OBE, God, Astrology, Debunked!

reply to post by Republican08


thanks for all this info and sources republican08. you are doing a great service. it's amazing what we can learn with science. to think most of us here on ats are just a bunch of frequent seizure having loonies after all! Well the last question left would be, how did the universe get created? I think when we die, that's it. Eventually we lose all consciousness, and especially say a shotgun to the head, that happens quickly. I would hate to be hanged, since your brain is still alive without a body. That must be the most horrible way to go.

I try to base things on cold hard facts, and you brought them along with reputable sources. Well done!

lol no flaming? well OBE's can be proved real through trial and error with a deck of cards, take one randomly from the deck and tape it the window and this next step requires you to be able to astral project/ manifest a OBE. After you've left your body look at the card, keep it in mind firmly as you reintegrate with your self i guess and wahlah! Trial and error, although it should be easy as long as you look with intent only to know what it is and not let your emotions or thoughts cloud your mind as your mind is a very powerfull influence in other realms of conciousness.

reply to post by Republican08


Now concerning your OBE section you say you do not think that the experience is real .

I will tell you one thing .

How is it possible that I have an OBE and DURING THIS EXPERIENCE I see and hear something that did not happen . As I come out of it and friends in the room are discussing the same thing that I saw in my OBE experience and the same discussion happens in real life in exactly the same way as I saw it .

How can you tell me that this is not REAL when the reality itself proves it ????

i believe in science over faith ! there is no such thing as god !

I have to go by what I know and Science isn't exactly the """cats meow."""

Theory, Scientist live well on,.......................... THEORIES.

Those things can never be debunked completely I dont think. Personally I dont buy any of the OBE, God, general religious stuff... but I always like reading people who do believe in those things points of view, because really we have no clue who's right and who's wrong, so it doesnt seem the logical thing to do being ridiculously insistent that something exists or it doesnt. I find it really aggravating when people come onto threads and all they seem to offer in the way of an argument is quotes from the bible.. but thats a whooooole other thread!

I think all that info in the OP just goes to show that there's so much we dont know about our own bodies, and confirms that we shouldnt be 100% one way or another with what we believe.

And who knows, maybe science will prove one day that those things do actually exist!

i have completely changed my views on all 3 subjects after reading your post!
jk.

As somebody who experiences astral projection (semi-randomly) frequently, I can assure you out of body experiences are REAL.

The first time it really stood out to me was when I looked at my body when outside of it. I usually project in the early morning hours, due to the fact that at night you fall into a deep sleep much too fast.

I have explained the phenomenon and how-to bits of projection too many times to count, and if you are interested you are more then welcome to U2U me, or go through my previous threads and posts in my profile where you will find quite a bit of information.

My opinion is that most people do not explain it well. They say, "Oh, you cant ever imagine it until it happens to you.", or something along them lines. Thats not true. The reason for this is much like dreams, many OBEs are very fleeting. If you do not write them down, most likely you will forget them unless something significant happened that sticks in your mind. Even then you most likely will forget a good portion of it. I have seen things, and heard things that were not explainable other then that it was a legitimate OBE. For example, days after my brother died, I had a OBE (this is explained in one of my threads) and asked him about his death. He told me something very personal, and it turns out weeks later it was confirmed when his death was ruled suicide/accidental overdose. I personally thought it was due to head injuries sustained the night before in a shooting where he was beat pretty bad with the end of a pistol and the passenger was shot in the spine and paralyzed. It went against my own judgment yet was confirmed weeks later. That to me was very significant.

Other things are the way I exit my body. I roll out off of my bed, float down, and after about thirty seconds I open my eyes. It literally feels like I am about to roll off my bed, and I do this consciously. The pre-requisite usually, which is a semi-sleep paralysis state, is not my doing. When it happens, I am able to take control and separate myself from my body. I have tried to learn to do this at will, but its very rare it happens. Although. Usually when I do try, or get it into my subconscious that I will be attempting to separate, it has a higher chance of giving me the opportunity and choice to continue with it.

When I open my eyes, I'm on my floor, where I can proceed to float into an upright position and then proceed through my bedroom door. I can also go through the wall, ceiling, or anything else, but I tend to follow the same paths I do when awake. I guess its habit.

Things also happen though that are separate and only in the astral world. I can lift things with my mind, throw fireballs, conjure spirits, and basically anything you can dream of - yet when I wake up, none of that has any effect. I think of it as a read-only type of medium. Much like a CD-ROM on a PC. You can copy files to RAM(brain), move them around, manipulate them, but when you are finished with it, the CD stays the same. I must admit though, its endlessly fun to fly around breathing fire and moving bridges and buildings with the blink of an eye. Scary what people would do with that type of power in this world though, for Its even tough not to give into my desires while out of body. I try to use it as a tool for knowledge, not food for my ego.

Anyway, it most definitely is real. I have personally felt it, seen it, smelled it, experienced it. I believe we all have the ability to view this beautiful world, but for some reason its harder for some then others. I honestly have no idea why it happens to me at will, but I take it as a gift and use it as often as I can. Although, there are times I'm not able to successfully separate and end up opening my real eyes if I dont wait long enough after rolling off the bed, or the rare yet frightening sudden falling sensation that accompanies certain separations. They scare the crap out of me honestly, which is why I try the roll out method most of the time.

