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Originally Posted by AndyMartin  Too much talk of oceans -- I'm going swimming! See y'all later. 
(P.S. Anybody coming?) |
Count me in... I was having a negative day yesterday, and the ocean always makes me feel better.
It's interesting seeing you in action, Erin. You've shared stories on your blog about approaching difficult situations with compassion instead of negativity (like the sorority dance group), but seeing it live, I can learn a lot. This level 10 connectedness with total strangers is powerful.
Radical, I meant to ask -- have you ever had a plain old lucid dream? In your initial post, you said that you "believe" in lucid dreams because they sound plausible. Maybe that would be a good first step towards making up your mind on out-of-body experiences. I've had a few lucid dreams (I learned it as a kid as a tool to prevent nightmares from getting out of hand) but have never had an out-of-body experience, and it always confused me that the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
I think Stephen LaBerge tried researching out-of-body experiences via lucid dreaming, but all of his OBEs, upon waking, turned out to be partially lucid dreams. You might be interested in
the article if you haven't already read it. It's been a while since I read it, but I don't remember finding it very conclusive. Here's the intro:
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"Out of body" experiences (OBEs) are personal experiences during which people feel as if they are perceiving the physical world from a location outside of their physical bodies. At least 5 and perhaps as many as 35 of every 100 people have had an OBE at least once in their lives (Blackmore, 1982). OBEs are highly arousing; they can be either deeply disturbing or profoundly moving. Understanding the nature of this widespread and potent experience would no doubt help us better understand the experience of being alive and human.
The simplest explanation is that OBEs are exactly what they seem: the human consciousness separating from the human body and traveling in a discorporate form in the physical world. Another idea is that they are hallucinations, but this requires an explanation of why so many people have the same delusion. Some of our experiments have led us to consider the OBE as a natural phenomenon arising out of normal brain processes. Thus, we believe that the OBE is a mental event that happens to healthy people. In support of this, psychologists Gabbard and Twemlow (1984) have concluded from surveys and psychological tests that the typical OBE experient is "a close approximation of the 'average healthy American.'" (p. 40)
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