Dr. Dean Radin Brings Real Magic to the Psi Lab |377|

It’s difficult to imagine how Dean reconciles his fondness for spoon bending with his championing of the sort of repeatable, dependable science that results in useful engineering and technology.
Maybe he doesn't. Despite it getting a lot of stick, I reckon a degree of cognitive dissonance is an essential feature of being human (and of existence, probably).
 
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Why use 'an iron age agrarian myth' to inform an modern moral dilemma?
Because maybe it's not a "Myth".

The ever-increasing desperation of current acrobatic leaps of Logic to run away from this possibility indicate to me there's something to this possibility.

There's this thing called "Moral Law". Even a low-I.Q. mentally retarded person can feel it. No Philosophers or Priests needed. One doesn't even need to be literate and spend decades studying scriptural legalisms to discern it.

Every morning I wake up with an intense and passionate lust for a big 'ol syringe full of Heroin. Instead of driving a few blocks and buying one, I go sweat my brow burying some fishheads and seeds in the ground. Tomatoes come out and I'm long-term happier.

Wouldn't it be neat if people codified this simple Happiness System into a set of strategies and techniques similar to a Martial Art that could be transmitted to younger, developing minds? There could be like some guide manuals, kata for practicing, and historical examples of success and failure.
 
I seem to recall Radin flagging an interest in magic - in the sense of being aware that things he was working on in the lab were also being induced in 'the wild'. For me Radin is an expression of a long campaign to invalidate and mistrust personal direct experience - so he seeks to validate what is known and experienced informally in a formal way - as defined by materialistic science. It has set the agenda by pushing the invalidation and mistrust of direct personal experience.
I think that's a good thing... or at least the most science can give us.
 
I fail to see any practical difference between a non-localised reservoir of consciousness and a "spirit".

I think there is a difference.... Spirit is a far easier concept to get your head around.
If "primitive" society settled on the primacy of mind a few thousand years ago, and their practice yielded tangible results bridging matter and consciousness and a way of being that reflected that truth authentically, then the distractions materialism offered in the interim are questionable at best. I'm not sure what the scientific method offers ...
What did they come up with? Religions.

The poet Ezra Pound said that we should 'make it new'. Being as he was a modernising traditionalist and sometime fascist, I can only assume his instruction is not a plea for novelty, but rather a call to take the perennial and make it contemporary. If the old forms and ways have become slack and lost their vibrancy, as I think they have for many people, is it not wise to get to work renewing the fundamentals? To me, this worthy and somewhat traditional endeavour is something that many here on this forum are attempting to engage with.

After all, it's worth remembering that religion is as much a product of culture, history and power-relations as spiritual revelation.

Surely science and its method can have a part to play in the pursuit of a renewed approach? A brush-cutter can be a very effective, if noisy and dangerous, tool for clearing away the unnecessary and revealing the trees..... if not the forest.

most of our ideas are not reductive and austere but proliferating and instinctive.

I definitely think imagination is a far more useful tool of inquiry than it's given credit for..... but I also suspect it may function best when disciplined against an opposing force like science (or tradition, or experience, etc.).

which is basically saying "We can't know"

Sure, probably, but that doesn't mean we can't all benefit from the chase. :)
 
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After all, it's worth remembering that religion is as much a product of culture, history and power-relations as spiritual revelation.
It's also worth remembering the faithful feel a sense of ownership of their traditions that is not always appreciated. Religions are spoken of as an exclusively top down, oppressive system of control based on fear. That is certainly the case for some religions and some people, but as I tried to show earlier there has been and often still is, a symbiotic relationship. The church was a symbol of people's spiritual aspirations, a focus for their hopes expressed through the beauty of the building, its art and statuary and its services. These were denied them for a one-way, text based, literal and visually austere form of spirituality.
 
If there was no determination to invalidate natural psi experiences (strong or weak) Radin would have no need to demonstrate the validity of psi to anybody (scientist or not) - because it would not even be an issue. We who live in Western European cultures have had the way we understand our experiences undermined - first by religious powers that say anything not sanctioned by priests is of the Devil and second by materialistic science that insists that any mistaken notion that woo is real is down to misinterpretation, misconstruing or misperception. In other words its bad or mad or stupid.
Right - I more or less agree.
I respect what Radin is doing. We all have our missions. However when you are disposed to accept a common human reality and are regarded as a nutter it is time to go back to the basic reality that woo is natural and thinking it evil or wrong is crazy. I don't buy the respectable scientific approach BS because it means having to validate the premise that woo is weird and in need of being intellectually tamed or validated. Outside the community of materialists this is not even a sensible notion, let alone a useful one.
I have browsed your blog, and I know you are not a scientist, so perhaps you don't understand how they feel! I was one many years ago, and I can tell you, they basically discard relevant non-scientific knowledge completely! Things that cannot be understood with conventional ideas, are utterly marginalised. That even goes on within mainstream science - for example, look up the late "Halton Arp", who seems to have discovered a good reason to doubt the way astronomical objects are dated via their red shifts. They tried to remove his telescope time, and even though he was highly thought of before he came up with this idea, he was shunned in his later years!
My sense is that there is a lot of utter nonsense that is supposedly channeled - innocently delusional and deceptive and intentionally so. Going looking for some 'source' is dangerous and ill-advised. But we should understand that there is a far larger community of beings whose present nature is non-physical than there are physical humans on this planet. Aspects of that community are organised and purposeful with the objective of interacting with physical humans in a beneficial manner.
This is the real problem, isn't it. What or who do we trust? I have tried to develop my views by trying to find a rough consensus of views from a variety of sources, including the rather convincing evidence for reincarnation.
In general we tend not to operate alone, but in concert with non-physical agents. In essence our sense of community extends both sides of the physical/metaphysical border - even if we are not fully conscious of this being the case at any time. I would argue that neither Sheldrake nor Radin are acting alone. While they might be 'outsiders' relative to the standard materialistic culture that dominates science, as well as having allies and supporters who do not belong to that community, they also have non-physical allies as well.
This is another mystery - do 'they' want us to understand the greater reality or not? Simply hinting at this or that, seems rather puerile for a highly evolved metaphysical being!
It is fascinating that most early scientists were deeply religious and that many (maybe most) major scientific discoveries came about by other than entirely intellectual means. In fact if we ask what have the materialists done for us we don't find ourselves in a Life of Brian awkward moment. That's because most materialistic thought has been non-systemic and non-complex - and hence most of what seems to have been good things have turned out to be duds - and often toxic duds at that.
There is certainly a sense that past science (say pre 1950) was of better quality, and there are a lot of knowledgeable people calling foul about more recent ideas.
It does actually seem that trying to go it alone in that humanist/materialist/rationalist mode has delivered most of the potentially catastrophic woes we now face. I don't think that either Sheldrake or Radin are going it alone - just that we seem to presume they are.

I wonder what sort of catastrophe you are thinking about? On the physical plane, nuclear warfare seems to be by far the greatest risk. I discount 'Global warming' for a variety of reasons that I won't go into here. I suspect some other environmental problems are also rather over-egged. I don't know what sort of catastrophe might exist on non-physical planes.

David
 
Can someone who knows about ceremonial magic help me out here.....

Dean describes Theurgy as working with deceased peoples / spirits / etc. and says the PSI equivalent is medium-ship. But I thought Theurgy was specifically the practice of invoking the power/aid of God(s?)..... So, wouldn't saying your bedtime prayers be closer to Theurgy than medium-ship?

Am I wrong? If not, it's a strange error on Dean's part.
 
Dean describes Theurgy as working with deceased peoples / spirits / etc. and says the PSI equivalent is medium-ship.

I think he was just differentiating the Spooky Woo we study from an impersonal force/technology/realm that can be understood and perhaps harnessed similar to electricity or gravity.

The Wikipedia definition of Theurgy seems pretty good. They define it as a phenomena with personality and agency (spirits)...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theurgy

---------------------
  • Pierre A. Riffard: "Theurgy is a type of magic. It consists of a set of magical practices performed to evoke beneficent spirits in order to see them or know them or in order to influence them, for instance by forcing them to animate a statue, to inhabit a human being (such as a medium), or to disclose mysteries."[3]
Neoplatonism
In late Neoplatonism, the spiritual Universe is regarded as a series of emanations from the One. From the One emanated the Divine Mind (Nous) and in turn from the Divine Mind emanated the World Soul (Psyche).