Hopefully this post gave you a bit of knowledge most other people never passed on, weather it be they forgot, or lying. I implore you to read my older threads and posts on the subject and make your own decision about me and my experiences.

[edit on 8/31/2009 by deadline527]

reply to post by Republican08


So here is where your "debunking" meets reality.


1. Just because I can induce religious experiences, doesn't mean that religious experiences are BS. I will often initiate a conversation with a statue. I fully have the convo and am completely under the impression the statue is speaking to me, but I realize that it's not, but yet it still works.

2. The only reality which really matters is the subjective reality. Objective reality typically doesn't play that much of a part subjective experience as our beliefs do. People are going to believe, whether they believe there is no God, or that he made the whole world, people are slaves to their beliefs, and thus when you can control what you believe, you are much better off IMHO.

3. Attitude is everything. It's true in sports, and it's true in life. Religious experiences impact yoru attitude, and thus they are extremely influential... doesn't matter if there is an external God or not. Doesn't matter if there is an external astral realm or not. What matters if their subjective effect on the individual.

Mind you I'm not embracing dogma here. I'm known for berating Christians who follow dogma.... however, without the religious experience, life is just a lonely white wall.

My .02



[edit on 1-9-2009 by HunkaHunka]

reply to post by Republican08


I'm also sceptical of sceptics. It would seem to me that they're hiding something from themselves that even they will not admit they haven't found yet. The ultimate answer to everything is the absense of knowing.

"Behold; for I shall make all things new.....AGAIN."

You didn't mention psychic spying or remote vewing. Maybe that's the self-god delusion.

Diseases do not debunk God. That just means there is a part of the brain created specifically to align with a belief in God. If nothing else, it proves to me there is a creator and people have a part of the brain that makes them want to get closer to the creator. These people just happen to have a defect that flips their switch at the wrong time.

I have this to say, If I'm wrong and there is no God, then I have absolutely nothing to lose. I have lived a happy and fruitful life loving others and being compassioante for my fellow man. On the other hand if you're wrong then, well....you know.,....

are science is nothing more than another attempt for us to come to terms with our situation. people who claim there science is an absolute fact is asinine. sux any science researcher can make anything they observe as a fact but hey we are entitled to our opinion so w/e believe what you want to believe, i still believe there is more to it than those fairly weak examples.

reply to post by Republican08


I had an OBE under the influence of psychedelic substances and I was able to tell friends of mine that were 40 miles away what they were doing in their house that night. The thing is at the time I thought I was "just trippin'" until they looked at me rather frightened and asked me questions, I asked them some and basically we all feel that I really did visit them that night.

I have since dipped back into that well multiple times and I honestly have had a set fo experiences that have confirmed my faith, so to speak.

If you are interested in this stuff google Johns Hopkins study and spirituality study.

Originally posted by Whine Flu
There was a time, too, where I was in sleep paralysis and was about to initiate an OOBE. It was very weird because I kept fluctuating between my physical and astral bodies. It was very weird, actually. Ill sum up what happened. I had a dream and I reached a certain point where I started to float up toward the sky (in the dream). The dream faded out and I engaged in sleep paralysis. Instantly, I switched to my astral vision and started rising up toward my ceiling. As I ascended, I tried to break out of the paralysis and I could only open my eyelids a quarter of the way. There was nothing out of the ordinary when I "opened" my eyes. Suddenly, the shut closed again and I switch to my astral body, which was continuing it's ascent toward the ceiling.

I switched between the bodies a couple times more and it was the end of that. It still strikes me as difficult to explain to this day. Was a very unique experience. Well, unique to me, anyway.

I've had an experience that was very similar to this. Same thing, sleep paralysis and out of the body while seeing through both sets of eyes for a short amount of time.

Good job presenting arguments to the other side of the debate.. but I don't think that any of the arguments were good though.. alot of it just didn't make sense, was useless, or seemed irrelevant, such as these:

Some people can do horrendous acts, without guilt or regret, many start off small, and can lead to killing ants, to turtles, to small animals, to humans, to genocide. Now OBE’s, none of which I have heard of, involved the destruction of a creature. But believe it isn’t far from it in the thought. No offense intended, you should see it.

To add, an estimated, ½ of 4 year olds, have Imaginary Friends.

Now I've heard of the God Helmet, and it's really cool. But it doesn't disprove anything. It's basically proving that you get weird effects from mechanical stimulation, which is not even the same circumstances under which a normal person experiences a real OBE.

In the God debate, you said that pastors, preachers etc., are motivated in their cause because of these seizures which cause religious experiences. However, for some reason you didn't include that the article you got this from states that these people all have temporal lobe epilepsy. So this doesn't even include all people with epilepsy, just people with TLE. You are suggesting that most religious leaders have this specific form epilepsy. Now I don't have the numbers for how many religious leaders have TLE, but I doubt it's very high.

