EDIT: Title changed due to it originally being too confrontational!

Admittedly, it's a fantasy I bought into myself for a while. I've been dealing with the loss of somebody very dear to me, and it has brought to my attention the fleeting nature of life....of everything. The people we love will one day die...and when they die...they are gone. In fact, it is the zen belief that they never existed in the first place (neither does free-will, to many "enlightened" people)...however, I'd rather not go into that.

I can't keep living in delusions.

Look more closely and you'll see this for yourself. There is no evidence to support this fantasy. The only evidence I've ever found (from my more than AMPLE resources searches) for OOB, synchronicity, precognition, and other so-called scientific research has been well within the realm of coincidence, chance, and self-fulfilling delusions. I recommend you check out a book called "The Psychology of the Psychic." It goes into detail as it describes certain things about human psychology which more than compensates for the results which "seem" to be out of the ordinary such as collective recall and wish-fulfillment.

Consider the fact that evidence is so hard to come by. Tom speaks in his book of going out of body with friends and having closely correlated stories. Why has nobody reproduced these results? Why doesn't the Monroe Institute put this sort of evidence in bold letters on their front page? The only recordings available on the TMI website are absolutely worthless as evidence. Getting some sort of evidence shouldn't be like pulling teeth. If I managed to have an OOB experience, I'd drop everything I was doing and spend the next 10 years of my life compiling evidence on top of evidence on top of evidence. I mean...why wouldn't I!? I would have successfully proven the existence of life after death!!!

But unfortunately...we have to face the fact. Our personalities, memories, and individuality are all rooted within our brains. And those brains rot away...along with our personalities, memories and individuality at the time of our death. It's a sad...but unfortunately inescapable reality.

homesar,

I hope that your attitude brings you great comfort.

I am not at all sure that your characterization of Zen thought is accurate (emphasis added as underlining). "The people we love will one day die...and when they die...they are gone. In fact, it is the zen belief that they never existed in the first place (neither does free-will, to many "enlightened" people)...however, I'd rather not go into that."

If this in fact were a true statement of Zen thought, then you must consider the logical consequence: If the people you love who die never existed in the first place, then the logical extension is that you never existed in the first place either unless you are going to claim that Zen thought includes solipsism of which I personally have recognized no sign. Zen is a form of Buddhism and I am also unaware that it fails to accept Buddha's statement that our experienced reality is an illusion, which I personally take as his statement (within the limits of what was then culturally possible to express) that it is a virtual reality.

We fully recognize that, cutting edge advances or not in science and mathematics, there will be many who adamantly state that this is a physical reality and only a physical reality, etc., just as you are doing. They are welcome to that attitude and belief. We are also free to express our understanding that things are otherwise. Just don't attempt to be disruptive in the expression of your beliefs on this bulletin board.

Ted as Administrator

Hi Homesar:

There are a lot of people that experience OOB and that does not happen. IMO, that does not happen because even though you may get excited, and keep getting excited you soon realize it is natural and also realize it is natural to everybody, not just you. It's like you were a kid and didn't know how to ride a bike. You want to try to do it. Once you can ride a bike, you get excited, you tell your parents, your friends, etc., but then a week from that you just ride your bike, like it is natural. You don't want to keep telling everybody that you can ride a bike (in general :).

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Homesar,

Have a look at Dr Radin's work

http://www.deanradin.com/NewWeb/TCUindex.html


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Radin

http://www.google.com/search?q=Dr+Dean+ ... CDIQqwQwAw

His science is beyond all dispute.





-Montana

Hello homesar

Remember this topic you created 2.5 weeks ago?
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5204&p=25530#p25530

You were searching, and now you are not.

Do you really want to stop searching?

One does not live in delusion by being curious.

Practice lucid dreaming, as you already know it. Experiment in your lucid dreams, and test your ideas with the goal of finding evidence.

homesar: " If I managed to have an OOB experience, I'd drop everything I was doing and spend the next 10 years of my life compiling evidence on top of evidence on top of evidence. I mean...why wouldn't I!? I would have successfully proven the existence of life after death!!!"

Well, maybe you would do that and you would absolutely know for yourself that it was true. Then one day you might have compiled enough personal evidence to base a theory on and write a book. You might even create a website with a bulletin board where the like minded can come and share and grow and learn all about what you have learned. And maybe someone will come one day and write:

"Look more closely and you'll see this for yourself. There is no evidence to support this fantasy."

That's the point. Until a person experiences it for themselves, it will be dismissed as fantasy and wishful thinking. No one here would tell you to believe it either. Tom constantly suggests to be open minded and skeptical. You've got the one down. Now open up with the other.

Ramon

That was good Ramon. Very creative.

Good to see you. Have a great weekend.

Clau

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Looking back, my topic title sounds pretty rude and inconsiderate. That wasn't my intention.

