible. There certainly are blind people that cannot see during a NDE-OBE, but that was beside the point of the argument. However, i agree it would be interesting to check out more studies in this area and see what they can tell us. "

That is true the studies indicate some problems with RB view. However That doesn't mean that Roberts comments about OBE and LD are all wrong.  It would be very interesting to see what Robert replies to this. I would suggest you sum up some key points and post the questions direct at the Q/A- Board. Robert usually comes up with some very good explanations.


"By and large, examples of people born blind might show us that during an RB type – OBE, they cannot see. This is probably why Bruce writes the above in the first place. I am not aware of people born blind that perhaps have visual abilities in their dreams and RB-type OBE's. If such people do not exist, Bruce and me are both right since I say that these RB-type OBE's are dreams, and in dreams our mental blueprint considering the senses isn't negated  by our astral senses (i will come back to this in a moment). Bruce in his idea is also right because for him it proves his point (people born blind cannot see). But what if people born blind could see in RB-type OBE? This would disprove Bruce's theory in the first place. For me it would be new information too, and i should think carefully to incorporate this in my view on these things. (On)fortunately there are no researches that i  know of  that show us any people born blind can see in their dreams or RB-type OBE's."

I really wonder if there are born blinds that can see in dreams, that would be quite important. After all there still would be a possible explanation if they can't. This could be that as long as the physical Body is alive the Experiences in the Astral are somehow limited but once it is dead that limitation is gone. Robert has some good explanations on that as well but I can't exactly remember.
For some more interesting imputes see

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2320/is_2_64/ai_67718675

"So a partial negation of the mental construct means, that this part is being replaced by a new piece of mental construct, namely the ability to see (astrally). Upon entering NDE-OBE, a person born blind can all of a sudden see and this new vision ability is then incorporated into his or her mental construction, thereby negating the previous construction of being totally blind. That's what i mean. Of course not that the whole mental construction falls away (although i would not know to which degree this mental construction stays put after death, since obviously I'm not death). To make an easy comparison, if you thought that the Chinese people's skin color was pink, but you see a Chinese guy and his skin is not pink but yellowish, your old mental construction of the Chinese will have been negated. That is what i meant, not that the mental construct is gone."

I see. So what is generating the mental construct in the NDE's then? the Brain is out of the game. So I would then consider possibility that the same thing that generates the mental construct in the NDE's also generates the mental construct in waking life. Which I believe is not the brain but the mind itself.



"I do not assume anything about anyone, at least no less then any of you people do."
There are so many examples of RB-style OBE's other people have had, but which you have never experienced yourself (perhaps this includes your following comment: "people claim to have OBE's that are not very prone to thoughts.") Still you assume they are truthful."

Yeah but I wrote "claim" to indicate that.

".Your reaction also shows that you might think that i think these RB style-OBE's to be of less value or in some other way demeaning, but that is not the case. I am just arguing that it is not what it looks."

Yeah but it feels demeaning cause it would mean that they are generated by our brain which would limit their scope somehow. It would mean that we should strive for the real Astral and all our efforts so far were "in vain"
At least it kind of fells so and that's one of the mean reasons people don't like your ideas, to me they just don't feel right, but this is of course no argument (or is it?)

"Do you think it is coincidence that when people's visual center in the brain is active, during RB-type OBE, they can influence the astral by thought? Like, just as in dreams, which are the same or very close, not  only to me but also to RB? Do you say that, it is coincidence that when you go to deep sleep and beyond where this visual center is not active (if you want proof ill search it for you), this is no longer possible?"

That would actually mean that OBE's are indeed Dreams and that Dreams are indeed produced by the brain (and spirit). But is that really so? I would need to know the exact experiments that have been done the results and the numbers of people involved to draw such conclusions, So please could you give me the link.


"Go and try this experiment: In your next LD or RB style-OBE, go and meditate. Try to sink deeper into yourself, into deep sleep. Try to wake yourself up quickly, if that doesn't work, and there are also NO visuals whatsoever, then you know you are in deep sleep stage. Now when you are here, induce your kind of RB type-OBE, and tell me what happens. I have tried this as well (as have several people I closely know, some even while monitoring brain waves so they were 100% sure in deep sleep) and i can tell you, no OBE whatsoever can take place here. Would it be coincidence that the visual brain center is not active here? To me, not, yet I agree it doesn't prove anything beyond doubt, it just shows in which way we should seek the answers."

Yes in RB view it should in fact be possible to have OBE's  in deep sleep if that is not the case your viewpoint seems more logical, but remember. In RB's viewpoint  LD and OBE are not the same, there are multiple copies of conscious possible, there is a dream mind and a copie of conscious having the OBE, So he probably would say that your experiments are done with your dream mind which can not operate in deep sleep but that OBE's are possible in deep sleep. Now one would need to do alot of experiments with brain wave monitoring and people that say they can differentiate between OBE and LD to see which viewpoint is true.

"Besides this, I also strongly believe indeed that inducing a 'real' NDE-OBE from beyond deep sleep is possible, although i have not yet experienced this yet (i am working on it though). But the fact that REM sleep is so completely different from deep sleep and certainly from stages even deeper shows that there must be differences between RB type OBE's and NDE-OBE's. Also take note that reaching this level to get into NDE is very hard and might take years to learn. I can further underscore this by taking Clark into my argument (some nice articles i lately read, his comments on Bardon's work). His ideas are very similar to mine and his astral wandering is what i call NDE-OBE. If you read carefully you will see that free astral wandering can only be reached after many years of intensive training. Yet the RB type OBE can be done by almost anyone, in any case many people do not even need to practice it at all. This is logical since to go lucid beyond deep sleep (or like Bardon, in very deep trance), takes ages of practicing, unlike RB type OBE's.

See above, RB says LD and OBE are not the same LD are easys and OBE's hard to achieve cause they need deep trance

"Lastly your point about expectation and NDE experiences which you claim can not point us in a direction of an astral dimension that would be solid. 1st of all there are a lot of striking similarities between NDE's all over the world, not depending on what religion anyone has. These experiences are all different from an average RB type of OBE. This in itself shows us only that we might be on to something which is actually not the same at all!"

Well there certainly isn't! the Body is dead, which in RB view (well probably I should say as I understand it since I'm not RB and I don't want to misrepresent him here) it means that the dream mind is gone and that alot of subtle energy is transfered from the physical body to the Astral body which gives him a lot more stability.

"So well  now on to the astral, when people die. I cannot really tell you what all the stuff is what is going on there, but people frequently report at NDE that they are welcomed by all kinds of astral beings, be it their lost families or friends, etc. Who says that any of the astral beings can't take the shape of Jesus? This might sound hilarious, but before you laugh at this, let me make my argument here. I meant to say, the astral is not prone to the CURRENT thoughts of the person experiencing NDE."


As far as i know people in NDE have never been able to THINK jesus away, or to change his appearance, etc. So although the astral might in some sense confirm to the mental image someone has of it, it is not prone to change by thought whenever this person experiences NDE, which is what the argument was about. Namely, to show that during an RB type OBE you can shape  the world mostly as you wish (depending on skills though), and during an NDE you cant.

O.k. good point which actually makes me think something completely different, sorry for changing subject but: What thinks anyway?! I always thought that the brain thinks and that one can measure this with brain waves now if people with no brain activity can think.........well I'm confused. What does the brain do anyway? it is not needed for mental constructs it is not needed for thoughts hmmmm is it only needed to transfer info's from the physical to the mind and vica versa?

"Its indeed easy to say but that doesn't mean its not true. I'm not sure why you would give these examples anyway? To show that a mental construct doesn't exist? I can give you some idea however in what direction you should seek the answer. During sleep and dreams you are in a closer connection to your subconscious self, which allows you to give significance to dreams in the first place. Creativity is extremely increased for example, many people including myself have reported being able to make the most wonderful music in their (lucid)dreams. Would it be so hard to imagine that your dreams can take form according to a mental model you have of how it should approximately feel to be a flower, or to be multiple persons?2

No is not but it is somehow strange for me to assume that the brain can do all this, the mind yes but the brain?

"Also i have never said that in a dream you cannot experience things alien to your mental model. First of all your subconscious can bring on such experiences, second of all contact or a connection with others (astral beings perhaps) can bring you sensations like  unconditional love.

Well so far my thoughts on your critique on my thoughts, have a nice day anyone who dared to read this far, and to the rest of you also ... "

are you always this polite ;-)
Just one last thought. People knowing nothing about OBE's and dreaming for years , suddenly report that they wake up floating above their bodys which lay in the bed. they get very scared and don not understand this at all, never the less it happens from time to time (I know alot of this people) No if We assume that OBe's are Dreams , we would this experiences all be so alike why should the brain suddenly simulate this which is really not like a dream were events happen usually like you expect them to happen (in a way, you are afraid and voila there is the monster...) but this experiences are completely against their expectations and alike, why does this happen i wonder.

Cheers Tom

PS your viewpoint is after all very good and I respect it.

@catmeow

"Hello tombodenmann

First of all, in your critique, could you please address myself and Xetrov separately.  In this way I can answer questions directed to me and Xetrov can answer questions directed to him."

Please call me Tom. Yes, I will reply separately

 "The following observation:

First of all you seem to agree but actually support conflicting ideas:

is utterly meaningless.  Xetrov has his opinions and I present mine independently.  To attempt to negate our opinions by combining them and then saying that we disagree with each other is meaningless."

Indeed That wasn't to smart to do, I'll stop that.


"At the same time, I would say that I have a lot of respect for Xetrov's opinions and I think he has a very valid viewpoint.  He is entitled to express his ideas without, as I see it ungracious, and frankly, rude (I don't direct this at you tombodenmann) critique.  I think his ideas are interesting and certainly worthy of attention."

If I sound rude it is cause my English is not good enough. I apologize.

"Personally, I think I have presented a consistent and valid analysis, ie that of a "sliding scale" from LD to OBE.  To me it is self-evident that when I am LD'ing I am dreaming and this is a subjective reality, shared only by myself .   On the other hand OBE is an objective (ie concensus) reality, shared by other consciousnesses.  "

No I don't understand that. Do mean you have both LD and OBE and that they are not the same thing? If you say NDE's you don't mean NDE right?

"I do not say that OBE doesn't happen.  It does.  "

So you believe that OBE can happen without NDE then?

"I just happen to believe that LD is NOT a collective reality.  In my opinion LD is a personal experience."

Have you ever heard of shared dreaming. there are actually people on this board that say they can enter other peoples dreams. It also seems to be possible to perceive real world things . For example native Americans searched for Prey during LD.


 "This is not to say it isn't a marvellous experience.  It is, I know I've had thousands.  They can be extraordinarily detailed and quite frankly, beautiful.  I had several this morning (as usual).  These were brought on by going through an "exit procedure" involving vibrations, floating (apparently out of my body) etc.  But I am pretty sure these were just personal dreams.  So to me - LD seems very similar to OBE but is really just a personal reality."

See above, it also possible that you drift into dreamworlds after exiting the body.

"I can't see why this should be such an emotive concept to some members of this board.  As I said, this is the traditional viewpoint, and has only recently been superceded by the notion that LD and OBE are one and the same thing."

Now you are aware that Xetrov believes LD =OBE are you?

"I can't speak for Xetrov, but my own opinion is that our entire world is clearly a "mental construct".  This probably applies to all lower states of being - eg physical waking consiousnes (PWC), LD and OBE.  Our subconscious minds actually construct a representation of the world, and our conscious minds then experience this construct.  This construct is based on the information we gather from our senses.  During PWC we use the physical senses.  During OBE we use astral senses.  During LD there is not much sensory input and the experience is largely fantasy (IMHO).  But basically the world we experience is a mental construct."

I agree



I would like your inability to see 3D while out of body. As from all I read I would conclude that it is very well possible for you to see 3D when out of body but as long as you believe you can't and search for a way to do it it won't happen. This is just my theorie though, maybe I'm completely wrong.
How do you manage to get all this LD anyway?

Cheers Tom

Quote from: Telos

Quote from: tombodenmannSince when is a simulation more extensive then the thing simulated?

Quite often, actually.

Postmodernist philosophers have labelled this phenomenon "hyperreality (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality)." Some philosophers, like Jean Baudrillard (http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Baudrillard/Baudrillard_Simulacra.html), go so far as to claim that our original reality is gone and has been replaced with the hyperreality of modern commercialism, where everything has a sign-exchange value to something that isn't real.

Some examples of hyperreality from Wikipedia:

Quote
• a sports drink of a flavour that doesn't exist ("wild ice zest berry")
• a plastic Christmas tree that looks better than a real Christmas tree ever could
• a magazine photo of a model that has been touched up with a computer
• almost all video games
• a well manicured garden (nature as hyperreal)
• Disney World and Las Vegas
• pornography ("sexier than sex itself")
• The stock market

All that's left, according to Baudrillard, are simulations and simulacra. Actually, this was the book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0472065211/qid=1101756042/sr=2-1/ref=pd_ka_b_2_1/104-0644098-5567148) that Neo used to store his data disks in the opening scene of The Matrix. (That was the joke -> it was a book being used to simulate a container for data. In doing so it was no longer a real book that contained data on its pages, but a hyperreal book that housed more varieties of data on optical disks.)

Edit: I'm convinced AP et al has something to do with humanity's tendency towards hyperreality. Lucid Dreamers often comment that their dreams are "more real than real," regardless of whether they believe it's the product of their imagination. I don't know quite how to describe this relationship, however - other than lucid dreaming can be skillfully used to simulate something you want to do in real life (giving a speech, etc.).

Interestingly, however, there is a group of posthumanists who believe that technological advancement is heading towards a "singularity," where artificial intelligence achieves our level of sentience and becomes, as Badrilliard would say, hyperreal human. We ourselves would also become hyperreal as our brains and biological systems are augmented with nanotechnology. Aided with nanotech, we would be able to communicate wirelessly in a virtual reality. The way these posthumanists describe virtual reality, you'd think they were talking about the astral plane. Ray Kurzweil seems to gather the most press about this prediction and has a very extensive website kurzweilai.net (http://www.kurzweilai.net), along with a few books. My username in the forums over there is "Cyprian."

More Edit: If you want to get really gee-whiz on simulation being more extensive than the object simulated, check this out. (http://www.ipt.arc.nasa.gov/gallery.html) That's a NASA gallery of carbon nanotube models. Scroll down to where they simulate proteins and neurons. They're intended to perform better than the object they're simulating.

ok. I'll see what you mean. My claim was indeed false, I would say.
What I acually meant is that If the simulation delievers experiences Impossible in the real thing I then no longer would consider it a simulation but a new thing. I don't know if that makes sense to you.
Well Dreams beeing a least partly a Simulation of reality I would not deny but the simulation beiing done by the brain I found strange

Well again some lengthy replies, so i guess i'll write one of myself too :)

Quote from: tombodenmann
That doesn't mean that Roberts comments about OBE and LD are all wrong. It would be very interesting to see what Robert replies to this. I would suggest you sum up some key points and post the questions direct at the Q/A- Board.  

You put words  into my mouth i didn't use. Of course not all of Bruce's ideas are wrong! Anyway, good idea, i might ask this question to him on the QA section. By the way, interesting article you linked, i'd like to comment briefly on some parts of it

Quote
Is their [deaf people with a Gochlear Ear Implant] being able to "gain hearing" pertinent to conceptualizing how a blind person can "gain sight" during an OBE/NDE?

.. in dealing with the physical forces of light radiation and sound vibration, human sense has to be adequately trained to sort out the range of sensory input.

I would argue that the physical senses are not at all working according to the same principles of the senses of the spirit (astral body), and certainly not when the link between physial body and spirit is severed. When at NDE-OBE, one is totally dependent on astral sight, signals do not pass the physical eyes, the brain, etc.

You made an interesting comment on this:

Quote from: tombodenmann
...as long as the physical Body is alive the Experiences in the Astral are somehow limited but once it is dead that limitation is gone

I agree totally. Since the experiences in the astral while the body is alive are processed by the active physical brain too (Clark has some interesting idea on this by the way), physical limitations should have some influence on our astral perception while we are alive. I say this is because, while our spirit is connected to a physical body, our perception and awareness is both influenced by the physical body (sensory input, for one, processed by the brain before it enters our awareness) and by our spirit. So we see that there is a difference between perception in a NDE-OBE and in a RB type-OBE, differences caused by the fact that during the first we are really out of our bodies and perceiving the astral through our astral senses entirely, while during the latter we are not out of body and perceiving any astrally related information through ESP, thereby also processing the information through our physical brain. That is why I say we are not really 'placed' in the astral in the first place during a RB type OBE, since if we were we would be in a NDE (spirit leaving physical body), which is clearly not the case since brain activity stays normal and the heart keeps beating regularly.

Clearly it looks as if NDE-OBE and RB type OBE are two totally different phenomena? You said yourself that as long as the physical body is alive the Astral experiences are limited, and yet you claim that your spirit has left the body at RB type OBE. How can these experiences be limited, if we are totally free? Being totally free clearly negates the limitations, which happens in NDE-OBE. Why are these limitations then still in place with a RB style OBE?

Quote from: tombodenmann
So what is generating the mental construct in the NDE's then? the Brain is out of the game. So I would then consider possibility that the same thing that generates the mental construct in the NDE's also generates the mental construct in waking life. Which I believe is not the brain but the mind itself.

Yeah but what is the mind? Isn't the mind our consciousness itself? During our physical life, our consciousness is clearly in interaction with our physical body/brain, and also with our spirit. I would argue it is a combination, yet at death it is no longer so, since it then is purely generated by our spirit. Set free from the physical body it is clearly totally dependent on its own.

Quote from: tombodenmann
Yeah but it feels demeaning cause it would mean that they are generated by our brain which would limit their scope somehow. It would mean that we should strive for the real Astral and all our efforts so far were "in vain"
At least it kind of fells so and that's one of the mean reasons people don't like your ideas, to me they just don't feel right, but this is of course no argument (or is it?)

Here you touch upon a very delicate point. I know it could be interpreted as demeaning when i say, no we arent really free out of our body. I would most likely feel exactly the same way as all of you when i was in your position. But so what if the experience would be "limited" because of the fact that its partly generated by the physical brain? So what if that does limit the scope of it? Really, there is still so much interesting stuff to explore and experience before you in the end will be able to go into an NDE-OBE. All the experiences posted on this forum,all the experiences of all the members here show this to be true. Also I have not said  that no "true" astral exploring can take place, since you can still perceive it through different ways, for one by ESP and by feeling the astral around you (energy, entities, whatever). To really grow spiritually and to expand your consciousness and your love from within yourself, you have to be patient. It isnt for nothing that Bardon's followers and Yogi's train themselves for ages and ages before they can really at last leave their physical bodies. Yet it seems  to be a characteristic of most contemporary western spiritual movements to get the most results as fast as possible, which is understandable because we are curious to explore!  But spirituality isnt fast food (no insult intended at anyone here). We should not lean on our desires (to advance as fast as possible) when explaining our experiences, doing so will only hold us back. You know, I do not say that I have to be right per se in my ideas, but at least it provides a congruent alternative viewpoint which all of you should consider carefully, and not dismiss right away because it would not at once meet with your current desires.

Quote from: tombodenmann
I would need to know the exact experiments that have been done the results and the numbers of people involved to draw such conclusions, So please could you give me the link.

I will show you the logic behind the argument I gave, why the visual cortex is inactive during deep sleep so no RB style OBE's take place. Besides from experience this argument goes as follows: dreams are initiated during normal / REM sleep by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This is common knowledge but I will link you to one random site that mentions it (there are many more) :

(http://www.todaysparent.com/toddler/sleep/article.jsp?content=20040210_105446_3120)

Here it states that "The release of acetylcholine in the brain switches on the furnace that fires dreaming". What happens with this neurotransmitter in deep sleep (also called low wave sleep)? Levels are significantly decreased. For example see:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/7/1795

Which mentions deep sleep and "the accompanying low levels of acetylcholine". I could give a more extensive amount of links that go into the matter, but the point is clear this far i hope. The deeper we go into deep sleep the less active this acetylcholine becomes. So when we are fully in delta wave deep sleep (brainwaves << 4Hz), there is no dreaming and no visuals, thus the visual cortex is not giving signals to our consciousness anymore. I and many others who can sustain lucidity during deep sleep have verified this. It is true that in the initial phase of deep sleep still some dreaming occurs. This is because brainwave activity overlaps, during the first stages of deep sleep there are still theta brainwaves (besides the delta waves), so dreaming is still possible although already diminished. When only delta waves remain, no dreaming whatsoever is possible and it is not possible to go into a RB style OBE.  
You can also not force yourself into a dream from pure delta sleep unless brainwave frequency goes back up again to theta and higher (this can go quite fast).

Also i have read an article that explicitly states that the visual cortex is deactivated but i havent found it back yet, but if I do I will most certainly post the link here.

Quote from: tombodenmann
Yes in RB view it should in fact be possible to have OBE's in deep sleep if that is not the case your viewpoint seems more logical, but remember. In RB's viewpoint LD and OBE are not the same, there are multiple copies of conscious possible, there is a dream mind and a copie of conscious having the OBE, So he probably would say that your experiments are done with your dream mind which can not operate in deep sleep but that OBE's are possible in deep sleep. Now one would need to do alot of experiments with brain wave monitoring and people that say they can differentiate between OBE and LD to see which viewpoint is true.

First of all this argument to me seems an elaborate invention to circumvent the logical and proved arguments I gave on dreaming in deep sleep. Perhaps your argument goes as follows: we are in normal sleep, we initiate RB type-OBE and thus a copy consciousness is released, and our original copy goes to deep sleep, thus proving that RB type-OBE during deep sleep is possible. Perhaps this is true, but my original argument is that according to RB it should be possible to initiate a RB type-OBE from within deep sleep, which it is not. Once in deep sleep, there is no way to go RB style OBE without going to higher brainwave levels (theta and higher). This fact does seem to point into the direction of my ideas.

Quote from: tombodenmann
OBE's hard to achieve cause they need deep trance

You dismiss my entire argument in that section by saying the above. Feel free to think so, but RB type-OBE's are extremely easy to initiate compared to NDE-OBE and astral wandering. And yes it does take a deep trance to get there, but getting into a deep trance is not so hard since we all do that each night when we sleep. Sleep and (lucid)dreams, from which a lot of RB type OBE's are initiated by many people including those on this forum.

Quote from: tombodenmann
...the Body is dead, which in RB view it means that the dream mind is gone and that alot of subtle energy is transfered from the physical body to the Astral body which gives him a lot more stability.

Looks to me as though he says here that his OBE's are initiated by the dream mind (thus the OBE's are dreams) and that at death indeed the whole spirit (all the subtle energy) leaves the body. I would agree with this.

Quote from: tombodenmann
well I'm confused. What does the brain do anyway? ....
... it is somehow strange for me to assume that the brain can do all this, the mind yes but the brain?

In my view, our consciousness (our mind) is the thinker, and is maintained, sustained and created by two things: our physical body and our spirit. Part of the spirit is the subconscious, which is largely responsible for creating dreams. To me it is not surprising at all that this combination can make us experience all kinds of stuff that we would not even consider possible before trying (being a flower or whatever).

Quote from: tombodenmann
People knowing nothing about OBE's and dreaming for years , suddenly report that they wake up floating above their bodys which lay in the bed. they get very scared and don not understand this at all, never the less it happens from time to time (I know alot of this people) No if We assume that OBe's are Dreams , we would this experiences all be so alike why should the brain suddenly simulate this which is really not like a dream were events happen usually like you expect them to happen (in a way, you are afraid and voila there is the monster...) but this experiences are completely against their expectations and alike, why does this happen i wonder.

First of all in our dreams a lot of unexpected stuff happens all the time, but it depends ofcourse also on what you would call "unexpected". I for one would certainly say that some things that happen in my dreams are quite unexpected by me. Also, we dream about many things during our lives. What if we would ever unexpectedly dream of seeing ourselves in our bed? This would be a shock to anyone, and could probably explain why it would happen again to these persons. Given the huge amount of people on earth and the huge amount of stuff they dream of, it would not be impossible that these natural "OBE's" occur randomly once in a while by accident.

Oh and Catmeow, i will look into these articles as soon as i have more time and see what i can come up with.

Still being nice, I salute you all.

Hi Tom

Quote from: tombodenmannDon't you work  o.k. I'm a student too (Physics), so I'll take some time to reply.

Tee hee.....   Yes Tom, I do work and am very busy, and this is eating into my free time!!

Quote from: tombodenmannIf I sound rude it is cause my English is not good enough. I apologize.

No need to apologize, when I was talking about being rude I actually wasn't referring to you.  And btw your English is much better than my Swiss (and Xetrov's English is much better than my Dutch!)

Quote from: tombodenmannNo I don't understand that. Do mean you have both LD and OBE and that they are not the same thing? If you say NDE's you don't mean NDE right?

I have had many thousands of LD's.  Of those thousands only a few have seemed, perhaps real enough to classify as OBE's.  I believe that LD and OBE are different.  You have actually prompted me to look up LD in RB's book, and I think my position on this in fact is very close to RB's, I'll explain this a little later.  But I DO think it is important to distinguish between LD and OOB and this is what many people on this board don't appear to do.

I consider NDE to be a type of OBE.  From what I've read and heard about NDE, it does appear to be a "real" experience, as opposed to LD which (IMO) is a subjective fantasy experience.

So I distinguish three experiences:

LD = subjective, fantasy, "dream" experience
OBE = objective, real experience
NDE = objective, real experience (?)

Quote from: tombodenmannSo you believe that OBE can happen without NDE then?

Absolutely.  This is where I suspect I disagree with Xetrov.

Quote from: tombodenmannHave you ever heard of shared dreaming. there are actually people on this board that say they can enter other peoples dreams. It also seems to be possible to perceive real world things . For example native Americans searched for Prey during LD.

Yes, I have experienced this myself.  The best was a dream I shared with my mother.  This was an LD which I initiated via my normal "exit" procedure.  I travelled to my mother's home and met her there.  I did a few tricks like walking through walls and floating around.  Later when I woke up I phoned her to discover she was in a state of shock.  She had had EXACTLY the same dream as me (at the same time) and was sure I must have died, since the dream was so strange.  

But to me, this experience felt like a dream.  It did not feel real.  I explain it as LD with ESP.  It was an internal subjective experience, but shared with my mother via ESP.

Quote from: tombodenmannNow you are aware that Xetrov believes LD =OBE are you?

Well, I'm not clear on Xetrov's position here.  But it does sound like he argues that LD=OBE?

Quote from: tombodenmannI would like your inability to see 3D while out of body. As from all I read I would conclude that it is very well possible for you to see 3D when out of body but as long as you believe you can't and search for a way to do it it won't happen. This is just my theorie though, maybe I'm completely wrong.

To be honest I haven't actively sought 3D vision whilst LD'ing.  I've just noticed (each time) that when I LD I have exactly the same vision impairment that I have physically.  It's possible that my preconceptions are limiting my 3D ability, but I honestly don't feel that's the limiting factor.

Regarding LD, RB talks in great detail about this in chapter 23, and in fact his position is identical to mine.  On p323:

Quote from: Robert BruceAs the physical body and mind fall asleep, a copy of consciousness is reflected into the etheric body, and from there into the projectable double as it is generated, and later into the astral and higher subtle bodies.  While this is happening, the physical/etheric copy of the mind begins sliding toward another type of projection, an internal projection into the dream environment

This is exactly my position.  Whilst we LD, we are using a type of consciousness which is still bound to ("residing in" if you like) the physical body.  RB actually mentions the term "physical/etheric" body.  This is an old Theosophical (Eastern tradition) concept.  The "etheric" double is supposed to be a type of ultra-gaseous physical double.  It's the physical "aura" if you like.  But I digress.

So we have a copy of physical/etheric consciousness which is "dreaming" in an "internal" (fantasy) world, and at the same time we have a copy of astral consciousness which is having an "external" (real) experience in the astral world.   When the OBE finishes, the memory of the OBE is lost because this memory fails to re-integrate back into the physical consciousness.  So all we remember is the "dream" experience, rather than the real astral experience.   In my case this is an LD, because I am conscious during my dreams.

I believe that this is the rule, rather than the exception.  Most people remember their LD rather than the accompanying OBE, because their "memory download" fails.  It's VERY difficult to achieve a complete "memory download".  That's why it's very difficult to achieve a real, perfectly remembered OBE.  Instead we remember the LD and mistake it for the OBE.

So all I'm saying is to be more critical of your experience.  If it seems like a dream, it probably is.  As I said in an earlier post, there is plenty of research into LD and OBE and the differences are:

LD:  Low level of consciousness, poor memory, low critical faculty, many fantasy elements, tendency to slip back into a normal dream, low sense of "reality", impaired senses, etc

OBE: Heightened level of consciousness, often described as "expanded consciousness", no or few fantasy elements, sensation of "utter reality", heightened perception, sometimes 360 degree vision, additional senses, communication via telepathy etc

Quote from: tombodenmannHow do you manage to get all this LD anyway?

Ever since the age of about 15 I started to practice LD.  I can now do it just about at will, but only really in the morning when I wake up.  I go through an "exit" procedure, pretty much identical to an OBE "exit" procedure, but I end up with (IMO) an LD not an OBE.   It's very difficult to do this at night, going to sleep because I just fall asleep.

I'm fairly certain that I'm active "astrally" pretty much every night, because my astral experiences reflect into my dreams which are usually of flying, swimming, running effortlessly great distances, leaping effortlessly, skiing, spinning, moving at high speed in various different ways.  These dreams all have a very special quality which distinguishes them from ordinary dreams.  Quite often I just float around in my dreams, and then I realise I'm dreaming (because I'm floating).  But as I say, these are all "physical/etheric" memories.  The actual astral memory is lost when I wake up.

Xetrov: likewise, I'll read your links in greater detail when I get time!

:D
catmeow

@Xetrov

Hi again

I must say, as your viewpoint becomes more clear to me I see that I agree with you on must parts, definitions seem to be the main Problem.

QuoteYou put words  into my mouth i didn't use. Of course not all of Bruce's ideas are wrong! Anyway, good idea, i might ask this question to him on the QA section By

I didn't mean to say you said that. I would enjoy reading your questions on the QA-section, I have been active there too.

Quoteagree totally. Since the experiences in the astral while the body is alive are processed by the active physical brain too (Clark has some interesting idea on this by the way), physical limitations should have some influence on our astral perception while we are alive. I say this is because, while our spirit is connected to a physical body, our perception and awareness is both influenced by the physical body (sensory input, for one, processed by the brain before it enters our awareness) and by our spirit. So we see that there is a difference between perception in a NDE-OBE and in a RB type-OBE, differences caused by the fact that during the first we are really out of our bodies and perceiving the astral through our astral senses entirely, while during the latter we are not out of body and perceiving any astrally related information through ESP, thereby also processing the information through our physical brain. That is why I say we are not really 'placed' in the astral in the first place during a RB type OBE, since if we were we would be in a NDE (spirit leaving physical body), which is clearly not the case since brain activity stays normal and the heart keeps beating regularly.

From me personal experience I would conclude that the experience itself is not so much limited but the ability to remember after waking up is in fact limited by our physical body.

QuoteClearly it looks as if NDE-OBE and RB type OBE are two totally different phenomena? You said yourself that as long as the physical body is alive the Astral experiences are limited, and yet you claim that your spirit has left the body at RB type OBE. How can these experiences be limited, if we are totally free? Being totally free clearly negates the limitations, which happens in NDE-OBE. Why are these limitations then still in place with a RB style OBE?

Well in this area I think we still have some misunderstandings. Being really out of body and being totally free, why should they belong together? I mean you now really sit in front of your computer, does that mean you are completely free? I don't associate Out of body with being totally free.

I think we neglected the most important factor of our discussion which is:
What is "You" what is "Self" what is "Spirit"? the question whether we really leave our body is dependent on this definitions. If we do not understand the same thing as "Self" we never will be able to reach common ground. In my view "Self" is conscious, awayness, there for I actually would say: when I sit on a bench daydreaming of my girlfriend I'm out of my body. This may sound odd, but it is a matter of viewpoint.

Now, how do you define "Self" or "spirit" ? Do you believe in a solid entity which could be labeled "soul" or maybe you say "self" is "all your memory, your awayness, your physical body and your current conscious"  then of course you can only really leave your body when dead. You see this question is I believe the most important. If we discuss whether or not one leaves his body we have to know exactly what we mean by "YOU", What are "YOU"?
If I had realized that point earlier I would have brought it up and saved us some time, sorry about that.

QuoteHere you touch upon a very delicate point. I know it could be interpreted as demeaning when i say, no we aren't really free out of our body. I would most likely feel exactly the same way as all of you when i was in your position. But so what if the experience would be "limited" because of the fact that its partly generated by the physical brain? So what if that does limit the scope of it? Really, there is still so much interesting stuff to explore and experience before you in the end will be able to go into an NDE-OBE. All the experiences posted on this forum,all the experiences of all the members here show this to be true. Also I have not said  that no "true" astral exploring can take place, since you can still perceive it through different ways, for one by ESP and by feeling the astral around you (energy, entities, whatever). To really grow spiritually and to expand your consciousness and your love from within yourself, you have to be patient.

I'm glad to see that we agree here.

QuoteIt isnt for nothing that Bardon's followers and Yogi's train themselves for ages and ages before they can really at last leave their physical bodies.

this comes back to the defition of "leave body" I guess

QuoteYet it seems  to be a characteristic of most contemporary western spiritual movements to get the most results as fast as possible, which is understandable because we are curious to explore!  But spirituality isnt fast food (no insult intended at anyone here). We should not lean on our desires (to advance as fast as possible) when explaining our experiences, doing so will only hold us back. You know, I do not say that I have to be right per se in my ideas, but at least it provides a congruent alternative viewpoint which all of you should consider carefully, and not dismiss right away because it would not at once meet with your current desires.

This is indeed true I'll think about it.

QuoteI will show you the logic behind the argument I gave, why the visual cortex is inactive during deep sleep so no RB style OBE's take place. Besides from experience this argument goes as follows: dreams are initiated during normal / REM sleep by the neurotransmitter acetylcholine. This is common knowledge but I will link you to one random site that mentions it (there are many more) :

(http://www.todaysparent.com/toddler/sleep/article.jsp?content=20040210_105446_3120)

Here it states that "The release of acetylcholine in the brain switches on the furnace that fires dreaming". What happens with this neurotransmitter in deep sleep (also called low wave sleep)? Levels are significantly decreased. For example see:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/101/7/1795

Which mentions deep sleep and "the accompanying low levels of acetylcholine". I could give a more extensive amount of links that go into the matter, but the point is clear this far i hope. The deeper we go into deep sleep the less active this acetylcholine becomes. So when we are fully in delta wave deep sleep (brainwaves << 4Hz), there is no dreaming and no visuals, thus the visual cortex is not giving signals to our consciousness anymore. I and many others who can sustain lucidity during deep sleep have verified this. It is true that in the initial phase of deep sleep still some dreaming occurs. This is because brainwave activity overlaps, during the first stages of deep sleep there are still theta brainwaves (besides the delta waves), so dreaming is still possible although already diminished. When only delta waves remain, no dreaming whatsoever is possible and it is not possible to go into a RB style OBE.  
You can also not force yourself into a dream from pure delta sleep unless brainwave frequency goes back up again to theta and higher (this can go quite fast).

This whole argument is based on the (possible false) premiss that the dream state must be present in the brain in order to experience OBE's. Thats why I said one had to do tests to explore this.
For example somebody that is very good in OBE staying outside the body until Brainwaves indicate "No dreams" then a Physical sign is revealed and then the person must describe this after he woke up. But this kind of experiments are way too hard to do.

