And the arrogant disrespect for the few rules enforced on this site, and the many members who abide by those rules, continues ...

Well, I was already a teenager when he started learning the astrology. Then, a few years took before he finished his courses, gained a practice and people started to come regularly. Until then, I didn't pay it much attention.
But how do you mean that? It was his work, after all. When he worked as a secretary/trader, I also didn't care about his papers. I don't feel like becoming an astrologer too. If anything had affect on me, it was the rate which people started coming, when they heard an awesome comments from previous clients. And you can be sure he didn't always told them just pleasant things.
Btw, this one astrologer isn't like others. Astrology is flawed, it's his opinion too, this is why he rebelled and till this day creates a new astrology for the age of Aquarius.
Tell me, if you would visit an astrologer, would you judge him according to a scientific validity of his methods, or an insight into your life, which would the session give you?

Btw, if I'd be really prone to be theist, I'd already become one, I had a plenty opportunities for that in Sunday school and religious camps, which I attended as a child. (there weren't any non-religious camps around at this time)

Why not, if it works? Why not, if I feel the "energy" on my own skin, had an OOBE, and so on? One doesn't have much choice than to investigate them. For some it is a fantastical shit, but whoever sees it work, has a duty to face it and research it. You are convinced that such things are a nonsense, and if your life experience told you, you should definitely trust it, it's your life, after all. But don't forget, that there are other people around, with different lives and experiences than yours, and they trust it just like you.

Well, parents certainly didn't hide books they read away from me, but also didn't say me what to think. As I already explained, my opinion is based on my physical perception of reality. It doesn't matter if I'd be encouraged or opressed in my opinion, these things doesn't go away whatever happens. It's not a belief, it's an observation. It's a result of nerve impulses which goes from my skin to my brain. Whatever I claim I perceive, I perceive, and for honesty's sake I must include it into my world-view. Is anything wrong about that?
Just try to imagine yourself in my situation. If the senses tells you something very clearly for many years, then it is surely worth of consideration. So where is the problem?

There's a good reason what someone "feels" doesn't count as evidence. Would you take the fact that a mental patient truly believes himself to be Napoleon to be evidence that he actually is? What about one who thought he was the cheesemaster and that there were coded messages in the newest Indiana Jones movie telling him that Harrison Ford was trying to steal his cheese? Would it be rational for the ploice to arrest him based on the patient's evidence?

Luminon, I get feelings of heat and pressure in the same places you mentioned, regularly. Unlike, say, someone in the medical profession, my knowledge on the nuts and bolts of the human body is slim. So as for feelings of heat and pressure, I don't know what causes them. Neither do you.

I would suggest that chakras etc, are, to those feelings we both get, what gods once were to volcanoes, earthquakes and etc.

 

 

Yes. There is something wrong with that. Everyone knows that our brains play tricks on us. That's why placebos are so effective. And just because you perceive something doesn't mean you know what it is. Drinking water and perceiving it's texture in your mouth doesn't instill you with the knowledge that it's made of molecules, which are in turn made up of atoms, that in turn are made up of electrons and such. Before science provided us with this info, our ancestors drank water and experienced it on a regular basis. Not once did perceiving it lead them to the conclusion that water was made up of one oxygen atom and  two hydrogen atoms. Our perceptions are not enough to create an accurate world view.

 

 

     ... and what are you enjoying this evening ?  Rum or ...

I definitely don't describe a pain. It's something like tension+heat+weak electric stimulation, and this feeling is right between hemispheres, slightly below, and the second is a bit forward.
It's very deep inside head, and it's more intensive since I started to meditate TM.
As for my other perceptions, it's very diffcult to describe.
Numerous esoteric books describes it very precisely ( as a normal part of human personal development), but these are books which you don't read. It's definitely a complex phenomenon worth studying. I just study it from the inside...

 

I study my extended consciousness and perception. It's nothing new under the sun, just new in this culture. What you ask from me, is not a rationality, but a cultural conformity. Cultural conformity, or better said, shutting the f*** up, would change absolutely nothing on my physical perception of world, it doesn't work that way. It remains the same whether I'm glad or sad, sober or not sober, healthy or ill. It's my physical condition, and I will never have any other.
Just like you can't deny you perceive solid, liquid, gaseous, light and heat stimuli, I can't deny I perceive these and a few more, and that these are very well documented. People extend their consciousness, they do it all the time by various means since the earliest beginnings of human history. What I experience daily, is an effect of this ancient tendence, it's not my extravagance, it was here before a beginnig of culture and will be among us when the culture will end.
What you and other skeptics show here, is an archetype of conservativity, in conflict with an innovative archetype. It's a war of principles, and we're their infantry. It's not a personal skirmish of foot-soldiers like us, it's a global conflict of archetypes. The difference is, whether we follow them unconsciously, or in full awareness of what's going on. Do you realize that?
(it's interesting that this kind of skepticism compared versus theism is innovative, because nothing is more conservative than ancient religion. )


That's very nice, congratulations! Mine wasn't so impressive.
So, I'm eager to know, what is your rational explanation. I guess you remained undecided, one OOBE per person probably isn't enough to admit that it exists.

