Brain Stimulation?

[ThereIsNoSpoon]

I was at a seminar today and a man was speaking about different phenomenons such as ghosts and other paranormal activities. One that caught my eye was when he started to speak about out of body experiences. He started to talk about how stimulating the brain at certain spots would trigger the person to start experiencing themselves as out of their body, exiting and entering their body. They also said that same area of the brain could trigger someone to hear voices and other strange phenomenon. This was pretty disappointing for me since I am an avid believer in astral projection and energy and to hear someone say it's related to different brain stimulations...you could imagine the feeling. Is there any evidence astral projection wise that someone could inform me of to show that it's not just "brain stimulation" like this guy is talking about?

*edit* here's a link to the report the man was talking about
http://iands.org/research/important-research-articles/69-out-of-body-experiences-all-in-the-brain.html?start=1

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[CFTraveler]

Hi Neo. There has to be a brain connection with any kind of perceptual activity, whether it's in the physical or nonphysical- information has to be processed and stored before it can be perceived- this is a known phenomenon. When you see a tree you are not seeing the tree that is out there- your eyes receive the photons that have bounced off the object, gone through your eyes, hit the retina, the retina reacts chemically to the photons, the chemical reaction goes then through your optic nerve into your brain, who then compares the electric data to memory, and presents you with an image of what you have 'seen'.
So when you 'see' the tree, it's actually been a few nanoseconds since the actual event happened and was 'realized' by your conscious mind.
So it is not unreasonable to assume that for your subconscious/conscious awareness to move location or become nonlocal, receive information from the "nonphysical", retrieve it and process it, there has to be brain involvement- which is why most OBE theorists put forth the hypothesis that the 'nonphysical' is an energy environment that we shape with our past experiences, and has a lot of subjective component. (I personally think it may be energy, but also information, presented in such a way that our physical sense organs miss but our nonlocal 'parts' perceive, etc.
So I don't find it surprising at all that the brain can be manipulated to be able to recall an out of body experience- what this scientist forgot to mention is that this is the way some scientists (Penrose was one, IIRC) got subjects to relive memories they had forgotten- stuff that had actually happened in the physical.

As to the brain stimulation using electrodes experiments performed on epileptic patients, the results obtained were not OBE, btw, it was autoscopy, which is a whole different animal. And if you read the study data itself you will see that at the very bottom the scientists recognize the difference- so the 'results' advertised in some of these studies are not the actual conclusions that the scientists reached.
You can make anything happen if you stimulate parts of brains- I believe hallucinogenic substances have proven this time and again- but that doesn't mean that OBEs are not real- it just means that we can make anything happen perceptually if we know how.

[Aunt Clair]

I was at a seminar today and a man was speaking about different phenomenons such as ghosts and other paranormal activities. One that caught my eye was when he started to speak about out of body experiences. He started to talk about how stimulating the brain at certain spots would trigger the person to start experiencing themselves as out of their body, exiting and entering their body. They also said that same area of the brain could trigger someone to hear voices and other strange phenomenon. This was pretty disappointing for me since I am an avid believer in astral projection and energy and to hear someone say it's related to different brain stimulations...you could imagine the feeling. Is there any evidence astral projection wise that someone could inform me of to show that it's not just "brain stimulation" like this guy is talking about?

*edit* here's a link to the report the man was talking about
http://iands.org/research/important-res ... ml?start=1 (http://iands.org/research/important-research-articles/69-out-of-body-experiences-all-in-the-brain.html?start=1)

[Link is being allowed but not active, please copy and paste to visit the site. For more information on this moderator action please see rules: http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?t=186]
To confirm what the magician magickally senses they need only sit with peers and working together can prove to each other what they see clairvoyantly and hear clairaudiently.

If one will develop clairvoyance , and anyone can do this, then they can see peers separating from the body and see the face on projectors that visit them too. If the energy is strong enough between peers the magicians can remote view the home and the faces of peers online in another country across the seas.

How shall we disprove the vast amount of new evidence that the internet provides?

Let a scientist pick his nose and tell us he has found a bouger . Does that mean that bougers are only in his nose? It does not. But he has one on the tip of his finger.

Triggering by brain stimulation does not discount anything.
If the scientist touches spot A and the volunteer hears voices who is to say that these are not real? Spirit is all around us. Maybe direct stimulation is another method of
triggering higher states of consciousness, OBE , clairvoyance and clairaudience.

Similarly if the stimulation triggers OBE why is this disputing OBE ? It does not. Perhaps the volunteer is experiencing multi location and separation.


When the physicians first stimulated this area, the woman “reported that she was ‘sinking into the bed’ or ‘falling from a height.’” When they increased the electricity, she reported, “I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk.” The authors reported that, “two further stimulations induced the same sensation, which included an instantaneous feeling of ‘lightness’ and ‘floating’ about two meters above the bed, close to the ceiling.”
This sounds like she has had a partial separation in bi location of consciousness.

This research does not demonstrate that OBE does not occur. It does show that stimulating portions of the brain may induce metaphysical and magickal phenomena though. When a magician trances there is heightened brainactivity perhaps this stimulates the same portions of the brain.

Edit: Actually, further reading of your link , indicates that the author of that site came to a similar conclusion;


Regarding the first assumption, the Nature article authors defined OBEs as “curious, usually brief sensations in which a person’s consciousness seems to become detached from the body and take up a remote viewing position,” a definition for which they cited three European publications (Brugger, Regard, & Landis, 1997; Grusser & Landis, 1991; and Hecaen & Ajuriaguerra, 1952). American OBE researchers have offered somewhat similar definitions, for example: “An experience where you felt that your mind or awareness was separated from your physical body” (Gabbard & Twemlow, 1984, pp. 3-4); “An…experience…in which the center of consciousness appears to the experient to occupy temporarily a position which is spatially remote from his/her body” (Irwin, 1985, p. 5); an experience in which “people feel that their ‘self,’ or center of awareness, is located outside of the physical body” (Alvarado, 2000, p. 183). It appears to us that by all of these definitions, the Swiss patient’s experience qualified as an OBE.

[Sinera]

the brain is receiver and sender alike to/from this 3-dimensional material plane we're on and experiencing as we are temporarily incarnated in those awkward carbon-based biological biped bio-machines

compare the brain to a kind of radio: turn the nobs (stimulate/activate brain parts) from your normal frequency (betawaves) to other frequencies (delta, theta, alpha, gamma or whatever) and you will get broadcasts (paranormal views, dimensional access, information, remote viewing, clairvoyant insights, etc) from other programs (dimensions, planes, levels, foci)

so where's your problem?

ps: this thread might also help you, there are a lot of good replies to the mainstream's and those brain-stimulating (so-called) "scientists" views on OBEs in there

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welco ... 253.0.html (http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welcome_to_out_of_body_experiences/obes_just_a_product_of_a_confused_mind-t33253.0.html)

cheers,
volgerle