Our jld left this video in a comment a few days ago. He commented that it “may not be immortality but it’s definitely weird.” That piqued my curiosity. I’m glad it did. The video is well worth watching.
The Parnis Lab’s field of research is resuscitation after cardiac arrest. As such, their research into the question of consciousness after death is undertaken with a dispassionate and scientific approach largely devoid of religious and philosophical questions. Obviously those questions raised by their research do affect those doctors and scientists. How can they not? I think this is clearly shown in the resuscitated pig head experiment. Their reaction to their findings moved into the philosophical and/or religious realm in spite of the purely scientific design of the experiment.
As I watched the video, I thought of my own research and experiments into the field of remote viewing and what this means for potential of human, or any other, consciousness. I also thought of the writings of the Jesuit priest and anthropologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a truly remarkable man with remarkable thoughts. Jane Goodall, another human I admire, and my first celebrity childhood crush, wrote of similar thoughts.
“There are really only two ways, it seems to me, in which we can think about our existence here on Earth. We either agree with Macbeth that life is nothing more than a ‘tale told by an idiot,’ a purposeless emergence of life-forms including the clever, greedy, selfish, and unfortunate species that we call homo sapiens – the ‘evolutionary goof.’ Or we believe that, as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it, ‘There is something afoot in the universe, something that looks like gestation and birth.’ In other words, a plan, a purpose to it all.”
(Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope: A Spiritual Journey. New York: Warner Books, 1999)
TTG
Indeed we have just seen a very real demonstration of this eerie phenomenon – by no less a figure than the President himself. My guess is his recent meeting with (the late) President Mitterrand of France was an attempt to win over that key Democrat demographic; the dead.
LOL.
The deceased always vote Democrat.
It is well documented that those close to death are often moving back and forth between the physical dimension and the spiritual dimensions. Maybe The Big Guy really is talking to Mitterrand.
Shawn Ryan has a recent six hour interview with remote viewer Joe McMoneagle:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRTon6qgVws
James,
Just got done listening to that interview (broke it out over two days). It is excellent. IMO, everyone should listen and pay attention and keep an open mind.
James,
Shawn has another one up today, Col. John Alexander and military applications of the paranormal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brGVALdMxzM
Ukraine is thinking hard about this right now. Is the country going to exist after the shells and drones stop? I hope it does but they need to stop this game of attrition right now or there won’t be anything to think about. They are killing Russians but, also losing a lot of their own. Russia has more bodies and weapons. It can only end one way. I do not like either side but these are the God Damn facts of the matter at hand. Time to stop this BS. COL Lang was wrong. I respect the hell out of him but he was wrong on this situation. I have been wrong on things as well. No shame in it but this is OVER.
TTG,
This is one of the fields in which we are solidly in the same camp. As a researcher and experiencer, I am 100% convinced that we are spirits having a 3D physical experience and, when we are done with that experience, we go back to being spirits – fully aware and fully individual. The evidence is overwhelming; not the pop MSM stuff. Rather the real stuff. And yes, remote viewing is absolutely a real phenomenon.
IMO, this area of research should be the most important endeavor of humanity. If we understood, we would enjoy much more peace, happiness, good health, harmony and prosperity. Alas, too many egos, too many political and religious toes feel stepped on by it. So the knowledge is suppressed and ridiculed when it comes to the surface.
Remote viewing is directly linked to survival.Group fear sets of an alarm that is linked to humans elsewhere that switches on the remote viewing ability in them.
Fear is the driver of everything
Imho
@TTG
I do not share at all Teilhard de Chardin, Jane Goodall, or your optimism about humanity.
Yes there is what appear to us as a “purpose” but it is only a projection of our own modus operandi of designing artifacts (fabrication), the Universe is NOT designed for a purpose, it’s only a huge attractor which follows it’s own rules not our myopic “human values”.
If the proportion of imbeciles, scoundrels and bullies is too high we will follow the fate of the dinosaurs, only much, much, much faster.
To give you an humorous estimate of this problem, how many municipal employees does it take change a light bulb (in France, but I expect similar feats most everywhere)
Only one but he must have a 3 days training and a certification!
jld,
I understand your doubts on an ultimate “purpose” to our existence. As an anthropologist I know the role such religious and cultural beliefs play in our quest for order in our lives. I’m nowhere near as certain as Teilhard de Chardin or Jane Goodall seem to be of an ultimate purpose, a linear destination even though I was raised in the AMDG tradition. There is much we don’t understand about all this. I’m inclined to believe that there is something to the cyclical beliefs of our ancient ancestors. They do seem to be much more aware of the unexplainable, unfathomable spiritual nature of all creation and beyond.
“They do seem to be much more aware of the unexplainable, unfathomable spiritual nature of all creation and beyond.”
Having had myself a few experiences with entheogens, shamanism, African sorcery and als and having also read a few hundred recent scientific publications I am inclined to believe that the “good old” Platonist/Aristotelician picture of the world as objects/substances/properties is woefully inadequate.
Even current High Energy Physics is at loss to find any kind of “ultimate reality”, i.e. reductionism cannot work because there is nothing to be reduced to.
