Thread: Questions for the Astral Traveler

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

So you perceive the waking world through the senses in your limited human body. And you think this is real?

The things in our universe are only perceived by our mind, not created by it like dream environments are.

We can't even determin if we actually perceive the same colour.

So what? We know that color exists, and we can differentiate between colors. There is the visible spectrum, as well as frequency, wavelength, and energy of light. These are facts, parts of our physical universe. Now tell me about the facts on astral projection and the evidence that it is something different from lucid dreaming.

Who says you can not fly? Walk through walls? Or perform telekinesis in waking life?

I'm sorry to disappoint you, but there is no evidence that any living human being is/was able to fly or walk through walls. Telekinesis... maybe... although there is not much evidence to support that either.

Because the guys that are doing OBE and AP are actually doing JUST those things. They claim to fly through the earth, through walls. Telekinesis is another thing.

Uh... lucid dreamers have been doing just those things for many many years. I myself have been doing them for over 10 years, I just don't see a reason to call it astral projection.

Why should I?

But i've heared some stories.

Good for you! Stories are awesome!

The thing is. They do all this without a human body. Perhaps that is the limiting factor. The world is mind-stuff. The material body is the limiting vessel.

Nonsense. The world is not "mind-stuff", whatever that is supposed to mean. The world, our physical universe, is made up of matter. It is made up of solids, liquids, gasses, stars, planets, solar systems, birth, life, and death. It is a shared experience by over 6 billion people.

Empedocles, you don't have to force your opinion on other people. Just like you don't want others to force their worldview into yours. You show the other the truth by means of insight. Or you respect the possibility of oppossing worldviews. This litle tip could save you some frustration and perhaps you can learn something in the process.

Huh? I'm not forcing any opinion on anyone, nor am I frustrated. I simply want to know why people call some lucid dreams astral projection instead of calling them lucid dreams.

I think most of us agree that Lucid Dream and Astral/OBE is the same thing, but that does not mean there nothing possible to do beyond dreams. You can call it as you wish, there are no terms and no public experiments on this topic, but that does not change the fact that you might witness future in your dream, or experience any other paranormal event.

Another term for Astral Projecting, or Lucid Dreaming has come to my attention.
Michael Reduga, has come up with his own definition of what we are trying to discuss here.
Looks like he has put a lot of work into the study.
Here is his contribution to the dream states that nobody can agree terms on.

Originally Posted by Empedocles

The things in our universe are only perceived by our mind, not created by it like dream environments are.

Orly? How do you know this? That is an assumption as far as i can tell. The term Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore i am) comes to mind. There is no sureproof way of knowing there is a universe without a conscious observer. Think about it. If all of humanity was to disappear completely. Including your own mind. How would you tell there is still an earth to observe?

Originally Posted by Empedocles

So what? We know that color exists, and we can differentiate between colors. There is the visible spectrum, as well as frequency, wavelength, and energy of light. These are facts, parts of our physical universe. Now tell me about the facts on astral projection and the evidence that it is something different from lucid dreaming.

So what? It means we can not agree on observable reality being the same for everyone. The colour is are frequencies. We interpret it as light. You could also translate the frequency unto sound. And vice versa for sound. This should not be possible, because according to our senses. The light is a strictly visual phenomenon, and sound is an audible phenomenon. Yet, here it is. Purple sounds and high-pitched colours.

Ofcourse science has reasonable explanations. But something like synesthesia has not even been acknowledged for a long time (deemed biologically impossible). Yet, schizophrenics have experienced them for generations. In this regard i'd rather trust other conscious beings to understand differences or similarities between consciousness and materials. Not that i don't trust science to come to the same conclusion.. Is the mind able to influence matter? I would bet my computer and television that the majority of quantum physicists would say yes. The mind is able to influence matter And this is like , what? a 20 year old science? I propose that the mind is indeed inseperable from material reality.

Originally Posted by Empedocles

Uh... lucid dreamers have been doing just those things for many many years. I myself have been doing them for over 10 years, I just don't see a reason to call it astral projection.
Why should I?

To go in on that. I mean that an AP-practitioner is able to move through physical walls. In physical reality. Able to retrieve data from a distance. Like reading a code from the inside of a locked door.

I don't know why you should call it astral projection.. It helps to understand what people are talking about sometimes. But clearly, there is a line between traveling through walls in a lucid dream. Because in this lucid dream one is not able to determin whether your girlfriend is cheating on you. Or if your grandmother is making your favourite food over at her house.

