This is a topic that is long overdue, but one that I find quite difficult to handle.  One of the criticisms levied against trance mediums is that rather than communicating a true message from a departed loved one, they are merely reading a sitter's mind, and believing that it comes from the deceased.  Don has cited cases where a sitter deliberately fabricated a false personality who was "departed," and the medium accurately picked up on the fantasy.  Further, he cites a case where a medium identified a person's departed friend as coming through, and it later turned out that this person was still very much alive.  In Alan's Myer's thread, I found cases from the 1800s where Myers himself found the same troublesome issues arise (namely mediums picking up on a person who was not deceased).  The issue to address then becomes: are these communications genuine after death communications (ADCs), or is it the result of ESP used on the living?

What is needed is a way to verify that a "mind reading" between the sitter and the medium could not have occured, in order to substantiate true ADCs.  Or, one needs to obtain a piece of information not known to the sitter, but only to the deceased.

ESP is presumed to be a form of communication not presently well defined by  western science.  It may include:
clairvoance, remote viewing, precognition, retrocognition, clairudience, clairsntience, clairalience, clairgustance, psycometry, aura reading, psychokinesis.  Interstingly enough, OOBE and mediumship are considered by parapsychologists to fall into the realm of extra sensory perception.  ESP is still quite a controversial topic amongst scientists, and while data continues to accumulate about it, the true definition of ESP and which of the aforementioned abilities are "real" and verifiable is currently not widely known or accepted by scientists.

I have always found the idea that invoking the use of ESP somehow invalidates the presence of afterlife contact as being somewhat curious.  That is because western science does not have (as yet) a valid working model of human consciousness.  The location of human consciousness is uncertain - many spiritually minded people believe that it exists independently from the physical world.  Certain oddites have come up in people who have had the corpus callosum cut between their cerebral hemispheres (the whole notion of left and right brain thinking).  Likewise, with strokes, if a certain general area is damaged, we know, approximately what part of the body will be paralyzed, or whether speech or language comprehension will be involved.  However, none of these biological models, can currently tell us if the brain creates consciousness, or if the brain is like a radio, receiving spiritual consciousness.  (Of course if you damage a radio receiver or stereo speakers in some way, you will not get the proper sound out of the music - but it would be wrong to say that the radio was creating the music itself rather than the musicians!).  So where is the musician of our consciousness located?

In Lashley's famous neurological experiments with rodents, the obliteration with a hot probe of large segments of their brains did not obliterate the memory of learning a maze - as if the memory of the maze were not a discreet entity in one part of the brain.  Clearly the question of where thought/consciousness comes from is far from solved.  So then this leads us to consider;  If "mind reading" exists, what exactly are we reading, where is it located, and how is it proof of any sort of occurence in the physical world? With other senses (touch, taste) we can agree on what is making contact with what (at least in generalities).  

Carl Jung and others have written various theories on the collective unconscious.  Many remote viewers report being able to access this vast reservoir of information while relaxed to locate and describe people far across the globe.  Remote viewers have reported accessing information from different points in time as well.  

So now, to get back to the medium accessing information from a sitter via ESP.  If mind/spirit is located in an interpenetrating dimension, and manifests in the physical, how does the reading of mind/spirit of a living person invalidate the existence of an afterlife (which may be in an interpenetrating dimension of mind)?  If ESP can be used as in remote viewing to access the collective unconscoius, independent of space and time, isn't ESP then by definition a phenomenon beyond the physical world?

The question asked by any of us of a medium is best put as: "is this a valid communication with a discarnate person, or can the medium know my thoughts, and project a false message from a departed loved one?"  If mind and thought are not part of the physical world, but interpenetrate with it, I'm not sure that our question can always be answered, unless we have proof of a communication of a a fact only the departed could have known but the sitter could not.

Perhaps ESP is a precondition for true contact with the afterlife.  Perhaps, in order to contact the mind of a discarnate person, we must be able to contact the spiritual realm in which the minds of incarnated people also dwell to some extent.  Seen in this light, the use of ESP is simply contact made in the mental realm between either a living or a deceased person.

Matthew

Doc said: isn't ESP then by definition a phenomenon beyond the physical world?
___

I think esp is accurately named as extra...sense...perception.

I think it is a series of electrical impulses upon the right hand side of the brain, the more receptive side, and the left side deals with interpretation of the extra perception.

the verification aspect is a detail received that neither the subject nor the medium knew beforehand, which could be verified by a 3rd party.
for my own personal verification I was talking and meeting with my grandmother purely as an experiment with no real expectations. she told me before she died she had asked my mother to give me a black brooch.
after I was done talking to her about this and that, and this through feelings and sometimes a word or two filtered through...I went downstairs to speak with mother why I had not recieved the jewelry.
I had known nothing about this. Mother then got a sheepish look on her face, and she knew I had been talking with nanny, as she herself talked with her all the time.
they were very close.  then she told me it had gone to Joan my sister.
so here was my verification, there was no one's mind to read, mother was downstairs and had was not thinking of nanny's jewelry.

and to top it off, I had been just having a silly, relaxed chat with nanny about the charleston dance and her hairdo back then, and there was PUL. it was nice. I was just ending the conversation when I felt her pull me back in to tell me about this brooch thing. I wasn't looking for any sort of verification, I just wanted to try out Bruce's description on making contact, to see if it would work for me. so being pulled back that way, with a little excitement I felt on nanny's part, to "ask mother about the brooch" I thought that was a special treat, and this was Nanny's way of reminding mother, I was her daughter, the one she thought didn't belong to the family, and nanny was working on getting us together, so hard, so there double verification. at least for me.

love, alysia

Thanks, Alysia,

That was a great personal verification not explainable by "mind reading".  Somehow, if ESP is brought up as a plausible alternative (in other situations), it seems to inject doubt to the whole process.  Yet for me, the realm of thought is not part of the physical, and there is therefore nothing ordinary about reading the thoughts of another.  Science currently has no device capable of probing a person's mental activities and finding hidden facts - even the simplest ones.

If I am in a deeply relaxed meditative state, as a trance medium might be, is it so hard to believe that I might interact in a communication with a deceased person in a similar way to someone still living?  Many people say, that they feel the presence of a departed loved one at certain events.  Is this any different than a wife turning pale, and suddenly saying "there is something terrible going on with my husband" on a gut feeling?

For me, the "white crow" theory of the afterlife truly holds; that is in order to disprove the maxim that all crows are black, you need only find one white one.  You need only find one trance medium who gleans knowledge unknown to the sitter from a deceased loved one to prove contact with the afterlife.  If trance mediums pick up communications from still living people, this does not necessarily invalidate the idea that they truly communicated with a deceased person on a different occasion.  

Matthew

Hi, some research on the matter at hand.

Telepathy is more than 'instinct'. It is mind to mind contact-- communication of one mind with another by means beyond the normal or ordinary--without the use of the five senses (sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell). Scientifically it is the 'instinct' in mankind that creates the ability that we call telepathy, clairvoyance, psychic abilities, etc.  We have forgotten have how to rely on our basic instincts, which is intuition, because of our reliance on ego-consciousness. Nature has programmed this ability into all of its creatures, but because man places so much reliance’s on 'ego-consciousness' he has forgotten how to use the survival mechanism ie. psyche which is there for survival. Age groups: Babies / Very young children:

They telepath all the time: "Hungry, Sleepy, Wet, Happy, Bored" -- Babies have not as yet developed 'ego-consciousness' so they rely more on instinct.

. Telepathy can be perceptive or projective. Some people are better receivers while others are better senders. If you know who is calling you before the phone rings--then you are a good receiver. The caller thinks of you and you connect vibrationally. It is also fun to send a mental message to someone to contact you and see if they do. Telepathy and Dreams Dreams also
bring telepathic messages. Often this is the way a deceased loved one will communicate with you. Try to remember the message as soon as you get up. In dream time we relate on those higher realities therefore we telepath with each other.

We can communicate with deceased entities, spirit guides, even people who are presently alive. When you dream you communicate telepathically with many entities. Some of this information you remember. Most you do not. Yet even if you do not remember consciously the messages received will impact into your conscious mind throughout the day usually guiding your decisions. The most common published accounts of telepathy and ESP are between lovers or between family members, and focus on a life-threatening injury or death. These people know how to tune into each other's frequencies as they spend time together. There is usually a strong desire to communicate between two distant (separated) individuals.



  All of the energy of the soul does not incarnate, the soul creates a
personality from those parts of itself that it wants to heal in the physical environment, and from those parts of itself that it lends to the process of healing in that lifetime. So powerful is the energy of the soul that it could not advance into a physical form without, literally, exploding that form. In the creation of a personality, the soul calibrates parts of itself, reduces parts of itself, to take on the human experience. Your higher self is that aspect of your soul that is in you, but it is not the fullness of your soul. It is a smaller soul self. Therefore, "higher self" is another term for "soul", yet the soul is more than the higher self

Intuition can permit the personality, through its higher self, to receive information from other souls of higher process, souls that are not its own soul. Sources of guidance other than your own higher self can come across on the same radio station, so to speak. This is not the same as an intuitive process. This is a process of receiving guidance through intuitive channels. Receiving information through intuitive channels is significantly different from receiving information through intuitive processes. Receiving information through intuitive processes is cooking at home. Receiving information through intuitive channels is ordering out.

Each human soul has both guides and Teachers. A guide is not a Teacher. Guides are what might be thought of as experts in certain fields that are called in for consultation. If you are writing a book, for example, or creating a project, or organizing an event, a guide that has the quality of warmth, or creativity, or insight that you wish to incorporate into your work is available to you

•      Energy continually pours through you, entering at the top of your head and descending downward through your body. You are not a static system. You are a dynamic being of Light that at each moment informs the energy that flows through you. You do this with each thought, with each intention.

•      The creation of physical experience through intention, the infusion of Light into form, energy into matter, soul into body, are all the same. The distance between you and your understanding of the creation of matter from energy is equal to the distance that exists between the awareness of your personality and the energy of your soul. The dynamic of soul and personality is the same dynamic as energy converted into matter. The system is identical. Your body is your conscious matter. Your personality is the energy of your soul converted to matter. If it is unaware, it is the splinteredness that is transmitted. If it is aware, it begins to become whole.

Research by

alan

Hi Matthew,

First of all let me say that I don’t think energy consciousness lies. What is… is. We are energy beings or spirits even while incarnate in the physical.  We use our energy or spirit to feel and explore not only the energies of the earthly inhabitants, but also those of the spirit worlds. To me ESP is the expansion of our normal five senses and doesn’t negate ADC. I think in many cases as many others and I have experienced ADCs are genuine and the modality of the communication is ESP. I think the questions arise because many times people cannot determine where the energy is coming from when they “pick it up” say during a sitting.