OTOH old traditions do have some effective grasp on practical matters which elude scientific approaches but it is always half-assed and does not yield to logic or even common sense.
So we would have to be content with that.
As a small example how the f**k did the makers of poisonous arrows guessed which substances would be poisonous and how to prepare them?
The impact of “spiritual” beliefs is also tremendously important as a scaffolding of societies as you know as an anthropologist.
You figure out what you think about the explosion(s) in Izhevsk Russia last night. Home of rocket factories. Compare it with various launches you’ve witnessed and place your bets. Make what you will of the proffered explanations. Being a congenital pessimist, I graciously recuse myself. If you don’t use Telegram then the X videos are linked below.
Joke du jour: If Teilhard de Chardin was named Joe Smith or Bill Jones, would TTG have ever even looked into his work? If he went by “Wild Bill Jones” my guess is possibly but otherwise not.
https://t.me/kartografo/1841
Estimated area (in pink shaded region) of RF territory vulnerable to drones launched from Ukraine. Some is speculation (such as Izhevsk today) some is confirmed.
https://t.me/vzglyad_ru/93913
https://x.com/noelreports/status/1755290096050299308?s=46&t=jXfbX09Tb2BmY-rS_dg5ag
https://x.com/jaanikamerilo/status/1755317911814635706?s=46&t=jXfbX09Tb2BmY-rS_dg5ag
——————————
Leftover Salmon – Wild Bill Jones
https://youtu.be/f9uBvn1j3L8
Bryan Sutton – Wild Bill Jones (played fast)
https://youtu.be/C1kVyrBVItA
F&L –
It’s well over 800 miles. Putin is going to have to move his defense industry east of the Urals. Or further. Like Stalin, who moved everything not already captured to Siberia and Central Asia in 1941 and early 1942.
Ah yes, these are pretty standard experiences.
My neighbour has a similar story. Years ago he ended up on an operating table after an ulcer complication.
He lost a lot of blood and it was pretty touch and go for a while, until they managed to stop the bleeding.
He remembers floating out of his body and observing the operating room and doctors trying to save him.
I myself was pretty obsessed with this stuff in the 90s. Robert Monroe’s books, lucid dreaming, out of body experiences, astral travel…
There are techniques one can practice to induce the experience.
I managed a few times, but the last time something scared the crap out of me on a primal level so I decided I was not ready for it.
It’s not all shining light and love out there.
I gotta say I come down with MacBeth on this one.
Where does the flame go when you blow out the candle? Flame afterlife? Does it go back into the “flame guff”(like in The 7th Sign)? What is the difference between one extremely complex set of reactions and another, that means one has some existence after the reactions stop and another doesn’t?
I get the impulse to believe. It feels logical, but I’ll tell you this: if you want a kid to “believe”, don’t give them Thor comics and Bullfinch’s Mythology when they are 8. It has a way of leading to uncomfortable questions about what religious and spiritual traditions are “real” and which are “myths”…and it can get very, VERY difficult to tell the difference after a while.
I will give you what Barbara Tuchman called “a rule based upon adequate research”, All ideas of life after death or out-of-body travel come out of religious/spiritual traditions. All of them. All of them. Scratch the surface of some “scientific” version and you find a scripture at the bottom. This is especially pronounced, if often not well attributed and footnoted, in New Age “traditions”.
People have the experiences they have, and I am sure not saying any different, or mocking or denigrating. I just think we differ on the mechanism of the experience.
Did you watch the video?
I am trying. Finding it fairly insufferable though…
I did not find this impressive, and could honestly only get through half. When the host asserted that the pig brain cells were “alive”(implying but not quite saying conscious, very cute) in the petri dish because they were “biologically active”, without even claiming shred one of other evidence like”and we slapped an EEG on it and there was electrical activity that grew in amplitude as the samples grew” or “and we measured the metabolic activity and it was consistent with that of living cells in a living brain”…I’m sorry, but this seems like Graham Hancock levels of speculation, and that ain’t a compliment.
The whole section on “definition of death” changing is not new or secret. The Tibetan Book of the Dead is actually meant to be read in to the ears of the deceased starting when the heart stops, and is meant to reassure the deceased as they journey to rebirth. To me, this certainly means that they know that heart stopping and person-really-gone were different events. This is one of the reasons I find the candle such a good metaphor for the relationship between body and consciousness; you blow out that candle, it smokes for a while. You can rekindle it, and the sooner you try, the easier it is. I suppose as we find “better matches” we get better at rekindling…and this is where the metaphor breaks down because IMHO, as some point, which we may or may not have identified but is probably pretty close to where we think it is, you cannot actually rekindle people. So far. I guess. I did not see alot that made me think otherwise.
It also has the quite strong whiff of certain types of archeology where, like Heinrich Schliemann who went out to find Troy and by god found it just where he thought it would be(without actually ever finding anything that identifies the place as the one he says he found), the host certainly seems like he is advocating for an answer, rather than just asking questions and presenting the evidence.
