Instructor: Rainsong & Wayfarer
Date: June 22, 2019 (Saturday)
Seminar: Topic: PK more generally, by request (Rose), drifting into Sensing Abilities (clairvoyance, Precog, etc) Q&A – Saturday, 22 June, 2019 at 6:30pm/1830hr New York Time — text format in the PSC #lecture room (Discord) — Instructor: Rainsong — Search LECTURE80
Rainsong:
Rose StellarToday at 7:50 AM
is there a lecture subject yet? because if not, i’d like to suggest one
CloversToday at 7:54 AM
What’s the suggestion?
Rose StellarToday at 7:56 AM
proper measures during psychokinesis practice. Things like foods to stock up on, what to avoid, what’s encouraged (what you should do), and any things that can enhance practice and practice sessions.. I’m not sure if it’s a good subject to cover? Since things have been said on it already. But perhaps a full lecture dedicated to it, could prove fruitful?
CloversToday at 7:56 AM
Meh
Grand Elder DemoToday at 11:05 AM
Itd indeed be fruitful since the first thing mentioned would probably be orange juice
Rose StellarToday at 11:06 AM
lol
Rose StellarToday at 1:47 PM
psychokinesis has such a distinct feel to it..
RainsongToday at 5:07 PM
Any specific questions about that? In general terms, at least, that’s all been covered in previous classes
Rose StellarToday at 5:24 PM
i suppose not, then. Well, perhaps, a more extensive list of foods that are useful for replenishing yourself after PK would be nice, but that doesn’t need a whole lecture
RainsongToday at 5:44 PM
https://www.webmd.com/diet/foods-rich-in-potassium#1 WebMD Which Foods are Rich in Potassium? You can help to keep your blood-pressure levels healthy by eating potassium-rich foods. Find out what foods contain potassium and how much you need to eat daily.
RainsongToday at 5:51 PM
The site claims low-fat a nd no-fat milk are better than regular milk and creams, but the accuracy of the claim depends on what you’re doing. For right after PK practice? 2% – 4% milkfat’s probably best. Enough to get some nutrition in you but not enough to slow down digestion https://www.albertahealthservices.ca/assets/info/nutrition/if-nfs-choosing-high-potassium-foods.pdf https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/hlbc/files/healthyeating/pdf/high-potassium.pdf Of course, this assumes that you don’t have a health condition that requires you to restrict potassium intake (i.e., mostly kidney diseases) A hit of sugar is also good. Actual sugar/honey/molasses/agave… none of this non-caloric sweetener garbage Then, after fifteen or twenty minutes, a snack with protein, such as a sandwich of peanut butter or cheese or some kind of meat
Rose StellarToday at 6:04 PM
thank you!
Chirotractor: and that’s all folks!
Chirotractor: good lecture!
Rainsong:
Rose StellarToday at 6:38 PM
so.. when i practiced PK and got dizzy (and eventually a burning kind of feeling in a part of my brain which was an even stronger sign i needed to stop..) i ate a bunch of sugary foods, and it seemed to help a little bit, but not that much. Is that because i left potassium out? and is there anything else than sugar and potassium that can help?
RainsongToday at 6:41 PM
There are probably individual variations in this beyond the usual warnings about diabetes and kidney failure. The main thing to remember about potassium is that the ratio of potassium to sodium is more important than the actual quantity involved. Generally speaking, for most people, you want more potassium than sodium (certain medical conditions aside) More important is to stop practicing PK when it starts to cause symptoms indicating that all is not well The exception to this is if you are attempting something important enough to you that you are willing to die for it Because death is in fact a very possible consequence
Rose StellarToday at 6:43 PM
i know.. it’s very tempting to continue practicing even when the warning signs start hitting. PK is very exciting for me. today, i practiced until it started to make me dizzy, then i stopped. Took a break for like 10 minutes, tried again, it hurt my head. Took an hour long break (give or take), tried again, still hurt. Then i decided to stop for the day.. it’s kind of like this “one more go” effect videogames have. But self control is important. Perhaps i pushed it a bit too far today in my trying to get a feel for my own signs of it being too much but i’m still alive.. and now i know even better when to stop, and to not continue practicing a few hours after, but wait longer than that (and replenish nutrients)
RainsongToday at 6:47 PM
Dizziness is one of the common signs. Heart palpitations another. Tightness of the skin around the fingers is another possibility
Rainsong: @Chirotractor LOL It seemed like it would make more sense to include what’s already been said, rather than re-hashing it. That way clarifying questions can come more easily to hand.
