Spiritual Possession?

jkj
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Spiritual Possession?

Hi, I'm new here and I was wondering if someone could help me understand better about this topic.

I've heard many personal accounts from people who witnessed these events, one of whom is my father, who keeps telling me what he saw during his days in the army. He warns me because I'm a skeptic and do not believe in such stuff and that in 2 years time, I will have to serve in the army. Where training is 90% done in jungle/abandoned areas which are supposedly known to be infamous with supernatural stuff among us locals, whether you believe in the supernatural or not.

(I live in Singapore and all males have to serve 2 years in the army. Apparently, the places where military training is currently held once used to be the barracks of the British who were stationed here prior to WWII, and then the Japanese army who occupied it during WWII, and supposedly where tons of atrocities have occurred.)

So my dad said he witnessed one night in camp, where he was awakened by lots of shouting, only to see his other bunk mates all awake and all were standing at the entrance of the bunk door, some were staring, others calling out the name of one of his mates who was outside. My dad said he went to see what the commotion was about and was shocked to see his bunk mate jogging round and round a tree non-stop, as though he was in some sort of a trance, oblivious to everyone who was shouting at him, asking him what on earth was he doing at such an odd hour. Even officers who came to see what was going on could not do anything until much later where he finally calmed down. My dad didn't tell what happened after except that his bunk mate was sent to a mental institute.

Apparently my dad's story is just one of many witnessed by people in the army and elsewhere (There is big ongoing trial in Singapore where 2 Catholic priests allegedly performed an "exorcism" on a lady against her will, who was claimed to be possessed). I'm just giving my father's story as an example because he isn't one who would lie and how serious he was when he told me the story.

So my question is this, is there any psychological reason why these events happen? Is it possible for the human mind to just "snap" and make one unconscious and lose control of one's actions, and then go into a "trance"?

Perhaps someone who is well versed in psychology could shed some light on this topic?

It would be very much appreciated.

 

 

 


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I'm not well versed in

I'm not well versed in psychology but I do know that

many things could cause hallucinations and/or erratic bizarre behavior.

 

Believe it or not, STRESS and exhaustion could cause it.

Exposure to certain chemicals could cause it.

Sleep deprivation could cause it.

Brain damage or disease could cause it.

Some sort of electrical or neurochemical activity in the brain could cause it.

Sleeping pills could cause it.

Sleeping pills combined with any amount of alcohol can definitely

cause it.

 

Other thoughts....we don't really know enough from this story. We don't know the history, the stress level, the family history.And we don't know what happened after the mental institute.

I'm not saying it is true in this case but there have been MANY cases of people doing also sorts of things to get out of the Army.

 

One thing we do know is that people tend to insert explanations that they are familiar with when there is an event that they don't understand or that frightens them. Inserting a supernatural explanation is very common but never very plausible (my opinion).

 

It seems likely to me, as a non-expert layperson only, that your father and co. may have spent some time thinking and talking about atrocities and how many people must have died in their vicinity. Maybe they were also predisposed towards supernatural explanations through their upbringing and church. Then there is this event you described. It seems like a sudden event but could have been building for a while. They are confused, perhaps exhausted and afraid. Nobody knows what is happening or offers an explanation....its a perfect time for the explanation they really fear, Spiritual Possession, to take hold.

 


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I served in the US Navy for

I served in the US Navy for 10 years and travelled your part of the world a lot. A good friend of mine from the Phillipines told me a story about something he supposedly witnessed as a young boy. The story goes that his father was a really religious man (he is too) and someone brought in a man to help. According to my friend Bernie the man was possessed by a spirit and his father placed a coin in the man's hands and a spirit was talking through him. Somehow the coin bound the spirit to the chair the man was sitiing in. Only when the spirit promised to leave did his father remove the coin to release the spirit. When the man came to he did not remember the event. I have no reason to not believe my friend, but the story sounds too incredible to say without a doubt it happened.  

Psychologically, yes there are many reasons to account for such behavior. I am not a psychologist but sometimes people just snap. Possession and spirits are common throughout almost all cultures so maybe there is more than we can see in the real world.

The biggest problem I have with possession and such is that demonic possession violates the freewill argument posted by many here. By allowing a demonic spirit to inhabit an earthly body would violate freewill as many christians define it.

"Always seek out the truth, but avoid at all costs those that claim to have found it" ANONYMOUS


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All manner of things can

All manner of things can effect the brain and thus the mind:

  • Sleep deprivation
  • Physical stress
  • Emotional/Mental stress
  • Food allergies
  • Environmental allergies
  • Drugs
  • Exhaustion

And there are more.

A young patient at a pediatric hospital I worked for years ago had similar symptoms to the fellow you describe in your story. When he slept at home, most nights he'd get up and rapidly walk up and down the hall of their home, muttering unintelligibly.