Actually, i think you are able to determin those things in a lucid dream, lol. But you understand the difference between a wall in a lucid dream and a wall in the physical dream.

Originally Posted by Empedocles

Huh? I'm not forcing any opinion on anyone, nor am I frustrated. I simply want to know why people call some lucid dreams astral projection instead of calling them lucid dreams.

I understand you can't read tone on an internet forum so it's hard to determin what's what. If i am wrong about this you can regard this message as non-existant. About not forcing your opinion on anyone, it's always good to make people aware of that fact. Again, you sounded absolute in your statements. But that might have spurred from inspired argumentations that you where forming. Sorry if i have misinterpreted.

A couple of small points:

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Orly? How do you know this? That is an assumption as far as i can tell. The term Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore i am) comes to mind. There is no sureproof way of knowing there is a universe without a conscious observer. Think about it. If all of humanity was to disappear completely. Including your own mind. How would you tell there is still an earth to observe?

So you're saying that the entire universe, all 100 million+ galaxies, would cease to exist if the human race ceased to exist? Doesn't that sound a little arrogant? Do you actually believe that a planet must be observed by a human on order to be real? Do you also believe that when you leave a room, it no longer exists as well? After all, no one is observing it.

I mean that an AP-practitioner is able to move through physical walls. In physical reality. Able to retrieve data from a distance. Like reading a code from the inside of a locked door.

Isn't that OBE? Aren't you supposed to be going to other planes of existence when you astrally project?

Is the mind able to influence matter? I would bet my computer and television that the majority of quantum physicists would say yes. The mind is able to influence matter And this is like, what? a 20 year old science? I propose that the mind is indeed inseperable from material reality.

You would definitely lose that bet. Actual quantum mechanics physicists do not tend to believe that the mind influences matter. The human component of observing the state of a subatomic particle has nothing to do with the mind influencing matter on a macro scale. I personally think the whole point of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is that the mind is truly separated from material reality, and not the other way around. Oh, and Quantum mechanics has been around for about a century now, not 20 years.

Originally Posted by Sageous

So you're saying that the entire universe, all 100 million+ galaxies, would cease to exist if the human race ceased to exist? Doesn't that sound a little arrogant? Do you actually believe that a planet must be observed by a human on order to be real? Do you also believe that when you leave a room, it no longer exists as well? After all, no one is observing it.

+1

And please, Dthoughts, if you aren't a quantum physicist yourself, don't bring them into conversation because I see you have no idea what they are talking about. Even they aren't 100% sure in their theories.

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Orly? How do you know this? That is an assumption as far as i can tell. The term Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore i am) comes to mind. There is no sureproof way of knowing there is a universe without a conscious observer. Think about it. If all of humanity was to disappear completely. Including your own mind. How would you tell there is still an earth to observe?

Answered by Sageous.

So what? It means we can not agree on observable reality being the same for everyone. The colour is are frequencies. We interpret it as light. You could also translate the frequency unto sound. And vice versa for sound. This should not be possible, because according to our senses. The light is a strictly visual phenomenon, and sound is an audible phenomenon. Yet, here it is. Purple sounds and high-pitched colours.

Please don't make me laugh. Yellow is yellow, and red is red. We know what makes yellow yellow, and what makes red red. Everyone will recognize yellow as yellow or red as red, unless he/she is color blind. How one person actually perceives this color, it's "visual", is completely irrelevant, and of course, it has absolutely nothing to do with astral projection.

Ofcourse science has reasonable explanations. But something like synesthesia has not even been acknowledged for a long time (deemed biologically impossible). Yet, schizophrenics have experienced them for generations. In this regard i'd rather trust other conscious beings to understand differences or similarities between consciousness and materials. Not that i don't trust science to come to the same conclusion.. Is the mind able to influence matter? I would bet my computer and television that the majority of quantum physicists would say yes. The mind is able to influence matter And this is like , what? a 20 year old science? I propose that the mind is indeed inseperable from material reality.

This is complete and utter nonsense. Read what Sageous said, as he put it very nicely.

To go in on that. I mean that an AP-practitioner is able to move through physical walls. In physical reality. Able to retrieve data from a distance. Like reading a code from the inside of a locked door. I don't know why you should call it astral projection.. It helps to understand what people are talking about sometimes. But clearly, there is a line between traveling through walls in a lucid dream. Because in this lucid dream one is not able to determin whether your girlfriend is cheating on you. Or if your grandmother is making your favourite food over at her house.

