Hey guys!!

I haven't been around in a while, it's good to be back. I have a few questions I hope you guys can help me with.

My questions have to do with dreams, and what exactly is going on during them. I am trying to get a VERY detailed understanding of the process of dreaming from the perspective of the larger picture. So if any of you have some insight, please be as detailed as possible in your descriptions. It would be a huge help for me!!

Question #1
When out of body, what does someone asleep and dreaming look like? If I were to have an OBE and float to my friends house and see him asleep and dreaming, what would I see?

As far as I can tell at this point, I think what I would see is his physical body lying in bed, and his astral body floating a few feet above him. But what would his astral body be doing? Some say there is a "haze" or "mist" that kind of forms a "shell" around the astral body during sleep... Does the astral body mimick the position of the physical body? If he is curled up in the fetal position laying on his side with his hands forming a pillow under his head... Will his astral body be doing the same thing, only a few feet above his head? Im looking for a detailed description of what this typically looks like.

Question #2
The dreams worlds and dream characters we perceive when we dream... are the worlds produced by the physical and etheric brain? Or is this all produced by the astral body projecting thoughts?

For instance, I am wondering.... When we have a dream body, is this actually our astral body? Is our astral body wondering around the astral realms and are we painting everything we bump into with our own thoughts and imagination? Are we walking around like zombies in the astral world and dreaming up dramas? Or is it just that our physical brain is projecting random thoughts? If this is true, then what is our astral body doing? Is it sleeping too? As you can see i'm very confused about this...

Question #3
When we become lucid in a dream, what specifically takes place?

Is it just that we are in our physical brain, and becoming aware of the passing images? Is it that we are in our astral brain and becoming aware of the passing images? Or will we find ourself standing in the astral plane somewhere and have been dreaming we were somewhere else?

Question #4
When we become Lucid in a dream, and change it into an OBE, what specifically is taking place?

For instance if I am lucid in a dream, and I use a technique I learned to fly straight up in order to induce an OBE... Will I really be flying straight up in the AStral Plane? Or will I wake up to find myself floating a few feet above my bed?
(also if you have any tips on how to go from lucid dream to OBE please feel free to share those)


As you can see, I am very confused about this particular subject and could use all the help I can get. Be as specific and detailed in your descriptions as possible, I won't mind reading really really long posts. ; ) In fact I would appreciate it!

Thanks so much in advance for all your help!
Namaste!

Try these on for size for further reading:

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3748

viewtopic.php?f=11&t=3114

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1810

Just some of the threads where Tom discusses dreams and dreaming.

Ramon

I don't know. Why don't you go look and tell us what you saw?

I'm sorry I can't tell you what I see; there is no conceptual framework that is conveyable in English to describe it accurately.



I don't know what an astral body is, but I don't think there are bodies, per se. We experience things called bodies and we have ideas about what they are, but it would be hasty to assume that bodies and our ideas about bodies are the same thing. I think an astral body is an idea about a body from our experiences of bodies that we superimpose on things similar to bodies that we experience in non-mundane reality (e.g. dreams, meditation, etc) and use to explain our experience of the body-like non-bodies to others who have not experienced them.

People tend to forget that such explanations are approximations and not literally true.

To answer your question, dream characters could be created by your mind, real people-beings, or something else we do not understand - it could be anything. In short, they are information referring to an unknown source.



We dream with a high level of self-awareness. By 'brain' I assume you are referring to who we are in the dream; our normal selves or some more fundamental Self. If so, this awareness that YOU have right now; the one reading these words. Yeah, YOU! That person right there! That's the brain you are.




I'm not sure that I would normally place a tremendous amount of difference between the two, but I will act as if I do in my answer. When you fly in a dream or ODE, you are not really flying in the sense to which you are referring, but it is still flying, nonetheless. I'll refer to what is really happening as flying. When you are flying you are experiencing a sensation of flying like you think of with your physical body lifting from the ground and leaving it below you, but you aren't really doing that at all, so it is literally impossible to draw some correlation between the thing are not doing in different locations that don't fundamentally exist.

I realize that you are not exactly talking about earth or the astral realm as places, but in some sense you are in that your question assumes some sort of correlation of location, as if they are both physical realms that are different in that one you start in and the other you go to. The fact that you start here on earth is more a matter of perspective than fact.