I am terribly hard on stuff like this as a default, and I will not lie and say I have an open mind on the subject. It will at least take a crow bar much bigger than I have seen to open it. That said, maybe it’s great info and I just can’t get past the presentation. I don’t think that’s it, but…you know…Know Thyself…
rick,
I’m pretty sure those were the entire pig heads in that experiment, not a few brain cells in a petri dish. Getting a few cells to reanimate would be no more impressive than getting a detached frog leg to twitch with a battery, a common high school biology experiment.
I guess I didn’t make it to the whole head part. I’ll try to check it out and get back to you, but ugh, we’ll see what happens.
rick,
“All ideas of life after death or out-of-body travel come out of religious/spiritual traditions.”
That is precisely why I find the approach by the Parnis Lab to this question so intriguing. Their focus is on the medical procedure of cardiac resuscitation. It’s experimentation and observation, like that dead pig head experiment. Their research led them to rephrase the idea of a near death experience to a recalled experience of death. In my own research and experience with remote viewing, I attempted to answer the question of whether it was a real phenomenon or not. Was it a lot of wishful thinking and confirmation bias? I am convinced it is real and that it is a sense and/or skill that can be developed. I am also convinced by experience that it can be directed. The difficulty lies in quieting the conscious and subconscious mind while conducting and recalling a remote viewing session. Perhaps medical death is just an effective way to quiet the mind and allow one to experience remote viewing, an out of body experience, a recalled experience of death, shamanic ecstasy or whatever one chooses to call it.
yes, quieting the mind is very important. If you have no agency over your thoughts the OOB experience will resemble just a very vivid dream.
I suspect remote viewing is every intelligence agency’s wet dream
but to stay close to the physical realm while OOB you have to have a lot of control.
“Perhaps medical death is just an effective way to quiet the mind and allow one to experience….”
Yes. That is pretty much it in a nutshell.
My conclusion (not original by any means, but developed independently by my own research and experiences) is that the ego gets in the way of experiencing psi and other spirit based phenomena. What is ego by my definition? That superficial (in light of the totality of our being) identification matrix involving a focus on the physical body, the physical world, social norms, personal history (everything from your name and birth date to what you have been trained to believe about who you are/aren’t). The emphasis on all of that is particularly strong in modern western society. Religion can move the focus away from all of that a bit because it asks us to look beyond ourselves to some “higher” reality. So sometimes religious devotion, if taken seriously, can give rise to “paranormal” experiences.
However, the real mechanism, at bottom, is shifting the energy involved in one’s attention away from the ego structures – paying attention consumes energy and energy is limited.
So meditation of the type that quiets thinking (thoughts are ego constructs that keep us/our energy plugged into that matrix), psychedelics (break down thought constructs/frees energy), near death (shocks the ego into paralysis) can all permit an unfolding of our larger selves and the connections we have, but have ignored, to a larger universe. Great love and dedication can also give rise to transcendence for the same reason (the emphasis moves away from the one’s ego).
TTG,
Sorry this took so long, but I wanted to think about it. I think of remote viewing differently than I think of Life-after-death. I do believe in the subconscious, and I do believe that our brains take in alot more information than we have conscious, intentional access to routinely, sort of a Rumsfeldian “unknown knowns” kind of thing. This is why the quiet mind is such a vital part of the process. You can “remember things” that you didn’t know you knew.
I don’t honestly think that some part of the viewer travels to perceive a remote subject and brings back information completely unknown or unsurmisible to the viewer prior to the event. I can think of quite a number of experiments for this, none of which is the classic “which of the six cards am I looking at”. Can I give a random name of someone unknown to the viewer and have them describe the face or some sort of verifiable personal quality? Can I give them an address or map coordinates for someplace quite remote that they have never been to and have them describe what is there in some detailed way that’s not just “i see trees”?
I would be very interested in your experiences of experimenting, because most of the time when I see this stuff in vids, it looks alot like “Cold Reading” like a fortune teller does.
By the way, my nickname is often “Rick the Killjoy Asshole”. Everybody is good at something…
I am terribly hard on stuff like this as a default,
we all are one way or another, but you are wong, it is an interesting video, and does not deserve to be classified as “stuff like this”. It’s not stuff like this. It’s an interesting piece about medical history …
Why I should explain the secret of the question of “life after death” to this assembly I don’t know. But it’s flabbergastingly simple so why not?
Question: Why the human concern with whether or not there is life (of some variety) after death?
Answer: Because no one wants to die. Instead they want to live.
Got it now?
For no extra charge you receive this bonus knowledge: TTG doesn’t want to die.
Neither do I. But I’m not so foolish that I think about life after death. I may be foolish, just not that foolish, or better, foolish in precisely that way.
F&L,
You would live your life the same whether you were a stimulus/response meat robot in a meaningless universe or an eternal conscious entity from infinity having a 3D dream?
