This person's experiences suggest that they are not dreams, her neural activity was arrested by freezing her brain during an operation. If the brain is effectively dead it could not create the OBE or allow her to remember it:
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/evidence01.html
If you have an ordinary etheric out of body experience you can check your surroundings and confirm it is real for yourself, I reckon most of us have done something like that.
I tend to agree about the psychotropic drugs and the difficulty in evaluating results. Only a person already out of their body when drugged could say whether they had an effect on their consciousness in the out of body state, and then you have only their insistence afterwards that they were either effected or not during the OBE, not very reliable evidence really. My feeling is, on a simpler level, when we are only drunk, there's still a little voice inside us that thinks clearly, that knows we are in a mess but it can't make the brain do what we want because we've messed it up temporarily. So I believe that consciousness is really a seperate entity from the brain and therefore the OBE experiences are real.
I don't agree with your expermiental device: I read here that there always is a link between physical body and spirit... represented in a cartoon I've seen by an umbilical cord. Given that link, the state of the brain will surely affect the conciousness, but without proof that some kind of energy body was not out and far away from its intended shell.
My own point of view is that eather way classical experimentations won't cross planes unless we know how they are physicaly related if they actually are... this field of knowledge not even being accepted by the leading opinion, I think it's impossible to raise the means to properly question it.
As far as i know Lucid dreams and Real Time Zone(RTZ) projection are not the same, and physiologically cannot be the same. Lucid dreams mostly occur during REM. The first stage of REM happens 70-90 minutes after the onset of sleep. The fastest ive clocked myself having a RTZ projection from the moment i layed down in bed was within 10 minutes which shows that it could not have been a lucid dream. For me the split takes place sometime during the hypnogognic state.
There are other environmental differences as well. While lucid dreaming my body is exactally like my physical body, if i look at my hands they look solid and normal. In RTZ my body fades away after i look at it and my hands which are a vibrant blue color not skin color. Mind you, these are repeatable, consistant traits that are not effected by expectation. At no point did i expect my hands to be blue, or red or green or whatever, its just the color of my body.
With lucid dreams the dreamscape is different than with RTZ projection. Upon examining something like a wall while in RTZ you might see that it is made up of tiny little star like particles, while in a lucid dream the structure of a wall seems just as real as the physical. It maybe that lucid dreams are created by our imagination and the basis of what is created by our imagination is taken from what we already know via our physical experience of reality which is then copied in the lucid dream. Unlike lucid dream's environment, RTZ seems to be somewhat separate from this idea of being an imagined copy of our physical environment otherwise we would percieve it the same way the lucid dream environment.
quote:
Originally posted by Klaus S
There is an ever on-going debate regarding the true nature of OBEs. Are they "only" special variants of lucid dreams and not what they seem to be? My own "OBEs" seem to be a lucid dream-variant anyway.
Lucid dreams obviously (?) are dependent upon brain functions, but are OBEs?
One thing that would be interesting to know is whether various psychotropic drugs given to the body during presumed OB-activity would affect the OBE.
If drugs were shown to affect OBEs in various ways, it would prove a link between the brain and the "entity" that supposedly leaves the body during an OBE. It would indicate that OBEs are lucid dreams.
BUT...There is one big problem here: Psychotropic drugs affecting the brain most likely would affect the brain's ability to store memories of OBEs. Any reports of OBEs in a laboratory would have to rely upon such memories, possibly distorted by drugs (one cannot speak in "real-time" during an OBE). Thus, any conclusions would be hard to make...
Anyway, it would be interesting with more research, biophysiological and otherwise, comparing lucid dreaming with OBEs.
Klaus S
A persons spirit (or related entity) must have inputs and outputs connected to at least some of the neurons in the persons brain, allowing the brain to communicate with the spirit the same way it does with a body part. This is the only way known to create real memories in a brain. We know that the physical body is always connected to the spirit, including during an OBE, because any distraction to it brings you back. You can try to ignore your brain while OBE, but with this connection always open, what the brain is thinking will have at least a small effect, unless you get far enough from time that no neurons are firing to affect you.
beavis I see now why you encouraged me for theorising!
but I still prefer my snoopy-like theory to your treatee
*cheers*
Brain and the OBE hmmmm.
If there is uncontrolled activity in the body while you are "out" it will certanly affect your total self.
If someone where to give you a high by giving you some mushrooms you would certanly experience some strange affects in your reality in OBE. [:o)]
Think of yourself as beeing pregnant.
You surround your physical aspect of yourself.
And if you move in this dimension you are in while obe'ing you are still having the physical dimension located inside of yourself.
Like carrying a laptop computer that is connected to the internet wireless. [:O]
And you are always carrying this laptop until it is too old or get a malfunction. [xx(]
When you have done your business outside of the internetworld you startup the laptop from sleepmode and it startsup its vital functions so you can operate through it. [8)]
Then you can start using it and operate, feed it with information or share information, whatever you want.
Then after a while you get tired of operate in the digital world and put the laptop in sleepmode.
Then you go and do your business (some aware or full aware of yourself). [?]
maybe,.. just some thought :D
*deleted because was ashamed*
I think you are WRONG to judge ppl like that.
Ive never said that all my experiences is in my brain.
I know that OBE's and Dreams are not in my brain.
So dont come here and judge.
And btw, dont think you have all the answers and that everyone else is wrong... be more open minded, there may be something in the middle.
Read "The Nature of the Astral Plane" topic....
'Nuff said....[;)]
There is an ever on-going debate regarding the true nature of OBEs. Are they "only" special variants of lucid dreams and not what they seem to be? My own "OBEs" seem to be a lucid dream-variant anyway.
Lucid dreams obviously (?) are dependent upon brain functions, but are OBEs?
One thing that would be interesting to know is whether various psychotropic drugs given to the body during presumed OB-activity would affect the OBE.
If drugs were shown to affect OBEs in various ways, it would prove a link between the brain and the "entity" that supposedly leaves the body during an OBE. It would indicate that OBEs are lucid dreams.
BUT...There is one big problem here: Psychotropic drugs affecting the brain most likely would affect the brain's ability to store memories of OBEs. Any reports of OBEs in a laboratory would have to rely upon such memories, possibly distorted by drugs (one cannot speak in "real-time" during an OBE). Thus, any conclusions would be hard to make...
Anyway, it would be interesting with more research, biophysiological and otherwise, comparing lucid dreaming with OBEs.
Klaus S