Reality of OOBE - Just in the brain or objective?

[Captain Nemo]

What I am interested in is if there are proofs that OOBE is real in objective terms - by which I mean that it is not just a fantasy inside the brain, but that it is proved that it has an objective reality (please, no questions like "what do you mean by "real" or "objective" - you know what I mean).

Did anyone make successful experiments about the reality of OOBE like reading some text someone has writen and which is in some other place, or determining what picture another person has drawn on a piece of paper or similar.

Basically, has anyone made successful experiments proving that one can get objective information trough OOBE in the real physical world about something that one could not know otherwise?

There are people outhere (not me, but I have doubts) who claim that OOBE, lucid dream and astral projection are just a phenomenon inside the head and that there is no real exit from the body.

Has anyone proved the objective reality of OOBE by retrieving correct information trough OOBE about something in the physical world that proved to be right after checking?

Keyword: OBE Validations

[Neil Templar]

yep. there's plenty of evidence around to prove it, i'm sure the Mods will be able to point you to some... get to work Mods
in the meantime, consider, would the US military have spent so much time/effort in developing remote viewing programmes, if the benefits were simply fabrications of the mind?

from my own experiences, i've had validation thru connecting with friend's consciousness when they're on the other side of the world, and shared experiences with numerous friends, nearby, and in other countries at the time.
how could we all be in each other's brains, having the same experience, at the same time?...

and when you get the validation you're looking for, you'll then have to reconsider your opinion regarding "where" consciousness resides... cos it's not in the brain.
sure the brain allows us to experience physical senses and reality and all that goes with it, but consciousness doesn't end with the brain.
and when you get your head round that, , you'll have no choice but to start considering and understanding the true nature of reality... and that's when things really get fun!!

the rabbit hole is bottomless, it seems.
enjoy the trip...

[Captain Nemo]

from my own experiences, i've had validation thru connecting with friend's consciousness when they're on the other side of the world, and shared experiences with numerous friends, nearby, and in other countries at the time.

Could you give an account of some, or at least one of these cases where you validated the objective reality of OOBE?

And in general, could anyone having such validating experiences or experiments describe some of them here please?

[Neil Templar]

i've posted about them, they're around here somewhere...i'll see if i can find them. pretty old posts...

[Sinera]

As some here might already know from my consciousness change post to Robert lately I'm a parapsychology geek who also likes doing some online research concerning these topics.
So I might help out with some verification accounts on APs.
Here's some links to interesting obe verification accounts I found on other sites, forums, story collections, plus one lab experiment report by parapsychologist Charles Tart (third link):

http://www.astralpulse.com/forums/welco ... 607.0.html

http://www.monroeinstitute.org/forum/di ... ng/#Item_0

http://www.paradigm-sys.com/ctt_articles2.cfm?id=31

http://www.oberf.org

I had collected the most interesting of them some time ago in a text file for myself, so i can copy them here for your convenience.
Not all of them are equally strong evidence - some, however, are astounding.
You still could - as a close-minded skeptic - argue that it is all 1. imagination/delusion and just accidental coincidence, or 2. made-up stories, lies and plain fraud. These however are always the standard "belief system defense mechanisms" of those materialist skeptics. I think we shouldn't do this here and instead value people's experiences and not be cynical about them, so I "believe" their accounts and evidence contained therein to be "genuine" experiences to some great extent.
Still, it remains of course subjective and personal, like all conscious experience, which makes it always somehow 'unscientific' because it remains "anecdotal evidence" - a term generally used by the skeptics to play it down. Apart from Tart, I guess no extensive scientfic laboratory tests have been done so far with OBEs.

Btw, it's a very different matter with scientific research on Remote Viewing, which is almost PROVEN! - I could post a lot on that, but I will leave it at OBEs now. It also should be mentioned that a lot of NDE-OBE accounts supply verifications, e.g. unconscious patients experience what the doctors and nurses were doing and talking exactly during the surgery, or remember what their worried relatives were doing at the time, one account mentions a shoe on the roof of the hospital, which was confirmed later, and so on. Moreover, there are many verified facts in accounts to be found in the vast literature on NDEs, since NDES contain OBE as an element, I would count these in! However, here's for the "genuine" Astral Projection validations:


Astral Pulse Forum:

