NEWS: Wider the Phase

[Michael Raduga]

What else the phase may encompass? Let's make it wider!

For example, besides the list, we can explain by the phase some biblical miracles and incubus (sexual encounters on awakening/falling asleep http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus).



What's your suggestion and where else have you seen traces of the phase(switched off body + switched on mind)?

[a historian]

Hi!

I'm not so sure about this straightforward way to interpret, not to mention explain, historical phenomena using modern concepts, but as the "phase" seems to be a universal phenomenon based on physiological structure of the human brain, it seems quite legit to make some connections. Deeper analysis can take place later, if ever.

I think one quite obviously phase-related phenomenon is the so-called benandanti.

"The Benandanti ("Good Walkers") were an agrarian visionary tradition in the Friuli district of Northern Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries. The Benandanti claimed to travel out of their bodies while asleep to struggle against malevolent witches (streghe) in order to ensure good crops for the season to come."

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benandanti, italics mine.)

I don't know much about this. It's just something I've picked up from some books I've read. Italian historian named Carlo Ginzburg has written about it: see The Night Battles: Witchcraft and Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (1966, English translation 1983). But, if I remember correctly, there is some outdated interpretations about witchcraft in his book. For example, he argues, I think - haven't read the book -, that those who were persecuted of witchcraft in the early modern witch trials were really surviving members of an old, pre-christian fertility cult, which is a popular misconception based mostly on writings of Margaret Murray. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Murray.) However, Ginzburg - again, if I remember correctly - has admitted this and corrected himself in his later publications. But this discussion is perhaps not relevant here - just read the book, if you are interested.

By the way, check the "Related traditions" -section in the wikipedia article quoted above. There you can find a few more possibly historical, phase-related phenomena. But, again, I think we must be careful when making this kind of historical connections.

[Summerlander]

The Benandanti believed they were travelling out of their bodies to fight against evil witches thought to be responsible for bad crops. In the Late Middle Ages, and at the dawn of the Scientific Revolution, such belief is venial given the lack of agricultural knowledge. Sleep paralysis certainly occurred on occasion when they supposedly left their bodies so it's safe to say that they were in fact entering the phase. Benandanti means "good walker" but I'm not sure "The Benandanti" concords with our list.

Maybe if we say, "The Benandanti's Spirit Walking" and people may be curious enough about what it entails to the point of checking out the history. Perhaps "Tibetan Buddhism: dream yoga" could also be added. We'll see...

[digitalvygr]

Dream Yoga is very interesting Summerlander. Seems there are actually even 3 levels: Dream Yoga, which sounds like it would correspond to Lucid Dreaming, Sleep Yoga Which is even a bit deeper and would maybe even correspond to both lucid dreams and OBE, and then they even have a third most advanced level which is Bardo Yoga, in which they prepare for trying to be able to discern what to do when they die in order to be conscious enough and prepared enough to try to merge with the white light and break the cycle of reincarnation as they see it. Seems like at that level they are really mimicking a full on death experience as much as possible, which possibly goes slightly above what is in the Venn Diagram above when it states "Near Death Experience (Partly).