Hi!
This forum was suggested to me by someone who said I might find an intelligent discussion of lucid dreaming and "astral" projection here. I've been impressed with Steve and Erin's thoughtful responses to skeptics, and suggestions for further reading. I thought I would share some of my own position on the subject, as a way of introducing myself.
I think of lucid dreamers and astral projectors as explorers, kind of like those who used to get in boats and travel to distant continents. Some had to be skilled enough to make these trips, and others had to make the leap of faith to accept their findings without making the trip. It took a long time for humanity to confidently piece together the current picture of our world, yet there are still some people who say the moon landing was faked. So who knows what evidence it will take before holdouts concede that the superstructure of the universe may be such that "taboo" concepts (like medium, ghost, channeling, ESP) have value in some contexts.
Skeptics have good reason to be skeptical of a wide range of terminology, though. I think the sloppy and almost anti-intellectual way in which paranormal concepts are pursued has earned the poor reputation they have. By exploration analogy, imagine if the sort of person who would go on the high seas was always that of a swaggering liar and conquistador! It's probably a little true--in fact, historic evidence is now calling in question whether Marco Polo fabricated his stories about reaching China, and merely showing off jewels and clothes that he traded for. That doesn't mean China didn't exist, but when the motives and means of explorers can't be trusted, it really sets back peer-reviewed mapping efforts!
Things are at a standstill in terms of astral/lucid validation, and I find this personally devastating. There are a few victories...like LaBerge proving to the scientific community via trained lucid dreamers that people in REM sleep can consciously experience the dreamworld and communicate with people in a lab. Of course, any skeptic could challenge these experiments as faked and insist that the dreamers were making it all up when they awoke! At some point we get tired of the infinite proof-cycle and want to spend time around those willing to take the word of an intelligent person at face value...
I'm sort of at that point. I write up my dreams and some essays, for those interested:
The Reality Engineering Handbook
I know it's weird. Occam's razor says that theories should be the simplest that explain the observed phenomena but no simpler. It's a nice principle, but says nothing about how to reconcile the situation when spheres of experience don't (yet) overlap!
