how do you see while APing???

[izalco]

Almost projected this morning, but something weird happened.

I was laying on my bed this morning, half asleep half awake. Then I felt my body rising to the sky, I thought I was out, maybe partially. I kept my real eyes closed, and as I was "floating through the roof" of my house, or so, my head peak out and sunlight came in my eyes, while they were closed, or in other words, close your eyes and look at the sun and thats what happened.

Now, I am wondering, how will I see while out of body? With what eyes?

[MisterJingo]

Sight in a physical body is simply the interpretation of energy (photons hitting cones and rods on the retina, which generates electric impulses which then propagate to the brains visual centres) by the brain/mind. If we have an energy body of some form while OBE, its not unreasonable to expect that we interpret energy interacting with that energy body through the methods learnt in a body. I guess there is the possibility that this energy which forms the astral is also shaped in certain ways dependent upon your own beliefs and that of other in-body humans. What I mean by this is that certain energy might give itself to being interpreted by our learnt visual processing if that energy is predominantly processed as a visual phenomena by other individuals. We should also consider how powerful personal perception is though, and so this might not be the case and I am just babbling :p

[Michael_E]

Sight in a physical body is simply the interpretation of energy (photons hitting cones and rods on the retina, which generates electric impulses which then propagate to the brains visual centres) by the brain/mind.  We should also consider how powerful personal perception is though, and so this might not be the case and I am just babbling :p

Haha! Babble on Mister Jingo! You surely have some good ideas forming there. There was a study done with participants hooked up to PET scans that had asked the participants to look at an object and then close their eyes and imagine the same object. The study partly showed that the same areas of the brain became active when the participants imagined the object as compared to when they physically saw the object. This could perhaps tell us that the brain doesnt differentiate between real and imagined once the info has been integrated. I can see how personal perception can be a big thing while oob.

[izalco]

yes but the question is not answered.


Why if my eyes were closed, did I sense the sunlight trying to come through my eyes, if my body was on my bed, and my consciousness trying to fly away, did I sense this?

[MisterJingo]

yes but the question is not answered.


Why if my eyes were closed, did I sense the sunlight trying to come through my eyes, if my body was on my bed, and my consciousness trying to fly away, did I sense this?

Are you saying that you saw light as if through your eyelids when it was actually your astral body seeing the light?

[izalco]

yes but the question is not answered.


Why if my eyes were closed, did I sense the sunlight trying to come through my eyes, if my body was on my bed, and my consciousness trying to fly away, did I sense this?

Are you saying that you saw light as if through your eyelids when it was actually your astral body seeing the light?

yes, it was strange.

also strange is that every time I try to Ap, I start by going out head, face, and chest first, but then end up going back.

Maybe I need more practice.

[MisterJingo]

Well an answer to this could depend on what you believe ap to be. I personally don't see it as moving outside of a physical body, but more a movement within the mind i.e. moving focus from one area (the physical) to another (what we call the astral). In such an interpretation of ap its possible to be in the middle of both areas, not quite focused on either. So when you saw the light with your astral body, being partly focused on the physical too could have caused confusion in interpreting what was happening. So the light was also seemingly perceived by the physical body too. I've experienced being out of phase with two areas, feeling both bodies and independent thought processes at the same time. It can be quite confusing.

[MisterJingo]

Sight in a physical body is simply the interpretation of energy (photons hitting cones and rods on the retina, which generates electric impulses which then propagate to the brains visual centres) by the brain/mind.  We should also consider how powerful personal perception is though, and so this might not be the case and I am just babbling :p

Haha! Babble on Mister Jingo! You surely have some good ideas forming there. There was a study done with participants hooked up to PET scans that had asked the participants to look at an object and then close their eyes and imagine the same object. The study partly showed that the same areas of the brain became active when the participants imagined the object as compared to when they physically saw the object. This could perhaps tell us that the brain doesnt differentiate between real and imagined once the info has been integrated. I can see how personal perception can be a big thing while oob.

There have been even more interesting studies in this area, one which springs to mind regards imagining exercise. To quote a source:

In a fascinating experiment, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation discovered that a muscle can be strengthened just by thinking about exercising it.

For 12 weeks (five minutes a day, five days per week) a team of 30 healthy young adults imagined either using the muscle of their little finger or of their elbow flexor. Dr. Vinoth Ranganathan and his team asked the participants to think as strongly as they could about moving the muscle being tested, to make the imaginary movement as real as they could.

Compared to a control group – that did no imaginary exercises and showed no strength gains – the little-finger group increased their pinky muscle strength by 35%. The other group increased elbow strength by 13.4%.

What's more, brain scans taken after the study showed greater and more focused activity in the prefrontal cortex than before. The researchers said strength gains were due to improvements in the brain's ability to signal muscle.