„In one of my projections, some years ago, I decided to go to visit my parents' house, which is 15 km far away. It was 10:00 in the morning. I overflew my city, following the way to the hose of my childhood. I could recognize all the details, the highway, the fields...
When I arrived the house and I went into it, I see my mother cooking in the kitchen. I tried to call the attention but she did not react at all, like she couldn't see me.
Later, I went to my sister's bedroom. In that time, she was still living there, but in that moment she should have been working in the office. I checked all was normal in the room. She wasn't there, as I expected. Some thing attracted my attention. There was a paper on the table. I approached to it and I could see it was like a note. I had many problems to read it (like usually reading something out of the body). But at the end I was able to understand what It said: “PRESENT FOR _____ (my real name)”
More things happened, but to summarize I went back to my body and made a decision: I would go physically to my parents' house to check all those things. I did it, what it took twenty minutes, and my mother was there, in the kitchen cooking. I say hi and I went into my sister's room, very thrilled. There was a note on the table, exactly like the one I saw being out of the body, which said: “PRESENT FOR _____ (my real name)”. Then I imagined she was thinking in my birthday, that would be in two weeks.
I think it is a perfect validation of an out of the body experience.....“


„When I was a little kid I had OBE experiences all of the time. I used to visit a place called "The Boys Club" for fun in the physical after elementary school.
I was around 8 or 9 years old and had the experience of flying thru the club at night, the lights were off. I took note that the placement of everything ex. "pool tables, ping pong", was completly different than earlier that week. Sure enough a couple days later when I went back there in the physical, everything was exactly as I had seen a few nights earlier!“


„Saw my dad in the yard once and noted his shirt, tried passing my hand through him, couldnt get a reaction, awoke and found him wearing the same shirt and pants.“


„The most convining validation I have experienced yet involved my sister, when I was still living at home. I became lucid in a dream, which caused me to wake up. On waking I discovered I was paralysed and experiencing the vibrations. I rolled out, and for some reason, I decided to try and pull my sister out. I went to her room (in my experience the light was on in her room, but in reality it wasn't) and started pulling at her arm. When I finally got her out, I showed her how to float, and helped her float up to the ceiling (we had our heads sticking through into the loft). The experience wasn't much more than this. I returned to body and checked the clock.
Out of curiosity, the morning after this experience I asked my sister if she had any strange dreams. She went a bit weird and didn't want to talk about it. Later that evening, she opened up and told me she woken in the night to see a black 'smoky' figure (see through) leaning over her bed with its hand reaching out towards her, this terrified her. She doesn't recall any of what I did (pulling her out), but the times matched up.“


„A few years ago I was living in the south of England whilst my parents lived in their house in Leeds in the north. One Saturday morning I AP'd and decided to pay my parents an "astral" visit. So concentrating on their house in Leeds, I soon found myself outside in the street in front of the house. It was a bright morning. Walking up the garden path I passed through the front door and into the hallway in my parents' house, where I discovered my mother watching in utter surprise as I came in through the front door.
I calmed her down and explained that this was just a kind of "special dream" and she had nothing to worry about. We walked through the living room and into the kitchen where I sat down on a very flimsy wooden "sewing basket", knowing that I couldn't break it. My mother complained, saying I'd break the basket but I reassured her that I was "as light as a feather" and it wouldn't break.
Then I decided to show off, so I started pointing at objects, cups, jars etc, making them fly around the kitchen. My mother was pretty shocked by all of this. At this point I lost consciousness and returned to my physical body.
A little later in the morning I got up, had breakfast, went about my business and by mid-day, curiosity got the better of me so I decided to phone home, just in case anything "unusual" had happened there. My mother answered the phone, sounding agitated, and as soon as she heard my voice said "Thank God! I thought you had died!". It turns out that she had a "dream" which was identical to the OBE I had.
She remembered dreaming that she was standing in the hall when I emerged in front of her by coming in THROUGH the front door. Shocked by this and feeling certain that something was very wrong, she continued to dream the same events that I had experienced - walking through the living room into the kitchen, complaining that I would break the sewing basket and then watching as I made objects fly around the kitchen. My mother recounted the dream without prompting. I didn't guide her in any way.
My mother's dream was identical to my OBE in every respect, and it troubled her so much that she was sure some harm must have come to me and that the dream was some sort of harbinger of bad fortune. She didn't have a contact number for me so when I called she was extremely relieved!“