In my experience there can be little difference in the way we intuit information from someone sitting across the room or a discarnate being. However, there is a big difference in the quality of how a spiritual being on a higher level feels to me. They feel like the purest most beautiful love energy anyone could possibly imagine and this love is infused with the communication somehow. It’s difficult to explain but it is the same feeling of love that I feel when I go into a state of consciousness where there is pink light swirling all around me. Information I receive is for me most often the same modality as when I’m sitting across from someone and picking up the consciousness of his or her energy field.  I don’t think anyone; even Don says that ESP negates ADC as a modality of receiving information.

Many times dreams are connected with ADC. My daughter living in Florida at the time of my father’s death had a dream where many of the details of her dream were exactly what happened before, during and after he let go of his body. My phone call to tell her grandpa was gone woke her up from the dream. She also woke up crying as she knew the phone ringing was me calling to tell her. My phone call was also part of her dream.

Love, Kathy

DocM,

Glad you decided to start this thread.  I personally find it hilarious that it wasn't so long ago when scientists claimed that ESP did not exist and that since all cases of supposed ESP could be explained away as collusion or fraud they must in fact be collusion or fraud.  Afterall the scientists argued, there is no scientific evidence to prove the existence of ESP, so obviously it MUST be fraud.  I see some visitors here using this same sort of ridiculous, laughable, flawed, logical argument.

Then, a few scientists began to actually investigate ESP.  They actully ran experiments to determine if ESP exists and their data proved what the rest of us who have experienced ESP events already knew.  ESP phenomenon are real, ESP does exist.  So now scientists claim that ESP does exist and since there is no scientific evidence to support the survival of consciousness after death, any such claims can be explained as ESP reading of "the sitter."  And, since it can be explained by a known phenomena, ESP, all claims of such afterlife evidencey MUST actually be ESP reading of the sitter.  (they conviniently forget to mention that they have no understanding of what ESP actually is)  And again, some visitors here continue to use this same, ridiculous, flawed logic.

When enough scientists do enough real investigation they will discover what the rest of us who have experienced contact and communication with those who continue to survive after death already know, our human afterlife is real.

As you rightly point out, "western science does not have (as yet) a valid working model of human consciousness."  Lacking such basic understanding it is easy to see how scientists could jump to the conclusion that ESP of the sitter explains away afterlife contact and communication.  But to those scientists I would say, extraordinary claims require extraordinay proof.  I say to scientists making the claim it's gaining access to information using ESP of a living person, okay, PROVE IT!

In my view they will find the flaws in their logic and theory when they discover that sometimes the information accessed through purported afterlife contact is not known to any physically living person.  That should be cause to intentionally design experiments with the goal of getting this kind of information.

That's why I teach folks who are attempting to prove to themselves that our afterlife truly exists to use the Basic Premise, which says:

1.  Find a way to make contact and communicate with someone known to be deceased.
2.  Gather information from that deceased person you have absolutely no way of knowing except via that contact and communication.
3.  Find a way to determine whether or not the information is accurate and true.
4.  If you can verify that it is accurate and true you have gathered evidence (not proof) that the deceased person continues to exist after death.
5.  Continue this process until the weight of your evidence proves our afterlife's existence to you.

Everyone who undertakes this course of action must understand that evidence gathered by someone else will NEVER provide proof to anyone except the person who gathered it.  Bersek2 seems to repeatedly miss this point.  He points to the fact that none of the evidence on this site is very persuasive to him.  He seems to expect to find convincing proof in the experiences of those visitors who have gathered their own evidence.  News Flash - - Berserk2 - - that will NEVER happen.  I have never made any claim that it would, on the contrary, I have always pointed to the Basic Premise as the only way presently available for it to happen at all, through the direct experience of the person gathering such evidence.  There will ALWAYS be the possibility of alternate explanations by those who did not directly experience its gathering.  Even those who directly experience it will doubt their own experience.

Will people make mistakes and believe they have real evidence and proof when they don't?  Of course they will.  The only way such evidence can presently be gathered is the highly subjective process of experience within one's own mind.  Of course there will be the influence of misundertandings, belief, expections, etc.  That is why the 5th line is in the Basic Premise.  Each time we gather more evidence there is the possibility that new evidence will conflict with our understanding of previous experience and evidence.  It is a process of experimentation and evidence gathering in which the only "sensor" or "measuring device" is our own mind.  It is subjective experience Berserk2, and can't, by its very nature prove anything, I get that.  Exactly the same thing could be said of existence of ESP phenomenon before properly designed experiments were run and evidence gathered.  And instead of carping on the obvious and calling people who disagree with me names and members of a new age ghetto, I chose to try to find ways to help folks to run their own experiements with the tools available to them.  And many have used the Basic Premise to prove to themselves our afterlife exists, their experiences have proven it to them.  But don't expect their evidence will EVER convince you or anyone else of that.  Anyone who believes that these people are just members of a "new age ghetto" will never take their experience or evidence as anything but fantasy.  Perfect!  That is what I have been saying all along Berserk2, you have to gather it your self.  So maybe instead of carping and name calling you could start gathering your own evidence and give tips to others about what worked for you and what didn't.  

Speaking of "tools available" why do you think I have such a strong interest in the development of electronic devices that could allow real-time voice communication with those who exist beyond physical reality?  Because with the advent of such devices the "sensor" shifts from subjective to objective.  The evidence can be measured with physical world instruments.  Are their any such devices available?  Yes, in my view.  Are they developed to the point that they are widely available?  With the possible exception of white-noise-based EVP, no.  Is evidence from any of these device conclusive?  Depends on who you ask, the person who directly experienced using the device or someone else.  For the "some elses" in the world the answer is, Of course not, yet.  

After the Wright Brothers historic first flight they returned home and continued to experiment at their farm outside of town.  Occassionly passersby who would witness one of their test flights would stop in town at the local newspaper office to report what they had seen.  The newspaper didn't even bother to send a reporter out to the Wright's farm to investigate these claims for something like a year and a half.  Afterall the editor had remarked, everybody knew it was impossible for men to fly so it would have been a waste of time to send a reporter.

I will get down off my soap box now,

Bruce

I sense a procedural issue here. A tangle of definitions based on the assumption of uniqueness of our human function.

From the perspective of a social scientist, there is indeed an excellent model of consciousness. William James expressed the operation of the mind with what has been termed a "constellar theory of meanings", which later was picked up by semanticists such as Benjamin Whorf, Edward Sapir and S I Hayakawa. This model simply sayus that the knowledge in our heads is a holism in which every definition occurs by cross reference with every other definition. Of these, a few also have direct attachment to sensations. These sensations define the nature of the actor, and the collection of definitions descrbes the actor's life space. Creativity can be reduced to (and has been experiemntally demonstrated to be) concatenation of prior data into complexions (that is, the set of all sets, or "power set" if you prefer) which leads to projection of the prior state, such as E(h), into a new cross-space, curl E(h), followed by focussing on useful correlates in the projected state. This repeats indefintely, and ultimately, given eternity, spans all possible states of mind. (For a more formal treatment see: Armentrout, D (1988). Growth of technical knowledge. Proceedings of the University of Pittsburgh 19th Annual Conference on Simulation and Modelling. 19 :305-11. Research Triangle Park, NC: ISA.) For science, about 95% of the variance is typically explained at the .001 level or better.

Phrased differently, this is nothing new. We usually say that we try to "put the loose ends together to come up with understanding", which is all there is to it. I just like the way it looks with all the Greek symbols etc. :-)

That model of mind has nothing in particular to do with either our spiritual nature, nor with ESP. It simply tells us that as we age we grow in wisdom and understanding. In light of this kind of thinking, ESP is merely another channel for input.

What we really lack is a good definition of ESP. It's a trash-can definition. "If nothing else can explain it, then we'll toss it into the bin labeled ESP." Thus, meditation that accesses the spirit world, hypnotic regressions into past lives and the spirit world, the activities of mediums and channeles everywhere, plus our own insights developed through our personal forms of yoga and prayer, and everything else that is other than obviously material cause and effect is ESP.

Coming back to Bruce's points, this definition of ESP forces us to conclude that there is no material proof of the stuff that ESP brings us. There can't be. That's because we have defined it away.

What we have in place of logical proofs is a huge series of inexplicable events. Children born with knowledge of debts and obligations of the parents and grandparents in India. Not very uncommon.
We also have, as Rei points out in another thread, "faith-healing" that has been proven effective by several investigators. And occasionally we have direct personal experiences with stuck souls, or entities that are hitching a ride with other people, and so on. And we also have personal experiences brought about through meditation, into which category I'd place NDEs, although the meditation is forced on the actor in the same manner as is the ultimate meditation of death. And we have OBE experiences as well, which includes a large number of hospital surgeries in which the actor's awareness moved here and there throughout the room, and often through the rest of the building.

The interested investigator will also encounter frauds of all types, psychotics, junkies, and material hedonists who offer nothing but objections and criticism, and who are the strongest supporters of a purely material world that rejects all other phenomena. Their posture is supported, not by specific "white crow" types of evidence, but by the fact that all phenomena of this world must fit into a material scheme, as well as other transcendental ways of being. That, plus denial, the most primiive defense, keeps these people happy in their hedonic activities, and hides from them the rest of the possible experiences of life.

I suggest that ESP is the essence of the entire situation with which we are dealing. It includes, by virtue of generality, everything other than the material world. And, after a lot of work by dedicated researchers at Duke and elsewhere, there is good statistical evidence that there is "something" that alows this unusual mode of communication. Adn we have generations of prophets of various degree and competency  who have written essentially identical treatises on the topic, suggesting that it has some degree of interpersonal consistency.

So superficially, we do, in fact, have a pretty fair model of where we are and what we're doing. We just haven't figured out how it works yet. Like Bruce, I'm quite interested in a gizmo that would communicate with the spirit world, but I lack a way to connect the material world to the spiritual, because the spiritual state still eludes analysis in a manner that involves extended physical states.

Personally, the one hint I have for further investigation, is that spooks tend to get caught up in electrical phenomena, making lights blink, phones ring, and recorders capture voices - and my rare OBEs have often led me to get caught up on an electrical wire over a street. Snoopy and I briefly discussed high impedance antennas in this regard, but without a better model, what would such a sensor physically look like?  I'm open to the quest, but it looks like we need some more data to concatenate.

dave

First if all, the spirit World and physical World aren't actually seperate, therefore, the source of information can come from different places. Thought energy is thought energy, regardless of which form it comes in. Even if it comes in the form of thoughts somebody makes up.

