spidergost What do you mean by "incorrect interpretation of natural brain functions"? Michael Raduga does not claim that "The Phase" is supernatural, because he is materialist. Perhaps because of this he gets support from the scientific community and seems to have a lot of money available for his research. Nevertheless the experiences of his "phasers" are quite similar to other OBEs. Michael propagates this as some kind of new lifestyle with astonishing effects. What kind of "natural brain functions" are these? Regarding NDE you should read the book from Pim van Lommel "Consciousness beyond Life" (Kindle version). He made a huge NDE research in many hospitals. He found that the most remarkable and verified memories had such patients, who's brain was totally damaged. Of cause it is not easy to reproduce such things. If the James Randi price would have been given for verified supernatural events in the past, the million dollar would have been gone.
Welcome kyrani99 I have seen you are a new member and also living in Australia. Thanks for your comments. Your belief sounds like Buddhism - is that true? I don't believe that the self or the soul ever disappears. I see souls on their way of endless individual evolution. There are so many different beliefs and it is good to stay in discussion and to have mutual understanding.
If his premise is that NDEs, OBEs, and alien abductions represent a brain state related to dreaming, I think that's a valid premise. If, as his website seems to suggest, these experiences can let one talk to the dead, then he's a wackalooon. Being a materialist doesn't mean you aren't practicing pseudoscience. He seems to cloak his "work" in the trappings of science and especially quantum physics, to give his ideas a sense of legitimacy. That's a fairly common tactic among woo woo merchants. This kind of thought-induced state of being doesn't interest me at all.
Being distributed psychologically across two or more parallel realities, but usually only conscious of the one which the neural-based memories locally belong to (no cognition corresponding to all of them as a whole), would imply a higher or "prior in rank" ontological stratum that could embrace such conventionally unknown territory and features. But even if our bizarre experiences, dreams (whatever) resulted from a circumstance like that, one should still expect there to always be conventionally accepted explanations for those events (or at least room available for ample skepticism). People can sport these dual or even multiple ways of conceiving what is "going on", which espouse a "metaphysical intruder" trying to harmonize with science. But only the latter approach which explains the situation in terms of the "internal story" of how our presented phenomenal reality hangs together will make progress or have a degree of satisfactory evidence. This is perhaps better got at or explored by shifting to a slightly different scenario or analogy: A sophisticated virtual reality or computer game of the future could have its own very coherent, internal story of how that realm works independent of the "external" technology at our level which make the former's "apparent existence" possible. Its inhabitants would be restricted to explaining their circumstances in terms of the inter-dependence of the parts or content which they discovered in their presented environment (IOW, the deeper computer origin is effectively and perhaps even necessarily hidden from them in terms of policy). Even though a particular character in that reality's "internal story" might be intermittently manipulated by a "transcendent" game player at our stratum, those effects would be converted into or made compatible with the natural explanatory system which that simulated reality operated under. Thus that manipulated character could never prove such was taking place, that it had a "noumenal will" or counterpart of itself so to speak contributing to its decision-making. A scientific investigation would reveal the individual's behaviors (as well as any strange experiences) simply correlating to brain / somatic processes. IOW, his/her "will" and "functioning" and "strange experiences" would be judged the result of his/her body's own manufacturing. And not stemming from agencies which would, anyway, be transcendent from that world's restricted perspective / access and epistemological limitations.
Imagine if the virtual avatar in the game explored the nature of reality in a more introspective sense, questioning why it does the things it does, what the nature of its consciousness is, and to what extent its being is transcendent to the programmed world of the game. It may begin by doing absolutely nothing, temporarily nullifying it's own software driven reactions and intentions. It would concentrate on its mere electrically-generated being, sensing itself eventually as something separate and standing outside to its pixelated situation. It may focus on the AC rhythm of at the core of its selfness. What is this self I am always preengaged with, and is it a mere construct of a transcendent consciousness? Suddenly the avatar wakes up as the player, and it's just you looking at a screen in your living room!