Nights he stayed at the hospital he'd sleep through the night without an episode.

His mother thought that meant it was ghostly possession. We had other ideas.

After searching their home very carefully, we found an infestation of Cimex lectularius (bedbugs). Once the house was fumigated for the little pests, his somnambulating stopped. Later testing also showed the kid had an unusual allergic reaction to bedbug bites.

There's never a need to attribute any extra entities to explain a situation, the physical universe is plenty strange on its own.

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


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As for spiritual possession,

As for spiritual possession, it happens.
Firstly, there is a 'discarnate', which is basically a ghost of a dead person. The word simply means 'someone without a flesh'. Such a dead person may be disoriented, refusing to progress somewhere "higher" (which is an extensive topic) and remains practically among us. Such a person is usually bound by something, for example by alcoholic or drug addiction, trauma, feeling of obligation. Such feelings are illusory without a physical body, but nonetheless, still very compelling for that person.
Secondly, there is a living person with affinity to addiction, trauma, or just feeling badly (for example, in hospital after a surgery). When his/her affinity matches the one of a discarnate passing by, the discarnate recognizes a fellow person, and decides to join with him/her, in the act of parasitism. A parasiting discarnate may then influence the victim's actions, for example, encourage the addiction, and then feel the alcohol coursing through veins of someone else's body.

But this is usually NOT as you describe. The discarnate's presence is almost unrecognizable. It may cause a sudden changes of personality, a look in the eyes, or habits, but such a person is mostly able to exist in society. Even having dozens of discarnates (and such cases I personally saw) parasiting on a victim is not enough to cause any violent outbursts of behavior, attacks of fear, paranoia, schizophrenia, insomnia, amnesia, and so on. It's rather like giving a hardship of own life to someone else for a little while...
If anyone has such intense symptoms I just mentioned, the main cause should be elsewhere and in many cases a medication is the best thing to solve the problem.

A normal, healthy person is capable of carrying one or several discarnates and practically no-one will fully realize that something is wrong. When a 'spiritual posession' has such a diffcult, psychotic symptoms, then it's not a normal, healthy person.
Majority of people is so healthy and feeling well, that they're resistant to the discarnates. Keep yourself well and you're safe.

Where are discarnates? On places where many people died, like concentration camps, hospitals, battlefields, and so on. The uneasy feeling, which people gets there, is most justified and visiting such places with children, for a tourism, is very stupid.

Of course, not only human discarnates can parasite on humans, but it's very similar. If a victim is so vulnerable, that it causes a psychosis, then the main problem may be in victim's vulnerability, unhealthy affinity with something, or in a primitive form of mediumship. Again, I knew a man who was very strong medium, and he ended up in lying to himself and everyone else, considering medially acquired "informations" as the highest sense of life. Such a person doesn't behave as an autonomous human being, but as someone's channel for dubious information. Just after a commercial scams, such people are the plague of New Age movement. NA is much about discerning, to differ a greater truths from lesser truths or lies, distributed by such people. (who are obviously not screaming things in spasms, but most charismatically teaching their stuff on lectures. Spiritual obsession is not a simple thing at all.)

I know this is a controversial stuff (specially when it's supposed to be rational here) but my parents and people like them dedicated decades of their lives to research such phenomena. After such a time, one should already find something, and they found. No secret can resist a long-termed, systematic research, and neither could the spiritual obsession. Many discarnates were thus removed from people effectively and non-violently, which is something I can't guarantee with religional exorcism.

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Cali_Athiest2 wrote:The

Cali_Athiest2 wrote:

The biggest problem I have with possession and such is that demonic possession violates the freewill argument posted by many here. By allowing a demonic spirit to inhabit an earthly body would violate freewill as many christians define it.

Of course it violates free will. Where is the problem with free will argument? Does it say, that nothing and no-one can violate the free will? Obviously, free will is violated every day, all the time. (school, army, bosses, laws, rapists, and so on) Perhaps I don't know exactly the free will argument.
Just as other people can violate our free will, so can, to some extent, do any hypothetical or specific "demons". Affinity to christianity changes nothing on it, in fact, I mentioned a Christianic egregore a couple of times, who's not a good fellow at all.

We live in a collective world and choices of other people or entities affects us all, a totally free will would mean being totally (or as we wish) unaffected by the rest of the world, which is impossible.

Beings who deserve worship don't demand it. Beings who demand worship don't deserve it.


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Luminon wrote:As for

Luminon wrote:
As for spiritual possession, it happens.
Oh please.

I'd ask for evidence to back that claim, Luminut, but I know you are allergic to empiricism.

