psi20 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 Anyone had a feeling of "falling through the bed?" I read a book lately about astral projections. It described falling as a phase of reaching a "super-sub-concious" or "soul traveling" and what not. What's weird about it is that I have had that experience before several times. Have you? What is it? Is it astral projection? Right when I'm falling, I jolt and wake up. I'm awake when I'm falling. Or at least I'm in a semi-conscious state. On second thought, I may be both sleeping and conscious at the same time. I remember that I dreamt about being a rabbit on the plains. I could faintly hear the music on my radio. Then my rabit self fell into a hole. I jolted and woke up.
neo007 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 I think I know what you mean, in a way. It is a possibility that your sub concious is being influenced by other things around you, such as when you a in a state of half asleep, half awake. It is known that 10-30 minutes before someone wakes up the brain can pick things up, for example if you were to sleep with the radio on, it is possible that when you wake up, you will remember and be able to recall what was said on the radio or what music was being played. Why this happens i'm not sure, but is probably due to the brain being in a state where it has had enough sleep and is in a state between being asleep and awake. I'm not sure if this is what you meant by "falling through the bed" but thats what i think B)
YT2095 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 I remeber several years ago when I used to live on a boat, I was sitting in front of the coal fire in my chair, not thinking of anything in particular. I turned my head only to see myself fast asleep in bed, at 1`st the idea didn`t seem strange then suddenly it dawned on me and I fely really scared , then next thing I know was as if I was physicaly slammed into my body and it felt like being hit with a lump of dead meat. I sat bolt upright in bed and felt a bit sick. that`s probably got to have been the scariest dream I`ve ever had and it seemed so real! I`m sure say it was astral projection and stuff but I don`t really beleive in the idea of being in 2 places at once, it seems ridiculous to me. but I must admit, an experience like that could certainly make some people beleive in it! the mind is a strange and powerfull device!
mossoi Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 I believe in and practice astral projection but in so much as it is an altered state of mind somwhere between awake and asleep where dreams are more vivid. In my experience it's just an extension of lucid dreaming (concious control of dreams) which I can now do whenever I want. If you wish to get up and walk around in a lucid dream then that's what will happen but only in the mind. A couple of things that are connected to the practice of lucid dreaming are paralysis and the 'snap back' into the body. The paralysis comes when the mind is awake and yet has shut down direct control of the body (there is an order by which this is done, I think it is taste, smell, site, touch/movement and finally hearing) - when you try to move you can't and it's often accompanied by a very strong feeling of being watched. It takes a huge effort to move but concentrating on moving a toe for example will eventually end the state and wake you up. The snap often comes when the body is very tired but the mind is active. Usually the mind will follow a train of thought and become engrossed in it enough to enter a type of REM sleep (almost like a very vivid daydream). Meanwhile the body slips into a sleep state and the jolt usually comes when the 'dream' causes a subconcious reaction (to lift a hand, or duck or jump) this seems to 'resynch' the mind and body through the subconcious channel causing the snap that one feels. If you want to give lucid dreaming a go there are a few steps to perform - keep trying, it takes a lot of practice and can take a while: When you are in bed try to keep your body as still as possible. Keep thinking about noticing when you start dreaming, try to maintain this while you fall asleep. When you are in a dream try to look at your hands or the ground - this will make you aware of your position within the dream. If you do enter the lucid state of a dream then at first you will find that control is only fleeting. Keep at it and eventually you'll have full control. Have fun, it's your dream! This can mess up your sleep patterns so if you feel more tired during the day than usual then stop for a while and go back to it - if you're not relaxed when you go to bed it won't work.
YT2095 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 personaly, I put mine down to the fact I have an idetic memory, I can close my eyes and walk around and look for things I`ve lost or misplaced and find them, get up and they will be there. I can be wide awake while doing this, I think it`s that I`ve seen it there and not payed attn, then when I go looking it`s presented to me as a form of simple memory recall, I don`t actualy leave my body at all. I think a fair test of actualy "Astral projection" would be to buy a book you`ve never read before, leave it upopened, astaly project and read the first line of say page 84. wake up and verify it. that would convince me
mossoi Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 Exactly - there are a number of supposed experiments of people reading the numbers on a piece of paper in a nearby house by projecting into it but there is nothing that has been carried out under controlled conditions and can actually be verified. I won't go so far as to say that Astral Projection does not exist, just that it exist solely in the mind of the one who is projecting. It is a very strong feeling so I can see why people feel it must be real but it's real only to them. The astral plane is supposed to be where wandering astral projectors can meet. This is really do not believe as each persons experience must be entirely within their own mind.
