He claims to have traveled outside his body to bring back art… and much more |297|

@Steve My impression is that at the moment I do most of the moderation here (something about being retired?), and I like to do other things sometimes - it just isn't possible to be there when these things happen - which is when it might have made a difference. Also judging when people go over the line is very tricky, and you can't please everyone!

David, it might seem to you as if I'm picking on you as an individual, it must be hard not to be offended in some way. I'm sorry for that, but it's not the case. I am picking on you as a moderator, and that probably isn't fair either. A forum like this needs careful moderation, it isn't receiving it. I would be willing to be a moderator myself, but I don't have the education or the intellect to follow many of the threads. One doesn't need intellect when some things are concerned, just consistency and common sense.

So I guess I'm saying to you, on one level, I'm sorry. I hope that you don't take it personally, because it's not meant to be. :)

By the way, if Woerlee or Wiseman were to post on the forum, that is different to being a guest on the forum. Furthermore, a more gentle and genuine guest than Jurgen would be hard to find, unlike the two that you have brought up. Oops, please don't ban me! ;)
 
David.
'Far from Here' received a 3day ban from Alex for going too far in his criticism of Dr Powell(Rightly on my view). It is inconsistent when this happens in one thread but when a guest is called an 'outright fraud ' in another there is silence from Alex or you. You say that you 'only discovered about this about 20 mins ago', but then you give the impression (to me at least) that you defend his statement?

I'm not advocating any ban on people, especially when they're new posters, like Ginko, a quick rebuff and deletion of the sentence would have been sufficient but as Ian says Ginko clearly crossed the line in my view and in the view of plenty others, yet you seem to be defending his opinion.

I pushed for Jurgen to be interviewed here, because as I said to Alex, I think that it is time to stop arguing with skeptics and move forward. I feel let down by Alex and other moderators, I don't think Jurgen should have been so quick to leave, for what it's worth, but I won't be so keen to ask for anyone else to appear as a guest on the show.

I think it's difficult when you see someone you've come to respect highly, respond to a negative comment in a way that a way that disappoints you, and lowers your opinion of them in some way.

Alex challenges his Skeptical guests very strongly, and some storm off, and it's quite a relief to see them exposed as little different to everybody else. I've done the same to Powell, and Kastrup.

I quickly got the sense Jurgen was possibly a bit over sensitive to criticism. He made an interesting reply to my first comment, then ignored another of my responses -which challenged some of his beliefs.

I find that when people set themselves up as experts, sometimes they don't stay quite grounded. They begin to believe what other people say about them, and seek the company of people who reinforce that image. The world they build around themselves can be quite fragile, and they often turn out to be quite brittle when push comes to shove.

In some ways I think it's quite heartening, that people who imply they have a better handle on what is going on than the rest of us, are then shown to act in a way that exposes that they still have all their own issues - just like everybody else does. And that we're all just trying to make our way through this thing as best as we can.
 
I think it's difficult when you see someone you've come to respect highly, respond to a negative comment in a way that a way that disappoints you, and lowers your opinion of them in some way.

Hi Max
I don't think that Jurgen is highly respected by me, not because of his OOB work anyway, I'm not the type of person who 'highly' respects or hero worships many people, I do, however, find him an interesting individual. When anyone is invited on to a show such as Alex's as a guest, I think they should be shown the basic respect that I would show to a guest in my house.

I don't feel any different to Jurgen now, as I did before the show. Is I said to him privately, I think that the only thing he's done wrong is reveal his ego by responding to Ginko and Hurmenatar's posts it the way that he did. The only real disappointment I feel is with Alex and David, but Alex should bear the brunt of it. In my view he is inconsistent and it makes the forum a 'less safe' place to come to.

Alex challenges his Skeptical guests very strongly, and some storm off, and it's quite a relief to see them exposed as little different to everybody else. I've done the same to Powell, and Kastrup.

I quickly got the sense Jurgen was possibly a bit over sensitive to criticism. He made an interesting reply to my first comment, then ignored another of my responses -which challenged some of his beliefs.

Maybe he simply thought 'there's no point'. By the way I doubt that you made any impression on Kastrup, with all due respect. ;)

In some ways I think it's quite heartening, that people who imply they have a better handle on what is going on than the rest of us, are then shown to act in a way that exposes that they still have all their own issues - just like everybody else does. And that we're all just trying to make our way through this thing as best as we can.

I think Jurgen is quite modest in his claims, but at the end of the day he has the background of 40+ years of meditating and many, many interesting experiences as a result. If you believe him, that is. :)

I agree with your last sentence and think that Jurgen would too.
 
I realize everyone is different, but after 40 years of deep meditation you would think one would have built a supply of equanimity.

One only need imagine how Don DeGracia would respond to Ginko's post. No doubt he would have accepted their right to any opinion and then quickly dug into Ginko's issues to expose any common ground.

I'm not saying that Jurgen needs to be a DeGracia clone, but I think many of us learned a bit about humor and graciousness during the time that Don participated regularly on the forum.

I read Jurgen's books when they came out, so I was a bit disappointed when he turned out to seemingly have a very fragile ego.
 
I realize everyone is different, but after 40 years of deep meditation you would think one would have built a supply of equanimity.

One only need imagine how Don DeGracia would respond to Ginko's post. No doubt he would have accepted their right to any opinion and then quickly dug into Ginko's issues to expose any common ground.

I'm not saying that Jurgen needs to be a DeGracia clone, but I think many of us learned a bit about humor and graciousness during the time that Don participated regularly on the forum.

I read Jurgen's books when they came out, so I was a bit disappointed when he turned out to seemingly have a very fragile ego.
Putting your very personal experiences out there in a public forum is not an easy thing to do. It's one thing to disagree with someone's philosophical position or interpretation of personal experience. It's quite another to say that they are lying about their personal experiences. Ginko called Jurgen a fraud. That was inappropriate and went way over the line.

It's easy to be an anonymous poster in a forum and call someone brave enough to use their own name a fraud. I don't think Jurgen is getting rich by sharing his experiences in public. Most people who do so are hoping to help others come forward, or at least to help others not feel so alone in having these experiences.

Until you start posting the most intimate details of your life using your actual name in this forum, perhaps you can cut Jurgen some slack.
 
This isn't about fragile ego's - it's about consistent moderation.

Are there any examples of any guests on the show who subsequently posted on 'their' thread being called frauds or something equally defaming without the poster being pulled up? I don't know the answer.
 
Hi Max
I don't think that Jurgen is highly respected by me, not because of his OOB work anyway, I'm not the type of person who 'highly' respects or hero worships many people, I do, however, find him an interesting individual. When anyone is invited on to a show such as Alex's as a guest, I think they should be shown the basic respect that I would show to a guest in my house.

I don't feel any different to Jurgen now, as I did before the show. Is I said to him privately, I think that the only thing he's done wrong is reveal his ego by responding to Ginko and Hurmenatar's posts it the way that he did. The only real disappointment I feel is with Alex and David, but Alex should bear the brunt of it. In my view he is inconsistent and it makes the forum a 'less safe' place to come to.



Maybe he simply thought 'there's no point'. By the way I doubt that you made any impression on Kastrup, with all due respect. ;)



I think Jurgen is quite modest in his claims, but at the end of the day he has the background of 40+ years of meditating and many, many interesting experiences as a result. If you believe him, that is. :)

I agree with your last sentence and think that Jurgen would too.

Well I must have touched a sore spot with Kastrup, because he normalised my comments by saying something along the lines that I obviously disliked him, and therefore he could justify ignoring all my future comments by blocking me.

He had suggested quite incredibly in my view, that if everyone was like him (consumption wise) old mobile phone, old car etc, the world would be a far better place! Lol...

