In that case, you have little or no need of communication. Then again, people communicate things to one another besides experiences of things you yourself have not experienced, like evaluations, extrapolations or interpretations of shared experiences.
Conformational bias. Experiences seen in the light about an idea of OBE, get interpreted AS OBE. This is not evidence for an increasing phenomenon, but evidence that people think of such experiences AS OBE.
LM,
There maybe many things or phenomena those may be unknown to you.
But, that does not mean that those cannot happen ever.
It is merely your preassumption without trying to confirm, which may be either true or wrong.
Do not be so sure of things without confirmation.
With love,
sanjay
By the way, what concrete evidence you have that shows that it cannot happen ever?
The last thing you can say that you are not sure either way, because you are saying only that you heard from anyone else.
It is called faith, not evidence.
Saying beyond this would be against both of science and philosophy, but religious only.
with love,
sanjay
Maybe Shamybe.
Maybe you can buy an ice-cream on the sun! Maybe elephants can fly by flapping their ears. Maybe I should wait until I see one try?
Sometimes things are just wrong; sometimes they are just stupid, and sometimes they are just impossible.
And somethings like OBE are a contradiction in terms. An experience is what the “body” has.
QED
This is the fallacy of “proving a negative”. You are being ridiculous. I can never proof that you are not god. That does not mean that I should consider the possibility that you are in fact god.
Wrong or rather i should say childish answer again.
Any notion must be supported either by evidence or the reasoning without doubt to be taken as true.
And, all examples those you gave are not supported by either of these.
Think of the concept of relaivity of time that Einstein gave. Was there any evidence of that initially? It was only a theory that might go either way, though later proved to be right by evidence.
But, at least that theory was supported by some reasoning and calculations.
it was not based or any childish examples as you suggested.
The same is about the concept of OBE and other likewise phenomena. There are some people who claim that they experienced these things in person. They maybe lying or even miunderstood. I am not denying that possibility because they do not have any concrete evidence to support their claim. But, the question is whether all those are lying and why?
Furthermore, religous ontologies also support their claim.
Thus, it would be wise to wait for the evidence to come up from either side, before claming anything nonsence. That is all i am suggesting and i am pretty much sure that this is how philosophy use to operate.
Having said that, there are some people also, who try to jump the gun, without giving a second thought to the issue, in order to show their intelligence.
With love,
sanjay
You must have left your brain on the bus. The burden of evidence is with you not me!
You are asking me to accept as true ANYTHING that cannot be disproven. That is absurd. For that you will have to accept the existence of a teapot orbiting Jupiter; pink unicorns, and so on.
OBE is false as there is no evidence. QED.
In fact there is evidence to the contrary. Experiments have been conducted. By leaving objects on top of cupboards in rooms typically used by dying people who claim to have experienced OBEs none of them have managed to see or identify any of the objects so placed there.
DR Sam Parnia and the University of Southampton (2008) examined 1500 patients over 3 years. Sadly although they completed the study nearly 3 years ago, they are embarrassed not to have anything to report.
Though I doubt that would satisfy you.
People like you would rather believe is the ridiculous than accept the truth, because you are infected with the superstitions of your forefathers.
Fallacy in logic.
Something not being proven to be true, doesn’t mean that is proven false.
…not very good evidence.
I am saying I do not allow into my everyday life mumbo jumbo until it is found to have some evidential basis.
It is perfectly possible to assert through induction certain claims. For example the claim that there is a Mac Donald’s and a 30 Lane Bowling Alley on Jupiter can be dismissed without serious consideration, as given the understanding of the world, such a thing wold be impossible.
As we know that the mind, emotions, perceptions, memory and consciousness, all rely on the brain. It is absurd to suggest that we can"SEE" ourselves from above in a literal sense; which is the claim of an OBE. This is as certain as the fact that there is no bowling alley on Jupiter.
There are a list of more reasonable explanations.
Whilst such an argument cannot conform to a deduction; we use indiction everyday, and it is perfectly respectable to do so.
