Rubbish.
Randi and the claimant agree on a test protocol.
The only restrictions are to avoid cheating and chance.
(So if you claim a 50% ability to predict a coin toss correctly, Randi will refuse you.)
Have you looked at any actual tests for the million?
Where do you get these percentages from?
Here’s an actual claimant:
Note that he claims an ability of 100%.
Not 50%, not 60%, but 100%.
First came the ‘Open’ test. When the claimant knew where the gold was, he scored 100%, over 20 separate tests.
So he is satisfied his ‘ability’ is working.
Now for the ‘closed’ tests.
The gold is concealed in one of 10 cups.
The claimant has 10 goes.
Oh look! He scores 1 correct test out of 10.
Why it’s just like he has no ability at all - just guesswork.
Well you get a million dollars. He gets publicity rights over your test only.
Well you’d think so, wouldn’t you.
Why then are there dowsing societies? (who offer to train you for money)
Why do psychics refuse to be tested? Because they make more money from gullible fools?
And how would you know they have these abilities?
If they can hit 2% better than chance all the time, that would be measurable.
It is interesting that there is not one piece of evidence in your friend’s account.
They ‘believe’ a lot, and think they were ‘seeing something’.
Sadly that does not help the rest of us accept RV.
I’m curious. In “astral projection” what exactly is "projected? What leaves the body? Is it the soul? If so, what is the soul made of? Where is it located in the body?
Also, does the soul have it’s own sensory organs? Can it see, hear, etc? If it doesn’t have organs,what does it see and hear with? If the soul can see and hear without organs, why does the physical body need organs?
Does your “soul” or “spirit” or whatever have memories? How and where are these memories stored. How about consciousness and cognition? By what process does this immaterial projected entity think if it doesn’t have a brain? (and it can think and remember without a brain then why does the physical body need a brain?)
I tried to keep it short, and limited my post to highlighting the army participants’ belief that the “ability” could be trained - didn’t mean to suggest that my brief post encompasses ANY evidence or conclusions from their activities. Since it wasn’t my project, you can look for that in THEIR books or the DIA’s report . . . I remain unconvinced (and undecided).
You related a project not your own secondhand; you admit there is no evidence; you drew no conclusions; someone else had a belief; and you are unconvinced.
What is this, a drive-by post?
Any test you perform for JREF is designed by both parties; it is mutually agreed upon just what is to be tested and what constitutes success or failure. It must demonstrate that what is claimed is not due to mere chance, so a definitive outcome is necessary. Basically, the claimant just needs to prove that what they claim actually is what happens and not just a statistical fluke.
I’ll field this one. Astral projection involves projecting the astral body. Apparently, this is a field of something - matter, energy, whatever - that assumes the same shape as the physical body. It seems to be subject to different laws than the physics which govern the physical body. Maybe this is the soul and maybe it’s not.
The astral body is capable of perceiving at least what the 5 senses do, and also seems to be able to sense electric fields such as those present in living beings. I have never heard of astral organs. The body needs them because it is constructed differently and is subject to the laws of physics.
I have no cites for any of this, but since you asked, it seemed only fair to answer. Call it a theory if you must.
I can tell you from experience that the soul has memory, because I remember before I was born. I remember the place where my parents lived, I remember the place where they used to watch the sun set, I remember the car they drove. They moved across country and sold that car while pregnant with me. I described each of these things to them and they confirmed that my memories are correct. There is no way I could have known of these things without actually being there in spirit.
As for cognition, I’m not sure. Haven’t figured that out yet.
Okay, bad example. A talented psychic would have foreseen the owner’s sudden change of mind.
Many people believe that some UFOs are extraterrestrial spacecraft. People like nuclear physicist Stanton Friedman who has investigated supposed UFO cases and come to the conclusion that some of them are not of this world.
I find it insulting that you’d call paranormal beliefs “gullible”. I wish you’d choose your words more carefully in the future.
