(1) BODY TRAVEL: the theory that we have an actual astral body which travels around the world and to other planes of existence;
(2) IMAGINARY OR DREAM travel: the theory that each of us concocts these images by the same mechanism our brain uses in concocting dreams;
(3) MENTAL SPACE theory: the theory that astral travel is "real" to the extent that it can bring us information not possible in the mundane world, but that it is a journey through a kind of collective MENTAL space.
All of this is meant in a practical way, as a way of trying to make sense of experience -- and, ideally, to pave the way for more replication and a possibility of more third person science. (Let us skip the metasemantics for now, please.)
Those of us who ascribe a significant probability EITHER to theory 1 or to theory 3 really should pay attention to Stan's call for better replicability, not only to make the benefits available to more people, but also to improve our own personal development. CHOOSING 1 or 3 is not as important as expanding the first person base, in a way which also allows more useful sharing of experience.
In replying to Vinod's post on this, I agreed strongly that the experience of yoga here in training people to do astral travel is important, and should be explored and developed further, but ALSO noted that there are other very important and very serious training systems developed in other cultures as well (including even those which view astral travel as just a byproduct of something else). My quick list was not all that bad as a crude starting point...
But... early this morning... in a state which I label to myself as "cosmic consciousness"... I suddenly realized that I failed to list a very important piece of work, possibly the work which actually comes closest to the goal of scientific replicability of astral travel. If we go back, and re-examine that work in that light, perhaps we can appreciate how important it is, for anyone interested in astral travel.
I refer to the work reported in "Lucid Dreaming" by LaBerge. I recommend that anyone interested in astral travel buy his classic 1990 book for $10 from Amazon if you do not have access to it in another way:
LaBerge's book is far more humble than books from Joan Roberts, for example, who writes ponderous tomes claiming to voice the words of great disembodied spirits. She in turn is far more humble than folks who claim to speak for (or be) God Himself. But does humility prove the guy knows less about the big things? We really need to resist that kind of misleading stereotype!! In Jane Robert's work, the book I like/respect most is her Oversoul Seven trilogy; I remember three vivid and important images from that trilogy, one of them the story of a reasonable but proud mystic who learns to pay more attention to the real, humble things "just under his own nose."
So please let us pay attention to LaBerge's book.
First, note that LaBerge is a real scientist, an empirical researcher (at Stanford) whose work has been published in Science. He was president of the international sleep research society.
"But" the glorious would protest "He is talking about dreams, not astral travel."
But if we pay attention... his book is full of protocols and records of what people saw and did in his laboratory. If you take one look at those records, you will instantly see the relevance. Words like "I started as usual floating up over my body... then floated through the wall.." LaBerge realized that with solid records like that, he did not need to make great claims about his metaconsciousness. The words spoke for themselves.. so strongly that he needed to calm dopwn his scientific colleagues. And how did he do that? By saying "No, of course I do not believe this was a real physical journey. It was all just a journey within the mind." And then he footnoted philosophical works suggesting that all is mind. In effect, LaBerge, like me, supports theory 3 above, the theory that astral travel is a journey in mental space. But -- above all, LaBerge has laboratory tested protocols which regularly CREATE this type of mental experience. I do not know whether any psi lab has gone further, to connect LaBerge's protocols with tests of psi, but that would certainly make sense to do. (Perhaps someone on this list will tell us it has been done or attempted. Or not. I have not even read LaBerge's more recent books.)
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That's the serious message. Then some off-beat personal comments/footnotes.
Given how hard it is to express tricky ideas in words, long streams of words, we also need to make room for jokes -- for very quick statements, labelled clearly as imperfect, analogous to haiku. Among the half-true jokes which came to me on this subject:
"Today I am supposed to do taxes. Since only death and taxes are inevitable, let me avoid taxes for now with something more pleasant -- death."
"If we are all part of God, God must be schizophrenic."
