Thread: Astral Projection and shared dreaming is nonsense

Originally Posted by Psionik

But what if you go back from your travel and you can't conclude it was just a dream? I have astral like lucid dreams which I can conclude as being dream(even during the experience), but when I have OBE I can't do that. The feeling of reality is too strong, stronger than normal life feeling. Sometimes this life feels more like dream in comparison of superreal OBE.
But we are at feelings. How can we quantize feelings and prove their exactness?

The reason we have non-lucids is because our brains are convinced it is reality. Your brain is not thinking logically when you are asleep.

Originally Posted by Barry

The reason we have non-lucids is because our brains are convinced it is reality. Your brain is not thinking logically when you are asleep.

Nonlucid dreams- I agree.
In lucid dreams- I know that I'm dreaming, that my body is laying somewhere...
OBE- I know I'm not dreaming... I know, that I left my body in bed... or on ground (sometimes ) and I see it also often. The thought process is different than in waking life, but I can use it also in waking life. As training. Intuition works stronger with its help.

Did you have OBE? You would know the feeling. The purity of consciousness. You had minimally 10 LD which is enough for you to know, to feel the difference between dream and LD. But OBE is diametrically different.

Some people call vivid lucid dreams ''out of body experience''. The idea that you can leave your brain is absolutely ridiculous. You are your brain. The term OBE is on the other hand accurate - for example when I lucid dream for long time 1 hour+ straigh and then I wake up, I have this feeling that I've been in different body and my actual body seems wierd to me. That is true that you have been in different body but still in your brain just dreaming.

Originally Posted by Psionik

OBE- I know I'm not dreaming... I know, that I left my body in bed... or on ground (sometimes ) a

How do you know your not dreaming?

Originally Posted by Nfri

The idea that you can leave your brain is absolutely ridiculous. You are your brain.

I also don't believe that it is possible to "leave" the brain/body. But the idea is not ridiculous; how would you prove that leaving the brain is impossible? You can't, you say? Well, you're in good company, because no one has ever been able to prove that.

For the sake of maintaining a scientific approach, we have to leave the possibility open, until firm proof is available.

^^ Well, actually science will never prove that leaving your brain is impossible, because that is not what science does.

Science proves that things are possible. To prove something is impossible is about the same as proving a negative, and science simply does not do that.

Semantics, maybe, but it seemed important to point out the difference as this conversation continues.

Originally Posted by Barry

How do you know your not dreaming?

I feel leaving the body. At least larger part of me is leaving it. I use my "senses".

Tell me, how do you know, that you are not sleeping and dreaming right now? You can't explain it any better than me. When I do OBE I feel things and see things much stronger then in normal state of awakedness. OBE state is as much different from waked state of mind as normal sleep is different from waked state. dream<lucid dream<= waked < OBE Intensity of awareness and consciousness... For me at least.

Originally Posted by Voldmer

I also don't believe that it is possible to "leave" the brain/body. But the idea is not ridiculous; how would you prove that leaving the brain is impossible? You can't, you say? Well, you're in good company, because no one has ever been able to prove that.

For the sake of maintaining a scientific approach, we have to leave the possibility open, until firm proof is available.

This is a pointless argument.

Read this: Russell's teapot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Originally Posted by sivason

There is no possible way love or fear is possible.

Prove it? No need as we all experience those things. Yet, if we want objective proof, all we can show is changes in action and changes in brain or hormonal function. Those changes do not prove love or fear, they only prove changes happened.

Hook somebody up to an EEG, EKG, do brain scans, watch their pupils, measure their physiological reaction and match it to when they say they are feeling something. Fairly easy to prove, and those are subjective. You have to rely on assumptions to some degree. Arguing that we can never know anything for sure, therefore we should not try is illogical. Otherwise we'd be wallowing around in our own shit eating filth like the rest of the animals on the earth.

With this technology coming out where we can reconstruct what the brain sees, I think we will finally be able to put at least shared dreaming or OBE to rest. We can verify if two dreamers are experiencing the same thing and if somebody is actually observing the outside world while unconscious.

Originally Posted by Psionik

I feel leaving the body. At least larger part of me is leaving it. I use my "senses".

Tell me, how do you know, that you are not sleeping and dreaming right now? You can't explain it any better than me. When I do OBE I feel things and see things much stronger then in normal state of awakedness. OBE state is as much different from waked state of mind as normal sleep is different from waked state. dream<lucid dream<= waked < OBE Intensity of awareness and consciousness... For me at least.