 

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


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I'm truly curious about the

I'm truly curious about the world that Luminon must live in.  I have to admit it must be really neat to be so disconnected from reality as to believe anything so long as it's a conspiracy theory or an "alternate explanation."

I've been reading a lot about schizophrenia recently.  I think it's fascinating how delusion reinforces delusion, and how personally involved the universe tends to be with sufferers.  That is to say, when someone is talking on TV, it's often perceived as part of an elaborate plot.  That newscaster is actually speaking in code to them and only them.  The train's running two minutes behind?  It's because the spirits manipulating the energy surrounding the passengers at the previous stop didn't want the sufferer to get to the newsstand in time to pick up his daily coded message from the Russian Secret Police.

Seriously... what a fascinating and exciting world it must be!  I'm not saying I'd like to be schizophrenic, but complete breaks with reality do have their appeal.  Reality can be a bitch sometimes.

(Now... the question is... can Luminon figure out the embedded code in this text so that he can prevent World War III from breaking out before the Level V Illuminati invasion of Sweden?)

 

Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin

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Hambydammit wrote:I'm truly

Hambydammit wrote:

I'm truly curious about the world that Luminon must live in.  I have to admit it must be really neat to be so disconnected from reality as to believe anything so long as it's a conspiracy theory or an "alternate explanation." 

It's pretty common in Los Angeles to run into jabber like that. On the plus side, there are a fucking lot of atheists here.


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Quote:So my question is

Quote:

So my question is this, is there any psychological reason why these events happen? Is it possible for the human mind to just "snap" and make one unconscious and lose control of one's actions, and then go into a "trance"?

 

"Trance" is not a word that best describes the behaviour of your father's army colleague, and needless to say "possession" fits the bill even less. Psychology once did indeed use the legacy term "possessive trance" to describe such behaviour, modifying it to "dissociative trance disorder" as it became evident that "possession" had nothing to do with anything, and now has ditched any one general term since, while superficial similarities might be noted in people behaving in such a manner, the clinical explanations can be quite diverse (as the bedbugs mentioned above amply prove). Cultural variation also plays a role both in how the subject behaves and how that behaviour is interpreted by onlookers and psychologists alike.

 

But your post helps illustrate a very important aspect to religion, how it operates, and how it has changed in recent history as many of the prime superstitions on which it is based have been systematically eradicated by rational thought, technological achievement and common sense. Once upon a time religion was the self-appointed explainer of everything, from the mundane to the weird and wonderful, and everything in between. Bit by bit science (and the logic it both requires and encourages) laid siege to religion's explanations for the mundane, and more recently has begun eating into its territorial claim over the fantastic, leaving religion with the very difficult task of justifying its elaborate tenets.

 

It does this through three methods - absorption, denial and exaggeration - and sometimes attempts to employ all three methods at once. "Demonic possession" is a good case in point. If you take catholicism then you can see this approach in operation (it being a sect that is no stranger to absorption since its geographical reach over centuries has meant that you could almost say it was founded, and has always been run, on that principle). Firstly, the church in question has an official stance that psychology is best placed to diagnose, analyse and fix aberrant behaviour. It has (against its will initially) been forced to "absorb" modern scientific knowledge and adjust its theological stance accordingly. At least in its official statements regarding "possession".

 

But "denial" takes place in practice. Not only do its operatives and subscribers, by their willingness to use disproven and out-dated terminology ("possession" is still not a concept ditched by the church, that would be going too far), deny their own superiors' official statements, but they deny scientifically adduced fact at the same time. Their superiors in turn endorse this denial through not emphatically discouraging it, loath as they are to compromise that other traditional area of absorption (absorbing diverse cultures' existing superstitional bias) and fully aware of the propagandistic advantage they retain by behaving in, what is really, a completely hypocritical manner. Priests are made available, with the church's full approval, to "exorcise demons". Other sects practice even more blatant denials ("intelligent design" being probably the most infamous form of thousands of such examples) but unlike the catholic church they tend not to attempt to ride two horses at once. In my eyes that makes the catholic crime against rationality all the more heinous, but that's beside the point.

 

Exaggeration is a recent phenomenon, especially as the weight of evidence has begun to be accumulated and publicised which not only contradicts but discredits the church's claim  in any way to be a viable vehicle for the interpretation of reality. It manifests itself by concentrating its theological attention more and more on the bits that it percives science has yet to explain or is not going to explain, at least in the near future. Things that once were just a minor part of a richly ornate tapestry of delusional guesswork posing as a theological explanation for everything have now, through the fact that science has itself become obsessed with its own inability in these areas, become vaulted in importance - presented almost as "proofs" against science itself. The lads in charge of course have traditionally denied in recent decades any responsibility for this behaviour, knowing that they have had their fingers burnt in the past (evolution springs to mind), but they still retain an extreme diplomatic silence when debates based on such exaggeration rage. In fact the last two popes have reversed a trend of decades and actively stirred the shit on the exaggerationists' behalf. They know that there are a lot of scientifically ignorant people still out there, and their objective is not establishing any truth but instead is centered on retaining a critical mass of subscribers. One evidence for this (and which is pertinent to the subject of the thread) is that a re-examination of "demonic possession" is underway, not with a view to ditching the concept but with a view to justifying it in the face of rational thought and reason.