QuoteFirst of all this argument to me seems an elaborate invention to circumvent the logical and proved arguments I gave on dreaming in deep sleep. Perhaps your argument goes as follows: we are in normal sleep, we initiate RB type-OBE and thus a copy consciousness is released, and our original copy goes to deep sleep, thus proving that RB type-OBE during deep sleep is possible. Perhaps this is true, but my original argument is that according to RB it should be possible to initiate a RB type-OBE from within deep sleep, which it is not. Once in deep sleep, there is no way to go RB style OBE without going to higher brainwave levels (theta and higher). This fact does seem to point into the direction of my ideas.

Were did RB state it is possible to induce a OBE during deep sleep? I wouldn't be surprised if your viewpoint is true, but don't see the relevance for our argument whether we can leave our body our not. You yourself say:
"we are in normal sleep, we initiate RB type-OBE and thus a copy consciousness is released, and our original copy goes to deep sleep, thus proving that RB type-OBE during deep sleep is possible. Perhaps this is true"
Thats all I'm saying.

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmann
OBE's hard to achieve cause they need deep trance

You dismiss my entire argument in that section by saying the above. Feel free to think so, but RB type-OBE's are extremely easy to initiate compared to NDE-OBE and astral wandering. And yes it does take a deep trance to get there, but getting into a deep trance is not so hard since we all do that each night when we sleep. Sleep and (lucid)dreams, from which a lot of RB type OBE's are initiated by many people including those on this forum.

Well what I meant is that OBE's (from "waking" via vibrations are harder to achieve then LD's during night) which is true for the majority of people.

Quote

."..the Body is dead, which in RB view it means that the dream mind is gone and that alot of subtle energy is transfered from the physical body to the Astral body which gives him a lot more stability."

Looks to me as though he says here that his OBE's are initiated by the dream mind (thus the OBE's are dreams) and that at death indeed the whole spirit (all the subtle energy) leaves the body. I would agree with this.

No not exactly. The dream mind is gone therefore it no longer affects the OBe-mind, which it usually does, when active, meaning that the memory's of the copies get mixed up, which sounds a bit odd to me as well, I must say.By the way I realized that catmeow basically shares my viewpoint so maybe He/She can explain better.
The dream-mind and the Obe-mind are however two separate things the OBe-mind is not sustained by the dream mind (In RB-view as I understand it). At death  a lot of subtle energy transfers to the Astralbody, giving him a lot of stability and clarity. However this can also be done while still alive if one trains this.

QuoteFirst of all in our dreams a lot of unexpected stuff happens all the time, but it depends of course also on what you would call "unexpected". I for one would certainly say that some things that happen in my dreams are quite unexpected by me. Also, we dream about many things during our lives. What if we would ever unexpectedly dream of seeing ourselves in our bed? This would be a shock to anyone, and could probably explain why it would happen again to these persons. Given the huge amount of people on earth and the huge amount of stuff they dream of, it would not be impossible that these natural "OBE's" occur randomly once in a while by accident.

This is possible but I don't think it is true.

@catmoew

QuoteTee hee.....   Yes Tom, I do work and am very busy, and this is eating into my free time!!

Yes indeed! So I'll try to write short.

QuoteAnd btw your English is much better than my Swiss (and Xetrov's English is much better than my Dutch!)

Hehe, don't hesistate to try though...

QuoteI consider NDE to be a type of OBE.  From what I've read and heard about NDE, it does appear to be a "real" experience, as opposed to LD which (IMO) is a subjective fantasy experience.

So I distinguish three experiences:

LD = subjective, fantasy, "dream" experience
OBE = objective, real experience
NDE = objective, real experience (?)

Well your viewpoint with the merging states is close to mine, how would you define the line between LD abd OBE, How do you recognize it yourself when having the experience?

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmannSo you believe that OBE can happen without NDE then?

Absolutely.  This is where I suspect I disagree with Xetrov.

Yes indeed, thats what I meant when I said you have conflicting viewpoints, but enough of that.

QuoteYes, I have experienced this myself.  The best was a dream I shared with my mother.  This was an LD which I initiated via my normal "exit" procedure.  I travelled to my mother's home and met her there.  I did a few tricks like walking through walls and floating around.  Later when I woke up I phoned her to discover she was in a state of shock.  She had had EXACTLY the same dream as me (at the same time) and was sure I must have died, since the dream was so strange.  

But to me, this experience felt like a dream.  It did not feel real.  I explain it as LD with ESP.  It was an internal subjective experience, but shared with my mother via ESP.

Interesting I gave some comments on the problems of definitions in the reply to Xetrov. What do you mean by subjective and objective?

QuoteRegarding LD, RB talks in great detail about this in chapter 23, and in fact his position is identical to mine.  On p323:

Quote from: Robert BruceAs the physical body and mind fall asleep, a copy of consciousness is reflected into the etheric body, and from there into the projectable double as it is generated, and later into the astral and higher subtle bodies.  While this is happening, the physical/etheric copy of the mind begins sliding toward another type of projection, an internal projection into the dream environment

This is exactly my position.  Whilst we LD, we are using a type of consciousness which is still bound to ("residing in" if you like) the physical body.  RB actually mentions the term "physical/etheric" body.  This is an old Theosophical (Eastern tradition) concept.  The "etheric" double is supposed to be a type of ultra-gaseous physical double.  It's the physical "aura" if you like.  But I digress.

Well fine I have not enoughexperience to say much on this

QuoteSo we have a copy of physical/etheric consciousness which is "dreaming" in an "internal" (fantasy) world, and at the same time we have a copy of astral consciousness which is having an "external" (real) experience in the astral world.   When the OBE finishes, the memory of the OBE is lost because this memory fails to re-integrate back into the physical consciousness.  So all we remember is the "dream" experience, rather than the real astral experience.   In my case this is an LD, because I am conscious during my dreams.

Hmmm I sense that you demean alittle the LD-experience itself, There are very good books on this for example "Dreamgates" by Robert Moss

QuoteSo all I'm saying is to be more critical of your experience.  If it seems like a dream, it probably is.  As I said in an earlier post, there is plenty of research into LD and OBE and the differences are:

LD:  Low level of consciousness, poor memory, low critical faculty, many fantasy elements, tendency to slip back into a normal dream, low sense of "reality", impaired senses, etc

OBE: Heightened level of consciousness, often described as "expanded consciousness", no or few fantasy elements, sensation of "utter reality", heightened perception, sometimes 360 degree vision, additional senses, communication via telepathy etc

But there seems to be a very thin red line between them, which nobody can really gasp.

QuoteEver since the age of about 15 I started to practice LD.

How?

QuoteI'm fairly certain that I'm active "astrally" pretty much every night, because my astral experiences reflect into my dreams which are usually of flying, swimming, running effortlessly great distances, leaping effortlessly, skiing, spinning, moving at high speed in various different ways.  These dreams all have a very special quality which distinguishes them from ordinary dreams.  Quite often I just float around in my dreams, and then I realize I'm dreaming (because I'm floating).  But as I say, these are all "physical/etheric" memories.  The actual astral memory is lost when I wake up.

other LD-dreamers said to me that if I would Try to remember my OBE's during LD's the memory would easily come, maybe You should try this, I haven't so far.

Cheers Tom

Hey Tom thanks for your reply it has made some point clear to me. You are correct in the following:

Quote from: tombodenmann
Well in this area I think we still have some misunderstandings. Being really out of body and being totally free, why should they belong together? I mean you now really sit in front of your computer, does that mean you are completely free? I don't associate Out of body with being totally free.

I think we neglected the most important factor of our discussion which is:
What is "You" what is "Self" what is "Spirit"? the question whether we really leave our body is dependent on this definitions. If we do not understand the same thing as "Self" we never will be able to reach common ground. In my view "Self" is conscious, awayness, there for I actually would say: when I sit on a bench daydreaming of my girlfriend I'm out of my body. This may sound odd, but it is a matter of viewpoint.

Now, how do you define "Self" or "spirit" ? Do you believe in a solid entity which could be labeled "soul" or maybe you say "self" is "all your memory, your awayness, your physical body and your current conscious" then of course you can only really leave your body when dead. You see this question is I believe the most important. If we discuss whether or not one leaves his body we have to know exactly what we mean by "YOU", What are "YOU"?
If I had realized that point earlier I would have brought it up and saved us some time, sorry about that.

Ok I will try to explain my view on this as clear as possible. First of all I strongly suspect there is more to our consciousness then a mere physical body. ESP, near death experiences, working with energy etc show to me that most likely there is a duality: a physical body and connected to it, the spirit. With that last word I mean the entire collection of non physical substance (not (yet) explained by science), that exists as part of an individual. It would be interesting indeed to know for sure what this exactly is. Is it like Bruce claims, possible to separate different "bodies" and thereby transferring different "copies" of consciousness into multiple bodies? To me, consciousness (and indeed the body-spirit system generating our consciousness also) is an integrated whole and not dividable into different parts that seem to lose connection to each other, as Bruce says. I do agree that splitting consciousness is possible (as in ESP, remote sensing), but when you do this all parts of consciousness stay linked together (it stays integrated as one whole), so what actually happens is we are expanding our consciousness beyond its ordinary physical boundaries.  That is also why I do not call the Bruce OBE's 'real' OBE's because consciousness stays integrated and at all times linked to the physical body. To me an out of body experience is the equivalent of a NDE because here the entire spirit is set free of the physical body, and set free in the astral (which does not happen at RB type OBE, you are "merely" sensing  the astral here. Its like being in a house with windows looking at the astral outside, you are still linked to the house (physical body)).

That said I can, however, imagine the following viewpoint of the people here: when going into a RB type OBE we clearly (certainly those who are quite advanced at it) experience "astral phenomena" (By ESP, but what exactly "astral phenomena" are and what matters fall under this definition, is a new discussion again).So if we experience astral phenomena and these are not part of our physical bodies, then we clearly experience something from beyond our body, thus labeling the experience OBE. Besides this, if we define OBE as the following (as a lot of people seem to do here) "any moment where our consciousness is not aware of our physical body and/or its current local surroundings", then indeed a RB type OBE definitely classifies as OBE. It has already been said that in this case we are almost always out of our bodies or perhaps even never really "in" there at the first place. To me however being in the body means that our consciousness is connected to and/or generated by it.

Imagine the following theoretical situation however: as human beings we keep evolving, our awareness and consciousness of ourselves and of the universe keeps growing (a likely possibility i think). When this happens there will be a point when your definition of OBE will be no longer of relevance, since our awareness by then always includes our physical body and our physical location. Well just a thought anyway....

Quote from: tombodenmann
This whole argument is based on the (possible false) premiss that the dream state must be present in the brain in order to experience OBE's. Thats why I said one had to do tests to explore this.
For example somebody that is very good in OBE staying outside the body until Brainwaves indicate "No dreams" then a Physical sign is revealed and then the person must describe this after he woke up. But this kind of experiments are way too hard to do.

Would be a very nice test to perform indeed, and i strongly believe the premiss isn't false. If evidence would show the contrary however, I will yield and admit that all of you are right after all :)

Quote from: tombodenmann
Were did RB state it is possible to induce a OBE during deep sleep? I wouldn't be surprised if your viewpoint is true, but don't see the relevance for our argument whether we can leave our body our not.

I think our disagreement here stems again from our differences on what OBE is, I hope this is cleared up by now. But still i don't see why a RB type OBE would not be possible in deep sleep if what Bruce says is true. However if I am right it (strongly, I think) points to the idea that LD + ESP can explain all RB type OBE. Perhaps I could ask Bruce's opinion of this matter and see what he comes up with.

Quote from: tombodenmann
....how would you define the line between LD and OBE, How do you recognize it yourself when having the experience?

I would be extremely interested in knowing how any of you know the difference for sure. Perhaps it is a sliding scale indeed, but what then is needed to classify an experience as an OBE?

Oh and Hi, Catmeow. I have a small question for you too:

Quote from: catmeow
I'm fairly certain that I'm active "astrally" pretty much every night, because my astral experiences reflect into my dreams which are usually of flying, swimming, running effortlessly great distances, leaping effortlessly, skiing, spinning, moving at high speed in various different ways. These dreams all have a very special quality which distinguishes them from ordinary dreams. Quite often I just float around in my dreams, and then I realise I'm dreaming (because I'm floating). But as I say, these are all "physical/etheric" memories. The actual astral memory is lost when I wake up.

This is purely speculation in my opinion. How could you ever know that ordinary dreams and those special dreams don't have the same source (possibly subconscious)? Why does it have to do anything with being "astrally active" (what do  you mean by this?) I have those kind of special dreams too all the time and I don't even consider them to be special anymore (although i do still enjoy them a lot). I'm just curious as to how you see these matters.

Well so far this (short...?..) reply of mine :)

Hi!

QuoteI would be extremely interested in knowing how any of you know the difference for sure.

All of my out of body experiences have so far been into what is called the RTZ (Real Time Zone) below are a some of the symptoms and attributes that I feel separate this experience from a dream for me:

Precursors to the projection are clear crisp sounds that resemble ripping Velcro and a sound similar to somebody walking on a gravel path - I experience sounds in my dreams but these are quite unlike the above and do not share their clarity.

I always exit through my head - I never experience this strange phenomenon when I dream.

I always have the same dimensions out of body, which are about the size of a tennis ball - In the dream state my body feels as if it has the same dimensions as it does in the physical, although on occasion this can change.

I always project into my bedroom - I rarely have dreams about my bedroom and when I do they are never as clear and vivid nor as simple and ordinary as when I leave my body. Another note here is that I have had an RTZ projection whilst staying away from home in a hotel, I projected out of body directly into the room in which I was staying.

Awareness and sensitivity to my environment is extremely heightened in all aspects - Although I experience my senses in the dream state they seem dulled in comparison to when I am out of the body.

Projection ends with a blackout - My dreams either tend to merge or fade into the next or I awake naturally after a REM/Dream cycle.

I suppose one could argue that an experience with characteristics of the above could be said to be a 'special kind of recurring dream' with very specific qualities.

I have had lucid dreams where I have projected too, these dreams served as a good comparison to what I would call my true RTZ experiences. The lucid dream projections shared all of the characteristics of a real projection but were much more toned down and felt false and a weak copy in contrast.

In these lucid dream projections it's almost as if I am applying my own interpretation of how I feel the projection experience should follow rather than experiencing the associated phenomena as a separate accompaniment to the true experience. The lucid dream projections also took place in locations other than my bedroom, these locations were vague and unfamiliar and very dream like.

I feel that dreams always serve a purpose of some kind, but when I project I tend to just sit in my tennis ball like form near my head, feet or in another part of the room in the quiet and just peacfully observe, this is quite unlike my dreams and is a very conscious experience.

I feel that I know the difference between the two for sure mainly through having the experience itself, I wish I could share that feeling with others but unfortunately I can't  :( .

Cheers

S

Hi Sampson

Quote from: SampsonThe lucid dream projections shared all of the characteristics of a real projection but were much more toned down and felt false and a weak copy in contrast.

In these lucid dream projections it's almost as if I am applying my own interpretation of how I feel the projection experience should follow rather than experiencing the associated phenomena as a separate accompaniment to the true experience. The lucid dream projections also took place in locations other than my bedroom, these locations were vague and unfamiliar and very dream like.

Precisely.  I believe you are having genuine RTZ projections into your bedroom and you can tell the difference between LD and OBE.  As I said before, if it feels like a dream it probably IS a dream.  If it feels real it probably IS real.  Dreams and OBE are different experiences, we should be aware of that!  IMO LD is a private reality, whilst OBE is a public reality - a true reality!

Thanks for your input!
Good look with the RTZ projections!
:D
catmeow

Quote from: SampsonHi!

QuoteI would be extremely interested in knowing how any of you know the difference for sure.

All of my out of body experiences have so far been into what is called the RTZ (Real Time Zone) below are a some of the symptoms and attributes that I feel separate this experience from a dream for me:

Precursors to the projection are clear crisp sounds that resemble ripping Velcro and a sound similar to somebody walking on a gravel path - I experience sounds in my dreams but these are quite unlike the above and do not share their clarity.

I always exit through my head - I never experience this strange phenomenon when I dream.

I always have the same dimensions out of body, which are about the size of a tennis ball - In the dream state my body feels as if it has the same dimensions as it does in the physical, although on occasion this can change.

I always project into my bedroom - I rarely have dreams about my bedroom and when I do they are never as clear and vivid nor as simple and ordinary as when I leave my body. Another note here is that I have had an RTZ projection whilst staying away from home in a hotel, I projected out of body directly into the room in which I was staying.

Awareness and sensitivity to my environment is extremely heightened in all aspects - Although I experience my senses in the dream state they seem dulled in comparison to when I am out of the body.

Projection ends with a blackout - My dreams either tend to merge or fade into the next or I awake naturally after a REM/Dream cycle.

I suppose one could argue that an experience with characteristics of the above could be said to be a 'special kind of recurring dream' with very specific qualities.

I have had lucid dreams where I have projected too, these dreams served as a good comparison to what I would call my true RTZ experiences. The lucid dream projections shared all of the characteristics of a real projection but were much more toned down and felt false and a weak copy in contrast.

In these lucid dream projections it's almost as if I am applying my own interpretation of how I feel the projection experience should follow rather than experiencing the associated phenomena as a separate accompaniment to the true experience. The lucid dream projections also took place in locations other than my bedroom, these locations were vague and unfamiliar and very dream like.

I feel that dreams always serve a purpose of some kind, but when I project I tend to just sit in my tennis ball like form near my head, feet or in another part of the room in the quiet and just peacfully observe, this is quite unlike my dreams and is a very conscious experience.

I feel that I know the difference between the two for sure mainly through having the experience itself, I wish I could share that feeling with others but unfortunately I can't  :( .

Cheers

S

Nice Post, I do not have much time right now to reply.

Sampson would you mind copie your post and post it again in the following thread in the dream forum, I started? It would fit perfectly there too, especially in reply to Paker7. Thanks
http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15487

Hi Everyone!

QuoteGood look with the RTZ projections!

Thanks catmeow!  :wink:

QuoteSampson would you mind copie your post and post it again in the following thread in the dream forum, I started? It would fit perfectly there too, especially in reply to Paker7. Thanks

Hi tombodenmann! I have copied my post over to your thread in the dream forum as you requested.