Interesting question but it’s not the issue to which I was speaking (writing). I wrote as flippantly as I did in order to underline the absurdity of the issue of life after or beyond death which is patently absurd and only arises out of psychological need – fear of death and desire for endless life. I’m not going to get into debating this on any “merits” such as your choice between two metaphors or jld’s excursion into idealistic philosophies which verge on solipsism. [“If solipsism is true then no one believes it because I don’t.” – a witty fellow.] If I get into the substance of your metaphors or idealism I make the same mistake as a trial judge who doesn’t uphold an objection to a line of questioning which invites a witness to entertain an entirely hypothetical premise (which can be used by the attorney to elicit conclusions which are premised on fantasy and not evidence). So I’m not going down your rabbit holes, sorry. If you’d like to consider the psychological truth of what I stated, fine, if not that’s ok too. Just as long as you understand that you haven’t really responded to the substance of my statement other than to illustrate that you can be mildly amusing and clever all the while evading the issue. The issue is that humans are creatures, who posess the cognitive ability to grasp the idea of death and finality, in addition to having an imaginative capacity which allows them to formulate various wishful escape scenarios such as reincarnation, heaven & hell, transmigration of souls etc. Other less intelligent creatures obviously have strong.instincts of self preservation – they most definitely don’t want to die, however limited their comprehension is, but they don’t formulate religions or other later fantasies which provide alternatives to death. If we in fact did live forever – would we ask about life after death? No. Life might be so unpleasant for some though or boring that ideas were formulated about an unobserved novelty, namely death. Books could be written and movies produced where people died and they would be considered science fiction. If intelligence levels were high enough skeptics would arise to say – nevermind all this, how do we know in fact that we do live forever never dying? There’s no evidence for eternal life you see because simply because we don’t know of anyone who’s ever died doesn’t mean that eventually death occurs .. it might eventually. Your approach, and jld’s, is equivalent to this: “Just because this mosquito has been squished into a mushy blot and then the mushy blot heated into incandescence with blow torches, well, that doesn’t mean the mosquito isn’t still alive somewhere, somehow, in ways and places I can’t understand or explain to you or myself but as you see I’ve read a scifi book or two.” If you want to think like that Eric it’s fine with me.
F&L,
You are obviously not aware of the evidence of life after death, which is substantial and utterly convincing. I mean original source material; not the straw men that professional skeptics use to misrepresent the original source material.
Yes, there is a lot of poor methodology and even charlatanism in the science, as there is in any scientific field. There is also a lot of very good science. The good science should convince all but the most willfully resistant. You are offering opinions about an area of research of which you know nothing, but if you want to think like that, F&L, it’s fine with me. Some day you will know the truth.
life after death
Life after whatever was defined as death, or seemed to be an intermediate stage a gray area at one point in time? Thus far, it still seems to be a journey without a return ticket. 😉 Outside religion that is.
“But it’s flabbergastingly simple … “
😀
No, not at all!
Did you watch the video?
First it’s a misnomer, it’s not about “life after death” but about life during death.
None of the witnesses, including the unfortunate pigs, had their brains completely wiped out, there was something to resuscitate.
Myself, as an atheist but not materialist, do not expect there will be life after complete death (like cremation), but…
I do not expect either the materialistic picture of the world to be faithful, from what I read about consciousness (more than 100 recent research papers) it seem well established that consciousness is the outcome of dynamic processes occurring in the brain.
What “hardcore” materialists do not grasp is that the very notion of matter is… an idea in their mind!
And I am not talking of the idiotic idealism of Berkeley, there is indeed “something out there” in the world independent of anyone mind.
However what we actually “see” is a completely made up picture of our environnement which has been finely tuned by evolution for survival purposes.
None of this is actually “simple”… 🙂
You pass the detective test. No I didn’t watch the video. (I’m pretty sure I’ve seen similar though,and I’ve definitely read on the topic).
I’m unclear about the thrust of your objection to my post, if objection it is. I do appreciate the complexities of idealistic philosophy and that our world is created by our perceptual apparatus and brains — I am firmly materialistic in that I believe we have material brains, material eyes ears noses etc. I benefit from having my brain invert my retinal image and appreciate it. While at the same time I’ve taken acid and mushrooms and walked down the streets wondering to myself “why don’t we all fall off into the sky? And what strange force is inflating everything including evey person from being a crushed nothingness?”
I don’t quite get where you’re coming from, sorry. I simply think the human psychological and animal instinctual need to deny the utter finality of death is predominant here. It’s most evident in the phenomenon of grief which can be disabling. I think people in our day are desensitized and really seriously dehumanized so they are essentially “animalized” as opposed to humanized. This is evident in many of the comments especially in discussion of horrific wars and lately especially Gaza which is an absolute atrocity.
Let me tell you why I say “animalized.” Because animals spend their time feeding on each other, destroying other animals and devouring them which gives them sustenance and life. Their entire beings if they are predators is built around their capacity to live their lives that way .. so they enjoy it .. it’s life to them and anything else is death to them unless they are fortunate to be fed by zookeepers, animal enthusiasts or circuses. “Human” is supposed to mean something else, unfortunately it too often doesn’t, and the weak and sensitive are despised.
I understand idealism, materialism, solipsism and perception and the tricks of consciousness. I just think the idea of immortality is ridiculous, even if it’s a fairly incomplete or provisional immortality such as watching the oscilloscopic blips generated by a decapitated pig’s head. Lobotomy isn’t immortality but I guess it might seem like it to a lobotomy victim. Religion is lobotomy without the icepicks. So is belief in immortality.