For Plotinus, the emanations are as follows:

  • To Hen (τό ἕν), The One: Deity without quality, sometimes called The Good.
  • Nous (Νοῦς), Mind: The Universal consciousness, from which proceeds
  • Psychē (Ψυχή), Soul: Including both individual and world soul, leading finally to
  • Physis (Φύσις), Nature.
----------------------------

Alex and Dr. Radin want it to be an impersonal technology, but thousands of years worth of experience indicate it is not. :)
 
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Well done, you! Respect.

Thank you. The only benefit I really ever derived from the years when I worked in the palliative End-of-Life Industry and had access to the best pharmaceutical-grade intravenous opiates on earth is that I got to visit Heaven for 10 minutes once a week.

This experience let me understand why the Afterlife MUST be a Mystery. It simply has to be.

If Heaven feels as loving and euphoric as I know from experience the human mind is capable of feeling, people would immediately commit suicide.

If people knew for certain what comes next, they would abandon earth's pain, illness, and brutality faster than a pilot parachuting out of a burning airplane.
 
If people knew for certain what comes next, they would abandon earth's pain, illness, and brutality faster than a pilot parachuting out of a burning airplane.
That reminds me of an account of one of the English martyrs, whether the story is real or apocryphal I don't know. Apparently he was deeply depressed on the way to the scaffold (as one might be), when he encountered a vision of heaven. When it was over he ran up the steps to the place of execution with a beaming smile and bid the executioner hurry! I'd have to dig the account out to supply more details.
 
That reminds me of an account of one of the English martyrs, whether the story is real or apocryphal I don't know. Apparently he was deeply depressed on the way to the scaffold (as one might be), when he encountered a vision of heaven. When it was over he ran up the steps to the place of execution with a beaming smile and bid the executioner hurry! I'd have to dig the account out to supply more details.

You’re not proposing decapitation as a cure for depression are you?
 
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Thank you. The only benefit I really ever derived from the years when I worked in the palliative End-of-Life Industry and had access to the best pharmaceutical-grade intravenous opiates on earth is that I got to visit Heaven for 10 minutes once a week.

This experience let me understand why the Afterlife MUST be a Mystery. It simply has to be.

If Heaven feels as loving and euphoric as I know from experience the human mind is capable of feeling, people would immediately commit suicide.

If people knew for certain what comes next, they would abandon earth's pain, illness, and brutality faster than a pilot parachuting out of a burning airplane.

Then why do people choose to come back here from near death experiences? It seems knowing for certain what lies beyond gives them the courage to come back for a purpose of their own choosing or to complete their souls mission.
 
Then why do people choose to come back here from near death experiences? It seems knowing for certain what lies beyond gives them the courage to come back for a purpose of their own choosing or to complete their souls mission.
They don’t always choose to come back from what I read, sometimes it appears they are compelled, sometimes persuaded.
 
Then why do people choose to come back here from near death experiences? It seems knowing for certain what lies beyond gives them the courage to come back for a purpose of their own choosing or to complete their souls mission.
They don’t always choose to come back from what I read, sometimes it appears they are compelled, sometimes persuaded.
Maybe a lot give up in the first NDE, it is impossible to know!

I guess physical life must have a definite value to those 'out there' because if not, why would they ever agree to start another life?

David
 
My impression is that some form of wise counsel helps them see the larger picture and then they choose to return to complete their mission which has a larger purpose than just their individual longing for bliss.
That's part of the picture. Others, like Pam Reynolds have to be forced back into their bodies, while some seem to return as soon as they remember people they've left behind. All we can deduce is the after life is mostly better, but earthly life has a real and significant role to play in our progress, and one that is not lightly thwarted. The most mundane and insignificant lives seem to have a part to play in the bigger picture, and once they are completed we can go back, but not before. That suggests there is some kind of story playing out, perhaps even a kind of progress, but not one allied to mortal ideas of material advancement.
 
That's part of the picture. Others, like Pam Reynolds have to be forced back into their bodies, while some seem to return as soon as they remember people they've left behind. All we can deduce is the after life is mostly better, but earthly life has a real and significant role to play in our progress, and one that is not lightly thwarted. The most mundane and insignificant lives seem to have a part to play in the bigger picture, and once they are completed we can go back, but not before. That suggests there is some kind of story playing out, perhaps even a kind of progress, but not one allied to mortal ideas of material advancement.
Of course, that isn't the Christian story!

David
 
Christianity, Islam are cherry picked paganism, allegories, and metaphors condensed in to books
 
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