Although Sageous already commented, I feel the need to do the same. I think AP-lovers first need to agree on what astral projection actually is. Go read the earlier pages of this same thread, or better yet, read some other threads in Beyond Dreaming. You will see a variety of "thoughts" that have little to do with each other. By reading these posts and experiences, astral projection seems to be...

a) Projecting an astral body into an astral plane which has nothing, or very little to do with physical reality.

or

b) Projecting an astral body into physical reality. (your claim)

or

c) An experience closely related to (but not the same as) lucid dreaming, which as nothing to do with an astral plane, nor with physical reality.

or

d) Something fourth which doesn't fit in the above three.

So I suggest you guys should first agree on what astral projection actually is, before you attempt to argue about evidence for it's existence.

Actually, i think you are able to determin those things in a lucid dream, lol. But you understand the difference between a wall in a lucid dream and a wall in the physical dream.

Let me tell you what I understand: I understand that there are hundreds if not thousands of experienced AP practitioners, and there is not one single successful controlled study which demonstrates an astral travelers retrieving information from a distance. What do you think about that?

I understand you can't read tone on an internet forum so it's hard to determin what's what. If i am wrong about this you can regard this message as non-existant. About not forcing your opinion on anyone, it's always good to make people aware of that fact. Again, you sounded absolute in your statements. But that might have spurred from inspired argumentations that you where forming. Sorry if i have misinterpreted.

The burden of proof is on you, not on me. I am not forcing my opinion on anyone if I ask for evidence about the existence of astral projection.

@Sageous, sorry for the late reply. I wanted to make a short one while you where still online but i got sidetracked a lot and it actually turned out longer than i expected so i put some hours into my post. And did a little more reading into quantum mechanics. I'm working on the damn maths but in school i am still trying to figure out basic algebra.

My post is excessively long, i know but i hope you enjoy it

Originally Posted by Sageous

Do you also believe that when you leave a room, it no longer exists as well?

No i do not believe that when i leave the room, it no longer exists because i have no way of knowing whether this is true or not. I think a conscious mind has to be involved in whatever matrix holds together reality. Because somehow, without a conscious mind there is no reality to observe. If there is no reality to observe then what is the point of having matter in the first place? Vague, i know. But i've been having these philosophical stones for a while now and to me they serve as a useful counter-argument to Empedocles' statement that the is world is "certainly" not made of mind-matter.

Originally Posted by Sageous

So you're saying that the entire universe, all 100 million+ galaxies, would cease to exist if the human race ceased to exist? Doesn't that sound a little arrogant? Do you actually believe that a planet must be observed by a human on order to be real? Do you also believe that when you leave a room, it no longer exists as well? After all, no one is observing it.

I'm not saying a human has to be involved in perception. I'm just saying a conscious mind has to be involved in whatever way, shape or form possible. It would be a tad arrogant or atleast ignorant to assume humans are the center of all existence. I'm merely trying to say that, I believe mind is inherent in all matter and energy phenomenon. If the mind is anchored to the human senses the mind is sensing nearby energy patterns and translating them into sensual interpretation. Visual,smell,touch,hear,taste. The whole shebang. In reality, i think matter is more like a sea of energy, vibrating in the physical form that we see because we are conscious only of this current arrangement of a universal waveform. (borrowed that term from wikipedia, btw )

I would expect the presence of nearby coherences that are only slightly different from this particulair universe. In the future perhaps one where we destroyed the earth and the rain forest and no trace of humanity is left to be found. Another one with a future in which we have moved to save the earth and re-established a working ecosystem in which humanity thrives on the earth-life system. Perhaps you can find another one in which we choose to depart for space. Only to find we are not able to survive the harsh distance and die out anyway. I don't believe in space travel because i think we already have the means and ability to explore other planets and solar systems. Using only the tubes and pathways in our mind. I'm all for traveling to mars though, and see what is there. Building an ecosystem on another planet is a noble thing imo.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

I mean that an AP-practitioner is able to move through physical walls. In physical reality. Able to retrieve data from a distance. Like reading a code from the inside of a locked door.

Isn't that OBE? Aren't you supposed to be going to other planes of existence when you astrally project?

Well yes and no. Terminology is the communication-killer here. People refer OBEs as means of traveling out of body into this physical reality. The terminology suggests a consciousness is able to travel outside of the human body. I mean to suggest with that quote that an OBE can lead you to this particulair coherence pattern. But i think it can also take you to parallel worlds. Some worlds that look just like this one, and some that are completely alien to us. This doesn't mean they are not a part of this same reality however. Take Robert Monroe as an example. I can interpret much of his experiences as time-travel , his layer of reality just has an extra dimension to it. It reveals ghosts and discarnate entities as flying through our physical space that are not actually seen by the majority of human inhabitants in this world, but whose presence is easily observed from the Out of Body state.

