OBE's, dreams, and REM sleep

Yes, yes,
Good ol’ LaBerge :smile:

OBEs, dreams, and the reality experienced in the waking state are all mental constructions, and further efforts in consciousness research may benefit from avoiding an arbitrary distinction between sleeping, dreaming and waking states.

Sleeping,Dreaming And Waking Life-ha,that might mean that monks are right…we as well might be asleep just not knowing that yet.
Damn,some techs would be appreciated.Normal techs,i dont mean all the meditation stuff.Preferably something to smoke.ie:)

I just noticed that the complete research document (pdf) is available at:
home.no/lucid/link.htm

I have the complete documents of the other researches I posted, but due to copyright restrictions I can’t put them online.

They are available at the nearest university library. That’s where I got them anyway :wink:

It is this kind of articles that makes me believe LaBerge has still more to offer than expensive Novadreamers :smile: . Seeing all realities (dreams, astral projection/OBE’s, waking reality) as the same kind of mental constructions, in other words seeing the commonalities between them instead of the differences is a gentle way of going beyond all the bickering between “believers” and “non-believers”. You don’t need to smoke anything to see the illusion right in front of you. Look around you right now, and you see a mental construction. Maybe based on external input, but who can be sure your senses give an adequate representation of “reality”? It’s probably not much better than the reality experienced by a maggot, just a few more senses doens’t mean perfect mirror of “reality”. Maybe you’re just a brain in a bottle, and mad scientists are creating your “reality” by providing sensual input to your brain :bored: . And what about all those thoughts running around in your head, they make the mental construction even more mental because they say what is important and what should be neglected, and so they create an intriguing story called “self” or “ego” with all its preferences and dramas. Hey maybe YOU are the mad scientist completely responsable for your “souvereign” reality, but you just don’t want to admit?

OK now let’s consider OBE’s and lucid dreams. When you are in these “other” realities, is the nature of your reality really so different? It’s just the reality where you are right now. I have read many (sometimes angry) discussions about this reality being “more” real than that reality but the fact is all those realities are experienced the same way, as a mental construction. Reality is where you are right now, period. You are always here, right now. There is no separation between different realities, let alone a hierarchy. Sure you can find differences but the commonalities cannot be neglected, like the impermanency of all the phenomena you experience, or the fact that you always need a mind to experience all those phenomena. You can be full of joy while flying in an LD and then you can screw the experience by thinking “oh my god I prefer this blissful reality to be more real than that stupid boring waking reality” This way you create a separation between heaven (the dream) and hell (waking life) and you will surely go through hell since you ALWAYS wake up from lucid dreams or astral planes. If you don’t separate them and just make the best of the reality you experience right now, where is heaven and hell?

That is the way of seeing reality LaBerge points to and he seems to have listened very well to the old masters, Tibetan or otherwise. Tibetan dream yoga includes day and night practice: during the day you constantly have to practice mindfulness and at the same time see the reality you experience as no different from “the substance of dreams”. And then there’s the lucid dreaming practice at night. This leads the practitioner to see the connection between all those mental states and if he digs deep enough maybe he also discovers the source of all those mental states. The fact that those practices and eastern philosophy in general has reached the west is something to be grateful for, because in the west we only see one side of the picture, the side of “how can we control and manipulate this ‘separate’ reality so that we can get what we want”. The meeting between east and west makes a more complete picture possible, can bring us closer to reality and thus live more in harmony with reality.

"This way you create a separation between heaven (the dream) and hell (waking life) and you will surely go through hell since you ALWAYS wake up from lucid dreams or astral planes. If you don’t separate them and just make the best of the reality you experience right now, where is heaven and hell? "

Well…easier said than done:(And i still hope for ld where i could extend the time to enormous lenghts.Some ppl did it.

Oh yes, much easier to talk the talk than to walk the walk. Nevermind my rambling rants, I’m just in the mood today :bounce: