From: Corp.Sun.COM!Eric.Arnold (eric )
Subject: physical/non-physical/science/religion (was Re: message...)
Date: Fri, 13 Nov 1992 13:28:17 GMT

Original-Sender: Corp.Sun.COM!Eric.Arnold (eric )

 > Original-Sender: farris@ruhets.rutgers.edu (Lorenzo Farris)
 >
 > That there is something happening, there is no doubt. And both sides
 > of the debate agree on this.

I think Robert might disagree about the connotations of "something
happening".  His "reductionist" point of view (reductionist means to me
that everything in the world can be explained by reduction into smaller
parts, basically "science".  *Some* folks, "holists", use
"reductionist" as a dirty word, something I disagree with. ) is that
(tell me if I'm wrong) OOBE events are brain events like extended
dreams or other experiences stemming from altered consciousnesses.  I
personally just don't know what to think.  There are the debunkers,
who've done a pretty good job in the later part of this century, and
personally, I give them greater than a 50% chance of being right.
However, there is also a huge body of contrary data in the form of
anecdotal and religious history dating thousands of years.  Most of the
systematic historical traditions are from other cultures, most with
barriers to western investigation (or any investigation from outside
their "sects").

 > IMHO, you cannot divorce oobe's from paranormal events. Based on the
 > many anecdotes I have heard and read about oobe's and paranormal
 > events, and my own experiences, they very often go hand in hand. And
 > if you are really going out of body, how much more paranormal can you
 > really get.

For myself I would agree that you cannot at least divorce OOBE from the
*question* of paranormal events.  My personal experience does not make
any tighter associations.

> Original-Sender: gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us (Gary S. Trujillo)
>
> In <Nov.12.09.53.42.1992.22590@ruhets.rutgers.edu> farris@ruhets.rutgers.edu
> 	(Lorenzo Farris) writes:
>
> > That there is something happening, there is no doubt. And both sides
> > of the debate agree on this...
>
> > I think the point I am trying to make here is that the whole question
> > of whether something is leaving the body may be in fact moot, as at
> > that level of awareness it perhaps doesn't even really make sense to
> > talk about in-body or out-of-body.
>
> YES!!  This is a point I attempted to make (probably not succeeding very
> well) in a recent posting.  I don't really care to debate the question of
> whether "something" leaves the body, since I don't know enough about the
> physical (or non-physical) structure of the Universe to speak meaningfully
> about the subject, and it's not really important for the kinds of investi-
> gations I most want to do, which are more personally experiential in nature.

Actually, it seems like Lorenzo was making a different point than
Gary's.  I think Lorenzo was saying that because our understanding is
poor of the possible paradigm for the Universe, then saying
physical/non-physical may not be a meaningful distinction.  However,
Gary goes on to say that only meaningful exploration (perhaps
the distinction just isn't important to him) is the impact of OOBE
experiences, psychologically(?), to the experiencer:

> I hope we can avoid getting drawn into a purely analytical debate, such as

This particular analytical debate is interesting to me because it shows
how people are thinking about fitting the OOBE problem into their model of
the world.

> the ones I've gotten sucked into recently.  For my own part, I've resolved
> not to take part in any major way in those discussions that don't somehow
> relate to a personal curiosity having to do with wanting to use the exper-
> ience or the fact of people being able to have such experiences as a means
> of greater self-understanding.

I find it unsatisfying to leave it at that, and not try for some sort
of resolution with science or reality.  What goes on in my own head is
much less interesting to me than what is "real", and I'll define "real"
here to mean experiences that can be shared by people, either physical
or non-physical, and that they can agree about afterwards.  If people
can't agree on common experiences, then science cannot be applied to
it, and it falls under the catagory of religion.  The problem with
religion is that it means whatever it means to each individual, so I'd
rather stick to a scientific approach.  Normal reality meets this
"consensus" test, and anecdotes say that OOBE might also.

Finally, my self-understanding is bound to my understanding of life,
and that's bound to my understanding of the boundries between science
and religion (atheist, agnostics, and believers all process the world
differently).  Maybe that's bad for me and the root of all my problems,
who knows.

-Eric
Newsgroups: alt.out-of-body