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jetleg
New Member

1 Post
Posted - 09/13/2008 :  06:12:27  Show Profile Send jetleg a Private Message  Reply with Quote
Hi.

What do you think of the following :

http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/en/archives/approaching_buddhism/introduction/extra_bodily_states.html

?

I think that


(1) They seem to have many falsifiable claims.
(2) So interesting to see how another culture treats it.

Cuneiformist
The Imperfectionist

USA
4955 Posts
Posted - 09/13/2008 :  08:11:07   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Cuneiformist a Private Message  Reply with Quote
I don't see much to this at all. And I'm not even sure that any of this is really falsifiable. For instance, he writes that:
Having gained control over the dream state and mastered this type of emanation, one can set out books in one's room and memorize them while asleep. However, as the dream body is unable to make contact with concrete objects and cannot turn pages, it is necessary to arrange several copies of the books so that there is no need for page turning.
So presumably, we could test this in a controlled environment.

The problem is that if you fail the test, you can always just blame it on circumstances-- "Oh, I just wasn't able to gain use of my dream-body for some reason"-- and go on asserting that it's possible. Right? So how do you falsify this?
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Ricky
SFN Die Hard

USA
4907 Posts
Posted - 09/13/2008 :  09:28:13   [Permalink]  Show Profile  Send Ricky an AOL message Send Ricky a Private Message  Reply with Quote

The problem is that if you fail the test, you can always just blame it on circumstances-- "Oh, I just wasn't able to gain use of my dream-body for some reason"-- and go on asserting that it's possible. Right? So how do you falsify this?


Falsifiability makes the assumption that the parties involved are reasonable. For example, if Eddington's experiment hadn't worked out, Einstein could have hypothesized it was because the Sun had an iron surface, and therefore the test did not behave as expected because our physics (and astronomy... and chemistry...) is wrong elsewhere, but not in his theory.

Of course this doesn't make Einstein's theory not falsifiable. Just because the supporter of the theory claims that the theory has not been falsified does not make it so. To any reasonable person, over several (dozen) experiments, they would say the OBE is at least unsupported, if not falsified.

Edit: And ad hoc explanations only go to destroy scientific credibility unless they are supported by more then a "Well it could be...".
Why continue? Because we must. Because we have the call. Because it is nobler to fight for rationality without winning than to give up in the face of continued defeats. Because whatever true progress humanity makes is through the rationality of the occasional individual and because any one individual we may win for the cause may do more for humanity than a hundred thousand who hug their superstitions to their breast.
- Isaac Asimov
Edited by - Ricky on 09/13/2008 09:32:35
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Simon
SFN Regular

USA
1992 Posts
Posted - 09/13/2008 :  09:49:37   [Permalink]  Show Profile Send Simon a Private Message  Reply with Quote
One thought: out of body experience in NDE has been linked to a lack of oxygen arriving to the brain.

Meditation, on the other hand, has been linked to a slowing down of cardiac activities.

My favoured hypothesis at that point is that the reduction in heart rhythm reduces the blood flow to the point where it mimics the effect of cardiac unrest as seen in NDE.
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Carl Sagan - 1996
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