Don, you have changed! 

Actually, I recall Kyo posting here a leaf experiment which shows like Emoto's experiments what we are capable of in the here and now.  Pick two leaves from the sam plant.  For one leaf, project loving thoughts to it.  Perhaps call it "Leafy" and talk to it like a loved pet.  For the other leaf, ignore it.  Pay no attention to it, or project hateful emotions on it.  Compare the two leaves after 4 to 5 days.  See which turns brown first.  This experiment has been done repeatedly, and, while not 100% effective, more often than not, the leaf given love and attention stays greener while the one ignored or given hate withers first.  Why?  Same thing as Emoto's expermients - intent/thought affects reality, only in subtle ways, often which elude our routine perceptions.

Matthew

heisenberg69 wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2010 at 8:32am:


Exactly...I've seen stuff that would "turn you white" (GhostBusters), and the human/soul potential accepted by the New Age community makes up the only group currently willing to accept the possibilities and attempt an explanation. 

Don, doesn't that fly in the face of the "faith" required to believe any formal/organized religious order's viewpoint?

We can approach our wishful thinking and associated experiences  logically or emotionally.  There is nothing wrong with deriving comfort from dreams that are more rationally explained as wishful thinking.  Most of us are governed more by our emotions than our reason.  What is important is to humbly acknowledge the more "rational" inference.  As long as we don't fudge this distinction, there is hope of advancing spiritual knowledge.  This is what St. Augustine meant by his teaching: "We do not understand in order to believe; we believe in order to understand."  In other words, we embrace comforting assumptions as our working construct for our life journey.  But then we rigorously probe our life experience to see whether and to what extent these assumptions need to be altered or abandoned. 

For example, I have had OBEs complete with floating near the ceiling, looking down on my sleeping body, and overlaying my "physical fingers" with my spirit fingers.  I have used this as the foundation for retrieving an ex-girlfriend who committed suicide.  That was the most emotionally powerful experience of my dream life.  But then I learned how to have lucid dreams and realized that my OBEs, including my retrieval, are better explained as mere lucid dreams with no relevance to an afterlife.  My future chances to advance  knowledge of the hereafter depend on my courage to forfeit the bogus assurance I received.   The danger of confusing OBEs with lucid dreams makes the quest for verification absolutely essential for genuine knowledge. 

Emoto's water research might seem absurd to the scientific establishment.  But it deserves respect precisely because replication of these experiments makes his claims testable, at least in principle.

Don

Dude,
Now you've posed the most important question, to which I'm not sure I have an adequate answer. 
(1) I understand that sleep paralysis can often precede OBEs.  I've experienced such paralysis, but not as a prelude to a lucid dream.

(2) I have not experienced the strong tingling sensation that is often reported to precede OBEs.

(3) Lucid dream adepts like Stephen LaBerge claim to create OBEs at will, but insist that these are no more than lucid dreams with no afterlife relevance.  But  some OBE adepts claim to enter the OBE state from lucid dreams.  I would like to know more about how these adepts would respond to the skepticism of lucid dream experts.

(4) Some on this site have claimed to generate OBEs or phasing experiences in the waking state.  I wonder if there is a waking equivalent to the lucid dream state.  That question has prompted me to read the many reported retrievals on this site.  Most of them strike me as too cartoony to be real encounters with spirits.  But my preconceptions of the mental astral  world may be flawed and I may need to expand the range of what is truly spirit contact.   

So I don't have a final answer to your question. But Swedenborg has been a powerful influence on my expectations in 2 ways: (1) the possibility of the verifications he routinely seemed to receive for his spirit contacts: I am intrigued by Robert Monroe's verification of a pinch he inflicted on a lady who later verified this.  Maybe if I astrally stalked Kathy (Lights of Love) and "pinched" her, she could verify this.  Of course, she would probably never communicate with me again.  LOL!  (2) I am also impressed by ES's  capacity to have very detailed conversations with deceased spirits that he later recalled and tested with friends who knew the deceased.  As far as I know, lucid dream conversations or rotes are rather simple and brief. In any case, I still have a lot to learn about this issue and wish I had more time to explore my Gateway tapes.

I'm just so sorry that when I tried to enroll in TMI Gateway program for my vacation, I was shut out; so I went to London and Paris instead. 
 

I agree in part with Vicky, however I think the heart of the issue, is whether or not a lucid dream is a complete fabrication of our imagination.  If it were, then any communication that occurred within it would not be the meeting of two minds, but our own hypothetical fantasy. 

The problem is a bit more complicated because even if a lucid dream contains a conversation held within our own mind (i.e. without true communication with another mind), there may be symbolism and subtle communication that comes from a deceased loved one that is difficult to recognize.  We may therefore play a hypothetical dinner with our deceased loved one in a lucid dream.  Yet in that dream we see flashes of a symbol - a clock, a heart, etc. that is part of the imaginary dreamscape, but that is a bit "off."  Perhaps, the symbology that occurs within lucid dreams could be a form of communication as well.

Anyone who has explored consciousness comes to realize at some point that what we call physical reality, and what we accept as verifiable sensory evidence is, in some ways no more "real" than any other exploration of consciousness.  It is simply an experience in this plane of thought, bound by common experiences in the physcial world.  We assume that common sensory experiences, somehow are our only reality, whereas upon deep reflection, it is seen that our pure perceptive awareness is independent of touch, taste, smell, etc. and that the five senses are not truly relaying objective evidence but more commonly shared experiences in the physical plane.

The real issue in the question about lucid dreams vs. an OOBE has to do with true communication between two minds (ours and anothers).  When we pick up on a piece of information that we should not have been able to know from our own thought, then we believe that a true afterlife communication has taken place.

Matthew

Quote:


Don, have you really been pinching me occasionally over the past few months?  If so... you pinch hard! Ouch! Be prepared to get pinched back next time. 

K



Matthew, this is beautifully stated!
Quote:

So it is quite clear that by using directed intent, one can affect objective reality.  Well, this directed intent comes directly from one's subjective mind.  So I think it is safe to say that there is obviously a strong connection between subjective and objective reality.  This would therefore apply to lucid dreams as well, and their relationship with OBEs and the semi-objective(?) afterlife dimensions.