Astral Projection

[diesel]

is it bullshit?

[we hope you die]

yes

[Dinaric Leather]

yep

[Wolfgang]

[§Transcix]

No it's not bullshit, however it's not a necessarily required skill / aspect on the path to enlightenment. Also, I've heard tons of bullshit astral stories. There was this one time when two individuals supposedly skilled in astral combat got into a disagreement and decided to combat each other, afterwards each of their versions of the battle was completely different from the other! We laughed at them...

[Somnambulist]

Years ago, on Halloween, while on some particularly potent psychedelic mushrooms, I had an out of body experience.  I vividly remember it, although it was brief.  My friends were about 40 feet in front of me and when they turned around and called for me to catch up, I saw myself from their perspective.

Now, here is the more general and interesting question:  is a "hallucination" "real?"  Even if it is "caused" by chemicals and your "mind playing tricks on you," it still happened on some level, did it not?  This is why I am hip to religion and mysticism and the fantastic.  If it is imaginable, then on some level it is real, no?  Reality has allowed you to imagine it, thus it is "real."  Numbers operate on this level, no?  If there is no inside and outside, then what goes on in your head is as real as anything.

[indjaseemun]

I think it's real.

I have a cousin who claimed to have unasked for out of body experiences in his teens, and that one time he had one and saw our other cousin doing something, which he later confirmed to be really doing. But I don't really know about the accuracy of this. What I do know are true stories of people being influenced in dreams to know real events that were happening to people who were important for them, which would bring more reality to the idea of a knowing beyond the body. Physicist Thomas Campbell claims to have participated in out of body experiments in Robert Monroe institute where real information was retrieved out of body.

Psychologist Charles Tart performed an experiment with a woman connected to wires to monitor brain activity with a number written on a paper on a shelf above her, and after some days of experiment, she said she went out of body and got the right number.

The US Government researched remote viewing for more than 20 years. Now it says it was not fruitful, but do you think they would really tell you?

I presume of course we are talking about perceiving reality out of body, not merely astral travel without the gathering of information from the objective world. If it is merely journeys out of body with no concern about wether it is in the objective world or not, of course they are real. One day I had one, I felt myself going out of body slowly, it was more like unfolding above the bed, and then I saw a female head floating above the bed. When I tried to kiss it, it sarted to suck me in, so I returned automatically. My cousin in his out of body experiences also reported the feeling of being sucked by a vortex.

[Wolfgang]

Years ago, on Halloween, while on some particularly potent psychedelic mushrooms, I had an out of body experience.  I vividly remember it, although it was brief.  My friends were about 40 feet in front of me and when they turned around and called for me to catch up, I saw myself from their perspective.

Now, here is the more general and interesting question:  is a "hallucination" "real?"  Even if it is "caused" by chemicals and your "mind playing tricks on you," it still happened on some level, did it not?  This is why I am hip to religion and mysticism and the fantastic.  If it is imaginable, then on some level it is real, no?  Reality has allowed you to imagine it, thus it is "real."  Numbers operate on this level, no?  If there is no inside and outside, then what goes on in your head is as real as anything.

A dangerous perspective.

[crow]

The term 'astral projection' means something different to everyone using the term.
Yes, of course one can leave one's body and roam, at will. Nothing mystical about that.
Where people get confused is when they imagine their sense will be the same ones they are familiar with on the physical level.
You don't 'see' while outside the body. But you might as well be 'seeing' since there is a vivid ability to perceive.
None of the physical senses carry over to out-of-body. Yet you are hyper-aware, even more-so than if you were using sensory data.
I've had lucid dreams, where I was where I dreamed I was, doing what I dreamed I was doing.
Later, in the physical world again, I've gone to those same places, and done those very things, and met the people I did in my dream state.
None of this was drug-induced.
All was the result of applied meditation/breathing.
True out-of-body is the state of enlightenment, where one moves outside of time, outside of discrete ego, and outside of location.
Jesus, and Buddha, probably experienced this state, which is why they were so odd.
You don't just brush it off and simply return to 'normal'.

[Wolfgang]

I think it's real.

I have a cousin who claimed to have unasked for out of body experiences in his teens, and that one time he had one and saw our other cousin doing something, which he later confirmed to be really doing. But I don't really know about the accuracy of this. What I do know are true stories of people being influenced in dreams to know real events that were happening to people who were important for them, which would bring more reality to the idea of a knowing beyond the body. Physicist Thomas Campbell claims to have participated in out of body experiments in Robert Monroe institute where real information was retrieved out of body.

Psychologist Charles Tart performed an experiment with a woman connected to wires to monitor brain activity with a number written on a paper on a shelf above her, and after some days of experiment, she said she went out of body and got the right number.

The US Government researched remote viewing for more than 20 years. Now it says it was not fruitful, but do you think they would really tell you?

I presume of course we are talking about perceiving reality out of body, not merely astral travel without the gathering of information from the objective world. If it is merely journeys out of body with no concern about wether it is in the objective world or not, of course they are real. One day I had one, I felt myself going out of body slowly, it was more like unfolding above the bed, and then I saw a female head floating above the bed. When I tried to kiss it, it sarted to suck me in, so I returned automatically. My cousin in his out of body experiences also reported the feeling of being sucked by a vortex.

Your case is based strictly on textbook anecdotal evidence. The power of prayer, the "law of attraction", visions from God, the chupacabra, UFO abductions have equally valid cases. You have to accept them all as real if you accept this, logically speaking, since all of their cases are no more or no less valid. Show me some scientific evidence. Show me a legitimate scientific theory for the processes that cause astral projection.