YT2095 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 It sounds a bit similar to "remote veiwing" also, the CIA spent billions on that and scrapped it in the end.
mossoi Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 Yeah - although some of there results were interesting. Either for being very cleverly rigged or for actually working. The diagrams drawn using remote viewing of the huge cranes in the USSR spring to mind, they were almost identical to the real thing. May I just note that I am a dedicated sceptic, I will not believe in any paranormal activity until somebody can prove, and reproduce, their results to me.
psi20 Posted February 20, 2004 Author Posted February 20, 2004 What you all say really explains some stuff for me. But I think there are psychics, whether or not you consider this paranormal. I don't think the word paranormal applies to psychics, because it probably is more normal than you think. But the range differs a lot. I bet you all have had an experience where you were just thinking of a random song, then your sister just starts humming it. Or in class you feel like someone is looking at your and you turn around to find a stranger looking at you. As for the CIA remote viewing, what they did was "imagination exercises." In the beginning, there was success in remote viewing. But as time went on, their remote viewing got weirder and weirder. When a committee finally went to inspect it, they decided it wasn't worth it. I think it's due to the imagination exercises. I'm not sure what those exercises were, but supposedly their minds gave them visions of aliens conspiring with the government and stuff.
YT2095 Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 dude, I read Tarot cards for money, that money goes to a home for mentaly handicapped people that no one wants anymore because of either embarasment to their social status or lack of coping skills, but 50% don`t even get visits never mind b-day or x-mas pressents. so sure, I beleive and use what maybe termed as Psychic abilities in order to perfom these readings for others and I`ve never failed yet, in fact I get fone calls out the blue from somone that I hardly even remeber telling me what I said to them a million years ago LOL, and that it came right just when I said it will and yes I`m a reasonably good Scientist at the same time, fact is, I don`t HOW it works, just that it does or seems to, and the evidence and witnesses acrued over the year will lay testimony to this, I AM however 100% certain that there`s a perfectly reasonable answer as to how it works, its just that maybe we don`t quite know what or how yet
Rasori Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 neo007 said in post # :I think I know what you mean, in a way. It is a possibility that your sub concious is being influenced by other things around you, such as when you a in a state of half asleep, half awake. It is known that 10-30 minutes before someone wakes up the brain can pick things up, for example if you were to sleep with the radio on, it is possible that when you wake up, you will remember and be able to recall what was said on the radio or what music was being played. Why this happens i'm not sure, but is probably due to the brain being in a state where it has had enough sleep and is in a state between being asleep and awake. 10-30 minutes? That explains why my sister knew the answers whenever a teacher called on her...
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 What's funny is that, when I have a nightmare, I don't realise I am dreaming and can't control it, then suddenly I think, "This is a dream!!" and wake up.
mossoi Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 I think we are too prone to look a patterns where there are none when it comes to predictive ability. How many thoughts, dreams, observations, movements etc. happen to one person in one day. Then think of all the people a person meets in that day. The number of simultaneous or sequential events is staggering so it's far from impossible that there will be regular coincidences. We go around saying things like: "amazing, I was just thinking about hot dogs and then you walked in eating one". We don't go around saying: "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and you walked in without one" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and you didn't walk in the room at all" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and the phone rang" or "Amazing I was just thinking about hot dogs and the moon shone through the window and illuminated my nose" and on and on and on.... IMO it's all coincidences that we notice because the mind likes patterns.
Cap'n Refsmmat Posted February 20, 2004 Posted February 20, 2004 Call those patterns fractal geometry.
