Do you believe astral projection is real or even tried to do it yourself?

Astral projection is a hallucinatory OBE. So it’s real to one’s senses, but its all in the mind.

@boots Hm. What is an OBE?

out of body experience

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies Ah, thanks.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies said it. Sorry for not making that clear.

Also maybe slightly off-topic I tried this thing called i-dosers.Not a real drug by the way.

You sit or lay down dark room, close your eyes and drift off but not really sleeping.Basically the sound waves throw off your brain in a sense and depending the “dose” gives you a feeling basically from happen to extreme fear etc…

My experience using it once was interesting though I could never tell was it me thinking or the i doser more so forcing the effect??

Rather crazy hour I had though.

Anyways do you think these are similar? Or could be?

That’s the one metaphysical thing I have not tried. Mostly, because I have meditations that seem to do the same thing.

@DarlingRhadamanthus Like what do you mean exactly? Can you go into more detail?

Meditating and astral projection are the same thing?

I don’t know about astral projection, but it is possible to get into a trance state where you operate in right-brain mode, which would give you that sort of sensation, The right side lives in the sensory world, interpreting the energy around it. My personal beliefs are that there is some energy thread that connects everyone and everything; past, present, and future. If you know how to tap into that (using trance work, for example), it’s kind of amazing what you can do.

yes… and yes I can also lucid daydream about locations that I’ve been to in the past

Yes. Most people tend to do it when just starting to falling asleep, however not a lot remember what was going on in their minds right before this happens. I’m sure everyone has had the experience of jerking all of a sudden while drifting off. Some call it “the falling dream”. One theroy out there is that the jerking is actually your spirit coming back into your body after astral travelling. While sleeping, your spirit has the freedom of moving around freely without the weight of your body keeping it grounded. Some people think you are stuck in your body from the time you are born until the time you die. I don’t think that could be further from the truth!

@angelld Actually, the “falling dream” stuff is just NREM dreaming.

its all in the mind

I’m with @boots. It may seem very real to the person experiencing it. But if astral projection were in fact real, it could easily be verified by scientific observation. As far as I know, no such proof has ever been shown. Some try to deflect away from this line of thought by suggesting that the spirit realm where the out-of-body energy goes is undetectable by any means of science. Even so, the out-of-body spirit should be able to either interact with the material world or at the very least report back facts about it that could not have been known to the meditating test subject.

Now, if you tell me that I should devote serious time to learning to go into a deep trance and project myself across town because once I get there, I won’t be able to interact with the world around me in any way, I’d really rather take the MBTA over there. It’s easier, and I can go shopping while there and actually bring back a loaf of bread with me. :-)

I just gave GA to ETpro and Boots since I agree with them completely anyway.

It’s probably better that you avoid it.

@ETpro makes a good point: astral projection, real or not, good or not, is awfully impractical.
I don’t quite get how a spirit – which is practically by definition immaterial – is expected to have any impact on the physical world, though.

Actually, in thinking about it, getting online on places like fluther is kind of like astral projection.

@Nullo If a spirit can’t have any impact at all on the material realm, then it can’t have any impact even on a human brain, which is undeniably in the material realm. Many who posit a spirit or soul think it is what is aware of being aware within us. If that’s true, if it is the little man looking at the movie our eyes project into our heads and making sense of that movie, then one might reasonably expect that, freed from the body, it could observe the physical realm around it.

@ETpro That presupposes that there isn’t an immaterial component to reality.

@Nullo If you wish to believe in a god that does nothing to intervene in the material world and a spirit or soul that does nothing to impact or interact with the material world, but just pleases or displeases the undetectable god; that’s fine. However, the OP is about astral projection. For that topic, the undetectable, untestable spirit that cannot interact with the material realm in any way whatsoever is nothing more than a convenient duck-blind to hide the weakness of the argument behind.

