by philo 81 Replies latest jw friends
Nice try. Not even close, of course, but as close as I would expect from one who has never experienced them. (see my prior posting).
But I have experienced them, Susan! Only after taking hallucinogens, or when excessively tired or under stress. And yes, they can be very real. But they are manifestations of what's going on inside your head, rather than a feature of the outside world.
--
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit attrocities - Voltaire
But I have experienced them, Susan! Only after taking hallucinogens, or when excessively tired or under stress. And yes, they can be very real. But they are manifestations of what's going on inside your head, rather than a feature of the outside world.
This may explain YOUR experience, but it does not explain everyone else's experiences.
Philo,
I have always had "visions" per say. When I was very young my great grandmother who died on the day I was born use to come to me and tell me things that were going to happen. I thought my dad was going to have a heart attack the first time I told him about it. I told him exactly what she was wearing when she would come to see me and it turns out it was the same outfit she was buried in. I verified this with my grandmother. Dad thought I was possesed or something so I just stopped telling him about it. I have also had visits from my mother since her passing. The first time I saw her was at my sisters wedding. I was about 15 and my father was officiating the ceremony. I was looking toward the back of the Kingdom Hall and I saw my mother standing in the foyer. This was 2 1/2 years after she passed. I know my father saw her too because right in the middle of his sermon all the blood left his face and I thought he was gonna pass out. He denied it but I could tell by the look in his eyes he had seen her. The last time she came to see me was about 6 years ago. She sat on the edge of the bed and told me that my partners mom had just passed. About 2 minutes later the phone rang and it was Kevins stepfather giving him the news.
Funkyderek: I know it's hard for someone who has never had this experience to understand it. Let me assure you that I have never seen any of the visions I've experienced while under the influence of any substance, or in a state of extreme stress. They are real, but they are not from our level of consciousness, so I'm not surprised that some people would not understand.
Peace and love,
Jon
Sorry, but I'm gonna have to side with FunkyDerek on this one. There have been numerous experiments performed to try and demonstrate ESP and so far there has been no evidence - not even a hint! Also, there is a million dollar reward out that has never been claimed for anyone who can successfully demonstrate this skill.
From all of the research I've done on this topic, the explanation seems to be human psychology. We remember the hits and forget the misses. We forget how many times we have those feelings that something really bad happened, and then nothing comes of it, but the one time it does happen it is proof positive for us. I have such feelings all of the time, but it is rare that there is anything I can connect the feeling to in real life. Every time I fly or my wife flies or my wife is out later than I expected I get a sinking feeling that something is going to go wrong. Nothing ever happens, but if one day something terrible happens - I could mistake that ordinary feeling for a premonition.
The mind is a very tricky thing. Many times we make much more out of something than it really is if there is some later event that seems to be related to the strange feeling. We can even reinterpret what we remember - memories are not concrete. People can influence the way we remember our experiences and the more times we bring back a memory, the more it becomes modified and expounded on. Details are added without realizing it. After a while, the real memory is forgotten and our new version is the truth in our minds. This is just a fact of how our not so perfect memories work.
There are a lot of anecdotes to support this phenomenon, but no positive quantifiable evidence at all. The same can be said about UFO's and Conspiracy theories. I think it's an interesting reflection of human psychology, though.
rem
p.s.: If some type of ESP were a real phenomenon, then I'm sure Vegas casino's would be bankrupt by now, or at least there would be rules against it. Also, the government ESP projects were all cancelled - I suppose they didn't work as planned.
"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."
..........Bertrand Russell
Of course they're real. And they're usually caused by such questionable activities as not eating for three days, or taking hallucinogens, or by something else that upsets the chemical balance of the brain.
Ok, that was a veyr ignorant statement and I will let it speak for itself..now onward...
There have been numerous experiments performed to try and demonstrate ESP and so far there has been no evidence - not even a hint!
That's also ignorant....
Professor Jessica Utts
Division of Statistics
University of California, Davis
If some type of ESP were a real phenomenon, then I'm sure Vegas casino's would be bankrupt by now, or at least there would be rules against it. Also, the government ESP projects were all cancelled - I suppose they didn't work as planned.
The fact is cops use psychics all the time as a last result measure, the US government was so astonished by experiments showing the xsistence of remote viewing they authorized project stargate. It was cancelled at the end of the cold war. Who's to say it isn't still being used under secrecy? Stargate was a spying program, such programs are not always made public.
I have seen it myself and it cant be explained away. I picked a random page in a random magazine, stuck a marker in the magazine and told my girlfriend to sketch the target. The target we defined as whichever image the marker I had placed in the magazine was touching. She produced a sketch, not skribbles mind you, but a distinct human figure in an exact position with a strange looking hat. It turns out the target was that image exactly. It was a human figure with a jester hat that was split in two, with his hands outstretched, exactly as in her sketch. You know what the chances of her hitting that were? It could have been anything. I didnt know what the target was, she had no idea what type of magazine it was.
She has given me exact results like that many times, again, that cannot be explained away. This is the type of evidence that can be reproduced in labs and analyzed that the US government was astonished by, and was so convinced they authorized project stargate right here in fort meade maryland.
