Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
caligari
()
Date: September 26, 2007 12:56AM
From Science Daily, [tinyurl.com]
=================================
Studies say out-of-body is not out-of-mind
LONDON, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- British and other European researchers have
found a way to induce out-of-body experiences using virtual reality
goggles.
The researchers, who used the goggles to mix up sensory signals to the
brain, said the studies suggest a scientific explanation for a
phenomenon often thought to be a figment of the imagination, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science said Friday in a
release.
The scientists said the sight of their bodies located somewhere else
plus the feel of their real bodies being touched simultaneously made
volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.
The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest out-of-body
experiences may be created by a disconnect between the brain circuits
that process certain types of sensory information.
In a study by Henrik Ehrsson of University College London and the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, volunteers viewed recorded images
through their headsets. In the other study, by Olaf Blanke of the
Ecole Polytechique Federale de Lausanne and University Hospital in
Switzerland, volunteers saw images of their own bodies from the
perspective of someone behind them.
The studies said multi-sensory conflict is a key mechanism underlying
out-of-body experiences.
=================================
In LGATs it may be possible to induce a similar confusion of the senses in a group within a controlled environment over long hours and several days using hypnotic suggestion and emotional testimony by other members stating they're having a transformative experience. Calling people outside the group to share their transformation and enrolling them into the group could be used to cement that induced experience as real. To convince others that something happened that didn't one may need to convince oneself first.
=================================
Studies say out-of-body is not out-of-mind
LONDON, Aug. 24 (UPI) -- British and other European researchers have
found a way to induce out-of-body experiences using virtual reality
goggles.
The researchers, who used the goggles to mix up sensory signals to the
brain, said the studies suggest a scientific explanation for a
phenomenon often thought to be a figment of the imagination, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science said Friday in a
release.
The scientists said the sight of their bodies located somewhere else
plus the feel of their real bodies being touched simultaneously made
volunteers sense that they had moved outside of their physical bodies.
The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest out-of-body
experiences may be created by a disconnect between the brain circuits
that process certain types of sensory information.
In a study by Henrik Ehrsson of University College London and the
Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, volunteers viewed recorded images
through their headsets. In the other study, by Olaf Blanke of the
Ecole Polytechique Federale de Lausanne and University Hospital in
Switzerland, volunteers saw images of their own bodies from the
perspective of someone behind them.
The studies said multi-sensory conflict is a key mechanism underlying
out-of-body experiences.
=================================
In LGATs it may be possible to induce a similar confusion of the senses in a group within a controlled environment over long hours and several days using hypnotic suggestion and emotional testimony by other members stating they're having a transformative experience. Calling people outside the group to share their transformation and enrolling them into the group could be used to cement that induced experience as real. To convince others that something happened that didn't one may need to convince oneself first.
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
SaneAgain
()
Date: September 26, 2007 01:24AM
Yes, and aside from the general confusion on Quest basic in South Africa there is a process where two people sit in a dyad for up to two hours, have to maintain eye contact for all that time while answering emotionally draining and frustrating questions that appear to have no answer.
This is at the end of the three day seminar, when people are already tired and confused. Once people get the answer most literally do have an out of body experience. My friend recognised it as such because he'd recently had the same experience in a car accident. He thought it was cool; most people thought they'd seen god. I remember I felt I was a star in the sky looking down on myself in the quest hall.
I think on quest the dyad is the main reason 95% of people rate it as an awesome experience.
Do other lgats do the same and cause literal, obvious out of body experiences?
I really wish scientists would do a study of this in lgats.
This is at the end of the three day seminar, when people are already tired and confused. Once people get the answer most literally do have an out of body experience. My friend recognised it as such because he'd recently had the same experience in a car accident. He thought it was cool; most people thought they'd seen god. I remember I felt I was a star in the sky looking down on myself in the quest hall.
I think on quest the dyad is the main reason 95% of people rate it as an awesome experience.
Do other lgats do the same and cause literal, obvious out of body experiences?
I really wish scientists would do a study of this in lgats.
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
Zorro
()
Date: September 26, 2007 01:45AM
On the last full day of the Advanced Communications course the instructor had us do an exercise where we closed our eyes and did some sort of regression. This was towards the end of the evening on Sunday. The instructor asked class if they had noticed or felt anything. Some people had. One person said that she thought she saw God!
I didn't get anything out of the exercise, atleast I thought I hadn't at the time because I did not cooperate other than closing my eyes and pretending to do the exercise.
This exercise came right after I called Landmark out on it BS infront of the class. Funny they didn't make me leave the place.....
Anyhow on my drive home I started having optical hallucinations. It was late after midnight and I had been through two days of intense long hours of the Landmark Advanced Communications course. Plus it probably didn't help that I was jazzed up from calling them out. The whole experience of the optical illusions were scarry. I think intense fatigue and anger coupled with the brain washing I had been subjected to caused this to happen.
