Lost Faith... Just LD's ?

[BaKo]

Hey. As I have been reading lately about LD's, I realize that nearly everything in an OBE is the same in an LD... and the "reality flunctuations" could simply just be parts of your dream. Can anyone somehow reaffirm for me that they are different things, and describe some differences? I want to believe, but I just can't right now...

[Mishell]

For me, Ld happen when I'm asleep and OBEs happen when I'm awake.

Besides that, I don't think there's much difference.

[CFTraveler]

Hey. As I have been reading lately about LD's, I realize that nearly everything in an OBE is the same in an LD... and the "reality flunctuations" could simply just be parts of your dream. Can anyone somehow reaffirm for me that they are different things, and describe some differences? I want to believe, but I just can't right now... Why do you need them to be different things? When you get validations (and I think we all do from time to time) you know you're getting information from a source that isn't the five senses.
I'm not a big fan of 'belief'- sure, it makes it easier to accept experiences for what they are, but they also make you expect specific things that may not apply to your person. So, I say chuck away belief and rely on your experiences.
The difference between an OBE, LD and Phasing are just technicalities-why get hung up on them?

Now, if you were asking how to tell the difference between a subconscious/personal brain process and a collective astral experience, then I'd have something to say.

[Neil Templar]

Now, if you were asking how to tell the difference between a subconscious/personal brain process and a collective astral experience, then I'd have something to say.

oh, go on then.. :wink: :P
if only for the purpose of having a decent description of the differences, for those all too frequent moments when i'm trying to explain it to my "normal" friends...

[CFTraveler]

if only for the purpose of having a decent description of the differences, for those all too frequent moments when i'm trying to explain it to my "normal" friends... You are a brave soul. Braver than me, anyway.

But if you insist:
Your brain processes information. That's what it does. The information can come from various sources- the senses, and memories.
Memories (according to conventional theories) come from sensory perception. However, esoteric theory postulates that memories can also come from extrasensory sources.

A projection is your consciousness immersing itself in an environment. We don't know if this environment is local or nonlocal, we just know that when we think and dream we are immersed in an 'inner' experience. This experience is mediated by the brain, whether an OBE or dream. The subconscious is usually the mediating part of the mind that is usually the observer, but occasionally the conscious mind is present and aware when we go through this immersion experience.
If we're lucid, the experience can be called an astral projection or a lucid dream. Phasing is a method to achieve an astral projection without experiencing an out of body experience.
In OBE theory, there is no essential difference between AP and having a lucid dream. What we can say about it, is that the astral projection has collective elements in it, which can be shared by others when we're having the experience. A lucid dream in essence is the same experience, but the elements in it are personal and symbolic. You can usually find something symbolic (that is, controlled by the subconscious who communicates in symbols) that pertains to your daily life. An astral projection may have symbolic elements in it, but they are usually verified by others as places they've been to. I would describe these places/people as archetypal representations of the collective unconscious.
Phasing is a way to have an AP. It is probably the same technique as WILD, or similar enough to pass for the same thing.
An Out of Body Experience is a projection like the above described, but has a few differences in the quality of the experience.
It is immersive, but the environment is usually local (or close to local) and the reality fluctuations can be caused by 360-degree vision (so they're not really reality fluctuations, they are more like location discrepancies) and the other type of common fluctuation has to do with 'openings' or 'gateways' which are archetypal, and as such could be explained as symbolic representation of 'switching' locales or modes of experience. Other fluctuations seem to be caused by the subconscious, and I'd call them 'dream intrusions'.
About the most obvious difference from the OBE and the AP is the exit- an OBE has a predictable separation process, which can change, but the experience of 'exiting the body' is unmistakeable for anything that can happen while 'awake'.
A nonlucid dream sounds like it would be easy to categorize, but lots of dreams end up being predictive, so even that is dubious.

So I consider all of them projections, the contents determine what kind.

[Neil Templar]

:mrgreen: Excellent! cheers CF!


if only for the purpose of having a decent description of the differences, for those all too frequent moments when i'm trying to explain it to my "normal" friends...
You are a brave soul. Braver than me, anyway.



