Can you have out of body experiences?

[Kramodlog]

Dark matter is inferred and there is no concrete proof of it. Almost by definition there can't be. It's possible that our theory of gravity is just wrong and variable gravity is correct (or one of a handful of alternative theories). What you are really talking about is is an assumption that because something is accepted by the mainstream of science that there must be evidence for it and lots of it, too. Yet this isn't how science works at all. Theories stand (based upon observations) until they are disproven. They are not proven first. They do not even have to be replicated. Or replicable. Take for example the theory of multiple parallel universes.

Are there scientifict theories about projecting our souls outside our bodies?

 

[kingius]

Are there scientifict theories about projecting our souls outside our bodies?

No. This is considered to be outside of the domain of science, being applicable to the human soul and therefore more the domain of religion and/or spirituality. Modern science is atheistic at its core and resists the inclusion of paranormal data which might contradict materialistic views of the universe on the face of it, despite including what are essentially paranormal theories in its body (such as parallel universes, which work just as well for heaven, hell, asgard, etc as any religious idea does). The difference is that in the latter case it doesn't realise it is doing it. E.g. a Christian could easily claim that dark matter is heaven or something like this, but that idea would never appear in science even though it is just effectively different words that describe the same thing (hidden realms within the universe ... as in the Celtic otherworld perhaps).

 

[Zombie_Babies]

Keep telling yourself that.

/smokes cigarette

Those aren't the experiences to which I was referring. Don't worry, I'll never forget our night in Detroit.

Dark matter is inferred and there is no concrete proof of it. Almost by definition there can't be. It's possible that our theory of gravity is just wrong and variable gravity is correct (or one of a handful of alternative theories). What you are really talking about is is an assumption that because something is accepted by the mainstream of science that there must be evidence for it and lots of it, too. Yet this isn't how science works at all. Theories stand (based upon observations) until they are disproven. They are not proven first. They do not even have to be replicated. Or replicable. Take for example the theory of multiple parallel universes.

There are varying degrees of 'no concrete proof', I'm afraid. There's been a lot more research into what we're discussing now than there has been into out of body whatevering. It's really nothing more than some drugged up people talking about what they experienced while high. It's only slightly more credible than a friend on acid telling you that your face morphed into an eagle's head. 'A lot of people said so' isn't evidence at all. 'A lot of people' said there were witches and killed those witches. Does that make those folks actually witches or is there possibly some other explanation?

 

[Umbran]

A point of clarity - in assuming that out of body experiences are merely dreams, one is falling into a trap. If the dream revealed events that you could not possibly know...

Folks would be very surprised at how much you "could not possibly know" that is, in fact, readily available information.

My advice is to go read about these incidents and challenge what you think you know about the nature of reality.

Already have. I'm not impressed. The people gathering data in this field seem to have a less-than-adequate grasp of what constitutes a controlled experiment.

I'm a physicist. I challenge what I think I know about the nature of reality fairly regularly. I, however, have a pretty high bar on what I consider evidence, as opposed to anecdote.

 

[kingius]

Here's how science attempts to deal with this problem. It attempts to reduce it to simply brain activity. However to do this, it has to completely ignore the aspects of the reports which contradict this theory. For example, the reports of people knowing exactly who was in the room while they were unconscious and where they were stood, what they said to each other and so on, details which are confirmed by the people themselves as being true.

Now for the scientific reduction to work it must be presented as being the truth and discourage people from looking at the original reports themselves. Effectively it dismisses them as being worthless and because people to not research it for themselves they do not know that the theory being presented is not just inaccurate but completely wrong. Hence, we must look at what is being described by the theory, in this case we must actually read the reports of people who claim to have had these experiences and determine if the accepted theory has been disproven. I.e. we determine if reductionism of all activity to the brain is sufficient to explain this phenomena... or if the wool is being pulled over our collective eyes.

 

[kingius]

as opposed to anecdote.

All science is based upon observations and anecdote is also eye witness testimony which can get someone locked up for life in a murder trial, so I cry foul to the double standards you are hiding behind. Don't take this personally, mainstream scientists are all doing this, it's indemic because critical thinking is not being applied to the scientific method itself ... or the assumptions which scientists are building theories on top of. Effectively, this ends the discussion because it starts to get philosophical and we stray from the point too far.

