Is Astral Projection Part Of Enlightenment?

[Leo Gura]

18 hours ago, Will Bigger said:

I'd say AP is a valid path to enlightenment.

No, enlightenment is a whole nother ballpark. Be careful about the delusions possible in this work.

Enlightenment is not any kind of experience at all.

[Atom]

@Emerald Wilkins that's freaky.. I wonder if that monster mouth thingy would have sucked me in and spit me out somewhere else if I would have stuck around.. This stuff was kinda the last stuff I thought about before going to sleep last night and it was pretty much some of the first stuff I thought about as I awoke.. One of the first thoughts was about the Vril women from WW2 with their long hair.. I wonder if there's a possible connection.. Could any of them still be alive? Maybe their in limbo.. Anything is possible to me.. I know there's a lot going on in the dream/astral/obe whatever area.. Seems like quite a bit more than the nothing going on in enlightenment.. 

Little collage I put together

 Something else that kinda dawned on me after another dream I had last night.. Was that tingling I feel in my fingers is similar to the feeling of a pinched nerve.. There's something related to the nervous system and electric signals in all this as well.. That's of course considering there even is one¿ 

 

 

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by Atom

[Emerald]

10 minutes ago, Atom said:

@Emerald Wilkins that's freaky.. I wonder if that monster mouth thingy would have sucked me in and spit me out somewhere else if I would have stuck around.. This stuff was kinda the last stuff I thought about before going to sleep last night and it was pretty much some of the first stuff I thought about as I awoke.. One of the first thoughts was about the Vril women from WW2 with their long hair.. I wonder if there's a possible connection.. Could any of them still be alive? Maybe their in limbo.. Anything is possible to me.. I know there's a lot going on in the dream/astral/obe whatever area.. Seems like quite a bit more than the nothing going on in enlightenment.. 

Little collage I put together

 Something else that kinda dawned on me after another dream I had last night.. Was that tingling I feel in my fingers is similar to the feeling of a pinched nerve.. There's something related to the nervous system and electric signals in all this as well.. That's of course considering there even is one¿ 

I don't believe that the hag lady that I encountered was a once-living human or anything like that. Even if the dead can have an impact on dreams (which I'm not sure of either way), this was more of a non-human entity and an instinctual force within the human psyche. I believe the dream to have been an archetype of the unconscious initiating me into the chaos that I had been resisting for a long time. But these are just conjectures. All I really know is that the dream felt significant in a way that dreams rarely do for me. 

That said, life and art tend to imitate archetypal imagery throughout all cultures no matter how distant. So, these women in the pictures may have been psychologically influenced by a similar archetype to the archetype that brandished itself in my dream. Although, these women are beautiful and creepy. But the beautiful woman in my dream was just beautiful, sharp, and professional; and the hag was barely human looking. It didn't just look like an old lady. It looked like a straight up demon. So, the imagery is very different.

As far as the feeling of a pinched nerve during sleep, I find that with my experiences with sleep paralysis that the shifts in brain waves during the night actually have an impact on the entire body and not just the mind. Sleep waves are a whole body phenomenon.

[Atom]

Hmm.. I'll have to chew on what you said for a little.. 

I don't give my unconscious/subconscious that much credit..@Emerald Wilkins

 

Edited August 5, 2016 by Atom

[Will Bigger]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

No, enlightenment is a whole nother ballpark. Be careful about the delusions possible in this work.

Enlightenment is not any kind of experience at all.

Thank you. But why do people talk of "enlightenment experiences" and "nondual experiences?" Like how in your psychedelics video, you talked about how you could actually feel the nonduality. Is there a difference between enlightenment itself, and an enlightenment experience?

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Will Bigger said:

Thank you. But why do people talk of "enlightenment experiences" and "nondual experiences?" Like how in your psychedelics video, you talked about how you could actually feel the nonduality. Is there a difference between enlightenment itself, and an enlightenment experience?

Mystical experiences can be had. But they ain't enlightenment.

I can't articulate it better than that until I'm actually enlightened. But I know enough to know that these experiences ain't it. Enlightenment is much more radical, and it doesn't go away.

Sometimes I say "enlightenment experience" in a loose way, which is actually more like mystical experience, because enlightenment isn't an experience. But you can certainly have samadhi experiences of union. They are really cool, although not enlightenment.

I haven't really seen any teachers explain this well. And I've talked to many highly enlightened teachers. I'll try to explain it better when I get there myself.

[Emerald]

2 hours ago, Will Bigger said:

Thank you. But why do people talk of "enlightenment experiences" and "nondual experiences?" Like how in your psychedelics video, you talked about how you could actually feel the nonduality. Is there a difference between enlightenment itself, and an enlightenment experience?

I would relate mystical experiences as tapping into a different state of consciousness temporarily. So, astral projection is basically being awake but having the brain wave patterns that are similar to sleep. So, it's shifting states of consciousness.

Enlightenment, from my very limited experience of it, is a realization of the state you've always been in. Like, before enlightenment you have all kinds of ideas about reality all centered around there being a "you." Then when you're enlightened, the "you" gets seen through and loses its importance as the center of your reality, allowing you to be reality itself. So, it's the loss of an illusion that allows you to see things clearly and truly reintegrate. So, it's the primary state of awareness and isn't any shift in consciousness particularly. It just allows you to fully be whatever it is that you happen to be experiencing whether it has the label of "mundane" or "mystical". There really is no difference between mystical and mundane as you are still experiencing this as the content within your awareness. If you break it down, you'll see that a mystical experience is just a mundane experience with unusual perceptions in it that you don't normally expect to experience. But with enlightenment, you'll really recognize that the mundane is truly divine. That's really the best I can do.

[Atom]

I say it's safe to say no one on here can really say anything about enlightenment that's not enlightened..  

You don't learn to drive by someone without a license do ya? 

One thing I'm pretty sure of is that there is way more to enlightenment than realizing no-self.. And no-self doesn't mean you're nothing..

 All I gotta say is what (and while you're at it where)  do you think you are during a Out Of Body Experience?..

Edited August 5, 2016 by Atom

[WhatAmI]

wow guys I wasn't expecting people to actually make that much effort in replying! 

I guess I am so confused about where I am at the moment. One day I'm focused on detachment from this body/reality, the next day I'm focused on feeling connected and loving to everyone, and the next just focusing on my breath/sensations.

I feel like every day I'm doing a new kind of 'spiritual' practice and I'm not really sticking to one form. They say that you need 10,000 hours to do something well, and like i feel like i'm not getting anywhere whilst being so spiritually confused with all of this material. So overwhelming!!

I've been trying to get my hands on different medications that will induce out of body experiences and to astral project in the hopes it will teach me about myself. I astral projected this week, it wasn't to a different reality or dimension or anything, it was just in my room and having a conversation with my mum, but it FELT extremely real. But then when I woke up, I woke up to this reality. I woke up to my awareness. I woke up to my everyday human experience.

This is SO unbelievably frustrating. I thought astral projection was going to teach me something but honestly like I know it's not Truth. I can observe the fact that I am astral projecting so it's not my true self. 

SO WHAT THE FUCK AM I.............