From: Scott Badger (wbadger@psyberlink.net)
Date: Thu Aug 05 1999 - 16:57:43 MDT
John Quinley <jquinley@aros.net>
> This sounds like you were napping around late-afternoon. OBE's are more
> common when one is napping or dozing, due to the fact that the person is
> unable to go into a full or deep sleep. What happens in an OBE is you
remain
> conscious or, as in your case, very close to conscious, as your body goes
to
> sleep. As your body drifts off into sleep, it releases a chemical that
> effectively paralyzes you so that you don't act out your dreams. Sometimes
> this malfuntions and people end up sleep-walking and so forth. Anyway,
once
> you become conscious after your body had paralyzed you, you experience and
> OBE. You are not really out of your body. You are basically in a
> dream-state. But it feels much more real than a dream (in fact, it appears
> just as real as reality) due to the fact that you are living it with your
> conscious mind.
Isn't this commonly referred to as the Hypnogogic State? That state of
consciousness can be the source of some very creative insights. It can also
be the source of some real crap.
I read a lot on this subject 10-15 years ago and remember one author
describing how the astral body is always connected to the physical via "The
Golden Cord" . . . an umbilical analog, I guess. And that often the astral
body will "snap" back into the physical from great distances causing the
physical body to suddenly jolt. Of course, many people have this experience
and wrongly conclude that, "Oh, so that's what that is. I was having an
OBE!" I think most if not all of us have experienced this sensation where
we're almost asleep and suddenly jolt back to wakefulness. For me, it often
feels as though I am dreaming that I'm tripping or jumping. Is anyone more
familiar with the real mechanics behind this phenomenon?
Here's another memorable story I read about a university professor who tried
to research and confirm of deny the accounts of children in India who
claimed that they remembered their past lives. Allegedly, children would
provide great detail about who they had been, their family members, the
neighborhood they lived in, their work, etc. A number of these stories had
been followed up by non-professionals and the stories were supposedly
confirmed. The professor attempted to use every means at his disposal to
confirm of deny the possible validity of these stories. Most of the cases
could not be verified, but some were (in his opinion) inexplicably accurate.
The most bizarre turn of events according to him, involved one child who
gave a quite detailed account of his past life. When they went to the house
(in another town far from the child) where the child was supposed to have
lived in his previous life, the person that he was supposed to have been
answered the door! An unusual number of details of the man's life were
apparently confirmed but he hadn't died yet! The professor concluded that
this single case suggested to him that reincarnation was probably hooey, but
the possibility existed that these children were telepathically tapping into
some sort of thought-pool that included information from the deceased as
well as the living.
This is all written up, but I would have to do some digging to get the
reference.
Of course, what the professor didn't realize was that the children were
probably having OBE's and traveling to other towns. And if I'm not
mistaken, can't astral bodies communicate with the dead? There . . . that
would explain it.
Scott Badger
-- not in touch with his spiritual side
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