„Ap Friends,
It's been awhile since I've posted my latest validation attempts and tracking. I've been following whole heartdly for the last two years now of my own personal experiences and validations. Your more welcome to view the contents in my web site to listen/read.
I recently conversed with a hard-core skeptic and it was a terrible conversation, to say the least. Purely one tracked minded, not open to the slightest of possibabilities and claimed that NDEs/OBEs were all hullcinations.
It was a good and eye opening experiences because it did give me some good insight on a few things that I needed to add into my FAQs about skeptics. Here it is:
•What are your thoughts about skeptics and their views?
I totally respect the views of skeptics trying to prove that the out of body experience is false memories, hallucinatory, and generated in the brain. It’s always good to be objective towards this field of study. However, we should keep a open mind and not be quick to judge either. Here’s a near death / out of body experience to consider and seriously think about:
Example: How do you explain the near death experience of Pam Reynolds? Under a medical and scientific controlled environment she was able to validate with accuracy during her operation external events outside her body.
During her operation, Pam had no brain activity, no blood, no vital signs for over an hour to remove a tumor. Doctors, Scientists, Skeptics can’t explain this experience but only try to theorize.
So how would a skeptic go about theorizing when experts in the medical / scientific fields can't.
Anyways, as I tracked my own personal success with obe's, I've come to one conclusion that if any skeptic asks "prove it to me". Why should I prove something that I've proved to myself and done the work.
Here are the journal entries on my web site if those who are interested in validations.
1 07/14/05 Thursday 3:45 AM 3:52 AM 10:30 AM 10:37 AM 2 Of Hearts King of Diamonds/8 of Hearts Jack Of Diamonds Couldn't Remember 416 to 1 - Validation 07-14-2005 - Card Verification #1 - Conscoious & False Awakening Projection.mp3“


„dream: I get lucid and decide to visit my sister L. I find her in a huge building. There are large open hallways almost like a mall, but bigger and lots of other people are there too. I look and finally see L standing nearby. I call to her, but she looks scared and starts running away. I'm confused and run after her, weaving in and out of people until I lose her in a crowd.
waking: call L to see if she remembered me in a dream last night. She said no, but she did remember a scary dream. She was in the Mall of America and someone was chasing her through it.“


„User: Mendel « Reply #94 on: March 25, 2007, 00:54:41 »
I didn't make it to your room in my projection last night, but I was thinking about your experiment and noticed a light blue object on my brother's dresser. It had five connected vertical open cylinders and little symbols of animals on it. It almost seem to sparkle as though it were made from glass.
User: Nay « Reply #98 on: April 02, 2007, 15:35:00 »
Oh and btw the object on my desk was a plastic easter cup, filled with pens and pencils.
User: Nay « Reply #105 on: April 10, 2007, 13:20:47 »
Hi Mike!
I can't believe I failed to see your post, I'm sooooo sorry! I went back to see what you said and what is absolutely crazy is, I have never mentioned that there are some little bunnies on the cup and you mention animal prints!!
Looks like we got a winner! Very impressive Mike!“


„I have a silly story of what I thought would be validation:
2 nights ago I had and conscious-exit OBE and wandered around my house. I was so sure that I had was fully focused in the RTZ - I've been in my new house a few months now and everything was exactly as it was before my OBE attempt that night. It was all very solid, everything being in place. Then I noticed a crack in one of my new blinds. I inspected it and was sure this would be my validation. I made a note of which set of blinds and the area it was cracked.
So the next morning I get up and check, and the blinds are fine. I was positive it would be cracked. I checked all the blinds in the house, but nothing. Oh well.
and TVOS told me this:
Quote TVOS:
That would have been cool to see that the blinds were indeed cracked. Maybe this was a future event that you saw? If I were you, keep a tab on the blinds, maybe if you can remember draw to paper what the crack looked like. When the time does come when the blinds do indeed crack, compare the two. Something to think about!
Well, a few days ago I was grilling, sippin a few brews, and a fly got in the house. I'm pretty good at snapping them with a dish cloth, so I follow it over the the window and SNAP - got the fly AND the edge of the blind, cracking it EXACTLY as I saw it before. As soon as it happened I remembered seeing it broken in my OBE.
Seeing as how I was the one with the premonition and the one who broke it, and I've never had anything like this happen before, I don't necessarily call it a validation. I may have unconsciously broke it (with unnatural extreme precision that matches the experience perfect) to make my prophesy come true.
But I can throw it into my x-files evidence cabinet for future reference.
Thanks to TVOS or I would have probably forgotten the OBE and never made a connection to a future event.“