If it was the only unusual thing you ever experienced, then it's logical you have this skeptical stance. I would do it as well. But as for me, the rate of unusual experiences is so frequent, that it's hard to imagine, I guess. I surely saw a few of unrepeated events. But my main argument is my almost continual state of consciousness (depends if I switch it on during the day), which is gives me an access to anomalous phenomena. If I'd count every day I spent in it, I'd say I have thousands of empirical, rational evidences. Nobody ever saw anything otherwise than through their senses.

It seems you consider my attitude as emotional. That's odd, because I don't give much value to emotions. I value intuition, which is sometimes confused with emotions, but it's entirely different thing. In my paradigm, emotions are a quality of animal origin and should be observed with detachment. I think you have this opinion, because most of New Age, and human culture as such, is emotional. I assure you, that I value the most a sources, which are very impersonal, and thus too "dry" for feel-goodism of general NA movement. I judge them according to what degree of my experiences can they describe, not by a rate of 'love' word per page

If I remember, our local great authority on ancient texts, Rook Hawkins, doesn't have a sense of smell. He must think we're all crazy. What are we, some deluded believers in a smell? There's a milliard of Christians, but this crazy cult is even worse, as for the number of believers. Smelling, also described as "remote taste", is an utter nonsense, no rational person can believe in that.
(that's just a sarcastic parable to demonstrate a certain way of thinking or not thinking, and has nothing in common with our respectable benefactor Rook Hawkins, Watcher, or a very well known biologic principles of the smell sense. I hope this note is useless and everyone understood what I really meant.)

Yes, that would be rational, but it needs to be finished. Rejecting gods like an "explanation" is good, but then it's necessary to show what it really is. Volcanoes are not gods, that's true, and just as true is, that they're outlets for magma. Removing the superstition should go together with education.
When you touch a physical object, you can feel details of it's texture. I have a similar degree of sensitivity, as for the "energy" which is felt in chakras and on all my other skin. I can touch the slightest details on objects which are not solid, nor visible. I had met a person to who it was visible, but not to me (I'm not that good, lol  ). Because I can study this phenomenon to a great detail, I can compare what I found  with what is in books, and thus decide which books are less precise and which more. Many are indeed, bullshit, feel-goodism, or incoherent, (like Deludedgod's example) but some not. I stick with these, which explains all experiences I ever had and will have after the reading. (and also the rest of world)

But let's return to "chakra system". as for me and other people I know (who attend here for meditations), a moment of mental concentration can stimulate these "chakra" places immediately and intensely. (note that blood flow in these places remains the same) When I was younger, I excited my heart chakra so much, that it was a feeling like there would be a big hole in my chest out on the other side.
I exercise my forehead and crown chakras every week in T. meditation, and it's intense unlike anything before and very versatile, during every session there's a wide range of intense feelings. Sometimes like my whole forehead is open and exposed to intense heat from the outside. In my beginnings I often had a strong headache, but it ceased and now I have just anomalous feelings like a group of welders and surgeons is doing something with my forehead
We have a woman in our meditation group who didn't feel anything at all. For three years, she just sat there and focused "blindly". But this kind of meditation is automatic and changes a person, so after three years she became sensitive to the "energy flow" just like everyone else in the group.
(btw, for formalists, terms like "energy" and "energy flow" are used among people, because the mentioned feelings are most describable as a physical feeling of some form of energy, similar to heat, electric current, static electricity, light, mechanic tension or pressure, and so on. All these are felt as a form of energy, and so is this, similar but not identic with mentioned examples of energy. This is why people calls it just "energy" with various adjectives. Who will ever discover it scientifically, has a full right to choose a better name, just please don't choose anything dumb)

What don't you understand about what I said? Your brain doesn't feel anything. Whatever sensations you are having must be felt by the cerebrovascular system, not the brain. My money's on nerve damage due to taking too much acid.

Good. It reminds me of many similar cases, (photographed) when the images of Jesus and Mary appeared on sliced potato, stone, rose petals, and so on. Writings of "god" or "Allah" in a structure of fruits or a sandwich had been found  and photographed too. Someone is obviously having fun nowadays, these things weren't so frequent before. None of this says anything about becoming a religional person. Christianity is a fanclub which didn't understand their idol, and besides that, there's a lot of similar, non-religional signs and "miracles" too. The message is probably like "look everyone, something unusual is happening!"

 

Well, that's how I meant it. I use similar, also rational conclusion, I hope. I made sure that my observations are real by interaction with other people. Until these events, I couldn't have a certainity if things what I perceive aren't only illusory.  But a few of interpersonal events with people less and more similar to me, showed beyond doubt, that it's real and that I and others can interact in this way.
Typical example is so-called psi-ball. It's a mental exercise of concentration to create something between your hands, which, if you're succesful (which is easy) feels like a ball charged with some sort of "energy" (it feels hot, for example). This ball afterwards should be possible to manipulate. If there's more trainees together, they throw that invisible, but tangible "ball" at each other like it would be a solid, physical ball.
Basically, there are three main events which convinced me.
1) My friend by his own open-minded curiosity and effort learned to perform the above mentioned exercise, and was able to produce the material of which is the "psi-ball" composed. (which completely convinced him that I'm not crazy. And me too.)