BrainMan Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 I often wonder how much of what people claim to have dreamed is really just interpretation after the fact. For instance, someone might wake up in a state of slight fear. You wake up in fear with a "jolt" (like you had fallen), and the mind says "aha, I was dreaming that I fell...that explains it". After this, you simply "remember" your dream that you fell- regardless of what was actually going on while you were asleep. Now it certainly doesn't feel as if it is all just an after the fact story that put together something coherent enough to be caled a dream, but this might be what happens anyway. Welcome back James, it's good to know you are alive and well. As far as the paranormal goes, I think much of it is simply a confirmation bias. There are plenty of disconfirming instances of these supposed phenomena, but people only pay attention to those few instances when dumb luck makes things come out right. Not to mention ambiguity and seeing what you want to see...
psi20 Posted February 21, 2004 Author Posted February 21, 2004 As for experiments on the psychic abilities, you can always get out a zener deck and practice with a friend, making sure neither cheats of course. Or something fun I like doing is telling which crayon is which. Get out some crayons, I usually limit myself to the primary and secondary colors only, close your eyes, shuffle the crayons, grab one, say which it is aloud, record your observations.
psi20 Posted February 21, 2004 Author Posted February 21, 2004 Oh, and I agree with what you say, it can be explained with statistics, but I still believe that telepathy and what not is possible.
Rasori Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 A bunch of non-believers, the lot of ya. I had a dream once that I was running away from a giant rubber band ball (dunno why, but what the hey?) I was tripping and falling over the stuff in my room and started pounding on the door cause it was 'locked' (doors in my house lock from the inside...) I woke up like that. So that's sleepwalking and off topic (thought you'd wanna hear the rubber band ball story). As for on topic, I had a dream once of a video game (I'm a geek, I admit) on a certain level, in a certain spot, in a certain car. Game was Vigilante 8 or something like that. Level was the snowy one, car was the dump truck, spot was the slaloms. I woke up afraid, for whatever reason, with that dream on my mind. Walk into the living room and, of course, my brother was playing same game, same level, same car, same spot. Needless to say, it scared me. So yeah, it could be coincidence, but I don't think so. NOTE: If you didn't realize, I'm parenthesis crazy today!
mossoi Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 So you had a dream and it coincided with what your brother was doing that time - coincidence. What about the thousands of other dreams that haven't come true. Do you remember those with disappointment because they didn't reflect something that was actually happening? Coincidence is more common than we think so we latch onto it and remember it as something paranormal.
Pinch Paxton Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 I often wonder how much of what people claim to have dreamed is really just interpretation after the fact. For instance, someone might wake up in a state of slight fear. You wake up in fear with a "jolt" (like you had fallen), and the mind says "aha, I was dreaming that I fell...that explains it". This is quite possible. It might be true that we make our dreams up after waking. I have been thinking about this ever since I had a couple of dreams that interacted with my waking up. I dreamed that someone was knocking on my front door. I awoke to hear the knocks on the door, but the timing was wrong. My memory was that I had dreamed it, and then it happened, but something was wrong with my memory of the event. I had a time residue that I had heard the knocking, then made the dream to match, and half awake. If you can follow this situation, then you might come to the conclusion that we can make a dream up, upon waking, but only being half concious. My question is this.... Are we covering up the tracks of what really happened in our sleep? Pincho.
YT2095 Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 I`m more that sure that in many instances that`s exactly what we do, the brain/mind doesn`t like NOT making sense of anything, and so often does it`s best to "fill in" gaps or unknowns. this can be demonstarted with simple optical illusions, our eyes see the true as in what`s pressented to us, but our brains often "make up" the rest
Rasori Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 Coincedence may be common, but a coincedence that is starkingly real (the same exact conditions) as opposed to a coincedence like, "Whoa, I had a hotdog with mustard and relish like that too!" has to be more than just a coincedence.
mossoi Posted February 21, 2004 Posted February 21, 2004 Why is premonition more believable than specific coincidence?
Rasori Posted February 22, 2004 Posted February 22, 2004 I didn't say (or rather, didn't mean to say, sorry) premonition. I just think that there's the POSSIBILITY of something more than coincidence as opposed to some people here (including yourself) outruling it outright. I always thought part of being a scientist was keeping your mind open...
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