Thread: Religion And Lucidity

Yes, it completely changed not only my opinions and understanding of religion (Christianity, specifically), but my whole life as well.

Well it wasn't LDing alone; also OBE/AP, which I discovered at about the same time.
And while they didn't make me who I now am, they were certainly the catalyst that turned my life around, as my first major reality tunnel buster.


The thing is that I had been brought up as a Christian; and while I wasn't ever too much into that, I still accepted the Christian view of the order of things as reality.

I often debated religion, defending Christianity with stock answers and coming up with ideas to validate the Christian understanding of the world that I would now consider insane - because after all, it was the "truth"; that much was already determined in my mind, so all I had to do was try and come up with a potentially possible explanation for the subject at hand...and in some cases, simply a "Well, it doesn't matter if you believe it or can understand it - truth is truth, regardless of your opinion or lack of comprehension".

I understood that we lived in the physical, and God and Jesus and Satan (and their cronies) were what made up the "spirit world", which wasn't permitted to be accessed by physical humans, except when God saw fit (which was rather rare, as he seemed to dislike the idea of people accessing the spiritual realm); and the majority of people who are able to access the "spirit world" by talking to spirits, or having them do their bidding, or perform paranormal phenomena, do so through the "power of the Deceiver". Because God would only do things to glorify his name, right? And the only persons who will glorify his name are people who believe in him, namely Christians.
Also in Matthew 24 Jesus warns about the false prophets, doing signs and wonders in order to deceive.
So I felt (as do most Christians) that they fit the bill.


Now LDing in itself would not have been enough to precipitate the change that resulted; though it was the first step, it was OBE/AP that really pulled it through.
Simply put, I realized that I had discovered things about the "spirit world" that were not defined or mentioned by the Bible. That wasn't even the main thing - it was the understanding that it didn't involve God or Satan, that one could access it by one's self.

Now when I say spirit world, I mean other states of consciousnes and other dimensions. And the spirit world. It's all one and the same, in my opinion.

Anyhow the full realization that I could access this "other realm" and it wasn't God doing it, but neither was it him who I normally would have attributed all other "paranormal" phenomena to (Satan); the understanding that they both could stay the hell away from me and I could do it all the same, was a big turning point.

Normally I would have thought accessing the "spirit world" (Christian understanding of the SP) would ba a bad thing, not of God.
Seeing that it had nothing to do with any of them, I first decided that it must be fine, because God wouldn't have created humans with the natural ability - however latent it may be - to do something like this, if it was supposed to be off limits.

After a while I decided that I wasn't interested in God - he may exist or he may not, and I couldn't care less. I had found things that I had never known of from reading religious texts. Christianity was all theoretical, but I had discovered the practical, and it was different.
I wasn't interested in God or Satan or any spirits that might exist. All I cared for was learning more about my mind. After all, if my brain had this incredible ability which I knew nothing about but which lay dormant, waiting to be roused, imagine what other potential lay there!


Not being tied anymore to Christianity was incredible. I had always considered myself to be open minded; but I realize now that as long as you hold beliefs of any sort, you remain fettered; if you cherish your beliefs, if they have a hold on you like religion can and does, it will always limit that which you allow yourself to understand and explore.

This time was a huge turning point in my life. I got heavily into LDing and began studying a branch of Buddhism (reality is a dream, an illusion...mindblowing concepts for me at that time). It was like I was in a new world, and I was discovering so many things right and left. And as I no longer held any set beliefs, I was completely open to anything and everything. Being that open brought me an incredible joy, as if I were a child in some fantasy land, full of free rides and treats.
For a while I was on a constant buzz, a continual euphoric feeling. I never experienced that before, and especially as I had recently come out of a nearly three-year bout of severe depression.
I suddenly viewed people around me in a different light. They were sleeping, mindless zombies who knew nothing other than the physical; all their concerns and aspirations and worries were about insignificant things that really didn't matter in the big picture.

Anyway from there I got into some forms of esotericism, occultism (academic), skepticism, magick, psychology (especially hypnosis and belief systems), and back to exploring the mind and states of consciousness.


I am now agnostic, and have better reasons for being so than mere rush-of-the-moment ideas.