For the ridiculous literal claims of the OBE camp to be true would overturn everything humans have strived for since the Enlightenment. I know this si not in itself an argument. But fore the sake of logical consistency the conclusion would have to be that the EYE is not required for vision. Many blind persons would be very interested to know how this is possible.
In fact there is evidence to the contrary. Experiments have been conducted. By leaving objects on top of cupboards in rooms typically used by dying people who claim to have experienced OBEs none of them have managed to see or identify any of the objects so placed there.
DR Sam Parnia and the University of Southampton (2008) examined 1500 patients over 3 years. Sadly although they completed the study nearly 3 years ago, they are embarrassed not to have anything to report.
I consider such things an issue of probability of the viability of evidence. Anyone can “do a study” and find out anything they want to be true, so it isn’t an easy matter to find credible statistics or experimentation, especially in the field of psychology.
What people seem to ignore in this subject is that “astro-projection” or OBE, is an experience. The cause of the experience is the question. Psychic abilities are not about magic except to those who see them as just too fantastic to believe yet believe them anyway, thus “magic”. The reality is simply that the mind functions in such a way as to be able to do things that most people simply find hard to believe, but nothing outside the realm of physics or science. An example would be those who can calculate extreme mathematics almost instantly. And along those lines, the mind can also visualize the probability of the state of things when it would seem impossible for anyone to do that. Sherlock Holmes was depicted as an example. Very small traces of evidence noticed by the subconscious mind can lead to incredible deductive power… with the right mind.
So a person can at times, know of things that would seem impossible to know. The only magic to it is the incredible acuity involved. I know that much simply because I have found myself doing it at times. I had to investigate myself to understand how I could have known something that seemed impossible for me to know. And in almost every case, I could recall some tiny hint that led to my conclusion. I just found it hard to believe that my little brain could actually put the pieces together so accurately, but it has done it, so I know it can be done and probably by others far better than me.
I used to plan for things like a road trip by imagining myself taking the planned route. During that experience, I would find myself realizing all kinds of things that I would not have thought about, through visualizing the reality of the scene. And when I actually took the real trip, I knew that there would be a gas station at a particular corner or a small church, a dirt road, and such things in places where I have never been or seen… except in that projected dream of my intentions, the planning stage.
The mind is built to predict and so such a thought isn’t totally off target. It is just amazing what the mind can deduce about things that it has never seen. I used to be able to read just a few pages of a book and tell you all kinds of things about the author such; gender, marital state, number of children, even color of hair and eyes. And yet, I had never seen anything of the authors. And it wasn’t just a book, but many all in a row. It was by reading the autobiography afterward, that I could discover if my impressions were correct. And they were correct during that period nearly 100%. And only when I sensed doubt and knew that I wasn’t certain, is when I would at times be wrong. It’s just incredible, but not impossible and not magic.
So what do you call that? It is actually known as “psychic ability” which really only means an “ability of the mind”, even though in the populous, it is taken to mean “mental magic”. ESP and such are not magic in any way other than simply extraordinary abilities, but real abilities none the less, just not as magical as people think.
The problem is that when people try to experimentally prove or disprove such things, they don’t realize how it works and thus they don’t realize when their experimental setup is interfering with it working. Thus their evidence either for or against tends to be poor. It is much like expecting proper scientific experiments from Babylonians.
That is an absurd way to put it.
If I am deluded that I met Issac Newton last night in a dream. The “experience” I have is NOT meeting Isaac Newton, my experience is having a dream that I met Newton.
Words are loaded. Saying I experienced astral projection or had an Out of Body experience is not a mature consideration of the rational possibilities.
When Hitler “pacified” and "annexed the Sudetenland and Poland we all know it was actually naked aggression - not a “policing action”, or any other euphemism.
It matters what you call it.
I had lucid dreams.
I remember my first very vividly; I
found myself sitting on the couch next
to an old friend at a rockin’ party, and I realized that
I had no memory of him coming back, so it must
be a dream. After that, it was a lot of fun, because you
can basically do what you want- fly, telekinese, whatever.