Btw, I am nonreligious.

[edit on 31-8-2009 by free_form]

Here we go again with people who absolutely refuse to believe anything they cannot hear,see,or feel. Unfortunately for those people there are just TOO many instances of things that cannot be explained with their logic.

It is an accepted principle that if you can provide proof a theorem works in ONE case, it proves it for all cases.

An example is something that happened to me many years ago. I was sitting in my office and two people arrived. One I had some business with, the other young man just stood in the background. I looked at him and had an odd feeling about the person. After the two left for no reason I have ever been able to determine I said out loud "I don't know who you are sucker but you are dead". I remember shaking my head and asking myself why I would say such a thing. I was alone, and had never done anything like that prior to that or since. Less than two weeks later I found out the young man died in an automobile accident. Coincidence?? That I had a weird feeling about someone and made a statement about him that I had never made the likes of in my life...and the person is dead less than two weeks later?

Nobody will ever make me believe that by some mechanism I knew what was going to happen to him. Whether anyone else believes my story or not makes no matter to me. I know it happened and that is all I care about.

I have read that surgeons have put symbols or writing on the top of overhead lights in operating rooms and had patients who claimed to have had near death experiences tell them what was there. I am not sure those stories are true but if ONE is then NDEs and probably OBEs are real.

I am a strong believer in the "Where there is smoke..there must be fire" way of thinking about things. There is just too much "smoke" for there not to be some level of truth about these things.

The problem is Mr. Debunker, you really didn't -debunk- anything. Your entire post is solely based on ideas you base yourself upon like saying Religious persons base themselves on the word written in the Bible therefore they believe in a "God". It's all just an idea, same as yours, even of those sources you posted, it's all their idea of what they "think" it really is;

Also your reasons are really shady and not very impressive at all; They really left me waiting for something to think about- But how you pretend to debunk each of these subjects with a mere paragraph or two, of mainly your own "ideas" ?

So if the Religious man says "God is real and you are wrong", and their proof is the Bible, their faith and how they feel and then you as the Skeptic say God is not real and your proof is certainly around the same as the Religious guy (baseless) then who is right and who is wrong?

I believe in certain things written in the Bible for example, some of it is pure faith and some of it are things that can be proven in real life and/or have already occurred (like events), as there are certain things that sound simply stupid and those can be debunked with logic, but something like OoBE is still out of scientists reach, and well Astrology worked well for the Greeks cause they were an ancient race and were getting to understand our skies, they came out with names for constellations and such and what not (that's also a huge subject) but that doesn't mean we still have to believe in it today, just like we can't believe in say The Genesis; those things can't really be debunked, they're all just ideas of previous men and these ideas have all been evolving as human understanding and intelligence grows with time;

Now if you talk about Deities, well Spiritists from Brazil can explain all that, and I could since I've studied with these people on this exact subject for years, but that'd mean too much writing

And that's another -idea- not a fact, just like nobody can prove that when a Human dies, everything goes; the word death and the whole meaning of it is also a mere speculation, just like the afterlife; You got yourself in a messy situation trying to debunk those things hehe

And God is a subject that has been beaten over and over all over the world and well whatever God should be is certainly not close to what every single religion believes; Again this is my idea, maybe I'm the one who's wrong about God and maybe he really is JUST like the Bible depicts him- those things cannot be debunked (or probably, not just yet?)

[edit on 31-8-2009 by jazket]

You aren't going to debunk OOBE when people have experienced one for themselves. The best you can get away with is saying it was a very real seeming hallucination. Which I think you touched on, but yeah. Saying "It might just be a hallucination" is not on the same page as a debunking.

"The God Helmet," and "The God Spot." Neither disprove anything. All they prove is that extraordinary human experiences can be induced by exciting different parts of the brain through physical means. If any experience is fake, it's these induced by electric shocks or whatever they are using.

Ken Wilbur argues about the God Spot well. He says that when you hold up an Apple, a certain part of the brain will light up to, but nobody says the apple is fake. Now when a person experiences God lets say, a certain part of the brain lights up, and now you say that makes God fake? But it didn't make the apple so.

One action leading to a given result does mot mean the result can only be reached by the action taken.

Debunkers commonly use this technique.

A ghost skeptic fakes a ghost on film and thinks he proves ghosts are fake. Really, he hasn't debunked anything. The only thing proven is that he can fake a ghost photo.

I'm not getting into the debate on whether spiritual experiences are real or not, just trying to make a point.


What if the stimulation forced a real experience? Our bodies run on chemical and electrical reactions. Could it be possible the scientists discovered a way to induce a real experience?

I have thought about this because I have had OOBE's. I have wondered if they were real or just in my mind, but I will say I have had lucid dreams and it is very different.

Also OoBEs don't just -happen- (90% of the time of course) NDEs on the other hand happen unwillingly 100% of the time; someone who practices OoBE don't just let them happen, they induce these things and work their way through some sort of mind training; Inducing the same effects with electrical impulses may even debunk the theory that OoBE's are NOT real. Think about it for a second or two