I don't know about brave. i've never had a problem standing up and saying whatever i feel, often getting me in trouble in the past, actually. :roll: but not always..
i remember standing in front of the "cool" guys at high school, they were all drunk, and taking the p*ss out of me, and everyone else having a good time at the school disco.
i stood in front of them all, and told them they were all assholes! i thought for sure i'd get myself beaten up.
in actuality, i think i earned some respect that night. :wink:

these days, i do enjoy challenging folk's concepts of reality.
armed with knowledge based on experience, i have no problem suggesting there's more to it than what their 5 senses tell them.
unfortunately they very rarely allow themselves to suspend their disbelief, or they bring up the tired old ♥♥♥♥♥ Challenge argument. :x

in fact, just the other day we had Holland's most respected statistician, Maurice de Hond, at my work, answering questions about the financial situation, politics etc.. it was a very interesting morning, he was talking about the global economy, and what'll likely happen if the people lose faith in their governments completely, a revolution of one sort or another being a very likely outcome.
i told him about a recent poll taken in Britain, that said 48% of British folk believe in an "Intelligent Design" to the Universe, as opposed to the traditional creation stories of the popular religions, or the idea that chance evolution is all that happened.
i asked him if he thought based on such statistics, the revolution he suggested as a probable future occurrence, might be of a spiritual nature.
his answer jokingly avoided saying yes or no. "the politicians will definitely be praying!"

a couple of hours later, i overheard my director and a couple of the actors joking about " a spiritual revolution. hahaha.."
i had to laugh to myself. they can mock all they want, so sure of what is.

sorry, tangent from the original thread.. :oops:

[wstein]

See http://forums.astraldynamics.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=13785&p=104582&hilit=change#p104582

[star]

these days, i do enjoy challenging folk's concepts of reality.
armed with knowledge based on experience, i have no problem suggesting there's more to it than what their 5 senses tell them.
unfortunately they very rarely allow themselves to suspend their disbelief, or they bring up the tired old ♥♥♥♥♥ Challenge argument.

Life is never the same after you meet someone that can pinch from a distance, or more.

[Ouroboros]

these days, i do enjoy challenging folk's concepts of reality.
armed with knowledge based on experience, i have no problem suggesting there's more to it than what their 5 senses tell them.
unfortunately they very rarely allow themselves to suspend their disbelief, or they bring up the tired old ♥♥♥♥♥ Challenge argument.

Life is never the same after you meet someone that can pinch from a distance, or more.

I would imagine not! o.O

Hopefully they don't use their pinching powers for naughty purposes. :P

[star]

these days, i do enjoy challenging folk's concepts of reality.
armed with knowledge based on experience, i have no problem suggesting there's more to it than what their 5 senses tell them.
unfortunately they very rarely allow themselves to suspend their disbelief, or they bring up the tired old ♥♥♥♥♥ Challenge argument.

Life is never the same after you meet someone that can pinch from a distance, or more.

I would imagine not! o.O

Hopefully they don't use their pinching powers for naughty purposes. :P

I'd think so, if it wasn't just that much more fun when they do.

[Berserk]

I used to travel OBE through my self-made self-hypnosis tape. In fact, I succeeded on the first attempt. The experience was compellingly vivid: I floated up from my body,bounced off the ceiling, and gazed down at my sleeping body tangled up in my twisted blankets. I draped my astral body over my physical body, but had trouble merging my astral fingers with their physical counterparts. This failure induced fear that woke me up. Later, I visited a deceased loved one who had committed suicide and she passionately reassured me that I need not worry and that she was making progress. The powerful emotions released by our reunion were among the the most potent I've ever experienced.