I'm not going to stop my attempts to reach OOB states, meditation, etc. But so far what I've found and my personal experience hasn't pointed anywhere near MBT concepts.

For instance, I am completely unable to separate consciousness and our experience from brain function. Why do drugs so completely change our experience? Why does a blow to the head temporarily remove it? Where does consciousness go during deep, dreamless sleep? I've read the topics here that try to give a description of why this is so...but it just seems like a stretch. Like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. I've experimented with LSD, and it so completely warped my perceptions that I completely lost myself and the separation of all things. I saw the world as being completely one...and our individuality as being a false construct created by our minds. Now...I'm not happy about this. I would prefer that our individuality goes beyond our brains...and that my dead loved ones are still out there somewhere....but I can't. It just doesn't mesh with my experience.

But like I said...I'm going to keep trying. I want this to be true just as much as all of you.

Homesar,
I can empathize with some of your thoughts, and can agree to a certain extent,but don't throw the baby out with the bath water as they say.You have to find your own subjective evidence,and I don't mean self delusion or wish fulfillment.I'll explain my personal example in a bit.

As for the personality and the brain:I think it is likely that alot of the information we falsely identify with is "but a transitory collection of aggregates"[likes,dislikes,responses,etc.].This is because there is conscious experience in correlation with neural activity as best as we can measure.Much brain activity occurs in dynamic relation to sensory input from the environment.So in alot of ways,"normal"sensory experience-brain activity is a continuation in a chain of external events.We can't really say where that chain begins or that it's ALL in our brains.Our brains are imbedded in this world [that we percieve as divided] and consciously experience only a tiny portion of the information that we subprocess.When our physical bodies degrade and die we loose our ability to be a participant in this process it seems.

BUT,there are many problems,here are some big ones for me after reading alot of books:

1.Most of the universe is unaccounted for and is thought to be "dark matter-dark energy". Wouldn't the law of constant composition say the same about our brains?[extension of self-brain in dark matter] So how much of this chain of events are we missing and why should reality be absolutely framed by what little we know of the world in which we are imbedded?

2.Our brains are imbedded in a world that is not solid,we only percieve it that way at our level of organization.

3.Consciousness seems to be required to bring about the "solid" matter world we percieve.There are many weird quantum experiments that show this. [delayed choice experiment,etc.] So if our brain is made from matter,and matter produces consciousness,then why is conscious choice necessary to bring "matter" out of a superposition of possibilities and into the solid reality that can make a brain? Which comes first?

4.The constants of nature are "the rule set" that "render" our world. These rules are perfectly tuned and certainly seem programed.The known universe couldn't evolve to produce our brains without these constraints in place.

5.This world is finite and therefore contains finite information.In order for things to evolve as they do there must be randomness if this is a closed system.Otherwise a finite object[like DNA] would need all of the information of it's future states and would exceed it's finite information capacity.[I think I got this right : / ]This has consequences for the health of our bodies-brains in this world. Yet we are able to concieve of seemingly infinite things in the mind. [ infinite regression,infinite loops,infinite possibility...] Are we an open or closed system? Are possibilities infinite?

6.Quantum entanglement upsets causality,space-time-relativity.This behavior is at the basement level of the matter that make our brains and the world. Simulation theories and MBT do a good job of explaining all this stuff and the paranormal.

I guess I could go on and on:So my point is that since nothing explains our conscious experience well ,and so much is unknown about the world it mostly takes place in,it only makes sense to seek personal truth.Lucid Dreams-OBEs are the ultimate method for me and have lead to personal evidence of a broader reality that includes some type of further existence beyond physical death of the brain-body.

I've had a few strange experiences but this was my big "taste of the pudding" ,proof for my wife and I:

One night while LDing I was in what we call NPMR's version of my bedroom.The door opened and I went through it.As the scenery changed to a room I've never seen before,the colors got momentarily very vivid.

The next moment I was shocked to run into a "zombie"like version of my wife.She seemed pissed off! She advanced on me and I could feel her mass resisting me as I held her back. There was a guy behind her chanting in mumbo jumbo,he seemed like he was controlling this zombie wife somehow. [I think]Then they switched places and he was in my face yelling.

The next thing, I tried to punch him and my fist went through his face.He laughed and said something like "you'll see" as I was dragged backwards through the way I came as if being rescued.

I mentioned it to my wife in detail the next day and we joked about the zombie and why she was pissed.But this whole thing ate at me.2 weeks later I brought it up again to her and described the guy in greater detail.She then went to an old box of photos and pulled out a picture of this exact same guy!

I was shocked.He was a deceased family friend of hers that she never mentioned before.I never,ever, heard of him, or saw a picture of him before.I swear to this.Therefore,my physical brain never had any input what so ever of this person.What are the chances that I would randomly lucid dream him from just a bunch of electro-chemical reactions?

