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Consciousness and the Paranormal — Part 5

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blowfish said:
Yeah OBE they are interesting and frighting the sensation of moving through a small light and traveling above the clouds. Your breathing changes and able to see folks while floating above a ceiling . Is it the same as abduction sensation due to sleep paralysis or near death experience. The fact you could not breath maybe what human experience in death when a sudden accident nearly takes your life. The brain is still active while rest of the body has stopped working. A kick start like a engine and the brain organic computer reboots which picks another program close to the one you had before.
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I see OOBEs being discussed again, and as of yet I've seen no evidence substantial enough to convince me that it represents anything but a mental construct analogous to a waking dream containing elements that appear to be objectively real, but in fact are not. The human brain has amazing powers of visualization, that's all, and sometimes those processes intersect with our conscious awareness in a manner that produces the illusions experienced during OOBEs.

As an example of just how powerful our brain is, the other night I had a dream that I went to see a performance by Bruce Cockburn at a very small room I was unfamiliar with, and in that room were people I didn't know, and the song he played was one that I've never heard. So not only did my brain conjure up all the imagery on the fly, it also composed an entire song that I could watch being played live! It's just mind boggling. To compose such a piece while awake would no doubt take me hours, yet there I was, just like watching a live show. This kind of power leaves virtually no doubt in my mind that OOBE experiences aren't the result of a disembodied consciousness that goes floating around experiencing objective reality from some other vantage point than where the body is located.
 
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@ufology

Have you done any research into remote viewing?? If OBES are nothing but mental constructs then how would explain the use of remote viewing in the military in the stargate project as a source for intelegence gathering. There have been reports of people involved in those programs saying how accurate the remote viewing sessions were. So how could someone produce detailed and accurate mental images of specific locations without actually being there.
 
Metzinger cites an experiment inducing something like an OBE to it's subjects--toward the end of the "Ego Tunnel"...worth looking at.

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I received that book in the mail the other day and will look for that section. Various devices have been used to 'induce' out-of-body illusions in recent years. The experiments seem to indicate that the brain can be misled by optical illusions and other devices to a point of disorientation or confusion about where parts of one's body are. I'm not sure any such experiments have produced a whole out-of-body experience. Anyone know? Or whether in such a case the subject's sense of his/her consciousness and visual perspective are relocated.
 
there is one experiment where they make the subject wear a headset and are recorded from behind and the image of themselves is sent to the headset and the subject sees themselves from a 3rd person perspective... im not sure what it is called but it is an induced whole OBE... and i think the experiment you are talking about Constance is the rubber hand experiment which is where te subject is tricked into thinking and feeling that a fake hand is a part of their own body
 
sylithan said:
@ufology
Have you done any research into remote viewing?? If OBES are nothing but mental constructs then how would explain the use of remote viewing in the military in the stargate project as a source for intelegence gathering. There have been reports of people involved in those programs saying how accurate the remote viewing sessions were. So how could someone produce detailed and accurate mental images of specific locations without actually being there.
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I've looked at claims of remote viewing from both a pro and con perspective and my view on them is that the results are not as definitive as they are promoted to be by the purveyors of RV, consisting primarily of sketches that IMO bear only a weak resemblance to certain aspects of the target. Nevertheless the resemblance is sometimes enough to make a person wonder if it is purely coincidental, and if not, what process might be involved. In that regard there are the usual possibilities associated with extraordinary claims, like incomplete accounting of all the variables, exaggerations, and outright hoaxes.

But even if we assume that some RV sessions actually represent some kind of information about the target, then we still don't have sufficient cause to assume that it's because of an OOBE type experience where a person's disembodied spirit ( or whatever synonymous term you want to use ) floats over to the target and makes an observation. If the phenomena is happening at all, the only thing we can say is that information about the target is being transferred to the RVer, and that the mechanism of that transference is not fully understood. This means we can entertain a number of informal theories and determine which makes the most sense.

If we're going to go out on a limb and suggest something far fetched, the idea that the RVer may be picking up signals of various kinds is a good place to start. For example maybe the nature of the target in question is unintentionally leaked out on a subconscious level to the RVer, or even more far out, the Russian guard standing by the missile platform sees the missile and reports it's status to someone who in turn passes that info along until there are enough people collectively focused on the target for an RVer to pick up some kind of weak telepathic signal. Even that, although clearly into the realm of woo, seems more sensible than an OOBE type trip.
 
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sylithan said:
there is one experiment where they make the subject wear a headset and are recorded from behind and the image of themselves is sent to the headset and the subject sees themselves from a 3rd person perspective... im not sure what it is called but it is an induced whole OBE... and i think the experiment you are talking about Constance is the rubber hand experiment which is where te subject is tricked into thinking and feeling that a fake hand is a part of their own body
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Was the individual close to death or pronounced dead during the experiment? Remember talking to nurses who treated close to death individuals and they saw odd stuff which they were told to keep quite due to ridicule sounds familiar?
 
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blowfish said:
Look at the recent article about scientific experiments Gene posted and take every thing with a pinch of salt.
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Thanks, blowfish. Where did he post it? Link would be best, but the title of the thread might do if the thread is still visible..
 
@blowfish

no te individual tested are fully aware and healthy... its changing the perspective of the individual... come to think of it im not sure you could really call it an out of body experience but rater a simulated OBE... i just caught a television program in passing talking about those experiments.
 
The editorial reviews and comments on the book at amazon suggest that she has some ideas in common with Wolfgang Giegerich. Both drawn to Hegel. Might be interesting. Are you going to read it?
 
Constance said:
The editorial reviews and comments on the book at amazon suggest that she has some ideas in common with Wolfgang Giegerich. Both drawn to Hegel. Might be interesting. Are you going to read it?
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Zizek's back cover blurb is oft-cited in the reviews:

zizek.jpg
 
malabou.jpg

Perspectives in Continental Philosophy series ... it's a short book
 
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