Daylia has the rights of the matter -- we have a very strong legacy of hanging our acceptance on repeatability of test situations, but the repeatability of psychological or spiritual states is not the same at all as the repeatability of physical ones.

In such matters the simplest and most reliable way to prove the truth is to be it.

This debate raises an interesting question. If the metaphysics implied by LH and daylia and others is true, then each of us is a spiritual being operating a body, with the dramatic difference that some of us perceive this and others do not. The explanations that could account for this are several, and I suppose they fall in tot wo large classes: (a) variations on the proposition that there is a mechanism (cumulative trauma or cultivated unawareness or whatever) which varies from individual to individual and occlude awareness of own nature; or (b) Spiritual perceptions are projections of desire, and those who don't have them are simply not projecting wishful thinking.

One of the reasons that this area gets so wrapped around the axle is that actually both things are true -- there are mechanisms which reduce self-awareness, AND projection is a powerful self-convincer. So the truth of an individual person's case is probably a mix of those things and sorting out which is which is certainly a valid path of therapy.

Personally, I find that the creation of conviction, to a very large degree, brings about experience. Including the experience of "not experiencing" some things. As to how such convictions get created... that's another thread, perhaps. But there are clearly a number of phenomena -- chiefly, understanding itself -- for which no mechanistic description can offer a sufficient model.




A