Transpersonal Psychology: Invitation to Dialogue

[Michael Mooney]

Originally Posted by Larv

Michael, you seem to be quite deluded. How do you expect a scientist to react to that last remark? I never see any spooks, so I must be "spiritually blind," too.

Please read the posts leading up to the remark you condemn.
I have answered this question over and over... quoted yet again in the last post. "No" was the answer over and over. I am as certain of the gnosis being challenged here as any reasonable person is of knowing "This is my hand which i see in front of my face." (This with no tricks up one's sleeve, like a false hand that someone stuck up my sleeve to fool me!)... but...duh!!

Michael

[Michael Mooney]

To whom it may concern:
Freeztar just gave me three more infractions for my last three posts here (earlier today and before).
I will obviously soon be banned, because I am under an extreme gag rule and can not even reply to challenges in a direct and totally honest way.
The archive will show that Freeztar has been very displeased with me for quite awhile since I so rudely offended him (several times i suppose) and is very willing, actually eager to exercise his "power over" me (which clearly really pumps him up!) and dismiss me from this forum ASAP.
He of course will have his way. It's only a matter of time.
I would be interested to know who else sees my last three posts as worthy of "infractions." ( I know you staff stick together but... honestly... if you can muster it!)

It would be a breath of fresh air here to have an uncensored forum... like a "Free Speech Plaza" where scientific materialism would not willfully banish all testimony of spiritual experience as not scientific.
Or revise your "Psychology" section to say "excluding all mystic/spiritual discussion" and formally banish "transpersonal psychology"... "which violates our "preaching" rule and maintains the protocol that only materialism is "scientific."

In my dreams. This post will surely be either deleted or my final infraction.

Hey... I already know. "Precognitive" too. Eat your little materialistic hearts out. (This said in jest... not that it matters.)
G-bye.
Final serious note: Those actually interested in the science of consciousness and the study of it as a possibly creative force might be interested in checking out both "The Journal of Consciousness Studies" and the best digest of experiments on the power of consciousness "at a distance" that I know of, "The Intention Experiment."
Well I can see the hammerr of authoritarian tyranny coming down with the supreme displeasure of Freeztar.
See you for a reunion in early 2004 if my immanent banning is not absolute and permanent.
michael

[Michael Mooney]

deleted redundant post... know not why it posted twice.
M

[Michael Mooney]

Erasmus:

I have no way of knowing with the level of detail given. I have witnessed both magicians and "mentalists", however, perform demonstrations like the image perception you have described. In all cases I have personally witnessed, there has been a trick. There has NEVER been a case of anyone able to replicate this result in a controlled setting- and hence no written account with enough detail to rule out the existence of a trick.

What kind of additional detail would you like? I gave one example of a partial "miss" in image transmission in my "Journey" page... and how it was a miss was very revealing... how the usual mind can interfere with direct transmission to a trance-state receiver.

Also, the above experiments were done in our home with no visitors bu my older brother as a witness. (Still very much alive and able to verify what I have said.) There were no "tricks" or any public there to impress. It was done in the pure spirit of seeking the truth about telepathy. We verified that it is possible, and we were certainly not the first... tho this forum will find a way to ignore all of it or dismiss it in some very lame way.

Finally, you state directly that there is no evidence that would convince you of my position. I can, however, be convinced of yours with the proper experiments in a controlled setting. Should we work together to devise some experiments? Or would my "skeptical energies" render this useless?

We don't need to re-invent the field. If you will not study the "Intention Experiment" as the best yet document (in my opinion) full of very well done experiments, what kind of pretentious ground breaking experiments might you have in mind... being unaware of all that has been already so well done in the field?

Michael

[Boerseun]

Michael, it's amazing to me that you're still around after all your threats to leave.