 

The catholic church is really just doing what it does best (ensuring its own survival), but one side-effect of its efforts is evident from this thread and one person's contribution to it. It is a very large and powerful organisation. When it wants to it can ensure that its exaggerated claims, even regarding the most ludicrous of its practises, be obfuscated through apparently independent debate (much of it is managed), enough that opposition to these assertions is made difficult to broadcast and proofs harder to get across to the general public. It is a master at "muddying the waters" and "demonic possession" is one proof of this ability to prolong itself through managing that ignorance and ensuring it be prolonged. The term has, for a century, been regarded scientifically as worthless, but the interpretation of the phenomenon as understood through the superstitious eyes of the church is still shared by a huge percentage of the global population, and not just catholics. The church has effectively recruited all delusional people into its army of defendants, and Luminon's contribution above illustrates perfectly how effective it has been in doing so.

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Hambydammit wrote:(Now...

Hambydammit wrote:
(Now... the question is... can Luminon figure out the embedded code in this text so that he can prevent World War III from breaking out before the Level V Illuminati invasion of Sweden?)

Dammit Illuminati! What did we ever do to deserve this invasion?! Save us Luminon!


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Having just come back from

Having just come back from Sweden I can only say that you guys deserved it! And don't think we'll be setting up refugee camps for you here in Norway either. We've done a deal with the Illuminati - as long as they don't illuminate too many of our politicians (I read the FRP are poised for government so I suppose there's no danger of that) we're happy to put up with the odd sacrifice of a neighbouring country or two.

 

(Breaks into a very bad rendition of "Ja, Vi Elsker Dette Landet" while knocking back canned beer bought for half the Norwegian price just beside the border on the trip back ...)

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JillSwift wrote:Luminon

JillSwift wrote:
Luminon wrote:
As for spiritual possession, it happens.
Oh please.

I'd ask for evidence to back that claim, Luminut, but I know you are allergic to empiricism.

...and what kind of proof would you like? You're behind the ocean, behind the internet anonymity, it's a safe way of discussing things. All I can do is to tell you to go find a proof for yourself. I don't know if there are around you any people like around here, you'd need to contact them in order to learn something.
And why am I allergic to empiricism? All my world-view is based on personal experience. Most of what I claim happened specifically either to me, or at my home. I say what my sensory perception says. I'm just a beginner in knowing this aspect of the world. I'm searching just as anyone else, and from time to time, I find something.

Hambydammit wrote:
I'm truly curious about the world that Luminon must live in.  I have to admit it must be really neat to be so disconnected from reality as to believe anything so long as it's a conspiracy theory or an "alternate explanation."
Yes, it's really interesting world, but it's immediate implications are meant for daily life. Such discussion on the internet is, I think, just a moment of fun. I don't take this so seriously, I don't think I can brainwash anyone, neither I want it. We're both safely dug in deep ditches of personal experience, and without a lot of empathy, (to experiece the other person's sensoric perception) we will stay in this stalemate.
Of course, I understand your situation, I just have reasons to not share it. We both mean it well, we're both logical, one of us has just more facts than the other. I'm sure, that just a moment in my skin would convince you, that my observations may be true. So obvious is my everyday experience. You always thought, that weird phenomena must be rare and lame? Well, not all of them. Some are permanently present in every moment of our lives. You just didn't yet make the effort to make yourself sensitive towards it.
This is just a response to the topic, nothing more. If such things should be ever scientifically understood, (they already are, just not by scientific community) then it must start from the beginning. The beginning is in human body and the system of acupuncture meridians, aka 'nadis', which exists, because they're electrically measurable. This discovery will be followed by many much deeper discoveries in next decades and centuries, and some of them will also include topics, like ghosts, souls, God, and so on.
Whenever anyone asks about a thing like spiritual possesion, it's skipping of that important development. I don't say if it's good or bad, it's just not so meaningful for you, because almost nobody here knows what I'm talking about. You see everywhere religious indoctrination, parental brain hardwiring, superstition, but not even for a moment you see an extent and quality of what I see.
Empathy would greatly help most of people on this site towards their goal of rationality. Without empathy, you can hardly know anything about an other person, and specially not about me. Thus, you're speaking about someone you know nothing about.
What is empathy? Many of you have been religious. Not anymore, but you're still able to imagine how a  theist may feel and think.
How do you recognize empathy? The more empathy you have, the less you're eager to judge and condemn anyone. I've met a lot of a-holes and d-bags in my life, but with empathy, I sometimes understood their inner motives, estabilished a harmony (or truce) or forgave them.