Rainsong: Yea, but I’m tucking the party thing in here, too……
ChirotractorToday at 7:10 PM
should do a pk party sometime
RainsongToday at 7:11 PM
Hmmm. That could be fun
Rose StellarToday at 7:12 PM
yes please! not tonight though, already did plenty of pk practice today
RainsongToday at 7:14 PM
Nah, they take preparation anyway For example, getting some soaked seeds, or some appropriate silverware
Rainsong: Could set up the Geiger counter, too
Rose Cinderfall: (i’m waiting for the starting signal)
Rainsong: Not seeing any objections to starting a few minutes, early….
Rainsong: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen
Welcome to this evening”s seminar here at the social club
We’re looking at PK again tonight, as you can see from the pasted conversation above.
Goign for a Q&A session.
Rainsong: Are there any questions?
Rose Cinderfall: I had follow-up questions to the earlier answers, but i’d like to give others a chance too if they have any questions
Rose Cinderfall: …if anyone else is present
Rainsong: They commented in the past few minutes, so probably here. Not concerned.
Rainsong: What’s your first follow-up question? 🙂
Rose Cinderfall: How do you know how long to refrain from doing PK after the warning signs have hit?
Rainsong: They should have subsided completely, and you should have some rest (preferably overnight after all symptoms are gone… so could be several nights)
Rainsong: And if symptoms start up again — at all — at the next practice, stop immediately. Have a snack, rest, and leave it a few days.
Rose Cinderfall: alright… And does replenishing these nutrients (potassium, sugar) shorten the time you need to refrain from doing PK?
Rainsong: Not really. They just reduce the likelihood of cardiac arrest after the practice in question
Rainsong: THey are toi help your body recover from a chemical imbalance, by restoring said balance
Rose Cinderfall: wow, that’s rather grim.. It’s a good thing you’re giving out these warnings now. I remember back when i was practicing stuff off of PsiPog’s articles, if I remember correctly at least (since it was very long ago), none of these warnings were in there…
Rainsong: They were there. Apparently we didn’t highlight them enough
Chirotractor: Not PK but I projected for a bit long a few months ago and had a slight scare
Rose Cinderfall: please tell us more, if you want?
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: apparently not >.<
Chirotractor: just felt ‘bad’ and had a very high heart rate.
Vampire of Death: The risk of cardiac arrest is run in psionics because I’m sure that it raises the heart, thus increasing the likelihood of arthymia.
Rose Cinderfall: how long is “a bit long”?..
Vampire of Death: How long is as soon as it starts.
Chirotractor: like… most of a day
Vampire of Death: You need to take it seriously.
Rose Cinderfall: no i’m referring to what chiro said
Rose Cinderfall: ahh
Vampire of Death: I know you.
Rose Cinderfall: >.>
Vampire of Death: How long it takes is a while.
Vampire of Death: But it is still serious.
Vampire of Death: Given your condition.
Vampire of Death: Excuse me, Rainsong.
Rose Cinderfall: thank you, but that was not what i was asking.. :sweatsmile:
Vampire of Death: How often should a psion rest between practice sessions?
Rose Cinderfall: i was asking chiro how long he projected
Rainsong: It does raise the heartrate – it’s a heavy exertion — it also messes up the glucose-insulin balances and the sodium-potassium balances. Both of those are pretty important
Rose Cinderfall: So basically, what i did today was a no-go? Yesterday I practiced PK, then ate a bunch of sugary things right after, went to sleep, woke up, and then later today practiced more PK, but already felt some of the symptoms coming back.. not too badly though. But then after about 10 minutes of practice, the symptoms came back, and felt worse than yesterday.. I’m.. guessing that was a no-go
Rainsong: Rose: yea, that was pushing a bit too hard, there
Chirotractor: Oh I’ve heard some things about it being a good idea to practice after a workout
Chirotractor: I’m guessing that’s more for a low-mid intensity workout?