I’ve had them where I flew to a different city
and went into another person’s dream.
I’ve had them where I’ve been flying over vast
crowds of people in the fields, and I keep swooping down
and pulling them up.
Then, I also had an experience where, just when
I was in a dozy state, I was telepathically contacted
and instructed; it’s very hard to lie telepathically!
Each thought is like a bubble with a little
movie where you are a part, where you fly in and take your
part and ride it through. One of the first things to
learn is to recognize where to go into the bubble.
What you seem to be saying is that you can find a scientific explanation for everything and therefore that science has to be correct. This is wrong headed.
You can find a mathematical equation to describe ANYTHING. But so what? That says NOTHING about the nature of reality. It DOES, however, say something about the nature of maths. It says that maths is very flexible.
Similarly, that one can find a scientific explanation for everything says NOTHING about the nature of reality. What is DOES say is that science is VERY FLEXIBLE — it’s a tool like one of those flexible rulers that carpenters use: you can fit the ruler round anything, but that tell you only that the ruler is flexible.
You will never understand the world if you just approach it with reason and maths and the experimental method — this is actually EXTREMELY primitive and simple-minded.
People have had reason and experimentation since forever. They have used them since forever. But it is only since the time of the ancient Greeks that they have decided that these two, along with maths, are the be all and end all, and that all the other abilities they have been using in order to deal with the world, to understand it, should be thrown out.
And the abilities that they have thrown out (including intuition, use of the senses and feelings, use of the subconscious, the natural development and growth of new abilities to meet new challenges) are all MUCH, MUCH more sophisticated and useful than that poor trio scientists and philosophers have chosen to rely on. (note — I am not saying that reason and experimentation and maths are useless, but that you have to know when and where to use them, where to fit them in with all those other abilities.)
So, just because you can ‘find’ a scientific explanation for everything you experience does not mean that explanation is right. It may not even be useful. It may be the reverse ---- a drawback, inhibiting the search for other possibilities and inhibiting the growth and development of understanding.
Did you call? Obe here. In regards to pigs and elephants that can fly, I know not, howeverr, of dreames of flying, I had a few.j
I dreamt of flying twice , then thought I was freaking out, until I found about Eckancar , and further, my brother in law told me of a similar dream.
It went like this : my nother just having died (she was an angel ),I dreamed of flying through the air. I flew over a place of great meaning to me, it was a place of a tree that I take to be a druid.
I passed this place, and kept on flying. When I was over Minneapolis, I thought 'might as well visit my mom'.Appearently, I forgot that she passed away.
I dived down to her place and when I entered I saw a group of elderly people milling around.. I asked about mom and they said she was resting upstairs.
I flew away without seeing her, and when I awoke I was convinced I had really flown.
A few years hence, I found out Eckankar, and their belief in the soul's nightly disengagement from the body.
First, this is a very nice piece of writing, obe. Again, I would point out that it has an attractive poetic quality. In this case it is also very lucid.
I’ve just looked up this Eckancar that you have taken an interest in. Two words: bad news.
Dreams are often really weird, but they are nothing to be afraid of. Nightmares are nothing to be afraid of. If you find a dream recurring then it is likely to be because of the fear or other emotional response. Emotions cause dreams to recur. If you have a frightening dream that you want to get rid of, tackle the fear, tell yourself that it’s just a silly dream, entirely harmless and even laugh at your own fears.
Dreams are meaningful. They are messages. If you can read them they tell you what is going on in your own mind, tell you things that are helpful e.g. in your case, if you are worried about your English writing, dreams might offer advice. They deal with all the little problems of everyday life. They are bizarre because they speak in the language of metaphor and of visial imagery. So, for example, flying might mean “flight of fancy” or “high flying”. It might even refer to some personal experience of your own related to flying. What it is not, is anything to do with the soul disengaging with the body.