A particular individual might accidentally or deliberately achieve what s/he considers sufficient evidence in terms of their own personal experiences and peculiar logic that _x_ is the case. The problem, however, is demonstrating such to others -- the public or intersubjective dimension of that world rather than the private nook of it. In the end, those with a similar disposition will usually be the ones attracted, persuaded to a belief or willing to spend the time learning a practice advertised as yielding "revelations". Although, to shift to a metaphoric analogy, I would hazard that most completely color-blind people are swayed into believing that color in the qualitative respect is the case just from being so severely outnumbered by "believers"; and possibly noticing the latter being able to distinguish some objects which they can't in any applicable situations. [Also setting aside rare or disruptive neural spasms that might generate random blotches of "Martian colors" for those suffering from achromatopsia, to where those non-gray hues are finally "shown" to them rather than described.]
spidergost and CC Thanks for your comments on Michael Raduga's website, which became very clear. It is really amazing what virtual reality can do today in order to simulate OBE. A very good example is the work of Henrik Ehrsson, described at: http://www.nature.com/news/out-of-body-experience-master-of-illusion-1.9569 Nevertheless, I, as a non-matrialist, still believe in real OBE on soul level. In my opinion, the best expert in this field is William Buhlman (http://www.astralinfo.org/). Especially his last book "Adventures in the Afterlife" is a real mindblower and highly recommended. It is a fact, that whatever you believe you will get confirmed everywhere and non confirming examples will be ignored. According to Buhlman the same will be the case first in the afterlife. Every belief will be confirmed - even materialism, and it will take some time to leave this state.
spidergost, OBE make only sense by having a non materialistic word view. It would allow to experience the own soul, exploring afterlife, meeting dead people and unlimited travelling. It is certainly much more interesting and less risking than travelling to Mars by a spaceshuttle.
What does "non-material" mean in this instance? Today, synonyms like "immaterial" can be construed in certain philosophical circles as referring to something that is spaceless, timeless, and accordingly without specific place or residence. Like a principle that extended, mutable physical phenomena may seem to be conforming to slash perhaps alternatively proposed as "ought" to be regulated by. Or a concept that falls out of a formal system (like mathematics or whatever) which doesn't necessarily even have an obvious application in non-abstract circumstances or a presentable / show-able reality. In contrast, the supposed "non-material" affairs of some folk and religious traditions can be quite spatiotemporal and amenable to having a location: Whether it's the ghost or demon bumping around outside the hut or deceased souls savoring a surrounding paradise in heaven equally abundant with an extended and changing manner of existence.
CC I did not write "non material", but "non materialistic" worldview. This means to believe in a spiritual world beside the material one.
I tend to view materialism as a highly useful instrumentalist tool rather than as a reasonable deep level ontology. If pressed I would say that I'm not a materialist. However, this post seems like it pretty much summarized the context of all of this sort of discussion. Meaning is user generated. Regardless of your spiritual or non leanings, the whole business of what something means is a context dependent issue. Even a God's eye view would not generate meaning for an individual who isn't God.
BWE1 Is there no purpose for eating, drinking, sleeping or learning? I need to see a purpose of life, therefore it should be allowed to discuss, what it could be.
sure there is. That purpose is defined by the individual though. We take the god's eye view automatically and decide that, since as an individual i can determine the purpose that eating and drinking and sleeping and learning would have for you that the purpose must be external to you but that is simply an error of perspective caused by modeling.
That would only be true if you could verify that you are actually outside your body. So far it seems that it's all a product of the mind.
Hi Hermann, I have done a lot of spiritual practice through Buddhism but I don't see myself as a Buddhist. I believe that all religions are attempts to understand and worship the divine. I had a Hindu guru once who said "to define God is to deny God" and I believe that is true. We can't understand using the intellect. I agree with you to some extent. Individual souls evolve but those that engage in evil practices end up in a scrap heap. The soul is eternal but there is a big difference between eternal life and eternal existence. In the first the evolution leads to an awakening in the Presence of God. The soul has become one with God, an avatar of God. If they have become evil then they lose their evolutionary path and end up caught in the fires of their own rage, in aloneness and darkness forever . And I don't see that a punishment by God. I see it as their own stupidity. They have chosen to play power games, harming others for the sake of pleasure. But that ego-eccentric existence means that they have tried to gain power through the garb of flesh and bones while discarding the true place of power, which is the soul. So their soul becomes deadened.