 

[Umbran]

Dark matter is inferred and there is no concrete proof of it.

Correct. But then, the observations that made it clear that we need more mass to describe the motions of bodies in the Universe are fairly recent. Patience.

I note, however, that inference is very powerful. We infer your own existence from your postings, for example. Do you suggest we should also question whether you exist?

Almost by definition there can't be.

No. By definition our normal telescopes can't directly observe the stuff. That doesn't mean there can be no concrete proof of it - we simply have to use indirect observations, or tools other than telescopes.

It's possible that our theory of gravity is just wrong and variable gravity is correct (or one of a handful of alternative theories).

Yes, this is possible. Cosmologists don't deny it.

Theories stand (based upon observations) until they are disproven. They are not proven first. They do not even have to be replicated. Or replicable. Take for example the theory of multiple parallel universes.

You seem to be conflating the common language version of "theory" with the way the term is used in science. Among scientists, if an idea is untested, it is more usually referred to as an "Hypothesis". It becomes a theory only after the hypothesis is put through tests and found to be fairly solid.

There are wide swaths of hypotheses that cannot be tested, as they make no predictions. The hypothesis that there are universes outside our own is very nice, but unless you also posit that the boundaries between universes are crossed regularly in a particular way, or that the existence of another universe implies something specific that will happen in ours, then there's nothing to test. We can neither confirm nor deny the existence of other universes, as we have no way to check and see if they might be there.

Mind you, other universes are completely consistent with modern quantum mechanics. There's nothing in the way of them being there. But, the point is mostly moot, as we don't seem to interact with other universes in a meaningful way. Who cares if there's another universe, if you can't get there from here?

 

[Umbran]

For example, the reports of people knowing exactly who was in the room while they were unconscious and where they were stood, what they said to each other and so on, details which are confirmed by the people themselves as being true.

Which is pretty easily explained by the subject in question still being able to hear and/or see. Unless you also verify that brain death had occurred (and a flat EEG is not brain death), this is a possibility.

 

[kingius]

Yes these are out of body experiences reported during what are called NDE's. I highly recommend that you read these as they speak for themselves and put together a more convincing case than I ever could. In addition you'll be getting to the source which the materialist theories are attempting to conceal by misrepresenting the facts. Anyway I would like to not argue and would prefer for people to go see for themselves and make their own minds up, arguing the toss on an online forum doesn't serve either of us very well.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't particularly remember any out of body experience, but I believe they are possible, and that they are not supernatural or have anything to do with our souls leaving the body.

It is a matter of perception and memories, both are not perfect.

As Umbran stated - you may just underestimate at what an "unconcious" body can actually percieve. I don't remember hearing while I sleep, but my ears still function, as do my eyes (it's just with the eyelids closed, they don't see much). I don't remember in the morning all the sensations that my skin felt, or the taste in my mouth, or the smell my nose detected.

So I find it not hard to believe that some part of the brain actually registers something going on around it, people in the room, what they talk about.
But in the state you find yourself during a "out-of-body" experience, this information is not correctly assembled the way it usually is, so it appears "out of body".

Our brain does a lot of fancy stuff that we never conciously register. For example, it is correcting brightness, for the effect our natural eye lenses (including the fact that the image of the outside world appear upside down on our receptors, but are turned the right way - and it can adapt to this changing, if you wear special googles that revert the image beforehand, the brain eventually corrects for this and makes the effect disappear).

One of the things it seems to do is correctly give us a sense where and even when stuff happens (eye and ear are synchronized normally, and it can actually happen that people with a particular defect can constantly see stuff desynchronized, creating a perceptable delay between the perception of sound for an event and the perception of sight - e.g. seeing people speak and hearing the words come out a bit later).

So I figure an out of body experience is the result of a particular aspect in our brain not quite working as it normally does. That some people can conciously create this state is fascinating - it makes one wonder what kind of effects we could also get a level of concious control over (can everyone do it, or are their requisite elements to it you cannot just train? I may be wrong, but I think synesthesia cannot be "learned").