75. Marilynn Hughes, Out of Body Travel Experiment (Podcast)

[alextsakiris]

Guest: Marilynn Hughes, performs an out-of-body travel experiment for a mother grieving the loss of her daughter.

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[audio: http://www.skeptiko.com/podcast/skep...xperiment.mp3]

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[craven]

What, no posts on this on yet?

If you listen to Marilynn's interview with Joan Rivers on her website you will realize that what she is doing when she experiences "astral travel" sounds an awful lot like a text book lucid dream. Did she ever mention this Alex? Whether or not you can actually pull real information out of a lucid dream is open to debate. Also, there is some good original music there on her site, "sky" especially, which sounds a little bit like "Plain Song" by the Cure.

[fabkebab]

I enjoyed the podcast (I enjoy all of Alex's podcasts) but this one was not as provocative (spurring debate) as some of the others -

To me, the lady has some interesting things to say, but there isnt any science in it to pick apart - Its a story (aka anecdotal evidence) to either enjoy or not enjoy.

I personally liked it and didnt try to judge one way or another.

I did have one thought though - During contact with the deceased, how long does the conversation last? The returned details from a medium always seem very general, with only a couple of specifics, implying that the conversation only lasts about 10 seconds or so -

If I had a conversation with someone, even if it was only 30 seconds, I would be able to recount a lot of specific information. Why would the deceased person only mention "a general university town" instead of naming the town itself? Why not name the lesbian woman? Why not explain exactly how she died and why?

If God allows a deceased person to communicate with the medium, why does he not allow clear, concise communication?

Anwyay, I dont "judge" stories like this, I just suspend my critical thinking for a while, but I did ask myself a question or two - maybe this will draw someone into the thread

[Eric Debois]

Originally Posted by craven

...what she is doing when she experiences "astral travel" sounds an awful lot like a text book lucid dream...

Not sure there is any difference really. I used to experiment a lot with this stuff. I was into shamanic drum journeying and all that.

Lucid dreaming tends to involve more alice-in-wonderland-ish expriences, but you can drift from there to more stable environments, like the shamanic nether world, or the one you encounter when you do plain OOB.

And you can certainly drift from a stable environment out into the dreamy ones.

So, I guess, from my point of view, these are just different ways of exiting the state of being "body focused" that we are normally in. But there doesn't seem to be a lot of boundaries once you are out there. So to speak.

[David Bailey]

Originally Posted by fabkebab

If I had a conversation with someone, even if it was only 30 seconds, I would be able to recount a lot of specific information. Why would the deceased person only mention "a general university town" instead of naming the town itself? Why not name the lesbian woman? Why not explain exactly how she died and why?

I think that is what always puzzles me - why are these contacts always so vague. I'm not saying this necessarily invalidates the phenomenon, but it is puzzling - almost as though the process is one of browsing another person's thought processes, rather than holding a conversation.

Alex, this might be an interesting point to pursue.

David

[Eric Debois]

Originally Posted by David Bailey

I think that is what always puzzles me - why are these contacts always so vague. I'm not saying this necessarily invalidates the phenomenon, but it is puzzling - almost as though the process is one of browsing another person's thought processes, rather than holding a conversation.

Alex, this might be an interesting point to pursue.

David

I've always pegged this as a kind of left-brain vs right-brain thing. Numbers, words and data in general seems to be experienced in terms of what it means rather than what it is. Again, much like dreaming.

Also, given that many skeptics are in the left-brain dominant group (good at math, memorizing etc) that kind of might explain why they dismiss this stuff out of hand. It's not a part of their mental make up so they can't conceive of it being true.

[FastEddieB]

Also, given that many skeptics are in the left-brain dominant group (good at math, memorizing etc) that kind of might explain why they dismiss this stuff out of hand. It's not a part of their mental make up so they can't conceive of it being true.

I think that's a bit of straw man.

I can conceive of many, many weird things being true, from quantum physics to dogs that know to psi to precognition to psychics to global consciousness, you name it - the weirder the better. I try not to dismiss anything out of hand.

If I AM left-brain dominant, that merely leads me to seek evidence and to weigh it objectively - not always easy to do.

[hoggworks]

I agree with FastEddieB, it's a pretty big straw man. Who cares if you're left-brained or right-brained?

Myself, I'm equally disposed to being both creative AND technical; I'm an artist, a writer, puppeteer (etc etc), so I'm predisposed to that kind of thinking, but I'm also a deeply analytical programmer.

If anything the "leftbrained" cop-out would only work against you, Eric: maybe you need to be left-brained to understand why you should dismiss such fanciful claims.

Also, isn't the left/right brain thing a myth? I hear it's not really based on much.

People are both creative and technical in different amounts, and Eric, don't forget, it takes significant creativity to be good at the technical stuff; that something involves science directly, rather than "intuition," or colour-matching or something doesn't make it more "left-brained."

So it's a straw man AND a false dichotomy. Nice!

[fabkebab]

Originally Posted by Eric Debois

I've always pegged this as a kind of left-brain vs right-brain thing. Numbers, words and data in general seems to be experienced in terms of what it means rather than what it is. Again, much like dreaming.

Also, given that many skeptics are in the left-brain dominant group (good at math, memorizing etc) that kind of might explain why they dismiss this stuff out of hand. It's not a part of their mental make up so they can't conceive of it being true.

Irrelevant to the straw man stuff - you make an interesting point that perhaps her communications are more like dreaming - but arent we talking about "Lucid" dreaming as opposed to vague nebulous dreaming?

[hoggworks]

Originally Posted by Eric Debois

Not sure there is any difference really. I used to experiment a lot with this stuff. I was into shamanic drum journeying and all that.

I got the sense that the "just lucid dreaming" wasn't that it was a dream and since dreams are gateways to other realities, it's all the same thing, but that it's just a dream, and not indicative of anything other than decidedly non-paranormal brain activity.