...what he had failed to understand was that he had reached a stage in his life where he no longer had to compete as hard. Whereas the younger generations are still having to compete hard to find a mate, buy a house, buy a car, buy a mobile phone. Kastrup had infact taken the exact same route as everybody else to get where he was in life, and was no different to anybody else.

When this was pointed out, he was horrified, and said so, but he normalised his feelings by blaming me for them, and then blocking me. :)
 
When this was pointed out, he was horrified, and said so, but he normalised his feelings by blaming me for them, and then blocking me. :)

We are all at the mercy of ego.

It would be interesting seeing Bernardo's side of the story, but I guess we won't ever know. Anyhow, he's off topic.
 
I feel let down by Alex and other moderators, I don't think Jurgen should have been so quick to leave, for what it's worth, but I won't be so keen to ask for anyone else to appear as a guest on the show.
I got the feeling Jurgen was expecting Alex to step in. Alex may not have been keeping tabs on the thread at this point, but somebody should have been.

Like Steve, I'm not criticizing David as such. But there doesn't seem to be a system established where threads - especially the show threads where guests can appear - are systematically moderated.
 
?? David, how can you not see this?
Well semantics isn't very logical, but even that is not the same as saying X practices outright fraud.

The point is that Ginko is not criticising this work from an outright materialist position, and I don't think we should be censoring his viewpoint. I'd have been a lot happier if Jurgen had addressed what he said.

BTW, At any one time there is probably 0.2 of a moderator available on average! Even then they may be reading another thread!

David
 
Well semantics isn't very logical, but even that is not the same as saying X practices outright fraud.

The point is that Ginko is not criticising this work from an outright materialist position, and I don't think we should be censoring his viewpoint. I'd have been a lot happier if Jurgen had addressed what he said.

BTW, At any one time there is probably 0.2 of a moderator available on average! Even then they may be reading another thread!

David
David, I won't argue the "fraud" point anymore, it's clear enough to me and other people.

On the moderation point, what you're describing is a problem, especially when it comes to the show threads. You said yesterday you just discovered this, but this happened on January 2! Somebody should have been monitoring this high profile thread. When I go to any other sort of forum, undesirable posts get taken out within minutes usually. I understand this might not be possible with a small community like Skeptiko, but again this points to a flaw in the system established (or the absence of a system).
 
David, I won't argue the "fraud" point anymore, it's clear enough to me and other people.

On the moderation point, what you're describing is a problem, especially when it comes to the show threads. You said yesterday you just discovered this, but this happened on January 2! Somebody should have been monitoring this high profile thread. When I go to any other sort of forum, undesirable posts get taken out within minutes usually. I understand this might not be possible with a small community like Skeptiko, but again this points to a flaw in the system established (or the absence of a system).
You make it sound as if I have a staff of deputy moderators working to a duty roster!

David
 
You make it sound as if I have a staff of deputy moderators working to a duty roster!

David
David, you've clearly misunderstood my post (and, I don't mean to be insulting, but at this point your reading comprehension is getting a bit frustrating, so I won't continue this discussion). Beyond you as an individual moderator (are you now the only one?), I'm clearly talking about what flaws Skeptiko has as current moderation of its show threads and what it needs. I figured Alex was moderating these threads but my impression (which could be off base) is now that he isn't systematically doing so.

Your defenses here have been very weak. You don't need an army of moderators to monitor the show threads, which would seem to me to be high priority. With the modest amount of activity on these threads, I would think it would take one moderator just a couple of minutes a few times a day to do the job. Again, my understanding was that Alex was doing this, and that you were scanning other places on the forum.
 
Your defenses here have been very weak. You don't need an army of moderators to monitor the show threads, which would seem to me to be high priority. With the modest amount of activity on these threads, I would think it would take one moderator just a couple of minutes a few times a day to do the job. Again, my understanding was that Alex was doing this, and that you were scanning other places on the forum.

