Roger,

It is an impressive experience you had with Linn.  But what made her feel you should mend fences with that friend? 

If there is a repository of limitless information to tap into, is it a database with no intelligence, or is it more than a database?

M

Roger,

The fact that Linn admonished you to seek reconciliation with an alienated friend might just be a coincidence.  But the fact that she identified him by name--and an uncommon name at that--is clearly paranormal.  Did she merely read your mind and/or your friend's mind?  I doubt it because of somewhat parallel examples from my own experience.

For example, in my first year as a college professor, I visited my brother in Colorado Springs, bought a Toyota Corolla there, and drove it back to Olean, NY.  Shortly thereafter, I drove to Boston to serve as the Best Man in Russ's wedding.  Russ was renting his house to a woman who read auras.  He told me that it was often a problem to collect rent from her; so this cast her in a somewhat negative light for me.  She read Russ's aura and uttered some vague positive cliches about his future.  Then it was my turn.  She stared intently at a spot just over my head and I almost felt naked.  She said something like this: "You have the aura of a healer, but I'd like to see just a little more green to fully develop your gift."  What she said next disturbed me.  She said, "Something bad is going to happen, but you will take it too seriously.  You have a tendency to do that." 

In Olean, I was living in a garage apartment at the  time.  When I drove home, I felt an impulse to ask my landlord if I could park my Toyota in his driveway.  He refused.  I was surprised at how urgently I wanted him to say yes.  That Saturday around midnight, I was watching TV when I heard al loud crunch.  A totally drunk young female driver had totalled my Toyota parked in the street.   And yes, I probably was more upset by this than I should have been.  How did gazing at my supposed aura tip the woman off to my imminent accident? Surely she could not glean my upcoming accident from my mind.  My sense of foreboding had no specific tragedy in mind.   So did she glean this warning from Universal Mind or God?  Other more reasonable alternatives elude me!

Don 

Ah Kathy, the inevitable question from a Tom Campbell fan!  Actually, the definition of "Universal Mind" is problematic.  I equate it with the so-called "Akashic records" and with Carl Jung's Collective Unconsious, but that equation just passes the definition buck to another intriguing but murky concept.  Jung invokes a Collective Unconscious to explain the phenomenon of ESP and the universality of archetypes.  Archetypes are not innte ideas; they reflect our tendency to organize our experience around certain symbols or imagery in a way that is cross-culturally valid, even though one culture has not shared these archetypes with another culture.  Archetypes seem embedded in a Collective Unconscious.  The Collective Unconscious also assumes that, at a deeper level, all human minds are open to each other and that this openness makes ESP possible.  I am also influenced by biologist Rupert Sheldrake's research that seems to demonstrate some sort of group mind or gruop mental energy field for each animal species.  Thus, a new skill learned by a group of birds or rats in one locale is quickly picked up by distant members of the same species without any physical contact or proximity.  On this theory, every species has its own group mind or Universal Consciousness.   Perhaps each species consciousness is contained like concentric circles within one divine consciusness emanating from God, the ground of all being. 

Don   

Well... if I'm a TC fan, then I must be a DS fan, too.    Actually TC's model of consciousness isn't much different than what you've described.  Just different metaphors, but I like a wide variety to help me see the truth threaded throughout. If I remember correctly, TC uses a model of what he calls the Reality Wide Web [of consciousness] in which we all are connected. This would be true for group consciousness as well. Similar to what I think you're saying regarding archetypes and Sheldrake's work that you also mention.

I've followed Sheldrake's findings for several years now and have been impressed by his work that in my mind clearly shows that biological forms continually evolve through an underlying intelligent unified life field. In my understanding it is also evident as a life field that automatically maintains health in our bodies as an automatic system that seeks to return to health when illness or injury occurs. A morphogenetic resonance associated with successful evolution of all other life as a field that is alive and continually unfolding and building more complex, higher evolved forms of life with more intelligence and capability to produce order within a complex system.  To me it seems reasonable to think of this intelligence as a field of consciousness / information that has a predilection for balance.


I love this... it reminds me of David Bohm's work, and expresses my thoughts exactly:
"Perhaps each species consciousness is contained like concentric circles within one divine consciousness emanating from God, the ground of all being."

Kathy

Prior to the revival of channeling in the 19th century through the Fox sisters, the dominant cross-cultural view was that mediums contact demons of gods, not discarnate people.  It simply begs the question to simply assume that the modern attitude is correct.  Consider this historical fact in your assessment of all the other arguments against channeling on this thread.  But I think I have made a good case for ESP rather than spirit contact, impersonator or otherwise) for paranormal information gleaned from mediums. 

Don

Starcraft, you miss the point.  Prir to the Fox sisters, the mediums THEMSELVES thought they were contacting gods or demons!  So perhaps the current desperate belief that they are contacting discarnate humans is wishful thinking!  In any case, I have made an effective case for super-ESP as the best explanation of paranormal information gleaned from mediums and you New Agers have merely frozen like Bambi in the headlights and ducked my arguments. 

Don

I use Occam's razor which means the simplest theory/hypothesis is most likely the correct one. To me this means that they are contacting people in the afterlife.