by boa 21 Replies latest jw friends
Boa there is a term called Astral Travel , it may sound odd as an out of body experience, but it very similar to what you have described. Our minds are a very strong force. Through meditation it is possible sometimes to reach those catatonic levels.
I agree with CHEVYSNTATS, I have had some OBE experiance too and it sounds to me like you were very close to a spontaneous OBE.
Mark....since the experience was my first one, and I was a good fully indoctrinated dubbie who was taught to avoid anything 'out of dub norm' in life....I was somewhat scared and yet actually had an undercurrent of thinking 'hmmmmm, where is THIS going to lead?'.
I'm a very unlikely candidate to join any new 'belief system Mark. However, I could accept the possibility that there is more to conciousness than this body (and what a hunka burnin love - according to some ladies. They usually check out my ass from what wifee says lol). I could accept some of the ideas of the 'astral' body from a scientific viewpoint without all the religious explanation.
I plan to research it further...after a ton of other research I already have on the go with exjwism.
boa...
hi boa, i have something similar that happns.
if i sleep laying on my back, i get to a point where i freeze & cannot move, i am in what is best described as a semi conscious trance, but not in control, as though my thoughts are active but my contol over my body is severed, sometimes i feel as if someone is on top of me, sometimes it's other things, like screams, i almost always hear screaming, both in my ears and in my head.
most of these these are i believe symptoms of sleep paralysis, (something i first heard about on this board) sometimes these things also happen if i am sitting relaxed and in a non defensive position, usually if my head is rolled back i am more open to it, i believe it happens right at the point between being awake and being asleep, where normally you would just switch off into unconsciousness, but for some reason you again become conscious of your surroundings when your body has gone to sleep... this being said, that's not always the case because sometimes i am deep asleep and it wakes me.
for what i have, it is easy to induce because it has happened since i was a kid so is 'normal', but to a large extent i think it fits the bill of sleep paralysis, with maybe a few optional extras.
not sure if it's the same as what you're talking about but there are similarities.
Sounds like what happens to me after I swallow about 20 vicodans and 7 valiums. I just lay there like a piece of vegetation growing on a Sloth.
'Leaving The Body' by D Scott Rogo is a great non-religious How-To book on Astral Projection.
I just started reading 'out of body experiences - how to have them and what to expect' by Robert Peterson. I like it, its also is written from a secular position.
boa
Robert Monroe has an interesting book on out of body experiences too. I've never had one but I don't think I'd want one, I'm too much of a control freak.
special K
That's interesting about the lucid dreams, I go through periods when I have lots but I haven't had any for a while. I love them, they are very energising.
Oh yes Lucid Dreaming. I have learned to slightly control when and how my lucid dreams go, but most of the time they just end up going out of wack and i become tired in the morning.
Why is everyone assuming this was an OBE? We can have altered states of awareness without our spirit (or consciousness) leaving our body. If it was an OBE I would have imagined that you would have actually felt detached from your physical body in some way but it just sounds from your description that you were catatonic.
It doesn't have to be a mystical thing, it might just be a result of self hypnosis or something.
I think that OBE's are more rare than some might imagine, and if you have an OBE you should perhaps look for some validation. If you do leave your physical body you may be able to gain information about the other location that you couldnt possibly have known unless you did actually leave your body. As for me, I'm no expert, I've had OBEs but only a few times in my life....and I've never deliberately tried it because I know that there are implications and dangers which most don't think about. For example, leaving your physical body leaves it vulnerable and you need proper protection in place.
Sirona
My thoughts are that you experienced a momentary "disasociative state" in plain english you got hysterical.It's happened to me and happens all the time to 'holy rollers' in church.
Mark....since the experience was my first one, and I was a good fully indoctrinated dubbie who was taught to avoid anything 'out of dub norm' in life....I was somewhat scared and yet actually had an undercurrent of thinking 'hmmmmm, where is THIS going to lead?'.
Yes, that undercurrent is the pure curiosity, without really looking for anything but just observation.
I'm a very unlikely candidate to join any new 'belief system Mark. However, I could accept the possibility that there is more to conciousness than this body (and what a hunka burnin love - according to some ladies. They usually check out my ass from what wifee says lol). I could accept some of the ideas of the 'astral' body from a scientific viewpoint without all the religious explanation.
But you see, even if you don't join up with a belief system, accepting some ideas is essentially the same religious consciousness. I know people do that all the time to navigate through life, but I just say see it for what it is - relative and conditional. Some people who are into this stuff and groovy spiritual experiences think their ideas are more refined and better than the typical fundy, but in my book they are not all that different. You can even have that kind of view as someone interested in the kind of spirituality that focuses on consciousness itself.
If you want to explore consciousness, it's actually as simple as using consciousness itself - and not resort to a lot of ideas. In other words, don't look to the outside, or even really to your own experience. It's a matter of what has the experience, not the experience itself. It's not for everybody, but I have to just point out that if you focus on experience without understanding the nature of consciousness, you wouldn't be able to put things in perspective. I call that fascination with phenomena.