@F&L
Like the video you didn’t watch you probably didn’t read my reply because you would have noticed that:
– I do NOT believe in “life after death” or any kind of immortality.
– I am NOT an idealist in Berkeley sense, I even stated that it is idiotic and that there is indeed “something out there” in the world independent of anyone mind.
– You completely fail to understand that materialism is an IDEA in your brain (and mine, and anyone else) which has been setup by evolution for best survival purposes as explained by Donald Hoffman in his “Interface Theory of Perception” which you probably not even glanced at. 🙂
So you are only responding to your own strawman opinions about what materialism and idealism are.
Being “firmly materialistic” means that you don’t really acknowledge that what we all “see” is only a f**king PICTURE and NOT what the world is really made of (Kant’s Ding an Sich)
This is obvious at the extreme microscopic and cosmologic scales, atoms and molecules are NOT “little balls”, black holes are NOT “big balls” (they don’t behave as such).
I hate to break it to you but everyday “objects” (tables, chairs, coffee cups, animals and als) are NOT either what they appear to be. 😀
Veridical mediumship – and I mean communications that provide confidential/secret, highly personal, idiosyncratic and unusual details – put an end to the idea that NDE experiences only happen because the brain is still functioning, albeit dimly, and the person is not actually dead.
I don’t mean cold (or even hot) readings and fishing that entertainers do. I mean sitting silently in front of a medium, using a thoroughly masked identity, and having a deceased relative communicate in the same mannerisms and word choices they habitually exhibited when “alive” and tell you about specific things that happened between the two of you when you were a child. For example, I had one comment on how I still had a tendency to do “dumb things”, and go on to describe, by way of example, how a couple weeks prior I had decided to have a pasta lunch, while wearing a white shirt, an hour before a job interview and – of course – had gotten red sauce on the shirt and had to order soda water and desperately worked to get the stain off the shirt. Yes, a spirit told me that, unhesitatingly, in no uncertain terms and it was exactly what had happened; an event that I had shared with no one, not even my wife. The medium was someone I had never met before and who lived about 150 miles from the restaurant, which is near where I lived (so no coincidence of the medium happening to be in the same restaurant at the same time of the incident). And no, I wasn’t wearing the same shirt. That kind of thing.
Your pasta sauce /dress shirt example is an example of “magic” , meaning trickery and deception, using confederates — no not the grey-suited rebel soldiers, but covertly placed associates who are unknown to the dupe who in this case was you, Eric Newhill. Data about you was collected well in advance and used to amaze you. You probably say “no way Jose, I opted into the experiment at random a long time after the sauce hit my shirt and without anyone’s previous knowledge that could possibly ever be an experimental subject.” Sorry Eric, magicians are much more clever than that or you, they can arrange for you to be prompted to volunteer or be chosen in ways you wouldn’t notice. These sorts of tricks have a long history, I was a close friend of a man who was for years the roommate of one of the world’s premier magicians who himself confounded President Eisenhower with a typical Esp trick. Houdini wrote at length about these things and revealed some of the methodologies. I wrote a longish post here years ago on the “lemon trick” that was played on me and is a variant of the one played on Ike and your shirt with sauce blot trick but I’m not going to repeat it now. FWIW Ike was very impressed but couldn’t figure it out, he acknowledged that he was stumped but adamantly insisted that it was trickery, to his credit. Sorry Eric, you are not nearly as clever or smart as Ike. But you do seem to think that if you can start a paragraph with fancy silliness such as “veridical mediumship” that 1) people will be overawed and conclude that you are smart and 2) it proves you are knowledgeable and must be correct. But it isn’t impressive at all it’s cheap trickery standing in for powers of reasoning because you aren’t in too much possession of them. You did the same sort of thing earlier with your two metaphors. I’m tired of this. You are a larger than average very brutal man and you are frankly very gullible and easy to fool. Ike was neither. Neither am I. You want to misinform and miseducate if it will impress idiots who are numerous and easy to deceive. You yourself are deceived but can’t acknowledge it. You can be happy if you wish knowing that you have almost single-handedly rope-a-doped me off this board. That’s a credit to you Eric. TTG couldn’t do it but has come very close, and neither could English Outsider who has come closer than close to where I no longer read his comments. You’ve improved drastically on his method which depends critically on long-windedness, I’ll call it Limey Rope a Dope. You aren’t long winded nor repetitive and fantastically boring, in fact you can be interesting and you are capable of making sense, but not as much sense as you like to think and unfortunately you are exceedingly brutal. Not wicked, brutal. nonetheless I am defeated in the sense that I see no point in continuing here. I might post items of information but infrequently. If you had the capacity to present your recollection with an attitude of “golly gee miss Molly that pasta sauce thing sure impressed big little me (I reserve little big for the video) but esteemed thinkers claim to know better” instead of your know-it-all cocksureness I might continue but alas.. . You’re a Hardstyle Fish, Eric, I get it, not a magic little frog.