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Empathism with lunacy

Empathism with lunacy carries risks. If you want people here to empathise with you ... well, you know what you have to do.

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Luminon wrote:...and what

Luminon wrote:
...and what kind of proof would you like?
Empirical proof. Duh.

Luminon wrote:
You're behind the ocean, behind the internet anonymity, it's a safe way of discussing things. All I can do is to tell you to go find a proof for yourself. I don't know if there are around you any people like around here, you'd need to contact them in order to learn something.
My little berg is stuffed full of folks who think (term used loosely) like you do. I have learned a lot from them, mostly about how folks can be impressively gullible and credulous. There's nothing to be learned about ghosts (those "discorporate" folks), since they don't exist. I know this because there isn't one tiny strand of evidence to suggest they do, and there are plenty of real-world simple explanations for what folks like to pretend are evidence for ghosts, 'cold spots' and the like.

Luminon wrote:
And why am I allergic to empiricism? All my world-view is based on personal experience. Most of what I claim happened specifically either to me, or at my home. I say what my sensory perception says. I'm just a beginner in knowing this aspect of the world. I'm searching just as anyone else, and from time to time, I find something.
Ironically, what you just now said is exactly what I mean by 'you are allergic to empiricism'.

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


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Nordmann wrote:Empathism

Nordmann wrote:

Empathism with lunacy carries risks. If you want people here to empathise with you ... well, you know what you have to do.

Then you know nothing about it. Empathy is not a reward for those who dance as you whistle, it's the basis of ethics itself. It's not dangerous for you, it's dangerous for your feeling of superiority and self-righteousness. It would show you, that your certainity would survive not even a hour if you would perceive what I do daily. You can't comprehend a simple fact, that there are phenomena in the world which you didn't encounter before, but which are just as much real as these you did.


JillSwift wrote:
My little berg is stuffed full of folks who think (term used loosely) like you do. I have learned a lot from them, mostly about how folks can be impressively gullible and credulous. There's nothing to be learned about ghosts (those "discorporate" folks), since they don't exist. I know this because there isn't one tiny strand of evidence to suggest they do, and there are plenty of real-world simple explanations for what folks like to pretend are evidence for ghosts, 'cold spots' and the like.
If you mean a general New Age movement, it's widespread, and less or more (rather more) deluded. Such people are in this country too and they're very annoying with their exaggerated claims, when they (for example) propagate worshipping of Krishnamurti or mother Mira. I don't like them more than a scientist likes pseudoscience. In fact, they're pseudospiritual... Smiling Fortunately, not all people are like them. We've got here a civil association of those, who saw their mistakes and left such groups behind.

Btw, I don't know anything about cold spots or whatever. What I consider as a proof for ghosts, is a direct verbal communication with them. One person with one or several discarnates may serve as a medium for each one of them and thus do all the communication. It means multiple conversations with several different personalities, with different story of their life. If the client is uncapable of mediumship (it's too young child, for example) then another person can serve as a medium for client's colony of discarnates. The clients are normal people, who wants to solve their problems. After a dozen or two of such cases it should be obvious, that all clients doesn't make up several new personalities per one session. They just reproduce their thoughts, or less or more in awe watch what do they speak, which somehow appears to be one or more meaningful conversations with personalities, which are not client's.
Such sessions were taking place either here at my home for several last years, or in a city with other therapists. Believe it or not, this is what happens here. I'd recommend you to observe a few of such sessions or participate on them, of course, if there are around you any able individuals doing real work, not just average, gullible NA crowd.
Difference between them and real work is just like between a pseudoscience and science. It's so great, and yet and so hard to see.

JillSwift wrote:
Ironically, what you just now said is exactly what I mean by 'you are allergic to empiricism'.
Well, I would call it empiricism itself, and Wikipedia definition seems to confirm it. If it's important, please explain it to me.

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Following your attempt to

Following your attempt to employ the website in your defence, I checked Wiki for you, since you obviously have some flaw with your screen / eyes / brain or whatever that prevents you from doing the same. It said

"In the philosophy of science, empiricism emphasizes those aspects of scientific knowledge that are closely related to evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world, rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation. Hence, science is considered to be methodologically empirical in nature."

 

I ran a search for the words "bullshit", "crapology" and "pseud" in the article but couldn't find any direct reference to what you fill your posts here with.

 

Empathy, by the way, is simply the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes for a bit. Maybe you should try empathising with rational people for a while - - - and silently.