Playing Blackjack As A Business, by Lawrence Revere, published by Lyle Stuart Inc. The systems in this book are based on the statistical probability of drawing cards that will cause the dealer or the player to bust.
For me, probably about once or twice a year, although lately the frequency has been increasing.
It can be done while awake or asleep, but: awake requires a lot of training (in particular, putting aside the “OMG I’m projecting” response - excitement response, characterized by increased heart rate and emotion of elation and/or surprise); asleep means spontaneous and often accompanied by a dream which creates a sort of trap where the person thinks he or she has succeeded but has no results, or where the person goes on to dream about something completely unrelated.
Try this, just for grins. Point your index fingers straight up, a couple of inches apart from each other in front of your face. Now look at them wall-eyed so that they merge. Now move them 6 inches apart. Can you still look at them wall-eyed? How about a foot apart? It gets more difficult. Can you learn to do this? Certainly. Can you do it under pressure without learning to? No. It’s a lot like that.
Because I have spontaneously projected. I know it is real because it happened to me.
A couple of times I almost did. Once, it felt like something or someone was holding me down. Odd. And one time not too long ago, in spite of a number of factors that tend to work against projecting, I managed to get out and float around a little bit while I was not fully asleep.
No, it’s not asking too much. Fine. I will devote as much energy as possible into the matter. I’ve been wanting to develop this ability anyway, why not get serious about it? I can go observe someplace I have never been, that you could verify what I see is really there. Where should I go look? Your front door, perhaps, or inside your refrigerator? Maybe the downtown section of your town or city?
That’s a sig waiting to happen. Wonder who it would be credited to, you or me?
devilsknew posted the Boundary Institute link, not me. I haven’t mentioned it yet. I’m still reading those PDFs. Are you referring to the Monroe Institute? If so, then it is because their volunteers are developing their skills in soundproof, lightproof relaxation chambers which is something I don’t have. I must make do with a dimly lit bedroom with cats that claw on my door, a radio playing all night in the next room, a heating/air conditioning system and a water heater that turn on and off, and the semi trucks that pass by frequently (busy I-5 highway is about a quarter mile away).
Sorry if I offended you.
Let me restate it “People who believe in the paranormal, without any evidence for it, are hopeful.”
I am confident that this book, which I have never read, is about basic blackjack strategy, plus card counting. (I am not psychic, but I know about blackjack and maths).
As I posted, so do the casinos. They use multiple packs, reshuffle before the end is reached and ‘interrupt’ a card counter’s concentration in a friedly way (talking, offering drinks etc).
Incidentally, if Mr. Revere knows something, why doesn’t he quietly become rich? Won’t his book alarm casinos, and make them change their rules?
Also have you noticed a casino going out of business? Note that their profits must cover buildings, staff, taxes etc. People who think they can beat casinos are ‘hopeful’.
But, although interesting, this is not the main course. You said you trusted that Dr. Monroe + his institute could send their minds across space, because you could send yours across 10 feet. Please can we discuss that further:
How do you know it was real? It happened while you were asleep, right? How do you know it wasn’t a dream?
So you have never astrally projected while awake?
Well that is much more than people normally offer, so I thank you.
Now I want to point out that I am an anonymous Internet poster, and it is unfair for you to rely on my unsupported word.
We need to agree on some protocol. How about this?
I contact a Moderator, giving details of what is on my computer desk (where I’m typing this).
You remote view my desk, and tell the Moderator what is on it.
Then he reveals our answers.
Is this fair?
I think this is very interesting, and important. How about I start a new thread, where we can agree on fair test conditions? Are you willing to be tested on your astral projection powers?
Well I can play simultaneuos blindfold chess. it’s more difficult while I’m being distracted, but I can do it.
I doubt many people can do this. Does that mean I have paranormal abilities? No. Does your post above show evidence of paranormal abliities? No.