Cheers

S

Hi Tom

This is getting tough!  I'm sorry but I missed your reply to my post...  not sure how, but I did... so here are some answers:

Quote from: tombodenmann

Quote from: catmeowAnd btw your English is much better than my Swiss (and Xetrov's English is much better than my Dutch!)

Hehe, don't hesistate to try though...

Not a chance! lol

Quote from: tombodenmann[Well your viewpoint with the merging states is close to mine, how would you define the line between LD abd OBE, How do you recognize it yourself when having the experience?

That's tough.  In the RTZ I think it's probably simpler, because you can check your immediate environment with what it really should look like.  This is an especially good test if you go outside into the street, make some observations and then come back and wake up.  You can then compare these observations with what is really going on in the street, eg did you see the cars parked there properly? was the weather correct? etc

Most of my experiences fail this test, ie there is simply too much fantasy for me to consider them to be real experiences, so I assume these are just an internal dream experience.  Only occasionally has there been a good correlation.  On these occasions, the experiences also felt much more realistic, than in the other cases.  So these would perhaps be OBE's and the rest were LD's.

If the LD/OBE is in an unknown environment then this test can not be performed.  In this case we can only rely upon our own feelings, ie whether it feels real or dreamlike, whether we slip in and out of dream consciousness, how critically is our mind working, how complete are our faculties, our memory etc.

Quote from: tombodenmannInteresting I gave some comments on the problems of definitions in the reply to Xetrov. What do you mean by subjective and objective?

I'm glad you asked that!

My definition of subjective is "private" and objective is "public".  In other words a subjective experience is a personal, private experience, not shared by others, occuring in a private reality.  On the other hand an objective experience is a public experience, occurring in some sort of shared or concensus reality.   There has to be a very strong degree of concensus for something to be classified as "objective", in other words a lot of people have to share the experience, not just two (as in the dream I shared with my mother).

The physical world is truly objective, since we all agree on it.  By and large our dreams are subjective because we tend not to share them with anyone.  Occasionally two people may share a dream, but this can be explained as two private dreams linked together by ESP.  So a shared dream like this would probably rate as "subjective" by my definition, because it isn't shared by everyone.

Quote from: tombodenmannHmmm I sense that you demean alittle the LD-experience itself, There are very good books on this for example "Dreamgates" by Robert Moss

Yes, maybe I do demean it a little, I'll get his book and read it! (I will)

Quote from: tombodenmannBut there seems to be a very thin red line between them, which nobody can really gasp.

Yes, it's a difficult area.

Quote from: tombodenmann

Quote from: catmeowEver since the age of about 15 I started to practice LD.

How?

It sounds odd, but I did this by reading, reading, reading....  I became so obsessed by LD and OBE that I read every book I could find on it.  When you live, eat and breathe a subject it stays with you day and night.  So when I went to sleep and started to dream I would just become lucid automatically.  Not every night but perhaps once or twice a week.  I just developed this conditioned reflex.  

I also had other techniques.  The most successful was (and still is) to catch myself waking up in the morning, and then simply go back to sleep, but remain lucid.  Once again, to do this you have to train yourself to wake up slowly.  It's no good if bang! you wake up suddenly and are fully alert.  You have to wake up slowly and become aware in the "mind awake body asleep" state.  You can then enter the LD state easily.

Strangely, by far the easiest way (for me) to do this is to go through an "exit" procedure, ie to imagine myself floating into the air and then landing on the floor.  When I used to do this the only sense I had at this time was one of movement.  After landing I would feel for the wall behind me, then feel for my bedroom door.  I would then actually open the door and step out of my bedroom.  At this point I usually obtained full vision, hearing and all the other senses.  Nowadays I can actually see whilst I float up to the ceiling.  It's a very curious sensation.  I have several other "exit" techniques to use if this one fails.

I must admit that it is curious that the best way for me to get into an LD is to use an OBE exit technique, but this is the case.  And yet I claim that this leads to an LD rather than an OBE!  But to me the resulting experience is too fantasy-laden to classify as "real".  Well usually that is.  It's still a great experience though.  I do think the reason for this is incomplete memory recollection ("memory download" - RB) as described in my earlier post.

Quote from: tombodenmannother LD-dreamers said to me that if I would Try to remember my OBE's during LD's the memory would easily come, maybe You should try this, I haven't so far.

That's an interesting idea, I'll give it a try!

It's VERY late here in the UK, I'm tired....! :roll:
catmeow

Reply to Xetrov

QuoteOk I will try to explain my view on this as clear as possible. First of all I strongly suspect there is more to our consciousness then a mere physical body. ESP, near death experiences, working with energy etc show to me that most likely there is a duality: a physical body and connected to it, the spirit.
With that last word I mean the entire collection of non physical substance (not (yet) explained by science), that exists as part of an individual. It would be interesting indeed to know for sure what this exactly is.

A lot of native religions actually work with 3 Parts: Body, Spirit, Soul, just a thought.....

QuoteIs it like Bruce claims, possible to separate different "bodies" and thereby transferring different "copies" of consciousness into multiple bodies? To me, consciousness (and indeed the body-spirit system generating our consciousness also) is an integrated whole and not dividable into different parts that seem to lose connection to each other, as Bruce says. I do agree that splitting consciousness is possible (as in ESP, remote sensing), but when you do this all parts of consciousness stay linked together (it stays integrated as one whole), so what actually happens is we are expanding our consciousness beyond its ordinary physical boundaries.

From what I know this seems not to be the case (unfortunately), at least not if we assume the Mind-split-effect to be real. Now, I havent experienced it, but I guess there are people here on the board that have.
If this is true, then you cannot say that conscious just expands cause that would mean you must be conscious of all "parts" of it at the same time (by definition) which is not the case. If there are really multiple copies of conscious possible, operating at the same time, which are not aware of each other, then I would call it "a splitting of conscious" if that is not possible I would call it a "Expansion of conscious". However, I do not know how many people have experienced the mind-split-effect.

Although I would prefer an expansion of conscious, like you describe it, cause it sounds more "calming" If you put Soul into the equation one could come up with the following scenario:
Conscious, Spirit (like you defined it) and Body are generated by Soul. Spirit and Conscious can indeed split into apparently independent parts but the Soul this connected with all  this parts at anytime, So we in a way stay integrated as one whole like you said. Well just a thought anyway.

 

QuoteThat is also why I do not call the Bruce OBE's 'real' OBE's because consciousness stays integrated and at all times linked to the physical body.

o.k. I see. I, on the contrary, would still call it real, even if this is the case.

QuoteTo me an out of body experience is the equivalent of a NDE because here the entire spirit is set free of the physical body, and set free in the astral

Well but this would lead to a dangerous situation, somebody could kill you physically, you could get lost in the astral, other entities could take your body.....all this can only be prevented if there remains a connection between spirit and body.

QuoteThat said I can, however, imagine the following viewpoint of the people here: when going into a RB type OBE we clearly (certainly those who are quite advanced at it) experience "astral phenomena" (By ESP, but what exactly "astral phenomena" are and what matters fall under this definition, is a new discussion again).So if we experience astral phenomena and these are not part of our physical bodies, then we clearly experience something from beyond our body, thus labeling the experience OBE.

O.k. I can agree with that.

QuoteBesides this, if we define OBE as the following (as a lot of people seem to do here) "any moment where our consciousness is not aware of our physical body and/or its current local surroundings", then indeed a RB type OBE definitely classifies as OBE. It has already been said that in this case we are almost always out of our bodies or perhaps even never really "in" there at the first place. To me however being in the body means that our consciousness is connected to and/or generated by it.

No I don't think that this is labeled OBE since you are still aware of your physical body and don't perceive the eviroment with the feeling of being completely some were else. As soon as you do, though, I would label it as Obe.

QuoteImagine the following theoretical situation however: as human beings we keep evolving, our awareness and consciousness of ourselves and of the universe keeps growing (a likely possibility i think). When this happens there will be a point when your definition of OBE will be no longer of relevance, since our awareness by then always includes our physical body and our physical location. Well just a thought anyway....

If that would happen, the term Obe in the above definition would be pointless indeed. Won't happen anytime soon I guess  :wink:

QuoteI think our disagreement here stems again from our differences on what OBE is, I hope this is cleared up by now. But still i don't see why a RB type OBE would not be possible in deep sleep if what Bruce says is true

.

If Robert is right Obes in deep sleep should be possible BUT inducing Obes while in deep sleep don't have to be possible.

QuoteHowever if I am right it (strongly, I think) points to the idea that LD + ESP can explain all RB type OBE. Perhaps I could ask Bruce's opinion of this matter and see what he comes up with.

Please do

Cheers Tom

Reply to catmeow

QuoteHi Tom

This is getting tough!

I know!.........

QuoteI'm sorry but I missed your reply to my post...  not sure how

:cry:

Quote, but I did... so here are some answers:

Quote from: tombodenmann

Quote from: catmeowAnd btw your English is much better than my Swiss (and Xetrov's English is much better than my Dutch!)

Hehe, don't hesistate to try though...

Not a chance! lol

lol..Chuchichäschtli.....

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmann[Well your viewpoint with the merging states is close to mine, how would you define the line between LD abd OBE, How do you recognize it yourself when having the experience?

That's tough.  In the RTZ I think it's probably simpler, because you can check your immediate environment with what it really should look like.  This is an especially good test if you go outside into the street, make some observations and then come back and wake up.  You can then compare these observations with what is really going on in the street, eg did you see the cars parked there properly? was the weather correct? etc

O.k. I see. Now I wouldn't be so hard with myself; as soon as real things appear that I could verify afterward I would call it Obe. But I admit, that this is indeed a bad criterion. Now, have you ever experienced this completely stable Obe's were writings don't mutate nothing fades or suddenly appears and things turn out to be exactly in the real world as they appeared in the Obe. This would be a awesome experience which would indeed separate LD and Obe. unfortunately, from what I experienced and heard Obe's rarely ever are this way.  But if you have this kinds of Obes that would be quite something .

QuoteMost of my experiences fail this test, ie there is simply too much fantasy for me to consider them to be real experiences, so I assume these are just an internal dream experience.  Only occasionally has there been a good correlation.  On these occasions, the experiences also felt much more realistic, than in the other cases.  So these would perhaps be OBE's and the rest were LD's.

But wouldn't it probably be more correct to assume (like Robert does) that Obe's and dreams kind of mix. So it is usually neither a completely exterior nor a completely internal experience but a mixture?

QuoteMy definition of subjective is "private" and objective is "public".  In other words a subjective experience is a personal, private experience, not shared by others, occurring in a private reality.  On the other hand an objective experience is a public experience, occurring in some sort of shared or consensus reality.   There has to be a very strong degree of consensus for something to be classified as "objective", in other words a lot of people have to share the experience, not just two (as in the dream I shared with my mother).

o.k. I see. I actually would define a experience as (at least partly) objective as soon as other people (like your mother) confirm it. But I respect your viewpoint as well.

QuoteThe physical world is truly objective, since we all agree on it

.

Things are (unfortunately) not this simple (At least thats what they teached my in philosophy of science at the university) but this would be a long discussion again and I wanna save your free time :wink:

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmannHmmm I sense that you demean alittle the LD-experience itself, There are very good books on this for example "Dreamgates" by Robert Moss

Yes, maybe I do demean it a little, I'll get his book and read it! (I will)

I suppose you won't regret it. What do you do in all your LD anyway? I used to do fly around alittle do some experiments and well just do anything I guess. But as i now learn (from the book mentioned) there seem to be quite some useful things one can undertake when lucid. I will use my future LD's more carefully now. You are really a lucky person having these LD daily!

QuoteIt sounds odd, but I did this by reading, reading, reading....  I became so obsessed by LD and OBE that I read every book I could find on it.  When you live, eat and breathe a subject it stays with you day and night.  So when I went to sleep and started to dream I would just become lucid automatically.  Not every night but perhaps once or twice a week.  I just developed this conditioned reflex.  

I also had other techniques.  The most successful was (and still is) to catch myself waking up in the morning, and then simply go back to sleep, but remain lucid.  Once again, to do this you have to train yourself to wake up slowly.  It's no good if bang! you wake up suddenly and are fully alert.  You have to wake up slowly and become aware in the "mind awake body asleep" state.  You can then enter the LD state easily.

Nice, How can I learn to wake up slowly  :?

QuoteStrangely, by far the easiest way (for me) to do this is to go through an "exit" procedure, ie to imagine myself floating into the air and then landing on the floor.  When I used to do this the only sense I had at this time was one of movement.  After landing I would feel for the wall behind me, then feel for my bedroom door.  I would then actually open the door and step out of my bedroom.  At this point I usually obtained full vision, hearing and all the other senses.  Nowadays I can actually see whilst I float up to the ceiling.  It's a very curious sensation.  I have several other "exit" techniques to use if this one fails.

Cool...

QuoteI must admit that it is curious that the best way for me to get into an LD is to use an OBE exit technique, but this is the case.  And yet I claim that this leads to an LD rather than an OBE!

Funny indeed!

 

QuoteBut to me the resulting experience is too fantasy-laden to classify as "real".  Well usually that is.  It's still a great experience though.  I do think the reason for this is incomplete memory recollection ("memory download" - RB) as described in my earlier post.

This is interesting, So you would say, You have a Obe but fail to download the experience completely and therefore this demeans the Obe into a LD... hmm... I'm sure there is a way to improve that download process.

QuoteThat's an interesting idea, I'll give it a try!

Let me know what happens!

Cheers Tom

My most recent post here (I described a typical "OBE" in it as I experience them) somehow disappeared. I have noticed before that pieces of my post were gone. I hope noone is deleting anything deliberately? Perhaps the forum is lagging/glitching for more people and it was all coincidence? Well just very weird...  :(

Hi Xetrov

Quote from: XetrovMy most recent post here (I described a typical "OBE" in it as I experience them) somehow disappeared. I have noticed before that pieces of my post were gone. I hope noone is deleting anything deliberately? Perhaps the forum is lagging/glitching for more people and it was all coincidence? Well just very weird...

That's a shame I would have liked to have read it.

I don't suppose anyone is deleting your posts, it's probably just a glitch.  However just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're NOT out to get you! :D (I'm joking!) (I think)

I have learnt from bitter experience to keep a backup of all my posts as I type them, in a notebook.exe text file.  It's especially important to keep such a backup just before you hit the Submit button, because in my experience this is when glitches tend to occur, and you can lose a lot of work in an instant!  If this happens (and it does) and you have saved your post in a .txt file you can just cut-and-paste it back in again!

catmeow

Catmeow,

I posted the stuff alright, and I even looked at it afterwards, and even a day after it was still there. A friend of mine has read it too. So it did not dissapear at the moment of posting. I posted it right after sampson's post of Fri Dec 03, 2004 5:49 pm, and before your reply to him.

This happened 1 time exactly the same before, when just a few lines of text had been lost (deleted???) from one of my posts. I dont want to be paranoid but this is really weird, and something I never had on any other forum. Its a shame either way, if the forum isnt working right and randomly deleting (parts) of posts, or if someone is deleting it on purpose (did I violate any rules? would be nice to get some message if I did).

Anyway, weird.

Hoi tombodenmann!

(Look that's as good as it gets!)

Quote from: tombodenmannNow, have you ever experienced this completely stable Obe's were writings don't mutate nothing fades or suddenly appears and things turn out to be exactly in the real world as they appeared in the Obe. This would be a awesome experience which would indeed separate LD and Obe. unfortunately, from what I experienced and heard Obe's rarely ever are this way. But if you have this kinds of Obes that would be quite something .

Not really.  I've had experiences where everything looked exactly as in the physical, but these still seemed a little dream-like, so I would say that really I don't know.  I'm undecided about these particular "realistic" LD's/OBE's.  They do seem real, but I am not sure.

Quote from: tombodenmannHmmm I sense that you demean alittle the LD-experience itself, There are very good books on this for example "Dreamgates" by Robert Moss

Quote from: catmeowYes, maybe I do demean it a little, I'll get his book and read it! (I will)

I suppose you won't regret it.

Actually, I've just ordered the book...!

Quote from: tombodenmannWhat do you do in all your LD anyway?

Good question...  Actually I love to just explore the environment.  I will usually just set off flying across the countryside, and marvel at the detail and clarity, which is usually just mind-blowing.  I don't do anything in particular, I just enjoy the experience, especially the flying/floating part.  I'm a bit embarrassed that I don't do anything more spiritually significant... but hey! I just enjoy the experience!

Quote from: tombodenmannHow can I learn to wake up slowly

Hmmm.... Don't move.  That's the advice.  Don't move!  When you wake up in the morning don't move any part of your body, don't shift your position to get more comfortable.  Definitely don't open your eyes.  Don't even twitch your finger.  Also, don't think.  Don't start to analyse anything because you will engage your "critical faculty" and before you know it you will be wide awake.   Let yourself drift back to sleep.  When you begin to see hypnagogic imagery, this is the time to try an exit procedure.  There are many exit techniques, such as imagining floating up, rolling over, spinning (around a vertical axis), "beaming" across the room, using RB's "rope" technique.  Sometimes I find it useful to try to move my dream (astral?) arms and wave them in front of my face.  I can actually feel them moving and see "transparent" arms in front of me.  For some reason this is a useful stepping stone to a complete "exit".  Once you can move your dream (astral?) arms you will almost certainly succeed at an exit.  It's useful to try all of this at the weekend, when you can have several attempts at "waking up slowly".

If you try this, then probably the first time nothing will happen.  But if you keep trying over and over again it will work.

Quote from: tombodenmann

Quote from: catmeowBut to me the resulting experience is too fantasy-laden to classify as "real". Well usually that is. It's still a great experience though. I do think the reason for this is incomplete memory recollection ("memory download" - RB) as described in my earlier post.

This is interesting, So you would say, You have a Obe but fail to download the experience completely and therefore this demeans the Obe into a LD... hmm... I'm sure there is a way to improve that download process.

Absolutely.  I agree, and I've thought (for some time) that the key is to learn and practice RB's NEW energy methods.  But I'm a bit lazy and I haven't really had the time to apply his techniques.  But I do intend to do this.