Little Big and Little Sister Nora – Hatdstyle Fish.
https://youtu.be/pNwBeKfGOzQ
F&L,
Eric never referred to the removal of a stain with club soda as magic. It’s merely a “Hints from Heloise” tip for removing stains. It works, not magically, but it works and it worked for Eric. The rest of your comments on the role of trickery in magic is accurate.
TTG
I never said that Eric referred to anything as being magic. I suggested (strongly, yes) that he was overlooking the role of magic as trickery, deceit and illusion in possibly if not very probably accounting for the events in his interesting story. To his credit Eric anticipated that and went to the trouble to say he didn’t even tell his wife or anyone else and there’s no way (that he was able to imagine yet) the incident could have become known to the so-called medium. That’s where I believe he is wrong. “Referee” rhymes with TTG, but don’t overdo it.
F&L,
This is clearly a very sensitive topic for you. Like you’re really torqued by it. I don’t understand why. It’s a question you should ask yourself and quietly and deeply explore.
I’m not trying to do anything to you or your status here as a commenter. All of that reads like paranoia on your part. This just happens to be a topic that interests me greatly as I have had numerous unexplainable experiences (unexplainable by materialist paradigms). I have also been involved in formal, well funded, research on these topics.
I am not really all that large framed (lol), physically, just muscular. I enjoy boxing as a sport to keep sharp and fit and combat and target shooting, just because I believe that a man should be able to defend himself and his loved ones, and perhaps innocent people that might be getting victimized in one’s presence. I believe in defending those who are unable to defend themselves . Beyond, God forbid, a scenario in which I am compelled to harm someone in defense, I’m not “brutal”. I don’t hunt because I don’t need to and I don’t have the heart to kill animals for sport. I have a pet cat who I love very much. My service was in peace time. So no combat killing. I’m thankful for that. I was involved in a exchange of gunfire with a bad guy when later working for, for a brief period of my life, the feds. I didn’t like it.
As for the rest about being a big dummy, I am a well paid senior manager of analysts in the insurance industry at a Fortune 100 company. I earned a masters degree in economics and sailed through the statistics and experimental design aspects with flying colors. I’m very good at that kind of work. So much for the big dumb brute stereotype.
I’m only bringing up personal details here to suggests that your imagined objections to what I wrote about the medium that I was assessing, are unfounded; completely from your own mind.
Beyond that, you have totally not paid attention to what I was saying about that encounter. I’ll try to make it clear.
1. I made an appointment to sit with the medium under a 100% masked identity. I used a “burn” phone for initial contact. I used a fictious name. I even rented a car to travel to the sitting just in case the medium had a confederate who could run the plates as I showed up. I spoke to the medium exactly once prior to arriving at her house at the appointed day and time.
2. The medium lived approximately 150 miles away from me.
3. The restaurant where I had the pasta was near my house.
4. There is absolutely no way the medium could have had a confederate follow me around for two or three weeks prior to the sitting because the medium had no idea who I was or where I lived.
5. The medium appeared to be of modest means and, even if she knew who I was, I very much doubt she could have hired someone to follow my every move, right down to observing the pasta sauce incident. In fact, what you’re asserting is ridiculous. The ego will go to great lengths to wave away anything that doesn’t fit into the world view it has created; a point I made earlier in this thread.
6. The medium already had a reputation as being the real deal. I don’t see why she would care what I concluded about her. So no obvious motive for resorting to elaborate and expensive means to fool me, which she couldn’t, even if she wanted to, b/c she didn’t know my identity.
I agree that there are many frauds out there. In fact, you’re far more likely to encounter a fraud or a delusional person than you are the real deal. I have encountered many frauds. Some of them are pretty slick and I can see how they can deceive the gullible and the desperate. Again, I have a lot of experience in this field and know how the tricksters operate and how to defeat their methods. That particular sitting had much more that was highly evidential beyond the pasta sauce. I just don’t want to display more evidence b/c much of it is too personal and much of it would involve a lot of writing. The pasta sauce should be enough. If you can’t see how knowing about that is impossible via normal means, then nothing else would convince you.
Eric Newhill.
Surprise. You’re a great, not overly huge but muscular guy who never uses force or violence except for entirely virtuous and honorable reasons. Guess what – Tedd Bundy, yes him, if given a keyboard and internet access would say the same about himself with slight adjustments for height and weight. I’m not taking anyone’s self description seriously especially if it’s so fantastic and wonderful a self appraisal as the one you just presented about yourself. I will take seriously though the sense of your character I have garnered by reading your posts here on topics such as Gaza. And sorry to say those have left me with a distinctly other impression of you – one of a morally bankrupt if not in some regard clinically insane and misinformed person who if given even the minutest chance would happily wallow in rivers of innocent human blood and especially if it goes along with the powerful mega-billionaires and hyper militarised society you live in. Your cheap and crude denigration of anyone on the left on the political spectrum is another clue underlining what to me is stupidity abd depravity.
