I’ve noticed a lot of directly contrary posts related to the topic of Out Of Body Experiences. A small mention of a possibly altered state of mind and experience, evokes a deluge of information about etheric and astral planes of reality, spiritual energy, and the like. This is a belief system that, in the face of experience, an internal and possibly subjective one, need not keep its boundaries in check. It must be fact. “Why can’t those stupid scientists get around to proving a soul? We all know it exists. When will they catch up?”
I personally identify as having experienced at least 5 such episodes in question between January and March of 2008. I appreciate the freedom we have to discuss it here, but hold much contempt for the manner that it is discussed: as described above. The definition of spiritualist is one I once dabbled in. Now, because of the experiences that I identify, that label has become an imposition. I would decline to be associated with so much presumption and dishonesty as I see from dogmatic spiritualists.
The detractors of the spiritualism present alternate theories for consideration. We’re dreamers, we’ve experienced what our minds are capable of-- but it is well worth considering that the root of the mind is in the body, in the brain.
I accept this. My family has a history of clinical depression, war being the least of what I have lived through to trigger it. My waking life was hell. Antidepressants helped immensely. Spiritualists that delayed my chemical intervention, for fear that it would calcify the gland that would, illogically, allow me to transcend the mortal coil and limits of the physical, or that my suffering had a karmic root that would persist if I escaped it… they were more of a nuisance. The body deserves consideration.
And then, say other materialists, my own experience does not. True, anecdotal evidence is a risky thing to depend on when it comes to defining our reality. An anecdote that cannot be tested, may have been fabricated, or exaggerated-- it is so easy to do, and we would be fools to think that being right is its own reward. There are many motivations outside the commitment to search for truth, and most of them are preserving what is not true.
But, then materialists presume that this attitude only applies to spiritualists-- not to themselves. So, my experiences are readily categorized as delusions, for the reason that to experience such a thing must be a delusion. I have experience, they have a belief about it-- against it. This is not something I accept as a label on my person, and it is not something I can accept as the correct process of seeking truth. When I draw attention to the fact that this conclusion is ill thought-out, I am challenged to find the right one. However, my issue was more on the manner of the argument-- not the matter of the argument. The method to reach this conclusion is extraordinarily faulty.
To at least one detractor of spiritualism, this necessitates that the opposite must be faultless and true. This is still an incorrect presumption.
But let us return to how foolish it is to declare the anecdotal untrue for the sole reason that it is anecdotal. Lucid dreaming, after all, started with an experience, became an anecdote, and then had a whole lab built around it. The theories against lucid dreaming were of the same circular logic: you can not maintain the same standard of memory and logic in a dream as in waking, because the definition of a dream is the loss of waking memory and logic. LaBerge was very creative, to be able to find a way to bridge the subjective inner world with the world that we so often turn to for objectivity.
Why, then, is not the same being done for OBE’s-- a false category, asserts the materialsts, because it is just another kind of nonlucid dream. Nobody proves that nonlucid dreams exist. That is the default. Any dream phenomenon that cannot, then, be proved with the same scientific rigor as lucid dreaming, must be a normal dream. And all of these categories-- NLD’s, LD’s, OBE’s-- are simply defined by expectation.
Unlike LaBerge, we do not all have the privilege of research grants for sleeping on the job, of the staff and technology to measure a phenomenon that is just on the edge of laboratory consistency. So why, I ask, do the loudest voices in discussion speak with the assertive strength as they do have these tools? I ask this of those who impose their conclusions, as a reminder that real life is not a laboratory. The conditions (variable, constant) are too extensive and detailed to control, and may never repeat. I ask of those who impose their conclusions, to consider that they are taking far more for granted than they think.
When people speak in a way that shows that they have not and will not even consider this, when they misappropriate a conclusion to something that they have had the privilege to experience nothing of-- I take offense. I see arrogance guarding ignorance, and worst of all it is complacent of this situation, and all the efforts that I have put into struggling to understand this phenomenon simply brushed away.
“OBE’s are dreams. It’s fact, and anyone who thinks otherwise is foolish.” This is what I feel is imposed upon me-- a refusal to even consider the smallest weakest evidence against this theory, not because the evidence and reasoning to the contrary is necessarily weak (which it is,) but because the theory must be preserved.
Robert Monroe, who spearheaded research into Out Of Body Experience, claims to have had his first OBE episode by accident, not by practice or expectation. We may examine the motives and mechanics. If this were a lie, to deter those who would say that it happened because Monroe expected it, then why wouldn’t he have said instead that he had be reading and researching about OBE’s from the Asian mystics, and brag on about how the spiritualists were right and he has been touched by the Nirvana light? Suppose that he was honest. Then, if Monroe had taken a mere dream for an OBE, why did he not take an OBE for a mere dream and leave off these axiomically false distinctions at all?
youtube.com/watch?v=4-PDqQ9bM
Charles Tart had a pithy two named test subjects for a test like Moriah proposed. Robert Monroe participated, and despite his experience was unable to complete the requirements of positive data for the purposes of that experiment. The other test subject, also reported spontaneous and inexplicable OBE’s, was able to identify the correct target number 25132.
psywww.com/asc/obe/missz.html
Why only once, and why only one subject? Dr. Tart’s character becomes a scientific variable: he may have had an education in the sciences, but he was overtly not materialistically inclined. If he was not gullible, then he may not have been honest, and fabricated Miss Z entirely.
skepdic.com/tart.html
But here, another consideration: perhaps, the conditions were not easily controlled, because we will not know what they are until we research more, which can only be done in more tightly-controlled conditions. It takes the creativity of LaBerge to break this loop, and he has already dedicated it to a specific phenomenon. The problem of the OBE is that it may just as easily be suppressed as it can be elevated.
I only have my observations. My OBE’s have been dreamlike, as one moment I would be in my room and the next I would meet with mermaids, and have nonlucid recurring dreams of oceans. I have also intended to project to Dusseldorf, and witnessed cold light rain-- and, afterwards, upon checking the weather report for the day that I initiated that episode, it appeared to match. These are only my experiences, I am open to alternative interpretation, but not to oppression. I have never called your dreams messages from the gods, or imposed such judgment upon something so subjective. What gives YOUR interpretation of MY experience so much greater credence, that you can announce so confidently what it is or isn’t-- when even I have the humility to say that I simply do not know?