Then I discovered Dr. Stephen LaBerge and learned how to have lucid dreams. These dreams were just as vivid as my OBEs. During the dream, I knew I was "back there" sleeping and that I had limited control of my dream surroundings. All five of my senses were totally engaged in my LDs. Later, I listened to interviews with various LD experts and they shared their OBE adventures. They all added that theirs were JUST LDs and nothing more. MY OBEs were not experiences of alternalte planes and had no relevance to the question of post-mortem surival. Reluctantly, I concluded that I had been duped, victimized by my own wishful thinking. I quickly concluded that I had been misled by gullible astral fundamentalists who needed to believe that their OBEs were real and found the hard work of verification tests odious and threatening.

I was particulary appalled by their naive reaction to La Berge's LD in which he lit a candle by his bedstand, went OBE, blew out the candle and explored the duplicate of his house, and then reentered his body only to find that the candle had burned to its base. OBE devotees tried to wriggle out of the obvious implication by insisting that astral matter is different and is not easily subject to such verification tests. They are just whisling past the grave yard that unearths the fatal flaw in their claims. Without verification, no knowledge can be claimed! A cognitive distinction between LDs and OBEs must be established experimentally; it can't very by postulated on the basis of subjective experience.

Don

[ButterflyWoman]

these days, i do enjoy challenging folk's concepts of reality.
Careful with that. There's nothing people hate more than having their concept of reality messed with. It can get ugly, and even downright violent.

[Hastor]

I was particulary appalled by their naive reaction to La Berge's LD in which he lit a candle by his bedstand, went OBE, blew out the candle and explored the duplicate of his house, and then reentered his body only to find that the candle had burned to its base. OBE devotees tried to wriggle out of the obvious implication by insisting that astral matter is different and is not easily subject to such verification tests. They are just whisling past the grave yard that unearths the fatal flaw in their claims. Without verification, no knowledge can be claimed! A cognitive distinction between LDs and OBEs must be established experimentally; it can't very by postulated on the basis of subjective experience.

Don

I agree completely. What I find strange, though, is the intrinsic expirimental nature of OBEs. The entire "real time zone" is supposed to be the real world and if so then any unknown of the real world could be varified during OBE and then checked after awakening. In simple terms, you could ask your friend to lay 5 random cards in a disclosed location within his or her house. During OBE you should theorectically be able to simply "float" over to the friend's house, look at the five cards, and then "float" back to your body. Even with the supposed difficulty of what Robert Bruce calls Shadow Memories, remembering 5 cards should be remarkably simple as compared to remembering a complex Astral experiance. If you are able to remember all cards correctly then there should be ample reason to believe in Astral Projection, but if you miss them all or even get one wrong then there is proof that the experiance was not an actual case of Astral Projection. Even though it sounds strict, the experiment is intentionally designed to sacrifice legitimacy by leaving so low a variable in exchange for allowing ease in attempt.

[CFTraveler]

I was particulary appalled by their naive reaction to La Berge's LD in which he lit a candle by his bedstand, went OBE, blew out the candle and explored the duplicate of his house, and then reentered his body only to find that the candle had burned to its base. OBE devotees tried to wriggle out of the obvious implication by insisting that astral matter is different and is not easily subject to such verification tests. They are just whisling past the grave yard that unearths the fatal flaw in their claims. Without verification, no knowledge can be claimed! A cognitive distinction between LDs and OBEs must be established experimentally; it can't very by postulated on the basis of subjective experience.

Don

I agree completely. Although I agree that OBEs are subjective and not altogether verifiable by scientific standards, I disagree with the assumptions that are being given here as if they were fact.
First of all, the Real Time Zone is not the real world- it is as the World looks to a subtle body that is interacting and experiencing it. This is very important and at the heart of the problem with this reasoning. It is extremely unlikely for a subtle body to affect the RTZ; it's as if radar were able to blow off a candle or turn cards. Radar is subtle, it can interact for detection purposes, which is why I use it as an analogy for such. That's how we perceive- it doesn't mean we can do anything else.

What I find strange, though, is the intrinsic expirimental nature of OBEs. The entire "real time zone" is supposed to be the real world No, it's not. Of course, you can ignore any literature that asserts the difference and just point to the literature that claims it to be just that, but that just points to your motivation.


and if so then any unknown of the real world could be varified during OBE and then checked after awakening. Not "any" unknown, since the RTZ is not the real world, and it is not completely objective.