Astral Projection uses the same mechanic but it has a more alien vibe to it. I see it as the same thing, this is why i don't discern in terminology. I use ESP as a home-term because it is a much broader term and doesn't discriminate between different kinds of Extra Sensory Perception. It just piles all these things up into the same category and matches perfectly what i experience.

Just to clarify,
I think the term OBE stems from the belief that consciousness is somehow anchored to the human body. Which i think is a primitive belief and could rather be adjusted to a belief system where consciousness is prevalent in all of space-time and we are merely traveling through this consciousness. It still fits accurately, because the Experience is on the Outside of the human Body.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

Is the mind able to influence matter? I would bet my computer and television that the majority of quantum physicists would say yes. The mind is able to influence matter And this is like, what? a 20 year old science? I propose that the mind is indeed inseperable from material reality.

You would definitely lose that bet. Actual quantum mechanics physicists do not tend to believe that the mind influences matter. The human component of observing the state of a subatomic particle has nothing to do with the mind influencing matter on a macro scale. I personally think the whole point of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle is that the mind is truly separated from material reality, and not the other way around. Oh, and Quantum mechanics has been around for about a century now, not 20 years.

We are referring to the same study, i think. I am glad i have not made an actual bet. But it was just a bet ofcourse. I still think opinions are divised atleast 50/50 between actual quantum physicists. But it doesn't matter. Such is the beauty of science. One can extrapolate from it his/her own meaning and interpretation. The how is a question answered by science's trial and error. The why is still an open interpretation as far as i know.

But i am still puzzled as to this particulair piece of wikipedia, perhaps you can give me your interpretation because i am interested in your viewpoint :

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

In the Copenhagen interpretation, quantum mechanics can only be used to predict the probabilities for different outcomes of pre-specified observations. What constitutes an "observer" or an "observation" is not directly specified by the theory, and the behavior of a system after observation is completely different than the usual behavior. During observation, the wavefunction describing the system collapses to one of several options. If there is no observation, this collapse does not occur, and none of the options ever become less likely.

It mentions the wavefunction collapsing during observation. I can recall from reading into this a few years ago it is an act of measuring that makes different outcomes more likely or something. But how is this not evidence for consciousness affecting matter and energy. (Because it is affecting both systems. Ofcourse e=mc² , i think this states that both are inseperable anyway.)

NDE's are closely related to OBE's and reported by millions of people worldwide. In a lot of cases people are *clinically documented* as brain dead. Yet they manage to experience something independent of their physical bodies. Can u discount the experiences of such a large population in the same way you discount someone who says they have experienced an OBE? And these patients that have experienced NDE's under medical conditions do u say their liars or mislead in the same way u address an astral traveler??

Wiki Definition

A near-death experience (NDE) refers to personal experiences associated with impending death, encompassing multiple possible sensations including detachment from the body, feelings of levitation, total serenity, security, warmth, the experience of absolute dissolution, and the presence of a light. These phenomena are usually reported after an individual has been pronounced clinically dead.

I did enjoy, Dthoughts, thanks!

One more quick response:

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

But i am still puzzled as to this particulair piece of wikipedia, perhaps you can give me your interpretation because i am interested in your viewpoint :

Originally Posted by Wikipedia
In the Copenhagen interpretation, quantum mechanics can only be used to predict the probabilities for different outcomes of pre-specified observations. What constitutes an "observer" or an "observation" is not directly specified by the theory, and the behavior of a system after observation is completely different than the usual behavior. During observation, the wavefunction describing the system collapses to one of several options. If there is no observation, this collapse does not occur, and none of the options ever become less likely.

It mentions the wavefunction collapsing during observation. I can recall from reading into this a few years ago it is an act of measuring that makes different outcomes more likely or something. But how is this not evidence for consciousness affecting matter and energy. (Because it is affecting both systems. Ofcourse e=mc² , i think this states that both are inseperable anyway.)

As you yourself noted, this phenomenon is about observation, not manipulation. It's about how the methods scientists use to observe subatomic particles define their observations, not the nature of the particle. For example, the only way they can define an electron's position in space is by stopping its passage through space, but by doing so they are unable to observe its motion (the wave bit). Conversely, if observing a electron's motion, they can never say exactly where it is (the particle bit). In other words, the particle's state of existence is either as a wave or particle, depending how we look at it. We might be defining the state through our method of observation, but we are in no way creating, manipulating, or changing that state the particle's existent reality; the particle retains its nature regardless of our presence. The wavefunction collapsed because we had to collapse it to observe the electron by stopping it in its tracks (i.e., it's traveling merrily along in the particle accelerator in a wave, but then, bam, it collides with a sensor plate and becomes a particle). And yes, if we were not there to make these observations, the electron would still exist, as it did for billions of years before we were around to do any observing. A very bad macro example of this: you can freeze water, boil it, or liquify it, and, though each state is very different from the other, it is still water.