Hello theprodigy, those are some good questions. I have myself gone through the same phase trying to answer these questions.

This is the most important part for you to understand.

Many, if not most lucid dreamers, OBE folks, and Astral Projectors describe and interpret their experience based on the limited perspective of PMR being an objective reality, existing in itself. The consequence of this is the belief that the body is at the centre of consciousness. They believe that they are actually going out of body, and that they are experiencing and objective reality. They are not.

For now, forget everything about these beliefs in astral bodies and astral brains and such.. or more presicely, you do not need to forget it, but let it not impede your progress. You need to detach yourself from these beliefs, as they will make understanding the reality of NPMR difficult, and it is not that easy to begin with.

Ramon gave some good links, but I know there are many more threads, and posts by Tom relevant to your questions.

From the second link:

"Relv: Why do you think dreams, especially lucid dreams, have such a different nature from OBE's ?"

Tom: "They are fundamentally very similar. The main differences are generated by nature of the entry (from uninterrupted awareness or from unconsciousness) and the nature of belief attached to each entry process."

I cannot stress enough how much the underlined part is important. This belief that so many have (including myself to recently) is severely limiting the potential of exploration. This is one of the reasons so few have ever gone beyond OBE and LD. Lucid dreaming is the playground, and OBE is the backyard.. nothing more. The only "big" difference between LD'ing and the OBE is that the inbuilt belief and assumptions support a greater occurrence of overlaying data streams in the perceived environment. Meaning that one in the OBE state can expect a slightly higher chance of experiencing external input overlaying the natural internally generated reality.

There are extremely many variables in the answer for this question. Remember that it's a subjective experience, based on your prior experience and current beliefs. Your interpretation of your experience will be largely affected by this. The largest obstacle for this ideal scenario would being actually experiencing external data, and not completely internal data based on fantasy. It is by my understanding so far, actually not an easy task to get this external and verifiable data based on PMR. In the situation that you would be getting actual external data, what you would see would be mostly up to you, meaning your intent would guide your view.

Again, many of these kinds of descriptions are not without the personal and unique signature of the person having this experience, it is still a subjective experience. There can be many expressions of the same meaning in NPMR, so whatever the description contain, it will likely just be one expression of this possible phenomenon. What you are seeking is really some kind of objective and true description of this, but more often than not, it's not possible. To be more concrete, I haven't experienced this situation, but I do not see the logic in some "astral body" floating above a sleeping body, when the person is dreaming. If the astral body would be a representation of his consciousness, why would it be inactive above his body while he is actively engaged in a dream?
The dream worlds and characters are not produced by any brain or astral body, but simply consciousness. But, the physical and virtual brain do still impose certain constrains on ones mind while dreaming, one is not separated (not spatially, in mind-space!) completely by the brain while dreaming.

I can't see how would explain this mechanistically, as the neurological equal would be below consciousness in the causal hierarchy and feedback loop. However, it would be interesting to know what precisely takes place in the physical brain as the brain is a representation of consciousness, an expression. One could find functional links between the state of the brain and mind. I know a little research of this already exists. There are many different ways of getting to lucidity. What is sure though, is that the commonality of getting lucid lies in awareness. The preceding causes of this change in awareness are many and plentiful. At a certain point, the awareness allows the realization that one is dreaming.

I have myself been lucid before, and tried to go "out of body". Fortunately, I did not waste many opportunities on this, as I eventually understood that trying to go "out of body" was truly absurd. You are not in the body to begin with!

My current undertaking is figuring out how to transcend the playground and backyard state of consciousness. Getting from the personal reality of the lucid dream to the shared reality (part) of NPMR. This will be one of my questions in the upcoming fireside chat.

Thanks all for you replies.

I see from your answers that there is a fundamental misunderstanding that is the root cause of my difficulty in understanding this particular topic. My foundation in coming to understand the nature of the wider reality was MBT, but being a less technically minded person, I drifted into more mystical teachings that cover the same topics. Now I am back to MBT, and attempting to integrate the knowledge I obtained from studying these other teachings with the map drawn for us by Tom. Hopefully the result will be an even clearer understanding. (of course I am not only seeking knowledge, but also all the while working to decrease my own entropy, and move ever closer to truly BEcoming the embodiment of Love itself the best I can during my time here in this incarnation. which I have made great progress in during these studies.)