In simple terms, you could ask your friend to lay 5 random cards in a disclosed location within his or her house. During OBE you should theorectically be able to simply "float" over to the friend's house, look at the five cards, and then "float" back to your body. Even with the supposed difficulty of what Robert Bruce calls Shadow Memories, remembering 5 cards should be remarkably simple as compared to remembering a complex Astral experiance. If you are able to remember all cards correctly then there should be ample reason to believe in Astral Projection, but if you miss them all or even get one wrong then there is proof that the experiance was not an actual case of Astral Projection. Once again, you don't seem to grasp that an Astral Projection isn't objective, it's primarily interaction to more abstract and subtle environments, that are usually created by the colllective unconscious- that is, a collective dream environment, as opposed to a subjective dream environment. And the only way to verify those is to compare with other projectors' experiences, which is one of the reasons forums such as these exist.

[Hastor]

Robert Bruce in his book, Astral Dynamics published in 1999, page 28-
"A simple way of proving that real-time projection is an objective rather than a purely subjective experiance is with a deck of cards. Shuffle the deck and, without looking, lay one card face up on top of a wardrobe, cabinet or somewhere high up in your own home, preferably at least twenty feet (six metres) away from where your physical body will be. Or tape the card to a window, facing outward, without looking at it. Do not use more than one card until you have some real success with this test.

Do not try to guess the card. Guesswork – even simply wondering what the card is – can easily cause subconscious interference (reality fluctuations), which can make a genuine real-time observation extremely difficult. If, for example, you try to guess or intuit what the card is, you may see the card you have guessed, instead of seeing the actual card. This can undermine the real-time observation with a small reality fluctuation and make the observation inaccurate.

At the very start of the projection, immediately move to where the card is and look at it. Glance at it only briefly, and remember it. When you are sure you can remember the card, re-enter your body, write down the card you saw, and then go check.

To give this test a fair go, keep it very short and do not try to do anything more during the projection. When you approach your physical body to re-enter it, hold the memory of this card firmly in mind and, quite literally, shout it out loud as you are re-entering, e.g. ‘The Queen of Hearts! The Queen of Hearts!” This will maximise your chances of remembering not only the projection, but also the face of the card you saw during the test. Please follow this procedure to the letter, or you may lose the memory not only of the card, but of the entire projection.”

All I did to this experiment clearly stated by Robert Bruce himself is I changed the number of cards and the person holding them only so that I might increase the validity of the experiment by adding a greater amount of variables and including an assistant. Unless Robert Bruce has come forward and stated otherwise since the date that he published the book then I am lead to believe that he sees the Real-Time Zone as
overlaying and permeating the entire physical universe and containing a perfect reflection of reality within it. This is another quote from Robert Bruce in the same book as mentioned above.



No, it's not. Of course, you can ignore any literature that asserts the difference and just point to the literature that claims it to be just that, but that just points to your motivation.
That statement is a bit of a Catch-22 in that any evidence I point to you could dismiss as merely an attempt to verif my claims while you consciously undermine the evidence I have. In essense, I could give you books of evidence that verify my claims, but as long as there is an inkling of evidence that refutes it then I would be put as wrong based simply on the existance of an opposition. I chose the evidence given by Robert Bruce due to his extensive experiances in the field of Astral research, and because of such an extensive expertise in the field I hold that his ideas can if not, in the case that much of his work forms the bedrock of the ideas in this forum, must be held as the definitive source of understanding of the area in question.

Please forgive my ignorance if the understanding of the Real Time Zone has changed since Robert Bruce published the book from which I quote, but otherwise I see no reason to recognize anything you state as "subjective" about Real Time projections.

