Naked Science Forum
On the Lighter Side => New Theories => Topic started by: Alan McDougall on 07/08/2008 09:43:23
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Guys I hope this belongs here or that the forum is open minded to at least read it and then comment.
Greetings forum,
I have not yet described my first and other conscious mind travel experiences, so I will give a consolidated version as follows.
At about the age of twenty-five in the afternoon my wife and I were having a nap. , but instead of going to sleep I entered a cataleptic state that I now know is hypnagogic sleep. In other words, I was unable to move my body (sleep paralysis). I was aware of my surroundings and that I was laying on the bed next to my wife. Then in the area of my head, an extreme vibration and buzzing began to shake my whole being. I tried and tried to move with no avail at first, and then something weird happened. I found myself hovering just below the ceilings, looking down on the bodies of my wife and can still remember the red bed cover. That indicates some sort of mind sight.
I did not like this experience, feeling some sort of an malicious being was watching me all the time, in addition the vibration and buzzing were very unpleasant. However, this sleep paralysis vibration started to happen more and more spontaneously until I found myself outside the house one night looking at the stars.
My consciousness awareness seemed to have separated from my sleeping body. I then began to take a real interest in this phenomenon and was lead to read a book by Robert Monroe and found the term then used was astral travel. It was considered evil or even by my then Christian friends who advised me to stop as my vacant body could be possessed by an evil entity, while I was traveling into other realities. Taking their advice, I stopped trying to exit the body when the catatonic sleep paralysis came at night and eventually these experienced ceased for many years.
I started to spontaneously experience all types of other realities on my nearly nightly travels. Some of these realms where so bizarre that there are no words to express these other dimensions. Realities alternate universes other selves, in the English language. The recent thread “they all walked backwards should” should give an idea to the forum.
There are other strange humanoid life forms so advanced from us that I could not get them to recognize me as a sentient being. Others were primitive, others almost like or earth but with minute differences. What we call matter is simply a wisp of smoke and I could rush through giant planets, which flashed be as rock, crystal, fire and again into the unimaginable void of the universe into the composite white light outside the confines of the unuiverse.
Our universe at appeared to reseed untill it became an almost infinite dark plane, then become a huge black orb until it was just one black dot amongst the infinite other universe in the eternal now of existence.
All seemed on this colossal unimaginable vast scale just minute interconnected molecules of one colossal gigantic cosmic body
I did not interact with those who have passed on but appeared to remain within the material realities. However, I did experience some frightening things, such as coming back in horror to the wrong body. This person was in a small prison cell somewhere and I really got a fright and immediately found myself back in my own body. At times, I seemed to have dual awareness in that I became somehow two beings, my sleeping self-communicating with my ethereal self.
"Maybe it was all generated by my beautiful imaginative mind, but read it or tear it apart if you like"
I hope this brief summary is of some interest to the group
Regards
Alan
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Be honest, is there any good reason to suspect that it was anything other than a vivid dream?
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It was no vivid dream and I have dreamed countless things in my somewhat protracted life, but nothing like this
I was conscious at the time
Regards
Alan
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How can you be sure you were awake? There is no way to verify the experience as being other than a dream - just because it wasn't a familiar form of dream doesn't make it anything more.
There seems little basis for trying and discuss this as a 'scientific' matter.
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Where is the NEW and where is the THEORY?
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"This person was in a small prison cell somewhere and I really got a fright and immediately found myself back in my own body. "
this, among other things, would be the perfect indicator of simple dreaming. Astral travellers talk about having to find their way back, rarely snapping back to the 'right' body.
Tell me about the red bed cover.. was it representative of your actual quilt cover?
Sounds much like lucid dreaming.
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Paul
Where is the NEW and where is the THEORY?
As I stated in a previous post I was unsure where to post this experience. I will remove it if you want.
What exactly is hypnagogic sleep is still much debated and when you are in this state you are aware of your surroundings. I knew I was in bed, but at the same time experiencing the lucid dreaming
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You can buy stuff down town that will give you a similar experience, they tell me.
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JnA,
Tell me about the red bed cover.. was it representative of your actual quilt cover?
Yes it was the quilt cover that I perceived from a viewpoint floating just below the ceiling..
Sophie,
You can buy stuff down town that will give you a similar experience, they tell me
Heck!! I know this, but why go illegal and the drug route when I can do it free.
If you want to have a profound mystical experience I believe the easily obtainable Salvia plant leaves will send you out into the universe or other dimensions. Real or imaginary, who knows?
Regards
Alan
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It seems, to me, to be very self indulgent to interpret an unusual and, as yet, unexplained experience as 'mystical'. It debases the use of the word.
If this experience were to have been induced chemically it would be dismissed as an hallucination. Why not interpret it the same way when its origin was unknown?
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Sophie,
I agree with you but it is you who sugested "we go buy the stuff down town" ,not me
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I introduced the idea of chemically induced experiences to point out that there is nothing significant to distinguish one experience from the other. You seem to want your experience to represent something special. The only thing special I can think of is that it didn't cost you. Great value but nothing more significant.