I'll just quickly expand on what I suspect is happening with the "memory download".  I do think there are two copies of consciousness operating, one in the physical/etheric body and the other in the astral body.  When the atral returns to the physical body, there is some "combining" of the astral and physical/etheric memories.  The resulting combined memory may be perfect (and hence "utterly real"), imperfect (hence "dream-like") or somewhere in between.   Those people on this board (there are some) who describe their OBE's as "completely unlike" LD's have perfect download.

As you say there must be a way of perfecting the download!

Cheers! :lol:
catmeow

Hi Xetrov

Well yes, if someone is deleting or editting your posts it would be nice to know.   I'm sure you haven't violated any rules.  Take a look at the Acceptable Use Policy.  You haven't done anything wrong as far as i can tell!

But like I say take a backup of every post.  Then if a post disappears you can re-post it until it sticks  :cry:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/aup.html

catmeow

Quote from: catmeowHi Xetrov

Well yes, if someone is deleting or editting your posts it would be nice to know.   I'm sure you haven't violated any rules.  Take a look at the Acceptable Use Policy.  You haven't done anything wrong as far as i can tell!

But like I say take a backup of every post.  Then if a post disappears you can re-post it until it sticks  :cry:

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/aup.html

catmeow

I checked that aup already and as far as I can tell I didnt break any rules (unless you count having a severely different opinion then others and sticking to it / defending it a crime). Also i do take backups of posts but uptill now only of the bigger ones. The one deleted was small so I didnt think it nececarry...

Quote from: XetrovCatmeow,

I posted the stuff alright, and I even looked at it afterwards, and even a day after it was still there. A friend of mine has read it too. So it did not dissapear at the moment of posting. I posted it right after sampson's post of Fri Dec 03, 2004 5:49 pm, and before your reply to him.

This happened 1 time exactly the same before, when just a few lines of text had been lost (deleted???) from one of my posts. I dont want to be paranoid but this is really weird, and something I never had on any other forum. Its a shame either way, if the forum isnt working right and randomly deleting (parts) of posts, or if someone is deleting it on purpose (did I violate any rules? would be nice to get some message if I did).

Anyway, weird.

Very strange.....But why would anyone delete your posts?  Maybe it just was a a strange coincidence. If it happens again I would contact the Mods or the Board Administrator, I think his name is Adrian

Hoi catmeow

QuoteHoi tombodenmann!

(Look that's as good as it gets!)

Wow! I'm impressed! How do you know that?

QuoteActually, I've just ordered the book...!

Oh good, I wonder what you think about it.

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmannWhat do you do in all your LD anyway?

Good question...  Actually I love to just explore the environment.  I will usually just set off flying across the countryside, and marvel at the detail and clarity, which is usually just mind-blowing.  I don't do anything in particular, I just enjoy the experience, especially the flying/floating part.  I'm a bit embarrassed that I don't do anything more spiritually significant... but hey! I just enjoy the experience

!

Well, I don't think there is much wrong about enjoying a nice experience. I just suppose there are some even more mind blowing things to do, like meeting guides, travel to earlier lives and stuff like that. The book gives some nice directions how to do that (If it works   8)  )

Quote

Quote from: tombodenmannHow can I learn to wake up slowly

Hmmm.... Don't move.  That's the advice.  Don't move!  When you wake up in the morning don't move any part of your body, don't shift your position to get more comfortable.  Definitely don't open your eyes.  Don't even twitch your finger.  Also, don't think.  Don't start to analyse anything because you will engage your "critical faculty" and before you know it you will be wide awake.   Let yourself drift back to sleep.  When you begin to see hypnagogic imagery, this is the time to try an exit procedure.  There are many exit techniques, such as imagining floating up, rolling over, spinning (around a vertical axis), "beaming" across the room, using RB's "rope" technique.  Sometimes I find it useful to try to move my dream (astral?) arms and wave them in front of my face.  I can actually feel them moving and see "transparent" arms in front of me.  For some reason this is a useful stepping stone to a complete "exit".  Once you can move your dream (astral?) arms you will almost certainly succeed at an exit.  It's useful to try all of this at the weekend, when you can have several attempts at "waking up slowly".

If you try this, then probably the first time nothing will happen.  But if you keep trying over and over again it will work.

I'll try it, thanks for the explanation!

QuoteAbsolutely.  I agree, and I've thought (for some time) that the key is to learn and practice RB's NEW energy methods.  But I'm a bit lazy and I haven't really had the time to apply his techniques.  But I do intend to do this.

I started with NEW again as well, It takes a lot of time though. But I'll keep it up this time for at least 6 Months, lets see what happens.

QuoteI'll just quickly expand on what I suspect is happening with the "memory download".  I do think there are two copies of consciousness operating, one in the physical/etheric body and the other in the astral body.  When the atral returns to the physical body, there is some "combining" of the astral and physical/etheric memories.  The resulting combined memory may be perfect (and hence "utterly real"), imperfect (hence "dream-like") or somewhere in between.   Those people on this board (there are some) who describe their OBE's as "completely unlike" LD's have perfect download.

As you say there must be a way of perfecting the download!

Cheers! :lol:
catmeow

[/quote]
Thats a good explanation, it is very similar to what Robert Bruce says. I just wonder how the brain is able to mix two copies of memories without creating a total mess.  :roll:
Have you already tried to remember the OBE's inside the Lucid Dream?

Tschüss, Tom

Hi Tom

Quote from: tombodenmann

Quote from: catmeowHoi tombodenmann!

(Look that's as good as it gets!)

Wow! I'm impressed! How do you know that?

Not saying....! :lol:

Quote from: tombodenmannThats a good explanation, it is very similar to what Robert Bruce says. I just wonder how the brain is able to mix two copies of memories without creating a total mess.

Me too...!

Quote from: tombodenmannHave you already tried to remember the OBE's inside the Lucid Dream?

Actually I haven't.  I had a stunning LD this morning - won't go into details - but I entirely forgot about trying to "remember" as you suggested.  Must try harder in the future!

Cheers
Joe

Hello everyone,

Something weird is going on. I asked a good friend of mine to post some of his experiences here because it is of relevance to this discussion in my opinion (his nick here is Vincent). Yesterday i saw that he posted a short message and now it has been removed (he told me it had already been removed once before but he re-posted it). There is no such thing as a forum where you post a message it will be coincidentally removed 2 times after each other (and no it didn't happen at the moment of submitting). This happened 4 times now and I'm starting to wonder what is going on.

If the person removing the messages is reading this (an admin most likely???) I would really like to ask why this is going on, thanks a lot for your explanation. I really hope my friend or I didn't break any forum rules

Have a nice day,
Xetrov.

Hey Xetrov! nice to hear from you again! I was a little shocked about the abrupt ending of our discusion!
Concerning the "post-problem" I believe there is something wrong with the new board server.  There are some other users that report the vanishing of posts and even whole threads! See for example

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=15745

as well as this:

QuoteHi Guys....something went wrong with the forums when I was trying to reply to your post, Experimental..... I ended up posting about 5 times, then trying to delete them & for some reason the whole thread has disappeared ! I've retrieved the text (below) & hope you guys can post again !! sorry .....

I had a idea last nite that confused me somewhat ...

It was the fact that if you are trying to proove to yourself you have
left your body , through useing a number or a playing card, which was
previously hidden out of site to you from a freind or someone in the
physical . Then if i was in a Lucid dream , then that number or card
may appear wrong to the true physical counterpart ? , because while we
are lucid the expereince is more subjective...

If i m thinking right , then if i m haveing a subjective expereince ,
i have the power to shape shift the dimension i m percieving ( Lucid )
shapeing the enviroment useing my imagination , even if i m unaware of
that at times , so if i suddenly wake up with the dream in mind with
the number or card in my mind , then it should be the wrong number or
card , because the expereince was Lucid ? . Like for example if i
slightly thaught of the number as being " 57 " lets say , then the
number would appear as that number. ( as aposed to the true number )

But if the number matched up to the true physical number when coming
back awake as i remembered it or seen it , it would suggest that i was
percieving objectivly somewhat , which would explain what type of
expereinceing i was haveing , IE : either astral orientated or dream
related ?

I knows it sounds abit confuseing, its head doing lol , but very intersting

Experimental

: D

So the good news: Probably nobody is deliberatly deleting your posts, the bad news : there is a technical problem with the server that seems to be unnoticed.
Cheers Tom

Oh thanks tomb. for pointing this out. I do not really follow other parts of the forum so i didnt read that yet. Im glad it doesnt seem to be someone deleting stuff... (but the time that only 5 lines dissapeared from my post was weird anyway). I have not been around also for some time since i was away, but i will contribute to the discussion soon again probably, and Vincent will add his experiences here too soon I hope.

Hi Xetrov

Really nice to see you are still here!

Please don't worry too much about posts disappearing.  This will almost certainly be a problem with the servers.  I'm in the business (many years) and I know how troublesome these systems can be.  Please ask your friend to post again!

Best wishes
catmeow

Hello all,

Im not gone yet :D , but doing more research on the subject of this post and also im going to rewrite my article with all the info i have gathered here (thanks to all the ppl in the discussion!).

I Just now came across a very interesting article published by a group of researchers, which up to a very high degree supports my viewpoint. Anyone interested should give this a quick read:

http://www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html

If you are pressed for time, scroll down and read the sections "WHAT DO WE KNOW NOW?" and "THE "IN-THE-BODY" EXPERIENCE". The only thing which they dont mention is the possibility of ESP from within a (lucid) dream...

Ill report back here if i find more interesting stuff and/or when i finish rewriting the cursed article  :)

A nice day to you all,
Xetrov.

Quote from: XetrovAlso i have read an article that explicitly states that the visual cortex is deactivated but i havent found it back yet, but if I do I will most certainly post the link here.

If anyone is still interested, I found it here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=11969332&dopt=Abstract


Look where they state "during slow wave sleep we observed . . . a pronounced negative signal in the visual cortex" and "deactivation predominantly in the visual cortex". Just to illustrate my point ofcourse, anyway i've been pretty much bizzy and distracted lately so I might come back to this if people are still interested in this discussion.

[Edit] I just found another very interesting link to a reseach preformed on yogis in a deep trance (mostly theta, same brainwaves which occur during dream visualisation).

http://www.scand-yoga.org/english/bindu/bindu11/pictures.html


Read the comment "Why it is interesting" at the bottom too  :)

Hi Xetrov

I read the article you linked to:

http://www.lucidity.com/NL32.OBEandLD.html

Actually, I've read this article before, and I must say that personally I find it a little confusing.

This is because the authors never clearly define their terms.  They never define clearly what they mean by "OBE", "LD", "WILD", "DILD" and "WILD-OBE"!  It is absolutely essential to define what is meant by these terms, at the beginning of the article, so that we (the reader) can then follow the author's line of reasoning.  So for this reason I find the article confusing.

Having said that, the following appears to be their definition of OBE:

Quote from: The Lucidity Institute"Out of body" experiences (OBEs) are personal experiences during which people feel as if they are perceiving the physical world from a location outside of their physical bodies.

By using this as the definition of OBE, the authors then go onto classify DILD's and WILD's as OBE's if they meet this definition.  Some discussion follows, and finally the conclusion that OBE's are really indistinguishable from dreams.

Well I have to say that based on the definition of OBE supplied by the authors, it is undeniable that OBE and LD are indistinguishable.  But in my opinion, their definition of OBE is over-simplistic and does not correctly or adequately define the experience.

There are several characteristics that I would add to the definition of OBE, for instance:

- On returning to the physical, an OBE is still perceived as "just as real" as physical reality.  This is not true of LD's
- During OBE sometimes 360 deg vision is experienced
- During OBE information about the physical world is sometimes obtained which cannot be perceived at the time with the physical senses
- During OBE sometimes the individual is a "point of consciousness"
- Some OBE's occur whilst the individual is physically active ie driving a car, playing an organ etc, ie whilst physically awake!

All of the above have been omitted from the author's definition of OBE!

For a better (IMHO) critique of OBE and LD please see the books of Celia Green (Out-of-the-Body Experiences and Lucid Dreams):

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00005WJKS/qid=1103655666
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0900076003/qid=1103655666

Xetrov, I am completely sympathetic with your notion that NDE-OBE is different from LD and conventional OBE.  In my opinion, this must be the case, since the biological "brain" is turned off and can not play any part in the experience.  But the article you have quoted does not really help you with this viewpoint... (Sorry!)

Finally,

Here are some examples of OBE which occurred whilst the OBE'r was physically awake and very active (from Celia Green's book):

QuoteThe next I registered, was of hearing the sound of my heels very hollowly and I looked down and watched myself walk round the bend of Beaumont St. into Walton St.  I - the bit of me that counts - was up on a level with Worcester College chapel.  I saw myself very clearly - it was summer evening and I was wearing a sleeveless shantung dress.  I remember thinking "so that's how I look to other people."

QuoteIf I remember rightly, I was reading a book or newspaper at the time, when suddenly I had a queer floating feeling, and I found myself looking down at the room, and seeing everyone sitting there, including myself.

QuoteI was sitting at the rear of the bus looking out through the window when without warning I found myself looking at myself from the stairs of the bus.  All my senses sight feelings and so on seemed to be on the stairs only my actual body remained at the seat.

QuoteI suddenly found "myself" suspended bodiless in the air behind my typing figure - about eight feet behind, two feet to the actual left, and four feet above actual height.

QuoteI was driving in a generally N Easterly direction along the right-hand lane of the Autobahn... when I became conscious that I was also about 15-20 feet above the roadway and to my right, watching myself, my passenger, the bicycle, my luggage (I could see it all) riding along the road.  I cannot say how long this lasted - it seemed quite a long time... I shivered violently and returned to myself when I stopped the bicycle and told my friend why

Quote...as I settled myself, switched on the engine, let in the gear, I seemed to fill with horror because I simply wasn't in the car at all, I was settled firmly on the roof watching myself and despite a fearsome mental struggle to get back into myself, I was unable to do so and carried out the whole test, (30 mins?) watching the body part of me making every sort of fool of myself that one could possibly manage in a limited time

The Lucidity Institute discuss REM sleep and the construction of a self body-image etc in their arguments.  In actual fact, many OBE's occur whilst individuals are physically wide awake and active, and quite often the individuals describe themselves as a "point of consciousness" with no body image at all.

I really would recommend Out-of-the-body Experiences by Celia Green.  It gives a detailed analysis of all aspects OF OBE, eg state of the physical body, muscular relaxation, motor control, self-image, perceptual realism, level of consciousness, ESP sense of time etc etc...  It's better than the Lucidity Institute article! :wink:

catmeow

Hello catmeow,

Your comments on the article are in itself pretty much true, and certainly if you are of the opinion that an OBE isnt the same as a LD. However, why i found the article interesting and worth reading is because it does show us some insight into one 'subclass' of OBE's, namely those that are initiated from sleep stages (be it LD's or WILD's, this group contains about 85% of all OBE's reported). Also their definitions for LD and WILD are exactly how anyone would define them (there is no discussion as far as I know as what these definitions should be). Possible differences also dont really matter as the definitions only indicate how a person becomes or stays self aware in a dream, and because according to their findings, OBE's from any dream stage, be it WILD or DILD or whatever, are very close or exactly the same. But you are right, their definition of a OBE is indeed too narrow to capture all OBE related phenomena. However let me point out why I liked the article anyway.They write in some detail about the parallels between OBE's and LD's, because they have been researching a lot on those phenomenon (yes, albeit a limited version of OBE's, only from sleep). Their findings show that all the OBE's induced from a sleep stage are nearly indistinguishable from LD's, and they also show how according to them people may still claim that they are different. This is because the transition between the waking and sleeping stage (for example during sleep paralysis and/or WILD) is so subtle that it is not noticed, thus going into a OBE this way doesnt seem to be a dream (but it still is). You have probably experienced this a lot of times according to your way of inducing lucid dreams (if i read it correct, you wake up slightly and perform an exit procedure, a method I also use a lot). I am aware that you agree with me that those sleep-related OBE's aren't really OBE's after all but the huge majority on this forum probably still claims otherwise, which is also why I posted this article to support my viewpoint. To quote the (in my opinion) most interesting findings from their research (and these passages show exactly why I think their findings are interesting and why they should be considered with great care):

Quote from: lucidity institute
[dream related] OBEs occur when people lose input from their sense organs, as happens at the onset of sleep, while retaining consciousness. This combination of events is especially likely when a person passes directly from waking into REM sleep. In both states the mind is alert and active, but in waking it is processing sensory input from the outside world, while in dreaming it is creating a mental model independent of sensory input. This model includes a body. When dreaming, we generally experience ourselves in a body much like the "real" one, because that is what we are used to. However, our internal senses in the physical body, which when we are awake
inform us about our position in space and the movement of our limbs. This information is cut off in REM sleep. Therefore, we can dream of doing all kinds of things with our dream bodies -- flying, dancing, running from monsters, being dismembered -- all while our physical bodies lie safely in bed.

During a WILD, or sleep paralysis, the awake and alert mind keeps up its good work of showing us the world it expects is out there -- although it can no longer sense it. So, then we are in a mentalÐdreamÐworld. Possibly we feel the cessation of the sensation of gravity as that part of sensory input shuts down, and then feel that we are suddenly lighter and float up, rising from the place where we know our real body to be lying still. The room around us looks about the same, because that is our brain's best guess about where we are. If we did not know that we had just fallen asleep, we might well think that we were awake, still in touch with the physical world, and that something mighty strange was happening -- a departure of the mind from the physical body!

The unusual feeling of leaving the body is exciting and alarming. This, combined with the realistic imagery of the bedroom is enough to account for the conviction of many OBE experients' that "it was too real to be a dream." Dreams, too, can be astonishingly real, especially if you are attending to their realness . . . . Lucid dreamers often comment to themselves in dreams, "I know this is a dream, but it all seems so incredibly real!" All this goes to show that the feeling that an event is real does not mean that it is happening in the physical world that we all share when we are awake.

