SDStaff Doug –
Very interesting response on out-of-body experiences. One slight error on your part, if I may be so bold – REM sleep is stage 1, not stage 4. This isn’t important to the meat of your answer, but I thought the clarification would be appreciated by somebody. Keep On Dopin’!
–Da Cap’n
Re OBE’s: Why can’t a mundane “computer glitch” of the brain also be regarded as a spiritual experience? We all know that sex is a mundane physiological process, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be deeply spiritual and revelatory. People have had wonderful religious experiences when on psychoactive herbs, even though “what’s really happening” is that their neurotransmitters are being chemically active. All that means is that there’s a physiological basis for a metaphysical event. So there’s no reason why we can’t derive spiritual meaning from an OBE, even if it is just an odd occurrence in brain function.
And the link to the article in question is: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mastral.html
There are two threads now on the same topic.
Mea culpa – I forgot the common courtesy of posting the article’s URL. Thanks, Dex.
You’re forgiven this time, Cap’n, but next time you’ll have to belay the mizzenmast and leeward the starboard. (I’m a little fuzzy on nautical terminology, does that mean walk the plank?)
What’s all this talk about things naval orange you taking a big chance you’ll say something you didn’t mean?
Dex wrote:
I believe the phrases you’re looking for are:
“Stow the mizzen mast! Hoist the mainsail! Batten down the hatches!”
‘But the hatches already are battened down!’
“Well, bat 'em down again! We’ll teach those hatches!”
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
Sorry about the screw-up in sleep cycle terminology. I no longer have my old psych books handy.
As for Tracer’s quote:
“Stow the mizzen mast! Hoist the mainsail! Batten down the hatches!”
‘But the hatches already are battened down!’
“Well, bat 'em down again! We’ll teach those hatches!”
The last two lines are misquoted. They go:
“But I did batten 'em down!”
“Well, batten 'em down again! We’ll teach those hatches!”
I used to run a quiz on rec.games.trivia on the last lines of Bugs Bunny cartoons. Trust me on this.
I’ve heard the “We’ll teach those hatches!” sctick in at least two different cartoons (One of which did, indeed, feature Bugs). And although I’m sure I didn’t get the quote exactly right, I do remember that one of them very definitely WAS phrased “bat 'em down again” instead of “batten 'em down again”.
Now if I could only find a video of that Bugs Bunny cartoon where Pete Puma says, “Oh, 3 or 4”. I haven’t seen it played on TV in nearly two decades.
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
Oh! I just remembered something actually related to the topic (for a change):
Sleep paralysis, coupled with hypnagogic hallucinations, has been implicated in many “alien abduction” stories involving small gray beings walking though the walls and carrying you out of your bed.
I’m not flying fast, just orbiting low.
Tracer wrote:
“Sleep paralysis, coupled with hypnagogic hallucinations, has been implicated in many “alien abduction” stories involving small gray beings walking though the walls and carrying you out of your bed.”
I can also vouch for this, though I didn’t want to get into it in the response. I intentionally induced one such episode, where I felt I was levitated up through the ceiling into a green light and a waiting spaceship. Naturally, this was impossible, me being in a first-floor apartment in a busy college town in the middle of the day. That would take some series of coincidences if I just happened to be abducted when I was attempting to hallucinate an abduction, and that they could dissolve the upper two floors of a building to get at me without anyone else seeing it happen - and then put it all back the way it was. I have ZERO faith in anyone who claims an alien abduction in which they were paralyzed.
matt_mcl said:
“Re OBE’s: Why can’t a mundane “computer glitch” of the brain also be regarded as a spiritual experience?”
Well, the term "spiritual experience" usually refers to something that one believes was caused by something external to oneself. It also usually refers to an experience that actually reflects the real state of affairs. If you have an OBE in which you witness something that actually happened, and which you would otherwise not be aware of, I would consider that more spiritual that simply imaging that you witnessed something that did not actaully happen. But if you want to consider OBEs as spiritual experiences even though they are produced completely within the mind without the help of a higher power, and leave the subject with an incorrect impression of what happened, that's certainly your right.
-Ryan
" ‘Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter.’ " -Kurt Vonnegut, * Breakfast of Champions *