Quote from: Gwandau on October 22, 2012, 06:48:38 PM
eatenbyagrue,

Yes, I have had personal so called out of body experiences that have made me aware of things beyond our physical world, but I am fully aware that these experiences are just personal experiences and of course as such have no validity in a scientific approach. Still these experiences have changed my outlook on things quite a bit
.
As a result I have devoted a lot of time since then in the study of the interface domain between the observer and the observed, and done some extensive experiments with Lucid dreaming techniques as well as explorations of the unconsciousness through the use of mind expanding drugs and other techniques well known in the shamanic tradition.

The frame of reference contained by the normal level of consciousness is nothing but the tip of the iceberg, and our experience of physical reality is the result of a social and cultural conditioning that is filtering away the major part of perception possible for man. Normal consciousness of today is assembled at a very narrow point on the avaible bandwidth of human consciousness, making it almost impossible to introduce the information accessible beyond the accepted frames of reference.

I can only tell you what I have seen, and the words you will hear are bound to be filtered through your mental firewall of preconceptions attained during your life. But I can tell you about a place beyond this world were newly dead people arrive every second without knowing that they are dead, being in a state of mind quite similar to when you dream without knowing that you dream. I can tell you that this strange place is real for me, and that you may experience it yourself if you devote enough time in so called Lucid Dreaming or other advanced shamanic techniques, or you just may have to wait until you die.

But as I say, these are just my words and since it still is not possible to record ones experiences and compare these with similar experiences of others, or proving this domain to be an actual domain by recording meetings with other participants there, these words of mine will carry little weight.

But still they are the very reason for me to suggest what I have described above as the framework of a spiritual alternative to the guilt ridden dogmatics of the Christian mythology.´

Gwandau

I commend you on your experimentation.  What I would suggest is that you try to bridge the gap between personal and something that can be proven.  At least then you will know you are not merely hallucinating or are just in some kind of trance, feeling out of body, but in fact firmly in body.

What you may want to do is hide a playing card, something like that, in a place that is hidden, and where you do not know which card it is.  If you can travel out of body and identify things you cannot possibly learn any other way, then you know you are onto something.

Quote from: eatenbyagrue on October 22, 2012, 08:10:51 PM

I commend you on your experimentation.  What I would suggest is that you try to bridge the gap between personal and something that can be proven.  At least then you will know you are not merely hallucinating or are just in some kind of trance, feeling out of body, but in fact firmly in body.

What you may want to do is hide a playing card, something like that, in a place that is hidden, and where you do not know which card it is.  If you can travel out of body and identify things you cannot possibly learn any other way, then you know you are onto something.

When I was in high school, a friend and I experimented with lucid dreaming and astral projection, and came up with a 40 percent positive strike rate. Not conclusive, even statistically speaking, but the times that we were right, actually frightened us a little bit.

On agreed nights we would set in place, on our drawer tops, an object or picture or written note intended for the other to view during lucid dreaming. The following morning we would write down what we had seen, then share the results.

We did this every mon, tues and wednesday for 3 months. It was spooky to get such a high hit rate, and at age 14, we decided we were out of our depth and stopped. LOL

At my current age, what scares me more, is not being able to remember what I looked at right in front of me and only a few minutes ago, and also while fully awake ! LOL

Gwandau
Buddy You got Brass Balls.........

I respect your Courage ,And I know this is possible [intuitively].
Its Just from My perspective, I'll be a long time dead ,why go hang out there
any sooner than requiered?

Others here have spoken of these "trips" ,usually they Meet some "others".
{nefarious types IMO].

You meet that lady yet?[the kissy huggy one].

@Toad
Our minds get cluttered and screwy sometimes,finding a path to peace
with a "good" purpose,
Works wonders..........
But once again thats just my opinion [and experience].

On the path and paying attention.........

Chet
PS
@Chris
I had written a nice responce to you but the forum murdered it.
[perhaps for the better]
Later..........

Quote from: eatenbyagrue on October 22, 2012, 08:10:51 PM

I commend you on your experimentation.  What I would suggest is that you try to bridge the gap between personal and something that can be proven.  At least then you will know you are not merely hallucinating or are just in some kind of trance, feeling out of body, but in fact firmly in body.