So this shows my point, OBE's from sleep stages are in essence the same phenomenon as lucid dreams, although people interpret them all differently according to their different viewpoints.

Now you come up with some interesting additional characteristics of what according to you should be included in a definition of an OBE.

Quote from: catmeow
On returning to the physical, an OBE is still perceived as "just as real" as physical reality. This is not true of LD's.

To start, the quote I gave from the lucidity institute shows that this is a false premise. It is only based on the distinction a person makes when he/she is having an OBE "it looks so real it cannot be a LD", thus it has to be an OBE, but this is not necessarily true at all. So, I would argue that you should broaden your definition of what a LD is to include such experiences if they do not fit your definition of a LD (and yes this comes from my own experience as well).

QuoteDuring OBE sometimes 360 deg vision is experienced

Same argument, if vision is 360 deg then it has to be an OBE? It's absolutely not impossible that we can imagine a 360 degree vision in a LD without the need for our spiritual essence or whatever to "float free of the body"

QuoteDuring OBE information about the physical world is sometimes obtained which cannot be perceived at the time with the physical senses .

I explained already in detail that this information can be obtained through ESP.

QuoteDuring OBE sometimes the individual is a "point of consciousness"

I can do this in a LD aswell, no big deal. Its a matter of exploring the possibilities of the mental world you are in while LD-ing, you would be amazed at what you (and your subconscious self) are able to imagine.

QuoteSome OBE's occur whilst the individual is physically active ie driving a car, playing an organ etc, ie whilst physically awake!

Ok now I agree this is really interesting information! Here we touch upon your initial critique of the lucidity institute, that their definition of OBE doesnt  include all forms of OBE, for example those described by Celia Green (by the way neither does their definition really include OBE's induced from trance). But I would like you to consider this situation, which probably has happened to any of us.

You drive home by bike or car, from work or school. All of a sudden you realize that the last few minutes you were sunk into thought and that the driving went on some kind of 'auto-pilot', and you cannot remember at all that you passed the lights for example, or a certain building or other feature you always see on this route.

Now what if some people (a minority for sure), can in such instances visualize their actual physical position from some distance? For sure for people with a photographic memory (these people are able to literally 'be' in any place they have ever visited or can imagine, by just thinking of it), this will look extremely like an OBE. In my view an OBE like this is not possible since for me OBE means NDE where the spirit leaves the body, and the body therefore isnt functioning anymore properly (for example no brain activity). The C. Green examples can ofcourse be defined as OBE's if you define OBE like "experience when someone sees/feels any place of reality from a different viewpoint then the physical body/senses, thereby also not being aware of the physical body/senses".To me this is not the essence of an OBE because this can all also be just as easily imagined. There is just no conclusive proof at all to support the notion that in such an OBE as Green describes you spirit is placed in the astral (same as OBE's from sleep stages, where this also doesnt happen).

Hi Xetrov

I have quite a lot to say in answer to you, but hey, it's Christmas and not much time...  An answer will follow within the next few days

catmeow

Xetrov, can you please define Lucid Dream.

Hey catmeow,

Take your time there's no rush from my side, ill check your reply after christmas.

And hey Tombo,

I will think of your question and reply in the next few days when I have time. If I wanted to go into detail however I could write a huge book on the phenomenon of lucid dreaming (but ill try to keep it short then and to the point).

Have a nice X-mas everyone :)

Hi Xetrov

My reply at last!  Sorry, it's long...

Quote from: XetrovSo this shows my point, OBE's from sleep stages are in essence the same phenomenon as lucid dreams, although people interpret them all differently according to their different viewpoints.

Well I agree that many OBE's initiated from sleep stages are in fact "private" LD's.  But it does not therefore follow that all sleep-initiated OBE's are LD's.

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowon returning to the physical, an OBE is still perceived as "just as real" as physical reality. This is not true of LD's.

To start, the quote I gave from the lucidity institute shows that this is a false premise. It is only based on the distinction a person makes when he/she is having an OBE "it looks so real it cannot be a LD", thus it has to be an OBE, but this is not necessarily true at all. So, I would argue that you should broaden your definition of what a LD is to include such experiences if they do not fit your definition of a LD (and yes this comes from my own experience as well).

Well you misunderstood what I said.  I said that on returning to the physical, an OBE is still perceived as real.  I don't care a jot what the individual thought whilst he was actually having the LD/OBE.  It's what he believes when he returns to physical waking consciousness that counts.  

It has happened to me many times that I returned from an outstandingly vivid LD which seemed pretty convincing at the time, only to realise when I woke up that it was "just a dream".  But for many people, when they return from OBE to PWC (physical waking consciousness) the experience is still just as real as the physical world.  In some cases, PWC actually feels "dreamlike" in comparison with the OBE, and the OBE feels "more real" in comprison. This is NOT addressed by the article, and I think you have mis-understood my point here.

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowDuring OBE sometimes 360 deg vision is experienced

Same argument, if vision is 360 deg then it has to be an OBE? It's absolutely not impossible that we can imagine a 360 degree vision in a LD without the need for our spiritual essence or whatever to "float free of the body"

Oh come on now!  How many times have you experienced 360 deg vision during LD?  Can you do this voluntarily during LD, let alone spontaneously, as OBE'rs report!  If you can do this during LD I'll give you my car (it's not a very good one!  :lol:)....  The accounts of LD/OBE I have read where 360 deg vision was present had other characteristics, which classified them (to me) as OBE, rather than LD.  These characteristics would be for instance "sense of utter reality" which persisted into PWC, observing the physical world accurately without fantasy constructs, or else the experience occurred spontaneously whilst the individual was physically active.  Show me an account of LD where there is 360 deg vision, and I'll show you an OBE!

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowDuring OBE information about the physical world is sometimes obtained which cannot be perceived at the time with the physical senses .

I explained already in detail that this information can be obtained through ESP.

And so have I.  But the article doesn't mention this aspect, because it's a complication which detracts from their theory.  But yes, we can have LD's with ESP.  I agree.

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowDuring OBE sometimes the individual is a "point of consciousness"  

I can do this in a LD aswell, no big deal. Its a matter of exploring the possibilities of the mental world you are in while LD-ing, you would be amazed at what you (and your subconscious self) are able to imagine.

Once again point-consciousness is not mentioned in the article, because it detracts from their self-body-image hypothesis.  Point-consciousness is much more common, in experiences that I classify as OBE than it is in LD, and it is (IMHO) a valid "indicator" of the difference between the two experiences.

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowSome OBE's occur whilst the individual is physically active ie driving a car, playing an organ etc, ie whilst physically awake!  

Ok now I agree this is really interesting information

Yes it is and it cannot just be shrugged off with a simple explanation of "daydreaming".  According to your classification of LD/OBE, the physical body is in some sort of REM sleep.  It is not awake, singing in a choir, giving a sermon, walking, riding a motorbike, playing a piano, or taking a driving test!  I read of one case where a lady (I think it was a lady) was giving a sermon in a church when she found herself literally "beside herself" and observed her physical "self" completing the entire sermon.  Not only that, but one member of the congregation came up to her afterwards and said that she had seen her standing beside herself during the sermon.  I think you're pushing your theory that real OBE's only happen during NDE if you simply dismiss cases like these?  You need to take them into account.  I'll try to find this particular "sermon" case if you are interested?

Now just to elaborate a little more on some points you dismissed:

The Lucidity Institute postulate that OBE is simply an LD. The sensation of floating above the bed occurs because of "the cessation of the sensation of gravity" as our senses shut down. The person however "retains the feeling of having a body" despite his senses shutting down. Okay, let's accept all of that.  But why on earth would a person spontaneously experience 360 deg vision during OBE, when this has no parallel whatsoever in his normal physical life?  Not only has it no parallel, but it's also pretty difficult to visualise.  Now if this 360 deg vision thing was an isolated incident then I'd be willing to let it go.  But it isn't.  It's a common theme reported in OBE's all over the world and there is absolutely no reason for it.  Where is the parallel in physical life?  Why should all manner of different individuals report this? Well the obvious explanation is that these individuals are using sensory mechanisms native to the new realm they find themselves in.  These are not just imaginings...

Now, there is the matter of OBE's which occur while people are physically active.  How does this fit with the REM sleep/LD model?  What is going on?  Let's take the example of the driving test, which I quoted.  So according to your theory, is this individual asleep? Or is he awake? Is he dreaming?  How do you explain it?  There are clearly two copies of consciousness operating - one is performing a driving test and the other is thinking independently from a viewpoint on the roof of the car.  This is easy to explain using RB's "mind split" model.  But how do you explain it?

And finally, the LD/ESP model which you apply to normal OBE's applies equally to NDE-OBE's.  Here's how it works:

A person dies in the operating theatre.  All of his bodily functions shut down, his blood flow has stopped and his EEG is flat.  The surgeons operate quickly and then resuscitate him.  As he begins to come round and in the instant before he opens his eyes he has an LD.  In this LD he imagines himself floating above the operating theatre watching the surgeons operate.  When he later compares notes with the surgeons he finds that everything agrees!  How could this have been? What he describes occurred whilst he was dead, whilst his EEG was flat?  So he must have been experiencing this whilst he was medically "dead".  Not so! In actual fact his experience did NOT occur during the operation, it occurred in the instant before he woke up whilst his blood was flowing and his EEG was normal.  All the information he apparently obtained about the operation was obtained by ESP from the minds and memories of those in the operating room.  Or else it was just obtained clairvoyantly from psychic imprints of the previous events in the "ether".

So you see the LD/ESP model applies as equally to NDE-OBE as it does to normal OBE.  If you argue "LD/ESP" for all the cases I quoted, where people were conducting driving tests and playing church organs, whilst they were OBE, then I will argue "LD/ESP" for all the NDE-OBE cases you mention.  There is no difference.  You can't have it all your own way!

Finally, I don't understand your reluctance to accept OBE as a genuine experience.  Given the fact that you accept human survival of bodily death, why do you refuse to accept the possibility of a person temporarily leaving the body whilst he is still alive?!  :?

catmeow

I posted this just before starting to read this thread in the experiences section of Astral and now I see it more or less belongs here.  Hopefully it can contribute well to this discussion.  I am more inclined to think in terms of the physical body but I am quite open to other possibilities.  This inclination is mostly due to my academic upbringing.

Also, Xetrov, it appears that you and most people on this site make a few other assumptions I would like to express now.

1.  The assumption that there is a mind. Not explored here.
2.  The assumption that there is such a thing as consciousness.  Also not explored here.
3.  Most importantly, that the mind, if it exists, is confined to one location.  In your case, the brain.

If you want to make an argument for a physical body hypothesis, I would start by not limiting yourself to the powers of the brain but extend that perhaps to the powers of the nervous system.  It may be possible that every neuron is highly important and that the ability of the nervous system to adapt is quite immense--simply judging from the number of interconnections between neurons.

My belief is that the nervous system is re-wired or reconnected based on our experiences (more or less like a neural network--to speak in Computerese).  In fact, we are creating such neural nets in Computer Science but the power of these systems is so minimal compared to the capability of the nervous system.

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For example, after I started energy development using NEW, my body reacted very radically and I simply could not understand any of the things that were happening to me.  This caused so much anxiety in me that I preferred not to sleep.  And many times during the night I would reject sleep for fear that I would get possessed or something.  Grant it that I do not believe in such things but I had read about it here on this site.

To shorten it, I think my desire to remain awake and the nervous system's function as a regulator lead to walking hallucinations or visions.  The vision seems to me now to have been all about me, my concerns, my memories, and my experiences.  

I think this was the nervous system at its best, reconnecting to adjust to a radical experience which caused extreme anxiety and distress.
Now I have less anxiety, and with time, I feel the system will make all necessary connections to bring me back to "normal."

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Here's what I had posted earlier on OBE.

When I was young, I remember being glued to the TV while laying on the living room couch or the floor. After a prolonged period of time, I've noticed my pupils dilate and later experience a sensation similar to an OBE. If you are familiar with this and have OBE experiences perhaps you can comment. During this experience, the TV set seems to get smaller and further away from the physical body and some effort to bring it back to actual focus does not help. I have tried blinking in some cases to no avail. Getting up has helped sometimes.

This leads me to the conclusion that an OBE may actually be a form of dream and not the reverse. Grant it that in such cases, I would have probably transitioned into a dream unless the desire to continue watching the show was greater than the inclination to rest.

It is possible that the fact that I was horizontal for a prolonged time signaled my body to sleep plus me not really wanting to due to my focus on the screen, caused the discrepancy, which in turn caused the mild OBE.

You see the nervous system is very intelligent and it tries its best to adapt to a given situation. There was an apparent contradiction, which the nervous system resolved given some time.

Perhaps those of you who OBE frequently could try that as an experiment to see how long it actually takes to OBE that way. Keep in mind that this may take some hours of watching TV in a horizontal position; also, try nothing else, not even a snack in the middle.

Could this be the case also with meditation induced OBEs?

Please note that I have never experienced an OBE otherwise nor have I explored the TV OBE any further. Also, the experience I expressed does not result in any exit or entry vibrations.

Catmeow, thanks for your elaborate reply!

Ill try to answer to a few of the points you raised, I must admit some of them are rather intriguing and make me think a lot about these issues. First of all let me briefly reply to what you wrote in the end of your reply; "why do you refuse to accept the possibility of a person temporarily leaving the body whilst he is still alive".

Well this is true and false. Yes I have been making myself rather clear here that I refuse to accept that during a RB type-OBE someone's spirit leaves their body, because sofar I have seen no evidence to definitely prove that this has to be true. However inclined I am to prove my own viewpoint, this does not exclude the possibility that given the right information I would change my ideas according to those of Bruce. However unsettling and incoherent my ideas might sound to the lot of you, I have come to a few points that are just not explained by Bruce and which contradict his ideas.

Why are there people born blind that can see during NDE-OBE, if those OBE's are the same as RB type-OBE?
Why does a RB type-OBE correlate exactly with the activation of the visual cortex, or To put it differently, why can't such an OBE be initiated from beyond deep sleep where the visual cortex is offline?
Nothing proves to me that, as Bruce claims, the astral is a fluid medium which is responsible for our dreams and which is prone to influence by thought. This can just as well be explained by the theory that dreams are only internal events.

So you see my ideas (they are not just my ideas alone, mind you) might have some 'gaps' to some of you (although I really do my best to explain any such gaps as I see them arrive, yet perhaps there will be some which I cannot explain, but that remains to be seen), this does for sure not mean that Bruce's ideas are perfectly sound and coherent. Indeed, to me they are absolutely not.

Also to come back to your claim, I have never said that a person cannot temporarily leave their body while alive, just that it is a lot more difficult then Bruce wants us all to believe because the only way this is possible is to initiate a NDE. Note that I seem to be supported in this notion by someone with a decent reputation and experience like  Clark and also by the knowledge of ancient tradition Yogi's. Ofcourse this doesnt prove anything to you but I thought i'd just mention it to show im not the only one ranting these ideas.

That said I'd also like to make clear what exactly I see as a lucid dream (since people have been asking for it and it would also help to clarify my viewpoint).

First of all we have the usual definition of a LD: Any dream in which the subject who dreams becomes aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming.
Yet this doesnt cover all phenomenon that are related to lucid dreaming. Therefore I also propose to define the phenomenon itself as: Any state of lowered brainwave activity resulting in either sleep or trance during which the subject retains his or her awareness. This awareness can range from 'only' knowing that one is dreaming / in trance to full inclusion of all daily conscious faculties, including but not limited to all memories and full consciousness.

Now this is clear, I want to say a final word about that article I linked. It is indeed totally incomplete and shows only a small picture of OBE related information,  I only wanted to make you read it because it states very clearly that although many OBE's from sleep and trance stages look a lot like someone genuinely leaving their body, this explanation doesnt hold in most cases. Just as in your case Catmeow, if I remember correctly you explained that most of your lucid dreams are initiated in such a way (through exit procedures). So you see I didnt necessarily put that article there to prove anything to you,  just to show that my point of view on this matter is not just something I have come up with overnight. And yes I agree this does absolutely not prove that a 'genuine' OBE is impossible from sleep/trance conditions, I totally agree on that. Yet many people on this forum claim that nearly every exit procedure from sleep/trance they initiate leads to a 'genuine' OBE. Perhaps this doesnt count for the more advanced OBE-ers here, Im not pointing at anyone, but it certainly counts for a lot of people (especially people new to all this).

Then something about all the additional features you would like to see included into the definition of OBE (and which I tried to counter with some arguments): I still believe it is all a matter of convincing yourself about what's what.

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It has happened to me many times that I returned from an outstandingly vivid LD which seemed pretty convincing at the time, only to realize when I woke up that it was "just a dream". But for many people, when they return from OBE to PWC (physical waking consciousness) the experience is still just as real as the physical world. In some cases, PWC actually feels "dreamlike" in comparison with the OBE, and the OBE feels "more real" in comprison. This is NOT addressed by the article, and I think you have mis-understood my point here.

First of all I would like to inquire after the amount of daily consciousness you retain in your lucids. Also, what did you mean when you said "only to realize when I woke up that it was "just a dream""? Do you mean to say  that during the LD, you did not (perhaps not fully) realize it was a dream? What do you mean by "an outstandingly vivid LD which seemed pretty convincing at the time"? Of what were you convinced at the time? Do you mean that you only realize after you wake up that you had a lucid dream? Please elaborate as I am now confused about what your LD experiences are.

Well now about the argument. If someone has had a RB style-OBE and he/she wakes up, and still believes it was perfectly real as you say, then it had to be an OBE and not a LD. Well that's just a definition, it doesnt necessarily mean it is true. I mean also, these people are also already convinced it had to be a real OBE. However it could be very well a feature of a dream in which one remains fully conscious. What is your evidence that when such an experience seems real after wards it HAS to be a genuine OBE? Also let's not invoke that article again since I already know very well its limitations.

