dave_a_mbs
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Hi Folks- OK, Alycia, since you set me up for this, let me try to give feedback appropriate to the question, rather than the technical side. I'm sure that my thoughts aren't new, but they might rekindle some of your own experiences and memories. I begin with the assumption that everything is One. (You can verify this by meditation, much easier than trying to do it by logic.)
Starting with Oneness, a level at which we are experientially One, and at which we have all questions answered and all knowledge shared, we also have very little to do. In order to have something to talk about, we have to have divergent viewpoints.
To have divergent viewpoints, we also have to maintain a shared definition of the continuum in which we are collectively immersed. Speculative physicists like Gribben have suggested tht this reality, together with its fundamental constants, like the speed of light, Planck's constant etc, are all selected as a set out of a vast array of potential values, so that this specific set of terms can generate a stable material universe. (For example, just try to find another set of values that allows eg. the triple-alpha conversion of helium into carbon, and also provides for the creation of fluorine.)
So we diverge, generating new subjective realities as we do, much in the same manner as when we wake up we start with one thought, one idea, one viewpoint, and then as we get involved in the day we develop new viewpoints, ideas and perspectives. There's nothing new here.
Bringing this to the present level, we have a reality that is defined as individualistic and discontinuous. The experimental settings used in any good experiment must use a separate and discontinuous definition of the experimental subjects, else they are "biased" in favor of the precise information that they purportedly seek. I suggest that this is why we find no more than a tiny effect.
If we start out by defining everything as One, and we place experimental subjects into that Oneness by hypnosis, meditation, Bruce's soul retrieval methods, my past life techniques, or anything similar, then we will get back a lot of data that overlap in nature and content, expressing the increasing commonality of viewpoints as they tend into Oneness. (This is why meditators can get into a very intimate union through meditation, and the proper practice of Tantric sexual meditation can produce a sense of unity of lovers at the point of Divine Creation.)
Now let's impose a definition set on each of our experimental subjects that says, "You are isolated, separated, have no way of contacting one another, and we have guarded against your doing it by telepathy, remote viewing or other non-experimental means." Just as prayer allows the praying people to alter reality toward the direction of cure of a friend, the experimental conditions, of themselves, negate access to the effects soughrt. And we have tens of thousands of experimentalists "praying" the materialistic state of separation in which there is no ability to make contact.
I was up late last night trying to come up with a better methodology. What I suggest is that we start with a contingent statement, "Given a continuum between Oneness and total diversity, there must be some attribute by which the location on the continuum is expressed." (By comparison, the attribute that expresses a person's love of eating might be their weight.) Then, we should be able to do a correlative study that associates the ability of a person to have "ESP" (meaning all psychic effects in this case) with the degree to which they manifest the attribution associoated with Oneness.
The problem is that this is a circular definition, presuming the answer, and then looking for its conditions of occurrence. The result would be a statement that for those who accept this type of definition, we have one property that exrternally reflects their Oneness, and that correlates with their mutuality of mind such that they have a greater ESP tendency. The next thing would be for others to pick apart the contingencies, so that some kind of logical expression might be made that reflects everyday reality, rather than our foreknowledge.
Here's an example. For all the people on this site, how many have had an "ESP" experience, again using the term in the widest possible manner? Next, grade those experiences from 1 to 10, and correlate that with their sense of participation in Oneness. (We'll ignore meditative skill and other instrumentation issues for a moment.) We'd find a high positive correlation at a very significant statistical level.
Looking at those data, do they mean that this is a commonly shared hallucination? Do they mean that because of those experiences they have decided to believe in a commonly shared delusion? FDo these number suggest tht peple will adapt their experiences to fit any available explanation, and thus we have a site based on neurotic compensation? Or is it all a matter of suggestion? Or could it all be true?That's the circularity problem.
So we enlarge the experiment to use a Greco-Latin Squares Analysis of Variance (when I taught methodology, I avoided this complexity whenever possible because of the hassles it entails) in which we classify people according to numerous beliefs, numerous traits, numerous beiefs, meditative skills, exotic experiences, and so on for as many traits as we can discover. Then we look for a common trend such that those traits asspociated with Oneness are also associated with "ESP". Next, after we publish our findings we wold face a vast uproar. Then we'd have to prove to the millions of materialistic critics that every one of our initial criteria was actually associated with Oneness, which is equally as difficult as the initial search for "ESP". Back to square one.
The only thing I know of that makes sense in this whole area is that when we love deeply, we also share ideas, thoughts and awareness. Mom "knows" when the kids are in trouble. Husbands phone their wives when the wife thinks, "I wish he'd phone me right now." But that makes for a really difficult experimental design, because there's nothing objective, no control group, and only imperfect recollections as data.
So, Alycia, you know what I think? - Of course you do.
love- dave
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