Thread: There is no difference between obe and a lucid dream.

Agreed. I think there's just a very powerful "leaving the body" schema that gets activaed, and you know how people can be profoundly affected by various dream schema and wake up thinking "It wasn't just a dream, it was totally real!"

Of course many people say this is how it happens, but that somehow in these experiences we're able to take in information from the waking world even though it's all filtered through the dream of being a wandering spirit.

The burden of proof is on those who believe in OBEs and want them to be taken seriously. During SP once I felt as though my body were lifted by a focal point in my stomach (so that my limbs dangled) and then my extremities continued curling until I was a single sphere of existence. It felt real, but not for one second did I actually believe my soul was now pulled into a sphere.

sanctispiritus has spoken. let it be so. just kidding. have to say i hate the whole tone of your post. you're just begging to start arguments it looks to me.

Originally Posted by Runeword

sanctispiritus has spoken. let it be so. just kidding. have to say i hate the whole tone of your post. you're just begging to start arguments it looks to me.

He's in a forum, what better place to start an argument? You're assuming that every argument is bad and not productive, but the arguments he posted for his way of thinking are very solid to me, and if you are apologist of dualism substance, unlike he is, then it would be pretty interesting to see you trying to counterargument him, at least for me.

On topic: Even though I agree with you in some parts, I still think we can't dismiss and put OBE in the same bag as lucid dreaming. There's several critics to that theory, and you can check one of them through this table (not all of them are necessarily true in my view):

This topic has some interesting discussion about the subject, but we can't deny OBE has very specific characteristics that are not necessarily present in a lucid dream, making them distinct concepts, even if seeming related.

Does materialism even exist as a philosophy anymore? Perhaps metaphysical naturalism is what you are looking for.

My English is not good enough to get into philosophical discussions. I am of those who prefer to explain things clearly and concisely without much adornment. It is not my interest begin argueing with anyone. I just express and opinion.
Quoting Carderon de la Barca.

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.
¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño:
que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son.

What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest good puny is;
For life entire is a dream,
And the dreams, nothing but dreams are.

Surely the crunch / critical point here is that if someone has an OOBE and, whilst travelling around the physical world, sees something that they couldn't have known about, it proves that an OOBE is objectively real. Some astral projectors claim to have done this. I guess the only way for an individual to know for sure is to practice astral projection and see for himself - an activity which I personally have not managed to master. Clearly a lucid dream only takes place within the brain.

Originally Posted by Dronfieldman

Surely the crunch / critical point here is that if someone has an OOBE and, whilst travelling around the physical world, sees something that they couldn't have known about, it proves that an OOBE is objectively real. Some astral projectors claim to have done this. I guess the only way for an individual to know for sure is to practice astral projection and see for himself - an activity which I personally have not managed to master. Clearly a lucid dream only takes place within the brain.

Yep! Yep! Yep.Spot-on.

There is no publicly acceptable evidence of this YET

Please do my Easy game because it will provide endless evidence of what we need evidence of. It is light and fun and friendly. There is absolutly no chance of cheating. Because the sinchronicity takes a week or more to manifest in the physical world.

One aspect that sometimes distinguishes an OOBE from a lucid dream is the situation whereby an independent observer actually sees, or senses in some way, the projector's etheric body. The article 'Out of the Body and Into the Lab: Defining Dr. Alex Tanous’ Abilities' in Paranthropology, vol. 4, No. 1(a) gives examples of this. There was also the case of the young French teacher who, whilst having her back to the class, to write on the blackboard, also had a double facing the class, whom the kids saw. Clearly, if you were only having a LD, no-one else would see you at a remote location.

Originally Posted by Dronfieldman

Surely the crunch / critical point here is that if someone has an OOBE and, whilst travelling around the physical world, sees something that they couldn't have known about, it proves that an OOBE is objectively real. Some astral projectors claim to have done this. I guess the only way for an individual to know for sure is to practice astral projection and see for himself - an activity which I personally have not managed to master. Clearly a lucid dream only takes place within the brain.

Dead right Dronfieldman. The really odd thing about this though is that despite how amazingly and ridiculously easy it would be to prove OOBEs are real (for an experienced projector), the only results forthcoming have been highly ambiguous and anecdotal at best, even from paranormal researchers. I just think something this apparent, that so many people can supposedly do, should have made more of a mainstream impact than it has if it was real.