Well, I believe in it. What happened to me was creepy/awesome. When I was younger (fifteen) I was writing in my journal about a dream I remembered having when I was much younger (Three) with my little sister being there. We had been gliding down the stairs (headfirst). We shared a room our entire lives until this year when I went away to college. Anyway, I turned to her, on a whim, and asked her: Mary, do you remember having a dream about gliding headfirst down the stairs in our pjs? She turned to me and simply said: Yes, of course, we did it all the time. Now, what I would like to know, how that would work with physics and I would also like to know how we had the exact same dream multiple times. I informed her that we weren’t in the physical realm, she just shrugged and said: I wouldn’t put it past us. She was fourteen, I was fifteen.

Absolutely real. It happened to me, and was the most profound thing I have ever experienced. I was in bed sleeping, (I do not recall dreaming or anything) and felt wide awake – and just sat up, although I wasn’t ‘sitting’, I was ‘standing’ where my body was. I had an idea of what might be going on, so I felt a need to move away, and decided to go outside. I moved through the wall and into the backyard, (no effort or planning, I just thought it) and just stayed there a minute looking around and listening – it looked slightly different, but I couldn’t say how. I was very excited and exhilarated.I then flew back into my body without thinking or trying to do anything. I got up and ran around the house going “wow!” What a beautiful feeling it was, and there is no doubt in my mind whatsoever that it was real; this was no dream, no way.

Since then I have read Robert Monroe’s books Journeys out of the Body, and others, and became a believer as it were. Every single time I go to bed, I hope that it happens again.

I do not understand the idea that a thing like this must be ‘practical’ (you might want to check out remote viewing) or that a non-corporeal entity should be able to intereact with the material world… but years of experiments have gone into this realm (see the Monroe Institute) , and this….I would have liked to interact with the world, but had no physical ability to do so. If it happens again, I’m sure I would not want to hang around any try to move objects on the coffee table for you; I’m sure there are far better things to do. I hope it happens to you someday.

Most of the paranormal is either normal or nonsense. An example of nonsense is psychokinesis.

No one has solved the body mind problem and we don’t know the real nature of consciousness. There are some interesting ideas based on quantum theory.

To any of you guys who insist that astral projection is true, you can win a million dollars if you prove it. Easy money!

@Rarebear That pot of gold has been sitting there for quite some time now, and is still unclaimed. :-)

What is true for you, is true for you. The truth about anything is the knowing of it for oneself.

@BluRhino No. A great many people once knew for themselves that the world was flat. That did nothing, however, to change the truth of the shape of the Earth. Until a few hundred years ago, everyone on Earth knew the Earth stands still at the center of the solar system and the sun and planets revolve around it. However, their believing that, no matter how firmly they believed, did nothing to change the actual arrangement of the solar system. Until recently, Westerners believed that disease was due to bad humors in the blood, and having a barber slice your viens open with a dirty razor would let the bad humors out and make you well. Even when they firmly believed that, the procedure killed many people and helped none. All those beliefs were not tru. No amount of believing made them true.

@ETpro; I believe you have misunderstood me. ”.. A great many people once knew for themselves that the world was flat..” No. The only way they could have known that for themselves was to have sailed off the edge themselves, which they did not do. It (like the other ideas you mentioned) was just a widely held popular belief passed on from ear to ear, not from experience. The first guy to sail over knew the truth for himself (and faced the unenviable task of trying to convince others) Knowing the truth of a thing is “getting it”, owning it, realizing (see def) a thing in your own gut (and mind) as irrefutable in your experience.

I can tell you that putting your hand in the flame will burn you and cause pain. You may say “yes, I can see how that may be”, and accept it as true, untested, for your whole life; but it is just a rumor, still. When you put your hand in the flame, you will know the truth for yourself. that is what I am getting at.

The original question is do I believe OBE’s are real. My experience makes it true for me, perhaps not for you or anyone else; and no amount of telling you so will make it so. Only your experience will do that. Everyone will have to sail over the edge themselves to find out. Bon Voyage.

@BluRhino I take your point about personal experience versus just hearing something. But your original statement could easily be read to mean that anything a person accepts as true is therefore true for them.

Knowing that astral projection is true is not an easy thing to prove by personal experience, because the human brain is capable of producing hallucinations that are as real seeming as anything real life provides. There is still the unclaimed prize money sitting out there for the first person to prove psychokinesis.

No proof is real, is hallucination. I know people try it, they cannot do it.