=========================================================================== BBS: The Cutting Edge! Date: 11-12-95 (03:02) Number: 155 From: BLUE DEVIL Refer#: 489855 To: DIOGENES Recvd: NO Subj: Listen you idiots... 1/2 Conf: (155) Psychic --------------------------------------------------------------------------- "There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy" - Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I DI³ You are talking about Dungeons and Dragons, not psychic ability. ³Gary Gygax was obviously no psychic, or he would still own TSR. ³Therefore, he and the people he ripped off know absolutely nothing about ³psychic powers. This goes for Steve Jackson, and Cyberchrist too. I dunno, Gary could simply demonstrate psychic ability in other avenues and be pretty poor at precognition. This goes for Steve Jackson (who surely could have avoided the Feds seizing his BBS and computers with a little precog), and Cyberchrist, and your little dog, too! DI³ Now, I'm not knocking psychic discussions mind you. I'm horribly ³superstitious and feel my spirit reach out to others and the world from ³time to time. I can not name these things, nor categorize them. Your ³attempts to do so, only serve to scream out your ignorance of such ³things. I think a distinction needs to be made here: When I categorize psychic occurences (I am hesitant to call them "powers"), I am attempting to find some common ground by which to group various reported and conjectured instances of what some people consider psychic events. This would include fiction and gaming, which are after all based on real life and history. There is some value in this, as it provides a framework by which to discuss different effects and through which one could find similarities between cases. However, if you are really going to try to identify the actual possession of psychic "powers" by individuals and shove them into neatly-labeled boxes, I'd have to agree with you that the task you set yourself is as impossible as it is hubritic. I knew someone would eventually make me do this, so hear goes: I am not probably going to make any friends by saying this, but it infuriates me to hear some teenager on here talking about what the more common and powerful psychic powers are like some freakin' college professor, or someone else claiming to be able to contact their friends and family psychically with 75% accuracy (I wonder if they get the 20% discount when they get that phone call they mentally demanded), or hearing someone else say they elevated a crystal's temperature high enough to sear flesh with the power of their mind. It's not because they're young, because if anything I think the young are often more in touch with life's mysteries, and it's not because I don't believe in those mysteries, because I do. It is because I cannot accept a universe where Cyberchrist can fry someone's palm with a crystal and Wildfire can casually mention being able to mentally paint an emotional portrait of a crowd, when others who have sought the enlightenment and the source far longer and far more earnestly can do neither. As a child of the 70's, with a mother who was desperately seeking herself and who dabbled with many of pursuits the New Age had to offer, I got to meet many interesting people even here in Little Rock. Perhaps many of them were misguided or taking advantage of the times to make a quick buck, but there was enough there that was real for even a kid to recognize. I remember especially an older man who called himself only Lali, who had been a vice-president of a record company and now grew his hair long and went from place to place, just being. He was one of the happiest people I ever met, and only one of many. I also have read a LOT about people who have made the search (of the books, I most recommend _The Only Dance There Is_ and _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance_), and even after the jumbled experiences of my childhood talked with many people who have reached into themselves and come out the other side. These were people who were truly at peace, who seemed to me a rock around which the river of life rushed, and who had reached a point of wisdom and contentment that I never think I will be able to even lay eyes on, like Moses at the Promised Land. None of these people made mention of heating crystals, or psychically contacting people to call them up. I imagine if they wanted their Mom to talk to them they'd simply call her. In fact, the it seemed to me the more advanced they were the more they refused to countenance such talk or try to recount or categorize the mysteries of life. I firmly believe the scientific analysis of so-called "psychic powers" is fruitless, as is their practice or the pursuit of their attainment. I also feel most strongly that most of the people who are claiming psychic experiences here are either making it up or deluding themselves with anecdotal experience and evidence. I can myself remember several instances from my own life I have no explanation for, but frankly when someone tells me they can call up the magic on demand with any frequency I am forced to chalk it up to youthful exhuberance and wishful thinking. Not because I don't believe in magic. But because, as you see, I trust the reports of those people who have walked through the fire, who have acheived mastery in other spheres of their existence and therefore have some right to pontificate upon life and its unknowables, who have lived enough life to recognize the difference between the chance and the given, before I trust the reports of those barely severed from the umbilical and