[indjaseemun]

Well you did not define if you want an explanation for astral projection in "inner realms" or other simulation of reality or including the perception of information on the objective world. As I said, the one without the contact with objective world is known by all to exist, it takes only practice.

Anyway, there are a lot of ways to gain information. I trust my family and I have another cousin who told me of two times she woke up in panic in the middle of the night thinking of death only to find out in both times important people for her had died tragic deaths.

Another even more convincing example is when a person living near my family dreamt she was being suffocated in the same day a person of the family was suffocated by robbers until passing out. This was before cell phones and the dream was told before anyone knew of the robbery.

So you have one family, over 3 curious events. That's to show how common these things are, having an explanation or not. When it starts happening too much against the odds, you might consider a connection and not always coincidence. Information like the experiment I mentioned with Tart or the claims of physicist Thomas Campbell serve only as evidence that has to be thought about: Are these people honest? If such things as ESP exists, would we not have these kind of evidence of people that experienced it, and some of them went on to do experiments and write books?
Here is another one by Charles Tart:

http://www.issc-taste.org/arc/dbo.cgi?set=expom&id=00008&ss=1

As sad as it is, if we are considering the possibility of esp, we have to consider the possibility that there are going to be people who have had this experience and write about it like the above. It is rude to always start from the assumption "All people who say this are lying" without at least trying to know a bit about the background of the person and what it is exposing.

By all the evidence I have been given by people of trust, and also the ones I read about, be it about spontaneous or laboratory experiences, I am compelled to believe that this stuff is real.

I'm sure there are also people who do not tell the experiences that happened to them for any number of reasons, but who have had them anyway.

I think it is not necessary to exist a explanation of something in order for it to be real. And also, I'm sure there are a lot of things we take for granted that we only believe because there have been experiments or is in a textbook.

About the US Government, how long do you think experiments in ESP would take? I mean, imagine a week of doing experiments in remote viewing or other kinds of esp. Now raise that to a month. One year. 10 years, 20 years? Do you think people would persist after more than 10 years with no compelling results?

--

"To become a consultant on the SRI project, I had to obtain a Top Secret security clearance and sign two contracts where I agreed not to reveal what the research found. I remember those contracts well, as agreeing to secrecy of any sort was not my usual style of life! (...) Fortunately for scientific knowledge, much of what was in these classified RV programs has been revealed by various authors (Schnabel 1997), who discovered them from documents recovered through use of the Freedom of Information Act, so they're no longer secrets that I have to worry about revealing. However, a good number of the most successful results used in actual intelligence operations have never been declassified." - Charles Tart

[crow]

You amuse, Wolfgang. Do you set out to amuse, or does it happen, by accident?
Your whole perspective appears to hinge upon everything being reducible to physical, 'scientific' proofs.
You appear to be living half-a-life, by clinging so tenaciously to such a perspective.
Are you really not aware that the purely physical is only a fraction of reality?
I always gawk in disbelief at such an outlook.
How can people know so little of the life they live?
But it seems quite common.
It might be a good thing, though, to let others live the lives they choose, too, and hold the beliefs they hold, without imposing upon them to also lead a half-life.
It really isn't very productive to insist that everyone holds exactly the same view of existence, where that view eliminates the other 90% of existence.

[Wolfgang]

You amuse, Wolfgang. Do you set out to amuse, or does it happen, by accident?
Your whole perspective appears to hinge upon everything being reducible to physical, 'scientific' proofs.
You appear to be living half-a-life, by clinging so tenaciously to such a perspective.
Are you really not aware that the purely physical is only a fraction of reality?
I always gawk in disbelief at such an outlook.
How can people know so little of the life they live?
But it seems quite common.
It might be a good thing, though, to let others live the lives they choose, too, and hold the beliefs they hold, without imposing upon them to also lead a half-life.
It really isn't very productive to insist that everyone holds exactly the same view of existence, where that view eliminates the other 90% of existence.

A little of both, but the typos are accidents. And they don't amuse me at all. Proofreading your/ur/you're own schtick is a challenge.

You say it is quite common, yet why are atheists only 5-8% of the population? This is the same thing as when a Christian says their religion is being choked out by non believers, when the reality is the country is so religious 1/3 of the nation believes protecting Israel is directly tied into Biblical prophecy, and only 1/3 of the nation accepts evolution as true.

What makes you believe the "purely physical" isn't all there is?

Within' reality and actual existence there are still an infinite number of ways one could disagree or interpret the nature of what exists. I am not interested in eliminating 90% of what exists, just 90% of what does not.

[crow]

What makes you believe the "purely physical" isn't all there is?

The evidence not only of my eyes, but of my experience.

I ask you to consider this:
If the only things you hold to be true, are the things you already know, how are you going to ever discover what you don't yet know?
The universe is jam-packed with truths of which we are unaware.
And among ourselves, are myriad truths known only to some.
None of us knows all there is to know. Or ever will.
But we will never know more than we do, if we refuse to consider what we don't already know.

[Somnambulist]

Years ago, on Halloween, while on some particularly potent psychedelic mushrooms, I had an out of body experience.  I vividly remember it, although it was brief.  My friends were about 40 feet in front of me and when they turned around and called for me to catch up, I saw myself from their perspective.

Now, here is the more general and interesting question:  is a "hallucination" "real?"  Even if it is "caused" by chemicals and your "mind playing tricks on you," it still happened on some level, did it not?  This is why I am hip to religion and mysticism and the fantastic.  If it is imaginable, then on some level it is real, no?  Reality has allowed you to imagine it, thus it is "real."  Numbers operate on this level, no?  If there is no inside and outside, then what goes on in your head is as real as anything.

A dangerous perspective.

"Live dangerously"