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[alway]

I used to read up on this kind of stuff (along with "How to communicate with the dead/angels/demons". Sadly, my religion doesn't allow me to dabble in that kind of thing. Good luck though.

Thanks. I may try again some day... But I'll have to go to great lengths to achieve the dream recall, attention and awareness that I had at the time when the projection or whatever it was occurred. It seems that mental fitness I had is a requirement or at least catalyst. All sorts of mental exercises and stuff... Never did replicate that mode successfully again.

Too bad about the restriction though! Are you sure they wouldn't like you to at least fly your soul around a bit to add experiential support to the idea that the soul is eternal and not dependent on the body? Okay I'm just thinking wishfully, I really don't think a lot of religions would be very gung ho about astral projection no matter how it's put.

I think it has more to do with, "If you leave, the demons can take over your body.". I am allowed to interpret my dreams, but I just can't do any mumbo jumbo type of stuff. And yes- The restriction kind of sucks, but I have to live with it. At least until I lose faith...

Talking to the dead is easy. Getting them to talk back is the tricky impossible part.

As for religious connections to such things, that are numerous just as they are with other weird brain-stuff. IIRC, there's at least one wherein lucid dreaming is a way of fighting your fears and problems in a rather literal way (as the hallucinatory nature of the lucid dreaming means they actually do appear as entities). Not entirely unlike Psychonauts.

[zombie urist]

I tried it for a month but didn't really get anywhere.  The farthest I got was being able to feel the vibrations, but that never lead anywhere and I always fell asleep soon afterwards.

[Starver]

I used to read up on this kind of stuff (along with "How to communicate with the dead/angels/demons". Sadly, my religion doesn't allow me to dabble in that kind of thing. Good luck though.

I used to read all this kind of stuff.[1]

Heck, I found it interesting to try, but I got nothing out of it.  Along with the various similarly 'speculative' books (see footnote about the 100s range reading), I found it interesting, but could never take it seriously.  I'd no religious bar to the idea, although maybe I just wasn't credulous in the right way.  I quite liked the book that postulated that the biblical "manna from heaven" was actually algae(?)-based nutrition tapped from a nuclear-powered device that provided the heat required[4], and the ones that told me how to astrally project were as much fun to read as the ones that told me about "aliens amongst us".  But "nowt came of owt", as some of my contemporaries might have said, albeit from a less bookish stand-point.

Really, the only Astral Projection that I've found to work is the kind that happens at any Planetarium.


[1] Thank (or blame) the fact that these kinds of books were in the 100s section under the DDS, just after the stuff about computers[2] and that I was sometimes rather methodical in my intensely prolific library usage.  (History and Geography (in the 900s) were read up on as well, because of actual attraction to the subject...  the 800s of Literature (being discussed in a non-fictional context) was probably not appreciated, because I was separately eating through the fiction library, and especially the SF/Fantasy shelves[3], so I probably never got a good grounding in criticism/analysis/review of literature, save for what I gleaned from my own opinions.)


[2] "0xx.x..." range, which was pathetically small, thirty or forty years ago in a library that serviced a town, rather than any educational or technical establishment.

[3] Abbott, Adams, Aldiss, Anthony, Anderson, Asimov, Ballard, Banks, Baum, Bova, Bear, Clarke, Dick, Farmer, Foster...  Those are the names I can think of, though I'm not so sure whether all of those were from this same era.  And I still got to read Pohl and Pratchett, Wells and Wyndham...  And yet I recall not completing my alphabetical foray, so I must have deviated from the plan, occasionally.

[4] "Fire by night, smoke by day", and the horrible burns ascribed to the Arc Of The Covenant being caused by radiation upon anyone who (not being a priest, trained/equipped to approach the equipment, or packing/un-packing it with all the hauling around that was needed) was 'unworthy' of being in its presence...

[Starver]

Simple test - astral project to my room @ 44.348441 : 17.251529 and tell me what brand of beer I am drinking right now.

I see...  I see...  A street, from very high up...  and the roofs are... the roofs are all fuzzy...  Although in the top-left-hand-corner of my vision I can see it says... "Google Maps"...  ohdamnwhatagiveaway...

And something tells me that I won't even be able to get a StreetView image through your window, anyway, however dated it might be...

Spoiler: And while I'm doing virtual geography (click to show/hide)

OTOH, today's (Monday's, correcting for perhaps incorrectly assumed local time of at least GMT+2 in nature) Geohash point looks to be a nice spot within a coniferous forest, a small trek up from an occupied valley, at around 770m altitude (100m above said valley), which I'd probably reach by heading for Vrbanjci and then up towards Radohova (oooh, an Iron Age burial ground... nice).  But not knowing the local politics of the "Krusevo Brdo" area (or Nanja Luka region, in particular) I'm not sure I'd attempt it so easily as I might tramp across my own local moorlands...

Oh, appears I'd have to cross the FBiH/RS border, so... north on E661, or cross-country?  I can see a number of tracks...  Very little (obvious) hint of barriers or patrol-zones, but these might not be the most informative aerial shots...

Tell you what, Retro a trip to Saturday's coordinates, instead...  They're pointing at the woods just SE of Bugojno, on your side of the border.  And with tourism and forestry being apparently high on the agenda for the place, there'll doubtless be paths (though not necessarily public) you can use...

[Tabbyman]

Not entirely unlike Psychonauts.

Onieronauts.

I personally don't really see any entities in my psychonautical lessons. I just end up thinking real hard about everything I've shoved under the carpet, with an inability to bullshit myself.

[DwarfMeister]

Simple test - astral project to my room @ 44.348441 : 17.251529 and tell me what brand of beer I am drinking right now.