I hope I got that right; this is all off the top of my head; I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong! But even if I am, you must remember that all that famously mysterious language about quantum mechanics (quantum entanglement being another popular phenomenon in this department) is based on observation of subatomic particles. There is no evidence, or even real scientific consideration, that any of this stuff happens to anything much bigger than a quark; much as it would be cool if it did, this stuff simply does not translate to the macro world.

I am a physicist by the way, though not a very good one, and have only an MS degree. Having skimmed through the comments since this weekend, here are my two cents....Or three or four cents, as the case might be, if we're being graded for word count.

Sageous is right that there is an objective reality, we're not just projecting it in the manner that we project our dreams. We've argued about this at great length in other threads, and I hope I'm not being biased to say that the pro-objective-reality side has won the arguments. Similarly, its true that astral projection is basically a lucid dream, and that the perception of the physical world in such a dream is mostly imagined, its not real.

However....This isn't the whole picture, and that's a big part of the reason these arguments keep coming up. As physics-ignorant and maybe even logically impaired as the "life is but a dream" proponents may be, there is an element of truth in that perspective. We as human beings may not be projecting the physical world, but it does have some of those characteristics, and however it is that it does get projected, we don't seem to be entirely separate from that process even though its mostly beyond us.

Regarding quantum mechanics: There are macroscopic effects. The Schrodinger cat thought experiment was cooked up to illustrate this. More recently Schrodinger's cat has been re-branded as a metaphor for something that only happens to subatomic particles, in my opinion because that dodges a lot of confusing questions at the edge of current physics theory. But there was a reason Schrodinger described the problem the way he did, and it does seem to me to be valid as described for cats. The fact that the cat is not a coherent wave-function doesn't change this. From a standpoint inside the box, the wave-function is collapsed and the cat is alive or dead. But from a standpoint outside the box, the whole system is in an indeterminate state that doesn't get resolved until the system comes into contact with the external system. So to some extent, things that we are not personally in contact with really don't exist, at least not as far as physics theory is concerned. They exist as a restricted superposition of possibilities, so its not valid to say that they don't exist at all without us. And they concretely exist for themselves, and for other observers unconnected to us. But in some sense they exist in multiple ways which aren't necessarily consistent with the way in which they would exist for us if we made the observation. It is generally believed that these inconsistencies always get completely resolved in when the systems interact, and I think its indisputable that they do in general, and least from our perspective. But there isn't actually anything in the math that I know that says it has to be that way in an absolute sense. And from my personal experience I'm pretty sure that its not true. So the mystics are right in that regard, even though they're generally terrible at relating that view with the current scientific understanding.

In much the same way that I'm presumptuous enough to criticize mental yoga even though I'm not a swami, I'm pretty sure that a lot of working physicists don't understand these issues. It doesn't come up in relation to the research they do, and they just blow off anything that they can't grapple with effectively. This is actually a characteristic of a successful physicist, they are the ones who can consistently make high probability research choices and continue to get funding. But its bad for the philosophical development at the edge of the field, which in my view has been stagnating for decades.

Some physicists are materialists in the western atheist tradition, others are Buddhist, and many believe in paranormal phenomena. I haven't encountered anybody who seems to understand any of these issues. Certainly I don't. But I've explored it enough to think that I understand it a little bit better than the science journalism 'consensus' philosophical understanding. Even though I'm equally sure that a typical physicist understands quantum mechanics 1000 times better than the typical mystic who speaks in terms of quantum mechanics. Maybe the best we can do as 'beyond dreamers' is to say: We have no friggin' idea how phenomena X is possible, but here's what we experienced, here's some suggestive evidence, and here's what we did to eliminate the obvious fallacies in interpretation. Furthermore here are some limitations of the scientific method that makes certain knowledge on these subjects problematic, which we do understand. And though its very hard to prove such results for a general, public audience, here are some steps you can take, without giving up your objective honestly, if you have the time and inclination and want to discover something about it for yourself.