Regarding making contact with spirits, I've been doing so on a regular basis for almost three years now, and so many things have taken place, it would be ridiculous for me to believe that spirit communication isn't taking place, mixed in with a few other things, including psychic noise which comes from who knows where.

I didn't assume right away that I was communicating with spirits. A fragment of my mind was really stubborn about it, and I took detailed notes and considered all the possibilities. It helped that I received some information through visual means that I had no way to know about and was able to verify. But such a way of verification was just a small part of what allowed me to understand what was and still continues to take place.

Once one determines for one's self that communication with beings "who have moved onto the light" is possible, one has no need to doubt that others can do the same, no matter how many fake examples exist.

Hi Guys,
Like you, all I am very interested in telepathy and know that it is real and exists.

However, I have yet to meet an adept at this, who can always tell one what they are thinking at any time. A completely open unprotected mind, with no blocking mechanisms would be bombarded by a cacophony of inputs driving them psychotic. “Such as being exposed to some of the thoughts of depraved minds out there”. Therefore, it appears that evolution/god has programmed a block to which we must find the key again, together with an ability to shield us from the unpleasant. What about privacy of the individual’s thoughts? Our minds and thoughts are precious private places, a retreat to a paradise by imagination.

In an altered state of consciousness, I believe momentaririly experienced this uncontrolled flood of other mind thought flow into my brain and felt I was going psychotic. Maybe I was who can tell.

Bruce, what about setting up some sort of an experiment within the forum to test out the validity controlled of telepathy? We are all out-of-the-box thinkers and ideal for this? Just a suggestion.

alan

I think that this thread has been important in pointing out the vagueries of the term ESP, and assuming ESP is a well defined logical science.  Living (incarnate) or deceased (discarnate) thought is still thought and I see no reason why someone sensitive to ESP might not also be sensitive to afterlife communication with a discarnate mind.

If the issue is can a medium sometimes channel living people's thoughts, the answer (from the evidence given on this board) is yes - a medium may channel the thoughts of a living person, in error.

Does that negate, in some way information gleaned by the very same medium on discarnate people?  Absolutely not.  This is where my white crow comes in; If and when a medium provides evidence from a truly deceased person that could not be known to the sitter, it is in general proof of a true ADC.

However, it does become complicated, because if the medium can access the collective subconscious, the medium may be privy to a huge stream of data which could include facts and figures.  We are then left with the  uncomfortable lack of proof, and as Bruce said about any evidence gathered:
"There will ALWAYS be the possibility of alternate explanations by those who did not directly experience its gathering.  Even those who directly experience it will doubt their own experience."

I believe that telepathy (mind to mind communication) or ESP takes place on the level of mind; as such, if the source of mind is incarnate or discarnate, the plane of communication, is the same.  I don't find the ESP explanation to be a definite debunking of a medium's abilities to communicate with the dead - for many of the points that have been stated about ESP in this thread.

I was fascinated by the Myer's thread, in that it is implied that Myers tried a new method of ADCs upon his death, which was a pattern of cross communications - giving mediums like Lenor Piper, and others on other continents, small pieces of a message, which could only make sense when put together - and signing them "Myers."  The mind of the sitter, in these cases of communication could have no impact on the message.  There may be an easy refutation as to these Myers' ADCs,, but it was a very clever way to take doubt out of the message, by dispersing it, in a sort of code to different mediums, after which the message would be reassembled (cross communications).

Matthew

I was 'interested' in ESP ever since I first heard the term as a child.
I saved up my pennies and bought the game by Milton Bradley named: Kreskin ESP.
http://img147.imageshack.us/img147/2227/espgamepy6.jpg


Yup a silly game.  However, it seemed to work.  I could hold the pendulum and say "Yes" and get it to swing one way (North & South), then say "No" and get it to swing the other way (East & West) then say "I don't Know" and it would swing in a circle.

I would 'say' all of this in my head and it would work.
That was pretty cool for a 8-9 year old kid.
Anyone remember or own this 'game'?

Also back then when I was a little older, maybe around 10-11 years old I had an odd experience.
I use to get up REAL early (3-4 AM) and do my paper route.
I also made myself something to eat then too.
My home that I lived in wasn't the best so to have this 'quite time' before my Mom and older brother woke up was BLISS.
I was cooking up a can of Cambell's soup and I looked at the empty can and thought "Move".
I saw it slide about six inches.  
I did not touch it or was it on a incline.  It was on the counter top.
I was wide awake.  I was already done delivering my papers.
That always 'bugged' me.  I could never get anything to 'Move' again...even til this day even.

That is my ESP story.  Take it or leave it...I don't care

That's neat, Dood!

'They say'  that when we anticipate an outcome, it can block the experience from happening. So you as a young dood must have had just the right amount of energy  and innocence to get it moving !    Ah, the days of energy and innocence!

Bets

Whether one reveals an actual persona, or a persona one makes up, one is making use of thought energy. Therefore, the manifestations won't be all that different from each other.

Regarding a persona having a connection to a person's sub-conscious mind, even if one makes up a persona, one is going to make use of one's sub-conscious mind in some way. Plus when one makes up a persona, whether one realizes it or not, the persona one makes up becomes a part of one's subconscious.

If one thinks about it, we always make up personas, when we decide how to psychologically respond to the circumstances life brings our way.

I receive informtion from various places, and as Bruce states, it isn't always easy to tell where it is coming from. Say you turn on the radio, you don't know what station the dial is on, and a song is playing that is played on numerous stations.  How are you going to tell what station is playing?

At least ways the person who turned into a fake persona, tuned into the person he was supposed to tune into.

I'm not saying that there aren't any fakes, but you can't draw overall conclusions based on the fakes that exist.

 So how do we get around this issue?    Setting more specific intentions, and using prayer, i would say.   Also you can give self (or others) suggestions when in a receptive state.  

 If we state an affirmation and set an intention that i only want to hook up with real consciousnesses (meaning who have full freewill and self awareness) existing and operating from the nonphysical spectrum, then chances are 9 out of 10 times this will be so, depending on the initial intensity of focus, the ability to let it go once stated, and positive belief or faith in it working the way you want it too.  

 But even better than that, is the whole, "not my will, but the Creative forces Will be done."  Or "i only open myself up to and receive info and energy from the most helpful and constructive sources there are."  

I pretty much agree with the below. When I make contact through visual imagery and experiences, most of the time I make contact with the light beings I communicate with.

Things can become noisier when it comes to receiving thoughts. Even one's own subconscious mind can intefere. Every once in a great while I'll receive thoughts that seem to come from living people.


wrote on Jan 17^th, 2008 at 2:03pm:

So how do we get around this issue?    Setting more specific intentions, and using prayer, i would say.   Also you can give self (or others) suggestions when in a receptive state.    If we state an affirmation and set an intention that i only want to hook up with real consciousnesses (meaning who have full freewill and self awareness) existing and operating from the nonphysical spectrum, then chances are 9 out of 10 times this will be so, depending on the initial intensity of focus, the ability to let it go once stated, and positive belief or faith in it working the way you want it too.    But even better than that, is the whole, "not my will, but the Creative forces Will be done."  Or "i only open myself up to and receive info and energy from the most helpful and constructive sources there are."

I think that we've come back to methodology. This topic has been around before (and will doubtless be back again later) and arises from two factors. First, we do not "know how" ESP phenomena arise. We just discover it. Like Old Dood, I, and several friendas, used to amuse ourselves on lazy afternoons poking a piece of mobile art dangling on a thread in my living room. We'd swing it right, we'd swing it left, and we'd get it to stop and reverse etc. The process was rather slow, maybe ten or twenty seconds to get it moving, so we never could prove that it wasn't air currents. However, despite our lack of knowledge of the mechanism and the lack of ability to falsify our claim that we were moving it, the darn thing moved.  -  Keep practicing, Dood, probably you'll recall the technique. I can still make things wiggle (sometimes).

OBEs have the same trouble. Each of us does an individual ESP routine and gets some kind of data. It is not necessary to understand what is happening any more than it would be necessary to understand how to grow your hair. It simply happens.  -  And if it doesn't, there's the Hair Club and Rogaine. :-)

The only implication for pure logic is that observed ESP phenomena are bound by the same criteria of logical consistency as all other phenomena. That means that we can guess at what's happening, but aside from looking at the logical consistency with other datas, we have nothing solid. I like the hospital excursions in surgery as a great example of this. There's lots of them, universally denied by the medicos, and universally believed by the surgical patients.  And in general they're frighteningly accurate - makes me wonder about anesthesiology as the next source of serendipitous discovery.

The issue is one of proper methodology. Given nothing but historical information, the conservative MUST doubt - that's the nature of scientific conservatism. The liberal MUST believe (or at least hope) - that's the nature of liberalism. These two extremes are equally undesirable because they lock us into a position without recourse. The only appropriate posture is that of a scientific investigator who is very clear that methodologically, we are dealing with a vast amount of information that is processed uniquely in every case, yet leads to a commonly perceived outcome, sometimes demonstrably accurate, sometimes not.

As an example of a closed mind, I once tested an engineering student with Zener cards. For 100 trials the SD is 4, and he got something like 20 corect, a Z-score of 4.0. That's so unlikely I was amazed and I pointed it out to him. He denied it, said it was all a bunch of bunk, and proceded to get all but about 4 cards wrong in the next trial, which is even more astounding! However, my engineering student blithely denied it all. Maybe he took statistics next term and got the actual message. (Notice that this was not an "experiment" because it had no control group, so could not be falsified. It was a typical "one-shot, quasi-experiemntal technique".)

The well known methodologists, Campbell and Stanley, (I use their monograph when I teach experimental methodology)  would tell us that ALL our ESP observations are a vast collection of "one-shot, non-controlled observations", and that this is a "quasi-experimental technique". The word "quasi-" is there because in a true experiment we can disprove a null hypothesis (the claim that there is nothing happening, no effect) through suitable control groups and distribution of experimental treatments. These are unavailable. All we can control is the situation. Therefor, criticisms and arguments applicable to controlled experimental technique are not appropriate here.

The idea of a "white crow" observation actually does not apply here because we have so much confounding by unknown factors that we can never produce a "black crow" against which to test it. As a result, we can wheedle and carp over our pet notions indefinitely. Talking about the topic is far less useful than actual involvement, but talking seems to be ever so much more logical. That's because our observational data are so muddled, that it is a relief to be able to use nice clear verbal concepts instead. So we place our faith in talking about what is true or false, all the while deluding ourselves into thinking that this somehow clarifies it. It doesn't. It merely adds another level of confounding.