Please remember that our community is scattered across the globe (so people post stuff while I am asleep), and that I have whole days when I am away from home. I don't have a smart phone, and even if I did, I would consider it irresponsible to use it for moderating the forum in case it got lost.

I dare say Alex has all sorts of other activities of his own!

The fastest way to get my attention (which will still not be immediate for all of the above reasons) is to report a post. That post was not reported as far as I am aware.

David
 
The fastest way to get my attention (which will still not be immediate for all of the above reasons) is to report a post. That post was not reported as far as I am aware.

David
OK. Thanks.

Sorry for being a bit harsh in the previous post - I was getting frustrated.
 
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NDErs usually say that being out of the body is immensely more pleasant than being in the body, so much so that they often don't want to return to their body.. Mrs. Piper, the trance medium, also used to complain strongly that she didn't want ot return to her body when her spirit communicators were done using it. Do OBErs experience the same difference in being out of the body compared to being in the body? I've read a few books by OBErs and I don't think they do.
 
What is the opinion of sleep paralysis? Does anyone experience this? Does it fall it to its own category or can it be lumped in with OBE?
 
NDErs usually say that being out of the body is immensely more pleasant than being in the body, so much so that they often don't want to return to their body.. Mrs. Piper, the trance medium, also used to complain strongly that she didn't want ot return to her body when her spirit communicators were done using it. Do OBErs experience the same difference in being out of the body compared to being in the body? I've read a few books by OBErs and I don't think they do.

I've no experience of either NDE or OBE but I'd say that the reason that most NDErs don't want to return is two fold from what I've read. Mainly they have just experienced a feeling of love and being home which is so overpowering that it frequently stays with them forever once they've returned and secondly they have often come from a body that has suffered some sort of trauma. I'm reading Bill Vanderbush's book'If Morning Never Comes' atm and frankly I don't think I'd fancy getting back in my body if it had just been blown up! :)

I think that OBErs don't often reach the 'special' places that NDErs often appear to reach. I don't think it makes NDErs special as I often read and hear on video and in articles these days. I think dogma and ego has taken over a large part of modern NDE reporting, I'd rather watch a video from before say 2010 when it wasn't common to the media. I'm sure that there are many genuine people who have experienced them who are put off by the hype that surrounds NDEs these days, they don't really know where to go, but that was always the problem.

While I don't think OBErs often go to the same places I have a feeling that they might well be able to some day. If intent is such and it is right for us I don't see why not? What I'm not convinced by is that by going OOB we are doing the right thing. Is there a right thing? Are we good scientific explorers or are we meddling with something that we shouldn't be? Not in a nuclear weapon sort of way but in a spiritual one.

Why is it tricky to achieve OOB? It can be achieved spontaneously for some but for most people it's not easy and requires a determined effort. The closest I've come is hearing loud gushing noises and a couple of voices shouting when I was alone in the house. I was aware that I might hear such voices but it was so convincing that I was scared that there was someone in the house and it 'woke me up'. Why should there be such defences if that's what they are? I don't know. :)

What have you read that makes you think that OBErs don't have a similar feeling in some ways to NDErs, for example I've read many examples of OBErs flying and it seems to be a magical experience. Just not the mind blower that NDEs often are.
 
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What is the opinion of sleep paralysis? Does anyone experience this? Does it fall it to its own category or can it be lumped in with OBE?
I don't know. I've experienced this in small amounts, but never in strange ways.

On the other hand, my wife (semi) recently had a very strange experience that seems to have remained with her to a significant degree. She experienced sleep paralysis and saw mother Mary. We're not catholic (or any other religion), btw. It all sounded very strange. She said that though she couldn't see behind her, she knew there was a presence there. She was frightened. She spoke of the episode in a dramatically different way than one does a mere dream.

I guess I've assumed that this was related to or an intermediate step between sleep and a full-on out of body experience. But I've unfortunately never had an OBE.
 
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