Theory 3 says that when we die, as individual humans, there are only two possibilities: (1) we end altogether, as in theory 2, where old folks like me need to pay ever more attention on passing on whatever we can to family and others;
(2) we may live on to some extent as a thought or collection of thoughts, inhabiting a mental space. Theory 3 suggests that old folks especially need to think about ALL they can pass on, not only the mundane aspect (1) but ALSO the thoughts which can be passed on or preserved in collective mental space.
The idea of collective mental space is not new, and not limited to speculations about the universe itself as mind. I have often talked about the "noosphere" or de Chardin and Verdansky. Carl Jung certainly talks about collective mind as well.
But "Is God schizophrenic?" Early this morning I asked my wife to think about little girls, how they might LOOK schizophrenic on the surface.. when really, they are just little girls, playing at many things, growing up but not growing up in one big jump. My theory of the noosphere is NOT a religious worship of Verdansky's version; it is a major modification of that theory, even larger than my modification MQED of David Deutsch's version of QED.
Best of luck,
Paul
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P.S. As I review this, I realize someone might ask "But what is this cosmic consciousness" state? Very simply, it is not necessary for a brain to have ONLY 2-D or 3-D visual images as the only thoughts inside it. Mental space also includes abstractions and more universal concepts and collective memories. To me, "cosmic consciousness" simply connotes a more flexible and direct communication within the system, without the need for mental props, and with some ability to shift focus naturally linked to a kind of emergent cognitive map of it.
Here is a previous dialogue with some relevance to that question:
Vinod:
What is the meaning of stating that noosphere like earth organisms have body, brain, and cells? Do you want to state that the way our earth is inhabited by the living organisms having bodies made of cells and brain similarly the noosphere is also inhabited by living organisms having their own bodies? cells and the brain? If it is so, I agree with it but I don;t think such bodies in the noosphere should have bodies made of cells and brain.
I try to remember as clearly as possible what I think I know, and what I don't -- even after intense explorations.
The basic idea that we humans are a symbiosis of visible body and noosphere component I hold to quite tightly, since I see no other possible TENABLE explanation for what we have experienced, short of assuming things like our entire multiverse being someone's computer simulation and other such ideas for which we have no empirical "hook" and no way to use them as yet.
But what is the noosphere of earth or of our solar system really like, IN DETAIL? I have actually considered different possible images. These different images are related DIRECTLY to the different views of reincarnation which were discussed on this list before.
There is one possible image which I now think of as the "Aurobindo" model, based on a post giving his view. (I am sorry I cannot easily find and cite that post, using gmail.) In that model, each of us in a symbiosis of body and a GROUP of cells or "seeds of memory" in the larger brain of the noosphere, cells which simply get reused after we die. The information lives, but the personal identity does not, EXCEPT to the extent that the information saved contains CONNECTIONS holding the information together in a coherent and active way, preserving something like the personal identity. (Ouspensky and Bennett have explained Gurdjieff's ideas and yoga-like exercises for how to create such a persistent identity. I forget whether Dean Radin's new book Real Magic discusses those specific exercises.) But why would one bother to preserve a personal identity anyway? Well, preserving and expanding the noosphere part of our mind is a natural process in general; connections and coherence are a natural part of that, of positive value but not to be overvalued.
But there is an opposite extreme possibility. Many neuroscientists have argued that neurons are organized into "assemblies" or "modules" or "columns" which hold together over time. In the mathematics of neural networks (which apply here as they do to simpler types of brains), there are good functional reasons why this should be so. The great animal behaviorist, M.E. Bitterman, has even argued (with recent support from E.O. Wilson) that HIVES of bees have achieved a qualitative level of intelligence/consciousness as high as mammals, higher than reptiles, as a kind of collective intelligence effect. And so, it is possible that our personal "souls" (the noosphere component of each of us) DO have a fundamental hard-wired persistent identity in the noosphere, either as modules or as "bees" (NO LESS connected than that, to meet what we see empirically).. or a mix of both types?... (Indeed, it is possible that the noosphere contains a combination of "seed cells," module souls and bee souls, IN ADDITION to other information-bearing entities which are not linked to animal bodies.)
