I've viewed a lot of youtube clips of Randi and he is very honest. I think the verifiability problem is to make these "psychic" experiments repeatable or re-producible.

Randi himself says that most "psychics" that claim para-normal abilities are amateurs and those are not the ones Randi is targeting with his price. Randi wants to challenge those, as he sees it, fake psychics that earn money on peoples stupidity.

I have also read a few articles on so called "cold-reading" and am now much more skeptic about certain claims. I would say that it's very healthy to read only one article about how cold-reading can be performed.

Besides, for you who haven't found Randi's youtube clip about his own OBE, here it is ->
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwKkbd2e-c&feature=related



Seems Randi was experiencing quite a real time fluctuation. Too bad he haven't gotten any more such experiences, which might make him experiment just a little - and eventually startle him.

I think there also is one TMI youtube clip about Remote Viewing (RV) and that Holmes "Skip" Atwater says that the biggest problem with RV is two-fold:

1. You don't always know when in time the remote place is viewed.
2. It is difficult to identify objects and make real-world items out of them as the view might not be detailed enough.

Here is Atwater explaining the problems with RV, listen to the first six minutes, specially between 4:01 - 5:46:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MonroeInstitute#p/u/94/Fc59il6fRfI

Dr. Who wrote on Nov 15^th, 2010 at 8:54pm:


Obviously this post seems directed at me.  Dr. Who, if you re-read what I said you'll see that my "closed-minded" comment was not an insult. 

What I said was, there's a certain way of thinking that closes down the psychic and nonphysical senses.  And that to open yourself up to being able to have those types of experiences, you need to open up a new way of perceiving. 

I myself have recently seen this happen to me, so that's the experience I'm speaking from, first hand.  I recently realized that at the moments I'm able to see clairvoyantly, I'm "open" to that type of perception.  But as soon as I begin to analyze what I'm observing, or tell myself something like, "Oh I need to document this and start writing my notes", then it shuts off.  In other words, what I meant as closed-minded.  Literally speaking, if you are doing things that close off a part of the brain or mind's ability to perceive, that's the same as being closed-minded, wouldn't you agree?  I see that you took that comment to mean something other than what I explained.

So, the clairvoyance is an ability that literally is apart from the part of the brain that analyzes and is logical-thinking. 

I was trying to point out the differences between our right brain and left brain.  And it's the same thing that Bruce teaches about how our Perceiver and Interpreter work together.  They work in balance of each other, and too much of one and not enough of the other isn't conducive to meaningful experience and memory function, etc. 

I hope that makes more sense to you now.  It's too bad you took offense to what I see as great insight.

Vicky   

Vicky, no way, it was intended for all pro-afterlifers since it seems to fit the majority of them.

Heisen, thus far, all of my own personal research has come up with (Spongebob's rainbow hand effect) "Imagination."
My current status on my OWN experiences and tests of the afterlife are leaning towards that it does not exist. One of the major factors is lack of solid evidence and the difficulty of proving that mind and body are separate.

Medical studies are learning more and more about the brain and how it works. Dementia and Alzheimer's being two of the major advocates of mind and body being completely linked and when they die, you die.

In fact, my studies are leaning more and more in the direction that life and sense of self is more of an illusion than anything. We believe life matters, we believe we matter. The reality is that we only think we matter in our own minds. If the entire world was destroyed tommorrow it wouldn't make a lick of difference in the long run.

I look at the afterlife because I see no meaning in life itself. I look at myself, at going to work every day, at having a beer, at having a wife, at playing a video game, at writing a book, at reading a book, and I say, wow, none of this really matters since in the end I have no true meaning. I will die and cease to exist. Having children to give yourself meaning is really just a way of fooling yourself. Even the memory of you will fade away completely within a life time or two maximum. And even if you are George Washington and people remember you years later, even this is an illusion in your mind, an attempt to give your life meaning.

Life, to me, is meaningless. Life itself, without some sort of continuance with death, has no real reason except the daily illusion of meaning we give ourselves.

Therefore, I make a futile attempt every day to pretend that life matters, all the while my mind is screaming and laughing maniacally. Inside I see the hideous and humorous worthlessness of it all.

When it all comes down to it, I wish I had never been born. It definitely seems unfair that parents can decide to create a life form and the life form being created has no say in the matter.

Oh yes, I know all the new age mumbo jumbo, the whole you picked your parents and chose to come here blah blah blah... well.... prove it if you are gonna say that type of stuff. I've heard that before from my new age friend Helga. (Who is actually a rather nice friend even though I am very negative at times!)

Anyways, In conclusion, life is meaningless to me.
Life should not exist. That's pretty much where I stand if the afterlife does not exist.

Dr Who:

It seems to me that you want your proof and you want it NOW ! But I would say that for most people it does'nt work that way. Its a more gradual process; cracks might open up in your belief system when you start finding anomalies running counter to it. For example a trusted friend (who has always been truthful) may relate a powerful obe/nde experience or a previously sceptical (high profile) scientist you respect says there is good data for mind being more than a brain function. Each not enough, on their own, to overturn your applecart but each slowly opening up your awareness to more ...

Keep your mind open you might be surprised what you may believe in 10 years time...

  Very well said David--couldn't agree more.

  Btw, Dr. Who, the offer about the Hemi-sync still stands (& i'm less broke of late).

I found the following recently, and thought it might add something useful to this thread.  Sorry if it's long.

“A while ago, experimenting with remote viewing, I learned first hand that there is a big difference between accuracy of perception and accuracy of interpretation. This cleared up questions that had plagued me for years about the process of obtaining information from the other side. The mind is always ready to connect the dots. That’s how we make sense of the world. But it’s also how we sometimes delude ourselves.”

“Think of your mind as containing two active elements, the perceiver and the interpreter, which weaves a story from whatever has been perceived, connecting the dots as best it can, enabling us to make at least tentative judgments when we have insufficient data. That’s well and good, but it brings its own dangers, because accurate perceptions don’t guarantee accurate interpretations.

In fact, because particularly accurate perceptions often carry strong conviction, and because that conviction can rub off on interpretation, the paradoxical truth is that sometimes the better the perception, the greater the chance that the interpretation will go seriously wrong. And because you remember the strength of the feeling accompanying the perception, you may be tempted not to examine too closely whatever interpretation you have attached to it.”

...and later...

"The only alternative to taking things on faith, or refusing to think about them at all, is to do our own exploring. Explorers by definition move into poorly mapped or unmapped territory, and by their own experience help fill in the map for those who follow. It cannot be required of explorers that they always know what they are doing, or where they are going, nor can it be required of them that they not pursue leads that turn out to be dead ends. All that can be required is that they be resolute, honest, and a bit skeptical even of the maps they themselves help to draw.

"Therefore it follows that the very last thing an explorer can do or should do is to stick to the “respectable” or the “common sense” explanations and pathways. What kind of exploring would that be? Even more difficult sometimes, the explorer must be willing to continue despite doubts, suspicions and confusions. Sometimes you just have to keep on going and trust that eventually things will sort out."


From “Chasing Smallwood:  Conversations with a “past life” American about the challenges, opportunities and meaning of his time and ours” by Frank DeMarco