Some people give fake reports, or report about people not actually dead. So what? - I recall Bruce's exploration when he channelled Snidely Whiplash. The "stuff" of the experience came from "somewhere", and turned out to be concordant with popular opinion. That neither "proves" anything about Snidely, nor about Bruce. What it tells us is that if we go looking for something, there will probably be a way to find it. If the intended target of a seance is real we'll get real data. If the target turns out to be fictional, we get fictional data culled from some source of information that we can only guess at. And very likely, in all cases we'll get a few errors - maybe lots of them - even with a valid spiritual contact. While this gives little information about that contact, it tells us something about the process - that's potentially useful information.

There are two generic criteria to consider, validity and reliability. To be valid, the experience must do what it purports to do. If you seek to channel Scoobie Doo, then it must be Scoobie Doo, and not Abe Lincoln. If you channel Bob Jones, then it must be the proper Bob Jones, and not someone else by a similar name. Often we have no idea of who is actually on the other end of the ESP linkage, so we have little or no control over the validity of what we receive. This is a simple experiemental fact.

Reliability means that we do the same thing over and over again. Superficially, we can see the channel repeat the same process and get a similar kind of result. Whether that is actually the same process internally, and in terms of spiritual interaction, is unknown. Thus we have very poor control over reliability.  We do have the channels' assurance that they are doing it the same way each time, but that cannot be tested.

The only way to get around these issues is to agree that we are dealing with the behavior of a "black box" that sometimes produces data, and that often is inexplicably wrong, and occasionally right. That places all the "I don't know" type arguments inside the "black box" and leaves us where we started, analyzing what we observe. That means that Snidely Whiplash is a legitimate ESP target, just as is Great Aunt Gussie.

The idea that groups channel the same being comes back to the untestability of individual processing. However, the data can be used to indicate that there is consistency, which implies "similar black boxes" are in operation "in a simlar manner". There are ways to use that data to make inferences, and I hope that Bruce will take advantage of that as he does his seminars - eventually giving us enough inferences that we can postulate a better description of the situation.

Until then, we remain in experimental limbo. Given that fact, I personally choose to believe my experiences, and everyone else can do as they see fit.

dave

Don, in the Davis case wouldn’t it be possible that Cooper communicated with Davis in the future after his demise?

I’m not trying to play devil’s advocate here, but energy consciousness doesn’t lie. If someone is talking to me and intentionally lies to me or even only partially tells the truth, I will know it. I would think that an experienced medium would also know if someone were trying to intentionally create a persona with the intent of proving the medium were fake.

I suppose the medium’s expectation could play a role and he or she would not pick up on the deception, but I just find this hard to believe.

Kathy

ou...Dave, now we're confounded!  :) then I noticed, life is like that.

what I notice on this thread and other threads is a stretching of the mind is taking place among many of us..an effort as it were...I think it's important to look at that factor that we are at the least putting our heads together, and who knows? maybe its a positive effort that will yield an answer to more than a few of us.

I'm reminded, in a broad sense of when we believed the world was flat. then I wonder when they got back from sailing I wonder if there were still some people in town who said oh that's BS...that they say the world is round, not flat.

seems logical that there were some who hung back, because, after all, it surely was not their experience to have sailed around the world.

now I could be wrong but here goes my thoughts: according to my belief system of a religious slant, JC has forgiven me my errors or sins. I assume that means my future and past sins or errors. So I am free to say this and expect forgiveness from my mates out there..you guys..JC also said "go and sin no more." as a budding medium, I could be that too, I admit the possibility, but I also say I have no motivation for that, nor intentions.

What does it really mean when it's said the truth will set you free? Did JC say this?
I don't know who said it, but I have witnessed time and again it is true. So I feel free to express myself, because I don't claim to belong to any thought system which does not produce that feeling that the truth is indeed setting me free.

It yields peace of mind, that I am not sinning. I am not in error. yet I will speak for none, just myself and hope it is enough, that I can share peace of mind. however I must go and get my OWN peace of mind and hold it by exploring our world, both nonphysical and physical. It's frustrating sometimes to wish to be a healing instrument of god and all that is happening is it seems you wind up typing on a computer and mentally masturbating is all it winds up being.

thats what I'm talking about, and I quote Bruce here, directly from his mouth and from his books "do your own soul searching and explorations and report back here what u discovered, in that way, at least we know you didn't read it out of a book, so there may be some factors to learn from explorers who use this method of retrieving, or partnered exploration, then there is a basis for comparison, and value in that comparison.

I hear voices from living and nonphysical folks. thank god not all the time and only if I am related to the sender through a bond of some sort, love, or family relationships mainly. I have my own life, I don't want to hear voices all of the time. seems some higher form of guidance is active to close down my space when I need time to myself to think and ponder. so I am safe from the looney bin in that way.
I am not able to say how it happens, that the brain is like a radio receiver? and that I can change the channel by my will? that is an idea but does not explain who and what we are, so confound it Dave! haha!

Don, your logic is pointing to a thought form you have, or a belief system you adhere to strongly, that it is morally wrong to contact a deceased person. This belief that it is morally wrong, is also associated with the fact you are a traditional Methodist minister.
Sometime ago it was decided that only certain pharisees could receive god inspiration to pass on to the flock.
But this does not jive with JC's words; you will all do miracles in my name as I do. I do see an opportunity to do healing work with abilities of mediumship, and that only bodes well for the masses as there is no reason to believe in illness if we lean on the teachings of JC.

So I say it is not necessarily morally wrong to be communicating with nonphysical beings, as even JC is nonphysical. He left the comforter here. what do you suppose the comforter is? its the body of Christ. What do you think the body is Christ is made up of?
why, lo and behold, the body of Christ is you and me and a bunch of other nonphysical beings who no longer have a body of flesh but still retain their status as individuals capable of bring forth messages of peace and hope and truth that will set us free.
we are the messengers of his word and the word can come through in many different ways in many different individuals.

I rarely talk this way, as I am a new ager, but I feel JC is personal savior to me, all who choose to study him, it is that he accepts us when we choose him. He is very much alive you guys, he did not die truly, he's just big enough to be able to see all of us at once and he can be anywhere popping up, as well, the HS grouping, (his words, holy spirit means whole spirit) they are also one with him with no ideas outside of his, so they can appear as they wish, in any guise if the purpose is to aid another soul into the light of who and what they really are.

preaching over. love you guys just as you are. hey, have to clarify I saw JC and Buddha are getting along over there ok, as well all religions mingle with each other peacefully as theres some truth everywhere you go. enemies make friends with each other on the other side quite easily.

When a person who has been regressed to the spirit world is sent to locate specific individuals, they generally find them, or the equivalent. The individuals may be incarnate, discarnate, or fictional. The same is true of those who go to the spirit world by meditation, or by other means. We get what we seek. There is always a question whether this is valid spiritual experience, and whether or not we have some extraordinary ability. To cite this in argument is pointless.

We all have had synchronicity with friends. The most common for me is probably reaching for the phone to call the wife, only to discover her already calling me. Most lovers have this experience - even after getting married. ;-)

Is that proof of ESP? - There are many times that I phone the wife and find that I woke her up and she's less than interested. Is that disproof? - All this discussion about who is good and who is bad and who said what about whom has nothing useful to add to understanding the underlying phenomenon. Its just something to talk about that makes us feel good.

Bruce has seminars with group work. That can produce some useful observations that can be attacked by Bayesian methods. Well documented sessions by forum members would also be useful. Reports by non-scientific writers might as well be regarded as fiction, even if substantially valid, because of hidden biases, filtration to "spin" the dta, and so on. Discussions about reports by non-scientific writers are thus pointless.

One of Buddhism's ten moral precepts is, "I avoid useless talk."

dave

Don't let it 'Throw you' Alysia.  Not one bit.
I am tired of this name calling 'ghetto' myself.
It is childish and lame.

You are correct. You do not have to prove a thing.
Not to me...not to anyone.

Whatever you say happens while you are Out of body *I* will take you at your word.
Why? Because I 'TRUST' you wholeheartedly.
I do not get a 'bad vibe' (lack of any term I can think of) from you EVER!
You have no agenda other then loving people.

All I get from you is GIVING.
So...you go on and be you.  Do not let anything throw you off your game.
People depend on you BE-ing you.  One of them is me.
This may be Bruce Moen's forum. He started it and cultivated it.
I am reading his books and learning a lot.
However, you are one of the MAIN reasons I even come here and post.
Don't forget that. I am sure others feel like I do about you as well.

I am also proud of you. You stand up to bullies.  You are fearless.  You are Alysia!

hi Dood. thanks, gosh I needed that. I know I should be fearless and to tell the truth I don't have much fear in me anymore, but I do feel PUL alot. what goes around comes around.

its is amazing to me to get vibes off just letters on a screen. uncanny how that works. Spirit told me a long time ago not to read toxic people. I pick up this energy, then I have to work to get it off me. negativity is truly like a sticky stuff, you can't let it set there on you, but you don't want to necessarily return it to the sender and most times I can transmute it right there and then. It may be true, we are here to speak our mind, but I fail to see why there needs to be name calling.
all I want to say is where there is a highly charged negative thread, it tends to shut down any real communication and defeat the very nature of research.
people don't like to jump into such a thread in that case, its not just me and my feelings I'm talking about.
we do need to encourage newbies to come here and talk. but it won't happen as quickly as we might hope if the sensitive ones are turned off by our arguments.

I want to speak with other sensitives, and I do think you are sensitive too Dood, as are almost everybody here picks up feelings the same.
I think u know what I'm trying to get across, basically, honor and respect each other. is that asking too much?

well, how about giving each other the benefit of the doubt? as gee, we already discussed that doubt is hard to get rid of. takes a whole lifetime sometimes and then some.

If I drop over dead I'm gonna go tap Don on the shoulder for fun.

love, alysia

Just a poInt on note here, but I feel an important point. During my nde and the nde of others "EVERYTHING" over there operates on ESP .

ALAN

Or y'all could just ignore him, like I do...

I'm just sayin'... ;)

wow. I wonder if we can all heal this situation? I don't know have to think on it awhile and ask for a miracle, for Don. I do think he has a calling, therefore god is surely working in him as well as all of us. so we could offer a prayer:

Don

May all your hurt and anger you project on this board be transmuted into the peace of god and perfect evidence of PUL be expressed through you in your ministry.
Amen

now we go into war these days. but it's a war with ourselves to speak softly but carry a big stick perhaps.  we must look at this thread in this way; (opinions are valuable)

we can win the battle, but not the war.  my suggestion is a worthy one because it was set by the administrator, Bruce himself. If you read the guidelines, we are breaking every single rule. be that as it may, its done. heres how to end the battle.

stop calling this place a new age ghetto.