Thank you,
Hastor

[CFTraveler]

All I did to this experiment clearly stated by Robert Bruce himself is I changed the number of cards and the person holding them only so that I might increase the validity of the experiment by adding a greater amount of variables and including an assistant. Unless Robert Bruce has come forward and stated otherwise since the date that he published the book then I am lead to believe that he sees the Real-Time Zone as
overlaying and permeating the entire physical universe and containing a perfect reflection of reality within it. This is another quote from Robert Bruce in the same book as mentioned above. But notice how he says 'reflection'- this is an indication that the RTZ is not necessarily what you see, all the time, and changeable. I'll clarify below.

That statement is a bit of a Catch-22 in that any evidence I point to you could dismiss as merely an attempt to verif my claims while you consciously undermine the evidence I have. In essense, I could give you books of evidence that verify my claims, but as long as there is an inkling of evidence that refutes it then I would be put as wrong based simply on the existance of an opposition. I have no interest in dismissing any claims you make, because my intent is not to 'debunk' your experiences- my intention is to simply say that the way science tests theories can not be applied 100% of the time, and thus can't be proven from a scientific standpoint. Does it mean it's not valid? Not at all, simply that the standards that science puts on experimental data cannot apply to mind experiments, because of the mind content. This is why psychiatry is not considered a science- not because it doesn't work or cannot be verified, but because it's all about the mind. And when it comes to extra-sensory perception, no matter how right you are most of the time, someone will go straight to the times when someone fails, and claim to invalidate it.

I chose the evidence given by Robert Bruce due to his extensive experiances in the field of Astral research, and because of such an extensive expertise in the field I hold that his ideas can if not, in the case that much of his work forms the bedrock of the ideas in this forum, must be held as the definitive source of understanding of the area in question. Robert is a very open minded man, is all I'm going to say.


Please forgive my ignorance if the understanding of the Real Time Zone has changed since Robert Bruce published the book from which I quote, but otherwise I see no reason to recognize anything you state as "subjective" about Real Time projections. Sorry if I sounded provocative, it wasn't my intention- however, the understanding of the RTZ is a bit more fluid than what I read in your previous post. Let me illustrate:

The astral is the closest dimension to the physical. It overlays and permeates the world like a huge mind net, catching and holding all thought. Its contents are created by the collective consciousness of the world mind. It contains all the thoughts, memories, fantasies, and dreams of every living thing in the world. In it, the laws of sympathetic attraction, or like attracts like, causes this ocean of mind stuff to strata and settle into layers or pools. These pools of thought are more commonly called astral planes, astral worlds, astral sub planes or astral realms.
...
The astral dimension is composed of astral matter and is aptly described as mind stuff. It is extremely sensitive to thought and can be moulded into any shape or form. These creations can be so perfect as to be indistinguishable from reality.

The best way to explain this, mind stuff, is to draw a comparison between astral matter and unexposed, high speed photographic film. When this film is exposed to light, focused by the cameras lens, a perfect image of reality is instantly burnt into the film by the chemical reaction of the film to light. When astral matter is exposed to thought, focused by the lens of the mind, a perfect image of reality is instantly formed out of astral mind stuff by the reaction of astral matter to thought.
Robert Bruce

http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials ... art-1.html (http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/astral-projection/part-1.html)

So you see, even though the astral is the closest thing to physical reality, and the RTZ is the closest thing to it in the astral, it is still the perception of subtle energy and subject to subconscious information. This is why the above experiment you quoted was very clear in that the projection had to be short and devoid of expectation- because the second you thought anything at all, it could affect the outcome, and that is a no-no, and subjective.

And then, in describing the Alice In Wonderland effect (which occurs in the RTZ) he writes:

Once the subconscious mind starts creating like this it continues to do so at a geometric rate. Which is the point I was making.

http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials ... t-1.html#6 (http://www.astraldynamics.com/tutorials/astral-projection/part-1.html#6)

So you see, what I was trying to get across is that the standards of objective science cannot be used to 'prove' AP to be real or imagine- a different protocol must be agreed upon than the standard to decide whether the outcome is more than chance, or a statistical anomaly. And considering the way Physics is developing, even that has to be reconsidered.




Thank you,
Hastor
No; thank you,
CF.