Rainsong: BlackBorn: If the practice session didn’t cause any issues or symptoms, then you can practice again whenever you feel like it. If symptoms appear, or you get particularly tired, stop
Rainsong: It’s rather like preparing to run a marathon race. If you run a mile or two in the morning before breakfast and you’re not in distress, you can probably run more, later on in the day. If you start out running flat out for thirty miles, you can run into problems
Rainsong: Chiro: What sort of workout?
Rose Cinderfall: Ohh? Does that mean that the more you do it, the longer you can last without hitting the symptoms?
Chirotractor: in general?
Rainsong: Rose: sometimes, yes
Vampire of Death: I suggested to Rose that she take breaks every other day given her condition.
Vampire of Death: Because headaches can hurt a lot.
Vampire of Death: And they can cause issues with anyone.
Rainsong: That sounds like a good interval to start
Desolus: Quitter talk
Rose Cinderfall: ._.
Vampire of Death: Ha, ha.
Rainsong: Chiro: As long as you’re not too tired, I don’t see why not. Haven’t particularly tried it, myself
Rainsong: Careful with projecting, too, as Chiro pointed out. And don’t drive or operate heavy machinery, or fly planes or whatever, within a few hours of a long projection… or on the same day as two projections.
Rose Cinderfall: So in comparison to the marathon analogy.. PK tends to take time to “get going” for me. I have to get into the state that’s conducive to it.. So reducing the sessions to 5 minutes seems like it wouldn’t work for me. But when you put it like that marathon analogy, that seems to me like it would be better to do it in short sessions, rather than long “sprints”? And sort of train my way up to where i can handle it for much longer without hitting the symptoms? So how would i go about doing that while still getting the time I need to get into the PK state?
Vampire of Death: Rainsong, what would it be called if someone were to use their abilities on other people through the internet, with or without projection? I hear weird words like ‘technomancy’ etc, but I don’t think that’s related.
Rainsong: BlackBorn: Depends what you’re doing through the internet
Rainsong: Rose: yea, build up the prep time until you can manage that part comfortably
Vampire of Death: Not manifesting things, just giving people feelings or even reading minds through the internet.
Vampire of Death: Predicting their behavior.
Rainsong: I can’t emphasize this enough: Psionics can mess you up, even when it isn’t working
Vampire of Death: Things like that.
Rainsong: That’d mostly be telepathy and possibly precog
Vampire of Death: What about knowing things about them, and knowing things about their past without being told and being able to have ’empathy’ for their situation because you can pretty much flip them like a coin and see concurrence in their every action?
Rainsong: Sending the feelings could also be described as (psychic) empathy. Some people consider it separately from telepathy
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: So, if i understand correctly, it does work like marathons in that you can train yourself to endure for longer and longer without hitting the symptoms? (This is question 1, i still need verification on this) And, the “prep time” is the time it takes for me to get into that state that’s conducive to PK, and i need to train the endurance for that as well? (Though i usually don’t hit the symptoms yet in this stage..) (this is question 2)
Vampire of Death: Yes, to put it frankly, Rose.
Rainsong: Some combination of one or more of empathy, telepathy, clarivoyance, precog, and retrocognition… depending on how you subdivide them
Vampire of Death: How does one develop a stronger ability to read psychic links?
Rose Cinderfall: Strigoi: I’d like the answer from Rainsong on these questions
Rainsong: BalckBorn: Please leave those sorts of questions re non-PK to either a different seminar or the main room.
Vampire of Death: I apologize, Rainsong.
Rainsong: Not to worry 🙂
Vampire of Death: This is interesting, there’s a lot of things I’d like to learn.
Vampire of Death: I won’t say too much for now, I will let Rose speak.
Rainsong: Rose: Most people can extend the time they can work, in the same way they can extend their running distances, yes. There is probably a limit to both things
Rainsong: If you’re not having any issues in your “getting inot that state that’s conducive to PK” (aka prep time), then it isn’t a problem. In such a case, it’s just the actual “practice” part of the practice you need to increase endurance for.
Rare peypey: (case study for rose, i’ve been doing this for about 7 years now. when i first got pk to work, i practiced daily but went on holiday a few days after i made the breakthrough. even without practice, i felt really woozy and wanted to go to hospital for a check up. at the pharmacy near my hotel, they did a few tests and i had some messed up ions and needed to have sports drinks. but basically from that point, i’ve had no issue doing minor pk for much longer amounts of time, so it definitely built up in my case)
Rose Cinderfall: thank you Rainsong and Rare peypey
Rose Cinderfall: okay Rainsong, thanks, then it’s mostly clear now! If i run into any further issues i’ll come back on those
Rainsong: 🙂
Rainsong: Any other questions related to PK this evening?