Sorry I mixed up posters. :o
Well obviously those conditions will help concentration. But has the Monroe Institute ever taken a scientific test?
Why have they not offered their services to NASA?
I can see,… it’s forming in my mind,… I can see,… yes it’s quite big,… kinda boxy,… getting sharper now,… it’s a COMPUTER!
I claim my ONE MILLION POUNDS.
There’s also some half-chewed pens, a stapler, a couple of books you’re meaning to read, a fossil paperweight, a signed photograph of Bill Gates, an unexpoded WWII shell, and, a plastic dinosaur called Nigel?
Am I close?
===
Sorry, I just want to object to your “test” which is small enough to be passed by chance (and I’m guessing that there’s something unusual on your desk, but not that unusual) and we’ll never be able to get anyone who “succeeds” to shut up about it, ever! Jeesh!
Well, an important aspect of glee’s test was left undiscussed- what constitutes a “hit”?
How specific does the info have to be? Very crucial element in scientific investigation of paranormal psychic phenomena. I mean if the hit criteria are vague enough, people like Praagh can look like genuine psychics.
So what kind of “energy” or “matter” is this astral body made of? Energy and matter have specific, detectable properties so it shouldn’t be hard to locate this thing if it exists in the body.
Oh and what do you mean it’s subject to “different laws than physics?” What “laws” would those be? And how do you know such laws exist if they exist outside of physics. Does this thing interact with the physical world at all? If it can see and hear it does because it would have to be somehow interpreting light and sound waves.
So you can “remember” before you were born huh? Good trick that. Do you “remeber” this stuff only while you are ex corpore or can you remember it while still in your body? How do you know that you’re notdreaming, hallucinating, self-deluded, schizophrenic or hopped up on goofballs? How do we know you’re not just a liar? All of these possibilities are far more likely and must be conclusively disproven before supernatural possibilities can even be considered.
Oh, one more thing. When I was in junior High School I had a brief infatuation with the Church of Eckenkar and I actually tried to “soul travel.” After much trying and concentrating I found i was able to occasionally have lucid dreams in which I "left " my body and zoomed around in space like Superman. I realized it was a dream, though, even while I was dreaming it.
Your points are well made.
I deliberately wanted to start with a test that anyone could have a go at. I won’t say yet how accurate any of your guesses are, but I assume you made them without any psychic ability.
Join my new thread (in Great Debates) to help design the tests!
Absolutely.
If, for example, I have a poster of Martin Luther King on my desk, and a psychic says he sees something about American Civil Rights, is that a hit?
You’re right about the book. The basic strategy is based on the odds when the casino hits on 16 or lower and stays on 17 or higher. Basic strategy: if you have anything between a hard 12 and a hard 16, hit if the dealer is showing 7, 8, 9, 10, face card, or ace; stay if the dealer has 2-3-4-5-6 up unless you have a hard 12 in which case you hit if the dealer is showing 2 or 3. That’s the strategy in the book. It’s claimed to have been proven by scientists running Cray type computers. Mr. Revere claims that he has indeed become quietly rich with his system.
There was no similarity whatsoever to any dream state. Anybody who has ever projected can tell immediately that it is not a dream.
There was that one time, when I was laying down at night, relaxing to some music. I started to nod off and suddenly projected. The music sounded like it was horribly distorted. Was I awake? Technically, it would probably be called stage 1 non-REM. If you awake somebody who is in stage 1 NREM they will tell you they weren’t asleep.
It may take more than the lifetime of a thread, is all I’m saying. What do I have to lose? My credibility as an anonymous internet poster? I wouldn’t be any more credible if I refused so, okay why not. Have you already contacted the mods? Have you already started the thread? (I didn’t see a link so it looks like I’ll have to hunt for it in GD.) Do you intend to leave your desk the way it is, no matter how long it takes to attempt the experiment?
I never said looking at things wall-eyed is paranormal, and I never said blindfolded chess is paranormal. But both are abilities that require practice to develop. So is consciously directed at-will astral projection.
