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Originally posted by Druscilla
reply to post by ProperlyErrant
You neglect to factor in observation from multiple independent sources that can verify replication or failure of replication. Further, any sufficient observations in a properly designed study would be monitored using various sensing equipment apparatus of differing sensitivities with redundancies and tertiary fail overs for full spectra coverage of any observable event across the entire range of known observable spectrum.
Make fun all you will, but, now you're just trying to play Calvin Ball:
Originally posted by Soylent Green Is People
Look -- we can debate all we want about whether or no hallucinogenic drugs boost creativity or not. To be clear, though, I'm not condoning the recreational use of drugs, but I personally think drugs can increase creativity but opening the mind -- sort of like when someone brainstorms ideas, or has great ideas come to them in a dream. I personally have some of my best ideas (such as find solutions to issue that arise in my work) when I'm at that in-between state of being awake and being asleep.
...HOWEVER, that's beyond the point here. The OP's assertion was that Shamans -- through the use of meditation and medication (i.e., psychedelic drugs) -- are able to access other dimensions and astral planes.
Well, that just ain't happening, as far as I can tell. Those shamans may be really tripping, and maybe exploring deeply buried and primitive parts of their brains, but they're not finding doors to other dimensions. Whatever they find is completely in their own heads, and is not part of the world outside their heads.
So, at least in that respect, I think whatever those shamans are discovering is basically just in their imaginations and is not real.
edit on 11/28/2012 by Soylent Green Is People because: (no reason given)
A look at Oshana's website, and even a listen to a random selection of his online class replays, might not suggest that he is much different from any other spiritual teacher or self-professed "enlightened being" on the market. His actual methods and goals have until now been quite well-concealed. This seems to be changing. Lately, Oshana has talked a little less about enlightenment and a lot more about the obstacle to it: the ego. He has described the ego, in graphic and visceral terms, as an octopus whose head is situated in or around the human brain, and whose limbs extend into every cell of the body. This octopus is like an alien parasite taking over a host body: it has almost total control over our thoughts, actions, and perceptions.
At first, Oshana seemed to be speaking metaphorically, but over time, I began to suspect that he was speaking energetically. The ego he was describing was at least somewhat physical. As Thomas cries after the bug is removed from his stomach: "That thing is real??" The ego described by Oshana is a kind of alien implant in the human body, similar not just to science-fiction stories but also to sorcery tradition (the "foreign installation" described in Castaneda's last work The Active Side of Infinity). Whatever its exact nature, and wherever it came from, the octopus-ego has hijacked our life force and is now in almost total control of our lives. Like an invasion of body snatchers, the egos have infested the planet. The enlightenment process is the process of exposing, isolating, and extracting the octopus from our nervous systems, in order that the life force can return to the body and resume a natural and healthy relationship with it. The ego has dethroned the soul, and enlightenment is only possible when the slimy usurper has been outed and slain, and the soul can re-animate the body again.
The "octopus" -- whatever its primary origin -- has insinuated itself into the human nervous system like a foreign "driver" generating its own reality program. Through this program, it is able to hijack our senses, both inner and outer. Our conscious life force or soul is isolated and kept from accessing greater reality, both outside and inside of us. It then becomes fuel for the octopus, both a food source and a means to replicate itself. We have been turned into batteries and livestock. This is spiritual fact, and it is the only suitable context for any kind of spiritual development or training. We are engaged in a spiritual war and what is at stake is our own life force.
Originally posted by CallYourBluff
I'm interested to know why you turn up on these threads. You clearly have no interest in these subjects, but you sure do enjoy calling people ignorant and uneducated. Is it your ego?
Originally posted by Druscilla
3. How old do you think I am?
I was in Full-Time University (16 hours of classes and labs enrollment) at 16.
I won't say what my academic accreditation entails, but, I went to school for well over a decade plus some.
From there, I've embarked on a successful independent career where I essentially make my own hours, attending to a variety of projects and interests with liberties extending to taking two or three vacations a year at most any leisure I desire.
Care to reconsider my age?
Originally posted by Druscilla
Edit: Re: #3: I misread your statement regarding EGO as "age". I'm not infallible.
Originally posted by Druscilla The majority of Alien Contact reports and claims can be described and attributed to subject specific personally subjective Psychological Phenomenon experiences.
Originally posted by Druscilla
Countdown reaches zero. Doors get opened to puffs of smoke and exclamations of man dude wow man dude wow far-out, and subjects are interviewed in isolation regarding their "travels".