These things which Eckancar talks about, things which have been around for thousands of years and have been practiced by shamans and other people for ages past, things like vision quests, soul travel etc are really bad news. If you explore them you run the danger of all sorts of mental problems and particularly emotional problems. My advice to you is to stay well clear of them. As an alternative, you might think of making a study of ancient religions, such as native american, shamanism and others. There is also an extensive literature by people who have explored drug states e.g. Huxley’s Doore of Perception, and the less literary Carlos Castenada and countless others. There’s some really interesting stuff from all around the world — the drug induced visions of shamans have been used recently to interpret prehistoric rock art, stuff that has so far defied understanding.
If you wish to explore the inner workings of the mind, then art in general will do it (think Coleridge’s poem Kubla Khan which came from a dream), and music in particular can take the spirit to other places.
Here’s the thing.
We all agree that OBE is a tag that represents an experience, or a range of experiences as described by people in various circumstances.
The question science can answer to total and absolute certainty is if this experience is IN FACT an Out of Body Experience.
Science relies more on whether a phenomenon can be disproven. And for every example where OBE can be examined, it is clear enough the the description OBE is not appropriate.
Verifying if an OBE is accurately described is not rocket science. It is childishly simple to verify.
IF a person who claims to be ACTUALLY hovering outside his body, then it does not take any intrusive experimental science that would upset the experience. It is as simple as asking what is on top o the cupboard. and none have managed to achieve the feat of magic.
The first problem is simply that if you are out of your body; what do we ever need eyes for? How is it that the mind is able to sense it’s surroundings? As this completely flies against the basic laws of the universe, then rational people are immediately suspicious that an OBE might be explicable in more reasonable terms.
There is no unequivocal evidence that a person experiencing what it THINKS is astral projection, or being Out of his Body, can in fact verify that.
There is plenty of evidence that those experiencing OBEs can not in fact relay pertinent details that they ought to have witnessed had they in fact been observing the world as if they were outside their bodies.
There are many physio-psychological explanations, that do not challenge the laws of nature. Any fool can read them in Wiki.
Why anyone resists more reasonable explanations which suggest that they are IN FACT still inside their bodies, has more to do with a world wished for than knowing the world as it is. But then some people always like magic.
You are trapped in science and you do not see it. You are like somebody who is trapped in, say, a ship. You think the whole world is the ship. You cannot escape the ship, rise above it like a bird and see it for what it is, see that little vessel sailing the waters of a bigger world. It reminds me of a film I saw recently called Grave Encounters. In it, a bunch of reporters decides to spend a night in a disused asylum, hoping to encounter psychic phenomena. They do encounter such phenomena and become frightened and try to leave but every door just leads to another corridor, the exists just open onto other corridors. They spend days endlessly hunting down corridors for a way out. But they are trapped and come to a sticky end. You are in the same sort of trap. Science and philosophy are that sort of trap. You’re thinking is confined to corridors and even if you try to find a way out you find you are in a labyrinth as inescapable as that of the Minotaur.
This is completely empty ad hominem.
And as there is precious little moderation here, with no hope of a report for such a childish breaking of the rules, I am going to add; adf hominem bullshit.
All reasonable assertions concerning the understanding of human phenomena must be met and compared with evidence; and not fantasy.
You are trapped in a fantasy world of your own construction if you think you can be taken seriously with this sort of argument; a meaningless analogy, designed to throw doubt on a reasoned argument, without for one second attempting to deal with the points raised.
Here’s another childish stupid analogy , this time aimed at you.
You are like a child who has excitedly taken a story given to her by other as if it were true, because it satisfies her heart felt wish. Father Xmas is coming down the chimney tonight to give you lots of loverly presents!! to which you eagerly agree.
The fact that there is no chimney pot at your home, and it’s not possible to fly through the sky attending to the needs of billions of children in a single night, does not bother you because you think BELIEF is enough, and if you want to believe a thing it has to be true!!! Then you stamp your foot like a little girl, “ITS TRWUE, ITHS TRUEW!!”