who can hardly connect to their own life-thread, let alone those of others. This may paint me as an age bigot. Whatever. Just as I would give more credence to the opinion of a Nobel-prize-winning PhD and medical doctor on genetics than I would that of a 10th-grade biology student, so do I give more credence to the wisdom and experience of those who I KNOW make me look like a child than I do to those (and I include myself in this category) who are still learning to make fumbling footsteps on their own. So what do I believe? I believe that yes, there are things unknowable and undefinable about life and this universe, and that to know them or define them is to deny them their magic. I have seen too much that I cannot explain, and had too many experiences which simply could not occur without that magic, to think otherwise. I can't define it, and I doubt ANYONE can (and would be a fool to make the attempt), but I think there exists some kind of global consciousness, some kind of mass-mind or net of connections between all living creatures to some degree or another. I see it as an ether, a medium which cannot be defined or measured, and which does not concern itself with distance except as it ties into certain sites within our physical world. Maybe there isn't a consciousness to it, but it is merely a medium through which information can pass and into which impressions can be made. And maybe, just maybe, it can sometimes affect the physical world. This would explain a lot of things, from emotional communication to object readings to even ghosts... And that's about as far as I'm going to take it. I think it's silly to try to define it, or to find ways in which we can test it, or come up with examples of how it works. Even if we throw the idea of this medium out the window, I believe that given certain criteria, there are mysteries we can access and that we cannot explain. However, I don't think that ANY of the people you see on TV or even on this board claiming access to those mysteries are even close to them. Every psychic I have ever read about, and I've read about a LOT (Uri Geller, a chinese girl who claimed to be able to imprint photos on camera film, a russian woman who could bend a laser beam, and a man who could apparently turn pages in a book without touching it to give a few examples), was quickly debunked when examined with any discipline or failed to produce in testable circumstances. This also holds true for various "mediums" and other seance-like >>> Continued to next message --- þ SLMR 2.1 þ Can't sleep..clown'll eat me-Can't sleep..clown'll eat me =========================================================================== BBS: The Cutting Edge! Date: 11-12-95 (03:02) Number: 155 From: BLUE DEVIL Refer#: 489855 To: DIOGENES Recvd: NO Subj: Listen you idiots... 2/2 Conf: (155) Psychic --------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> Continued from previous message gatherings. There is a great urge in us to believe in stuff like this, to think that there is something magical, something special, that we can all find and use to our advantage. And that's great, we SHOULD believe in something beyond ourselves. I just draw the line at deluding ourselves into thinking we've easily and simply found some answer ourselves which has eluded the earnest efforts and sincere sacrifices over many, many years of many a seeker wiser and more experienced. Sweet Jane mentions a woman who she found amazing, who knew things she shouldn't. I'm inclined to give this more credence than anything else I've read here. I'm also inclined to think that most of what this woman does comes from an ability to read people and to sense their emotions through experience and a real caring for others. However, it is exactly people like that, who have cared for others and fought their own struggle for year upon year, who I have found maybe once in a while touch upon whatever name you want to give to the hidden world. I have also found these people rarely call attention to themselves or make any big deal about their so-called "abilities". Finally, another reason I am skeptical of individual instances of psychic abilities is that I don't think they just erupt like that, full-blown, in such categorizable ways. It seems to me that one first gets in touch with one's own feelings, then begins caring about the feelings of others and learning about them, and goes through a long struggle and journey towards enlightenment, and that things just HAPPEN along the way. I don't think you could get really good at, say lighting candles with your brain, just by working on this. I tend to think the whole thing is more holistic than that; that the people who do things we cannot explain or analyze do so without seeking the power but as a by-product of their own search for enlightenment; and that it never finds defined paths or duplicatable ways, but instead re-defines itself for every person, just as every person must find their own way to their salvation and enlightenment. So, I guess what I am saying after all the hoo-rah is this: I believe in magic, and in things we can't explain. What I don't believe is that the gang around here has ready access to this magic, or that they have the experience or expertise to define it and make judgements about it. And I believe that anyone who makes the mistake of accepting the bold claims and statements being thrown about here does both themselves (not to mention everyone who has ever climbed barefoot the long, sharp-stone-covered path to enlightenment) a grave disservice. ]:-) --- þ SLMR 2.1 þ Can't sleep..clown'll eat me-Can't sleep..clown'll eat me