Well technically you mixed up institutes. No biggie, AFA I’m concerned. I do not know if the Monroe Institute has done any of those things. Hopefully I will be able to visit someday, in which case I’ll be sure to ask.
It is referred to as an “astral body”. As to what it’s made of, I’m not sure. Like I said it seems to be a field of something. Probably something that has yet to be discovered by science. Properties - not bound by gravity but weakly influenced by it, able to move through solid objects, attached to the body by means of what some call a “silver cord” that exerts an attractive force which becomes less as the distance is increased (much like the pull of a magnet). IIRC, somebody once discovered that at the moment of death there is a very slight decrease in the body’s weight. Dang, I wish I had a cite for that one.
There was a case when one person, a young woman, projected into the bedroom of a couple and moved a vase on the bureau. The man in that room was a skeptic, and when he and his partner heard the vase move, he said something like ‘must be so-and-so up to her tricks again.’ The woman who projected said that it felt like trying to move a piano, and she was drained for the next several days.
Yup, about one year before my birth, and no, in corpore. It’s memory - it has the flavor of real memory. Not the kind of bland reciting of dry facts (names, numbers) that we usually call “memory”, but memory as in actually recalling having experienced the place and time indicated. How do we know that I’m not dreaming? Because I’m awake when I remember it! How do we know I’m not hallucinating? Because it is not something I relive, just remember having lived (poor choice of words since I was not actually living at that time). How am I not self deluded? The info I presented was confirmed by my parents. I don’t see why you suggest schizophrenia. Heh, hopped up on goofballs. I can sit here fully awake, sober, not high on any drugs (only thing in my system right now is coffee) and remember the year before I was born. How do you know I’m not a liar? Well unless you want my whole family to sign affidavits, it’s my word against no way to prove me wrong.
Sounds like what they call a lucid dream - where you know you’re dreaming and can control it. Nothing mysterious about that IMO. Just a realization of self-awareness while asleep. I had one of those once. It was kinda fun.
I have very vivid memories, complete with visuals, in my mind; about several years before I was born and in the year or so after. It has the flavor of very real memories, that feel like I was either there or observing at the time. I am relatively positive that these memories were “planted” in my mind by the stories I heard as a very young child. Just my parents talking about events and where our family used to live, etc. I have very vivd “false memories”. They seem very real. Why do I believe that they were just a product produced from casual conversations and you believe yours were real? To this day, I am very good at predicting, guessing and knowing things that other people are not nearly as quick to know. I can almost always beat the odds at silly things like number games and what card am I holding up. I’m actually very good at it. I assume I’m just basically a very good “guesser”, not that I have a gift. I used to have very vivid dreams about leaving my body and floating somewhere else. I really could “feel” myself doing that. I actually used to be able to “make” myself dream those things. I am sure they were just very nice dreams. The other thing I really wonder about is why when someone “claims” they have these special abilities, it seems many of them have multiple abilities and an extra dose of belief in other unprovable phenomena. The answer could be that you’re more gullible or that you’re more open, “tuned in”. I am not some die hard skeptic. I believe in God. I just believe there are more reasonable explanations for most of what you describe. Experiencing some of the same type of “events” and memories and coming to a completely different conclusion about mine, makes me skeptical of yours. Either that or I should be going for that million dollars too. I just have to wonder why I don’t believe it and you do?
IWLN, let me turn around and put the same scrutiny in reverse. You claim that hearing your family discuss the past has caused you to have vivid detailed false memories of the time period in question. You claim that from a few words you gleaned detailed imagery of the place and what it would be like to actually have been there. I find that a stretch of credibility. It is actually easier for me to believe that you were actually floating around in spirit before you were born.