Don't get me wrong. I want to believe OOBEs are real (and did for about a decade) but it worries me that for something which challenges all our notions of the physical universe, the only 'proof' comes in a suspiciously dream-like guise (of zoth00's OBE list above, only (G) can't be written off a perfectly valid LD experience). Without more to go on it's hard to give OOBEs any more cred than other much talked about things built-up on little evidence like ESP, telekinesis, UFO's, and the Loch Ness Monster.

Incidentally I think you're right; the only way to prove it is to do it, but what if it's not real, i.e. there's nothing to prove? When do you stop investing time and energy into an idea that fails to deliver?

Originally Posted by EnT

Dead right Dronfieldman. The really odd thing about this though is that despite how amazingly and ridiculously easy it would be to prove OOBEs are real (for an experienced projector), the only results forthcoming have been highly ambiguous and anecdotal at best, even from paranormal researchers. I just think something this apparent, that so many people can supposedly do, should have made more of a mainstream impact than it has if it was real.

Don't get me wrong. I want to believe OOBEs are real (and did for about a decade) but it worries me that for something which challenges all our notions of the physical universe, the only 'proof' comes in a suspiciously dream-like guise (of zoth00's OBE list above, only (G) can't be written off a perfectly valid LD experience). Without more to go on it's hard to give OOBEs any more cred than other much talked about things built-up on little evidence like ESP, telekinesis, UFO's, and the Loch Ness Monster.

Incidentally I think you're right; the only way to prove it is to do it, but what if it's not real, i.e. there's nothing to prove? When do you stop investing time and energy into an idea that fails to deliver?

Ent

No! No! No! No!

There is plenty BUT like Scott Rogo, if it gets Toooo public practitioners end up MURDERED.

It would take a lot of ORDINARY people to do somthing like my "easy" light, fun, friendly dream synchonicity game to overwhelm those who want to suppress the ... thingy... so that the whole world can come into ... it.

Believing that the soul is independent of the physical world and not a product of matter is just theology. If the soul separates from the body and the person dies at this moment, what will the soul do then? The soul could try teleporting. That for me is nothing but nonsense.

Originally Posted by sanctispiritus

Believing that the soul is independent of the physical world and not a product of matter is just theology. If the soul separates from the body and the person dies at this moment, what will the soul do then? The soul could try teleporting. That for me is nothing but nonsense.

I couldn't agree more sanctispiritus. Before you even ask if OOBEs are real you need to determine whether you hold to a materialist view or some kind of pluralist one. I feel that it is too easy to do it backwards and leap onto the pluralist bandwagon without really asking what it means to say that we have a non-material soul. If you ask the hard questions up front, the pluralist option always raises far more questions than it answers.

Sorry debrajane, you sound like you have personal experiences to back up your beliefs - for better or worse, I can only work with what I know, good old-fashioned reason...

Originally Posted by EnT

Before you even ask if OOBEs are real

But we know they are real They're called "out-of-body experiences". Those experiences are real due the massive reports and scientifical observation. Even if they were to be proven to be a specific lucid dream (which they haven't so far), they would still be a unique concept due the unique characteristics of the event. The deal you're arguing with (I think) is what nature do they relate to: in that subject, I immediately agree with you in the sense of them being a mere subjective reality constructed by our mind.

Originally Posted by zoth00

But we know they are real They're called "out-of-body experiences". Those experiences are real due the massive reports and scientifical observation.

Good point. And you're also dead right right in thinking that I am postulating the shocking theory that instead of a soul/spirit leaving the body every night we're just dreaming about it.

[QUOTE=EnT;1993578]I couldn't agree more sanctispiritus. Before you even ask if OOBEs are real you need to determine whether you hold to a materialist view or some kind of pluralist one. I feel that it is too easy to do it backwards and leap onto the pluralist bandwagon without really asking what it means to say that we have a non-material soul. If you ask the hard questions up front, the pluralist option always raises far more questions than it answers.

Sorry debrajane, you sound like you have personal experiences to back up your beliefs - for better or worse, I can only work with what I know, good old-fashioned reason...[/QUOT]

wow

just heard on tv news. A Group travelling around Adelaide suburbs, for Fringe Festival, is giving Out of Body experiences (OBEs).

Folk sit, and a black hood with a screen is put over their head.

They can look-down on themselves (due to a camera on a long stick on top of their head).

Then they get them to catch a frizbee. And some do catch the frizbee (hahaha).