Anyone else have a similar Landmark exprience?
I didn't get anything out of the exercise, atleast I thought I hadn't at the time because I did not cooperate other than closing my eyes and pretending to do the exercise.
This exercise came right after I called Landmark out on it BS infront of the class. Funny they didn't make me leave the place.....
Anyhow on my drive home I started having optical hallucinations. It was late after midnight and I had been through two days of intense long hours of the Landmark Advanced Communications course. Plus it probably didn't help that I was jazzed up from calling them out. The whole experience of the optical illusions were scarry. I think intense fatigue and anger coupled with the brain washing I had been subjected to caused this to happen.
Anyone else have a similar Landmark exprience?
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
SaneAgain
()
Date: September 26, 2007 02:20AM
Zorro,
I wonder if closing your eyes and graphically imagining - literally "picturing" yourslef in another place, has the same effect as wearing goggles that show you in another place? Particularly for people with vivid imaginations?
I agree there must be something about the emotional stress as well. In that dyad exercise the interesting thing is that the assistants don't have OBE's - or at least, not as intense ones. So my first thought was that it must be something to do with eye movement, having fixed eye contact - assistants are advised to lean back and take a breath if they get "tunnel vision" and I guess tunnel vision is the beginning of what might lead to an OBE. So they are trained in how to do the exercise without popping off into outer space.
The other thing different for the assistants is that they are trained to be neutral - have no emotional response to anything the delegate says, don't even remember anything they say, let it disappear. And of course they're not under any real pressure, they just know they have to sit there and ask the questions. On the other hand the delegates are under pressure to get the right answer and the right answer is to do with what they "really" want... this leads most people down a really emotional track, to things like: wanting people who've died to come back, admitting embarrassing desires, and so on.
So yes, I think the emotional strain combined with something to do with visual processing is what causes it.
Quote
On the last full day of the Advanced Communications course the instructor had us do an exercise where we closed our eyes and did some sort of regression. This was towards the end of the evening on Sunday. The instructor asked class if they had noticed or felt anything. Some people had. One person said that she thought she saw God!
I wonder if closing your eyes and graphically imagining - literally "picturing" yourslef in another place, has the same effect as wearing goggles that show you in another place? Particularly for people with vivid imaginations?
I agree there must be something about the emotional stress as well. In that dyad exercise the interesting thing is that the assistants don't have OBE's - or at least, not as intense ones. So my first thought was that it must be something to do with eye movement, having fixed eye contact - assistants are advised to lean back and take a breath if they get "tunnel vision" and I guess tunnel vision is the beginning of what might lead to an OBE. So they are trained in how to do the exercise without popping off into outer space.
The other thing different for the assistants is that they are trained to be neutral - have no emotional response to anything the delegate says, don't even remember anything they say, let it disappear. And of course they're not under any real pressure, they just know they have to sit there and ask the questions. On the other hand the delegates are under pressure to get the right answer and the right answer is to do with what they "really" want... this leads most people down a really emotional track, to things like: wanting people who've died to come back, admitting embarrassing desires, and so on.
So yes, I think the emotional strain combined with something to do with visual processing is what causes it.
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
SaneAgain
()
Date: September 26, 2007 02:22AM
Forgot to say, maybe your hallucinations were the combination of stress and the visual strain of focussing on the road, through oncoming headlights, when you were also tired?
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
SaneAgain
()
Date: September 26, 2007 02:33AM
Zorro,
Yes, I experienced that exactly, but around about the time I left I also had a psychosis, and got PTSD, so I've always thought it was that more than a general lgat thing - very interesting!!!!
I definitely found when I left I had a lot of dreams and nightmares and they were mostly about quest, at least once a week usually two or three times a week. When I found this website and started figuring things out, the dreams got worse at first, but they seem to have cleared up now, down to about one bad dream every two three weeks, instead of a few times a week.
Were any of your dreams specifically or metaphorically about landmark? Were they generally good, bad or neutral?
Interesting they don't do gender programming at landmark, and you say people became more neutral... I think it just shows people become whatever they're programmed into, without specific masculine / feminine programming those traits are maybe just overwhelmed by all the other programming?
Quote
I even stopped dreaming when I was asleep. I discussed this with another Lekkie when I first started Landmark and she was experiencing the same thing. I've started having dreams now that I've left Landmark. Some are quite disturbing I often wake up with sweat soaked clothes. This used to not happen, not with the temp I keep my place at night.
Anyone else experience this?
Yes, I experienced that exactly, but around about the time I left I also had a psychosis, and got PTSD, so I've always thought it was that more than a general lgat thing - very interesting!!!!
I definitely found when I left I had a lot of dreams and nightmares and they were mostly about quest, at least once a week usually two or three times a week. When I found this website and started figuring things out, the dreams got worse at first, but they seem to have cleared up now, down to about one bad dream every two three weeks, instead of a few times a week.
Were any of your dreams specifically or metaphorically about landmark? Were they generally good, bad or neutral?
Interesting they don't do gender programming at landmark, and you say people became more neutral... I think it just shows people become whatever they're programmed into, without specific masculine / feminine programming those traits are maybe just overwhelmed by all the other programming?
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
SaneAgain
()
Date: September 26, 2007 02:34AM
:roll: Sorry... posted on wrong thread again...
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
corboy
()
Date: September 26, 2007 03:15AM
It doesnt take much to trigger inner experiences in people.
Here is an article by David C Lane
[www.ex-premie.org]
Here is an article by David C Lane
[www.ex-premie.org]
Quote
[b:f285717509]THE KIRPAL STATISTIC[/b:f285717509]
[i:f285717509]Using Inner Visions to Your Social Advantage[/i:f285717509]
Excerpt from:
EXPOSING CULTS: When the Skeptical Mind Confronts the Mystical.
Author: David Christopher Lane
Publisher: Garland Publishing, Inc. New York and London.
Publication date: August 1994
It turns out that almost everybody has the inherent ability to see inner light and hear inner sound. Moreover, almost everybody has the capacity to have an out-of-body experience and behold wondrous inner visions. You don't need to go to an Indian guru to have such experiences indeed, you don't need to go anywhere at all.
But that's not what Kirpal Singh and his successors told their vast following. Instead, unsuspecting seekers(who number in the thousands) were taught to believe that it was the guru himself, not the disciple, who was orchestrating the elevation of the soul into higher regions. But Kirpal and crew were not being completely forthcoming about the mechanism which governs access to such amazing sights and sounds. That mechanism is the brain and that three pounds of glorious tissue is the lot of all humans.
In the early 1980s when I was teaching religious studies at a Catholic high school, I tried several meditation experiments with my students which convinced me that Kirpal Singh and other gurus like him were taking undue credit for their disciples' inner experiences. In my trial mediation sessions, I informed my students beforehand about the possibility of seeing inner lights and hearing inner sounds.
Naturally, given the boring routine of secondary education, my students were intrigued. I informed them that I knew of an ancient yoga technique that would facilitate their inner voyages. I turned the lights off, instructed them briefly about closing their eyes gently and looking for sparks of light at the proverbial third eye. I told them that I would touch some students on the forehead lightly with my fingers. They meditated for some five minutes. I then proceeded to ask them about their experiences.
[Kirpal Singh invariably did such a process directly after his initiation ceremonies; he also kept a running tally of how many saw stars and so on-something which I have called the 'Kirpal Statistic'.]
To my amazement, since I felt that Kirpal Singh and others were actually transmitting spiritual power, the majority of my students reported seeing light. A few students even claimed to have visions of personages in the middle of the light. Others reported hearing subtle sounds and the like.
I repeated the experiment on four other classes that day. I have also in the past ten years conducted the same experiment on my college students (both undergraduate and graduate). The result, though differing in terms of absolute numbers, is remarkably the same. The majority see and hear something. It doesn't take a neuropsychologist or a sociologist trained in statistics to realize that Kirpal Singh and others were simply tapping into an already built reservoir of meditational possibilities.
What was unique about Kirpal's approach, at least in comparison with other Radhasoami gurus, was that he claimed to be the responsible agent, the medium through which such inner experiences can be transmitted. Kirpal's disciples generally did not question his grandiose claims, since many of them did indeed see and hear something during their meditation. What they, of course, did not fully appreciate was that almost anybody could have induced them to have inner experiences.
[I don't mean to suggest, though, that Kirpal Singh was not a good catalyst, but only that he was not unique and that his success at providing thousands with access to inner lights and sounds was not necessarily connected to his mastership.]
Religious devotees seem overly eager to give up responsibility for their own neurological happenings, believing instead that it takes a 'Master' to draw their attention 'within.' This may or may not be the case (and I am not implying that gurus don't have anything good to offer), but one thing is certain: Kirpal's claims, and others like his, cannot be divorced (as they often are in Sant Mat related groups ) from an initiates own cultural and psychological field of interplay.
It is that interplay, that acceptance as fact of a guru's method and the disciple's own inherent capacity-neurological or mystical-for inner experiences, which fuels the claims of would-be masters.
It seems wise to me, in light of Near-Death Experiences and the plethora of other meditation accounts, to inspect how we see and hear during our inner voyages of light and sound. Then we may be able to understand why such experiences can occur to almost anybody, anywhere, anytime. It may also help us contextualize and appraise the claims of gurus like Kirpal Singh, who insist on taking credit for their disciples' wondrous visions.
If, as I have suggested, that anybody can act as a conduit for such other-worldly experiences, then Kirpal and gurus like him should be judged on some other criteria, since their claims for uniqueness and exclusiveness are anything but unique and exclusive.
The 'Kirpal Statistic' is exactly that: the probable outcome that the majority of meditators, provided the necessary instructions in Shabd or Nad yoga practice, will see and hear something.
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
spoony
()
Date: September 26, 2007 04:38AM
Quote
Zorro
Anyhow on my drive home I started having optical hallucinations. It was late after midnight and I had been through two days of intense long hours of the Landmark Advanced Communications course. Plus it probably didn't help that I was jazzed up from calling them out. The whole experience of the optical illusions were scarry. I think intense fatigue and anger coupled with the brain washing I had been subjected to caused this to happen.
Anyone else have a similar Landmark exprience?
Yes, I had something similar happen to me during the Advanced Course. What triggered it for me was the conversation about reality (basically - nothing's real, everything is agreed). Somehow I really latched on to this and came to the conclusion that nothing about me is real, everything is made up (and fraudulent) and I was overwhelmed with this feeling of being completely destabilised - like the rug had been pulled from under my feet. Thinking about it now, it seems ridiculous but at the time it was terrifying. I started having tunnel vision and what I could see was distorted, like I was looking through a wavy mirror. It happened on the Saturday morning while I was at home and lasted about an hour or so until I called a friend (another Landmartian, but one who seems to be more selective about what she took from it) who helped me stabilise. I've never been sure what actually (physically) happened then but I am pretty sure that it was at this point that I handed over control to Landmark.
Inducing out of body experiences
Posted by:
Zorro
()
Date: September 26, 2007 12:02PM
Spoony,
Sounds like you had a pretty severe reaction, with the tunnel vision and all. I had a tunnel vision experience a few weeks ago when I kind of over did it in the heat while servicing my car at my friend car shop, I was already in a weakend state though from not feeling well. So I can certainly visualize what happened.
Most Post Land Mark Course Reaction didn't include the tunnel vision. I felt like a weight had been lifted, I felt empty, plus I was feeling scarred having just basically told the instructor off as well as Landmark.
When the hallucination first happened I thought there was something in the street that I was going to run over. So I swerved and realized nothing was there. It spooked me a bit. I kind of thought it was the street lighting and the local suburban landscaping. But when I got to my apartment that is well lit and the same thing occurred I knew something was wrong. I immediately called a trusted friend and told her all the events of the weekend and what had just occurred. Because of her professional background she knew exactly what was going on and that I had been basically been subjected to brainwashing.
The rug got yanked out from under me last month when I discovered that the mentor / mentoring course (Raymond Aaron) I was involved in outside of Landmark was linked indirectly to Landmark. I discovered that Raymonds mentor is Marcia Martin, co-founder of EST which is now Landmark. Raymond spoke about Landmark being a wonderful educational organization. Once again I was in my car and driving!!!!
This time it was daylight and the only reactions I had were utter disgust, felt like I was getting screwed once again, anger, and like all of what I had previously believed was nothing more than a lie. I didn't hallucinate this time, I just got really mad and motivated to start doing something about LGAT's and fake Self Improvement Guru's. I felt numbed as well. I was able to drive to my destination a half hour away with out any problems.
Sounds like you had a pretty severe reaction, with the tunnel vision and all. I had a tunnel vision experience a few weeks ago when I kind of over did it in the heat while servicing my car at my friend car shop, I was already in a weakend state though from not feeling well. So I can certainly visualize what happened.
Most Post Land Mark Course Reaction didn't include the tunnel vision. I felt like a weight had been lifted, I felt empty, plus I was feeling scarred having just basically told the instructor off as well as Landmark.
When the hallucination first happened I thought there was something in the street that I was going to run over. So I swerved and realized nothing was there. It spooked me a bit. I kind of thought it was the street lighting and the local suburban landscaping. But when I got to my apartment that is well lit and the same thing occurred I knew something was wrong. I immediately called a trusted friend and told her all the events of the weekend and what had just occurred. Because of her professional background she knew exactly what was going on and that I had been basically been subjected to brainwashing.
The rug got yanked out from under me last month when I discovered that the mentor / mentoring course (Raymond Aaron) I was involved in outside of Landmark was linked indirectly to Landmark. I discovered that Raymonds mentor is Marcia Martin, co-founder of EST which is now Landmark. Raymond spoke about Landmark being a wonderful educational organization. Once again I was in my car and driving!!!!
This time it was daylight and the only reactions I had were utter disgust, felt like I was getting screwed once again, anger, and like all of what I had previously believed was nothing more than a lie. I didn't hallucinate this time, I just got really mad and motivated to start doing something about LGAT's and fake Self Improvement Guru's. I felt numbed as well. I was able to drive to my destination a half hour away with out any problems.
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