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Eh, my dog and even my kids have a better sense of time than I do..my dog starts watching out the window when he thinks it is time for the kids to get home. My kids usually get up before the alarm clock....I don't see that as a supernormal sense.
As far as sensing positive or negative energy I don't think that is supernormal either. Animals can certainly sense this. I think our brains process positive and negative energy without us completely understanding how we do this...I don't see it as a supernormal sense though.
I have a good friend who used to be a police chief, and we talked constantly about all sorts of things.....
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Originally Posted by AONE
I can say I have experienced and witnessed many events.
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Originally Posted by fisheye
I tried this myself and think that it might be possible. The clouds, that I concentrate on, disappear - while surrounding clouds stay and sometimes grow. Can I prove it - no. Can I do it every time - no.
This tends to be the only "evidence" offered on subjects like this. Stories, anecdotes, often second hand, third hand or more. "I knew a guy who knew a guy...." kind of approach. This is hardly convincing yet it keeps being the only "evidence" offered.
It is even less convincing given that no one here has independent access to the events in question to judge the situation based on evidence left out or not noticed at the time.
The story on the internet that highlights what I mean which I heard before was of two guys who were in a room and suddenly a lamp shade started moving all over the place by itself. The first of the two declared it to be a ghost. The second was doubtful. The first called him "close minded".
The second eventually turned off a heater which, by heating the air, was causing a convection air current in the room. The lamp shade stopped soon after. It was actually the ghost theory that was close minded given it stopped the man trying to find out more. The doubter looked for evidence and found it.
However if the first guy had been alone and told the story later, no one would have known about the heater. Without independent access to the events they would not have been able to find the right explanation.
Yet we are bombarded with similar anecdotes here on the internet which fail for the same reason and - as I said - always seem to be second hand, third hand or worse.
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Originally Posted by harry chickpea
On the other hand, as I continued to learn about him and read his "cases", it became obvious that he had become SO jaded, and SO egocentric (one has to be when fighting charlatans) that he would not see sweet Jesus if he walked on the water in his bathtub in front of him.
It is a common trick to declare randi biased or worse to discount his debunking of such claims. It is easy to do too. As easy as writing a sentence and declaring "job done".
However what we do not see is specifics or evidence to back up the ad honinem attacks against him. It is just "Randi is biased" never "Randi is biased in in Experiement X this could be seen when he made action A, B and C to ensure the applicant could not complete the challange even if he did have magic powers".
It is too easy to declare randi biased or jaded but the fact is that if you ever read about his experiments and how they are set up three things strike you. First he goes to great lengths to remove and account for any accusations of bias. Second he often has nothing to do with it but has people do the testing for him. Third I have not yet seen a single experiment set up by him or his team that had even the inkling of unfairness or poor setup. They are always fair, transparent and controlled.
The simple fact is that people only engage in the ad hominem against him because his tests simply show up charlatans for being what they are. People claiming to have powers who are unable to do the simple task of declaring what those powers are, what they can do, under what conditions, with what degree of accuracy.... and then follow up by actually doing it.
So if someone thinks Randi has a bias or is unfair then simply lay out how and where this was apparent. Give examples and citations and so on to show how his test was setup and why it was unfair. I think we will find that those that would decry his methods have nothing at all to substantiate the claims against him.
The information flows through, its not an intentional use of the mind. Its not as though you can turn it on and off.
And as Anifani821 said, knowing doesn't give you the ability to change anyones circumstances.
As far as I'm concerned theres no question about the validity.
I'll leave it at that.
So well put . . .
It may be that everyone has a degree of telepathy, but simply block it out. But why would it matter? Obviously, to those who feel they do not have such a sense . . . it has made no difference in their lives . . .
In the end . . . the only person it should matter to is the person who believes he/she has that ability. If I were to tell you I am highly gifted in several areas of "prescient abilities," what would that mean to you? It should not mean a thing, b/c it is a highly personal matter and rarely anything that is useful to share with others, any more than knowing that I have a highly developed sense of smell, lol.
On the other hand, if I told you I get messages from the universe, it may raise an eyebrow . . . and make you wonder if I am schizophrenic, lol. After all . . . mentally ill folks can believe they are being directed by voices outside themselves.
Attempting to validate such matters is akin to turning the human experience into nothing more than a dog performing tricks. How silly is that.
And what a waste of energy.
ETA; BTW - I have now read the whole thread.
Last edited by brokensky; 01-08-2012 at 11:46 AM..
Telepathy?....psychokinesis?.....precognition? Can such things be? Many of us have had a feeling of “Deja Vu†when we walked into a house or building, and some of us may get certain “feelings' that something is not quite right on occasion. The ones who do typically write it off as intuition. We've all likely read stories about E.S.P., or psychics attempting to look into the future. I would like to discuss the possible existence of what would be considered Parapsychology. For the sake of brevity we'll be ignoring some of the other aspects of parapsychology such as seeing apparitions and near-death experiences, and simply sticking with what would generally be considered the big four.
Telepathy-Getting information on the thoughts/feelings of others using your mind.
Precognition-getting information about future events or places before they happen i.e. seeing into the future.
Clairvoyance-Seeing things in your mind that are happening at remote locations.
Psychokinesis-using the mind to influence time, matter, space, or energy by means unknown to science.
