Blue_Lagoon wrote: By "Astral Travel" would this include what some call "out of body" experiences?
wikipedia (emphasis added) wrote: Astral projection The traveller finds him- or herself in an apparently real domain, analogous to the "other worlds" experienced by traditional peoples, which have no parallel to any physical setting or to consensus reality, described by New Agers and occultists as the astral plane or the astral.Environments here may range from populated to un-populated, artificial to natural to completely abstract environments and from beautific to horrific. Here, normal physical laws often do not apply and humans can often, for example, float or fly. Quality of physical detail ranges from crude and un-detailed and depressing to bright, vivid and fascinating as detailed, among other writers, by Robert Bruce in his Astral Dynamics. Travellers may travel from one realm to the other. Projectors may find access to visions of the past or future and to the Akashic records accessible from here. It's been said that space and time don't exist on the astral plane nor the higher planes - but no explanation is given as to how forms and entire environments can exist without spatial dimensions, nor why there can be a sequence of events and yet no such thing as time. Many travellers have theorized that people having dreams actually travel to the astral realms, unaware, and, again as reported in Astral Dynamics, travelers have reported seeing dreamers enact dream scenarios on the astral plane, unaware of the more extensive and varied non-physical environment surrounding them.
Goodshape wrote: I wouldn't be too quick to discount this at all.
Zillah wrote: Why not? What about it convinces you that its not just dreams?
Goodshape wrote: I just find the posibility to be an interesting and cool enough idea that I'm not going to discount it. There are stranger things in this world tbh.
And going along with it for the sake of argument, at the end of this very lucid dream, I was invited into a house and offered food by a person (who I didn't recognise) and told he had been expecting me. It was definitly unlike any dream I had had before.
Zillah wrote: :eek: Stranger things? Stranger than humans leaving their bodies and traveling to other dimensions in their sleep?
So it was a weird dream? At what point did it become weird enough to require a supernatural answer?
Zillah wrote: I just think its silly to assume its actually travelling to other dimensions rather than just weirder dreaming.
kshiel wrote: Just woundering do you have to travel to another country or could it be within say your own house. Like if you dreamt that you went into another room to check on someone or something to find when you woke up that it was exactly as you precieved it in your dream.
Wikipedia wrote: Real time projection In contrast to "astral" projection, the traditional understanding of out-of-body experiences involves the projector (or traveller) moving about in (usually invisible) ghost-like form in a world resembling mundane physical reality. This world may, however, have minor differences between the physical reality world we know and travelers may encounter non-human astral entities. Practitioners sometimes refer to this practice as Real Time Projection (RTP) and the mundane world as the Real Time Zone. From the Real Time Zone, travellers can access "the astral".
Goodshape wrote: This would be the sort of out of body exeperience (OOBE) that I would be more familiar with (reading about that is, not experiening). The idea that there is a non physical 'astral plane' which we can also access and, seemingly, encounter other astral travelers on is new to me but also I think a good deal more interesting.
Zillah wrote: I've yet to hear a single reason as to why these things shouldn't just be considered dreams.
It'd certainly be cool if I had a flying unicorn, but I don't try and ride it to work.
Goodshape wrote: Then consider them dreams and let that be the end of it. There are plenty (well, a few at least) of people here who might be willing to have a bit more of an open mind on the subject. You don't have to join in.
Can you prove that meeting distant, dead or dying relatives, or visiting places you've never seen before, or talking with dream entities about subjects you have no or little prior knowledge of, is just and always a 'fantasy projection inside your brain'?
Would you not be at all open to the idea of the interconnectedness of all things?