They often detail extrapolations of symbolisms based on their own unique identifier, but, never is there an actual exchange of any valid information indicatory in the least that anyone went anywhere anyone else did to commune anything.
They simply convinced themselves there was some communion, when in fact whatever trip they took was just the the vast universe of their own brain jelly.
Originally posted by Druscilla
Name something, anything philosophically, physically, engineering wise, mathematically, culturally, and/or of societal developmental significance other than a long string of works from contemporary musicians that ever came out of these "consciousness expanding" experiences.
Originally posted by Druscilla
reply to post by mcrom901
If it was anything more than brain masturbation we'd have whole teams of people camped out in shifts doing sessions in sweat lodges to divine the next great next-gen propulsion systems, architecture, engineering, medical advances, robotics, Informatics, transportation, agricultural development, bioengineering and any other number of sundry specialties and concentrations that could profit were there any merit beyond self gratifying brain masturbation in these states of "expanded consciousness"
Robert Monroe UFO Encounter
Connections between out of body experience and ostensible UFO encounters stem from an experience reported by Robert Monroe, author of Journeys Out of the Body. Monroe's out-of-body experiences, which have been previously mentioned, actually began with an encounter strangely reminiscent of some of the more believable UFO abduction cases.
Monroe himself was not aware of the connection until many years after the following event when he first read Fuller's book on the Betty and Barney Hill case, The Interrupted Journey. There were three facts presented in the book that astonished him.
The first of these was the physical examination that was described as taking place within the saucer vehicle. Secondly, were the beeping noises that the Hills heard, and lastly the blemishes that appeared on the Hill's automobile. Fortunately, Monroe had kept careful records of his experiences and he was able to check his notes for 1958 when this experience occurred.
He was alone one evening, in a little ten-by-ten office, he had built for himself back in the Virginia Blue Ridge mountains. The first strange thing he noticed was a repeating tone about 800 cycles per second. Then it felt to him as if a beam of heat penetrated the walls of his office and hit his body, from a position about thirty degrees above the horizon.
From that point on he was aware of the presence of three or four entities. He was unable to see their forms in detail, although he had a sense he was seeing some forms. He also had the experience of telepathic communication with them lasting for about two and a half hours. Particularly striking for Monroe was the sensation of having a cup-like object placed over his groin precisely as Barney Hill had described! The examination and communication that followed was rather detailed.
Monroe felt the most important sensation was as if his brain were being probed -- as if everything he knew or thought was examined. Of course, he was rather awestruck by the situation and did not make all of the observations which he later thought of. Today, he maintains the examination took place while he was outside of his body, but still in the physical environment of his office.
However, being inexperienced at the time, he did not know how to interpret the event. Now he even hypothesizes the incident may have changed his brain in some way that led to his subsequent out-of-body journeying. Generally speaking Monroe does not associate the out-of-body state with other UFO encounters. He acknowledges the presence of many strange creatures and beings in the out-of-body state, but feels there is no evidence they are related to UFOs.
Only on one other out-of-body trip did he experience anything like a UFO: This happened in the early days of my out-of-body journeys, from the same office. I rolled out of the physical and thought I would go play for a while. It was a beautiful cumulus cloud day. So I went up and was doing power rolls through clouds and things like that. As I came out and circled round this one large cumulus, there was this disk shaped object sitting between two cloud towers. The cockpit was, I would assume, maybe ten or eleven feet in diameter. There were two snake- like heads coming out of it. They were long heads without any shoulders. They could have been mechanical devices. They appeared to be rotating, like rods with helmets on top. I perceived a peculiar sort of frequency coming out of them. I was within two hundred feet. Then I got nervous and just turned around and went home before I was discovered.
These are the only UFO experiences Monroe associates with the out-of-body state. However, he also describes peculiar visions preceded by a hissing sound and a sensation like a valve opening in his brain. Monroe claims these visions have produced accurate scenes of the future in so far as he has been able to verify them. One such vision, which has not yet manifested, describes what might sound like mass UFO landings:
Behind the first wave is row after row of the strange aircraft, literally hundreds of them. They are not like any airplanes I have seen before. No wings are visible, and each machine is gigantic, some three-thousand feet across. Each is shaped like the head of an arrow, V-shaped, but with no fuselage as in our swept-wing airplanes. The V shape is not a lifting surface, but houses the occupants in two or three decks. They sail majestically overhead, and I feel a tingle of awe at the mighty power they represent. I also feel fear, because I somehow know that these are not man-made.
Originally posted by milomilo a spiritualist want to explain by adding data gathered from spiritual sources which is unverifiable and subject to massive illusion and lies..