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Luminon wrote:If you mean a

Luminon wrote:
If you mean a general New Age movement, it's widespread, and less or more (rather more) deluded. Such people are in this country too and they're very annoying with their exaggerated claims, when they (for example) propagate worshipping of Krishnamurti or mother Mira. I don't like them more than a scientist likes pseudoscience. In fact, they're pseudospiritual... Smiling Fortunately, not all people are like them. We've got here a civil association of those, who saw their mistakes and left such groups behind.

Btw, I don't know anything about cold spots or whatever. What I consider as a proof for ghosts, is a direct verbal communication with them. One person with one or several discarnates may serve as a medium for each one of them and thus do all the communication. It means multiple conversations with several different personalities, with different story of their life. If the client is uncapable of mediumship (it's too young child, for example) then another person can serve as a medium for client's colony of discarnates. The clients are normal people, who wants to solve their problems. After a dozen or two of such cases it should be obvious, that all clients doesn't make up several new personalities per one session. They just reproduce their thoughts, or less or more in awe watch what do they speak, which somehow appears to be one or more meaningful conversations with personalities, which are not client's.
Such sessions were taking place either here at my home for several last years, or in a city with other therapists. Believe it or not, this is what happens here. I'd recommend you to observe a few of such sessions or participate on them, of course, if there are around you any able individuals doing real work, not just average, gullible NA crowd.
Difference between them and real work is just like between a pseudoscience and science. It's so great, and yet and so hard to see.

Colony of disencarnates? Oh man, that's classic crap. No, really: It's classic. It's one of the spurious claims of $cientology. Beware the colonies of body thetans! Spiritual post-it notes abound! What a load of garbage.

You never seem to notice that you leave yourself an "out" for anyone who tests your claims, namely that if we find that your claims can not be confirmed or can be outright denied you can just claim "Oh, that was just a New Age idiot", "The testers were skeptics so skewed the results", "They didn't have the training in the Field to do it right", or anything at all similar so the debunking does not have to touch your precious delusions. That is the very antithesis of empiricism. Thus my conclusion that you are allergic to empiricism.

"Anyone can repress a woman, but you need 'dictated' scriptures to feel you're really right in repressing her. In the same way, homophobes thrive everywhere. But you must feel you've got scripture on your side to come up with the tedious 'Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve' style arguments instead of just recognising that some people are different." - Douglas Murray


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Nordmann wrote:Empathy, by

Nordmann wrote:
Empathy, by the way, is simply the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes for a bit. Maybe you should try empathising with rational people for a while - - - and silently.
I do it already, this is why I'm not verbally agressive, I don't call people bullshitters, lunatics and idiots, this is why I don't accuse them of spamming this site, I don't threaten them with a ban when I'm not a mod, and thus I also avoid suggesting to our respectable mods how to do their work, unlike someone else. (which is by the way mentioned in forum rules) This is the beneficial effect of empathy, you should try it too Eye-wink

 


JillSwift wrote:
Colony of disencarnates? Oh man, that's classic crap. No, really: It's classic. It's one of the spurious claims of $cientology. Beware the colonies of body thetans! Spiritual post-it notes abound! What a load of garbage.
Really, it's in Shitentology too? Well, there are no copyrights in NA movement. Majority of NA teachings are thousands of years old, L. R. Hubbard didn't invent anything except of a marketing strategy. This sect has no deep tradition here, and definitely doesn't determine how the discarnate psychotherapy is taught and performed. Until Velvet revolution, separation of Czechoslovakia and a few years of changes, no such western stuff could make it's way here. Today the situation is a bit different and people gets ripped off, but it's still much better than in USA.

JillSwift wrote:
You never seem to notice that you leave yourself an "out" for anyone who tests your claims, namely that if we find that your claims can not be confirmed or can be outright denied you can just claim "Oh, that was just a New Age idiot", "The testers were skeptics so skewed the results", "They didn't have the training in the Field to do it right", or anything at all similar so the debunking does not have to touch your precious delusions. That is the very antithesis of empiricism. Thus my conclusion that you are allergic to empiricism.
So here's the problem. I don't usually think about a verification of it as diffcult. It doesn't require any special circumstances, just a trained therapist (I have one at home, and the course isn't so long nor expensive) and a client with a problem, which is today nothing rare. The truth is, that on this kind of therapy everyone must make own opinion, because no official stance exists. There are results, they're very obvious, but subjective. If a discarnate changes someone's personality or habits, then it's something which can't be precisely measured, this is why the clients and their families knows it best. 
Also, I have no idea how such kinds of psychotherapy are taught in the world. I know a name of the lector who taught my mother and others, but I have no idea if anyone such is in the country where you live. Probably yes, and probably their methods are adequate. (though maybe not identic) You're likely to find something like that, which should be sufficient. Some abbreviations from that article may be useful for further searching, like PLT or SRT, some less. For example, I have no rational basis for RSF as mentioned there, I've never heard of it seriously.
But on the other side, I recetly performed something like SRT on myself, with only initial assistance, without any training, and succesfully.

