a few questions...

[natalie-1984]

Why do we need to be in another level of consciousness to seperate from our bodies? Why can't we just do it at will?

Why is the air so damn grainy after I am out? What is all that stuff, is it energy? Is that how the 4th dimension looks?

These questions have been bugging me for a while!

[CFTraveler]

Why do we need to be in another level of consciousness to seperate from our bodies? Why can't we just do it at will?

Survival. Because it requires a shift of your awareness, your sense of self into another environment. If we did it all the time (that is, be consciously immersed in a nonphysical environment) we would probably fall off a cliff or get run over by a car- because most people can't completely have their attention in two places in one time, and the physical needs attention- it's too easy to get killed or die in some way.
Think of it like this- you are already in the astral, in the mental, etc. But your attention is in the physical through your body. Because you have to walk, talk and function in the physical. If you don't, you won't survive. Your attention is here while awake. When you go to sleep, your body and mind are in a controlled environment (your room, on a bed, protected). Then you can shift your attention to the nonphysical.

Why is the air so damn grainy after I am out?

Because you are sensing with your energy body, not with your eyes. You don't have eyes, you are an energy field that senses by interacting with your environment, like radar. So what you 'see' is the information gathered by your energy body translated into images by your brain.

What is all that stuff, is it energy?

Yes, in fact, everything is energy, even the physical.

Is that how the 4th dimension looks?

The fourth dimension is time. Science fiction ruined the idea of dimensions for us. The physical dimensions are, height, width, depth, and time.
There are supposed to be other dimensions that are unspecified because we can't perceive them, (up to eleven, IIRC) because they are too small, according to modern physics. (Stephen Hawkings) in string theory. It is possible that when we become nonphysical we are able to perceive such dimensions, but no one really knows what the truth is.

--

[ButterflyWoman]

Why do we need to be in another level of consciousness to seperate from our bodies? Why can't we just do it at will?

Well, with enough practice, some people can learn to just do it at will, I suspect.

Here's an analogy. I can completely relax my entire physical body just like flipping a switch. I can do this because I've practiced progressive relaxation for years and years and now I'm just so good at it that I can go "FWUMP!" (not literally ) and everything goes into deep relaxation. I actually get really annoyed with guided meditation and hypnosis CDs because they assume you need a lot of work to relax, and I'm always really bored with it when they go on and on and on about relaxing this and that and so forth. If I want to physically relax, I can do it, at will.

I do not, however, do this at will unless I'm in a safe place to do it, because collapsing in a heap in the grocery store and turning into floppy dead-weight is just not that great of an idea. Nor is it a good idea while driving, or, really, anywhere in public. Slump over into a heap on a park bench or waiting for a bus and you tend to alarm people, and you can hurt yourself if you fall the wrong way.

Most people can't relax like that, in the same way that most people can't change the focus of their awareness instantly, and even if you could do it, you'd have to be pretty careful where and how you did it, for the same reasons the going into complete physical relaxation in the deli department isn't a good idea.

For what it's worth, it's possible to develop a kind of split awareness and be, mentally, kind of in "two places at once". It's a bit like the way you might have multiple windows open on your computer with different things in them. One of them is going to be the one in focus, and the other(s) in the background, but you can switch between them, and if you set it up right, you can watch what's going on in the background one out of the corner of your eye. I do this all the time, literally and also figuratively with split consciousness (which is why I don't talk about OBE that much; I don't do it the way most people do, and so I haven't got much to say on the subject because I'm such a weirdo ).

[CFTraveler]

You're not a weirdo. You're just aware. *Wags finger*

[ButterflyWoman]

You're not a weirdo. You're just aware. *Wags finger*

I'm aware that I'm a weirdo. *waggles finger back so we can have a finger-sword fight*

[natalie-1984]

you guys are so funny!

I guess I never really thought of it that way before, I have heard of people who kind of go crazy because they can't tell the difference between what is real and what isn't. Or people who spend so much time exploring the nonphysical that they start to see nonphysical things in the physical. I think my psychic abilities have increased quite a bit since I started doing this OOBEs, I am noticing I can sort of read people's thoughts . I can feel the energy they are giving off and it tells me what they are feeling, and sometimes certain emotions will just pop into my mind and I will feel them. It's so odd! But It's been helpful!