What you may want to do is hide a playing card, something like that, in a place that is hidden, and where you do not know which card it is.  If you can travel out of body and identify things you cannot possibly learn any other way, then you know you are onto something.

eatenbyagrue,

thanks for your open minded response to something that would make a warning bell ring for most people.

My out of body experiences are few and randomly appearing, but Lucid dreaming is something that I am getting more and more familiar with, and there is certain shaman techniques coupled to Lucid dreaming that will indeed induce out of body experiences(OBE). These techniques is my goal to perfect, since they are enabling exactly what you were suggesting when you mentioned the possibility to "bridge" between the out of body state and the physical reality around us. This technique is actually called what you named it: "To Bridge".

When fully mastering the induction of the OBE state the shamanic disciple takes his first step in the art of making a Bridge by moving his Dreambody(called astral body in modern terms) to the place were he is laying asleep. Here his first challenge is to avoid the strong surge of slipping back into the sleeping body in front of him since this would immediately arouse him from sleep.

Next step is to identify the autencity of the body in the bed being the real physical body. This check point is prepared by another disciple who have placed something specific for that occasion by the sleeping disciples bed, like a newspaper dated same day. Thereafter the disciple will leave the room and his sleeping body and move (preferrably fly) outside the house in a direction that will lead him to a place in the forest where he never has been before. Now his task is to look for something small, like for example a oddly shaped piece of rock in the surrounding that catches his attention.

Then he is to remember exactly were this item is laying by remembering certain distinctive features in the surrounding that will help him relocate the item later. The final step in this first "kindergarten level" of the shamanic OBE practice is to wake up in his bed and walk to the place and relocate the item that he found in his OBE. By bringing this item home and place it on his altar, the disciple has done his first shamanic tampering with reality, thus doing exactly what you suggested, eatenbyagrue, creating a bridge between the reality of the dream and the reality of the so called physical world.

The art of creating a Bridge is an almost lost art in the shamanic tradition and only a few inofficial groups within the North American Twisted Hair Medicine Tribe still know the keys to the deeper levels of creating a Bridge. With the risk of boring you, I will here give you a taste of the depth and complicity of this art by describing how the old Toltecs employed Bridge creation in instant travel all over the planet long before the white man even knew about the exitence of the Toltecs.

What I am about to tell you here is something one should only practice when fully controlling every part of the technique, and I am sure most of you that read this will shake his/her head, and that’s just as it should be, since this is knowledge only for those dedicated beyond normal levels. The technique presented here will additionally need such a enormous amount of focus and energy that only a person with such levels of Intent will be able to perform this.  I may also add, that in contrast to almost any other lucid dreaming activity, this one involves real danger, meaning a kind of danger that even surpasses the danger of death. Read this just for entertainment, if you prefer, it is of course up to you how to take this other worldy information., I just felt I wanted to share this many thousand year old Toltec shamanic knowledge.


Fasten your seatbelts and join me on this strange ride:


There is an old technique said to be performed frequently by the Toltecs, using this specific route through dream within a lucid dream and thus become lucid in a layer of consciousness below the first layer of lucid dreaming. The trick is to train yourself to lie down with every limb of you body in an exact position that you easily can recall, when going to sleep. Every joint, from your big limbs down to every joint of your fingers has to be positioned in a way that you can remember exactly.


The Toltecs for some reason preferred lying on their left side. Now, when getting lucid in you first layer dream, you have to reposition yourself into the exact same position as your body had as falling asleep in your normal reality. If you manage to fall asleep in this position within the dream, and then succeed to get fully lucid in next dream layer, your physical body will according to the Toltecs snap out of your physical world and get locked into your first layer of dream.


The Toltecs say this is because your dream body, or astral body, are primary to your physical body, not the other way around as we western people think. Thus the physical body is inferior and closely dependent upon the energy level of the dream body, always situated one single level away from the dreambody. The state of lucid dreaming always engage the dreambody, if moving into deeper levels of dreaming in a lucid state, the dreambody follows. The Toltecs knew that your higher energy body, your dreambody, is the very body that will remain when you die, and this knowledge was used by the Toltecs in many sophisticated ways.

They used this specific method to move the physical body over great distances without the aid of physical transport systems. To re-enter normal reality at the point of arrival, you have to go there with your dreambody and identify the place as being a true part of normal reality.  This techique is achieved thorugh years of training to move around with the dreambody in the normal reality, starting with the point of departure in normal reality where your body is lying asleep.

