[The Universal Call]

Originally Posted by Radical

I can bring myself to believing in lucid dreams, as that sounds fairly plausible, but the idea of your spirit (which I don't believe in anyway since I'm an atheist) actually leaving your body yet still attached by a thin thread, travelling to other dimensions and fighting with evil demons, sounds utterly ridiculous to me.

For someone that claims that they haven't experienced an OBE you oddly take an example that only a minority of OBE'ers have claimed. I'm not an authority on the subjects of OBEs or APs (I will leave that to Erin Pavlina or Sean) but I'm amused that no one has yet to comment on this. This I have heard:

When having an OBE no one did ever enter another dimension to fight an evil demon. You leave your body and project in your physical location, you can see your body and can move about in a somewhat, almost similar resemblance, to the world we know of. You are attached to your body by a (silver-)thread, yes. Further, from what I have heard you can lower your vibration and see lower, negative, entities - but you can also do the opposite, and visit a higher plane (i.e. positive entities).

I have heard of people having astral projections (AP) that has done some crazy stuff (maybe not as exaggerated as fighting evil demons, but close ), but by taking the meaning of an Astral Projection: your thoughts create your surroundings and circumstances (like a live Lucid Dream?), such crazy things could happen. Maybe you've heard a story about an AP? Even I am a bit sceptical of this sort of extreme but I acknowledge that it could be possible in an AP, however, be critical yourself (like we haven't noticed you are yet). I'd love it if I was corrected in my statement, but quite frankly I haven't heard anyone have an OBE to go fight an evil demon. To me it seems like you've got it wrong.

I can actually relate to that; I thought that taking my driver's license would be SO HARD and take up SO MUCH TIME, I was really worried about taking it, taking a driver's license (i.e. lessons and theory) + school?! In the end this worry actually got one of my major concerns, I gave it a big role before I had even tried it. Asked my dad how long it would take and what work would be put into it: I was shocked! It was far from how horrible I had imagined it. Now I'm not too worried at all about taking it, and this entire misunderstanding was brought into life because I had overplayed some parts of the story I had been told and neglected other.
Moving on...

Originally Posted by Radical

The only proof or evidence of OBE's you can seem to give me is that you remember the experience whilst you were asleep and unconscious, i.e. from your dreams. I too have strange dreams but that doesn't make them reality.

Once again, I don't think I have ever heard anyone confuse a dream to their OBE-experience. Having an OBE for themselves put no doubt in their mind the difference, and I think you would too.

Originally Posted by Radical

Another reason why OBE's are impossible is that consciousness loses all meaning outside your body, as you need your brain to interpret signals from your senses in order to be alert and aware of your surroundings. You claim that your consciousness travels outside of your body, then how can you remember anything, since memory is a property of the brain?

Impossible??
Please, it was your "precious scientists" who put a label on consciousness without having any proof of it, over time this got accepted as truth (compare: religion) even though it is by definition illogical and a mighty good assumption. If you are even remotely interested in what Steve Pavlina teach (reason why you came to this forum?) then I need not explain to you how we CAN NOT PROVE that this or that item has consciousness or not. Claiming that OBEs are impossible because of a "consciousness-issue" seems rather foolish to me, and as I said: 'It is not scientific.' As far as we are concerned (you included) consciousness might be possible out of one's body, which automagically: impossible >> possible.

Originally Posted by Radical

There are many things we don't understand, but that doesn't mean we have to follow some cult (i.e. religions) in order to get answers or believe in some unproven delusions in order to make ourselfs feel more omniscient.

As far as some religions go, I might in a sense agree, but I'd rather not voice myself on that since I haven't tested said religions, but can only assume. Now, this statement... I think the people on this forum (most of them) is intelligent enough to see if something works for them or not, don't you agree? This statement sort of implies to me that those who are experiencing an OBE are believing in an "unproven delusion", and further it doesn't seem to give space that their personal experience counts for anything. I'm quite confident that if Erin says that she has had an OBE she have experienced this by herself. And if she wouldn't have had I doubt she would be following a cult just because it is so damn fun to believe in an unproven delusion, which also maintains a "theory" about some sort of "OBE's" yet no one has experienced them before. Religions, or cults (or what have you) usually don't last long if they don't hold any value to a person, and to me it seems quite obvious that we who believe in OBEs might just not be deluded, but has experienced them and can verify their experience and gives us a sort of value. If this would not be the case (which you imply), then we would probably abandon it.

Originally Posted by Karma Police

I challenge you to prove to everyone here that your experiences in life are "real" and that you aren't simply processing an elaborate dream that you believe to be real.

As you formulate your proof, please keep in mind that I do not believe your experiences are real, and I won't attempt to recreate any of your experiences in order to verify them for myself.

Hahahaha! Right on! I love this sort of humour.

Originally Posted by Rocket Surgery

Finally, if you want some scientific proof of something, consider this: It is IMPOSSIBLE for something to come from NOTHING. The Big Bang theory claims this; that before the Big Bang that created the Universe, there was NOTHING. As a scientist, you know this is impossible. You cannot get something from a complete absence of anything. That means that SOMETHING had to exist somewhere prior to the Big Bang. What that something was is debatable. And if it wasn't something physical, then it was a SOMETHING that was NON-physical. And what might that be but some huge, non-physical cosmic consciousness, perhaps? The Big G, perhaps?

Gosh, I repent not replying in the thread "The origin of the universe", we had an interesting discussion indeed and I am surely interested in continuing it. As for your statement: Exactly! As you may already know, but will surely be explained later in above mentioned thread; only by observing that the universe is now, and that can be slightly concluded by your statement: 'WAS, no matter if a Big Bang happened', referring this existence (that the universe, simply: IS) to a consciousness seems like a fair theory to me.

[If any of my discussion seems jumpy or out of context, excuse me, I always have a hard time expressing myself when I'm tired]