Psychics prove it

[robot]

Ok, so i'm interested in astral travel and different methods that could help me experience this.  I've had enough lucid dreams in the past to make me question just what else we can do with our minds but still for me i can't stand the term psychic and the people that associate themselves with it, it's little more than mere imagination perhaps if there truely were any users on this forum with "powers" you could start by telling me the name of my first class primary school teacher or the colour of my first car!  What annoys me is how my knowledge of lucid dreams and my curiosity to find out more about astral travel leads me to websites with ridiculous links for psychics which leads me to think more scams and disbelief.. people just trying to sell books and make some easy money.

When i first looked through this forum this section caught my attention as the admin has launched a new set of books to help you develop your own psychic powers... maybe if he was that good he would have known my intentions and banned me before registering on this forum..  but that's okay you're probably in a deep state of trance right now talking to dead summerians and looking for the answer to 2012.. i look forward to your excuses. 

On another note you've probably all heard of james randi and his million dollar challenge.. there are more out there and i don't want to hear you say how you don't need the money i'd just like to hear why you can't prove those skeptic groups wrong?  Why is it that still to date no one has been able to prove so called psychic powers they have.

The link below will take you to the main james randi article on his million dollar prize and also other organizations looking for PROOF.
http://skepdic.com/randi.html

When i was reading about Adrians new books i thought maybe i'm wrong maybe he's just defining the term psychic in a different way (maybe he means we could only use all these powers in our dreams.. which i wouldn't deem to be psychic when i'm lucid i can do what i want to the extent of my imagination and thats how it works) to allow him to get away with frauding people out of their money but the mere mention of telekinesis was enough for me anyway to know (and excuse my french) that it was all bovine excrement, finally i thought i would close my proposal with a little humour i copy and pasted this from the promoted website in the admins thread - developingpsychicpowers.com

Here are just a very few of the valuable Psychic Powers you will be able to enjoy:

Clairvoyance: How to "See" beyond the physical worlds, often known as the "Astral Planes"
Clairaudience: How to "hear" people and other sounds from the Astral Planes, the afterlife
Clairsentience: How to "feel" and "sense" Energies from the inner planes of life
Psychic mediumship: How to contact "deceased" people now living in the "afterlife"
Psychic intuition: How to sense and interpret psychic Energy including events
Telekinesis: How to move, bend and influence objects, however large, even sprout seeds
Telepathy: How to communicate with other humans and other life with the Mind alone
Spirit Guides: How to communicate with your Spirit Guides and other Astral helpers
Higher-Self: How to communicate with your Higher-Self for valuable guidance and answers
Psychometry: How to "view" or sense past events by feeling an old object associated with it

All comments are welcomed, i would like to hear you're views and if we could debate this that would be great thank you.


Nice to see that redBULL SHITake has been changed to bovine excrement, must be a word thrown around on this forum a lot.

[robot]

It's easy to understand why this thread hasn't been read much when the words "prove it" are in the title..

[CFTraveler]

http://www.near-death.com/experiences/skeptic09.html
http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/propaganda/

[Stookie]

robot - Adrian doesn't come here anymore and none of us are selling anything. He has a newer forum here: www.ourultimatereality.com

These books aren't really discussed (or taken very seriously) around here. We stick mostly with AP.

And I agree with you in that scamming people though their limited knowledge and beliefs is like adding shitake mushrooms in your redbull.

[Stillwater]

Hi robot,

I can easily understand your distaste with your experiences of searching for "verifiable" or legitimate information regarding metaphysical or "psychic" phenomena- this is an area very poorly funded and researched by reputable sources, and most research is carried out by groups with dubious mission statements, in a sometimes unscientific fashion, and with little consistency or continuity. Add to this problem the compounding factor that since people are open to the idea of realities beyond the prozaic, and often willing to believe anything that is less insipid than what they deem their everyday experience to be, there exists fertile ground for people good at inventing credible tales to harvest wide swaths of cash from the gullible. The "new age" movement and the hordes of people taking new interest in the teachings of the East and the Theosophical and paranormal research being done in the West, in my opinion, is about 30% "initiates" desperately looking for meaning in their lives, about 50% people claiming dubious skills and "knowledge" a child would find qustionable, maybe 10% people unequivocally trying to make money in any predatory way possible, and perharps 10% other- people who may possibly have some insight.

I think we can easily come to consensus that of what possible legitimate information there is, the majority is buried so deep in a pile of rubish being circled by armed thieves, that it is inaccessible to most people. I think if you want to find "truth", you need to take the most disciplined approach possible; by this, I mean that one must, whenever possible, be "scientific" about their inquiries. Do the claims being made occur more than once, and are they duplicated by other people in other places? How reasonable are they, and what assumptions does the claimant make? What methods are used to test the claims, and how are they monitored? Are there cases of historical parallels in unrelated cultures? Granted, none of these criteria alone will provide concrete "proof", and there is also an insidious tendancy of the charlatan to try to mimic the properties of the paranormal or spiritual claim they try to make, relying on people's tendancy to corroborate what they read by comparing it to other cases, as I have advised, but these methods at least provide a basis for weeding out the pure nonsense, allowing us to take more time in researching what is possibly more meaningful.

It is not my particular area of expertise, but I have done a little research from time to time, and instances which I think might merit consideration to you include Princeton University's Project PEAR, which was a study analyzing the effects of people on what would otherwise be "random" events, another series of experiments carried out by Charles Tart, on the subject of individuals gathering information while they claim to be in an OBE state, and the various experiments carried out to study the phenomenon of remote viewing, since there have been countless of seemingly systematic method that yielded thought-provoking results, if nothing else. I have also found that there are scores of people who have claimed to be suffering from a disease which modern psychology collectively characterize as a generalzed "spiritual emergence syndrome", which I have heard described in many different instances, usually called "Kundalini sickness", by people of apparently different paradigms. One person who wrote, in what was to me a fairly no-nonsense fashion about her experiences with this syndrome, which apparantly gave her great pain, coupled with seemingly transcendental experiences, is El Collie, whose works are easily found online.

As for Randi's challenge, I think little needs to be said. This subject has been brought up literally dozens of times, both by those genuinely interested, and those antagonistic toward people making paranomal claims. From the many articles I have read about the "challenge", and the excerpts of the the manual associated with it, there are hundreds of applicants, and Randi's commitee dismisses, as the challenge stipulates, all but those they deem they want to test. This in and of itself invalidates the whole thing, as it is a thoroughly unscientific method masquerading under the guise of reason, with possible ulterior agendas being the opperating factor. Those chosen to participate are dealt with in a most capricious fashion, sometimes waiting months between contacts, and are unable to procure information from Randi's group by any means of communication. Suffice to say, none of these claimants really seem to be genuinely inspected in a manner at all dedicated or even scientific, and it is clear that Randi does not possess to resources to administer the tests for the scale of applicants he receives, in anything approaching a scientific manner. Several people from this forum have applied, and were not given the time of day, so I think that I have seen enough to know that Randi's claims have no weight.

I am glad that you want to approach the matter in debate, as the dialectic is really the way to go- there needs to be an open-minded exchange of ideas, with rational analysis of all claims, divorced from any beliefs the individuals in question my possess. It is my sincere feeling that if we truly listen to what others have to say, especially those holding views different from out own, we are challenged to evaluate our own positions, and consider things from angles we had not previously considered 

Thanks,
Stillwater

[Lighten]

Good answers!

[Stillwater]

Yeah, I have a feeling that Robot just wanted to be provocative, lol, as he hasn't cared to follow-up, but any of the matters at hand are open to discussion