Of course people can say that my wife and I concocted this story as it can't be proved to anyone else,but this is the point.Subjective proof.Her and I know that reality is stranger than we are conditioned to think.

Sorry for the long post.
Jeff

homesar: "Looking back, my topic title sounds pretty rude and inconsiderate. That wasn't my intention."

I know it wasn't your intention and I wasn't trying to be harsh in my earlier response. I was just commenting on the inevitability that some people, most maybe, will have that reaction no matter what proof you bring to the table. Just like Jeff and his experience, which was great by the way, people will say that he and his wife made it up if it is outside their comfort zone to accept such things. I am far beyond doubting the reality of the larger reality from my own experience.

The first experience I had that was really proof to me that it was real occurred while attempting to "foresee" the winning lottery numbers one time. I quieted my mind and told my brother what numbers to play for me. The result: the winning numbers were all one digit off from mine. Every single one. The odds against that happening are, to the best of my knowledge, almost as staggering as if I had accurately guessed the winning numbers. You can read about it here: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2624

Since then there have been numerous examples for me that something more is at work than simple brain chemistry. I have all the proof I need that it exists but continue to always look for datapoints to expand my understanding of what exactly it is. Tom's theory gives an excellent framework on which to hang what I know so far. I still have a long way to go but am very happy with my progress to date. It's a journey, not a destination, but you have to stay on the path and look back only to gauge your progress. Stick with it.

Ramon

homesar,

I've had quite a few experiences in my life that would make it hard for me to accept the materialistic view of the universe that says this is all there is. A lot of the skeptical "explanations" don't really hold up if you've actually had the experience yourself. A lot of skeptics would say Jeff is imagining things or making stuff up or has exaggerated what really happened, and we have no way to prove it. You could say the same thing about the stuff that has happened to me, but I know that my experiences are as real as anything else that has happened to me. So I tend to believe that Jeff's experiences are real too. What do he or I have to gain by lying? Why would we even be here looking for some answers and possible explanations if what happened to us wasn't a very "real" experience.

As to your comment about our individuality, I've actually had spontaneous experiences regarding 2 people who had recently died. One instance, involved someone that I didn't even know was dead at the time (hadn't seen or heard from him in 28 years). So you can pretty much eliminate wishful thinking or grief in that case. I tend to think that individuality persists. At least that has been my experience.

There is alot of evidence that points in the direction of there being some sort of transcendental reality (something beyond our physical senses and our physical environment). I am here trying to make sense out of some of it. But some days, a kind of depression gets a hold of me, and it seems that all I can hear are the skeptics.

You're going to have your grief over your loved one no matter what. It really is a separate issue, no matter what happens after we die. That grief is normal and it really does hurt.

Keep looking, and remember - a lot of the skeptics really do have their own agenda and they are not nearly as objective as they'd like you to believe.

Jeanne

Check this out...http://www.pimvanlommel.nl/?film/115/media

Good one Jeff. It fits my model that the brain does not produce consciousness, colors, imagination, visualizations, ...

Claudio

_________________
"Every moment can be as good as you want it to be."
"Experience is the ultimate teacher."

> http://soprano.com <

Jeff, that dream you described about your wife and the man you later recognized to be a dead-relative of your wife...it's very likely that you're having a false ID. It happens all the time to police witnesses as they point people out in a line-up. Most likely, you saw a generic man in your dream. Later on, after seeing this photo you filled in the generic man in your dream to be this dead-relative.

There's a tendency among human beings to believe that coincidental stuff cannot arise by chance. In fact, coincidental (or synchronous) events happen ALL THE TIME. People just like to believe that it's happening because of some mysterious or important reason when in fact it's just another random event. This problem is compounded when people begin LOOKING for synchronous events and mis-interpreting certain happenings (or perhaps unknowingly exaggerating) these happenings to become something miraculous when it's not.

Ramon, if that thing with the lottery numbers really happened...then that's interesting. It's possible it could have been a coincidence. It's also possible you're not remembering the actual lotto turn out correctly. I'm have no way of knowing..


As for people and their existence beyond their physical bodies... There's just so many problems I could point out with this scenario. For starters...when does the consciousness enter the body? When the sperm and egg combine? Does the consciousness just sit around and wait for a sperm and egg to combine and then...it pops into it? Also...our bodies are made up of a bunch of cells. Are each one of them conscious? According to MBT...the bacterium in our intestines are conscious...so wouldn't our liver cells be conscious as well? What about people's who's personalities have been drastically changed by head-trauma? Memories lost through disease?

And I've heard that the US government investigated remote viewing. I've also heard that one of the investigators (Dr. Puthoff) is now a member of the church of scientology. If that's the kind of minds they had running THAT operation...then I'm certainly not impressed.