This seems to be a very advanced LD forum, probably the best out there. So I have 2 questions here for anyone who feels they can give me a competent and professional answer.
What’s the difference between AP and LD? I actually opened a topic on this years ago on UM, never really got anywhere with it. I’ve been aware of both for many years, and have studied induction methods in depth for both, which was also years ago, and have put down this for a while now, but I’m pretty sure I came to the conclusion that the methods are basically the same for both. And it is a legitimate question, how do you know you are not lucid dreaming, I mean when you LD, you’re still aware, and you have so much control, although that’s another good question, how much control can you have in LD? Also, I’d be interested to know a method that works for inducing LD but is guaranteed not to work for AP, and vica versa. And is there a reality check test while you’re in them that can tell you without fail which one you’re experiencing?
This is related to the first, namely, if AP is your awareness leaving your body (which is exactly what LD is) while experiencing objective reality (which is supposed to distinguish it from LD), then how come the existence of the soul is not science fact? Can’t they do a test where you AP to the other side of the world or into a locked room and tell the scientist the number on the card? I’ve heard of many NDEs where the patients can quote word by word the conversations that doctors had in rooms far away from the operation room. Similarly remote viewing has had some convincing cases, isn’t that AP in a way, aren’t all of these the same thing? Getting more and more confused here, so I’ll stop here and let an (or more) expert(s) crack on and sort this out for me. Many thanks.
There are a LOT of differing personal beliefs on the definitions and validity of AP, NDE, RV, OBE, and so on. I’ll try to answer as objectively as possible.
We have to start with some basic definitions, first.
Internal stimuli would be sense generated within your physical body or mental mind. This includes primarily thoughts and imagination, but also things such as sounds that you hear in your dreams as a result of sounds near your sleeping body. (eg, that pesky alarm clock that makes its way into the dream as some buzzer that you just can’t seem to turn off.)
For the sake of this argument let’s simplify a dream as “a state of mind in which you are experiencing only internal stimuli, ie, it’s all in your head and you are unaware of your physical body.” This makes a lucid dream merely that plus the knowledge that you are in such a state of mind and don’t believe that you are experiencing these things with your physical body.
An Out of Body Experience is when have an experience that your conscious (or otherwise the active) mind is no longer within your body. It being an experience, there’s no designation whether it is a dream simulating the experience or you are in actuality experiencing external stimuli.
An Astral Projection implies that you (‘you’ being your active mind) are in fact outside of your physical body. The differentiation between this and a dream is that in an AP, the implication is that you are experiencing external stimuli. There are two caveats here though. Many believe you may ALSO experience internal stimuli, making distinguishing between the two difficult. And many also believe that you are not actually on the physical plane, but the astral plane. A different reality with a different set of rules from either the physical world and the dream world.
Near Death Experiences and Remote Viewing are more loosely related to the above. To be more clear, the application to our discussion would be that NDE’s usually include an OBE, which some believe to be an AP, and AP is a form of RV. RV can be accomplished multiple other ways.
So, why is AP and the soul not widely accepted as scientific fact?
AP doesn’t necessarily need a SOUL, it just needs a consciousness independent of physical body. This is just a nomenclature nuance though. We can ignore it.
There’s yet to actually be repeatable proof in a controlled enough environment. When everything is open to interpretation, it’s very difficult to devise scientifically rigorous experiments. Once it’s opened to the possibility of a different reality, our scientific methods simply can’t cover it.
Did I cover everything, or did I just make you more confused? Feel free to ask more questions or point out any flaws or oversights I may have missed.
Thanks for the reply, well, it’s all confusing, although there is a certain logic to what you’re saying. I guess I would say OBE is involuntary, AP voluntary but technically the same. I didn’t quite understand what you meant AP doesn’t need a soul. Can you give an example of something without a soul that can astral project? Also you said RV can be accomplished multiple other ways than AP. If AP is a form of RV, what other forms are there, and which “other ways” would accomplish RV but not AP? And how is RV different from AP? And true as it may be that “it’s very difficult to devise scientifically rigorous experiments”, we’ve been investigating the world using scientific methods for a few hundred years now, it’s 2014, do we really still not have the knowhow for devising experiments? Or is it something else? Can’t be that hard. That’s all for now, I’ll let you or someone share thoughts on these and maybe then we can move further. Thanks.
I wouldn’t say OBE is involuntary and AP is voluntary. I would describe it more like an OBE is the experience of doing something. Let’s say a Flight Simulator game. Whereas AP is ACTUALLY flying the plane. Now, flying a plane is also experiencing flying the plane, so an AP is also an OBE.
…or a square is a type of rectangle, but not all rectangles are squares.
As for other types of RV, let’s say scrying in a black mirror or bowl of water. If it works as prescribed, you are remotely viewing something without projecting or being otherwise out of body. Basically any form of RV that instead relies on extra-sensory perception. Then again, I suppose your ‘senses’ perceived by the astral body are technically a type of ESP…bah, that’s irrelevant, though.
The soul thing was mostly just pointing at a silly nuance. Not everyone uses the word “soul” to mean the same thing. To avoid religious debate, I find it more appropriate to just call it the “consciousness”.
Sometimes it takes a long time to develop a valid scientific test of a hypothesis. Just think of lucid dreams. It’s an ancient practice. Aristotle wrote about it once, but imagine him trying to prove that he could control his dreams using something other than personal memory as evidence. The technology wasn’t there. Prior to the 1980’s, the scientific ‘proof’ of lucid dreaming’s existence was based solely on a sleeper’s eye movements and personal accounts. The validity of these proofs was fairly well contested. EEG’s finally became commonplace enough and electrical signals were able to be detected showing clear differences in brain activity during lucid and non-lucid dreams. (This segment could use some fact checking…It’s not meant to be accurate, just to highlight a point)
Science is hard sometimes
Feel free to ask more questions or point out any flaws or oversights I may have missed.