Does anyone know the name for this?

Discussion about out-of-body experiences (astral travel), lucid dreaming, and other sleep related phenomenon such as night terrors and sleep paralysis.
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scaravich
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Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by scaravich »

OK, I am not completely sure how to classify this type of experience.

When I was a child, I used to read books about the power of the mind (I had a college reading level in kindergarten lol) and how to exploit it. I thought that mental power was really fascinating. None of the books were metaphysical, they were all physical and scientific. I remember a lot of subjects in the books... like reducing heartrate to extremely low levels, focusing on certain sounds until you could hear only that sound, stuff like that. A lot described techniques you could use to trick your mind into thinking very things, exploiting involuntary actions, etc.

But I remember one 'trick' I learned from this kind of book was that of manipulating your mind to feel things that weren't physically there. Essentially you were making yourself think you were experiencing physical senses even though you were not.

I remember it used exercises that started with an orange, and you would visualize the orange for extended periods of time until you could see it clearly in your mind. Then you would feel the orange, focusing on everything it made you feel (how cold was it? texture of the skin? was it wet or dry? how firm was it? etc.) and then you would smell it, taste it, etc. Focusing on every aspect of the sense. Eventually, after practicing this enough, you really started to feel and taste and smell this orange.

As a kid I thought this was the greatest thing in the world. I think kids actually can do these things more easily because they have not "lost" a lot of the mind's power to conditioning. Anyway, I started trying to visualize other things like this, and would try to teach my friends to do it. I never got my friends to be able to, until one day I met a friend who actually had been doing the same thing for his whole life. At this point I was now probably age 10 or 11 and had been doing this for many years.

After practicing this regularly for years, I had gotten quite good at it. I could imagine entire worlds and feel like I was there. I would go to a park where there was a stream I could wade in. There was a large grassy field that was always sunny. Around this field were berries of all kinds to pick and eat. I would spend hours in a quiet corner (luckily, you could say, my family was largley quiet and absent during my youth... not to mention I would stay up til 1 or 2 AM even from age 5 LOL) and explore this place, even thoug it was not terribly big, and feel the grass and water and eat the berries and taste them.

There wasn't much more to it than that, but the more I did it, the more it began to feel "real." I was really using my senses... tasting, smelling, hearing, feeling, seeing... It was beyond simple contemplation and imagination, to where I was really feeling these things. It was not as clear as everyday life and feeling, but the particular feeling I was focusing on at the moment felt quite vivid. When I would eat a berry, I would actually taste it, albeit not as strongly as a real-life berry, and while tasting, the smell/sight/sound/feel of the world I was in would be lessened.

Once I met the friend who also said he would do things like this, we started lying to each other to try to make our fantasy worlds seem better than they really were. We started saying we were traveling to other dimensions, and we were heroes in some kind of movie-like world, and we could meet each other there, and cast magic like in Final Fantasy or Dungeons and Dragons and stuff like that. Slowly, I started focusing on making up stories rather than honing my ability to go to this place in my head. And I lost the ability to do that. I'm sure with proper meditation and practice I could do it again, but it might be a bit harder now and less clear.

But is there a name for this kind of experience? I was conscious and definitely knew I was conscious. It felt very different from a dream. But I don't know what to call this kind of experience. It's really not anything metaphysical, it was training techniques to reach into your mind's inner workings and make it feel things it wasn't actually feeling. I knew exactly what I was doing when I was doing it. I knew I wasn't actually travelling anywhere, but imagining something so vividly I could experience it with the physical senses.
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Lillady
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Re: Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by Lillady »

During mediation you can defintely get to that type of state, using all five senses consciously. Typically this is just known as a deep mediative state. Fully conscious you are disciplining your mind to focus on the various aspects of that one object (its scent, taste, look, feel, and its sound). I have done it many times myself and it utilizes a lot of energy! How did you feel afterwards? Drained? Just curious because I know I did at least for a little while afterwards. I hope this helps you :)

Blessed Be!
scaravich
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Re: Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by scaravich »

At first I probably did, but kids have tons of extra energy and dont notice when they are worn out as much. Plus I did this every day so I had a lot of practice and probably built up a kind of stamina for it. I was hoping the exact feeling of controlling the senses to experience things that were in your mind would have its own name. But thanks! Maybe I should try to hone this ability again :)
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Lillady
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Re: Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by Lillady »

You're welcome. Yes you can build up kind of a stamina for it. Im sure you can defintely gain the ability back, just keep in mind it may be a little harder now that you are older. It is for some not all, just varies from person to person. Good luck dear!
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-Dark-Moon-
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Re: Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by -Dark-Moon- »

The name for that experience is visualisation.

As you know, a basic skill for spells and magic.
I am that which is attained at the end of desire
scaravich
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Re: Does anyone know the name for this?

Post by scaravich »

Hmm, I guess it's just a very intense/realistic form of visualization, then. I will admit, the visualization I employ in magic is not anything as 'intense' as what I experienced as a kid. My current visualization ability lends more to like... a very vivid imagination/daydream kind of experience. But I don't ever feel like I'm actually tasting/hearing/etc. things. More just, thinking about tasting/hearing/etc.

Hmmm... I really think this calls for a lot of thinking and practicing and re-evaluating how effective my visualizations are now. I think visualization is so important to magic...
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