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Luminon wrote:So here's the

Luminon wrote:
So here's the problem ... I have no rational basis ...
Aha!


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JillSwift wrote:Luminon

JillSwift wrote:

Luminon wrote:
So here's the problem ... I have no rational basis ...
Aha!

  Glad to see you're having fun!
When I really don't know something, I don't make a secret of it. I think that more suspicious would be the strict know-it-all attitude.
In this case, it's RSF - "Recovery of Soul-Mind Fragmentation", which is something I'd call a nonsense, but I don't know why exactly. For all I know, it can all have a different basis I don't know about and RSF is just a form of meditative introspection, which may be universally helpful, so theoretically it may work in some cases, but if it works, it's misunderstood, thus unprecise...  You see, it's not so simple to discern stuff. This is why I wrote, that in the case of RSF I have no rational basis.

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Is the persecution complex

Is the persecution complex part of the package, luminon?

 

Far from trying to suggest you be banned I have advocated in the past that you keep your delusions away from the forum to which theists are excluded - not because you are necessarily a theist, but because you suffer from delusions, if anything, even greater than a fair proportion of them. It's a fairness thing, not least to the poor individual who poses a question on a forum where the blurb says he or she is likely to receive rational responses and instead sees it turned into yet another luminon-crapology-smattered parody of a discussion. (Note the original poster has not seen fit to re-enter his own thread, and has apparently abandoned the site altogether after one posting. I wonder why, and I wonder why he is not the first to have done exactly that in a thread which you and your delusions have subsequently entered?)

 

Of course, you should still contribute to your heart's content on those forums where contributions like yours serve as a salient reminder to the rest of us of the dangers of irrational thinking.

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I've known christians who

I've known christians who were more skeptical then Loominon.

 

And Loominon, personal experience doesn't constitute evidence for the conclusions you made from those experiences. The fact that I saw something that looked like a ghost does not mean I definitely saw the disembodies soul of a dead person.

I think your major malfunction is your innability to explore alternative explanations to your experiences that don't involve supernatural causes. Or, you simply don't want to.

Wish in one hand, shit in the other, see which one fills up first.


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Jello wrote:I've known

Jello wrote:

I've known christians who were more skeptical then Loominon.

I can be skeptical about gossips and things I never heard of before. But how can I be skeptical about something as common as spiritual possession? I know what it is like, and my mother's therapy practice this was one of very common cases.
I'll explain it more precisely. My mother does both Past life therapy, and Spirit release therapy, it's very similar process. She had totally over 300 clients during her practice, and a significant part of these cases was SRT. If you would have it at home as often as I had, you would get used to this idea of PLT and SRT, it would become a routine for you. The need to prove something had been satisfied, now it's a time to research the inner nature of these phenomena. I know where to start.
 

Jello wrote:
And Loominon, personal experience doesn't constitute evidence for the conclusions you made from those experiences. The fact that I saw something that looked like a ghost does not mean I definitely saw the disembodies soul of a dead person.
All right, then how many of the personal experiences starts to be significant? There are phenomena (unbelievable enough for you), which I saw only once, then other several times over the years, and some weekly or even daily. I also know people, who had exactly the same experiences. I even cooperated this year with a clairvoyant man, to demonstrate extra-sensoric perception to another person he brought along. It was amazing, and only a small bit of what human being is really capable of. Scientists would go after it like crazy, only if they would overcome their professional blindness. I'm willing to help with that.
 

Jello wrote:
I think your major malfunction is your innability to explore alternat
ive explanations to your experiences that don't involve supernatural causes. Or, you simply don't want to.
There are no alternative explanations. There already is a "theory of of everything", which incorporates reincarnation, spirits, evolution, life, energy, matter, a part of the gap where God is supposed to be hidden. This makes these phenomena predictable and natural, not supernatural. I've seen this theory work on numerous ocassions. It's huge and I know only a smaller part of it, but it already gives a sense. Of course this peace of my mind wouldn't be possible, if I wouldn't see it in practice so often. Without that experiences, I would be simply gullible, but with what I saw and touched, it's a logical answer. You think I'm gullible, because you can't imagine the extent and intensity of my experiences. Also, I'm not good writer enough to explain it, and others are not so confident to believe that I'm writing the truth. They demand a proof, but they can't get one when they're blind to it. To use a metaphor, I can't explain a color to a person who has eyes tightly shut, but when the person will open the eyes, he will see many without my assistance. We need a scientists to develop a techical devices which can detect colors. This will help the rest of people to work with colors themselves and to acknowledge those who sees them directly. When someone discovers the colors, there is a question, is there any more colors behind the limits of this spectrum? And it is a good question indeed.