As for the year or so after, there is only one explanation that comes to my mind: you really were there and you actually remember some of it. For that matter, hell I remember the place my mother and I stayed during my first 2 weeks of life. I remembered enough to sketch the room’s floor plan for cryin’ out loud. Doesn’t strike me as a paranormal claim. Scientific studies have shown that very young children have excellent memory. Remembering a place that you’ve actually been to is not an outrageous or ridiculous claim and needs no alternate explanation. Why you make one up is beyond me.
You also claim to be such a good guesser that you can predict number games and card games. On what basis do you claim that you do not have a “gift”? Do you use an exact system that you have learned/developed, or is it just an automatic understanding of the laws of chance? Have you always had the ability to do without even a second thought what (for example) card counters spend a lot of time practicing and perfecting?
For that matter, how do I know that you really can make any kind of accurate guess? Allow me to propose an experiment. Based on your claimed “good guesser” ability, can you tell me the year I am remembering? I have been careful not to reveal my exact age on this board and there is a good reason for that, but if you can guess in 3 tries the year I am remembering (the year before I was born) I will tell you if you are right or wrong. If you are right, I will tell you why I have not revealed my age and ask how you came to the correct answer.
And you claim that you have flying dreams. A lot of people have flying dreams. I’ve had a few myself. Is it even possible to show that yours are mere flying dreams, and not actual astral projections?
What makes me wonder is why a lot of people attempt to debunk the entire set of claims that they label “paranormal”. After all, if one of these claims is proven wrong, it doesn’t automatically make all the others wrong. Sure there are a lot of charlatans and frauds gazing into crystal balls and playing phone psychic. But just because Madame Zebrafish has no talent for extrasensory perception doesn’t mean that extraterrestrials are not visiting our planet. This kind of across the board dismissal seems illogical.
Now from where I stand, you come in and tell me you’ve experienced some of the same things I have, and in spite of firsthand experience with it you dismiss it as phoney and tell me it’s possible that I’m gullible for believing in it. Given the choice between 1.) you’re wrong and 2.) I’m gullible, I’m choosing what’s behind door #1 every time.
But you say you are not a die hard skeptic. Is it true that you are skeptical, but still open minded enough to concede these things if they are shown to exist? But by your own admission, you have experienced them yourself and you don’t believe! If the memories and events themselves will not convince you, then nothing I say is going to convince you. I am an anonymous internet poster. For all you know, I might not even be a real person. At the moment, the most credibility I could have is corroborating with another anonymous poster under the supervision of the board’s moderators.
Maybe Psychic or so- called Psi abilities are actually pheneomena of temporal conditions (time). Something that in theory is well defined but as yet a new science, much as electro magnetism was theory a hundred and fifty years ago. We could define it as Time Dissonance (T.D.) -a wave and particle paradox, a slight leak in a parallel dimension…an anomaly or occurence at a quantum level exhibiting an extremely low frequency with a disproportionately large change in it’s attraction. An inproportionate natural force dependent upon the 4th dimension…or for that matter an infinite number of dimensions. Parallel but inverse eminations from a parallel dimension could explain psychic ability. Surely there is a universe running tempoarlly and exactly opposite of ours? Maybe that single universe causes our premonition and makes the existence of each supportive and “linked” through time?
By the way saw, the largest (re: grammar-is a radius large or long?) radius of a Moon Corona ever. Quite breathtaking with an undulent, whisping fog masking all. The corona had a horizon of clouds …the light was projected against and fore in perspectve of the background clouds, quite an unusual experience. It inspired this haiku.
Moonlight Corona
battles the glint of streetlight
– ghost projected time
Yes, scientists only had theories about electromagnetism centuries ago, but they were based on observations. Newton wondered why an apple fell. Edison knew lightning existed.
You offer a theory of parallel dimensions which leak very slightly into our Universe - on what observations is that based?
Why do you think paranormal powers exist?
Cityboy916 is having a go at a practical demonstration in Great Debates.
s there anything paranormal you can do?
Wonder who it would be credited to, you or me?