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How many times have you experienced 360 deg vision during LD? Can you do this voluntarily during LD, let alone spontaneously, as OBE'rs report! If you can do this during LD I'll give you my car (it's not a very good one! )

Not yet, but start driving :). Ill accept your challenge, and I will report on it as soon as I am able to get a decent LD again (which should be soon I hope). The fact that during an OBE people have reported to have spontaneous 360 degree vision is interesting however, are you sure these people had never read or heard anywhere about this before, so that it was 100% spontaneous? Could you show me where you got this information? Also, I wonder, is 360 degree vision per definition part of a 'genuine' OBE (meaning, without it, it isnt one?). If not, why are there differences in degrees of vision in different OBE accounts? Why does someone have it and someone else not? Should it not be that we all ought to have it, since I assume that you realize that if what you claim is true, and the astral body is set free, then the astral senses take over from the physical / internal ones. Why would the astral senses in such a scenario show 360 degree vision to one person (and perhaps not even always), and not to another person?

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The accounts of LD/OBE I have read where 360 deg vision was present had other characteristics, which classified them (to me) as OBE, rather than LD. These characteristics would be for instance "sense of utter reality" which persisted into PWC, observing the physical world accurately without fantasy constructs, or else the experience occurred spontaneously whilst the individual was physically active.

Yes this might be so but we were arguing about 360 degree vision, but anyway your remarks do have relevance for the discussion. Let me however give you an analogy to show you my argument. A child goes to an illusionist with his parents, and he watches the illusionist as he makes objects fly through the building. He is so fascinated that he goes again and again to see the same show. Now the child might believe that what he sees is exactly what happens and that the illusionist really has magical powers to make objects fly through space.... Ok now I agree this is a rude analogy, but I wanted to say that if you have experienced RB type-OBE's a lot, and you had 360 degree vision and point-consciousness each time and also when you woke up, each time you 'knew' it was real, etc, then ofcourse you will define these experiences as 'genuine' OBE's.  To use another one metaphor, to me it's like saying, a house (LD) is a building (Dream) but a castle (RB type-OBE) is clearly not, because it has so many different characteristics.Also please dont think that I compare any of you to a child or that I say that your arguments dont make any sense, because that's not so I was merely trying to make my view more clear.

I think part of the problem might be a definition issue perhaps, since I have claimed that RB type-OBE's are similar to LD's. I didn't mean they are the same (as in, a castle is a house) but that the underlying phenomenon is the same; both are dream experiences, and dreams are caused by visual cortex activity (so a castle and a house are both buildings).

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it cannot just be shrugged off with a simple explanation of "daydreaming". According to your classification of LD/OBE, the physical body is in some sort of REM sleep. It is not awake, singing in a choir, giving a sermon, walking, riding a motorbike, playing a piano, or taking a driving test!

Im not shrugging off anything! Im trying to explain certain phenomena from within my viewpoint, and when you can show me for 100% that Im not correct, I'll congratulate you and we all live happily ever after. But no kidding. I have heard of people that are able to visualize any situation during waking life, and at the same moment kind of "dream" that they are there (so at that point, they really are, mentally speaking). So this is not just some mere insane idea I came up with, also its not 'just' simply daydreaming as most of us won't be able to do this (since it involves a photographic memory). Also, uptill now we have indeed been arguing about RB type-OBE's from sleep and trance stages, and for these to happen you don't need to be in "some sort of REM sleep". As I explained (I think), your brainwave-activity has to drop significantly from beta to alpha and theta, which indicates relaxation of physical body and heightened internal activity in visual cortex by release of certain neurotransmitters. It is certainly not impossible that this can even happen for some people during normal daily activity and even when they don't expect it. Furthermore, you can fully immerse yourself in such an experience while continuing to perform very complex daily tasks without being (fully) aware of it! Hence the people that have OBE's during driving tests, or in churches etc. I found a nice example to show you in which direction this can go, an account of an OBE experience by Susan Blackmore, you can find it here:

http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?set=expom&id=00075&ss=1

The interesting thing in this account was that she was still able to keep talking during all the time she had the OBE, yet she had no control or feeling of her body. You see I am not dismissing anything and really trying to take any case of OBE into my explanations. It is just that I see so many 'holes' in Bruce's theory that I am inclined to try to explain these phenomena in a different way then most people here do. This does not mean however that Im not open to different explanations as I have said before, however I have seen no reason yet nor any full evidence that Bruce has to be right in his ideas. What I propose, even on these OBE's during waking life, can be true.

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But why on earth would a person spontaneously experience 360 deg vision during OBE, when this has no parallel whatsoever in his normal physical life? Not only has it no parallel, but it's also pretty difficult to visualize. Now if this 360 deg vision thing was an isolated incident then I'd be willing to let it go. But it isn't. It's a common theme reported in OBE's all over the world and there is absolutely no reason for it.

Well ok back once more to the 360 discussion. Do you mean to say that everything we experience in a (lucid)dream needs to have parallels in physical waking life? Do you mean that, stuff that is difficult to visualize would be impossible to do in a LD? I can prove the contrary. And sure, it isnt an isolated incident, a common theme even. If you are aware of Susan blackmore's theory on 'memes', you could argue that this is for a large part why people are able to experience 360 degree vision in the 1st place.

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these individuals are using sensory mechanisms native to the new realm they find themselves in

I think you meant here that they are using their astral senses, the use of which is native to the astral (new) realm they find themselves in. Well yes, perhaps this is true! But, does that mean they need to have their spirit disconnected from their bodies? I would argue not, because using our astral senses is already possible when we are awake or 'merely' in a LD (remember ESP). Use of astral senses just seems to be limited during physical life, but that doesnt mean its impossible to perceive in 360. So this doesnt prove nor disprove anything. It could very well be that in a RB type-OBE, we are really in an elaborate form of Lding, which allows some of us to visualize in 360, either because we can imagine it, or either because we can use our astral senses to allow such a way of viewing.

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the LD/ESP model which you apply to normal OBE's applies equally to NDE-OBE's

Might be true (no way to disprove what you wrote here). But what does that prove? That my theory can be incoherent if you apply a certain way of reasoning about it? Ofcourse it can! There are still so many variables in my and in Bruce's theories too, variables that have to be researched and/or experienced before anyone can with certainty say anything about it. Yet in my viewpoint I can explain these things in a coherent way (you have to admit my view is coherent albeit perhaps not true, but that's another story), but in Bruce's theory there are loopholes which aren't explained yet.

So what I dont understand is all of your reluctance to explore possible different ways of explaining the OBE phenomenon.

Well anyway Catmeow, thanks for your reply and let's see what the future brings in this discussion, I hope we can still continue it for a while (and no need to hurry ofcourse, take your time!).

Greetings,
Xetrov.


PS: I will reply to FreeChile later since my time is also limited :)

Hi Xetrov

No time now, but I will reply when I have more time!  But I think my car is safe!  :lol:

catmeow

Quote from: Xetrov
First of all we have the usual definition of a LD: Any dream in which the subject who dreams becomes aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming.

This is a bad definition cause it avoids to define "Dream"

Quote from: Xetrov
Yet this doesnt cover all phenomenon that are related to lucid dreaming. Therefore I also propose to define the phenomenon itself as: Any state of lowered brainwave activity resulting in either sleep or trance during which the subject retains his or her awareness. This awareness can range from 'only' knowing that one is dreaming / in trance to full inclusion of all daily conscious faculties, including but not limited to all memories and full consciousness.

If this is your definition of LD, then  OBE=LD is fine with me..........

Hello freechille.

I assume we have a mind (and I think most of us do), because I seem to be/have a thinking, conscious self. What alternative would there be, that we have no mind? How would you propose that could be? Also, I assume I am conscious, how else could I think and be aware of myself, of my surroundings, of emotions etc?

Your question in 3 is a good one, and I have argued and I guess most people here would agree as far as I have heard their ideas on this forum, that the mind is not physically located anywhere. Only that the place where it is generated / maintained / sustained (and influenced) is located, a least partly in our nervous system (thanks for pointing that out, its ofcourse not 'just' the brain indeed). I will soon post my new article here in which i delve a little deeper into this issue. The location of the mind in this definition would be equal to whatever it is currently focused on (a dream, a thought etc). I also share your idea on the nervous system as a system that rewires and reconnects depending on our experiences.  

The experience you describe is a good example indeed of how our body, nervous system and conscious mind can interact to create the illusion of an OBE, where our spirit leaves the body. I think there are several possible situations during which this might happen, all of which can result in either a clear OBE situation to merely a feeling of being OBE (or anywhere in between). Examples are plenty and include OBE's induced from sleep (from LD), from trance, and your experience. It would be good to keep an open mind and to explore all brain/nervous system related phenomena before we conclude that such OBE's are really the result of our spiritual matter disconnecting from the body.

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Perhaps those of you who OBE frequently could try that as an experiment to see how long it actually takes to OBE that way.

I think some people can do this very quickly, in a matter of seconds, either voluntarily or by accident. When it happens by accident, and if it is accompanied with an exit procedure (which is certainly a possibility we should take into account), it surely looks like a 'genuine' OBE.

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Could this be the case also with meditation induced OBEs?

Yes, although  perhaps those are different in that during meditation, you are even more closely trying to reach the perfect situation for an OBE to occur, which is a super relaxed body, an aware mind and low (alpha/theta) brainwaves. In a trance like this, it is easy to visualize in great detail a sort of 'dream' where you float free of your physical body.

Quote from: Tombo

Quote from: Xetrov
First of all we have the usual definition of a LD: Any dream in which the subject who dreams becomes aware of the fact that he or she is dreaming.

This is a bad definition cause it avoids to define "Dream"

Quote from: Xetrov
Yet this doesnt cover all phenomenon that are related to lucid dreaming. Therefore I also propose to define the phenomenon itself as: Any state of lowered brainwave activity resulting in either sleep or trance during which the subject retains his or her awareness. This awareness can range from 'only' knowing that one is dreaming / in trance to full inclusion of all daily conscious faculties, including but not limited to all memories and full consciousness.

If this is your definition of LD, then  OBE=LD is fine with me..........

Hmmm... Just a thought: Your definition of LD automatically includes all Conscious Experiences That do NOT happen during waking Life or Brain dead. So basically all OBE's are now per definition labeled LD. Do you really want that?
Assuming it is possible to separate the spirit during Sleep and have a "real" OBE (in your terminology) , this would now still be defined as a LD! Do you see what I mean?

Tombo: I know what you mean. But separation of spirit without NDE or really dying isn't possible so yes, I would say that all these experiences share the same fundamental principle as the phenomenon of lucid dreaming, which is that they are "internal" (so not fully placed in the astral), mental events. Note however that the term "lucid dreaming" is just a label for a subset of these experiences.

I have by the way come across a very interesting article to show you some more scientific evidence that my viewpoint is no-nonsense. I would highly suggest for anyone to read the following:

http://www.geocities.com/franzbardon/virtuallimbs.html

It shows to me some interesting facts. First of all they agree with most of us here that we have (ofcourse) a mental model of our physical bodies. A mental model which, according to research, is even hard wired into our nervous system. To quote their findings on this issue:

Quote
The important point is, in my opinion, Melzacks assumption that this body scheme represented by the neuromatrix is working on its own but is constantly "updated" by the sensory inputs which come from the diverse parts of our body. Therefore, if we cut the input from the sensory apparatus down in some way then this neural network which processes these signals will take over and will create the impression of a separate body besides the "real, material" body. Therefore we can speak about two systems:
1. Our body and the sensory systems which connect us to the "real (=outside) world", and
2. The artificial body scheme generated in the brain by the neuromatrix = neurosignature. ..

As long as we live an "ordinary" life and nothing special happens, the difference between these two working systems gets by unnoticed. Only if the first system gets separated from the second one by any means, the autonomous working of the second one becomes apparent.

You see here what happens if in any way we lose contact with the physical bodily sensory information flow, the mind will automatically switch purely to this mental image of our bodies. This is what happens when we perform an exit procedure from trance/ sleep (remember i focused on the smooth transition which makes us really believe we go OBE), but if can also happen I think under certain circumstances during waking life (an issue to be explored further). Also this does not mean ofcourse we cannot experience other mental constructs (like as said here, be a flower or a bird), it just shows that as a standard, normally the mind will automatically switch to this internal model of our physical body.

As i have said before here on the forum, what you are doing when you enter an RB type-OBE is what Bardon calls "mental wandering". Ofcourse the argument will go like, "yeah but that's Bardon's words vs Bruce's", and I agree. It's up to us to explore the truths behind each of their claims. It's still interesting though that Bardon's mental wandering can now partly be explained by science. Also I reckon most people will not like the final remark of that article...

Quote
What we learn by Bardons method is not to reach the "astral plane" but to control our own body image neuronal network.

... yet I fully agree  8)

Hi Xetrov!

Sorry about the long delay, but there really is no urgency I feel in our discussion...?  :D

Quote from: catmeowI don't understand your reluctance to accept OBE as a genuine experience. Given the fact that you accept human survival of bodily death, why do you refuse to accept the possibility of a person temporarily leaving the body whilst he is still alive?!

I'm still waiting for a comprehensible answer to this?  What I'm trying to say is, given the fact that you accept that "spirit can leave body", I can't understand your inisistance that this can't happen whilst the physical body is alive?  Your argument seems to be:

Quote from: XetrovI have seen no evidence to definitely prove that this has to be true

But this is equally true of NDE-OBE.  There is no evidence to definitely prove that NDE-OBE is "spirit leaving body" either.  :? Ultimately these things can not be proven, and we can argue in circles over this for months.  Given the fact that we both accept that "spirit can leave body", it seems that you then place an additional and an unnecessary constraint that "body must be dead".   Why? I don't understand?  You talk about "evidence" but the overwhelming "evidence" is that "spirit leaves body", even when the body is alive.

We should apply in each case the simplest theory which fits the observed facts (Occam's Razor).  For the cases I cited, I think that this is that "spirit leaves body" and not that "person has hallucination about leaving body coupled with ESP, coupled with self-body image, coupled with hallucination and ESP of second individual who thinks he saw first individual out of his body" etc etc...!

Quote from: XetrovTo put it differently, why can't such an OBE be initiated from beyond deep sleep where the visual cortex is offline?

Who says an OBE can't be initiated whilst the visual cortex is offline?  :?

Quote from: XetrovI have never said that a person cannot temporarily leave their body while alive, just that it is a lot more difficult then Bruce wants us all to believe because the only way this is possible is to initiate a NDE.

Well this is exactly what I am disputing.  You say a person needs to be NDE to OBE and I say they don't!

Quote from: XetrovTherefore I also propose to define the phenomenon [Lucd Dream] itself as: Any state of lowered brainwave activity resulting in either sleep or trance during which the subject retains his or her awareness. This awareness can range from 'only' knowing that one is dreaming / in trance to full inclusion of all daily conscious faculties, including but not limited to all memories and full consciousness.

Doesn't this definition also include NDE-OBE where brainwave activity is reduced to zero?  :?   I would like to see the EEG of those cases of "waking OBE" I quoted where people were taking driving tests and riding motorbikes.  It would be interesting if these showed a normal EEG, because then they would be excluded from your definition.

The following article discusses EEG, measured for various individuals during OBE:

http://www.psywww.com/asc/obe/faq/obe17.html

From this article:

QuoteBut perhaps most important is that in no case so far did there seem to be a discrete state in which the OBE took place. There were no sudden changes in either EEG or autonomic functions to mark the beginning or end of the OBE. Any changes were gradual; unlike dreaming, the OBE does not seem to be associated with a discrete physiological state.

And again:

QuoteThe one other subject who has taken part in a large number of OBE experiments is Keith ('Blue') Harary. ... Here there were no changes in EEG. The amount and frequency of alpha were the same in OBE and 'cool down' periods and there were only slightly fewer eye movements in the OBE phases. These measurements alone show that Harary was awake and that his OBEs did not occur in a sleeping, dreaming or borderline state.

These results disagree with your view of LD/OBE as only occurring during alpha/theta EEG.  For at least one subject (Keith Harary), OBE's take place during normal EEG.  So his OBE's also do not fall within your definition of LD/OBE.

Now to answer some of your questions

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowIt has happened to me many times that I returned from an outstandingly vivid LD which seemed pretty convincing at the time, only to realize when I woke up that it was "just a dream"...

First of all I would like to inquire after the amount of daily consciousness you retain in your lucids. Also, what did you mean when you said "only to realize when I woke up that it was "just a dream""? Do you mean to say that during the LD, you did not (perhaps not fully) realize it was a dream? What do you mean by "an outstandingly vivid LD which seemed pretty convincing at the time"? Of what were you convinced at the time? Do you mean that you only realize after you wake up that you had a lucid dream? Please elaborate as I am now confused about what your LD experiences are.

We need to distinguish (at least) three closely related things during LD/OBE:

1. Level of consciousness
2. Vividness of scenery
3. Sense of "reality"

In my experience these are three different things. During my LD's my level of consciousness can be anything from dream like to very nearly full PWC.  Also, the scenery can be anything from grey and washed out to extremely vivid, and in fact definitely as vivid as PWC.  The sensation of "reality" for me varies from "dreamlike" to "real".

So during an LD my level of consciousness is usually pretty good, though not quite up to PWC.  I am always aware that it is an LD at the time.  I do not have to wake up before I realise it is an LD!  I know for sure at the time.  An "outstandingly vivid" LD is one where the visual scenery is very vivid.  For me this is often the case, the scenery can be marvellously detailed and vivid, every bit as vivid as PWC.  Also at the time, the experience usually "feels real".  It is only when I wake up and compare the "sense of reality" during the LD with the "sense of reality" I am now experiencing during PWC, that I realise the LD was inferior.  On only a very small number of occasions has this not been the case, in other words, it has only happened a few times that when I woke up the LD felt as "real" as PWC.

Quote from: XetrovWhat is your evidence that when such an experience seems real after wards it HAS to be a genuine OBE?

That isn't what I'm saying.  I believe there is a difference between LD and OBE and for those who experience both LD and OBE, this difference is pretty obvious.  One of the characteristics of OBE is that it still seems "real" when the individual wakes up.

Quote from: XetrovThe fact that during an OBE people have reported to have spontaneous 360 degree vision is interesting however, are you sure these people had never read or heard anywhere about this before, so that it was 100% spontaneous? Could you show me where you got this information?

