Here, Honesty are my answers to your points:
It is really quite easy to trigger this response–at least it is if you have been doing it for years like I have (for no good reason other than exercising my sense of fantasy). It is not an instant switch, but more like a build-up that requires a couple of minutes. I don’t know whether individuals who can trigger the fight or flight response have been studied, but the concept does not strike me as very strange. If you like the theatre, think of it as a form of acting, where you become so involved in your character that the character takes over you. It’s a poor analogy but that’s the best one I can think of right now.
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There’s nothing unusual about that either. People who claim to see auras do so through a simple trick of the eye. I was very curious about this particular field several months ago, so I did some research. I found out that you can learn to see “auras”. After I set about learning, I realized that I’ve been seeing “auras” all my life–it’s a simple optical trick. if you happen to have a firm belief in this sort of subject matter, then it is fairly simple to convince yourself that you are seeing emanations of life energy and all that jazz–however, after investigating this phenomenon I have concluded (as have most others with an objective mind) that there is (once again) absolutely nothing supernatural about this. If you are interested in a discussion I started about auras, with several interesting and informative replies, here is the link http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=8163
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(quote about dreams coming true, etc.). I would be very surprised if this hasn’t happened to a great number of people. For much of my life I have kept dream diaries, and recorded my dreams (they make for absolutely fascinating reading). I have found more than once that a dream I had happened in real life some time later (sometimes, I remembered the dream only when I re-read my dream time book). The first time it happened I was a kid and it freaked me out with all sorts of paranormal possibilities. A little logic, however, soon solved the problem. We dream constantly, endless parades of images and events that are based on our waking life. Sometimes (especially if you are a very active dreamer) you will find some overlap between the waking world and the dream time. You will make connections, because humans are pattern-seeking organisms.
Of the huge number of dreams you generate, how many come true? It is only normal for us to notice the “hits” and ignore the “misses”. I probably have about 5 dreams that I can remember that later took place in everyday life, but I have no reason for remembering each of the dozens of thousands of other dreams that never did come true.
I suggest you read Cecil’s discussion on deja vu, it is interesting. I also have a suggestion that links deja vu to dreaming. Everyone dreams when they sleep (whether dreams are remembered upon waking is another matter). Frequently you will be in a waking situation where you walk across a street, or you visit a place, or you meet someone, or you hear something on the radio, and you think to yourself that this has already happened. That’s deja vu. Now consider the ephemereal qualities of dream memories. If you remember a dream when you wake up, you will notice that the memories decay extremely rapidly. In fact, it is normal for our conscious mind to forget dreams as part of normal mental clean-up, and dreams therefore have a rapid rate of decay. But if you write down a dream and read it a month later, you will experience both surprise at the dream (because you had forgotten it) and familiarity (because it is not completely erased from your mind, just stored in a back room).
With all the vast range of subject matter that marches through your brain when you dream, you build up an extensive database of ghost memories, images, places, events, characters, and so forth. If you are on holiday and walking on a beach that you have never seen before, the landscape might trigger an old dream memory you had that involved a strange beach, and your neurons start making connections to attempt to retrieve all data on the matter and formulate explanations. But your brain can’t really do that, because you know you’ve never been there before. So you feel this curious feeling of having been there, and you are puzzled. There’s your deja vu.
- Astral projection is also natural and has nothing whatsoever to do with the supernatural. You can read this very interesting link about the subject http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mastral.html.
If you are too lazy to read the article, let me quote SDSTAFF Doug when he says that astral projection is “a rather natural and common form of hallucination that can be best described as the exact opposite of sleepwalking.”
I hope I have provided the most sensible and likely explanations here.