For some reason, you don't "get" it:

Scientists are objective, and allow for the mind playing tricks on them. That is why Erasmus says that "seeing your hand in front of your face" does not necessarily make it so. There are quite a few optical, mechanical and neural systems between your hand, and the part of your brain that recognizes it as such. Any one of those systems are vulnerable to malfunctions of many kinds. A good scientist knows this, and will allow for the possibility that the hand he sees in front of his face might not necessarily be his.

The "negative energy" from skeptics exist, but unfortunately only in your mind.

Seeing your son's ulcer is, most likely, another case of the enumeration of favourable circumstances, where you tend to remember the positive samples and forget the negatives. For instance, how many times did you analyse your kid and got it wrong, and you just don't remember it?

Your dad reading your mind is most likely another case of faulty memory. Me and my mother share a common memory of a thing that happened when I was around ten or twelve years old. Often we have joked and laughed about it, and it became a bit of a family joke. Until the one day I told my dad (they got divorved when I turned around fthirteen or so, and have been apart since shortly after the "incident"), and he told me that it actually happened completely different to what me and my mother seem to remember. And other witnesses took my dad's side. Yet it was "real" for me and my mother in the truest sense. It just goes to show that if you repeat the same thing over and over for many years, it might become the truth in your mind. In short, most likely your memory is in error. There have been many, many cases in which exactly the scenario you propose have been tested for with negative results - and zero with positive results.

The skeptic's "negative energy" does not hold - unless you can propose a mechanism
by which this "negative energy" is propagated; what, exactly, this "negative energy" is, how we can test for it, etc. Sending out the skeptics before the experiment commences merely leaves those behind that are willing to be duped. I cannot comprehend you not understanding this.

James Randi is a nice enough guy. He'll even let you design your experiment to cut out the "negative energy" - if you can adequately describe it, and how to test for it so it can be excluded from the experiment. You'll even score a million bucks. If you don't need the money, do it still and donate the bucks to Hypo. We can use it.

But I put it to you that the "mind reading" you talk about is fallacious. Your memory is in error, and you are the only witness we have to this. The only way to get around this, is to repeat your experiment. You can make money out of it. Yet, there is no mechanism known to science by which what you propose is even remotely possible. Humans have evolved very effective communications skills in the forms of body language and vocal communication. There are parts of our brains dedicated to that, that light up like christmas trees under scans when we engage in those activities. I wonder where the part of our brains that run our imagination is - and how brightly it will light up when we engage in "mind reading".

Quit the pseudo-science already, Michael. Or, at the very least, show me a cheque with James Randi's signature on it.

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

We don't need to re-invent the field. If you will not study the "Intention Experiment" as the best yet document (in my opinion) full of very well done experiments

If these experiments are so well done, why are they not yet in scientific journals? Why have many of them not been published outside of the book? The level of description is popular science- not scientific journal. An interested reader can learn nothing of the methodology used.

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

To whom it may concern:
Freeztar just gave me three more infractions for my last three posts here (earlier today and before).
I will obviously soon be banned, because I am under an extreme gag rule and can not even reply to challenges in a direct and totally honest way.

Obviously.

[Michael Mooney]

In the interest of science, and on my very best behavior (not yet banned, I see, thank you...)

In answer to Erasmus, I don't know whether any of the experiments in "The Intention Experiment" book are yet published in respected scientific journals. I would first check "The Journal for Consciousness Studies" but my I let my subscription lapse two or three years ago.

However there is a wealth of detail about each of the six experiments listed in "The Experiments" section of the website, most detailed in the PDF download link for each experiment.
In regard to your statement:

I have heard many anecdotal stories about telepathy, etc, but on close examination the subjects involved are deluding themselves. They desperately WANT to believe, and so convince themselves.

... and my request for how you see my family's early telepathy experiments as deluded or faulty... and how my perception at a distance of my son's ulcer could be false or deluded...