So I don’t buy what you’re selling Eric. You’re intensely anti-intellectual, flushing with unconcealed relish a large class of valuable people down the drain while simulataneously being self praising and congralatory. Your credentials don’t impress me at all. I suppose you can also analyze the Spooky action at a distance phenomenon as professionally as Einstein, Bohm, Aspect, Podolsky and Rosen? Of course, because how not – you passed statistics courses for one of the most corrupt trades in the United States – financial analysis. I mention EPR and the related discovery of local unreality of physical existence because no one here has even mentioned it and in this context that disappoints me. I wish I could say it surprises me. Used a burner phone did you? Even if you did it proves nothing, they are not foolproof. Do you use proton email too? It’s guaranteed to be safe! No one can break into it because…? Those services are the ones the CIA and NSA set up especially for dupes. “I bought a burner phone from the nice man at the store so there’s no way anyone listened in because those huge spheres which vaccines up every electromagnetic wave are programmed with special chips which tell them to stop as soon as the “I’m a burner phone” digital code is detected,” said Eric. Yes. That’s thanks to the advanced knowledge of electromagnetism, cryptology and related advanced disciplines which you possess but forgot to include in your Confessions of Saint Eric Newhill, due to your obvious excessive humility. Well now if only mom was still alive I could tell her I’ve met another saint who is also a outstanding genius, lucky me, and also a man who dismisses anything originating from Harvard graduates because, well because he’s not anti-intellectual, no, he’s just done his own research. I met a young lady awhile ago who told me that the world is governed by reptilians who came from outer special millennia ago. How do you know? I asked her. It turned out she had done her own research. I seem to not be able to get off this lucky streak it seems. Eric bought a burner phone, did his own research and someone knew he has spilled some tomato sauce on his white shirt weeks previously and he didn’t even tell his wife. Therefore god exists, so does immortality, and leftists should be shot along with every Palestinian who isn’t trapped under tons of rubble or starved to death. And the guy who thinks this stuff is a great wonderful nice cuddly muscular but not overly large guy and not an obscenely cruel stupid bastard because he says so and he passed some stat courses. And if you think otherwise you must be overly sensitive (mortal sin) and paranoid. It’s good to know.
Typo – vaccines should be vacuums
F&L,
Yeah sure, a simple woman, working one on one out of her simple home, not a high prices stage magician, has the ability to find out who is behind a tracphone purchased with cash from a Walmart.
“Clinically insane”? Really? From the guy who writes paragraphs of pure and literal rambling gibberish that includes loose word associations accompanied by weird lizard art? Mildly amusing upon occasion, but I’m supposed to care what you think about me; or anything/ anyone else? You really do live in your own private Idaho.
@Eric Newhill
You are wasting your time, hardcore materialists are extremely dense when it comes to anything “spiritual” because they are SCARED, not only of death but that their little “materialistic computations” may sometimes fail and not cover the whole of reality.
Eric
If you do an experiment on your own and determine that the acceleration of gravity at sea level is 7.8 meters per second squared — should Harvard erase the 9.8 m per sec squared value?
My point is simply that you had an experience with pasta etc – as fascinating as it was that’s not how the matter will be decided. My apologies for taking it a step or two too far. You’re right that something is making me oversensitive of late. Rather not discuss it, it actually involves the death of a close relative and possibly the topic is simply freaking me out unknownst to me. Maybe there’s an element of devaluing the worth of a human life in discussion of belief of awareness persisting beyond.the grave, or at least there could be in the wrong hands.
F&L,
I have been involved in extensive research and experiments, not just that one, which I used as an example. I am not the only one.
I don’t understand the Harvard comment. Many well respected, well credentialed university researchers have done the science and concluded what I have. Personal experience just adds to my certainty and conviction. Like I said, you don’t know the body of work on this topic. You have been duped by the professional debunkers whose careers (more accurately, schticks) are dedicated to misrepresenting the science best science and cherry picking the worst studies to stand up as straw men.
I do not see how life after death devalues human physical life in the least bit. I do, however, think that the stimulus/response meat robot in a random, meaningless world, i.e. the materialist model, is what devalues humanity.
Perhaps someone could assign some twisted ramifications to life after death. Like because people will live on, it’s ok to terminate them in this world, or that their suffering doesn’t matter in the big scheme of things. Well, we can’t deny facts because a psychopath might use them irresponsibly. That amounts to pure censorship out of fear. No way to live. Especially since virtually anything can be twisted by psychopaths.
If you knew the science concerning life after death, you would know that a common theme from NDEs and after life communications is that human life on earth matters a lot. It is a learning experience, perhaps even a test. Can you make it through these harsh conditions with your head held high and with love in your heart? Can you avoid the tendency towards selfishness and cruelty that can arise from seeking to satisfy material needs? That kind of thing.
@Eric Newhill
“I mean sitting silently in front of a medium, using a thoroughly masked identity, and having a deceased relative communicate in the same mannerisms and word choices they habitually exhibited when “alive” and tell you about specific things that happened between the two of you when you were a child.”
Sorry but this is irrelevant to the questions of “life after death” and “immortality of the soul”.
My own brother is doing such things but when doing so he is himself ALIVE like any other medium.
It only proves that some information about past events, known or unknown to anyone, is available to some LIVING being (the medium) “somewhere”, it’s the Akasha concept of Eastern spirituality.
It doesn’t mean that deceased people have retained a capability to ACT on their own, there is always the need for a (living) medium to interact with these memories.
