James Randy on Out Of The Body Experience

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by Mind's Eye

I looked into Randi a few years back; what he does is valid in one respect because he weeds out a lot of frauds and mystical myths. And don't think some of those people going for the money didn't know they were full of bull, but was hoping for a good guess so that they could become rich.

But I have said for years, before I even knew who Randi was that so called psychic abilities do not work the way many portray them to. I have had deep knowings, insights, dreams that came true and could tell what a person was thinking or what their outcome in certain situations would be... I have seen spiritual things that I cannot explain. But where I come from, the Hollywood-i- zation of psychic abilities is nothing more than a lot of make believe... They exist, but not like many people think they do because of the mind candy fed to them through movies, books and fake gurus. Some things we can hone and use at will; many others we cannot.

So here we have the Hollywood psychic saying that he projected out of his body and walked on Mars, and claiming he or she can see the future... and on the other side we have Randi saying it is all fake.

Yet the truth lies somewhere in between on a very narrow line.

Well why don't the ones who believe they can do what they say prove it, there is always an excuse isn't there?.

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

I recall an interview with Randi in which he was insisting that a particular experiment (I believe it was regarding one of the Stanford experiments with Geller) lacked (without specifics) "sufficient controls".

The interviewer asked "How do you know there were insufficient controls?"

He looked uncomfortable for a moment and said something like

"Because I don't believe such results are possible if there are sufficient controls".

Sometimes the faults we see most clearly in others are the ones that are our own greatest weaknesses.

Geller was one of the easy ones to disprove, it was so funny, go to you tube and have a look.

Originally Posted by psychoslice

Well why don't the ones who believe they can do what they say prove it, there is always an excuse isn't there?.

Perhaps some believe that they can do some fantastic feats... I really couldn't tell you unless I sat down with the supposed psychic and had opportunity to dig a little deeper into their philosophy.

I certainly cannot speak for every person or claim to know it all; all I know is how certain things have always worked for me. And how it is depicted by movies, novels and folks like Geller is not always based in reality or honesty as far as I can tell... It is much like the art of spiritual healing, some folks have a pretty high healing record, others just use it as a money maker to dupe the masses.... very sad really.

[Reverend Keith]

Originally Posted by psychoslice

Geller was one of the easy ones to disprove, it was so funny, go to you tube and have a look.

Yes, well the problem is that even if Geller has some paranormal abilities (and I actually suspect he does) he also cheats outrageously on numerous occasions. Which makes any positive results suspect, even if they really are positive.

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by Reverend Keith

Yes, well the problem is that even if Geller has some paranormal abilities (and I actually suspect he does) he also cheats outrageously on numerous occasions. Which makes any positive results suspect, even if they really are positive.

The so called positive results are only results that randomly worked out, just like if you guess something about someone, some of the guessing will be true, or seem true.

[psychoslice]

Originally Posted by Mind's Eye

Perhaps some believe that they can do some fantastic feats... I really couldn't tell you unless I sat down with the supposed psychic and had opportunity to dig a little deeper into their philosophy.

I certainly cannot speak for every person or claim to know it all; all I know is how certain things have always worked for me. And how it is depicted by movies, novels and folks like Geller is not always based in reality or honesty as far as I can tell... It is much like the art of spiritual healing, some folks have a pretty high healing record, others just use it as a money maker to dupe the masses.... very sad really.

Well the only way to see if it truly works is to test it under controlled conditions, its that simple, it either works or it doesn't, and that goes for healing also.