Newsgroups: alt.dreams,alt.oobe
Subject: Re: alt.dreams
From: jtulli@eagle.wesleyan.edu
Date: 27 Jul 92 16:43:41 EDT
 <1992Jul24.224220.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu> <1992Jul25.213959.22247@gnosys.svle.ma.us>
Organization: Wesleyan University

In article <1992Jul25.213959.22247@gnosys.svle.ma.us>, gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us 
(Gary S. Trujillo) writes:
> In <1992Jul24.224220.1@eagle.wesleyan.edu> jtulli@eagle.wesleyan.edu writes:
> 
>> ...it could be the prelude to an out of body experience...
>> ...in that state you are also potentially receptive to visions
>> and other neat other-worldly stuff.
> 
> One of the topics I hope we can discuss, once we figure out what to call
> the OBE newsgroup is just how "other-worldly" the experience might be.

this is a good point.  i guess the reason i use such terms as "other-worldly"
is simply that i don't know what other terms there are to use to describe such
experiences.  i'm glad you pointed that out though, and think it would be a
very constructive subject.
 
> I've long felt that it would be useful to bring a bit more rigor to some
> of these discussions, and to help one another do some careful investigations.
> Sure, it's fun to share experiences, and to speculate about their meaning,
> but I'd also like to do such things as to construct a bibliography of the
> best literature on whatever subject we're investigating, and then set about
> talking carefully about what's been written, and combining it with our own
> personal experience and opinions about their significance.
> 
> As I mentioned over a year ago, when there was a lot of discussion of the
> out-of-body experience, most of us seem to talk about various phenomena
> which occur while our minds and bodies are "asleep," including dreaming,
> lucid dreaming and having OBEs as if they're yet another form of entertain-
> ment, kind of like watching television, and we're interested in finding out
> what's on various channels.  Is anyone besides myself interested in seeing
> what we can learn about ourselves by pondering the implications of being
> able to do such things?

yes.  i think there are many related subjects we could discuss, though i'm
afraid to list them because, again, my own opinions regarding them would shape
the terms i would use in such a way as to already define what i think is. 
perhaps they are most impartially represented in questions:
is there anything people can't do?
are obes evidence of a soul that lives on after death?
is there such a thing as reincarnation?
what is the significance of the physical world to the out of body self?
is there even such a thing as an out of body self?
if so, does it function when we are awake?
what is the nature of spiritual development?
what is the "higher self"?
etc., etc.

however, what i meant about not discussing the "objectivity" of obes on
alt.oobe is questions like "is an obe just a dream that activates the part of
the brain that determines what is real and therefore just a figment of the
imagination that comes across as being real?"  (some professor somewhere
invented an obe helmet-type thing that induced the experience in the majority
of his subjects and claims that obes are simply hallucinations that activate
the reality-sensing part of the brain.  (sorry to be so redundant, but...))  i
still think issues like that are best discussed on alt.paranormal, but if the
alt.oobe crowd decides it's a constructive topic, then so be it.  i hope,
however, that alt.oobe will turn out to be a newsgroup sympathetic to 
constructive discussion of all aspects of obes, and the turns that related 
books, interesting ideas, and our own experiences take us on.  (as opposed to a
group utilized solely for a debate between those who believe obes to be "real"
and those who don't.)

> I think the most fascinating of these topics is the OBE one, of course,
> though various kinds of dreaming are interesting in their own way.  I
> look forward to a far-ranging discussion, but I hope it will also be
> possible to delve into the phenomenon in a careful enough way to allow
> us to try to make some sense of the various implications of whatever it
> might be we're dealing with here.
> --
>     Gary S. Trujillo                            gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
> Somerville, Massachusetts              {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,ima,cdp}!gnosys!gst

Jude

ps: someone on alt.oobe said that you can't pronounce "obe".  to make reading
on the subject go faster, i pronounce it Ob--to rhyme with "probe".  hope
this is helpful...
Newsgroups: alt.dreams