Not the same thing. When you sail into unknown waters, what is unknown is just where your are. Waters are known. What you need to survive at sea is known. Winds and currents, while different, are known. You can prepare for the known.
I am sure that there were many unknowns to which those early adventurers prepared for as best they could.
IF there is a continuation of consciousness after death of human instrument, then it might be that OBEs – rather than being some delusion of the brain, are bridges from one state of reality to another.
IF so, then OBEs might be helpful for preparation into that unknown.
Yes, you are basing your future existence on what you know of the present. Yet you fully acknowledge that things such as "experience" and "knowledge" are dependent on your corporal existence. How can you use them to predict or plan for what a future incorporeal existence would be like? Why do you think they would have any relationship at all?
Not exactly.
I am basing another type of existence on what I know of this existence.
It is from this corporal existence that I experience and acknowledge.
I do not have any recalled information that I have consciously used to help me prepare for this corporal experience. All assistance received has been based upon those who have lived or are living a corporal life before my own.
Based on the small amount of subjective experience I have had with OBE, I can deduce that the two types of experience (corporal and non) are closely related.
Don't knock your aging body. It is the only vessel that you can count on housing your consciousness. But as for the dregs of what was once me, I agree with you. Let anyone who can find a use for it do what they will. It is unlikely that I will care.
Nope. I don’t knock the human instrument. Nor do I belittle the creator of this thing. I am unable to believe that something without intelligence could have created something as complex as a human instrument.
Anymore than I am able to believe that within the universe, there are no other systems which have produced similar complex life-forms.
I am sure they are not identical, just as no two people's dreams are identical. But they are still identifiable as "dreams".
I am sorry about your friend. I have had friends (and relatives) who also suffered sexual abuse and blocked it out to the point of not remembering it at all until forced to by direct questioning. Yes, the mind can indeed do tricky things.
It is not known as fact that two people’s dreams cannot be identical.
I don’t discount the usefulness of dreams, but the OBEs I have had are clearer than both dreams, and what is referred to as real life.
Do you not think it possible that there are no voices, but that they are imagined by the brains? I've heard voices in my mind too. I realized that they were imaginary. Was I mistaken? Is your friend mistaken? Which is more likely, real voices that only a single brain could hear, or a single brain that imagined voices?
It is possible that there are no voices.
It is possible that there are voices.
It is possible that the voices are heard because the brain of the individual is ‘wired’ to receive these voices.
If so, these voices might come from the incorporeal. If so, this might be another form of ‘heads up’ on something of what is going on in that world.
It is possible that when a personality departs this world it may find itself existing independently of a corporal body.
It is also possible that the personality retains much of its prior self. So if it was a nasty prick in this world, it may be a nasty prick on the other.
I don't think you need a professional. You are more sane than most "spiritual" (if I may suggest the classification) people we get here. You probably function just fine in the real world, even if you long for another to exist. Really, belief in supernatural things is more common than denial of them. I don't think you need to worry about men in white coats.
I don’t long for another world to exist. I don’t belief in the existence of ‘supernatural’ – IF that parallel world exists, it may very well be a production of this world. This corporal world is natural (although – sheesh! Many believe that it was created by accident –such a belief is more the ‘supernatural’ to me than the belief that there was a conscious intelligence involved)
Sounds like an interesting story. You can tell it if you are very brave. Feeding time at the skeptic cage is not for the faint of heart.
So far I don’t even have a tiny scratch from the retaliation I have witnessed, to what I have shared.
In my own good time…
As a scientist, I don't believe anything is separate and disconnected. There are connections we barely recognize. But I don't think those connections can be reasonably described as "consciousness". It would require a re-definition of the word into something that would make no sense for most currently used applications. This is why I dislike using such terms for concepts to which they were not intended. I want to tell the New Agers, "Find your own damn words. Quit stealing ours."
Hmm…then someone might complain about words ‘being made up to suit concepts’ dammed if ya do…
Silly? That isn't the word I would use. I'd say "irrational". But humans are not always, or even often, rational.
This is interesting when you discover that some people believe that the brain is responsible for an incredible amount of people’s irrationalities and delusions.
IF this is so, then the brain is actually something that isn’t suitably able to define itself clearly using the device of its self.
And yet, it appears to be the only device around to attempt the job.
One might conclude therefore that any brains or any number of brains might make up words to express what they see as their own or others delusions.
Even that this might be the case, there is apparently no outside intelligence which could verify conclusively that brains are really delusional or just able to explore places using consciousness, which cannot be done any corporal way.
No one knows just how much any or every brain knows, or how intelligent it is beyond the measurable, or how much information it might be able to keep from the part of itself defined as ‘personal identity’, or for what reason it would keep this information, assuming it could.
Yes, I understand that too. As thinking creatures, it is almost unfathomable for us to conceive how it would be to not be able to think or use our minds at all. It is like trying to conceive of infinity. It is a concept that doesn't really register. So we must think of something that does register. "Thinking, but in another plane", fits the bill. It satisfies the mind, even if it has no evidence.
Satisfies the mind.
Interesting.
Why does the mind need satisfying?
Because it cannot conceive of nothingness? But it can. It started out that way, as far as we each are aware.
We have no sense of ever always having being in existence, therefore it is that understanding which can give us an idea of what it is like to not be.
LOL. It seems that "going places" would be fun. It is easy to contemplate that possibility. "Not going anywhere" is a possibility that is not nearly as fun to contemplate. As such, many people tend to ignore it, even though it has the most evidence.
Maybe it is not so much ignoring as it were, but already having a concept of having come from nowhere.
Just like the universe, as far as we can tell, came from nowhere.
Nature is quite predictable in many aspects. Gravity works mostly all the time. Celestial movements follow a course that can be predicted centuries ahead of schedule. These things we learn from observable, objective evidence. That is why we skeptics like evidence so much. It provides a basis for predictability.
Who the heck embraces nothingness? Solipsists?
And predictability will give the world stability?
I meant embrace now, the idea of your death being the end of everything that you are.
That is why I don’t think what you experienced is what I did. Any kind of fear seems to inhibit the process, at least from my own experiences, I have found this to .be so.
The process of OBE – there is a process.
My symptoms. OBEs were only one part of them. They never called me "delusional'. The medication was to prevent the panic attacks, not to prevent OBE's. Once the panic attacks diminished, so did the OBEs.
So your process for having what you call OBEs had something to do with panic attacks.
The medications prevented the panic attacks and also stopped the OBEs.
Subjective evidence is not evidence. That's called "anecdotes".
Yes – when shared with others who have no way to validate what you say, these are anecdotes.
No, there is not, but then, the trick isn't to prove it is a delusion, the trick is to prove it is real. If you can't do that, then there is no reason to believe it is real. What is that word we use to describe things that people think are real but cannot provide evidence for? Starts with a "D"
If I cannot prove to you that it happened, then it cannot be real to you, therefore there is no reason for you to believe it happened.
And there is no way for you to prove to me that it didn’t happen, although you can suggest other hypothetical explanations for me to consider.
I heartily encourage you to enjoy your trip and to send us pictures from the other side.
I think that we may have to wait for science to develop the instrumentation which will be able to achieve this thing, provided of course, that the other side truly does exist.
Percentage wise…what would be easier for you to believe could exist:
1: There is a continuation of individual conscious awareness after that individual consciousness leaves the dead human instrument.
2: There is an organization of scientists who are funded by the private sector to investigate areas of human consciousness which secular scientists are not funded to investigate.
There may be equal amount of non evidence to support either hypothesis, but number 2 is conceivably more possible.
