Are OBE important?

[Blue Giant]

Hello,

Belief is a powerful word. It is defined as "partial or full assurance without positive knowledge or absolute certainty". I feel that if one has an outer body experience it only stengthens a particular belief, yet still goes uncertain. One "compares" this expereince as a life after death situation, but is still no further in knowing the answer until it is revealed. If it is looked upon strengthening a belief more positively and intensly - the only benefit to the seeker who experienced it is the strengthening of what is yet still unkwown. By knowing this, having an outer body experience or not it will not reveal the secret until one goes through it...fully. So if you never were to have an O.B.E....your still in the same boat if you were to have one. All in all, the strength of such a belief lies not in its reasoning for it, but the mere belief in itself.

I hope that helped,

Rusty

" It is not the destination-
the reward is in the journey. "

[Jeff_Mash]

quote:Originally posted by TorosDead
"righteous is he who seeith and believes, but blessed is he who believes and seeith not."

I believe that we have to put this scripture in perspective.  Jesus said these words to his disciples, who were with Him in the flesh.  They had the benefit of hearing him physically speak these words of enlightenment, and they got to SEE with their own eyes the miracles that He did (healing the sick, water into wine, walking on water, etc.)  

However, Jesus was saying, "Hey guys, you guys are pretty righteous for staying by my side and believing in me.  But you know something?  I'm going to have an even greater amount of appreciation to those who, after I leave this physical plane, still believe in me and follow me WITHOUT ever seeing me."

That's just the way I always looked at it.  I never take a scripture at face value without reading it in context to when it was said, and to whom it was said.

[alt0xFF]

Jeff_Mash, right on!

[TorosDead]

Didn't look at it like that before, it makes a lot of sense.  Scripture interpretation can be difficult so it's always good to have outside perspective.

[beavis]

Faith sucks. If there is a god, I doubt he would want you to be stupid. You could have faith that a giant monkey created everything or faith that Hitler gave money to charity, but there is no reason to believe those things. Beliefs should be verified with experience, or disbelieved.

[Candieapple]

Please be aware that when you read the Bible/scriptures/testaments, you must remember that a man wrote them upon his beliefs/opinions. God is not the author of the Bibles, and they have been delibertely changed over the centuries based on the need for Churches to suppress psychic/spiritual development and to control the masses. Also remember that there are hundreds of Bibles and many verses are written differently with totally different meanings that have twisted the original meaning. I have typed over 160 Bibles comparing verses for a friend of mine, Sidney Schwartz, who wrote the book "My First Encounter With An Angel". Prompted through a channelled entity, who claims the Bible has been altered, (my friend, being Jewish and denying any tampering of the word of God) begins a quest to disprove the channelled entity and begins to compare verses and also discovers how the Bible is "saturated with metaphysical or mediumistic phenomena of every kind." I was amazed on how different the hundreds of bibles were. I grew up Catholic "believing" the words were true. Anyway - after the last few years of researching metaphysical information, I conclude that everything is philosophy until it is experienced, then it can be considered your "truth". It has to be a "knowingness" instead of a belief system, because if you say you "believe" in something instead of "knowing" you are really saying "it could be, maybe, or maybe not". I hope I'm making sense here, sometimes I have such deep profound feelings, but have difficultly expressing it in words.[]

[quetzalcoatl]

Well having an OBE isn't really "seeing" because your eyes are shut.  

I don't think Jesus was saying "believe it because I said so".  That would just be bizarre and illogical, bordering on sadistic.  He was saying that there is a deeper way of knowing than through the senses.

[Ybom]

Blue Giant, I like your signature!

My lil post here is about a person I work with. He is a devout Christian and is curious about "new age" material and we had a chat about it during one of our breaks one day. It seems he's conflicted with the whole "It's the work of the devil!" line. Spiritual brainwashing at it's finest...

[beavis]

Candieapple, I agree that the bible (and many other religious texts) are distorted by human interpretation and changing of text after it was written. The kind of faith that "sucks" the most is faith in the texts. I think there is so much distortion that there could be no god, but instead something else similar to astral (and even that is a distortion), and Jesus Buddha and other religious leaders could easily misinterpret that into "god". There is definitely something beyond the physical that they are interpreting, but I think being human limits them too much to give their interpretations as much credibility as most people do.

[Candieapple]

Hey Ybom, maybe your friend needs his brain washed?[]HeHe. Just kidding. It can be hard to shake off all the dogma you've been brought up with. Its not easy to teach an old dog new tricks![] I still stuggle from time-to-time with some issues. One must begin with small steps before he can run (or fly)[]! Years ago I began with research on angels. It begins to open your mind into the para-normal world/beings in other dimensions and go on from there.

Beavis - Jesus and Budda were beautifully gifted men who turned into master teachers. Jesus had all his psychic abilities/gifts of the Spirit working: Clairaudience/Clairvoyance (transfiguration on the mount); Healing; Apports (multiplied food); Levitation (walking on water), etc. I agree with you that God has been distorted, but because ignorant men distort "God" doesn't mean there isn't such a thing. I agree with you when you say God is similar to astral, yes! energy! of great magnitude that pulsates threw everything, all of us, everything has a piece of God within. God is in the butterfly, the whispering wind, an insects wings, a fishes scales, childrens laughter, lovers embrace. God is all![]

[beavis]

I think that what most people call "god" is so different from what really exist that it should not be called "god". "God" implies there is a central intelligence, and I have seen no evidence of that.

[TorosDead]

For years now I have been attemtping an OBE because because curiosity has gone wild about the subject.  I was once athiest and after reading about AP I soon became more interested in NDE.  That opened my mind to the possibility that there may in fact be a God.  Then I began reading anything I could get my hands on about God, including scriptures of many different religions.  To date, I think that Christ is the answer... and have recently come across some of his teachings that make me wonder about OBE.  One statement that most got to me said by Christ was "righteous is he who seeith and believes, but blessed is he who believes and seeith not."  Now this leads me to believe that it's possible to have an OBE experience or the likes thereof and know the truth because you have experienced it.  But to truly show your spirituality you must have faith without seeing (OBE?).  So my curious question is this... even though we can have OBE and tap into the truth of the soul, is it more important to have faith and believe without seeing?  Christ also teaches that we must learn patience, and though I have heard that it takes a great deal of patience to induce an OBE... wouldn't it take the most patience to go throughout an entire life without an OBE and wait untill death before the answers are experienced?  I do however recongnize that those who have had a NDE "experienced" the truth and have more faith then they had ever known before because of the knowledge they brought back with them, some including talking with the "being of light"(christ?), so that in itself suggests that it would be good to have an OBE.  I am just curious if I'm the only one thinking this.  If this makes sense to anyone, I would like to know you're ideas on it.