Log in

View Full Version : Parapsychology



Lenina Rosenweg
25th July 2011, 00:47
Recently, due to a complicated variety of reasons, including the death of my father two months ago, I've developed an interest in areas of parapsychology and offbeat cosmology.

This may get shot down or laughed at but here goes. I've been reading Robert A. Monroe. He was a US businessman apparently was a pioneer in introducing cable TV. In the late 1950s he had an experience where he felt he was leaving his body. Needless to say this weirded him out. He began experiencing this often and eventually was able to reproduce it at will. Monroe preferred to call this ab "Out of the Body Experience" OOBE, rather than the occult sounding "astral projection".

In the 1970s Monroe wrote a book on his experiences, "Journeys Out of the Body". He started a research institute, the Monroe Institute in Virgina to study this. Growing numbers of people from around the world claim to have experienced an OOBE. Researchers studying this say there's no evidence people literally "leave their body", verification of external markers seen in an OOBE such as time on a clock face are different than in the real world. Something seems to be happening though, no one knows what.

Monroe later wrote "Far Journeys" in which he develops a Buddhist/Gnostic type cosmology. It makes for interesting reading, if nothing else.

I think something may be going on and I think it has a material cause.

Any thoughts?

Lenina Rosenweg
25th July 2011, 01:41
Dude, with all due respect, I think you've been drinking a wee bit much. I meant my post to be serious. If you disagree, fine, but please give some reasons.

Sasha
25th July 2011, 01:53
an scientific aproach by no means exclude the possibility that the mind/human "soul"/world works in ways that we dont yet understand.
while an utter atheist hardcore sceptic things like twin connection, out of body experiences and lots of other things are too widely reported to be dismissed out of hand.
i still think though that string theory is an better explanation than god

praxis1966
25th July 2011, 01:58
can you found bigfoots too?? i heard theres more than 1399 living in america. hahahahahrg

This post constitutes a verbal warning to twenty percent tip for spam.

ÑóẊîöʼn
25th July 2011, 02:05
As far as I can tell OBEs are the result of completely normal physiological effects such as oxygen starvation of the brain, etc.

What's interesting is that as we get better at providing emergency medical care, the better we are at "pulling people back" after their heart stops beating. Also, unless there is damage to the brain, memories and personality are usually intact. This suggests that human memory is mainly non-volatile, and raises the exciting prospect of being able to bring anybody back as long as the brain is not irreperably damaged.

Aurora
25th July 2011, 02:40
I've had an OOBE twice i think, first was taking the dissociative-psychedelic salvia divinorum where i was so out of it i left my body and started walking around and talking with a spirit creature, was able to look at myself and everything else in my bedroom.

The second was when i was having various mental health problems and became so depersonalized/derealized that i felt like i was observing my body from about a foot or so behind my head, literally felt like my mind had become detached from my body, that only lasted about a minute but it scared the crap outta me.

In both cases it was pretty clearly just chemicals external and internal respectively that messed up my perception of myself and the world.