2) Later, when he had a talk sitting at a table, he spontaneously summoned a piece of the mentioned material (of which the psi-ball can be formed) around his fingers. Me, being close, touched this material, which clearly wasn't created by me. My activity of this kind wasn't switched on at the moment. (yeah, it's possible to switch it on and off more or less by will)
This is the interpersonal confirmation number 1. Note, that my friend wasn't able to sense a psi-ball material produced by me. I attribute this to his low sensitivity, I have a lifetime practice, but he only a few months and still had diffculties in it.

3) A family friend, clairvoyant person to some degree, visited our house, together with a woman known to him. We sat outside and had a chat, and he suddenly asked what the hell I am doing. It appeared, that I, as it is my habit, had summoned a bunch of this psi-ball material in my hand, ocassionally poking in it by a thought, letting it swirl around. It's like yoyo. The clairvoyant man saw this material to be active and thought I'm doing some sort of mischievous stuff, like trying a "black magic". I explained, that it's normal with me and nothing else than a simple mental exercise. I was also quite surprised that he is able to see this material for psi-ball creation, I had never seen anyone like that.
Then we tried a few of tricks with it together (also with that woman as a participant), which I won't describe here because it's already too much information, I think. It turned out that he brought that woman here to show her a bit of world's mysteries and I had been helpful for that purpose as well.

So, this is my interpersonal confirmation number 2, for the subject of "Psi-ball phenomenon". Besides that, I had seen a lot of people on the internet, mainly on psychics' forums who have identic (or better) experiences than me, and they even played together the psi-ball. With such an experiences, I think the first duty of every rational person, to investigate rationally, had been fulfilled and I started to gather more data on this topic. I welcome any healthy curiosity, which might help anyone to try this simple mental exercise as well, to determine for their own judgement, if I write the truth. You wouldn't be the first to do so, see 1).
I also hope they will be useful one day and that I'll be able to gather more. My desire is to help an official scientific interest in researching of this phenomenon. Without real scientists, funds, equipment and hints, it won't be researched in depth, it won't be available to public and there can't be any technology based on it. If it will be researched, the first benefits will be in area of medical/biologic science, because it seems to be a biologic phenomenon, by-product, for the most part.
 I hope I expressed myself clearly, to not create much more confusion. There aren't yet any official terms, but I hope I was specific enough and kept the unfortunate vagueness on minimum.

Deludedgod, I'm wondering if you could help me with something here. Do you know anything of the science of the mind concerning a placebo effect? That is, what exactly is going on when we believe something to be happening (like taking a sugar pill) and the outcome we believe should occur (healing) does seem to have a greater chance of occurring? I think this sort of explanation would benefit Luminon as well, if he's willing to take it seriously. I think when he talks of feelings of energy in his chakras and everything it's really sort if a placebo effect, he believes it to be true so it becomes true. I think this is actually the basis of all beliefs many classify as "new age". Does science offer an explanation?

Seems to me , a message that "you are healing , you will be fine", does often have a positive effect.

I love you, you are saved ! Feel it !  

I think Luminon's last post show a good example of why I asked. He, and many people for that matter, are interested in these things(a placebo effect, power of the mind, maybe called an energy or whatever) but because science offers no explanation there's still much experimentation. He doesn't experiment in a laboratory but with whatever data that he comes by in his own life. Deludedgod, you're more likely to trust purely mathematical findings, but realize for most people that's not necessary. Our monkey brains are usually fine accepting something based on what we perceive in our everyday lives. It  had to work that way for  our early ancestors, because that was the only information they had.

The point, I guess, is that people know something exists in the mind or body or both with a "power". But we don't understand how it works or really what it is. So until anyone comes up with a definite way to understand it we can all rationally agree on, it's perfectly natural for people to do their own experiments and hold certain beliefs.

And I guess the real point behind this is that I felt sort of obligated to stick up for Luminon because looking back, I sparked this whole thing(at least in this thread). And I don't believe comparing him to most of the theists I've encountered is fair. Theirs is not even a "god of the gaps" because to believe in a biblical god you have to create gaps in scientific reasoning that aren't even there in the first place. Luminon is, as I understand it, just trying to fill in gaps in a way most people do, lacking any other information.

All of this is based on the assumption that if there was some good, peer-reviewed, scientific data explaining how these things work, he'd be capable of admitting he was wrong if the findings point away from his currently held beliefs.

I'm up much earlier than I'm used to and so I'm not so sure I'm even making sense, but I still notice this thread has been hijacked from the OP and I'm thinking further posts should probably just be about why we're doing what we're doing as atheists.