If observation is the standard by which we judge reality we can only affirm that what we observe is real. We cannot deny that which we do not observe. We can only affirm that we have not observed it, and express doubt.
Why does God allow people to develop 'forbidden' special powers?
by SM62 197 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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rem
True. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Then again, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
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Mulan
Last summer we were camping with a huge group of ex JW's. One afternoon I was looking for my daughter in law, in everyone's campsite (RV's and motorhomes). I found her with a couple of other gals looking at patterns. I went inside and started looking at them too. To me they looked like different designs you make with a spirograph, but they were in a kit that helped you to "format" your psyche. That isn't what it said, but I can't think of what it actually said.............something like that. Some designs you would like, and some would immediately repulse you and it meant something for each experience. So were picking out things that we liked and stacking them (each of us had a seperate stack) We also had crystals and other neat things.
Princess appeared at the door, wanting to know what we were doing, and stepped inside. Immediately she said "what is going on in here............the whole place is vibrating." She became very nauseous and had to go outside.
I don't know if it was the crystals or the designs but something was making a lot of energy in that small space. I couldn't feel it until she mentioned it, and then the hair on my neck tingled and I did become aware of the vibration in the room. It was cool. In the old days, as a JW, I would have been certain it was demons. Now, I just am intrigued and want to know more.
Dolphman, your experience is very interesting. My brother has a friend who told me about something similar one time, and I thought he had smoked too much pot, but he was also meditating, when he had his experiences. He swears he levitated too. I thought he was nuts at the time, but now I don't.
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dolphman
Well, i'm really new to all this stuff, but I've taken a crash course in it and i'm learning some interesting theories. Honestly, 6 months ago i wouldn't have known what a bija mantra or a mudra was.
Vibrations are huge part of my experience. Sometimes I feel as if there is an earthquake happening. The way i've figured it out, is that if you think about it, we're made up of atoms, right? I'm no atomic scientist but i'm assuming that because atoms themselves are a collection of swirling electrons and protons, they have a certain vibration. And if they're dense enough, they take on the form of solid matter. Which is why we appear solid, although if you think about it, we're just a mass of moving energy.
So apparently what happens when people meditate or chant certain things the sound acts as a catalyst to vibrate the atoms in your body around to alter them to some degree. Sound in and of itself can alter matter, for instance an opera singer breaking glass or loud sound breaking an eardrum. So if "energy" of some kind is intense, we can feel it's vibrations in our very being.
This is why dance is such a prominent part of ritual of ancient peoples and cultures. Because the combination of music, sound, and chanting could literally alter their physical make-up and conciousness, or so they believed.
The yogis believe chanting the mantra "OM" attunes your body and conciousness to the natural sound of the universe. Literally chanting this sound will attune your "vibration" with that of the universe. Sounds new-agy, but I swear there is something to it. the literal sounding of "OM" in theory then alters your atomic structure to make it "resonate" at another level. This in turn alters your conciousness, and the yogis believe even your physical body. They invented Hatha yoga to make the physical body more apt to this experience.
So i'm assuming the reason why i chant these sounds is that my soul speaks Sanskrit, or all our souls speak Sanskrit. If you research Sanskrit, you'll see the Indians believe it is the language of God, or at least the language of the primordial universe. So in theory, the words act as catalyst to altering not only your conciousness but perhaps even your physical reality. Because the words themselves are simply sounds that tweak atoms and in turn conciousness. Therefore these sounds are part of our being, we just don't know it, because it's a part of our being we don't ever access. I mean, we're too busy crossing the street or putting food to our mouths to be aware of it. That's why there is so much emphasis on meditation. Because then, the ego is shut down and you can focus on higher states of awareness.
I've heard of stories of people levitating and other stuff, but nothing like that has happened to me. Although to do some of the yoga poses spontaneously is quite frightening at times. I normally cannot do a headstand so It's pretty intense when it happens. A lot of it looks like Hindu temple dancing. I swore it was demons at first too!
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seattleniceguy
I've deliberately avoided reading this thread for the past few days, but curiosity finally got the best of me and I read all six pages with some interest.
I'm a rationalist myself. Things happen for reasons. Magic is just an effect with an obscured cause. I'm open to the possibility that there are physical phenomena whose cause we do not adequately understand at present. I also realize that we sometimes "experience" things that did not happen. Memory is malleable and greatly influenced by what we believe or fear.
I read rem's posts with considerable interest because his thinking almost exactly matches my own. Of all the paranormal phenomena, it seems that auras should be the easiest to confirm. Perhaps at the next apostafest, we can find two people who can easily see auras, and ask them to write down their impressions for a succession of ten or twenty people. Even this casual method would be quite interesting. Like rem, I'm interested in 1) ascertaining whether the phenomenon has any objective basis, and 2) understanding what the physical cause is.
