Hi!
Good question and your post is not far from the truth. When I first started (entering the phase), I thought that my soul was really leaving my body. The experience was so real and having listened to others claiming to know for sure that we are not just our bodies I figured that it can only be true and the experience is the proof.
I'd like to mention here that I started practising phase induction when I first heard of Robert Monroe in a Michael Powell book called "Mind Games". It included a summary of the method that Monroe describes in his first book:
Journeys Out of the Body. Curious, I decided to try it and found myself experiencing vibrations, and later, a full-fledged OOBE. Eventually, I bought Monroe's book and admired his approach and honesty (the same, however, cannot be said about his following books and the people who got involved).
I started to think that Spiritualists and New Agers were the most open-minded people around and became a member of sites like Astral Viewers (though later I found out that even those who were open to the "Astral Projection" concept as being a reality could also be close-minded about many things and were often hostile towards those with opposing views).
The name "Summerlander" came from an experience I had where I landed in a magical and colourful land. At the time, I hadn't even heard of Summerland (or upper astral plane as some called it) but found striking similarities between my experience and the way in which, in a book about the afterlife, an alleged spirit of a dead person described where he was to his family members through a medium. It was a place that convey happiness, love and harmony. A colourful place but not really a place... a state of mind. Cottages and rainbows struck a chord with me...
Soon, I found myself attracted to esoteric cosmology and liked the idea that the phase provided a glimpse of an afterlife. Still, I've always been somewhat fickle and never held onto any belief system 100%. I met the sceptics and listened to what they had to say. Their arguments were equally valid. I was also curious about what science had to say on the subject. It painted a different picture. The brain is more complex than anyone can imagine.
But it was the experience in the phase, the more familiar I became with it, that started to open my eyes more and got me to question things. The phase often reminds me of how people take the world too seriously. People no longer laugh together when a horse poops and it absolutely stinks. We no longer mock each others voices in harmless fun because it is now considered disrespectful. We no longer laugh at nature for the meaningless circus that it really is because everything has to have meaning. why be so serious about things? We need a reminder that conceptual reality only exists in our heads and we have the power to shape it as we see fit.
I came to the realisation that I wasn't separating from my physical body at all as nothing was actual in the phase. How did I discover this? Well, I found that even the perception of space could be altered just like objects and people. I also began to pay careful attention to what was presented to me in the virtual world of the phase. I found evidence of a mishmash of thoughts and memories. I saw things as an artist that I had never seen before but were paradoxically familiar and felt like I had created them somehow. This tallies with the subconscious view. The subconscious mind largely governs the phase. Soon, I realised that memory, expectation, motivation and desire were powerful catalysts in that state of mind. Another one: belief.
If you believe in something, you will see that and nothing else. That becomes your reality. If you have doubts, as I was having at the time, you will see that. Example: even when I was open to esotericism, I pondered the possibility that the phase world was a hallucination - next time I entered the phase I translocated to a strange room and found a word engraved on one of its walls: hallucination.
I also noticed that when I daydreamed, there were certain thoughts running through my head which seemed congruous with what I had been experiencing in the phase. Then, the penny dropped... the phase state is the lucid experience of thoughts (both conscious and unconscious). The phase itself was teaching me and I was evolving intellectually. More and more the notion of spirits and an afterlife sounded ridiculous. I realised that the phase does not provide proof of any of that but that people were the ones interpreting the phase in ways that differed from one another.
That is what made me a sceptic. Then, I discovered Stephen LaBerge and Michael Raduga. Both of their views resonate with me. What attracts me the most to this site is that it is concerned with what's practical first and foremost.
The telepathy issue remains. There is still no evidence strong enough to convince the entire world that it is real. Is it real? I don't know. All I know is that I was getting a string of hits at the time and thought I could help that member of Astral Pulse. But one cannot escape the possibility of coincidence or the biased interpretations that people have to reinforce their beliefs. Associations can be made in so many ways!
I think it is healthy to look at the full picture rather than just swallowing what things seem like without scrutinity and reason. Note that everything I suggested to Darina was still in a hypothetical tone. Even then, however, I was already a sceptic. A true open-minded sceptic!!
Is the phase entirely in my head? I don't know. I'm sure most of it is (if not all). Of course, one can argue that the brain picks up external frequencies or that all matter is somewhat quantum entangled since the big explosion. But, I have logically reasoned this with a question: If when I daydream it seems like I am vaguely experiencing the content of the phase, and taking into account that in the waking state I cannot read other people's minds, why should I be able to do so in the "full-fledged" phase?
What you see depends on where your mind is at. Hence the proverb: "What bread looks like depends upon whether you are hungry or not". LaBerge conducted an interesting experiment with inkblots and later people observing films where they would have to describe what was going on. The individuals' backgrounds, beliefs and expectations massively influenced what they saw. We create our own worlds even when we are awake...