I have had one NDE and man OBE (most were spontaneous, i.e., not willful but needing to go see or do something). My experience was different in NDE to OBE. In NDE it was the soul experiencing leaving the body. My soul emerged out of my body and traveled towards a horizon blazing with light and reached a place, almost like a line was drawn in the space in front of me and a spiritual ally said "you have reached the point of no return, it is okay if you want to cross over and return to us". My soul reflected for a moment and replied, "I came to do something, I will go back". There was a backward movement and I again became conscious of my body and a struggle to breathe, which I had to attend to. The OBE was different. It was definitely through my personal self. I explain it this way. The Mind (The Mind of God) is a singularity-timeless and spaceless. It contains all knowledge. Out of this knowledge or states of possibilities, whatever is chosen to be known becomes an energy state and thus the phenomenon of the material. The energy state is an oscillation between known and unknown, selected and deselected. The Mind is a common platform through which we all inter relate. But there are rules, just like there are rules in the material existence (laws of physics). Generally speaking one can select any place and go there and even interact with others, because it is a matter of choosing the possibilities that exist in The Mind. Note The Mind is the Great Set, whereas all personal minds are sub-sets, which have limits and restrictions. So my experience was of a "mind body" , which is the ethereal form the physical body. It was the medium that moved and traveled and experienced.
I had many occasions where I found a real advantage to be able to have and use an OBE. I will tell you of one such occasions. Some background first. I was being attacked by some toxic people. Their methods use the mind but they are crude. They use a threat and at the same time make mental suggestions. If you don't know how the foul game play is played, which I didn't in the beginning, but luckily got told, it is easy to be sucked in because the ideas are presented mentally in such a way as to appear like your own thinking. Of course it requires someone closely related to be in the game to get telepathy. These games always involve at least three or four people, often many. Anyway in my case they were hassling me and I wanted to put a stop to it. I am an activist and I have serious angered a lot of toxic /psychopathic people, who have declared war on me. (These days I am using the occasions to make observations about how they operate and to gain an advantage over them, which I can't explain here). What I did was to use OBE to go into the house where there was the threatening party. I saw him sitting on the edge of a bed with what first looked like a book. He was peering into the book. When I moved closer I realized it was a laptop and he was watching some simulated video of me being attacked. What I did was to summon some "spirit" beings, which help me when I need them. I call them spirit beings but actually they are manifest through The Mind but do not have a material form. They act directly through the Mind. These beings have tentacles that elongate and can go through all material objects, eg concrete, steel, wood, flesh etc. They also attack the hearts of evil people. I then addressed him and gave him fair warning that if he stayed in the house the spirit being (they are called whyerps) would enter though the roof and their tentacles would cut through everything, him included. Within a few minutes I heard a car screaming up the hill, screech to a halt, someone run a short distance and a car door slam shut. The car immediately screeched off and drove away at what sounded like top speed. He was gone.
There are two world views. One is materialism is all that there is, which is the official scientific position, though not all scientists uphold this world view. The other is that there is a non-material AND a material reality. However I don't believe that these have anything to do with the nature of being, in the sense of "that which is always existent". What I see is a simulated reality, this universe, which is one of many, and another reality that I would call the Ultimate Reality, which is outside of the simulated reality, it is another level. IMO meaning is not user generated but user attributed. Meaning also exists as part of the universal knowledge base, as an array of possibilities. So the same words can be attributed different meanings. A meaning must belong to the universal knowledge base to be able to be understood by another, and that may not only be a human but also an animal or plant. For example a hunter may find the feces of a deer and know they may be able to track it down and kill it. The deer will realize the danger before they have seen the hunter because they are able to sense the hunter and know the meaning of the hunter's intent. A hunter will talk of feeling the beast's tension.
Um. That is truly awesome what you wrote in those two posts. However, I am neither a materialist nor a spirit-world ist. Or whatever you saw the alternative as. As a matter of fact, I see those two options as structurally almost identical, but with materialism having a much higher utility value when I want to fix my car for example.