I have to say to Nathan that you do come off highly confrontational. I too demand rational evidence for the things in which I believe. When reading the account of the boy who predicted football injuries with 100% success, I wondered if perhaps the misses were simply not noticed because they were less spectacular. On the other hand, if it is really true that his injury predictions actually occur with that level of success, then statistically it is highly improbable that it is by chance.
I'm not saying that I believe in the boy's abilities, but that it would be presumptuous for me to declare that he does not have them. And I can understand how this type of ability would be difficult to check in laboratory settings, since the boy apparently does not call the injuries at will, but once in a while, spontaneously.
I have to admit that the absolute vacuum of scientific evidence for paranormal phenomena is damning. But I wonder if perhaps phenomena such as the football injury predictions actually are repeatable, but we simply don't know how to set up the correct circumstances. Perhaps there is a completely rational explatation at work but it only happens at highly specialized times, whose details we do not presently know.
Basically, my position is that it's best to view incredible claims with extreme skepticism, but I don't believe I have the right to insist that something absolutely does not occur and that believers must of necessity be duped, although this certainly occurs quite often too. In the case of auras, I don't see them, but must I insist that no one does? That seems a bit arrogant. And what if no scientific equipment can record them as they are seen by humans? That seems to imply that we have developed instrumentation capable of sensing every type of phenomenon in the universe, which claim is patently false.
I am, however, in agreement that until we can reliably reproduce and understand such phenomena, they are basically useless to us.
I read dolphman's story with interest. This is an instance where I would be interested in applying a very critical eye to the problem. For example, your claim of speaking Sanskrit is extremely interesting. From a linguistic point of view, this brings up many questions. Were these words spoken clearly? Since they are said to have come from some other power, were they spoken with an accurate pronunciation - not an Anglicised one? What rules of romanization did your girlfriend use when transcribing your utterances to search for them? For instance, The pinyin system of romanization for Mandarin is not intuitive. Xiexie is pronounced something like "shye-shye." If you were to hear this and type that into a search engine, you might get dubious results. Could your utterances also be mistaken for other languages? Had you ever heard or experienced (even through popular media) Sanskrit mantras before?
I'd be interested in following your story. Please post updates.
Interesting thread.
SNG
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Enishi
James Randi and the people from CSICOP will never acknoledge the existance of evidence for the paranormal. Not that you can blame them. It would, after all, mean the end of their careers. If anyone is interested in the other side of the arguement, you should check out The Conscious Universe: by Dean Radin. I'm reading through it right now, and it has a lot of good information. Personally I doubt paranormal phenomena will become mainstream knowledge within our own lifetimes. Orthodox western science and orthodox religion have little to gain and very much to lose in proving claims of the paranormal.
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wednesday
well the Bible records people speaking in tounges and appearing crazed.(or words to that affect). Growing up in the bible belt, i have seen people in the pentocostal religion(known long ago as holy rollers here in the south) do very similar things that dolphman described. The jws of course said this was the demons and not the holy spirit.
all the accounts, including mine ,with the black smoke cloud that both my husband and I saw go through a wall, are interesting. I recently was reading Sylvia Brownes book on the after life. I found some of it interesting, but it is just too strange for me. She has some odd ideas. Such as , there is the Other Side, to which we will all eventually go, the left door, where u enter and are immediately sent back to earth to be reborn, and then there is the ghost, who does not know they are dead and must be helped to get to the other side, or enter the left door. The left door is for those who lack God's light and love, and they must be reborn. So why whould God let an evil person be reborn?
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Satanus
Wed
Sylvia brown is flighty. She is way off target in a lot of her stuff, but hey, she makes a lot of money pandering to the masses. If you wanna read about stuff like that, robert munroe or bruce moen are better, imo.
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Enishi
I personally don't pay much attention to people like Sylvia Brown or John Edwards. I have an innate distrust of anyone who makes that much money off of this sort of thing.
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rem
James Randi and the people from CSICOP will never acknoledge the existance of evidence for the paranormal. Not that you can blame them. It would, after all, mean the end of their careers.
Most of the members of CSICOP have quite respectable careers outside of CSICOP and other paranormal investigation groups. To suggest that their education campaign against superstition is based on financial gain is unfounded. Resorting to Ad Hominem attacks does not make your case. This discussion is best served by sticking to the facts.
Orthodox western science and orthodox religion have little to gain and very much to lose in proving claims of the paranormal.
This is another ridiculous assertion. Why has western science wasted over 100 years and thousands (millions?) of man hours searching for paranormal phenomenon if they have "little to gain and very much to lose". If anyone could truly harness psychic powers it would be western science and its scientists - the ones who have helped us harness most every form of energy humans have discovered.
rem