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It is decidedly not special, I am a normal human entity and countless others have experienced much deeper and profound mystical realities tha I have. , "than little puny mortal me"
Regards
Alan
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JnA:I just read this:
Astral travelers talk about having to find their way back, rarely snapping back to the 'right' body.
That begs a lot of questions. You presumably mean 'people who claim to have had an experience which they thought was Astral travel'. I have not heard of any actual evidence that these 'trips' are anything other than hallucinations / dreams. Can you produce any?
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You presumably mean 'people who claim to have had an experience which they thought was Astral travel'.
yes, yes I do.
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JnA,
You seem to give more credit to this experience than sophie and rightly so.
We should not just dismiss another's experiences as delusional simply because they are outside our domain of personal experiences.
And why should I or anyone else lie about such experiences when there is absolutely nothing to gain by this except vitriolic ridicule by skeptics.
Of course I respect sophies right to express her views in anyway she likes
Alan
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I am only dismissing a statement which is completely unsubstantiated. On a Science forum, I think that is quite in order.
If we're not to be rigorous then we cannot claim to be scientific.
You, Alan, say that you had an experience; I believe that you believe it. I just don't believe your explanation. Is that vitriolic or just ordinary skepticism? It is really up to you to provide some proof that your experience was anything more than 'delusion'.
If you couldn't prove a similar claim made in an advert, you would be violating advertising standards. I am merely imposing a similar requirement.
Disagreeing with someone's interpretation of a phenomenon is a million miles away from saying that they are lying.
btw I am a bloke; my boat is the 'female'.
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sophie,
OK you are a male I was mislead by your ID.
I am only dismissing a statement which is completely unsubstantiated. On a Science forum, I think that is quite in order.
If we're not to be rigorous then we cannot claim to be scientific.
You, Alan, say that you had an experience; I believe that you believe it. I just don't believe your explanation. Is that vitriolic or just ordinary skepticism? It is really up to you to provide some proof that your experience was anything more than 'delusion'.
If you couldn't prove a similar claim made in an advert, you would be violating advertising standards. I am merely imposing a similar requirement.
Disagreeing with someone's interpretation of a phenomenon is a million miles away from saying that they are lying.
btw I am a bloke; my boat is the 'female'
Reply
You were not vitriolic and that statement was not directed at you I am sorry you saw it in that light. I welcome skeptism that is why in another thread I stated that some biblical stories are impossible fables
If we all agreed on every point in a debate, man!1t would be the death of the forum.
Science must try and explain the so called unexplained phenomenon that exists outside of known classical scientific
thought.
At some point science must consider where everything came from and exactly what the totality of all is. existence.
The religious try to say there are phenomenon that can never be explained by human thinking and point to the gaps between scientific proof and creation by an intelligent designer. They say that the gaps are too vast to ever merge into one understanding.
I don't agree as a scientist I know the human mind can contemplate the vastness of the universe, and indeed expand outward finally to the knowledge of everything. Then mankind will walk as gods on the vast stage of existence. Why should we put a limit on human capability?
Science makes the claim that as the years go by, more and more of these gaps are filled by science and believe a theory of everything is near. To me T.O.E simply is a scientific equation of the religious god.
When T.O.E is realized maybe there will no longer be any reason for religion.
To understand and get proof you want relating to my experience. you would need to objectively come into my strange and weird mind and see the memes that constitute the beauty and horror of it.
Regards
Alan
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Phew!
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As a teenager, suffering from poor sleep patterns due to insomnia and staying up too late and getting up for school very early, I used to have very lucid dreams. One involved getting up in the morning. I used to dream that I had got out of bed and that I was getting ready for school. I would then realise that I was still in bed and hadn't really got up. I would repeat the dream three or four times before actually getting up for real. The dreams were so vivid that I actual thought I had really done the things I was dreaming about.
This sounds similar to your dreams but I think mine were caused by my lack of sleep and by the fact that I was turning into a woman and the growth spurt was taxing. If you develop a bad sleeping pattern your dreams will be impacted upon and become more vivid and memorable. During this time I had reoccurring nightmares and dreams about horrific things.
Later in life when I became pregnant my sleep pattern was disrupted again. Strangely this time I had vivid sexual dreams that were so real I could smell the other person.
The brain is a very resourceful thing and as we still don't know everything about it, I think Alan, your answers lie purely in your own brain.
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Make It Lady,
Later in life when I became pregnant my sleep pattern was disrupted again. Strangely this time I had vivid sexual dreams that were so real I could smell the other person.
Yes dear lady this sleep paralysis state is often accompanied with intense heightened sexual feelings, even up to the point of orgasm. Why this is so I have no idea. There are forums that deal with this phenomenon.
Regards
Alan
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So, when my mum complained about the state of my pyjamas when I was a lad, I should have told her I had been having a Hypnagogic mind time travel. That would have reassured her, cos she thought it was just wet dreams - or worse!!
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sophiecentaur,
When I was a wee lad, I had a lover like you did, myself so to speak