Budweiser. I didn't astral project, just so you know. And I doubt that those are the real coordinates.

P.S.- So far, my best abilities have been precognition (I foresee deaths or know who has died before I know about it. Also, during 9/11, I woke up with major depression and didn't want to get out of bed [before I knew what had happened].) and "knowing stuff" (For example, a friend of mine was freaked that a tin container of his was missing and, without missing a beat, I said, "You mean your condoms?". My friend looked at me, shocked that I asked that and said, "Yes." with a sigh. It was pretty funny.).

P.P.S.- I'm stale, so "Budweiser" was only a guess. Am I right?

[Shinotsa]

Heya, if anyone manages to succeed go tell the James Randi Educational Foundation, they've been offering a million dollar prize to anyone who can reliably show off psychic or supernatural powers for years.

[Reelya]

I quite liked the book that postulated that the biblical "manna from heaven" was actually algae(?)-based nutrition tapped from a nuclear-powered device that provided the heat required

Haven't you heard about the manna theory

- the starving Isrealites camped under some trees, each night Quails flocked in the trees, and each morning some white stuff like "dew" covered the ground under the trees but was compactable into cakes.

hmmm..birds, trees, white residue under the trees ... bird poo!

That's one theory, but there's a better one:

http://www.cookingissues.com/2010/06/09/anytime-it-rains-it-rains-manna-from-heaven/

Sometimes the bugs eat the sap and poop it out as sweet honeydew.  Like the familiar aphids that produce honeydew here, manna-producing bugs, like the Coccus manniparu responsible for Tamarisk manna, are very small and can go unnoticed even by the gatherers and casual studiers of manna.

Yep, so it's insect poo, probably mixed with bird poo

[Heliman]

I'm with Greatorder on this one, Astral projection is a pretty reliably wild theory. If it exists at least one military in the past several thousand years would have weaponized it by now (As I recall america tried with ESP but failed miserably.)

WILDs I can believe however. While it is strictly a point-of-view sort of thing, it at the very least bases itself on occurrences that every human encounters. A theory I personally find more intriguing is that people are just dreaming that they have free-will, as in, they are having a self-satisfying dream in which they feel that they are no longer bound while they dream.

[Svarte Troner]

I get some crazy lucid dreams once in a blue moon, but I've never actually tried to experience one, nor do I know how. But as others have said, this astral projection (while it would be a good name for an album or something) thing sounds a bit far-fetched to me at least.

[Tabbyman]

I agree that astral projection is pretty shaky stuff. I originally gave it a chance to impress a girl.

In the end, I lean heavily toward WILD.

Testing astral projection has lead to a lot of inconsistent information if I remember what I read correctly, back when I was looking into it. For instance, in my WILD, which I'll assume it was, there was an object on my desk that didn't exist in reality. How can I say I'm gathering information about reality when I see unreal objects? (edit: typo)

[Flare]

Whenever I have fevers I tend to go into this strange state of mind. It's not exactly like astral projection that the OP described, in that I don't really explore the universe. In those moments I seem to be able to comprehend vast scales of things. The vastness of my own arm or even my whole body would feel disturbingly massive. Stray thoughts like other large things like the vastness of the earth tend to scare me so much that I daren't move for fear of the immensity of the idea crushing me if I shifted around.
It's never a very good feeling to comprehend these thing. As things start piling up, the urge to vomit increases ever so much. Suddenly you're just as familiar to the 240 thousand odd miles from you to the moon as the cup within your own arm's reach. But the main type of comprehension that frightens me the most is the comprehension of the mass behind incredibly large things. In an instant it's like I've acquired what it feels like to judge the speed and momentum of a softball heading towards me in the place of the earth as it spins and falls around the sun. It's kinda like seeing a colossus in SotC for the first time, except it's many orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude worse. I tend to try not to think of anything when experiences like that happen.

[Reelya]

They've certainly done testing and nobody's been able to prove they astral projected. In these cases the proponents always trot out "you have to take these things on faith". But you just know if they could prove any psychic phenomena they'd drop "faith" like a lead balloon and go "we got PROOF suckers!".

All the proof needed would be to look at a piece of paper behind your head and tell the investigators what's written on it, which should NOT be hard at all. The only explanation for constantly failing such a test would be some sort of "uncertainty principle" where you couldn't actually attain any knowledge you didn't have before, which kind of renders astral projection as useless even if it's real.

Also, one accusation is of scientific bias against these phenomena, but the ONLY reason for bias is that no tests ever produced real results. Early scientists were TOTALLY open to psychic phenomena. And anyone who could prove they exist would have their names recorded forever in the history books. So, no logical reason for a "bias" which stopped these phenomena being recorded. Hell, plenty of modern science was disbelieved when it was first discovered, no less than psychic stuff. In fact plenty of modern science was less popular than psychic phenomena when first proposed, but came to be accepted due to consistent results.

I've had am intense sleep paralysis incident once and it was interesting, distortion of perception etc, i can see how it could be interepreted as a "spiritual" phenomena. I've also had dreams where I tried to turn a light switch on but it didn't work (could definitely "flick" the switch in the dream, just no effect. I guess working light switches is a bit beyond normal dream modelling of the real world)

[Neonivek]

The sensation that something should work but doesn't is quite common in dreams. Even outside the plausable such as simply being unable to do something you were just doing in your dream not too long ago.

[Flare]

I've had am intense sleep paralysis incident once and it was interesting, distortion of perception etc, i can see how it could be interepreted as a "spiritual" phenomena.

This is my feeling on it as well. The brain is a very strange thing, and for most things like ESP, or astral projection, I think the defensible position to people who think that is just to say they don't really know what's going on. That there is no data on your set of experiences does not mean the most wishful or convenient explanation is supported.