At the chosen point of arrival the Toltec placed his dreambody on the ground in the exact trained position and woke up into the first layer of lucid dreaming. Now his body was lying asleep on the spot of arrival. From here he just woke up and re-entered the physical world. But years before doing the big “jumps”, the diciple had to perfect his re-entry training by re-entering at dedicated spots nearby his sleeping body. This is but one of the old and almost forgotten arts of the Toltecs, which where shamans of an unparallelled magnitude in human history, who knew more about our reality than we ever can imagine.


Lucid dreaming hides a lot more secrets than our contemporary western knowledge can even fathom, being portals into realms far beyond our wildest dreams it openly threatens the stability of the contemporary scentific fundament.

Personally I believe Lucid dreaming is an unparallelled opportunity for mankind to evolve into a deeper understanding of the dynamics of our reality.

Quote from: hoptoad on October 23, 2012, 02:59:20 AM
When I was in high school, a friend and I experimented with lucid dreaming and astral projection, and came up with a 40 percent positive strike rate. Not conclusive, even statistically speaking, but the times that we were right, actually frightened us a little bit.
On agreed nights we would set in place, on our drawer tops, an object or picture or written note intended for the other to view during lucid dreaming. The following morning we would write down what we had seen, then share the results.
We did this every mon, tues and wednesday for 3 months. It was spooky to get such a high hit rate, and at age 14, we decided we were out of our depth and stopped. LOL
At my current age, what scares me more, is not being able to remember what I looked at right in front of me and only a few minutes ago, and also while fully awake ! LOL

hoptoad,

A wonderful adventure you had there! And very intriguing experiments performed by kids. A pity it wasn't to much literature about it then that could help you understand that Lucid dreaming is harmless and good for your overall wellbeing . In my case when being at that age I was totally alone in having Lucid dreaming experiences and it scared me as much as it fascinated me. Today the Internet is crowded with Lucid dreaming sites and there is a great variety of literature about it.

Quote from: ramset on October 23, 2012, 09:18:34 AM
Gwandau
Buddy You got Brass Balls.........

I respect your Courage ,And I know this is possible [intuitively].
Its Just from My perspective, I'll be a long time dead ,why go hang out there
any sooner than requiered?

Others here have spoken of these "trips" ,usually they Meet some "others".
{nefarious types IMO].

You meet that lady yet?[the kissy huggy one].

Ramset,
thanks for your kind answer and good humor. Yes, like most Lucid dreamers I of course have met "that lady" you mention, but one thing you soon find out is that she stands in the way for any prolonged stays in this strange realm, since by geeting exited, you will lose concentration and quite shortly therafter you will wake up.

To be able to stay awake within a dream for a longer period, you have to be quite cool and detached, and by attaining this mental poker face you will be able to experience great adventures, including meetings with spiritual guides and beings from other dimensions. Waking up from such an experience is much more rewarding than a short meeting with "the lady".


It is actually not courage that makes me do this kind of research, it is pure childish curiosity. I have always been interested in the white spots on the map and there is soo much still to discover and that's one of the reasons I am here meeting you guys at the OU forum, getting new ideas and trying to observe things from new angles.


I am totally convinced that if you have a dream, and you pour all your intent into that dream, you will inevitably sooner or later stumble onto something great. That's how things have worked for me, at least.



The day we finally have managed to decode the interface signals of our senses we will for the first time in human history be able to record and document our explorations into the mystery of consciousness.

When that happens, a scientifically founded understanding of our consciousness and everything that appears within us will be accessible, from the dynamics of thoughts to the inner voices that guides the religious person.


Gwandau

Quote from: hoptoad on October 22, 2012, 04:27:08 AM
Free will or free willy? 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/victor-stenger/free-will-is-an-illusion_b_1562533.html

@hoptoad, thanks for the link. In short, the article suggests that the so-called "free will" is not exactly as free as we think, coz it's influenced by some factors we are not - or at least till most recent times - we were not aware of. Of course, it's a huge blow against the notion of sin and thus against at least some religions.


edit
About lucid dreaming; I also experienced that in the past. First it was absolutely involuntarily and I was really scared of, since my whole body was in complete "paralyzed" state. Later I've learned that brain works somewhat differently while in it: you see through your shut eyes and you are unable to move any part of your body. Later I was able to induce this using some techniques, but I never got OBE.