Effectively, we now have come to expect that we are indeed, guess what? a new age ghetto. Now every newbie comes, looking for whatever dinner we might have, they will read oh "its a new age ghetto" guess I don't want to be a part of the new age ghetto so I will not add my VALUABLE 2 cents worth of experience, because I will probably be attacked for this belief I have, this experience which I would love to share, if only someone would listen.

it has come to my attention by private contact, people would say, I have no one to confide my beliefs, which are new, due to an experience I had. It could be a retrieval, it could be an NDE, it could even be Juditha's divorce, where she has no one to talk to. whatever reason we end up communicating on this board, it should be a "safe" environment meaning another is not using another as a scapegoat, to project anger unto another group.

I notice Don has PUL. he came to Juditha's rescue on that thread. good for Don, however, reccomending she find another church other than spiritualist is not what Juditha needs to hear. she is what she is. and we are all in training, to learn more. my point. many paths, same god. god is not a vengeful god, humans are.
Don is in denial that the world is changing. we have channellers now! imagine that. Imagine every one becomes their own minister and no longer projects hatred upon another group who does have different beliefs and different behaviors.

Stay, go, I don't mind either way as the opposite opinion is good to hear once in awhile so long as its not rammed down your throat.

all I'm asking for is the cease and desist in name calling.  it would be the same exact request if someone were in a room with me and they shouted at me, I would certainly not allow myself to just accept their shouting. I can hear quite well. you don't need to raise your voice Don.

its for each of us to adhere to the guidelines and not act condescendingly simple because you have a degree or two. besides, when a person is angry, it's really hard for spirit to speak to them the truth that they might attain.

sum up, just knock off the name calling. we can go forward from there. who knows, we may be in for a miracle! I'm up for that.
thanks Dood for your thoughts.

Don-
You seem to be a pretty persistent critic of the airey fairey side of discovery and the people who bring it to us. And I certainly couldn't be any more critical than I am already. Certainty in science is based on the inability to prove, by controlled experimental means, that X is Y, or some such thing. Except for experiments of the type run at Duke under J B Rhine (yup - I read the reports) which indicate a tiny tendency for unexplained phoneomena, this whole area is filled with smoke and mirrors and very little else. The Fox Sisters are an example, with their wonderful table rapping evocation of ghosts - obtained through cracking the knuckles of their toes.

But I see something that evidently has been overlooked along the road here, which is that we seem to be treating these ideas as if they applied to people on a binary basis. That is, we tend to view all the airey fairey stuff as if the people involved had little ESP-Switches stuck into their heads. Some and switched ON and most are switched OFF. Then we have those who know and tell truth, those who know and lie, and those who don't know and either imagine randomly or deliberately lie.

This isn't the case. What we have is a normal human trait that is normally distributed. Everyone has a little ESP ability, a few have it pretty well under control, and nobody has none at all. This ability does not function reliably all the time, but its functional ability is also normally distributed. Some people are correct rarely, some nearly all the time, most of us are in the middle. Synchronicity is when it happens to work out for two otherwise normal people. (The odds against synchronic events are pretty high - enough to expect them to never occur.)

Given that the trait is inconsistent in both its presence, and also according to the fraction of time that it is valid, it is of the nature of any random event. To watch John Edwards, assuming that he is actually  a very competent medium, we watch him blunder and lose his train of thought about 15% of the time, and produce some kind of useful information about  15% of the time, and the other 60% of the time he gives mostly accurate generalities. (I evaluate on the basis of the impact on the people for whom he is doing the readings.)  That's pretty close to an optimal performance.

In that performance, the "correct" responses are only partially correct with a lot of stuff omitted. "Whose mother died of a lung problem?" totally overlooks the type and duration and general population frequency.  My point is not that he's a fraud, which I do not believe, but rather that we are getting information through a lot of static and transmission losses. Further, He himself does not have a basis to evaluate whether his messages are correct or not.

There is no way to take this information and process it to obtain a decision as to whether ESP is or is not a valid phenomenon. It simply is not possible. To process it properly would require literally thousands of reports, each with a known degree of accuracy (which is not available), and the kind of massive data munching that Rhine and his followers have used, which would eventually come up with the idea of a small percentage of very real effects and a large amount of noise.

Aside from the statistical basis, there is no logically derived basis on which to evaluate these data. We can turn to the prophets, teachers, avatars and revelations, but these lie outside normal human experience and have no bearing on routine issues. "Take up your cross and follow Me" has no scientific value. It's remarkably excellent advice for those who wish to escape the world, but it is scientifically useless.

Virtually everyone on this forum has had some kind of metaphysical challenge, leading either to a useful question or to confusion. I've noticed three classes of answers - Scientific questions, subjective reactions, and "obsession". The category of "obsession" includes two terminally pathological responses, one being "Yes, I believe, and don't confuse me with facts." The other is, "No I do not believe, and don't confuse me with facts."

Scientific questions do not look very promising at present, which is why I, and a few others in the field, tend to use synthetic and inductive approaches.  They offer little for purposes of validating the effects involved.

Personal accounts and subjective experiences are extremely important, as these are the essence of what we are studying. Because there are no controls, the best we do is to get hints about the ultimate reality involved, as seen from an endless variety of mutually inconsistent viewpoints. Not much help as proof, but interesting.

And then we have the obsessive states - these are psychological levels of refuge for threatened souls. Because the evidence fails to fit their preconceptions, they feel frustrated and frightened, lest they might be wrong. As a result, these people regress to the ultimate defenses of childhood and say that it either IS or it ISN'T true, and they reject all argument, discussion and factual information. Many of these people seek references in scientific writings or in the Bible in order to support their claims. Such people are not to be criticised any more than Little Johnny when he cries for Mama to come and chase away the ghosts hiding in behind the closet door in his bedroom. For us to pick on people because of their closed minds is inappropriate.

Incidently, Don, I can't speak for the interests and beoiefs of the entire hypnosis community, but I have no basis to believe that exotic ideas are poorly received by ANY scientific workers (such as members of the American Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis) or practicing hypnotherapists from other sources. So I question your statement that hypnotists generally don't accept ESP etc. I feel you are incorrect.

In fact, as a "white crow" counter-example, the International Hypnosis Federation is holding its annual conference in San Pedro on March 6th through 9th. I'm on a pre-conference panel from 9-5 on 6 March teaching "Spirit Releasement" (that's entity depossession, getting the dead ones unstuck from the live ones) through past life regression methods. Anyone interested can get further information from Dr Shelley Stockwell-Nicholas at 310-541-4844. - So it seems, Don, that at least part of the community is not only interested, but desirous of advanced training in this area. :-)

dave

I have been one of Don's biggest supporters, even after he stated, in the Mindfreak thread that he would not respond to my posts in general because he did not think my spiritual quest was a genuine one.  That cut me to the quick, as my mind/spirit are centered on my quest every day.

Yet this is a message board.  You present your point of view - backed up by your own experience and knowledge.  You go with the flow.  I like information and different points of view.  When Don said he could have stated x,y or z on my Tree of Life thread, but did not because he did not deem me a worthy seeker, I thought - too bad.  Many would have enjoyed hearing his take on things from scriptural knowledge.  

Even after that assault on me, I PM'd Don, and asked him to comment on the thread by Alan M. on Myers - as this researcher from the 1800s found a medium who also channeled some "living people" before Lenore Piper did.  Don declined to comment there, or to reply to my PM.  I did hold out the olive branch, despite having been hit, because I see him as a colleague on the board, and I try to ignore the personal stuff.

Some of the best discussions on this board have been heated ones.  I'm a bit tired of the tough love approach or jabs, but in the end - I'd rather share knowledge with Don as a frined than ask him to leave.  The barbs drew some blood, but I have a tough skin.

Those who operate from a system of pure logic, be th Socrates, Vulcans or our friend, have a belief system based on logic.  They of course might say that to not believe in logic is to have a belief system based on inanity.  Either way, it is the belief that we choose and stick too.  How difficult it must be for one who requires nonfalsifiable data to operate in Focus 27 (also called the Summerland).  If any thought can be instantly translated into fantasy/reality, you'd have to let go of more rigid belief systems.  Otherwise, you'd gravitate toward others who preferred to keep their feet firmly on the spiritual ground, rather than fly.

I say, have at thee Sir Don!  En garde!  I am always ready to play/engage.  Will I ask that insults not be thrown around (yeah, probably).  But with the mix of input from all posters, we will have a hell of a good time.

Matthew

Vicky said;      
_________________________________________________________

Don, " the truth is before I even read his books and knew him I was already having the same kinds of experiences he was.
____
me:
same here. I didn't come here fresh out of the woods. life experiences are full of the paranormal, especially esp, which covers a wide range of experiences, but does nothing to explain who and what we are and what we are capable of becoming.
_____
Vicky:
 Don, it isn't necessary to find the opposite of something in order to prove what you already know, see, and can experience.
____
Me: good point Vicky.
___
Vicky:
It doesn't matter how many people in the world write books that say the opposite of what I already know and believe to be true because it will never change the experiences I've had.
____

Me: another good point to back up the first good point! somewhere here a poster said something significant to me yesterday. he or she said "it will be funny when we all transition and find out BOTH sides of the issue have their own placement in the afterlife as both being quite correct and I might add, it is my supposition and inner knowing to share we are not coerced into any beliefs, or admonitions to study any areas of humanity, ELS, or anything because of our god given free will, to be choosing this. and we are very happy to learn we don't have to be right, to be happy.
_____
Vicky:
I can guarantee you Don, that the day you have a personal experience (not one that you've read in a book!), an experience so overwhelmingly powerful that it alters everything you thought you knew and believed about the afterlife...then you can join me and people like me in saying "I may not have the kind of proof YOU would like me to have, but I know what I know from my own personal experience and that is stronger than anything you can throw at me."  
__________
Me: this is the crux of the matter Vicky. arguing about who's dog is bigger is not going to work in a group situation. For me, its been a pathway of people presented in my path who are precisely there to cause me to speak out and hold firm to what I KNOW, and yet at the same time, not to play the power game with them, as that is playing into their game.
_____
Vicky:
everyone who has an experiences goes through their own critical thinking process.  And some of us, like me, have been open enough to accept something that I cannot really prove, at least not to your liking.  And you what?  That’s ok!  Being open really does change your perception and your reality.
_____
Me: even though this is addressed to Don, I am responding because what Vicky brings up for me is related thought. She has held many triggers for me in this regard.
The very act of having to prove something, is not the approach in exploring these experiences we have as it sets up a tension block in the mind right away. Thats why experiments are so very difficult to the scientific minded to establish this criteria Don is looking for as "evidence."
its a brand new field of study. we are barely beyond cave man era here relatively speaking, but I expect some great leaps here shortly, especially with the EVP on scene, but even beyond the EVP is what I'm seeing. I see a plan unfolding which only bodes well for all of us. again, it's a personal journey. we need to be open and share it.
_____    