All this hangs on the actual structure of space and time, is time “real” or is there a “block universe” a la Julian Barbour over which our minds wander?
We don’t know!
jld,
What you are proposing is commonly known as the “super-psi” theory. Basically, it says the dead are dead, like cease to exist in any way, shape or form – or, even if they are still aware in another realm, they can’t communicate. Rather, a medium or psychic who can produce veridical results under controlled (by the researchers) circumstances is using his/her own psi, not communication with the deceased.
There has been a lot of discussion of this theory among serious researchers. I am very familiar with it. I won’t rehash all of the detailed counters other than to say that there is no proof that there is anything like super-psi, Akashic Records or to the assumption that the departed can’t communicate. In addition to no proof or evidence, Super-psi is less parsimonious than spirit communication as an explanation. It is also pretty much a non-falsifiable hypothesis. The lower parsimony and non-falsifiable make it an unscientific theory.
jld,
One more point re; super-psi and “we don’t know”.
If there is psi and there is remote viewing (a form of psi), then it must be concluded that consciousness is not limited to our brain functions. And once we accept that fact, then life after death in a non-physical form of awareness must become more plausible.
A proactive aside – I know the arguments about being able to damage a brain and the owner of the brain loses aspects of consciousness (or loses all consciousness). A good analogy is a radio. If I poke a hole in the speaker, the sound quality of the music decreases. If I pull a wire, I can no longer listen to certain stations. If I smash the radio with a hammer or pull its batteries, it doesn’t work any more; no more music. So that means the music I used to be hear coming from the radio was due to little tiny musicians that live in radios? Or maybe just the way the wires and other parts connect inside the radio causes music to be generated – right?
jld,
I missed something important in what you wrote;
“there is always the need for a (living) medium to interact with these memories.”
That is simply not true. Many people – a higher percent than you might guess – have had what they understand to be communications from the deceased. Deceased loved ones appearing or otherwise directly communicating with the living survivors, at the time of their death, is extremely common. It occurs whether or not the death was expected. Typical scenarios are a loved one, who lives a thousand miles away, dying in an accident, but at the same date and time of death, appearing to a local survivor. Usually, the deceased passes along a message that they have passed away and are “ok” – that’s the main point they want to make; don’t be upset. They find themselves in a good place and everything will be ok. Sometimes details of the circumstances of death are given. After the encounter, the survivor finds out about the death and the details, which conform to what the spirit communicated.
No need for a medium and his/her alleged super-psi. Very common phenomenon.
Out of Body Conscious awareness is very real…and quite intertesting…I was near unconsciousness once.and physically unable to control my body.
.i remembering thinking if I go unconscious..I Would possibly Die..
I Was and All of a Sudden..Then standing behind my physical body..looking at it…evaluating the situation Very Calm and clear…I determined I had to go back into my Body..and will it to start Recovering..Gain Control…Sit up..Move and Get more alert..
I Then went back into my Body…Got control of the Thought process..Willed My Body to Sit Up..Feel strongerr and Move..It Did..I Recovered..And quickly Got out of a Dangerous situation..I Left..So I Understand that it can and does happen..
What the Spirit is..that Can transfer from inside a Body to Outside Looking Back
and not connected in a Conscious way ..is Interesting…God only Knows What Experiments are or Have been done With People..But the Results would be most
interesting…Anyone Been there and Done that….??
jim
Don’t Give Up Till It’s Over – The Dubliners
https://youtu.be/XcCBemm-hIo
The Irish Rover – The Dubliners
https://youtu.be/eRSmC7A36tU
Whiskey In the Jar – Dubliners
https://youtu.be/Hwb8C2TijYE
F&L..
Yes…The Irish Dubliners…Folk Music at its Best…They Are The Oldies but
Goodies..of Your Time…Alone with So many other Bands..Singers..Movies..Actors
Plays..Operas ..and Composers…Mixed into Your Life..in Gods Control Room..
And It Seems Thats Always Been a Safe Place for You…Where you Find Peace and Security..To Maintain Stability….In the Same Way I Do..
It Seems from Your Wide Range of Experiences..and Knowledge..That you are Highly
Intelligent and Educated..But Have Been a Gladiator in Arenas only You Know..
and Perhaps cannot talk aboiut…Except to Get Over High Fences..Find Boats and
Explore..without Escourt…
I Assure You..My Friend…You are Able to Deprograme enough to Know..All You see and Experience..is Created Matter..Every thing..Living and Inert..You Have a Spirit
that Reasons..Calculates..Creates..With Gifts of Vision and Insight..Like All The
Great Artists..Composers..Scientists..
Some..Have Much Greater Powers of Discernment than others…Its a Gift..Like Singing..or Painting..Or Being a Great Analyist…or Remote Viewer…Gifts to the Spirit..That Require Perfect Balance..
or The Chaos..of The Crash….And Destruction..of Human Souls..and Physical Elements..in Explosive ways…We Must Maintain a Status of Being Stable..and Logical…Observers…in an Unstable and Illogical Environment..
My Observation of Matters today…Best Regards..
jim