„A friend of mine seems to be a natural AP'er.
I told her to project and then think of me to project to me.
She said she could see that i was making motions like i was clicking the mouse on a computer, but I was the only thing in the room that she could see.
She also said that it looked like I was touching my face with my left hand.
At the time of the projection, I was on the computer, using the mouse with my right hand, and biting the nails on my left hand.“


„I've had several validations. But the most validating was the one in which my ex showed up in my OBE. He has these experiences also, only his are more progressed. He told me he was going to come and join me sometime. And he did! A few days after he appeared in my OBE, my ex came over to my house and asked me if I had seen him. I told him, "I knew that shadowy figure on the stairs was you!" I had recognized his silhouette----especially that of his hair!My ex even told me that at one time when I flew past him that my and his heads had collided.This had happened when I decided to fly through him instead of past him the second time around.I flew through him from his neck up. This is when he and I collided heads!
Another time my ex came over, and as he and I stood outside talking, he nodded toward the direction underneath my upstairs bedroom window and asked me if, a few days earlier, I had traveled out my bedroom window just underneath the spot where he had motioned his head. Again, I was excited but not shocked to learn that he had seen me. I told him I had done that very thing because I wanted to scare the neighbor's dog that was always barking and annoying me.“


„One in particular experience that I could call validation of an astral experience was when I was attending high school. I had left my body and found my conscious awareness at the top of some trees.
It was night time and I saw a fire burning below. I could see a definite red glow and smoke was billowing up through the air. Below I saw firemen scurrying about working on putting out the fire.
The next day I relayed this experience to my close friend from high school. He was astonished at what I told him and he then told me that there had been a fire at a school mates trailer that night. He said that himself and other volunteer firefighters were there that night, and the scene was very similar to what I had relayed to him.
One other time was when I wanted to visit this same friend at night during an astral travel. I remember hovering over his bed, but him just seeming to sleep, not responding. The next day I told him what I did. He said "that was you!!! Don't do that again, you scared the cr*p out of me, I thought you were a ghost!!!"
He he, I didn't bother him or anyone after that.“


„I saw my dog trying to jump up on a chair of the kitchen table which I’ve never seen him do before. I went upstairs right after the experience ended and he had actually gotten up on the same chair and was trying to get at a bowl and this is the only time that he had ever done something like that with the kitchen table chairs.“


„I traveled into my son's room and briefly watched as he sat at the computer and watched YouTube videos. Later, I asked him if he had been watching wrestling videos on YouTube. He said he had been watching UFC videos on YouTube. In my book, the same thing! He must have thought I meant WWE and was specific that it was in fact UFC. I asked him if it had been wrestling cause I just knew it had been two guys squaring off in a ring.“



Monroe Forum:

"I went out of body one morning, went outside my house and saw the postman walking towards my house with a parcel, I returned immediately went downstairs and he knocked on the door, he had a parcel for me. I was smiling like Cheshire Cat, I bet he thought I was a little weird lol. Validation is great fun."


"I saw a small plane while flying in an out-of-body state, and flew around the plane observing it. When I awoke, I heard a small plane, and looked out my window to see what appeared to be the same plane flying over my home. While obe I visited my children who were living with my ex-wife at a location on the other side of town; and the next day verified the events that happened and what my ex-wife was wearing with her the next day."



OBE Research Foundation:

„I could fly over London, or be in a Maxfield Parish painting. It was as real as I am sitting here right now. Fun, amazing, and life changing. One time ,one of my first times, I went to a place that my friends were at to find out if this was real or just my imagination. I was able to fly there, and they were there and I saw what my friend was wearing and the next day I asked what she was wearing and it was true. I absolutely was floored…“