Raggiedmon: No question but a suggestion, if one can produce even a tiny tiny pk effect from what I know might be possible to push astroids off course easily
Raggiedmon: if they are far enough away from whatever planet trying to aid
Rare peypey: yeah actually. @Flux and I have been talking a lot about how the incremental progress model for PK is likely just based on our assumptions that this stuff works on the same rules as bodybuilding etc. passive programming from your assumptions can have serious effects on energy work, so any thoughts on this? evidence being poltergeist type phenomena, spontaneous abilities, enlightenment type phemomena
Rainsong: Raggied: hmmm, yes. Between the relative lack of friction and the small angles required, that should work. I’d suggest a “bank shot” like in pool, against a small section of the asteroid, to get the most proverbial bang for your pk buck
Rose Cinderfall: Oh!
Rose Cinderfall: that leads me to another question!
Rose Cinderfall: In PK practice sessions long ago, i noticed something peculiar. When i managed to get it to work on a psiwheel.. it seemed to work on open doors too. A door is heavier, but on a hinge, and can move upon a slight push, though it requires a heavier push. How does this stuff about friction and mass and the like apply here?
Rainsong: Rare Peypey: the incremental thing for effect may well be entirely false. The issues seem to be connected to the effort involved more than the resulting effect.
Rose Cinderfall: also, Raggiedmon: Wouldn’t it be cool if an asteroid was heading for earth and a bunch of psions saved the earth by steering it off-course? :p
Rainsong: Friction definitely has a noticeable effect on PK. In my experience, volume is more important than mass, but I don’t know how far we can generalise that. It may be different for other people.
Rose Cinderfall: Peypey: that makes sense, but the incremental progress model does seem like a good way to prevent overexertion that leads to death..
Rare peypey: look at pk parties
Rare peypey: they do things far greater in magnitude than the majority of people that just mess about with psi wheels
Rare peypey: they don’t die
Rare peypey: and have no previous experience
Rainsong: They also aren;t “pushing” very hard or forcing things. Just having fun.
Rose Cinderfall: but even when I don’t “push” when doing PK on a psiwheel, and try to practice doing PK without tensing, it does eventually lead to the symptoms that indicate “you have to stop”
Rare peypey: could you clarify what you meant in your initial response to me? “The issues seem to be connected to the effort involved more than the resulting effect”
Rainsong: Someone trying really hard to make a dense psiball and not actually accomplishing anything beyond some static around their hands and wrists can, clinically, drop their blood-sugar as much as or more than someone who is moving a couple kilos of metal around a table, but doing so in a relaxed and “chilled” manner because it’s smaller and easier than whatever they usually do
Rainsong: Blood sugar and potassium levels can be tested pretty easily, and blood sugar results come back fast
Rainsong: I’m sure nobody here regards a nicely dense psiball as difficult enough to warrant that kind of straining effort
Rare peypey: ah, like that woman who could do pk, but her work up ritual was more exhausting than the pk itself. i forget her name
Rainsong: Mrs Kuligina?
Rare peypey: there’s a picture of her floating a ping pong ball between her hands
Rare peypey: yeah i think that’s it
Rare peypey: okay so what causes this strain?
Chirotractor: like how someone out of shape can run their ass off and be slower than someone in shape jogging
Rare peypey: can you reduce strain at a given level of pk, and how is this consistent with enlightenment/poltergeist/spontaneous phenomena
Rose Cinderfall: i don’t have the answer, but i do want to add a comment, which is that when i do pk, it feels like parts of my brain are working harder than normal..
Rose Cinderfall: is that familiar to anyone?
Rose Cinderfall: like i feel strain in specific regions of my head
Rainsong: My guess is the level of concentration. Many of the symptoms and the remedies are the same as what happens if you cram all night for a big academic exam, and feel hungover the next day. The cramming hangover takes longer to happen, and tends to be milder, but it is otherwise very similar.
Rose Cinderfall: ……yeah but cramming for an exam doesn’t kill you..
