Physical Versus Non Physical

[steve_bank]

I close my eyes and imagine my spirit travels to Mars.

I have a vivid image walking around. I pick up rocks and leave footprints. I watch a Mars rover roll by.

Is the experience real?



What is non physical vs physical?

Astral projection - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In esotericism, astral projection (also known as astral travel, soul journey, soul wandering, spiritual journey, spiritual travel) is an intentional out-of-body experience (OBE)[1][2] in which a subtle body, known as the astral body or body of light through which consciousness functions separately from the physical body, travels throughout the astral plane.[3]

The idea of astral travel is ancient and occurs in multiple cultures. The term "astral projection" was coined and promoted by 19th-century Theosophists.[4] It is sometimes associated with dreams and forms of meditation.[5] Some individuals have reported perceptions similar to descriptions of astral projection that were induced through various hallucinogenic and hypnotic means (including self-hypnosis). There is no scientific evidence that there is a consciousness whose embodied functions are separate from normal neural activity or that one can consciously leave the body and make observations of the physical universe.[6] As a result, astral projection has been characterized as pseudoscience.[7]

Ancient Egyptian
The ba hovering above the body. This image is based on an original found in The Book of the Dead.

Similar concepts of soul travel appear in various other religious traditions. For example, ancient Egyptian teachings present the soul (ba) as having the ability to hover outside the physical body via the ka, or subtle body.[8]

 

[Elixir]

Is the experience real?

Absolutely. You have just had the very real experience of imagining that your spirit travels to Mars and you do stuff.

Technology is amazing. I bet anything that in the unlikely event that some neolithic dude imagined his spirit traveling to Mars and doing stuff, he never saw a Mars rover go by when he got there.

 

[Jarhyn]

Is the experience real?

Absolutely. You have just had the very real experience of imagining that your spirit travels to Mars and you do stuff.

Technology is amazing. I bet anything that in the unlikely event that some neolithic dude imagined his spirit traveling to Mars and doing stuff, he never saw a Mars rover go by when he got there.

Just like when I write a video game simulation of Mars and send myself there in full-dive VR, I really do have an "experience". I felt the things I felt, saw the images I saw, and thought the things I thought. All that really happened. All of that environment was really rendered unto me.

That environment is not the place "Mars", for all it is capable of delivering the experience that place would unto me, at least of our knowledge of Mars some minutes ago.

The experience is just as real when an LLM is behind the "controller" for all it is a different experience given the difference in the "user agent" part of the loop.

What it is without, however, is "consequence": It will never change the state of stuff outside the body on that way without some mechanical messaging linkage to some present object capable of doing work that would meaningfully contribute to that outcome.

It may seem like a pedantic splitting of hairs, but to call something not-real simply because it lacks consequences (outside of the mind that experienced it and some adjoining motion towards heat-death in the calculation of its presentation and holding of its states) is going to be interpreted as "strictly" or "technically" true, and we should probably reject such language as misleading at best and outright perilous at other times.