„In 1989 my family and I migrated from Italy to Canada. In 1993 my parents gave me as a sweet 16th birthday present a ticket for the summer to my home town of Perugia, Italy.
Approx. 2 weeks before my departure I had a dream. I found myself in front of my childhood friend's door. I found it peculiar to be there but in the dream I told myself 'it's just a dream'. I knocked and after a while my best friend came to the door and looked around but didn't see me standing there and as she was closing the door I sneaked inside.
As I stood inside their foyer and while trying to get their attention these are the things I saw: first of all it seemed like it was lunch time, all the women of the house were running around trying to set the table, and coming in and out of the kitchen. Why do I say it was lunch time? Because out of own curiosity of the time of day I looked outside toward their balcony and the sun was shining.
Then I turned my attention to the house. They had renovated the house. Where there used to be once upon a time my friend's sisters' bedroom was now the kitchen. Beside the kitchen was the new bathroom with granite like tiles from head to toe. And to my left their dining room was still the same but they had changed the arrangement of the dining room table and the TV. As I kept on trying to get their attention and calling out for them I started walking toward the end of the foyer and I opened the door to what used to be their living room which was now my friend's bedroom. And further down the hallway the old bathroom was no longer there and her parent's bedroom had not changed.
After again trying without avail to get their attention I finally woke up from my dream.
My first feeling was that it was a dream warning me not to expect much, and I actually tried to convince my parents to cancel my ticket for fear of rejection from my friends. But I'm so glad I went for that trip. I'm so glad to have had such a beautiful experience because when I actually went physically to my friend's house I saw all that I saw in my 'dream'. All the changes in their house, their cooking and eating routines and also the absence of their family pets made me realize it wasn't just a dream, I think literally travelled there in spirit.“


„On January 18, 1998 it was a Sunday, ( I remember because I kept a article of the event) That night I remember going to sleep and suddenly it felt like I was flying by my neighborhood above and watching a scenario happen. In OBE there was a boy I went to middle school with, I remember seeing him walk through this parkway towards the mall I lived generously close to. And it felt like I was following him above and sometimes along side. It kind of felt like I was there watching from above floating kind of. Than all of a sudden I saw a blue ford-like pickup truck driving through the park also, than I saw a blurred glimpse of a white male with a baseball cap, he pulled a rifle out of the window and shot the boy in the back. it was so detailed. I immediately got freaked out and wanted to cry because it was so real, I woke up crying. I just thought it was some silly nightmare, so I went back to sleep. The next day was no school, I didn't find out until I went back to school on Tuesday that this event had really happened. When I got to school it was so gloomy, people were crying and talking about some boy that got shot, and than I found out it was him. I freaked and thought maybe I’m going crazy, so ever since than I kept the newspaper article (that has every detail I so vividly remember), not knowing my gut instincts were right to keep it. Considering what I know now about OBEs, I definitely was oblivious to the extent OBEs really are and how life changing they can be.“

(note: there might be a lot more on OBERF, this is only what I found after 20 minutes of research time)


Charles Tart, lab test with "Mrs Z":

"Miss Z awoke and called out that the target number was 25132. This was correct (with the digits in correct order), but I did not say anything to her at this point; I merely indicated that I had written the number down on the record. I then told her she could go back to sleep, but twenty minutes later I awakened her so that she could get ready to go to work. (...)
It should be mentioned that Miss Z had expected me to prop the target number up against the wall on the shelf; actually, I had laid it flat on the shelf, which she correctly perceived. (...)
Miss Z's correctly calling a five-digit number (P = 10^-5 [i.e., odds of 1 in 100,000]) was the first strong evidence that her OOB experiences contained a parapsychological element. "

-------------------

I hope this is all helpful.

So far I have not yet found a "validations thread" here. I cannot contribute an account myself because I have not yet managed a good validation yet (seeing my body is not enough, it always should be an event unfolding or object you just don't know how it looks like before.).



So ... has anyone here of you guys a good validation story to add? I would suggest maybe we can make this thread our validations-thread from now on?
Also, maybe someone can post here further good weblinks to more validation stories on OBE/AP? I like them a lot.

[dreamosis]

Has anyone proved the objective reality of OOBE by retrieving correct information trough OOBE about something in the physical world that proved to be right after checking?

Yes, I've objectively tested myself once by viewing a playing card while OOB that was placed for me.

A diehard skeptic wouldn't take this as proof, though, since I had a 1 in 52 chance of being right.