Is it even possible for these types of old spiritualist beliefs to exist in today's world. Or is it an legitimate field that the scientific community has largely given a cold shoulder too, thereby stifling any real research on the subject. Most of the available research on parapsychology was done in the late 1800's and the early decades of the 1900's most famously by Dr. J B Rhine at Duke University. Can a person focus on another and receive...lets say an image pictured in the others mind? Or dreaming about a future event? Or perhaps moving a glass across a table or affecting the throwing of dice? There are numerous books arguing for and against these senses, and no shortage of anecdotal tales. Anybody here have any experience with this? Any family members that have strange abilities? Do you believe it possible?
Some of it IMO is bunk....like telekenesis.
However, I have little doubt that some people are more sensitive to detecting things around them that others miss. One persons telepathy might really be the fact that another person has 3-4x heightened sensitivity to pheremones or electrical fields and so forth.
Not to mention that there are proven areas of science related to things like quantum mechanics that are just straight up "voodoo" to steal Albert Einsteins own comments.
So, I believe some of these things are both real and possible but it's a field rife with charlatans as well so there is a lot of reason to be skeptical.
To a limited extent I seem to be able to sense things I probably shouldn't.
One year Mrs. Tek and I were going to Chicago for Christmas and we came upon a semi in the right lane.
We got to within a couple of car lengths of the truck and I felt "wrong". Or rather the truck felt "wrong". So I let off the gas. Within a few seconds (when we would have been next to it) a large cloud of what looked like smoke came out of the front and he immediately slowed down, as did I.
We pulled over and talked to the trucker and told us the fan had exploded and showed us where one of the blades had come out the side of the cowling. He said that if we had been next to him it probably would have come through the passenger side window. We gave him a ride to Chicago. He was trying to get back to South Carolina (North Carolina?) for Christmas.
When I play Blackjack and I'm "on" I get a fuzzy/buzzy feeling in my head when I'm going to win a hand. Can't explain it, and I can't control it.
Again, when I'm "on" I can call cards. My favotite example was when we were at the Luxor biding time until we had to go to the airport. I placed a healthy wager, doubled on 9 (dealer showed a 6) and got a deuce for a grand total of 11. The player to my left told me, in so many words, that I was going to lose my money. I turned to him and told him that he needed to learn that when the dealer has a middle card that our card count is less important than the dealer count. I then told him that the dealers under card was an 8 and the next shoe card was a 9, and that I had won. He looked at me like I was nuts. You know what happened. Oh, and the guy to my left hit on 13 and busted. If he hadn't I would have been wrong.
We watch a lot of poker on TV and probably 9 out of 10 times I can call the river (number and suit), when I call it. I only do so when I get that fuzzy/buzzy feeling.
If I could turn whatever that is on and off I'd be living in Vegas and probably be wealthy, but banned from the casinos. Unfortunately, I can't.
I have no experience with telekenisis, but plenty of experience with the other three.
For what it is worth, here is a telepathy experience I have had.
I befriended a woman who viewed things much like myself and one night we sat talking about all kinds of things and paranormal was one of the topics. So we experimented.
We worked first with numbers, 'guessing' the number that the other was thinking.
We did ok, but nothing to take note of. Then we switched to colors. That's when it got a bit more impressive. We had been able to call out color names of the crayon kind.
Rather than just blue, it was turquoise. Instead of pink it was rose.
We determined that she was more of a receiver and I was a better transmitter.
Many many months later I came into work, I was her relief (we ended up working at the same place shortly after we met). When ever I would come in, I would get a coke. On this particular day, as I pulled into the parking lot and thought about my usual coke, I was wanting something different. MILK! Very different indeed. I walked in, sat down, she came over and looked at me and said....
'You want a glass of milk?' I just started laughing.
How would she know? After months and months of always getting a coke before my shift (and occasionally just water) and never asking for milk, it is not just a lucky guess based on my past actions.
Currently between my husband and I, and me being more a transmitter, he seems to pick up on my thoughts. There are times when we sit in silence and he says, 'what did you say?'
I said nothing. After many of these instances I finally responded to his 'what' with 'I said nothing, but what did you hear?'
More often than not he hits the mark of what ever it was I was thinking about.
Of course he does not get the exact words, but certainally the jist.
Like the time I was figuring out what I wanted to bring up from the basement. He relayed that as cleaning up the stuff in the basement.
I have dozens and dozens of experiences like these as well as precognition and clairvoyance.
Maybe I'm more open to the possibility of these things being real based on my experiences, but this does not mean I am not skeptical. Let it be known that my father was a scientist and many in the family called him clairvoyant and he never denied it.
If you want to hear more of my experiences and dissect them, I'm game.
I myself "dreamt" about a friend of mine having a very specific conversation. When I called her the next day, she informed me that she had indeed had that conversation the night before.
We can look at this information and debate the merits of the foundation. You would never keep everybody happy all of the time. I do think that his quest has debunked many charlatans. It does look difficult to agree to the proper parameters for the testing. I can understand why the foundation would insist on valid testing.
And in all those applications and tests we can not find anything to indicate a bias, unfair test parametres or anything else that people like to level against Randi but never appear to do so with any substantiation. So thanks for helping me make my point
There is no one real single set of parameters for testing given the massive diversity of claims being made to the JREF.
There is one rule however which they have. An application has to be able to say what they can do, under what conditions, and with what degree of accuracy. Simple as that. What could be simpler in fact?
That requirement alone seems to put off most of the applicants however. They simply are unable to lay out what it is they themselves are actually claiming to be able to do... and I find this massively telling indeed. I guess their inability is just Randis "bias" though, or so some people would massively like to lead you to believe!
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