Don says:
"as if any serious reader on these issues would imagine that in the afterlife we still have physical vocal cords.  Of course, the real issue is this: if ESP is "everywhere" as he suggests and ideas are things (or forms of energy)
____

Me: we are serious Don. we may not Look serious but don't judge a book by its cover please. physical laws and nonphysical laws, order, if you will, are certainly different. I believe it should be self evident whether the egg came first or the chicken came first to lay the egg.  the egg came first..the chicken would be an analogy to what the physical earth is. the earth is manifestation of what was first cause, God, intelligent process that knew what it was doing and how it would end up.
as for physical vocal cords...I don't think so. a sense of hearing with a more finer vibrating body, yes, I do believe in that.
for example, a dog can hear outside of the range of a human ear. and sometimes a human is born here with the ability to "hear the vibrations of an impending earthquake, just as an animal would begin to display unusual behavior, due to they sense the sounds underground.
I offer this as an explanation to date, why I can hear what sounds quite audible with tonal inflection, emotion, as well what I call the energy signature of the party calling me. the vocal sounds of my friends and associates, people I know, and have a bond with, not unknown spirits upon whom I would be inclined to ask their intentions if they were in my house and I could not identify them. this is critical to ascertain, and is also discernment.
it is not "normal" thus many would say it's a curse. its not a curse, its amusing now.
as well, I don't need to go to use the telephone. and unlike the telephone, I don't get anyone trying to sell me a bill of goods and theres a handy shut off switch called I listen only to the voice for god.

so from all this I deduct I shall not lose my sense of hearing, upon transitioning and that indeed, I see no loss of anything in the transition, as its simply going back home.

is everyone getting lightened up around here yet?  :)

I have grown tired of this board precisely for some of the reasons that I suspect that Don is growing tired of this board.  Its amazing to me how negative people have turned on Don when he is one of the most insightful, intelligent, well read, and open minded voices on this board.  I had planned on never coming back and never posting again but will briefly in defense of Don.  

I haven't read all of the posts on this thread (I'm at work) but a couple things stand out.  Old Dood and others are flipping out at Don characterizing the board as a new age ghetto.  Its a fair characterization, as on the whole if people don't read outside their line of thinking, then the site becomes a common belief system that is simply bought into - a group mentality that can be disconnected from reality.  At the end of the day, if we are all looking for greater understanding and truth about the afterlife, then we need to be able to think critically and from different perspectives.  Don has shown how some thinking, even in this thread, resembles a new age ghetto.

I have a couple requests before I lurk and probably leave the site for good.  One is please think critically and don't get bent out of shape if your pet idea (belief system) is being attacked.  Attacking a bad idea or a line of thought is not the same thing as attacking a person.  As a side note, Don is not a mean person - reference old posters like Chumley or Spitfire for actually mean people.

Secondly, I would request that people do more of what Don does - please attack bad ideas, ask for what grounds people are just saying things about.  I could think the afterlife involves a flying spaghetti monster, and post my essay on the reality of the afterlife as governed by the flying spaghetti monster, but it is meaningless unless there are reasons for these sentiments.  We are all interested in the afterlife - what this site needs more of is critical thinking and critical posts (like Don's), not less of them.

Pratekya,

I for one would like to see you post more often.  I do think that I should clear up a few misconceptions about the rest of the herd (since I must be one of the ghetto - I'm gonna get down with my bad self! LOL).  

First, it has been my experience that the majority of posters on this board do not share one belief system of what the afterlife is, or one expectation of heaven.  That is seen by fundamentalists of Islam, christianity and several other faiths.  Most of us on the board are uncertain, searching, trying to find our way.  Most want to believe in miracles.

Most people on this board are not certain of what lies in spirit.  So they share experiences, try partnered explorations, attempts to heal others (Kathy, and Alysia come to mind as posting on personal experience with healing, as has Dave, Don and myself).  

What drives people who want proof insane (and I know, because as a physician in the US, I really on objective evidence), is the "everybody is right" philosophy.  "Oh, you took a trip to the martian base on the moon last night in your astral form? - how wonderful!"   "Oh, you believe that getting an enema can cleanse the soul? (I think I'll stick to meditation)"  " You don't believe Hitler was evil, he just needed a hug?"  "You believe that we can grow a new arm or leg just by wishing it?"  It seems contradictory that in our mind, anything is possible (and perhaps in Focus 27), yet in the physical plane, these statements, for various reason sound like insane New Age drivel.  Is it so wrong, that people want to transcend the physical plane and laws on this board?  Not logical, no, but understandable, possibly quite beautiful.

Yet it would be wrong to characterize this site as a mindless ghetto.  If it were mindless, why perform partnered explorations to gather and analyze evidence?  Why talk about EVP, afterlife comunication at all, if the majority of people on this site walked to the beat of the New Age drum no matter what?

I myself have been an avid reader of material on consciousness, having consumed more than 20 various books and articles over the past year alone.  However, I would not push another to do this as a prerequisite to have a discussion with me!  Alysia published a great book, Don.  Have you read it?  

Books are what they are - some authors are eloquent and insightful.  Some are not.  Some may even falsify what they present as fact  - there has been a great deal wriiten about one author recommended here in particular who is said to have likely falsified much data - but I won't go into that in depth.

Read - yes.  But this site is to share experiences, discuss and learn.  Sometimes in doing so, we start to care for others on this board.  It is a community in cyberspace, a meeting of minds/souls.   Souls with such different fears, loves and feelings that it is folly to lump us together.  

There are no prerequisites to discuss a topic here; just as long as you are sincere and respectful.  And in general, Prat, Don is not villified, but he is called out when his dialogue gets confrontational and insulting.  I am impressed at the healing work he does, at the love he has with his congregation.  Yet, I don't give anyone a pass to speak and act lovingly in their "real world," and otherwise on a forum.  Last time I checked, Love of thy neighbor did not have afterlife forum group exclusions on it.

Matthew

Good question, Vicky!

So tell us,please, Don. Have you tried any of the methods for access to the afterlife that Bruce recommends?

d

LaffingRain wrote on Jan 18^th, 2008 at 3:11pm:

The very act of having to prove something, is not the approach in exploring these experiences we have as it sets up a tension block in the mind right away. Thats why experiments are so very difficult to the scientific minded to establish this criteria Don is looking for as "evidence."

Alysia, thanks for pointing this out.  You are absolutely correct.  That's the whole point.  The blocks that get set up in the mind and in one's belief system affect the outcome of the experiment.  

I deleted all of my posts except two.
I left my original first post alone....and...my post to Alysia.
It was meant for Alysia and it stays.

Now this thread can get back on track.

Call it a 'Do-Over'.

HI there all and Bruce, I am aware that we are not a near death experience forum but believe this account explaines a lot about what we have being debating in this nice thread. It is possibly the most profound nde that I have had the pleasure of reading,
alan

 

Mellen-Thomas Benedict's

Near-Death Experience

 


For the latest updates on Mellen Thomas:

Mellen Thomas Near Death Experience NDE

The official website of Mellen Thomas

Mellen-Thomas Benedict is an artist who survived a near-death experience in 1982. He was dead for over an hour and a half after dying of cancer. At the time of his death, he rose up out of his body and went into the light. Curious about the universe, he was taken far into the remote depths of existence, and even beyond, into the energetic void of nothingness behind the Big Bang. During his experience, he was able to learn a great deal of information concerning reincarnation. Because of his near-death experience, he was able to bring back scientific discoveries. Mr. Benedict has been closely involved in the mechanics of cellular communication and research dealing with the relationship of light to life called Quantum Biology. This research is providing dramatic new perspectives on how biological systems work. Mr. Benedict has found that living cells can respond very quickly to light stimulation resulting in, among other things, high speed healing. He is a researcher, inventor and lecturer who holds six U.S. patents.

Several weeks after Benedict was born, he may experienced a NDE when his bowels were ruptured. His body was tossed to one side as a corpse, yet much to everyone's surprise he later revived. As soon as he was big enough to grab hold of crayons, he started what became a compulsive urge to create symbolic renditions of the black/white yin/yang circles of Eastern religious thought. He has no memory of why he drew those particular symbols.

He spent his grade school years in a Catholic boarding school in Vermont, and was baptized in the Salvation Army religion as a youngster. He traveled extensively because of a military stepfather until the family finally settled down in Fayetteville, North Carolina.

Then, Benedict was diagnosed as having inoperable cancer. He had retired from the frenzy of filmdom by then and was operating his own stained-glass studio. As his condition worsened, he spent more and more time with his art. One morning he awakened knowing he would die the next day, and he did. As the typical heaven-like scenario began to unfold, Benedict recognized what was happening as it was happening. The process was familiar to him because he had read many books about the near-death phenomenon previously.

Mr. Benedict's NDE is reprinted here by the permission of his friends Dr. Lee Worth Bailey and Jenny Yates. Their excellent book entitled The Near-Death Experience: A Reader, published by Routledge, New York, in 1996, is highly recommended by the webmaster. A portion of his near-death experience also appears in P.M.H. Atwater's book, Beyond the Light. Concerning Mellen's near-death experience, Dr. Ken Ring remarked, "His story is one of the most remarkable I have encountered in my extensive research on near-death experiences."

 P.M.H. Atwater has the following to say about Mellen-Thomas Benedict:

"I can attest that his case is genuine and his claims about the brain tumor and the conditions of his death are true. I have met his mother and step-father, been in his and their homes, and have followed his life since - his struggles and his accomplishments - as he sought to find a way to integrate his experience into his daily life while still honoring the mission he felt guided to fulfill."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Road to Death

In 1982 I died from terminal cancer. The condition I had was inoperable, and any kind of chemotherapy they could give me would just have made me more of a vegetable. I was given six to eight months to live. I had been an information freak in the 1970's, and I had become increasingly despondent over the nuclear crisis, the ecology crisis, and so forth. So, since I did not have a spiritual basis, I began to believe that nature had made a mistake, and that we were probably a cancerous organism on the planet. I saw no way that we could get out from all the problems we had created for ourselves and the planet. I perceived all humans as cancer, and that is what I got. That is what killed me. Be careful what your world view is. It can feed back on you, especially if it is a negative world view. I had a seriously negative one. That is what led me into my death. I tried all sorts of alternative healing methods, but nothing helped.