You 'feel' and 'sense' things when your dreaming too, does that mean it's real?

I can't say with certainty that I am not dreaming now, just like you can't say with certainty that you had an OBE. When people smoke weed they can feel like there in a different state of awareness.

Originally Posted by Barry

This is a pointless argument.

Not at all. There is absolutely no good reason to allow anyone a free ride. Those, who firmly believe that OBE's are impossible, must necessarily prove their point, if they through the use of logic must bring the believers of OBE's around to their point of view.

Obviously, it works equally the other way.

As a (not-so-irrelevant) side note, it may be pointed out, that we're unlikely to ever prove anything what so ever about the physical universe. So the debate will probably rage for as long as humanity exists.

It always a good idea to keep in mind, that an adequately insane person will be precluded from realising his/her own insanity. And, by extension, we humans can never know whether our physical universe is really just one long dream. There are no tools provided for us, that can reveal the truth to us.

Originally Posted by Barry

I've got a serious question, how do people know that there Astral Projections/OBE's were not just normal dreams? If I thought about astral projection long enough, I'd eventually have an Astral projection, but I'd wake up and realize it wasn't real, and was just a dream.

If they were normal dreams wouldnt you and 90% of the population have already experienced them?

Originally Posted by snoop

Hook somebody up to an EEG, EKG, do brain scans, watch their pupils, measure their physiological reaction and match it to when they say they are feeling something. Fairly easy to prove, and those are subjective. You have to rely on assumptions to some degree. Arguing that we can never know anything for sure, therefore we should not try is illogical. Otherwise we'd be wallowing around in our own shit eating filth like the rest of the animals on the earth.

With this technology coming out where we can reconstruct what the brain sees, I think we will finally be able to put at least shared dreaming or OBE to rest. We can verify if two dreamers are experiencing the same thing and if somebody is actually observing the outside world while unconscious.

Probably in a dream or lucid dream the brain would be very active, but I think that there would be little activity when there's a astral projection.

Originally Posted by kadie

If they were normal dreams wouldnt you and 90% of the population have already experienced them?

Dreams are made up of thoughts that you have during waking life. The majority of the population probably have never heard/think about Astral Projections or OBE's, your not going to dream of something you've never heard off.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

Probably in a dream or lucid dream the brain would be very active, but I think that there would be little activity when there's a astral projection.

What are you basing this on?

Originally Posted by Barry

You 'feel' and 'sense' things when your dreaming too, does that mean it's real?

I can't say with certainty that I am not dreaming now, just like you can't say with certainty that you had an OBE. When people smoke weed they can feel like there in a different state of awareness.

I don't have experience with drugs.

As I wrote sooner, dream is a dream. I live in it and even with reality check I usually conclude it is reality. But I wake up from it.
LD is a special dream where I know that dream reality is not real but imagined.
Waked reality is problematic, because it is similar to dream with that that you think it is real. Is it? Yes it is. I will not wake up from this state. Now I'm sure This is not a dream. I'm sure, but not 100%
But in OBE I know that I'm not dreaming. I know where my body is laying. I feel much more and much sharper than in any other state of consciousness. Now there are different kinds of OBE. Astral is easiest to reach. Mental is more difficult(consciousness is sharper, it is harder to make it into that state, or dimension. Consciousness even sharper...

It was said Cogito ergo sum. The more I'm conscious the more real is my surrounding... maybe. Maybe it is all illusion. Matter, energy... dimensions... and we are dimensionless beings. Or maybe only one being. Schizophrenic that is

Originally Posted by Barry

What are you basing this on?

That when you're conciousness is away from your body (OBE) thinking probably won't affect your brain, or maybe it will, I wouldn't know, EGG, EKG, Brain scans could tell.

Originally Posted by Psionik

I don't have experience with drugs.

As I wrote sooner, dream is a dream. I live in it and even with reality check I usually conclude it is reality. But I wake up from it.
LD is a special dream where I know that dream reality is not real but imagined.
Waked reality is problematic, because it is similar to dream with that that you think it is real. Is it? Yes it is. I will not wake up from this state. Now I'm sure This is not a dream. I'm sure, but not 100%
But in OBE I know that I'm not dreaming. I know where my body is laying. I feel much more and much sharper than in any other state of consciousness. Now there are different kinds of OBE. Astral is easiest to reach. Mental is more difficult(consciousness is sharper, it is harder to make it into that state, or dimension. Consciousness even sharper...

