BS: You and your ESP

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Bee
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 01:10 PM

Well, CarolC, I don't think that applies to everyone at all. I am a very skeptical person, but I would be thrilled if various supernatural or miraculous phenomena were in fact 'real'. The ideas of things like telepathy, precognition, pixies in the garden, astral travel, collective unconscious, animal spirits, and so on are very attractive to me, so much so that I treasure my family's vast collection of personal stories of the supernatural, eagerly read books on the subject, adore ghost story collections and songs with spooky lyrics.

I'm even willing to contemplate that the skeptic's explanation or theory regarding inexplicable experiences (and, like most people, I have had a few) might be wrong. I suppose the fact is, once something has a reasonable natural explanation, it is no longer supernatural. My tendency is to think that experiences I've had which seemed supernatural will eventually prove to be neurological or physical (though currently not understood) in origin.

In my life, I have had experiences which a supernaturally inclined person might consider telepathy, precognition, ghostly visitations (human and animal), and even a thoroughly weird and shocking non-touch physical manipulation performed on my person, without my consent and very unexpectedly, by a very strange person indeed. Most of those personal experiences are explained, to my satisfaction, by natural and known factors. A few are not - yet.

I suppose I think if something happens at all, it is natural.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:57 PM

"I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should choose of its own free will, not only its moment to jump off, but also its direction. In that case, I would rather be a cobbler, or even an employee in a gaming house, than a physicist."

Einstein

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:45 PM

Bingo, Carol. It is a caution how some folks define the word "nach'l", though. Don't forget those witch-hunts back in the 12th to 16th centuries! :D


A

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: CarolC
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:38 PM

It's not supernatural (or a miracle or a cosmic wonder). It's perfectly natural and normal, but some people choose to block their awareness of it because it makes them uncomfortable.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:33 PM

Bill:

You may want to include in the debunking piece that is fermenting in your fevered, but heavily reined-in, imagination, a thorough rebuttal of the ridiculous notion that quantum entanglement can impose the equivalent of "knowledge" shariong between particles that have been separated since the Big Bang, such that the state of one can precisely indicate the instantaneous spin-state of another light-years away.

Obviously this violates all Newtonian laws of information exchange and Einsteinian concepts of FTL transfer.

A

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Bee
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:29 PM

My father was a skeptical man in most arenas, but susceptible to the interesting collection of old Scottish ghost/folk stories he'd grown up with.

He was, I think, almost convinced the Second Sight was a real phenomena, doubtful about fore-runners, and ambivalent about ghosts.

One night, when he was around sixty, he woke to see a figure standing by his bed and staring down at him. Un-nerved, to say the least, he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the figure was gone. Next night, he woke and there were several people moving about the room, pausing to stare at him. He again closed his eyes and they went away. He was convinced he was seeing ghosts, but didn't recognize any of them and was quite frightened by the experience. The third night, he woke to see.... a refrigerator full of food, door open, light on - real as anything, he said.

Right, he told me later, I don't think ghosts of refrigerators are likely, so off I went to the doctor.

Turns out a fairly rare side effect of a medication he'd recently started is vivid hallucinations. But if the frig hadn't appeared, he'd have continued thinking the visions were indeed ghosts.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: SINSULL
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:26 PM

As a child I knew when people were going to die suddenly. It was preceded by a shock like lightening striking my head and travelling to my feet. And I knew.
My mother was horrified and forbade me to speak of it. I never warned anyone. The saddest event was a night when I was baby sitting for a couple I really loved. They had two babies, both girls, under two years old.
As they left for a night out, I was "struck" and knew I would never see her again.
She was struck by a car and killed instantly that night. To this day I wonder if I was meant to warn her.
Whatever the "ability" was, I lost it at about 16 years old.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Liz the Squeak
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:08 PM

Bill, that explains the snot on the keyboard then....

I'm fairly sceptical, but I'm a Virgo too...   In science there are no coincidences.. but I'm no scientist.

I am in fact, a total contradiction to myself. I've had things happen to me that were too weird to explain any other way but ESP, so I'm keeping that part of my mind open. Possibly.

LTS

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 12:04 PM

**sitting on my hands, lest I comment**

(why, yes...I did type this with my nose)

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 11:07 AM

Bee,

I see no contradiction there. Gross patterns are easily recognized on a mechanical level, and are frequently used by people with a talent for fixing automobiles, but its purely mechanical pattern comparisons. The "extrasensory" bit is actually somewhat oxymoronic, I guess; but not everyone can detect the patters in (for example) persoanlity indicators.

In addition there is a world of non-local knowledge which appears in different degrees and different levels of accuracy to people depending on their makeup (which is part of what D. was describing). The extent of this potential to detect and assimilate non-local knowledge is completely unexplored, and it is almost entirely anecdotal data.


A

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Bee
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:35 AM

Funny, JD.

So much of it sounds like coincidence and pattern seeking to me.

When I was a very young artist, an English friend observed that I wasn't good at seeing patterns, and as a result of his remark, which struck me as very true, I made a huge effort to improve my abilities in that area.

Artistically, that effort has served me well. Applying this learned ability to life, however, seems to frequently set me at odds with the romantic and/or the spiritual observations of others. They see miracles and cosmic wonders; I see an innate human ability and tendency to seek patterns, an ability I had to train myself to use, as opposed to what seems the norm, an unconscious and easy behaviour.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: KT
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:28 AM

and hear, hear, to Jacqui, too!!

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: KT
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:26 AM

Donuel, yes.    Those and many more examples -commonplace, accessible and for our aid.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: jacqui.c
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:22 AM

Then there's the 'people radar' that gives an individual warning that certain people are best off avoided as any real connection will cause problems and, conversely, that other people are immediate friends, to be cherished for life.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:21 AM

I'm a skeptic, but then they say all Virgos are skeptics.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Peace
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:18 AM

I knew he was gonna say that.

Subject: RE: BS: You and your ESP
From: Amos
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:15 AM

Hear, hear, Donuel!

Subject: BS: You and your ESP
From: Donuel
Date: 11 Aug 08 - 09:04 AM

I give ESP a wider spectrum of senses than some people might.
I include that feeling you get when you feel someone is looking at you...and as soon as you immediately look up in the direction you suspect, there is the person who was staring at you.

I include dreams that seem to be the special fortelling dreams even if you are not sure what or when the fortelling will be revealed.
Like a dream I had about the future defending itself and talking to the past....One week later I was showing home video of our our 1 year old son playing a electonic piano on the floor. Now 8 years old he said to the video "Hey dude, this is your future, I'm talking to you in the past...thats not the right chord..." The whole family laughed and felt like that was the highlight of the home videos.

I include unlikely and unusual actions you might undertake that turn out to be highly significant tommorrow. Yesterday I took about 10 photos with one hand as I drove over the Bay Bridge. Hours later that span I photographed was breeched by a semi truck that plunged off the bridge.

In short, what some would call weak examples of ESP is really a most powerful everyday sense. The smaller the better. THe small examples will help your life more often than trying to force some big predictive event or a mental 'post it' note of tragedy.

Its so normal in this holographic universe that we really shouldn't call certain quantum effects "spooky action at a distance"
IT is simply normal action for the information fabric of our universe to behave.