So I determined that this was really just between me and God. I had never really faced God before, or even dealt with God. I was not into any kind of spirituality at the time, but I began a journey into learning about spirituality and alternative healing. I set out to do all the reading I could and bone up on the subject, because I did not want to be surprised on the other side. So I started reading on various religions and philosophies. They were all very interesting, and gave hope that there was something on the other side.  

On the other hand, as a self-employed stained-glass artist at the time, I had no medical insurance whatsoever. So my life savings went overnight in testing. Then I was facing the medical profession without any kind of insurance. I did not want to have my family dragged down financially, so I determined to handle this myself. There was not constant pain, but there were black-outs. I got so that I would not dare to drive, and eventually I ended up in hospice care. I had my own personal hospice caretaker. I was very blessed by this angel who went through the last part of this with me. I lasted about eighteen months. I did not want to take a lot of drugs, since I wanted to be as conscious as possible. Then I experienced such pain that I had nothing but pain in my consciousness, luckily only for a few days at a time.

The Light of God

I remember waking up one morning at home about 4:30 am, and I just knew that this was it. This was the day I was going to die. So I called a few friends and said goodbye. I woke up my hospice caretaker and told her. I had a private agreement with her that she would leave my dead body alone for six hours, since I had read that all kinds of interesting things happen when you die. I went back to sleep. The next thing I remember is the beginning of a typical near-death experience. Suddenly I was fully aware and I was standing up, but my body was in the bed. There was this darkness around me.  Being out of my body was even more vivid than ordinary experience. It was so vivid that I could see every room in the house, I could see the top of the house, I could see around the house, I could see under the house.

There was this light shining. I turned toward the light. The light was very similar to what many other people have described in their near-death experiences. It was so magnificent. It is tangible; you can feel it. It is alluring; you want to go to it like you would want to go to your ideal mother's or father's arms.  

As I began to move toward the light, I knew intuitively that if I went to the light, I would be dead.  

So as I was moving toward the light I said, "Please wait a minute, just hold on a second here. I want to think about this; I would like to talk to you before I go."  

To my surprise, the entire experience halted at that point. You are indeed in control of your near-death experience. You are not on a roller coaster ride.  So my request was honored and I had some conversations with the light. The light kept changing into different figures, like Jesus, Buddha, Krishna, mandalas, archetypal images and signs.  

I asked the light, "What is going on here? Please, light, clarify yourself for me. I really want to know the reality of the situation."  

I cannot really say the exact words, because it was sort of telepathy.  The light responded. The information transferred to me was that your beliefs shape the kind of feedback you are getting before the light. If you were a Buddhist or Catholic or Fundamentalist, you get a feedback loop of your own stuff. You have a chance to look at it and examine it, but most people do not.  

As the light revealed itself to me, I became aware that what I was really seeing was our Higher Self matrix. The only thing I can tell you is that it turned into a matrix, a mandala of human souls, and what I saw was that what we call our Higher Self in each of us is a matrix. It's also a conduit to the Source; each one of us comes directly, as a direct experience from the Source. We all have a Higher Self, or an oversoul part of our being. It revealed itself to me in its truest energy form. The only way I can really describe it is that the being of the Higher Self is more like a conduit. It did not look like that, but it is a direct connection to the Source that each and every one of us has. We are directly connected to the Source.  

So the light was showing me the Higher Self matrix. And it became very clear to me that all the Higher Selves are connected as one being, all humans are connected as one being, we are actually the same being, different aspects of the same being. It was not committed to one particular religion. So that is what was being fed back to me. And I saw this mandala of human souls. It was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. I just went into it and, it was just overwhelming. It was like all the love you've every wanted, and it was the kind of love that cures, heals, regenerates.

As I asked the light to keep explaining, I understood what the Higher Self matrix is. We have a grid around the planet where all the Higher Selves are connected. This is like a great company, a next subtle level of energy around us, the spirit level, you might say.  

Then, after a couple of minutes, I asked for more clarification. I really wanted to know what the universe is about, and I was ready to go at that time.  

I said, "I am ready, take me."  

Then the light turned into the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen: a mandala of human souls on this planet.  

Now I came to this with my negative view of what has happened on the planet. So as I asked the light to keep clarifying for me, I saw in this magnificent mandala how beautiful we all are in our essence, our core. We are the most beautiful creations. The human soul, the human matrix that we all make together is absolutely fantastic, elegant, exotic, everything. I just cannot say enough about how it changed my opinion of human beings in that instant.

I said, "Oh, God, I did not know how beautiful we are."

At any level, high or low, in whatever shape you are in, you are the most beautiful creation, you are.

I was astonished to find that there was no evil in any soul.  

I said, "How can this be?"  

The answer was that no soul was inherently evil. The terrible things that happened to people might make them do evil things, but their souls were not evil. What all people seek, what sustains them, is love, the light told me. What distorts people is a lack of love.

The revelations coming from the light seemed to go on and on, then I asked the light, "Does this mean that humankind will be saved?"

Then, like a trumpet blast with a shower of spiraling lights, the Great Light spoke, saying, "Remember this and never forget; you save, redeem and heal yourself.  You always have. You always will. You were created with the power to do so from before the beginning of the world."

In that instant I realized even more. I realized that WE HAVE ALREADY BEEN SAVED, and we saved ourselves because we were designed to self-correct like the rest of God's universe. This is what the second coming is about.  

I thanked the light of God with all my heart. The best thing I could come up with was these simple words of totally appreciation:  

"Oh dear God, dear Universe, dear Great Self, I love my life."  

The light seemed to breathe me in even more deeply. It was as if the light was completely absorbing me. The love light is, to this day, indescribable. I entered into another realm, more profound than the last, and became aware of something more, much more. It was an enormous stream of light, vast and full, deep in the heart of life. I asked what this was.

The light responded, "This is the RIVER OF LIFE. Drink of this manna water to your heart's content."  

So I did. I took one big drink and then another. To drink of life Itself! I was in ecstasy.

Then the light said, "You have a desire."  

The light knew all about me, everything past, present and future.

"Yes!" I whispered.

I asked to see the rest of the universe; beyond our solar system, beyond all human illusion. The light then told me that I could go with the Stream. I did, and was carried through the light at the end of the tunnel. I felt and heard a series of very soft sonic booms. What a rush!

Suddenly I seemed to be rocketing away from the planet on this stream of life. I saw the earth fly away. The solar system, in all its splendor, whizzed by and disappeared. At faster than light speed, I flew through the center of the galaxy, absorbing more knowledge as I went. I learned that this galaxy, and all of the universe, is bursting with many different varieties of LIFE. I saw many worlds. The good news is that we are not alone in this universe!  

As I rode this stream of consciousness through the center of the galaxy, the stream was expanding in awesome fractal waves of energy. The super clusters of galaxies with all their ancient wisdom flew by. At first I thought I was going somewhere; actually traveling. But then I realized that, as the stream was expanding, my own consciousness was also expanding to take in everything in the universe! All creation passed by me. It was an unimaginable wonder! I truly was a wonder child; a babe in Wonderland!

It seemed as if all the creations in the universe soared by me and vanished in a speck of light. Almost immediately, a second light appeared. It came from all sides, and was so different; a light made up of more than every frequency in the universe.

I felt and heard several velvety sonic booms again. My consciousness, or being, was expanding to interface with the entire holographic universe and more.

As I passed into the second light, the awareness came to me that I had just transcended the truth. Those are the best words I have for it, but I will try to explain. As I passed into the second light, I expanded beyond the first light. I found myself in a profound stillness, beyond all silence. I could see or perceive FOREVER, beyond infinity. I was in the void. I was in pre-creation, before the Big Bang. I had crossed over the beginning of time - the first word - the first vibration. I was in the eye of creation. I felt as if I was touching the face of God. It was not a religious feeling. Simply I was at one with absolute life and consciousness.

When I say that I could see or perceive forever, I mean that I could experience all of creation generating itself. It was without beginning and without end. That's a mind-expanding thought, isn't it? Scientists perceive the Big Bang as a single event which created the universe. I saw that the Big Bang is only one of an infinite number of Big Bangs creating universes endlessly and simultaneously. The only images that even come close in human terms would be those created by supercomputers using fractal geometry equations.

The ancients knew of this. They said Godhead periodically created new universes by breathing out, and de-creating other universes by breathing in. These epochs were called yugas. Modern science called this the Big Bang. I was in absolute, pure consciousness. I could see or perceive all the Big Bangs or yugas creating and de-creating themselves. Instantly I entered into them all simultaneously. I saw that each and every little piece of creation has the power to create. It is very difficult to try to explain this. I am still speechless about this.

It took me years after I returned to assimilate any words at all for the void experience. I can tell you this now; the void is less than nothing, yet more than everything that is! The void is absolute zero; chaos forming all possibilities. It is absolute consciousness; much more than even universal intelligence.

Where is the void? I know. The void is inside and outside everything. You, right now even while you live, are always inside and outside the void simultaneously. You don't have to go anywhere or die to get there. The void is the vacuum or nothingness between all physical manifestations. The SPACE between atoms and their components. Modern science has begun to study this space between everything. They call it zero-point. Whenever they try to measure it, their instruments go off the scale, or to infinity, so to speak. They have no way, as of yet, to measure infinity accurately. There is more of the zero space in your own body and the universe than anything else!

What mystics call the void is not a void. It is so full of energy, a different kind of energy that has created everything that we are. Everything since the Big Bang is vibration, from the first word, which is the first vibration.

The Biblical "I am" really has a question mark after it.

"I am? What am I?"

So creation is God exploring God's Self through every way imaginable, in an ongoing, infinite exploration through every one of us. Through every piece of hair on your head, through every leaf on every tree, through every atom, God is exploring God's Self, the great "I am". I began to see that everything that is, is the Self, literally, your Self, my Self. Everything is the great Self. That is why God knows even when a leaf falls. That is possible because wherever you are is the center of the universe. Wherever any atom is, that is the center of the universe. There is God in that, and God in the void.

As I was exploring the void and all the yugas or creations, I was completely out of time and space as we know it. In this expanded state, I discovered that creation is about absolute pure consciousness, or God, coming into the experience of life as we know it. The void itself is devoid of experience. It is pre-life, before the first vibration. Godhead is about more than life and death. Therefore there is even more than life and death to experience in the universe!

I was in the void and I was aware of everything that had ever been created. It was like I was looking out of God's eyes. I had become God. Suddenly I wasn't me anymore. The only thing I can say, I was looking out of God's eyes. And suddenly I knew why every atom was, and I could see everything.