It was said Cogito ergo sum. The more I'm conscious the more real is my surrounding... maybe. Maybe it is all illusion. Matter, energy... dimensions... and we are dimensionless beings. Or maybe only one being. Schizophrenic that is

I think we should just agree to disagree, who knows, maybe we are in the matrix

Originally Posted by Barry

I've got a serious question, how do people know that there Astral Projections/OBE's were not just normal dreams? If I thought about astral projection long enough, I'd eventually have an Astral projection, but I'd wake up and realize it wasn't real, and was just a dream.

Originally Posted by kadie

If they were normal dreams wouldnt you and 90% of the population have already experienced them?

Perhaps everyone has experienced AP/OBE-like dreams, but have not interpreted them as such. It could be that the decision to interpret a particular memory as an AP or OBE is what is rare, and not the experience itself.

This doesn't mean I'm saying that AP/OBE doesn't happen; only that what Barry said has some validity. Humans have a powerful tendency to attach meaning to things (everybody's a drama queen, in the end), and strong expectations coupled with a mindset that assumes AP/OBE must happen will either serve to help dreamers recognize that they just had an AP/OBE, or to interpret their dream as such.

Personally, I think that many OBE's are "just" LD's with content that implies leaving the body. And, given that sometimes this content can be quite convincing, and a dreamer is relying on her memory of the state as the only personal proof that it occurred, it can be fairly easy to be sure that she just had, say, an OBE... but she must already want to make this assertion: if you have no idea what an OBE is, then you will likely just remember the experience as a dream or forget about it altogether. Conversely, if you are expecting or anticipating an AP/OBE, you will very likely make an extra effort to remember they happened, or perhaps interpret what happened as them (same with LD's, BTW, but that is for another thread).

So: People can have AP/OBE-like dreams all the time, and just not notice or care. By the same token, people might just be having actual AP's/OBE's and are not noticing or remembering them; the arguments are just as sound in either direction (which kind of sucks, I think).

You also can not prove dreaming is real.

With fear, the changes are all you can prove not what emotional experience happens. Because we all experience it there is no need to prove it.

With dreams we can prove that changes happened in brain activity. If only 1 in 1000 people experienced dreams then these changes would not support the wild claims of having experienced a virtual reality in your mind complete with touch sight and sound.

I have never met or heard of anyone hear claiming to experience shared dreaming in the way you all are imagining it. So let's ignore that as more unlikely than AP. Lots of people experience that.

Changes in brain activity can be measured as can changes in bodily function during all manner of meditation, sleep, dream, or emotion.

It is highly likely that when I experience what I think is AP that changes take place in my brain activity. However, as a yogi type, I can effect my brain waves simply by focusing. So let's assume you hook me up to a moniter and when I claim to have had the experience we do find a shift in some bodily function and some alteration in brain waves.

It would prove nothing! It would prove changes happened. It would not prove what I experienced and certainly would not prove anything special (spiritual) took place.

Maybe its impossible for it to be real but you cant deny the fact that thousonds of people have said they have experienced them. This proves that maybe they experienced it but it wasnt real but coincidence.

Also i wouldnt suggest being so close minded. It is bad for your intelligence and wisdom.

Originally Posted by Barry

So I'm trolling because I don't believe in something that has absolutely no scientific proof? All Atheists must just be trolling then. To the people who claim to have had experiences of Astral Projection and Shared Dreaming, how do you know it actually happened, and wasn't just your mind tricking you. By some peoples logic, if someone saw or experienced something it must make it real. So are what people see when they have hallucinations real? If someone claims to have seen/experienced something, it is up to them to prove it, not me to disprove it. I can't disprove that theirs a planet far away in the universe that is full of talking dogs, so does that mean there must be a planet full of talking dogs? I agree, that I can't say with certainty that Astral Projection and Shared dreaming doesn't exist, just like I can't say with certainty there isn't a planet full of talking dogs.

You can only scientifically prove things that you can rigorously control. Some people choose to believe that nothing is real unless they can rigorously control it, but that doesn't fit everyone's experience very well.

They don't need to prove their claims to you. If they are delusional, that's their right, and you can be ignorant if you want to be.