In most areas of science, there are large-scale dynamics that can be described in fairly straightforward way. But then there are also really small dynamics that have big effects, and which render certain kinds of problems very difficult. For example, the general way a wing works is trivial to explain even to a child, and for many things that understanding is adequate. However, the wing is 'big' compared to the thin layer of air right at the surface where physically important things happen on a really small scale. The math to deal with this kind of thing is really a bitch. Or to use a more colorful example, relativistic effects can generally be neglected when modelling atoms. But gold would not appear gold except for relativistic effects, so these do have to be taken into consideration when asking that question. My point here is that scientific theory is like this in almost all areas. Its really good for understanding the world we life in, insofar as we understand it. But there are areas, not always obvious in the linear, easily controllable realms where we're most comfortable, where theory breaks down almost completely. That's the way modelling is. A set of equations that describe an atom is not isomorphic to an atom. For some things the equations fail.

Sometimes people fall so much in love with the equations that they forget that there's more to reality. This is similarly true with sensory perceptions, which as I've mentioned earlier are a type of model, even though to a significant extent its a model that has evolved over hundreds of millions of years and is mostly involuntary. We're so used to it that we forget its there, but its not reality. An awful lot that isn't currently a part of our sensory model of the world is nevertheless real. And the model isn't actually wholly ingrained or beyond improvement. If you study it and improve your understanding of it, you can have new experiences.

^^ Excellent post, and I'm in as general agreement as I ever am, but I must mention one very minor thing that goes to the point I was making earlier.

Though I am among those who assume (and has read repeatedly) that Schrodinger's Cat was indeed a metaphor for the problem of examining very small things, that actually is not important in this case.

The thought experiment was meant to show that we could not know the state of the cat, so it was both alive and dead, but the cat was always in the box. Just like those electrons, the cat's descriptive state could not be known until it was observed, but the cat was still there, in the box, real.

Objects in reality exist, whether we're watching them or not, and whether we want them to or not. They may not yet be defined, understood, or incorporated into our worldview, but they still exist without our input. To say they would not exist at all if humans are not here to observe them simply makes no sense, and may thoroughly exaggerate humanity's participation in reality.

I'm pretty sure you agree with much of this, but I just wanted to clarify my original point.

Sageous,

I think I have to disagree with your point here. The problem is not merely one of knowledge, the state of the system isn't actually defined except to the extent that its "made real" by an observation. This is why Young's double slit experiment works the way it does, for instance. If it were merely a matter of not knowing which slit the electron goes through, there would be no interference pattern. A ghostly, half-real electron goes through one slit, and another, ghostly, half-real electron goes through the other slit, and they interfere with each other. When people speak of wave-particle duality, another way to say this is that the distribution of the not-quite-real particles is wavelike. This isn't to say that the electron isn't real at all while it is unobserved: there are still limitations on the different states it can be in. But those limitations mostly have to do with past and future interactions with other objects. Feynmann's sum of histories formulation is even more obviously weird this way, the particle has taken every possible path, not even limited by the speed of light. But its out of phase with itself and cancels itself out almost everywhere. Where the infinite possibilities don't quite uniformly add to zero is where it is likely to be observed. The speed of light is a statistical result, its not even an absolute limitation on where the particle can be except in a probabilistic sense.

I think we agree that humanity's role in all this tends to be exaggerated, that we're just one small part of our environment. But that small part isn't nothing, and no, stuff really isn't as real when its isolated from other things. Just as mystics tend to interpret physics terminology to support whatever religious ideas they want to believe in, there's also a strong tendency among science journalists and a lot of physicists to make the world as concretely defined as possible. I think its a part of their desire to understand, to master everything. But as I understand it, the reality of physics really is a bit ambiguous, or spirit-like if you will.

Maybe I should do a better job at highlighting the point that we're agreeing about: As far as physics theory is concerned, its not the consciousness of an observing scientist that defines the state of the observed system. The system interacting with any other system defines it for that system, whether there's a scientist present or not.

Whether any of this would exist without consciousness is a question that's well outside the scope of present day physics.

In other words, for the most part you and I are not projecting the physical world like we would a dream, it is not our dream. Yet it does seem to me that there is some kind of a dreamer, even if we're only a small part of it and mostly don't understand it. Otherwise it doesn't seem to be possible to account for some of our more bizarre experiences.

^^ Agreed on both posts, Shadowofwind, especially the last paragraph of your second. But...