I believe my core question would remain being thus:

If our dreams are the result of interpreting *internal* data streams produced by our own consciousness, then once we are able to shift into NPMR fully and experience the *external* data streams within that shared reality... And assuming that we are in the version of NPMR that many call the "REal Time Zone" and this presents us with as accurate a representation of what is going on in Physical REality as is possible.... My question is, what would we see when we looked at a person dreaming from that percpective?

Someone suggested I go look and see for myself. And my response is firstly, "Touche" lol But secondly, " I don't yet trust my ability to descern my subjective interpretations on that realm from what is actually there... I am asking for a description from someone who has seen and who has experience enough in NPMR that they can trust their description as being an accurate representation." Perhaps we would just see a person sleeping in bed? Idk... I just heard that the astral body floats out and hovers around the physical body in NPMR at night when we sleep... I was wondering if this was true or not. And if not, what is the truth?

Thanks again guys.

P.S. I haven't checked out those posts by tom yet that Ramon provided. Perhaps the answers are there, I will go check them out now. ; )

prodigy,

Tom has explained more than once that all of our experience is subjective, our interpretation of an incoming data stream. So what you are asking for is for someone to provide their subjective description to you which you will somehow take as an objective description. Think about it. This cannot meaningfully happen.

We must learn to live with uncertainty which we gradually reduce with time and improved understanding.

Ted

Great questions and posts.

Here is my take on the matter in relation to my own experiences:
The common denominator across the various experiences that I have had is me (the experiencer). I am the filter through which any data must pass. I, as consciousness, am the constant in all instances of my experience. I think and experience while lucid in a dream, while OOB, and while in waking life. In that I am my own data interpreter, the interpretation is limited by my knowledge and bent according to my expectations. If I expect to see an astral body, then I might likely see this. In accounts of near death experiences, there are some common factors across the board... however, some meet Jesus, some are welcomed by dead relatives, some encounter a ball of light, and so on.

Borrowing from Tom's multiplayer video game analogy, it does not matter what game you are playing or even necessarily what is happening in the game. The choices that you make in any of these settings are what matter.

In terms of OOBEs, some people interact with NPMR beings, some might see astral bodies floating over beds, some go to the various TMI levels, and so on. My OOB experiences for the most part have been solo... just me, some tunnels, lots of dark matter, and my thoughts. My lucid dreams on the other hand often involve interactive characters that seem to have something to show me. Is there actually a little quiet Asian man that guides me on seemingly pointless journeys using only hand gestures? Maybe, maybe not. I have to assume with this example that I have projected some of my expectations onto the matter. I can still work with the data the best that I can though.

The only effective way I see to approach these experiences is by closely examining the one thing that remains constant in all of them... me. Honest introspection. What are my fears, my expectations, my hopes. It seems necessary to stare these things in the eye and closely examine them in order to achieve a cleaner interpretation of any data that I may receive.

It is true that there are some commonalities among different NPMR experiences. I find it probable that these commonalities are a mixture of truth and a projection of our expectations. It is more likely that the astral body floating above the bed is a common interpretation and now an expectation among us Earth PMR folks. If we consider that there is another PMR "out there" in which there are blobs of flickering lights instead of human bodies, then we have to consider that the chunks of consciousness that inhabit those blobs of light might interpret a given set of data quite differently. To see the data through their perspective would seemingly be comparable to my dog listening to brail. The point is that it all appears to be relative to our level of growth, our history, and the current location of our perspective (ie PMR).

At any rate, that is my humble and admittedly limited perspective. I hope it can be of some use.

_________________
-"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find... you get what you need"

And this is why nobody can tell you anything. However, it doesn't matter what you see or what it really is; what matters is what you do with it. It is a billion times better for you to completely misinterpret what you see than for someone to tell you what they see - it might even be -billion times better because telling someone is often worse than telling them nothing.

Do you understand the point I'm trying to make? If we tell you anything, you may adopt a belief about what you should see that could hinder your progress. However, I could say that during an out of body experience where you see your physical body below you, it is your awareness that is shifted to a different data stream which is receiving data correlating to a position above your body. The astral body perception is a belief about what self is, which is projected onto the location of one's awareness.



