Real time zone and reality fluctuations

[peachtree]

I intended to write this as a reply to the afterlife thread, but it's probably one on it's own.

If I may add something else to that thread, not necessarily related to what happens after death (I haven't been there yet, so don't know  ) but rather about what happens during an OBE. I like the thinking of not actually moving out of the body and around in the physical world as an astral being, but rather shifting focus on a different state of our consciousness.

The main reason for this is that every time I have had an OBE, the surroundings I had represented nothing like the physical world I know I have around my body (even when I do see my body lying there). Admittedly I have not had millions of OBE's, but I've had enough to know the difference between that state and lucid dreams. I can't come to grips with the concept of a RTZ simply because I have not been able to experience it in a realistic sense. I don't deny that it exists, because so many describe it, but I have simply not experienced it.

Instead my experience is always quite different. I go into a vibrational state (quite distinct), roll out (and this feels real enough), and look around and see things (still feels real enough), but I know these are not really there in the physical world (and not just a flowerpot where a TV should be, but whole rooms, whole regions that I explore).

With all the classic literature we have available describing the experience as leaving the body and moving around in the physical world (with the exception of the later writings around phasing etc), is it not possible that we have been conditioned to believe in a RTZ and an experience outside the body, instead of a state of mind? Is the RTZ not just a belief construct that we have created ourselves based on what we have read should be happening to us and from what we know from our physical experience of our surroundings? In other words it all exists in our minds and is not actually connected to the physical world other than through our memories of it. I think this also aligns with Frank's model and his F2oC. And it explains (at least in my opinion) reality fluctuations in a much more satisfactory way. 

Any comments or different points of view?

[CFTraveler]

This would apply to people who read about it and then try to project and succeed, since there is so much written about the experience.  But remember that the theories follow the experiences that the original writers had.  The explanations were to try to make sense of their experiences.
For example, I've been projecting since I was very young, long before I read about or heard about astral projection, and my experiences in the RTZ were completely "true to life" which is why I was able to stop and think and come to the conclusion that what happened was not a dream.  It was later, after I was all grown up and had read books about it that I had reality fluctuations, and yet later on after I turned 'after 40' that I have been able to successfully phase directly into the astral.
So as to the 'reality' of subjective experiences, I don't see how we can asign 'reality' to one type over another, because IMO they're all different, and that has to be for a reason.
I guess what works for you is what works for you.

[peachtree]

Good reply. Yeah I guess your experiences as a child blows my theory out of the water.