[CFTraveler]

I'll tell you a few of mine (which I also posted in the AP forums long ago- however, I'm too lazy to look it up).
The first one is literally the first one I identified as an OBE:
I was around 8 or 9. I remember thinking I was too old to have a babysitter,and was mad my parents were going to a party at a neighbor's house, where my aunt was also invited, and who I adored. My older neighbor M. was the babysitter. We read comic books I was not allowed to read usually, and at least felt vindicated for that. So we finally went to sleep. I awoke as I floated away from the bed- and found myself on the main hallway of the house. I then floated through the wall and it was the most amazing feeling. I could feel the concrete wall- all the little pebbles in the concrete and the iron parts of it. I even felt how it tasted, in an amazing way. I found myself floating outside, and seeing the roofs of the houses. I then floated down to the house where the party was, and I entered through the roof. There I could see the party, I could see my parents and my aunt, who was wearing a beautiful dress. I tried to float to her and talk, but she didn't see me. At some point I realized no one could see me and this made me upset.
The next morning I told my mom what I saw, and she got really angry thinking I had somehow snuck out of the house. When I described how I got there, she seemed spooked, as I had correctly described how my aunt was dressed and what the other people I knew were wearing.
When she verified with the babysitter that I in fact went to bed when I was supposed to and didn't leave, my mom then realized something else was going on and read about OBEs in general. I was 'this close' to getting grounded, and I realized that you can get out of your body and do stuff like fly to other people's houses and this kind of thing. Later on, when I was around twelve, she let me read a book she had found that was about APs. I believe this was one of the theosophy books that described experiences that happened to other people, but didn't really explain why this happened or how to induce it.
The second verification I can think of was when I was freshly married- My hubby and I had just moved to our first house and he had a new job (I wasn't working full time yet, IIRC). He had gone to work and I was either sick or something else- what I remember is that I laid down to take a nap, and found myself flying around the beach area. I found myself in a white room, and I could see my husband sitting on a bench with a large box (looked like a giant tackle box) with really shiny metallic pins. He had a pair of tweezers and was rooting through the shiny objects, and putting some of them on a table. When I figured I probably was at his work I kind of snapped out of it. So I woke up and looked for his phone number and called him at work, and asked him what he was doing.
He verified that someone had broken into this store he was working at, (it was a rental store) and his boss was going to change the locks, and he had the equipment (his dad used to be a locksmith, so he knew how to do this stuff) and was doing the work in-house. This surprised me because that wasn't his job (so I had no expectation of what he should be doing) and at the time I had no idea that he knew how to do this stuff or how it was done. This was the second 'real' verification on what I now know was either a fast RTZ trip or a Remote Viewing episode.
The third verification happened when my son was a toddler. We had been doing some home gardening and had put some seeds in some peat pots, covered them with bags and put them on the top of the fridge for sprouting.
About a week after doing this, I was sleeping, when I woke up with exit sensations. I floated away from my body (at the time I didn't know about techniques, so I just sat up and floated) and found myself in the kitchen. I was attracted to this beautiful glow in the corner, so I floated towards it. It was up in the top of the fridge- a beautiful green glow, and when I floated up I could see little tiny two-leaved plants. The baby plants! And they were amazing- they had this green glow that shone up the kitchen. The next morning I ran to the kitchen, took the pots down and got them off the bags- and there they were, the little teeny plants I had seen the night before.
We planted them the next day and enjoyed tomatoes for around a year.
I've had other validations but have been more in the 'mystical' way- precog visions and this kind of thing- not genuine real time validations like the first three.

[Sinera]

Wow, CFT, that's really 3 great validations I can add to my little compilation of rtz proof stories now.
dreamosis: congrats for a successful "card trick", I still am waiting exactly for this kind of success, I try hard but failed so far, keep your fingers crossed for me

[heliac]

I think it is all in our heads, but just because it is all in our heads doesn't mean there is a loss of objective practicality.

I've tried the playing card experiment once.

The card i saw out of body was a red 3. Couldn't tell what suit.

The actual card was an 8 of diamonds.

I havn't really felt any major urge to pursue the objectivity of OOBE after that too much more.

I guess it depends on your goals though. I'm not really trying to project to validate its objectivity.

[CFTraveler]

I havn't really felt any major urge to pursue the objectivity of OOBE after that too much more.

I guess it depends on your goals though. I'm not really trying to project to validate its objectivity.

Me neither- but my reason for posting mine (there are more) is to show that indeed they exist and happen. Whether that's enough is a matter of personal preference.