Note that your disagreement is supported by (excellent) examples of particle/wave behavior. Yes, the double-slit experiment is remarkable, and even to someone of my limited knowledge curious indeed, but you've sort of amplified my point by bringing it up:

There are no cats going through the slits. If they were, I imagine that they would behave much differently, and far more predictably. This is because they are cats, and not subatomic particles. All I was trying to say, if I can remember properly at this point, is that what works and mystifies on a subatomic level does not seem to translate to the physical world we encounter with our given senses, and we are not creating cats simply by being there with them, and to assume that we do is, in my opinion, erroneuos at best.

Yes, there is much we do not know yet, and I personally believe we have barely scratched the surface of our (human) interaction with reality ... but that's because as a race we are very new to this sentient consciousness thing, and have much to learn about our reality -- learn, not create!

That's all I'll say on this, because I think you know what I mean and, honestly, the rest of what you've said has lent far more clarity to the conversation than I or any cat could have anyway.

Sageous,

I'm going to say at least one more thing because I think you misconstrued the implications of my double slit experiment example, or I explained its relevance badly.

As far as physics theory is concerned, as I understand it, macroscopic, "real life" objects are in a superposition of inconsistent states also, even though they can't be diffracted to produce interference patterns because they can't be described by a single coherent wavefunction. The different tangles of contradictory states are already 'collapsed' in relation to themselves, so when you make an observation you just get one tightly knotted tangle and not the rest of them, so its not easy to show that the rest of them are relevant. But not easy to demonstrate in a scientific setting isn't the same as effectively unreal or unimportant. I think my teleporting driver's license experience illustrates this kind of result, at least for myself if for nobody else. And I still have my 'parallel-world' bottle of turtle food on my desk. Assuming these events were objectively real as I've described them, did I observe them or create them with my mind? I don't think the answer to this is clear cut, and it depends in part on what we mean by "I". But there is definitely a creative element to it.

If we're fighting a Law Of Attraction battle here in subtext, I guess you know that I'm on your side on that one. Though we do create our reality to some extent, there are definite limitations on how we can do that, many of them still to be discovered. We can't just make up any contradictory thing and it becomes true because we believe it. But on the other hand, we do have a lot more power to create our reality than most people realize, or that we understand how to make use of consistently.

In contrast to my dream premonitions and pseudo-shared dreaming experiences, I intentionally avoided repeating the alternative history phenomena because I had poor control over it and feared it would be too disruptive to my life. For instance, I want to be able to trust that when I look at my keys, and they're in my hand, I can then lock the car door without them turning up inside the car afterwards. And I want my computer to be able to find different parts of the operating system where it expects them to be on the hard drive. So I tried hard to shut down this sort of thing rather than pursuing it and getting better at it. (Though I admit I fudge this occasionally, when I think I have put something in the wrong place and don't want to accept that outcome.) I guess a lot of other people have this kind of fear too, and I think this is part of the reason these experiences aren't more common.

In summary: Yes to a large extent we do create reality, and I don't think we can honestly shrink away from that, even though we take issue with the people who think we can make it up any way we want to. I realize my qualifications to what I'm saying are mostly the same points you were trying to make, but there's a large enough element that's different that I didn't want to gloss it over.

As a possibly interesting corollary to this....Some of these experiences seem to suggest to me that the mind is at least partially 'outside' of the system that is defined by current physics assumptions, since the mind seems to be able to produce occasional objectively demonstrable 'miracles' that don't happen much otherwise, apparently. The conventional scientific approach of course assumes that reality is absolutely immune to such interference, and experiments are designed accordingly. So it should be expected that such experiments are inadequate for studying such phenomena.

Anecdotally, it also seems to me that a moral component of the mind is outside the 'conventional' physical system. In other words, I speculate that if you could completely understand a person's genes and the physiological effects of their past experience, it would largely account for their moral character, but not entirely. Since the 'physical system' lacks knowledge of that other component, the multiverse of alternative outcomes includes some that would never actually be permitted to exist by the mind. But those outcomes still influence intuition and precognition, since they are physically possible. Maybe I'm too lazy to give specific examples. But there's the idea to play with anyway.

^^ Well said, Shadowofwind, and I find myself reluctantly agreeing on the point of the poor cat's existence; thank you!

... Now that I think of it, I probably agreed all along (indeed this is some of the stuff I tend to write about in real life); I just needed my stubborn head rattled around a bit to be reminded!

My OBEs (I can relate to some aspects of AP, but can't nail it all down to AP specifically, so I'm sticking with OBE) are different from all other sleep activity because in OBEs, I get factual information about current or future events in waking life that I had no other way to obtain. For the last few years, it has happened with only two people - the same two people every time, always, no matter what. And then there's that pesky "feeling" lol, but the feeling matters. I understand that it's not enough for you, but it's a part of the equation. Not the whole equation(!), but part of it, and it is valid.

