Thread: Astral Projection and shared dreaming is nonsense

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 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

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 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).