There are topics, which are touchy even to many local freethinkers, because it's more free than they would like. For example, the best documented miracle ever, the worldwide Hindu milk miracle. A purpose of such events is to show us that there's more to reality than meets the eye, to show us what to search for, and for what to give Nobel prizes in future. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that these phenomena will be scientifically discovered and researched. However, they can't be totally explained with what is already known, whole new areas of science will have to be formed. Maybe there will be a radical paradigm shift. I've probably already had it, this is why I seem so weird to you, but after 30-40 years from now, everyone will know what I know, probably more, I'm no expert. Maybe this process will start by the discovery of meridians, maybe by something else, but I'd love to see it happening very soon. Meridians are the clue I know about, it only needs a biologist to get it started.

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Nordmann wrote:Is the

Nordmann wrote:

Is the persecution complex part of the package, luminon?

No, the persecution itself is, under a good, rational intention. But this is natural, nothing new under the sun. Even Thomas Alva Edison persecuted Nikola Tesla by publically slandering his new invention - the alternate current. It occurs whenever a new idea appears. I'm not naive enough to expect a warm-hearted invitation.

Nordmann wrote:
Far from trying to suggest you be banned I have advocated in the past that you keep your delusions away from the forum to which theists are excluded - not because you are necessarily a theist, but because you suffer from delusions, if anything, even greater than a fair proportion of them.
Sorry, but this would be like discussing about me without me. I've got a lot to say on these topics. Most of people here just agrees with each other that it's a nonsense and wonders how a rational person can believe it, every time such a topic is brought up. None of them ever seriously looked at it without a bias, condemnation, or with a slightest idea what they're talking about. It needs a change. Someone, who knows such things confidently with a lifetime practice. That's me.

Nordmann wrote:
It's a fairness thing, not least to the poor individual who poses a question on a forum where the blurb says he or she is likely to receive rational responses and instead sees it turned into yet another luminon-crapology-smattered parody of a discussion. (Note the original poster has not seen fit to re-enter his own thread, and has apparently abandoned the site altogether after one posting. I wonder why, and I wonder why he is not the first to have done exactly that in a thread which you and your delusions have subsequently entered?)
It's not mature to blame anyone else for what other, mature people does with their free time. Remember Genesis 4:9: Am I my brother's keeper?  Smiling
I wrote a message to Jkj about that. If he/she will reply, we'll see. We could bet why he/she's gone, I've got a PayPal account. If not, well, you say there are more of such people.
Btw, do you get 5 dollars (or Norwegian crowns) for every new member of the forum? Or do you think that it's so wonderful place, that every person who registers here must stay here forever?
Anyway, I don't believe that people would be so sissy to get awfully offended by my differentness and to leave it here forever and let us here regret their absence. If anything, I think they saw how do you here treat the real freethinkers, and left.
 

Nordmann wrote:
  Of course, you should still contribute to your heart's content on those forums where contributions like yours serve as a salient reminder to the rest of us of the dangers of irrational thinking.

Uh...you mean...Trollville? General conversation has topics which mostly doesn't interest them, for example, some TV program which will be never broadcasted here. This forum is big, I don't know all it's places. And maybe you mean a different website.
Btw, my thinking is a result of my perception and interpersonal confirmation, so I'm rational. Rationality is not measured by cultural standards of what is currently acceptable, but by how much is the opinion justified, how much the necessary requirements for a justified opinion are met.
You may think I'm delusional, but don't forget the Martha Mitchell effect. 

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That you have a lot to say,

That you have a lot to say, luminon, does not need stating by you. Whether any of it - and I mean ANY of it - is worth reading is another matter entirely.

 

Believe me, should you do the decent thing and restrict your delusions and your increasingly one-man discussion of them to the appropriate messageboards, no one here would discuss you or your delusions in your absence. No one. Not a single person.

 

You can keep your bible quotes, your petty megalomania, your childishness, your gullibility, your pretentions to intelligence, your stupidity, your petulance, your "new wave" idiocy, your smarminess and, most particularly, your delusions to yourself you know. You don't actually need to hound innocent first-timers from this site with your pollution of their threads or your "personal messages" sent to them just in case they were foolhardy enough to contemplate your intrusion as a glitch. You could, now that you have exhausted your repertoire of stupidity, simply choose to shut up.

 

But you don't. And so you continue to horrify others who innocently assume from the title of the messageboard that they have entered an area where they might be mercifully free from such foolishness and time-wasting stupidity as that which you serve up time and time again.

 

Your manners match your intelligence.

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy