108 replies to this topic

[Mr Walker]

Etu Malku, on 29 August 2012 - 02:08 PM, said:

I never said you "had" to, simply pointing out a fact.
Tell me some of the ways that you would alter your consciousness?


I agree and embrace lucid dreaming, but dreams are not altered consciousness, it is the unconsciousness making sense of all its data.

Let's take a look at the UFO phenomenon as an example; prior to the 1940's (with the exception of a few silly reports in ancient China and Rome) there were 'no' reports of UFO's because no one thought of them yet, once the Air Force began speculating about them then everyone saw them . . . except where people never heard about the Air Force's speculations, they remained unaffected.

I'm sure if you tried explaining these 'hauntings' to a prehistoric man he would club you in the head. I remain convinced that these phenomenons are learned reactions of the imagination. Everyone gets flooded with chemicals when they are dying, we all experience the same hallucinations, but only those people with similar religious/ethnic backgrounds have the same 'interpretations' of the experience.

By will. One can alter ones conscious state by will. Some people require training and discipline to do this. Others just seem to pick it up as chidren and retain it. A child with a "real" imaginary frien d is in an altered state of consciousness.  So is a person completely immersed in a day dream


Maybe its a problem with definition but dreams are absolutely an altered state of consciousness. (from normal waking consciousness) There are several layers of sleep and forms of dreaming.  I can shape plan construct  a dream (plot characters and scenery) while awake, enter it and live within it while completely conscious of who i am and my conection to the real world I can return to this world every night for monthes or years or go on to cnstruct a differnt dreamscape,  This is onestep beyond controlled lucid dreaming. I connect my subconscious and conscious minds and can create dream symbologies from real waking events   As a child (and i know current kids who can do this) I could also create an entire world inside my waking world in which to live. My father taught me how to do this. It is realy only a more evolved and intense form of totally creative and imaginative play, that all children live in at times. One lives inside this world. Other children can share it and live inside it too even thought it is  'only"a shared mental construct .
Related to this is the altered consciousness of OBE ing. In this, one is fully conscious but separate from ones body. One sends ones mind anywhere one wishes  I  can sometimes do this at will (not so much as i got older) I can travel anywhere on earth and observe it in real time and space  I used to do this before satellites were invented and long before google imagery. Today verification is a lot easier than it was in the 1950s. Other staes include trance like conditions As a teenager i could control my body in an atered state of consciousness so that i could stay under water for up to 5 minutes while free diving. I could also  control pain from wounds etc almost to the point of not feeling any pain at all .
Actually ufos have been reported throughout human history but they have always been reported in a contextual way that relates to a society's knowledge and understanding.

Humans only learned to fly in  the late 1800s Flying machines were unheard of to most people before that, yet the bible has ezekiels chariot, and other mythologies describe flying; machines, vehicles, engines, carpets  etc.  I made an intensive study of ufos during the mid 20th century especially in australia, which had a high number of sightings.

My considered opinion is that of the us govt.  Given that a number  (a small but significant percentage) of these  sightings are not able to be discredited, the probability of ufos being real, remains. I've seen a couple from a distance but none close up. Most of the people i know in my comm unity have had a least one encounter with what would be considered a ufo Partly because we are on a coast with a back drop of hlls and very little electic lighting to impair night vision. A lot are seen out to sea and over the hills, One of the most common are lights which follow a car in the air above it along a road  and then either stop for a few minutes forcing the car to stop or shoot off into space, but they come in a variety of forms  What they are, i dont know. In my area they certainly arent gaseous forms, or ball lightning, we dont have them around here.

If you talk to people and read widely you will see that many "hauntings" are obviously real and physical  because of the evidences surrounding them . Again the problem is understanding them. Denying the reality of their existence  doesnt help one understand them at all.
Plenty of sane fit healthy and wide awake people encounter "supernatural" forces and entities. The same  haunting can scare one couple really badly and 20 years later fascinate and enthrall a differnt couple. This was the case with a haunted bed.

My neighbours in the 1970s) (both school teachers and one a  maths/ science teacher) bought an antique bed which turned out to be badly haunted. A series of events caused them to sell the bed.  Twenty years later the bed turned up in another couples possession. They had the same ghost appear after the same progression of activities , but were fascinated and kept the bed in a spare room as a conversation piece. A state newspaper investigated this bed and found hauntings going back 100 years involving a dozen couples spread out over several thousand square miles, as the bed moved around,

Not one of the owners knew any of the story of the bed until, in about 2000, the current owners told their story and the newspaper began the investigation  ( It turned out this beautiful brass bed had been the scene of a gruesome murder where a young woman was stabbed and bled to deat h on the end of it ) The progression of events each owner told included; coldness, damp spots on the  end of the bed, animals which refused to lie on the bed or approach it, a misty form on the end of the bed both cold and damp, and eventually for those brave enough t  hang on to it, the ghostly form of a young woman weeping on the end of the bed.

NONE of these owners had any prior knowledge of other owners experiences or what had happend  to the girl. Usually they bought and sold it at a  auction or later in antique shops without saying a word about it when they sold it. I remember my neighbours saying how pleased they were to have "offloaded it"  to an unsuspecting second hand dealer, even though they made a bit of a loss  on it. (Such beds cost several thousand dollars,  or a few months salary, at the time)

Edited by Mr Walker, 31 August 2012 - 11:42 AM.

[Mr Walker]

Etu Malku, on 30 August 2012 - 06:40 PM, said:

Excellent thought! My only explanation is Jung's Collective Unconsciousness . . . our unconscious minds are all a part of an exterior collective of unconscious minds, a pool of imagination and thoughts if you will.

And, again, one can tap into this. It is not limited to collective human consciousness. When i first encountered it, i called it the cosmic consciousness ( I was a pre teen,  just) because that is just what it was. That was in the late 1950's early 60's. To me the critical mind opening experience was as a seven or eight year old watching the forbidden planet at the  local cinemas saturday matinee, with my grandmother and seeing the concept of how human thoughts might take physical form as they did with the monster in that film. That got me started thinking and reading and opening my mind to possibilities.

Lo and behold a couple of decades later i found out that this was exactly what it had been named, and that many humans have had similar encounters with it. ONe can connect to, and piggy back on, the cosmic consciousness to any destination; from a nearbly mind or through the worm hole at the centre of the galaxy into another brane altogether.

One can use it to access the past and peoles living there, other peoples cultures times and even alien consciousnesses, but not ( as afar as i can tell) the future, because the future does not exist yet, even to the cosmic consciousness.

[Darkwind]

It is funny, when my brain has gone wonky and I have had hallucinations they have never been spiritual or pleasant. Once from MS, twice from prescribe medication and one from a bad infection.

[Bluefinger]

Beany, on 23 August 2012 - 02:00 PM, said:

I think there comes a time for many of us when we begin to question our beliefs, and discard many if not all of them. IMHO, this is a good thing. We can feel bereft when this happens, and mourn, because we've lost something important to us that has been part of our core existence. But it could signal that we are putting away the last of our childhood, when we were so dependent on adults for just about everything, including beliefs, and moving into a future in which we can study, read, educate ourselves, and through this process begin to discover what's true for us. This is much more difficult to do then accepting a "ready-made" spiritual philosophy, but ultimately much more rewarding, because what ever we end up with is ours, borne out of our own labor, experiences, and thinking process. If our faith can't withstand this kind of test, then how deep does it really run?

Well said Beany!

When one can look at inconsistencies and unanswered questions with a sober realization that they weren't passed on the most accurate information and yet still maintain their belief with an honest humility, I'd say they are truly convinced.