I don't recall ever noticing a clock, but if there was one, I would not choose to direct my attention toward it. The clock is not of interest because what I get out of these experiences gives me more validation than I believe a clock ever could. I don't say that to be rude or dismissive, but to address your clock question so not to appear to be avoiding it.

Can I ask why you need to validate others' experiences? You're ultimately saying that you once believed you were experiencing something that you later came to believe you were not experiencing at all. No problem. Why do you need other people to prove their experiences to you? You don't seem to want an explanation, you want proof. Nobody has scientific proof of this stuff. None of this it can be recorded or documented in a way that would please any majority group and apparently, it can't even be recorded or documented in a way that would please some individuals. I want nothing more than a whole set of answers myself, but who's to say? Nobody here can prove to you that an OBE is a different experience than a lucid dream, but you can't prove that they're the same either. I hope you can make peace with that. You kind of have to.

Originally Posted by Elle

You don't seem to want an explanation, you want proof.

He did not want proof either. He wanted AP and OBE to be lucid dreams without anything mysterious going on, and to challenge people's claims to the contrary.

I don know what people are talking about here. But the closest thing to proof I can think of is In a dream, if you stare at one spot for 6-12 seconds the dream ends. In APs, this isn't the case

^^ That may not be the case all the time.

I for one have stared at the same spot during a dream for far longer than 12 seconds and never had the dream end on me -- and I'm pretty sure I wasn't projecting. That's anecdotal, I know, but I thought it worth mentioning. [EDIT: on further thought, this may indeed not be so anecdotal, as I'm pretty sure that one of the things practitioners of dream yoga do is focus on an object in a dream for a lengthy amount of time, and they too do not wake up]

Aside from that, I hadn't even realized the conversation here was about proof at all; was it?

Originally Posted by Elle

I don't recall ever noticing a clock, but if there was one, I would not choose to direct my attention toward it. The clock is not of interest because what I get out of these experiences gives me more validation than I believe a clock ever could.

That's fine, but why not take 10 seconds and do the experiment? You have no interest in seeing if AP/OBE-clocks are stable?

Can I ask why you need to validate others' experiences? You're ultimately saying that you once believed you were experiencing something that you later came to believe you were not experiencing at all. No problem. Why do you need other people to prove their experiences to you? You don't seem to want an explanation, you want proof. Nobody has scientific proof of this stuff. None of this it can be recorded or documented in a way that would please any majority group and apparently, it can't even be recorded or documented in a way that would please some individuals. I want nothing more than a whole set of answers myself, but who's to say? Nobody here can prove to you that an OBE is a different experience than a lucid dream, but you can't prove that they're the same either. I hope you can make peace with that. You kind of have to.

1.) There is evidence of lucid dreaming. There are techniques that can make almost every person learn it if they are persistent enough and do it the right way. Aside from that, Stephen LaBerge managed to get people in a lab to signal specific eye-movements from REM sleep once they became lucid.

2.) There is no evidence to prove what you are saying. I don't know of any controlled study that shows people getting remote information (location of a hidden object, etc.) through AP/OBE.

3.) Regarding the bold and underlined part: You couldn't be further from the truth. The burden is not on me to disprove anything, but it is on you who is making these claims.

Originally Posted by shadowofwind

He did not want proof either. He wanted AP and OBE to be lucid dreams without anything mysterious going on, and to challenge people's claims to the contrary.

Uh... your statement is flawed. I don't want AP/OBE to be lucid dreams, because as far as I know, they are lucid dreams, as there is no evidence to the contrary. The burden of proof is on you, not on me.

Originally Posted by Tasca

I don know what people are talking about here. But the closest thing to proof I can think of is In a dream, if you stare at one spot for 6-12 seconds the dream ends. In APs, this isn't the case

If you don't know what people are talking about here, then I can't help you. I think my post is very clear, the questions are very logical, and tons of people understood it.

Regarding your "staring at one spot" thing... I think it's ridiculous. Tons of lucid dreamers have done it including myself, and there is nothing that would cause someone to wake up because they're staring at a spot. If anything, it might prolong the dream state because you are directing your focus on the dream scene and away from your physical body.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Aside from that, I hadn't even realized the conversation here was about proof at all; was it?

No, it's about honest questions and honest answers. If someone tells fantastic tales about astral projection I want to know why they think they are astral projecting and not simply lucid dreaming.

That's all.

I am amused that so many would choose to entertain the OP when he clearly wants only to argue rather than learn.