But no, it seems very unlikely to me that we have actual personal BODIES in the noosphere, for many reasons. Above all, my experience with astral travel, for example, stresses that it is travel through a MENTAL space (which I view as the mental space of the noosphere). Some astral travelers (Besant? Fox?) say that "the astral plane has regions closer to the earth and farther from the earth." But Fox, who chronicled his experience with OOBE on earth in great detail, gives examples showing that "close" is NOT identical. And it is well-known that we can change our apparent form (or "avatar" as defined in internet work) over a wide range, if we so choose and learn how. Neurons CAN influence the physical action of muscles, BY WAY of the effects which occur when information passes from them to other neurons to other channels in the nervous system; such circuits are sometimes very short, and sometimes long.
VINOD FURTHER COMMENTED:
Of course, the inhabitants of noosphere should have their own unique " cognitive system" but whether this system is composed of cells and brain does not seem to be logic. In the noosphere, there is no baryonic matter of quantum particles, therefore, there should be no cells and brain as we know. The "cognitive system: of the inhabitants of the noosphere should be composed of some ontological substance, as distinct from the e.m field/quantum particles.
I would claim that the evolution of life in the ocean of dark matter would "start" with (be built upon) evolution of ITS kind of cells, made up of dark matter, which permits the further evolution of structures like brains and noospheres composed of such dark matter cells.
The brain of our noosphere has its own cognitive structure, and its own dark matter cell components, and the same additional complexities we see in ordinary matter brains (and more). These are of course not ordinary matter cells. How different is dark matter form ordinary matter? Of course we do not know yet, but its properties need not be radically different from some of the possibilities within the scope of serious physics.
That is why in my previous message, I posed a specific issue to you regarding your views on the ontology of noosphere - whether it is having its own ontological substance as distinct from physical fields/particles or an extension/manifestation of physical e.m field/physical quantum particles. But somehow, You seemed to have overlooked this query since I don't find any mention of this in your message
Fair enough. I cannot say how "ontological" dark matter may be. I do not have any empirical "hook" to justify assuming too many exotic properties, but in truth we do not yet have a well-grounded model of anything but the gravitational properties.
I previously wrote:
I view the "astral plane" as totally or pr in aquiteimarily a "dream of the noosphere", the dream/thoughts of an actual person (if an intelligent organism can be properly understood as a person). Brains do look different from the viewpoint of a neuron in the brain, versus from the outside.
Vinod:
I treat astral plane of nature and noosphere as synonymous though I don't know if the ontological astral matter is the same as the dark matter of the Physicists hypothesized to explain extra gravitation. But I understand and believe that in the state of Samaadhi thru the subjective 1pp experiences, the ontological reality of the Astral world, with astral beings possessing astral bodies, can be viewed in a quite vivid and reproducible manner.
This point is extremely important, much more important than the majority of what we discuss on this list.
The word "reproducible" is most important.
Many cultures in the world worked very hard, through centuries, to develop protocols and training methods to allow the reproduction of such experiences, and it is very unfortunate that important knowledge may have been lost. Dean Radin's new book Real Magic addresses some of that. I have benefitted from reading many useful sources, such as Walsh's book Shamanism, Corbin's book on life in the Sufis (perpetuating techniques of the Pythagorean school), Western mysticism, and many things from China. (Probably some others I forget. I do cite De Chardin, Greeley, Besant, Orson Scott Card etc., at times.) It would be good if the knowledge AND the uncertainties about HOW to generate and reproduce such experiences could be better unified, and studied with more intensity and focus.
I am not sure how to make that happen, but I view it as one of the VERY most important challenges before humanity at the present time.
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