Everyone needs skepticism, its a crucial part of mental hygiene. But if all you offer is skepticism, you scrub away everything until there's nothing left to grow. If you really want to know whether or not they're delusional, then to start with the subject can be explained to you better, so that you understand what they're really talking about, instead of seeing only your strawman caricature of it. Of you want to experience something new, it is possible to discover things that you did not believe were real before. But if you're not interested in those things, then that's your choice, and I don't see why its worth much time talking to you.

Yes of course a dream of astral projection is a dream. In terms of the sensory experience, a hallucination is no different from really seeing something. If all you do is focus on the sensory aspect of the experience, you can never know what you are dealing with. If your girlfriend or wife says she loves you, she could just be saying that because she's after your money. So do people never care for each other? You can read into it whatever interpretation you want to, but that doesn't mean your plausible interpretation is true. If you want to know if compassion is real, you have to do it. Many, many things are like that. Word are just a sequence of symbols representing sounds. Does any of it mean anything? Yes it does, and you can know that objectively, but the meaning is not in the symbols. If you're going to judge a-priori that shared dreaming is so likely to be nonsense that its not worth exploring, maybe that's not an unreasonable judgment given who you are and based on your experience. But then you're really not going to have very much interesting to say on the subject, particularly to people who have been doing it and critically studying their experiences for decades. Of course you can find neurotic fools who believe whatever they find compelling, but those aren't the people who have much interesting to say on the subject either. In other words, either the topic interests us or it doesn't. So many of these discussions it seems that people are trying to score some kind of point but aren't really interested. Why talk about something instead of exploring it and seeing first hand.

Originally Posted by kadie

The Buddhist monks have been writing about Astral Projection for ages.

Which monks, which writings, and what specific terms did they use? Sources, please. Generalizing about Buddhism is a popular but sloppy pastime that gets us nowhere. I understand that there is good textual evidence that Tibetan Buddhists (and no others that I'm aware of to date, though I do wonder about some of those visions of the Pure Land) employed some form of lucid dream practices, but the distinction between lucid dreaming and astral projection is precisely the issue here, so it won't do us any good to blur or elide it.

As far as I've been able to determine yet—and I can't say with certainty, as I've only started to look into this—the specific term "astral projection" was an invention of the Theosophists in the late nineteenth century. If so, I hope we can at least agree that Helena Blavatsky is not exactly a reliable source, unless you find solace in her ideas about "white masters" or "the inherent divinity of Aryan man." (See Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism (Duke University Press, 2002), pp. 21-22.) After looking over some of the odd ways the term "astral projection" was used in the 1880s and 1890s, applied to occult phenomena as disparate as visual manifestations, automatic writing, and clairvoyance, I'm getting the impression that our current understanding of the term was not cemented until sometime well into the twentieth century.

Originally Posted by Verre

Which monks, which writings, and what specific terms did they use? Sources, please.

The Theravada tradition holds that upon reaching the fourth jhana, the six Abhinnas become attainable. These are powers that exceed the normal (by quite some margin). One of these is the ability to touch the "Brahma world", where one may exercise psychic powers with, or without, a visible body. The Brahma world is a higher realm than the heavenly realms, so it must be at least as exalted as the astral plane. See e.g. "The path of serenity and insight" by Henepola Gunaratana, where there are further references to the ancient literature.

Originally Posted by Verre

I hope we can at least agree that Helena Blavatsky is not exactly a reliable source, unless you find solace in her ideas about "white masters" or "the inherent divinity of Aryan man."

You're dismissing someone as a reliable source, because that person supported two related ideas, unpalatable to you?

With such a high standard, there won't be a single reliable source left in the whole world!

Originally Posted by Verre

As far as I've been able to determine yet—and I can't say with certainty, as I've only started to look into this—the specific term "astral projection" was an invention of the Theosophists in the late nineteenth century.

Although the term "astral projection" was not created until recent times, individuals throughout history have been recounting experiences that perfectly fit our modern understanding of this phenomenon. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is considered by some to be the "Father" of astral projection, although he didn't use this flavor of eastern mystical terminology in describing his experiences.

but the distinction between lucid dreaming and astral projection is precisely the issue here

Rather than debate this distinction, I believe it is best to experience it for one's self.

I related my personal findings on the subject on another thread: http://www.dreamviews.com/beyond-dre...ml#post2127348