Rainsong: Yeah, but it has a much lower onset, aside from being milder
Rainsong: You’re going to just faceplant in your notes and pass out long before that kills you
Rose Cinderfall: makes sense
Rainsong: As for reducing the straing (Rare Peypey’s question above): It seems that efficiency can make a difference. Puffing “all the oomph” to move a psiwheel takes more effort than sending a small dence stream at it does
Rainsong: Also, poltergeists that don’t result in immediate health problems for the person involved are usually pretty short
Rainsong: I don’t know enough about enlightenment to offer useful comment about it
Rainsong: Spontaneous events also have widely variable consequences healthwise
Rare peypey: so would you agree with the idea that traditional psionic pk training is probably not even close to optimal, given that pk party level phenomena is accessible with 0 prior experience and causes no strain?
Rare peypey: there could be a way to adapt that into a solo training thing
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: I see you talking about puffing oomph towards target objects. I’m still using a method i think was described on PsiPog? connecting to the target object and sort of “merging” with it, moving it as if it is an extension of you, like an extra limb. Is that method deprecated?
Rainsong: I agree 100% that it’s suboptimal. I hadn’t been aware that was even in question
Rare peypey: do you have any suggestions other than pk parties on what would be better?
Rainsong: Rose: the “becoming one with the object” thing works for a lot of folks. I don’t teach it only because I’m not good at explaining it online. Text-chat is a useful educational medium, but it has some practical limits
Rainsong: Rare Peypey: I will probably never come up with an optimal way to teach PK from scratch. I didn’t learn it from scratch
Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer’s pretty good at revising and optimising study and teaching methods.. maybe you two could work together on that? (Rainsong and Wayfarer)
Rare peypey: he doesn’t do pk work though
Rainsong: I believe Wayfarer is trying to improve on training methods, based on his grad-school research
Rainsong: But true, he doesn’t tend to do PK
Rainsong: Judging from other teaching experience, however, I imagine that someone who learns pk “from zero” will be a better teacher of it than someone to whom it comes relatively easily
Rose Cinderfall: it would be nice, though, to have better guidelines to follow, with a good balance between making progress quickly and ensuring safety, along the lines of what Peypey said, of it perhaps being the case that the incremental progress model is a self-imposed thing
Rainsong: Whenever I have suggested what amounts to a significant jump in size, volume, friction, or other potential diffculty to someone who started with a psiwheel, over the years, I’ve been met with disbelief and suspicion that I’m joshing them.
Rainsong: Even with easy stuff, like changing the trajectory of a rolling ball
Rare peypey: i’m almost fully convinced that it’s self imposed at this point. i think that all of my work with pk over these years has been less than people start at with pk party type phenomena as the most minor of them. it makes sense to the logical mind that you need to build your way up, but you don’t
Rare peypey: i did the trajectory changing stuff before i got the psi wheel to work, but it’s not as concrete so it’s not something i counted really
Wayfarer: I am generally trying to improve on training and how people learn these skills and so on but my own lack of proficiency at PK means at best I could coach someone but I couldn’t really teach them. I don’t think that I can’t learn PK, but I have never really put in the time it would take.
Rainsong: Ever go bowling? Try it with a bowling ball going to the …gutter?
Wayfarer: Micro-PK is a different thing though and I have worked with that and am a bit more confident with it.
Vampire of Death: Huh.
Vampire of Death: Someone wants to use it to win the lottery.
Vampire of Death: That I know.
Wayfarer: It’s been done but usually that’s a thing ARV people like to do. You run into problems of interference with the lottery.
Wayfarer: Assume that everyone buying a ticket wants to win and is on some level pulling for their own numbers.
Rose Cinderfall: Whenever I have suggested what amounts to a significant jump in size, volume, friction, or other potential diffculty to someone who started with a psiwheel, over the years, I’ve been met with disbelief and suspicion that I’m joshing them. maybe they just need more explanation and teaching, on how that works and how the size and volume and the like don’t matter as much as you would think?
Rare peypey: as an extreme extension of the incremental model mindset, the way i got past the barrier to pencils was to wrap a tinfoil psi wheel around one. it’s a bad mentality to have
Wayfarer: When you go for it with a microPK approach there’s a lot of resistance. It’s not just random. There are millions of people trying to push it, however casually or passively.
Rainsong: Rose: Part of the problem is that we do not know what is and is not important regarding size and the like.