[ButterflyWoman]

I have heard of people who kind of go crazy because they can't tell the difference between what is real and what isn't.

Well, this assumes a few things about the nature of "reality" which may or may not be true. And sometimse, people have brain malfunction that impedes their ability to sort out different kinds of reality.

Personally, I don't consider my dream life any less "real" than my waking life. It's just a different kind of mutable reality. It's not fake or made up or the result of brain dysfunction. Of course, if I was one of only a handful of people who dreamed, then it'd be abnormal and I'd be "crazy" according to some definition of it...

I am noticing I can sort of read people's thoughts . I can feel the energy they are giving off and it tells me what they are feeling, and sometimes certain emotions will just pop into my mind and I will feel them.

That's empathy. Careful with that. You want to practice psychic shielding to protect yourself, and don't get in the habit of "reading" random people. You'll encounter stuff you definitely did NOT want to know if you do that enough. (Trust me on that one ).

[eyeoneblack]

The fourth dimension is time. Science fiction ruined the idea of dimensions for us. The physical dimensions are, height, width, depth, and time.
There are supposed to be other dimensions that are unspecified because we can't perceive them, (up to eleven, IIRC) because they are too small, according to modern physics. (Stephen Hawkings) in string theory. It is possible that when we become nonphysical we are able to perceive such dimensions, but no one really knows what the truth is.

From a Q&A interview with celebrated physicist and mathematician Roger Penrose (Nature 12.23.10); "Your Collected Works includes a diverse range of papers. Is there a theme?
Most of them involve a particular point of view on how to unify space-time structure with quantum mechanics. (...)"

I actually pulled this article out for a quote on [i]string theory[/] and then noticed this statement about space-time which I also wanted to discuss. (BTW you can have Dr. Penrose' Collected Works, all 5104 pages of it for a mere $1,250!*choke*). As far as string theory is concerned he maintains it is merely the current fashion in physics "which has many merits but is not believable. I don't see how you can make sense of all those extra dimensions."

Back to the space-time quote, I think we can infer that Time is not another dimension but rather an unalienable component of Space. We cannot speak of one without the other and so we bring them together in a single concept - space-time. I can think of space-time as the envelope containing the empirical universe. In other words, the three classical definitions of Space cannot be conceived except within this envelope. Where there is space, there is time and vice versa.

There is another conception of the 4th dimension which is hardly conceivable but runs like this: Take a point which exist in zero dimensions. This is the point within a circle we often see as a symbol of the Sun and also the limitless God - Ain Soph of the Cabala. Move the point through space and it will describe a line - this is the first dimension. Move the line through space and it will describe a plane - this is the second dimension. Move the plane through space and it will describe a cube - this is the third dimension.

Now here's the kicker. Somehow move the cube through space-time and it will describe the fourth dimension which also exist within the envelope of Space-Time. Our minds can't do this because it twist time and space into some 'structure' we can't imagine. But we can imagine some of the rules of this 4th dimension and the central one is that all objects are contiguous to all other objects and all times are contiguous to all other times.

We experience this in the Astral (and that is the 4th D IMO) where all places and all times are merely a thought away.

Just my thoughts on this mind-bending stuff....

[CFTraveler]

I agree with what you're saying (I always think of space as spacetime, etc.) but the accepted scientific definition of the 'fourth dimension' is time, while the concepts of a fourth dimension as the astral is the adaptation by a specific subgroup of a measurement that already had an assigned value. It's like when scriptwriters call ectoplasm protoplasm, and people talk of restringing DNA. It bugs me.
Now, I'm guilty of this myself, as I think of the astral as possibly being a quantum nonlocal state of consciousness, but I don't 'believe' it is, and am not planning to rename it anytime soon.
I rather prefer to use 'the astral' as it's own descriptor, and not 'the fourth dimension' or the 'fifth density', etc.

[eyeoneblack]

Sounds good to me.