Think of it this way if it is not clear to you already: One's awareness is fixed at some point, so it receives data appropriate to that point. From another nearby point, the data would be slightly different (like the difference between sitting down and standing up). During an OBE, awareness is no longer associated with the body, so will leave it behind (which is really nothing more than receiving visual data of the body from a perspective that is different than the normal behind the eyes perspective). Think of the astral body like a sort of phantom limb perception. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_limb

So, the astral body is really just one's awareness with a phantom limb sensation. In that sense, it is true, but not in that it is a literal thing somewhere out there doing stuff.

The originality of the dreamscapes and the folks we meet there always amazes me. Part of this may be due to dreams being composed of streams of non-physical information that exist outside of our PMR mind's ability to interpret in physical terms. So our PMR perception reaches into the the data available to it and undertakes a correlation exercise, matching non-physical data with PMR-associated data as best it can. If there is a teaching involved within a dream, the lesson may come through in a rich flood of data, but our minds may not be able to use most of it as it simply cannot be correlated into terms that we would understand. Because of this, often all our PMR-attuned perceptions receive is a simplified analogy (normally highly symbolic). In a dream I had last night, Tom Campbell offered me two psychedelic Bananas, stating that the effect on my dream consciousness would be the same as the effect of taking two psychedelic Bananas in PMR. Most would agree this quite silly, but it probably represents my PMR mind's best attempt to match non-physical information with the most appropriate objects and situations I can derive meaning from. The reason why things sometimes seem ludicrous or highly original in dreams may be the same reasons that web-based translation systems (like google-translate or babel fish) often produce hilarious translations from language to language; there isn't always the equivalent word, phrase or concept available in the language being translated to, so the software has to 'get creative' in its interpretations.

So regarding Question #2:
The dreams worlds and dream characters we perceive when we dream... are the worlds produced by the physical and etheric brain? Or is this all produced by the astral body projecting thoughts?

It's more likely the former in my opinion (i.e physical and etheric), in that the data is non-physical, but the imagery and events assembled to create the analogy from which useful data can be understood is done by the physically attuned mind.

Nickalosomo,

So regarding Question #2:
The dreams worlds and dream characters we perceive when we dream... are the worlds produced by the physical and etheric brain? Or is this all produced by the astral body projecting thoughts?

Let's try another way of phrasing an answer to this question. Everything is perceived within and by our selves as an Individuated Unit of Consciousness. However our PMR perceptions are maintained as a normally separate and isolated stream of PMR related consciousness which while perceived in general by us as an IUOC during a set aside increment of delta t, is specifically 'filtered' by some sub set of our total being as an IUOC, selected to be our Free Will Awareness Unit for this PMR session. It is to and/or within this FWAU to which the PMR rule set and filters are applied so that the experience is based on the model of PMR reality. In that model, there is a brain within our PMR bodies which models how our IUOC experiences PMR through this rule set and filter. As we are in situations where we can examine this brain model more in detail, finer and finer levels of fractal details are displayed for our conscious observation. Normally, our brains as models do not actually exist as we cannot be consciously aware of them. What exists and appears out there in and as PMR is what we can be consciously aware of and consciously observe. What our brain would be like if we could observe it is maintained in the model within The Big Computer as a probability. If an observation is made, the probability field collapses into a specific observation. As our ability to observe becomes more and more detailed, those additional details, finer fractal layers, are collapsed out of the probability field.

Remember Tom's frequent use of computer games as an illustration. There is a record in the game program of the physical environment and the various details. As you pass through a doorway, what is within the next area becomes visible and is displayed on the screen. As you look at specific things, they are displayed closer up on the screen and you can see more details. You can see finer levels of detail when you focus on them.

And all of this is just a model, but a good and useful one.

Ted

That's an excellent description Ted, taking it right back to the fundamental layers of the model, obeying the mechanics as presented in MBT and putting all in its correct context.

Namaste.

Nick

Nickalosomo,

I'm glad you found it useful. One never knows whether the big jump from older terminology and metaphors will be accepted and the full jump with all of the aspects made.

Ted