The interesting point was that I went into the void, I came back with this understanding that God is not there. God is here. That's what it is all about. So this constant search of the human race to go out and find God ... God gave everything to us, everything is here - this is where it's at. And what we are into now is God's exploration of God through us. People are so busy trying to become God that they ought to realize that we are already God and God is becoming us. That's what it is really about.

When I realized this, I was finished with the void, and wanted to return to this creation, or yuga. It just seemed like the natural thing to do.

Then I suddenly came back through the second light, or the Big Bang, hearing several more velvet booms. I rode the stream of consciousness back through all of creation, and what a ride it was! The superclusters of galaxies came through me with even more insights. I passed through the center of our galaxy, which is a black hole. Black holes are the great processors or recyclers of the universe. Do you know what is on the other side of a black hole? We are; our galaxy; which has been reprocessed from another universe.

In its total energy configuration, the galaxy looked like a fantastic city of lights. All energy this side of the Big Bang is light. Every sub-atom, atom, star, planet, even consciousness itself is made of light and has a frequency and/or particle. Light is living stuff.  Everything is made of light, even stones. So everything is alive. Everything is made from the light of God; everything is very intelligent.

The Light of Love

As I rode the stream on and on, I could eventually see a huge light coming. I knew it was the first light; the Higher Self light matrix of our solar system. Then the entire solar system appeared in the light, accompanied by one of those velvet booms.

I saw that the solar system we live in is our larger, local body. This is our local body and we are much bigger than we imagine. I saw that the solar system is our body. I am a part of this, and the earth is this great created being that we are, and we are the part of it that knows that it is. But we are only that part of it. We are not everything, but we are that part of it that knows that it is.

I could see all the energy that this solar system generates, and it is an incredible light show! I could hear the music of the spheres. Our solar system, as do all celestial bodies, generates a unique matrix of light, sound and vibratory energies. Advanced civilizations from other star systems can spot life as we know it in the universe by the vibratory or energy matrix imprint. It is child's play. The earth's wonder child (human beings) make an abundance of sound right now, like children playing in the backyard of the universe.

I rode the stream directly into the center of the light. I felt embraced by the light as it took me in with its breath again, followed by another soft sonic boom.

To All,

I do not like to have to suspend anyone's posting privileges here and tend to cut folks a lot of slack, but on occasion the person involved leaves me no other choices.  Don (Berserk2) has been suspended for a period of 7 days due to repeated violation of the Posting Guidelines.  

Don's influence is often a welcome asset to these forums for its insightful questions and intelligent discussion.  But I could not in good conscience allow the other side of that influence to continue degenerating threads into painful experiences of name calling and bullying argument for other visitors. It is my hope that upon Don's return things will be better.

You will notice that all of Don's posts to this thread good, bad or indifferent have been removed to the Admin Private Board.  This is a procedural record keeping part of this suspension process.  Those of you who have posted directly to Don in this thread may wish to review your posts for relevance to the topic and modify or delete them.  I will leave that up to each individual.

The Admin  (aka Bruce)

Dave,

When you said:

>>  The only implication for pure logic is that observed ESP phenomena are bound by the same criteria of logical consistency as all other phenomena. That means that we can guess at what's happening, but aside from looking at the logical consistency with other datas, we have nothing solid. <<

Dave, that's the clearest statement of what I too see as the only criteria upon which to base a methodology to gain more understanding of whatever ESP, or appearant afterlife existence is.  I really appreciate your ability to objectively and clearly think through the issues, and distill them down to their essence.  You are in my view absolutely correct, we have nothing solid here that can be measured and tested.  All we have are the many and varied, subjectively gathered "data sets" from a very broad range of observers, each with their own expectations, assumptions, beliefs and other biases that directly influence their perception, analysis and understanding of their own data sets.  

If our goal is to get closer to whatever the Truth is, it is entirely pointless for individual data set providers to argue with others over whose data is correct.  Since the only tool available to us is logical consistency between data sets, progress toward our goal is best served by increasing the number of data sets available and openly sharing whatever our entirely subjective experiences lead each of us to believe we  find.  In my view it matters not one twit that an individual provider may be misinterpreting their experience, deluding themselves, etc. because we are ALL, inescapably, doing that.  

I remember when, as a 19 year old no longer able to accepted the internally conflicting beliefs of my Lutheran upbringing, I naively set out in search of the one, "True" religion.  I examined as many different religions as that pre-Google era allowed time for, but always discovered the same basic problem with every religion I investigated.  They all had at least some internally conflicting, logical inconsistencies within their own belief structures.  Then I began to see something that I felt might at least point in the direction of the one true religion if it existed.  I began to see a pattern of logically consistent, common threads that ran through most all of the religions I studied.  That led me to conclude that whatever set of such beliefs was common to most religions, that set of beliefs was probably closer to whatever the Truth was than any single religion in the group.  And it implied that any new logical inconsistencies between this emerging pattern of internally consistent beliefs and any new beliefs found while investigating a new religion were a challenge to the reality of the emerging pattern.  Such challenges must be resolved or they could invalidate any or all of the beliefs in the emerging pattern.  These challenges became highly prized targets for further investigation.

I gave up my search for an already existing, one true religion and began instead building a belief structure of my own.  Over the years of other kinds of explorations I took on it became my habit to be on the lookout for any of my own experiences that conflicted with my own, developing set of beliefs.  Finding one of these logical inconsistencies within my own experience seemed to automatically trigger an intense desire to dig for more understanding and experience in the hope that the inconsistency would be resolved in some way.  Sometimes I'd discover I had misinterpreted the triggering experience, it was a delusion, or too heavily influenced by my expectations, etc.  Sometimes more experience would only serve to make that inconsistency more glaringly obvious and I'd be forced to change my beliefs to accommodate the implications of that experience (aka belief system crash).  Through it all I recognized I would probably never know and understand enough to have the Truth, but I found it satisfying to just be getting closer to whatever that Truth is.

So, Dave, I completely agree with you.  If we are looking for a methodology by which to gain greater understanding of ESP phenomena, or the reality of survival of consciousness beyond death, logical consistency with other data sets is at the root of that methodology.  And it makes me wonder how we would begin to define what the trunk and branches of the rest of that tree would look like.

Thanks Dave,

Bruce

Greetings to Pratekya,

You have been here a long time, to remember Chumley and Spitfire !
I've appreciated your posts ever since you started as Pratekya. (  :) Now I wonder if you had a previous avatar back when those two you mentionned were active here?)

But your comment about those two makes me wonder if you are as keen a judge of character as your post re: Don asks us to believe. Spitfire, for example, was a sensitive seeker of answers who was driven to extremes by severe pain and deformation that he hoped to find the justice for. He cared enough about spirit to launch his own website dedicated to Spirit in order to seek answers he couldn't find here. His pain was severe enough that he spent a year in the Orient undergoing a torturous procedure that broke his legs in seventeen places !!--and still he sought for Spirit's justice.
To call such a suffering soul 'evil' IMO shows, at the least, a lack of consideration I did not expect from you.

I suspect many Spiritual seekers are driven by some negative personal experience, possibly tragic or traumatic. Those who speak now from a positive fullness of Spirit often received that Spirit after much trauma/suffering also.
I suspect Don and many other souls most active here may also have that motivation.
So how can any be judged as evil when they are so keenly involved in seeking spiritual knowledge?
(I also wonder how anyone can say that any path to the Supreme is wrong when it has provided Spiritual meaning to any wounded souls, but that's not for this thread or you, P.)

We're all learning. We never know enough!

Betson

thanks Bruce , its always good to read you. I experienced an emotion this morning complete with the sound of myself crying.
I am not ashamed to be emotional about the well being of this board. I think there was  a time I couldn't say that so I must have grown somewhat.

I may be deluded and still allow myself that delusion for the time being, that we are supplying a need here and making it easier for others to get off their chest the many strange things which conflict with their belief systems.

Dave certainly does put things into perspective for me time and again. I agree Dave, a lite went off when I read what you wrote too. what Dave does for me personally is get me grounded. I fly too high, and he acts to get my feet back on something solid because its like living in two worlds. it can be most distressing.

thank god for this board

Hi Bets-
I like your perspective. When I do marital work I always point out to people that the reason they are so terribly frustrated with one another is that they are in love. That doesn't always make for happiness, because marriage takes hard work, but it definitely keeps emotions flowing. ;-)

Bruce-
I kinda wish I were a better methodologist - I just used to teach the stuff. However, my feeling is that we've tried to get excessively precise and localized, when what we have is more like a spring breeze that sweeps over the hillside, but can't be reliably located at any specific point, nor can we predict what it will do to this bush, that tree, or those clouds forming over there.

From the top of my head this morning, if we want to view this on a wide screen, so to say, then one option would be to gather a lot of individual experiences by class, using cluster analytic math. This can be analyzed with Bayesian estimates. This does not provide "proof" in the sense of a controlled experiment, but it gives predictive data against which we can test observations, with a null hypothesis of chance correlations.

The value of this kind of approach is that we can define the clusters rather arbitrarily, so long as they are populated reasonably. That allows soul retrievals, hypnotic regression, meditative epiphanies, CS skill building, and whatever else, all to be defined in their own terms, and then reduced to numeric frequencies which could be later manipulated.

To do that kind of thing would require us to establish a collection of commonly observed attributes for cluster sorting, from which to pick our favorites. My preference would be to try to find natural sets that are statistically discriminable, This is just a matter of lots correlations on the data set so that clusters would separate along lines of greatest variance.

In all of this, my personal fear is that we lack a sufficient number of samples. As a rule of thumb, any set of 30 or more data will be normally distributed (because Student's t deviates from normalcy by less than .01 for n=30) so any kind of analytic work would hopefully have at least 30 members of any subset cluster. However, this might be made up by sampling workshops, or by running a general questionnaire on the forum.

That's about all that comes to me today. (I feel that I should now give the pages of next week's readings and the date of the Midterm.)

I find it interesting that your background took you through so many different religions. I was a malcontent who got sent to a military school to "fix" my attitude. (It didn't. I set some kind of school record for marching punishment tours - 50 minutes walking the quad carrying my rifle. I even wound up in charge of some of the extra-duty details.) One of the profs sensed that I was "restless" and rather than advising me, he mentioned that he once had a friend who had more or less worked his way through all available religions prior to coming to his own conclusions.  My personal search took me into the Haight-Ashbury area and a few years as a hippie, until the authorities closed down my kitchen lab and suggested that immediate employment would probably be better than a long vacation at state expense. I took the hint and went back into electronics, and later, to school. There's definitely a great deal to be said for a wide scope in belief systems. :-)

Incidently  - thanks for the forum!

dave