How do you think our little experiment could have been better designed, and how do you think my correct perception of the very real ulcer was in error? (There had been no clue about his condition when I left for the wilderness trek, and it was a very real burning sensation in my stomach, along with his image in my mind... which reached me at a distance around the time of his hospitalization. So... how could I have known? I could not by any means presently recognized by science.

Whatever the medium for any/all "action at a distance"... it is not like radio/TV broadcast and reception. There is indeed a human factor involving the level of "connectedness" of the participants, which favors deep personal connection such as between father and son in both cases above. And a hostile atmosphere is certainly not conducive to positive results. (Same as hostility is not conducive to clear communication of the usual sort.) This field of investigation is still in its infancy, but the above has been true for all my telepathic experience.
Finally, with all due respect, I am no more or less sure of my gnostic awakening than you might be sure that when you hold your hand up in front of your face and look at it, that you are actually seeing your hand. If you have doubts that you are seeing your hand, I must respect that, though I don't understand what you could possibly doubt in this case. I have no doubt whatsoever in that case that I am, as right now, seeing my hand. Likewise knowing in the gnostic sense, as above.

Thanks again for allowing me to continue posting. I will do my best to follow the rules here, tho I am still confused as to how one can speak of direct spiritual experience without violating the rule against preaching. Will review the rules.
Michael

[Larv]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

Thanks again for allowing me to continue posting. I will do my best to follow the rules here, tho I am still confused as to how one can speak of direct spiritual experience without violating the rule against preaching. Will review the rules.
Michael

Michael, how is a "direct spiritual experience" different from an "indirect spiritual experience"? Can you measure the difference? And how is a "direct spiritual experience" different from a direct physical experience? Can you measure the difference? And, finally, how is a "direct spiritual experience" different from a drug hallucination? Can you measure the difference?

I think your problem is that you assume scientists will buy into the legitimacy of your so-called spiritual experience. But you haven't backed up your claim with anything but..well...your claim. If you want scientific acceptance for your spiritual experiences you need to provide some form of physical evidence (outside of your personal experience) and a testable hypothesis. But you can't do that because spirits do not leave physical evidence or lend themselves to testable hypotheses.

When will you be ready and able to admit that what you are preaching here about TP is nothing more than a pedestrian belief system?

[Erasmus00]

Originally Posted by Michael Mooney

In answer to Erasmus, I don't know whether any of the experiments in "The Intention Experiment" book are yet published in respected scientific journals. I would first check "The Journal for Consciousness Studies" but my I let my subscription lapse two or three years ago.

I checked the usual scientific journal databases by author. It appears that the key studies (that actually show positive results of "intention") have not been published.

However there is a wealth of detail about each of the six experiments listed in "The Experiments" section of the website, most detailed in the PDF download link for each experiment.

The pdfs on the website generally do not include the raw data(only data after analysis, and occasionally no data at all), or descriptions of apparatus and statistical methods used. At least one of the pdfs have graphs of analyzed data with unlabeled axes. None of these would be publishable in a journal. This then is the problem-there is not enough information to accurately judge the quality and controls of the experiments.

How do you think our little experiment could have been better designed

By your analysis, your mother acted as the go-between for you and your father. Both you and your father would have been close to her, and may have unintentionally passed information back and forth. (a sort of human Clever Hans effect). To do this as a legitimate experiment, other people should have acted as the go-between in a few trials.

Also, at some point, the go-between could be mis-lead (i.e. the "image sender" tells the go-between he is sending one image, but in actually sends another), etc. Everything possible must be done to guarantee that no information is actually being passed. Are you familiar with the facilitated communication debacle of the late 70s/early 80s? Its easy to unintentionally pass information.

As to the ulcer- its a one off phenomenon, which makes it hard to study scientifically. We need some data to calculate the probability of a coincidence. Its only a significant event scientifically if the odds of it happening by random chance are small enough. We'd need to know how often people experience phantom ulcer symptoms, how often they picture their children, and how often people develop severe ulcers. Keep in mind, 1 in a billion coincidences happen every day.