Until you experience it, you won't beleive I know. I never did until she showed me.
-Dan
Didn't you hear that the Bible says:
Matthew 17:9 ***
“Tell the vision to no one”
bboyneko,
There are two sides to every story. According to Utts' colleague Ray Hyman, the experiments and the data gathered were highly flawed. Here are a couple links. The first is a laymans explanation of what happened - cutting through all of the media hype that blew up in 1995 over this non-finding. The second is Ray Hyman's actual report.
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpsychicfed.html
http://www.mceagle.com/remote-viewing/refs/science/air/hyman.html
Here is an excerpt from his report:
The secrecy under which the SRI and SAIC programs was conducted necessarily cut them off from the communal aspects of scientific inquiry. The checks and balances that come from being an open part of the disciplinary matrix were absent. With the exception of the past year or so, none of the reports went through the all-important peer-review system. Worse, promising findings did not have the opportunity of being replicated in other laboratories.
Making matters even worse is the use of the same judge across all experiments. The judging of viewer responses is a critical factor in free-response remote viewing experiments. Ed May, the principle investigator, as I understand it, has been the sole judge in all the free response experiments. May's rationale for this unusual procedure was that he is familiar with the response styles of the individual viewers. If a viewer, for example, talks about bridges, May--from his familiarity with this viewer--might realize that this viewer uses bridges to refer to any object that is on water. He could then interpret the response accordingly to make the appropriate match to a target. Whatever merit this rationale has, it results in a methodological feature that violates some key principles of scientific credibility. One might argue that the judge, for example, should be blind not only about the correct target but also about who the viewer is. More important, the scientific community at large will be reluctant to accept evidence that depends upon the ability of one specific individual. In this regard, the reliance on the same judge for all free-response experiments is like the experimenter effect. To the extent that the results depend upon a particular investigator the question of scientific objectivity arises. Scientific proof depends upon the ability to generate evidence that, in principle, any serious and competent investigator--regardless of his or her personality--can observe.
As the parapsychologist John Palmer has recognized, parapsychologists will have to go beyond demonstrating the presence of a statistical anomaly before they can claim the presence of psychic functioning. This is because, among other things, the existence of a statistical anomaly is defined negatively. Something is occurring for which we have no obvious or ready explanation. This something may or may not turn out to be paranormal. According to Palmer, parapsychologists will have to devise a positive theory of the paranormal before they will be in a position to claim that the observed anomalies indicate paranormal functioning.
An experiment or study is not generally accepted in the scientific community unless the results can be replicated. So far this has not happened, so for now the results are just an anomally.
As far as your girlfriend's skill, methinks she could be having some fun with you. But if you are confident in her skills, I would suggest that she go for the million dollar prize from Uri Gellar. Also, I would not be against being involved in an online test. Maybe if she could do something similar with me over the Internet I think that would prove to be interesting. I'm not sure how scientific the results would be, though, regardless of whether they were positive or negative, but it might be fun.
As far as the police using psychics - police are fooled too. Sometimes they are forced to use them by the request of the public. I've read that 70% of US police departments have used psychics at one time or another, but only 3% said they would ever use one again. They use many techniques to give the impression that they have made hits, such as "the body is near water", which could mean near a river, a gutter, or in the bathroom. Some of the techniques are shown here:
http://skepdic.com/psychdet.html
I just know that it is true the hand is quicker than the eye. That's what makes magic tricks seem so real. People can use psychology to their advantage in the same way - and some don't even realize they are doing it. But in the end, they are just tricks.
rem
"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."
..........Bertrand Russell
Lol @ StifflersErSlayersBrother To Slayer
This commin from the guy who's done more LSD than neone should... no im not surprised... lol
"Im just here for tha pussy...."
Stifflers Brother
SlayerLayer Oh God...there goes the neighborhood.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Really though - I have ESP - no joke. Example. We (hubby and I) listen to a radio station called 99X (new "rock.") My hubby won $99 and a chance to win a new Beul (Harley sports bike.) We had to go to a bar to see if we won. About 100 names were called. Leon was number 50 +/- and right before they announced his name as I non-winner I said You're next hun - and he was. Stuff like that happens to me all of the time.
Errrr Yep, most of my life I've had mostly feelings as an empath. But for the last 3 or 4 years, I have had visions, often while talking to
people and usually about their past or future.
Not usually weird, mostly benign stuff. Usually in context with whatever is being said, but still a little cryptic at times
BugEye
philo,
Never had a vision, but I had a dream once...
A buddy of mine, a fellow JW who I grew up with, always seemed to have a charmed life. Things seemed to come real easy to him without him really trying... jobs, positions at the Hall... everything. I couldn't ever figure it out, even though I thought about it all the time.
One night, I had a dream. I saw my friend in the deep end of my junior high school's indoor swimming pool, standing waist-high out of the water. It amazed me and I had a devil of a time trying to figure out how he was doing it. So I stuck my head under the water and saw him standing on someone's shoulders.
It was a very good dream.
