Welcome to the hizzle!

I'd say you are an atheist, but have some irrational beliefs.

Buddhism is essentially an atheist religion, as you say.  There is no "god."

If you don't believe in god, then you are an atheist.  Period.  It's not like a political party that you can choose to join.  It's a definition.  Many people try to skirt around that, but it's just a fact.  You can call yourself whatever you like, though.

See the difference?

I don't believe in mysticism, personally, but there's nothing that says an atheist can't.  It's just kind of rare in the west.

Lol!!! Thanks. BTW, I am not a buddhist just because I tried some techniques created by buddhists. Just like I am not Jewish because I believe in the theory of relativity!

Requirements for being Atheist

1. A lack of belief in a God.

2. Refer to 1. 

I don't believe in God, but I believe in mysticism. You see, to me God is like Santa Claus. I don't believe. I have practiced Buddhist meditations and have acchieved results. I am not interested in beliefs. I am interested in evidence, with results. I wanted to see if there was anything to these meditation claims. The Buddhist methods attracted me because they are scientific, with no belief necessary. In fact the Buddha didn't believe in god. If you try this, you will come to know.... I lived in a monestary for nine months in New York. I had experiences of leaving my body in a "dream body". We had group dreams where five of us shared the same dreams regularly, and we always verified it the next day. This is "proof" for me that the mind is not an individual thing but at the depths of our minds we overlap. Like waves in the ocean seem to have individuality but are the same. But I don't believe in God. Another thing, I started having dreams about the future, which would happen. Also our teacher would come into my dreams and give me teachings.

I had many experiences that prove to me that consciousness survives death, if you can meditate enough that your mind stays conscious while you sleep regularly. These are scientific methods. They are experiments. Try them and you come to results and from these you can prove a hypothesis. This is something alltogether different and not to be confused with being a stupid person who desparately believes in Santa Claus the savior because he or she is afraid of the mystery and depth of life and death.

Of course how can I prove this to anyone else? You can either take my word for it, or think that I am full of shit, or you can try meditation for yourself. It is not irrational. In fact "meditation is the art of contacting reality. And what do we mean by reality? Do we mean the material world? Or the spiritual world? These are philosophical concepts and concepts are not reality! Reality is...(chime of a bell)... and we won't give it a name." -Alan Watts

So, am I an Atheist? I don't believe in any God or Devil that created this universe. I believe in me and me alone.

Welcome Sexy Sadie,

I used to be a bit into Buddhism when I was a young teenager. Those were the days when I wanted to find a religion.

Would you object to the theory that there is a scientific explanation for out of body experiences. I don't know what it is, although some of the psychologists here might have an idea. Evidently such experiences exist, as does hypnotism and religious experience. But would you object to the idea that it is our brains that do this and not some kind of mystical, supernatural force.

The human brain is immensely powerful, a lot depends on what chemicals are in the brain. Drugs can have massive effects on the mind, LSD for example is known to have devastating hallucinogenic effects. Slight changes in mental state  can turn a fully operational brain into one that is unable to deal with the real world.

I have synaesthesia, so when I listen to music I visualise the music in colours and patterns. I associate numbers and letters with colours. So 1,2,3,4,5,6 goes Black, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cream, Red (I never knew that it was unusual until a couple of years ago). If this can happen in the brain there is no reason why certain practices can't alter mental states to those you described.

Welcome to the forums, Sadie. My non-synaesthetic voice teacher (5th generation Liszt piano student) is a Zen Buddhist. She believes in a lot of things I consider hogwash, but we get along just the same.  I wonder if she realizes she is an atheist?

I do believe that meditation can cause altered mind states, but I also believe they are just that and nothing more. I've been trying to make myself learn mindfulness meditation, but undertaking it as a solo endeavor has been less than successful so far.

Out-of-body experiences have been debunked to my satisfaction. Of course, it's pretty hard (impossible) to prove a negative, but no one has satisfied a simple test: When on one of your "out-of-body" experiences, journey to a friend's house and read a note that was left for you. Once back in your body, report what the note said. No one has ever done this, at least in a scientific setting.

As for sharing the same dream, one possible non-supernatural explanation is that students who are together all day experiencing a close bond might tend to dream the same sort of thing. Perhaps a bit more research would shed light on this phenomenon.

Again: welcome to the forums.