I can't be sure that these people never heard of 360 deg vision.  I'll do some research to see if I can dig up some interesting cases.  360 deg vision is again one of my "OBE pointers".  In fact I would go as far as to say that if you have 360 deg vision then that is strong enough on its own to indicate OBE rather than LD.

Quote from: XetrovIf not, why are there differences in degrees of vision in different OBE accounts? Why does someone have it and someone else not? Should it not be that we all ought to have it, since I assume that you realize that if what you claim is true, and the astral body is set free, then the astral senses take over from the physical / internal ones. Why would the astral senses in such a scenario show 360 degree vision to one person (and perhaps not even always), and not to another person?

Don't know.  :cry:  I assume that it's like "focussing" your physical eyes.  If you concentrate on one spot whilst OBE you get normal vision.  But if you focus on all of your surroundings, your astral senses open up and you get 360 deg vision.  Seems perfectly sensible to me?

Quote from: XetrovAs I explained (I think), your brainwave-activity has to drop significantly from beta to alpha and theta, which indicates relaxation of physical body and heightened internal activity in visual cortex by release of certain neurotransmitters. It is certainly not impossible that this can even happen for some people during normal daily activity and even when they don't expect it.

Well of course we need to hook these people up to EEG whilst they are having their "waking OBE's".  I think you might be surprised with the results if we could do that.  As I already showed (in the article I linked to above) EEG measurements have already been taken, which completely contradict your alpha/theta EEG theory.  Can you explain this?

Quote from: XetrovWell ok back once more to the 360 discussion. Do you mean to say that everything we experience in a (lucid)dream needs to have parallels in physical waking life? Do you mean that, stuff that is difficult to visualize would be impossible to do in a LD?

Nope, it's just that the the "parallel" aragument is conveniently trotted out to explain the "self-body-image", but the "parallel" argument is then conveniently dropped and discounted (by yourself) when talking about point-consciousness and 360 deg vision.  It seems that on the one hand it's a "good argument" and on the other hand it's "unnecessary".  So which is it?  :?

Quote from: Xetrov

Quote from: catmeowthe LD/ESP model which you apply to normal OBE's applies equally to NDE-OBE's  

Might be true (no way to disprove what you wrote here). But what does that prove?

The point I'm trying to make is that the LD/ESP model can be misused to disprove your position, just as well as it can be misused to disprove mine.  What we should be using, in both cases, is the simplest theory  which explains the observed facts (Occam's Razor again).  This means that in NDE-OBE the spirit leaves the body, and also in normal OBE, the spirit leaves the body!  :wink:

Quote from: XetrovSo what I dont understand is all of your reluctance to explore possible different ways of explaining the OBE phenomenon.

Aha!  trying to turn my own argument against me!  :lol:   Well I have no reluctance to explain OBE's as LD's.  Some of them, even many of them are LD's.  But a very significant proportion of OBE's are exactly what they appear to be, "spirit leaving body".

btw, how is the "360 deg vison during LD" experiment coming along?  Is my car safe?  :lol:

catmeow

Hey catmeow, ill reply in length soon, but just one small remark now.

Quote from: catmeowbtw, how is the "360 deg vison during LD" experiment coming along?  Is my car safe?  :lol: catmeow

I have not yet had a significant high Lucid dream to test it. However I have been asking around to some people I know very closely (and trust at least as much as I trust you!), and they have said that they have 360 degree vision when they reach their highest state of lucidity (so yes, in a LD). I can paste the log or get you in contact with this person if you don't believe me :)

So eh, does that earn me a car yet?  :lol:

Hi Xetrov!

That's very interesting indeed.  And yes my car is about 4 inches in length and comes in a little cardboard box!  :lol:

I'd love to hear from your friends!

Best wishes
catmeow

Quotehave by the way come across a very interesting article to show you some more scientific evidence that my viewpoint is no-nonsense. I would highly suggest for anyone to read the following:

http://www.geocities.com/franzbardon/virtuallimbs.html

I never thought your Ideas are nonsense.But In my view this article does not in any way show evidence that a neuromatrix is more likely then a Astral body existing besides the physical body. All observed Phenomenon are explainable with both Theories.

QuoteBut this is equally true of NDE-OBE. There is no evidence to definitely prove that NDE-OBE is "spirit leaving body" either.  Ultimately these things can not be proven, and we can argue in circles over this for months. Given the fact that we both accept that "spirit can leave body", it seems that you then place an additional and an unnecessary constraint that "body must be dead". Why? I don't understand? You talk about "evidence" but the overwhelming "evidence" is that "spirit leaves body", even when the body is alive

I agree.. what evidence have we any way, to assume there is a spirit? I think none,  that one could not explain away If one is a little creative with theories one can easily explain all experiences a human being has without a spirit. (  most scientists do exactly that! )
What evidence do we have that spirit leaves the Body, well this question is the wrong way, I think. Let me ask this: What evidence do we have that conscious is not the more appropriate description of what we are then spirit? Conscious can leave Body during sleep, that we know, so if we are not Spirit, but Conscious (a more plausible assumption I think) the discussion would be finished.

I think the Problem is the following:
We do not understand what the mind really is nor do we have any good explanation for conscious itself.  But ultimately we are "mind". If we focus our conscious to remote places and become conscious of things there, we have a fact that modern science can not explain! You can use ESP (unexplained I think!) Neorimatrix etc.. but ultimately we do not understand conscious and therefore this theories are , in my view,  not satisfying cause they fail to explain the most essential part.
It seem s to me that explaining Conscious with science is like explaining a melody with words.....Not possible :D
So I guess, our dispute is doomed to fail (  :roll:  @ Frank)





To FreeChile

QuoteAlso, Xetrov, it appears that you and most people on this site make a few other assumptions I would like to express now.

1. The assumption that there is a mind. Not explored here.
2. The assumption that there is such a thing as consciousness. Also not explored here.

It seems to me like you are saying, It is a assumption to say "We are"   :shock:  
What do you mean? I don't get it....... :?

Hello everyone,

Catmeow and Tombo, thanks for your replies. I hope we're not getting tired of this discussion yet (I'm not, but I am jobless for the moment, so I got plenty of time to write huge posts :P ). I'll see if I can make you understand better why some people seem so reluctant to go with some of Bruce's viewpoints.

Quote
catmeow wrote:
I don't understand your reluctance to accept OBE as a genuine experience. Given the fact that you accept human survival of bodily death, why do you refuse to accept the possibility of a person temporarily leaving the body whilst he is still alive?!

I'm still waiting for a comprehensible answer to this? What I'm trying to say  is, given the fact that you accept that "spirit can leave body", I can't understand your inisistance that this can't happen whilst the physical body is alive?

First of all I never said its not genuine. But I understand what you mean anyway.The answer lies, to start with, also in this:

QuoteWho says an OBE can't be initiated whilst the visual cortex is offline?

To continue, this also has to do with what Tombo wrote:

Quote from: TomboIn my view this article does not in any way show evidence that a neuromatrix is more likely then a Astral body existing besides the physical body. All observed Phenomenon are explainable with both Theories.

Ok so we have 2 viewpoints here now, both of which show some possible inconsistencies. First of all in Bruce's theory. I have claimed that the fact that no OBE can be initiated in deep sleep whilst the visual cortex is offline argues against Bruce. I have asked people here to confirm or reject this statement by trying to do this (experience lucid sleep) themselves, however being lucid in deep sleep is very hard so it would be some time I guess before anyone here can or wants to experiment on this. However I and a few other people I know well have done so on several occasions. From our experience, all of us are able to go  into a RB type-OBE from sleep / trance but not from deep sleep. After some research we found that in this stage the visual cortex is offline, so this supported our conclusion that  RB style-OBE are like dreams and Dependant on certain brain functions  (visual cortex) that produce visual images. How can this be true if Bruce is correct?
To continue we also found some research that shows that people born blind could not see during RB type-OBE, but could during NDE. This could possibly point in the direction that, contrary to RB type-OBE, at NDE-OBE we do leave our body and can "see" with our astral senses. Add to this the several NDE experiences that a friend of my induced from really 0 brainwave activity. I have asked him to elaborate on  these experiences here so perhaps you will find a detailed description of it soon (i hope). These facts are also not explained by Bruce and seem to contradict his ideas.
Now this doesn't mean Bruce is totally insane and has no good ideas whatsoever, only that his notion of astral matter of the body (spirit) disconnecting from it and operating independently from it, thereby fully placed in the astral dimension during RB type-OBE, is not correct.
So now what are the deficiencies in the model of explanation that I have proposed?

QuoteWe should apply in each case the simplest theory which fits the observed facts (Occam's Razor). For the cases I cited, I think that this is that "spirit leaves body" and not that "person has hallucination about leaving body coupled with ESP, coupled with self-body image, coupled with hallucination and ESP of second individual who thinks he saw first individual out of his body"

Occam absolutely says nothing at all about which viewpoint would be the more simple theory that fits the observed facts, just that you should pick the one that YOU think is more simple, which is purely subjective interpretation, depending on your experiences and knowledge. For you, it's Bruce's ideas. For me, it's not. I could easily sum up or invent some examples where someone doesnt know all the facts so that a certain viewpoint looks the more logical one while this was totally not the case. So, Occam is not going to help us at all here and says nothing about the validity of either of the viewpoints.
I have argued that OBE's are visual happenings induced by the brain, so if you want to call that hallucinations, ok. We have also seen that ESP is absolutely not a weird phenomenon to happen and could very well explain 99.99 or perhaps 100 percent of what happens. So then we are left with some odd examples like "she saw that person beside her body while that person had an OBE". You say, "aha! Occam! So Bruce is right!"... Well that just doesnt do it for me. I have been theorizing a bit on  his forum what can happen and the possibilities of ESP etc, this does not mean I know everything that is possible! Neither do you I assume, so we will always have some lack of information in our discussions (we just dont know everything). So while this example of yours might have happened, I think this is a far smaller discrepancy (and behold yet, for I will certainly try to explain it, just read on... :) ) then the ones I showed in Bruce's ideas.

QuoteYou say a person needs to be NDE to OBE and I say they don't!

You know im not the only person who believes this don't you? Look at Bardon's work for example and the ancient tradition of Yogi's. Don't come with the same argument as Frank please that these are invalid and based  upon centuries of dogma and such because that's just not true. These people have been exploring consciousness on levels most of us cannot even imagine, for ages!

QuoteDoesn't this definition also include NDE-OBE where brainwave activity is reduced to zero?

No, I dont consider zero to be activity. Perhaps I should have made that more explicit.

QuoteFrom this article:
Quote:
But perhaps most important is that in no case so far did there seem to be a discrete state in which the OBE took place. There were no sudden changes in either EEG or autonomic functions to mark the beginning or end of the OBE. Any changes were gradual; unlike dreaming, the OBE does not seem to be associated with a discrete physiological state.

And again:
Quote:
The one other subject who has taken part in a large number of OBE experiments is Keith ('Blue') Harary. ... Here there were no changes in EEG. The amount and frequency of alpha were the same in OBE and 'cool down' periods and there were only slightly fewer eye movements in the OBE phases. These measurements alone show that Harary was awake and that his OBEs did not occur in a sleeping, dreaming or borderline state.

These results disagree with your view of LD/OBE as only occurring during alpha/theta EEG. For at least one subject (Keith Harary), OBE's take place during normal EEG. So his OBE's also do not fall within your definition of LD/OBE....
....EEG measurements have already been taken, which completely contradict your alpha/theta EEG theory. Can you explain this?

I never meant to say that RB type-OBE is exactly like dreaming, but that the fundamental principles behind  them are the same. These are 1) No spirit leaves the body and 2) Visions are internally created events, added with ESP. So this to me includes RB type-OBE's in any condition as well as LD's. This said, most likely my definitions did not yet cover all related phenomena and all possible aspects (as you try to show). Don't forget Im at times also still learning new facts here, and I try to incorporate them as good as I can into my viewpoint (there might be a limit to this, where there are facts that are so inconsistent with my ideas that I can't incorporate them, but I dont think this is the case just yet!). Also if I get stuck I could ask some other people with far more knowledge and experience than me (but who share my ideas) on their opinion. This is by the way what i'm doing now and then, and I also asked some of them to post their ideas here but alas, noone showed up yet so I'll have to defend the case alone, for now.
Now how could there be "no sudden changes in either EEG or autonomic functions to mark the beginning or end of the OBE"? Have you even considered for example the possibility that differences would show up on the EEG, between OBE's induced from waking life (like WILD) and OBE's started from within a LD, without the absolute necessity for those two kinds of OBE's to be very different? It merely seems to be a sign of sleep when EEG changes fast and a sign of wakefulness when it doesnt. Also about trances, I dont claim to be THE expert on this topic, but I know that meditation starts with alpha, then theta, and in alpha already you can have vivid visions. There is also no need for sudden EEG changes since during the experiment, it could very well be that, when they started to measure, the person was already relaxed and in alpha EEG. So this in itself doesnt say anything . Also remember the cases I called upon of people that could kind of "OBE" at any time of the day by "loosing themselves in their internal visions", for example if they have a photographic memory (but here could be other causes, like people who are extremely good at visualizing). These persons for sure also don't drop into theta trance.
You might say, well a minority of cases dont seem to fit entirely with your previous description of what according to you should be happening at a RB type-OBE. But I am covering  in this discussion some issues on which i definitely dont have all the knowledge (yet), so perhaps it's possible that even RB type-OBE's are in reality dividable in different categories, depending for example on brainwave activity. We could divide them into OBE's induced from sleep paralysis, from LD, from trance, from daily activity, etc. It would be hard now to exactly describe all of these phenomena in one description, but I still believe that they share in common as I have argued, 1) No spirit leaves the body and 2) Visions are internally created events, added with ESP.

Quote
Xetrov wrote:
If not, why are there differences in degrees of vision in different OBE accounts? Why does someone have it and someone else not? Should it not be that we all ought to have it, since I assume that you realize that if what you claim is true, and the astral body is set free, then the astral senses take over from the physical / internal ones. Why would the astral senses in such a scenario show 360 degree vision to one person (and perhaps not even always), and not to another person?

Don't know.  I assume that it's like "focussing" your physical eyes. If you concentrate on one spot whilst OBE you get normal vision. But if you focus on all of your surroundings, your astral senses open up and you get 360 deg vision. Seems perfectly sensible to me?

So when you are in the astral, your astral senses still need to open up? This seems weird to me and contradicted by people that experience NDE's. I can tell you though why I think this is true. There are two possibilities. One is that you watch your visions with a kind of fisheye – effect (if you know what I mean). Two is that you can perceive with your astral senses (ESP), but the differences in talent and experience determine to what extent you can do this (360 or less), because we are still connected to and limited by our physical bodies.

Quote
Nope, it's just that the the "parallel" argument is conveniently trotted out to explain the "self-body-image", but the "parallel" argument is then conveniently dropped and discounted (by yourself) when talking about point-consciousness and 360 deg vision. It seems that on the one hand it's a "good argument" and on the other hand it's "unnecessary". So which is it?

You dont understand what I mean. The self image model we have is the basic to which we always fall back to during many (mostly ordinary) situations. This doesnt mean we cannot experience different things, which are alien to this model.

QuoteThe point I'm trying to make is that the LD/ESP model can be misused to disprove your position, just as well as it can be misused to disprove mine. What we should be using, in both cases, is the simplest theory which explains the observed facts (Occam's Razor again). This means that in NDE-OBE the spirit leaves the body, and also in normal OBE, the spirit leaves the body

If I would use Occam here, I would say  that your application of LD/ESP to NDE is extremely far fetched. It would mean that the LD takes place at the exact moment of revival where the brain becomes active again (so there needs to be a huge time compression), and also the knowledge of everything that happened must be obtained through an empathic link with the doctors present, which is extremely unlikely since unless you are godly talented most you can do is sense emotions. This also counts for obtaining the information trough "clairvoyantly from psychic imprints of the previous events in the "ether". ", which is furthermore an idea based upon a premise that you want to prove, so you cant use this argument because it's based upon itself(the ether or astral being prone to influence of thought, and that this is information reachable through  ESP or whatever means is what you need to prove in the 1st place).
So while we both agree that the LD/ESP model is RATHER plausible, we both  (I assume) kind of laugh  (as a joke ofcourse) at your idea to counter my valid use of the LD/ESP model. But who am I to use Occam, ofcourse :lol:

Oh and by the way, Im waiting for the postman to deliver your car as soon as I bring the people to post their 360 – LD stuff here! :)

And as a final note to Tombo: If you dont agree that we have a spirit / astral matter in the first place then how come you believe in Bruce's ideas anyway? And also yes, we are conscious, but if that is all there is, then consciousness  must be created and maintained purely by the brain/nervous system, and we have already argued that if you talk only about consciousness, we really never are "in" the body  in the first place, but "in" the place you are conscious of at a certain time (be it a dream or a thought or whatever). The argument was going about astral matter / spirit disconnecting from the body.

O.k. I'll give in!
Xetrov I must admit: Your Theories on Astral Travel are at least as plausible as the ones Robert Bruce has, or any other I have heard of.
I'm curious for your new article though. I think you should start a new Thread once you post it, cause I doubt any body else is still following this interesting discussion:

BTW: I hope Catmeow has some good arguments against you, though........

Hey Tombo.

Well indeed your conclusion, that these ideas are at least as plausible as Bruce's, is one I have tried to defend here from the start (might have taken a while for me to explain it in a decent way, but hey, that's what a forum is for, im glad i learned to state my ideas so others could understand!). I really hope that more people will be open minded and try to search themselves for possible answers to the questions raised here (including, hopefully, more scientists too in the future). And ofcourse, these answers could still include parts of Bruce's theories, yet I do hope that my ideas have made clear that you should not take it all for granted (as some do but luckily not all).

Anyway I'm also curious for a reply of Catmeow (I hope he will still give one, no hurry though).

Also, I will update my article by the way with any new information I recently obtained (not a lot, but still) and post it here soon.

A nice day to you all!
Xetrov.