Rose Cinderfall: i get it. Maybe that’s something that can be figured out with a few people in PSC that can do psychokinesis?
Rose Cinderfall: with a bunch of testing, you know
Rare peypey: no, because it’s inconsistent between people
Chirotractor: seems like it’s less effort and more learning how to ‘harmonize’ with what you’re moving
Rose Cinderfall: ohh…
Wayfarer: Among other things yeah. Different people are gonna experience that stuff differently just like with, say, martial arts. Some people have trouble with power, some people with balance, some people with coordination, etc. etc. We’re all “made” differently.
Rose Cinderfall: I mean, I don’t know that well what i’m talking about here, i’m mostly asking questions. I’ve had a spontaneous psychokinetic event, but other than that i’ve been wiggling psiwheels, and haven’t done much more than that as of yet
Rainsong: And while it’s flattering that you think the few people here working with practically no budget and limited equipment can exceed the investigative capabilities of the Soviet governments over a number of decades, it’s not very pragmatic
Wayfarer: There has been research done in that direction but it’s mostly going to be very vague. I don’t know of anyone who is teaching PK reliably out there in part because troubleshooting it is difficult.
Wayfarer: In particular training PK is difficult because you can’t get external feedback on “what it is you’re doing.” You have to be extremely self-aware to see what is different from one attempt to another.
Wayfarer: The feedback is somewhat binary. You either moved the thing or you didn’t. There’s no “kinda moved it.” It moved, or it didn’t. But what you’re actually doing is different each time. You can repeat what you did when it moved, but if it doesn’t move again, it doesn’t really work.
Rainsong: I know of a guy teaching a Teachable kind of course (I don’t recall which platform) who claims he can teach most people to spin a paper psiwheel under glass in three to six months
Rose Cinderfall: I mean, i’d say spinning a psiwheel is more of a success than making it wobble and wiggle…
senpai…: If belief ties with the size one can effect what if someone was “mentally unstable” and thought if anything, everythings all computer code or a hologram? and there for say, the moon is no more really there then the psy wheel and as such, if they can pull the pys wheel, they can pull the moon just the same?
Rare peypey: no, because otherwise we would observe this
Rare peypey: mental institutes would be wizard’s towers
Rose Cinderfall: and the moon would crash into the earth
Wayfarer: Belief does tie with psi functioning generally, in fact it’s the single greatest factor in psi performance. But how that relates to mass of objects in PK is dicey. It’s likely that if you are performing PK reliably, you believe in your ability to perform PK, and how much belief is enough belief? Why would someone believe they can move a 5mg object but not a 6mg object? Or a 5kg object, even?
Rainsong: And Giant Meteor would have won a previous American presidential election
Rose Cinderfall: lol
senpai…: idk, have you went to a mental institution and teached them how to do basic PK yourself as a test? :thinking:
Wayfarer: I worked in psych facilities for about 4 years and never had a delusional manifestation actually manifest.
Rare peypey: if belief is what matters, and mentally unstable people often think they have special powers (it’s even in mental health questionaires in the uk), we would see it
senpai…: what if they were just never given the basics thro?
Wayfarer: The thing about belief with regards to PK is you’re not just working in a vacuum. People have models of how the world works that they are imposing on the world around them constantly.
Rose Cinderfall: oof, the mental health questionnaires.. that’s another subject entirely that might be a fun subject for another lecture…
Rare peypey: were you ever given the basics on how to walk? i don’t think that they’re the equivalent of the hulk in chains that would be unlocked with a psi wheels 101 lecture
Wayfarer: Simply believing in something doesn’t mean you can make it so. There’s a lot of pretty deep philosophy this is gonna get into, right? But we have a consensus model of physics and reality that we all sort of tacitly reinforce and which exists at least in part because of a collective karma of consciousness interaction with shit.
Rainsong: It’s in the psych evals here, too, along with hearing voices in your head. It’s seen as delusion only when it’s not demonstrably real (here, anyway)
Rose Cinderfall: and also because conventional science and physics deem PK as fake
Rose Cinderfall: but to remain sane you have to hold on to some science
Rare peypey: is it alright if i ask a question more on the philosophy behind paranormal abilities? this is a more specific lecture
Rainsong: It seems to fit here. Go ahead. (I’m no philosopher, though)
Chirotractor: if things seem a bit too much like a story then it’s time to get suspicious
Wayfarer: Ehhhh I am reluctant to say that our scientific models limit people per se. Those models are based on observations we’ve already made. I don’t care whether or not conventional science says something is or isn’t possible, I care whether it’s actually possible.
Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer: But conventional science’s definitions of possible and impossible seems to be what a lot of society holds on to in order to not stray too far away from sanity. Except we as psions who practice this stuff, believe (and some of us know) that it’s possible and real, so i at least chose to discard the parts of science that claim it’s not possible…
Wayfarer: I mean, in the West, in certain places, at certain levels of education, sure.
Wayfarer: But conventional science isn’t something that a vast majority of the world’s population are actually familiar with, sooooo
Rose Cinderfall: Yes, I mean the stuff taught in schools
Rainsong: Not even all of the West. It’s a matter of contention between American and French scientists, for example
Rose Cinderfall: And the general “common knowledge” kind of science all around western culture
Wayfarer: Western culture is like, a pretty small fraction of the world though. Most of Africa and huge parts of Asia don’t have any basic science education at the public school level. And yet gravity still works there? I don’t think the scientific education has much influence on How Things Are, is what I’m saying.
Rare peypey: @Flux do you think that practice even matters? there are people who work on achieving enlightenment type phenomena and achieve abilities spontaneously. assuming the stories (eastern philosophy, and flying saints etc) are true, what seems to matter is connection to something greater than oneself, and attuning to it. the monk’s method is meditation, the saint’s method is reading scripture, and the psion’s method is practicing abilities. any thoughts on that?
Wayfarer: There is a bias in the material sciences against parapsychology but the material sciences are only a few hundred years old, tops.
Rose Cinderfall: fair point..
Rare peypey: @Flux and I have been thinking about this
Rare peypey: i accidentally deleted half a sentence
Rose Cinderfall: but for example, I live in western society, and when I was a child and pursued psionics and psychokinesis and energy work, and did it too openly, at the time, i’d often (in most cases) be met with words like “that’s not possible”, “that’s scientifically impossible”, “you’re wasting your time”, etc
Rainsong: From physicists?
Rose Cinderfall: no.. my parents, my family, my friends, almost everyone around me
Wayfarer: Sure, of course. But that’s an effect of cultural acceptance and belief, which the material sciences are also subject to.
Rainsong: Or from folks whose knowledge of the scientific method is half-remembered middle-school stuff?
Wayfarer: Within the parapsychology literature there’s a lot of distinction made between psi-believing and non-believing cultures, dating back to the 50s at least.
Wayfarer: Because, well, it matters.
Rare peypey: even in psi believing cultures, it tends to be a thing that other people far away do. or something someone scary you should stay away from does
Flux: I think a question might be, if practice matters, why?
Wayfarer: To key over to the practice mattering bit…yes? Basically the entire focus of my research is that if you’re learning psi like this, like a skill, then practice matters. If you’re acquiring skills through spiritual attainment or whatever, then practice still matters, but it’s practicing something else.
Rose Cinderfall: “Or from folks whose knowledge of the scientific method is half-remembered middle-school stuff?” I suppose? I don’t know if everyone around me based it on that, but like i said, it was my parents, my family, my friends, almost everyone around me
Wayfarer: Milarepa didn’t become psychic without practicing. The dude meditated for years and years. He developed psi skills secondarily rather than as a primary goal, but the practice was there.
Flux: Has the benefit of being in a psi believing culture been quantified?
Flux: Right, but if I practice riding a bike, I’m not assumed to get better at math.
Wayfarer: But you are assumed to get better at running.
Rose Cinderfall: And it made it hard. Because I had to hold on to my passion for energy work and psionics, despite everyone around me telling me it wasn’t real. And try to get things working so that i’d see that it’s real. Even though my belief at the time was “It might be real, it might not be, i really want it to be real, i really hope it’s real, let’s try it , i hope it works eventually”
Flux: You’ll get better at running, yes. But not pitching.
Rare peypey: how is scripture the cycling to the running of pk
Rose Cinderfall: and somehow i got it working even though i didn’t have full belief
Rose Cinderfall: but that was a huge barrier to get through
Rose Cinderfall: and required a lot of passion for it
Flux: The analogy of course breaks down. It’s not super strong, but I think it got across the point I was trying to make.
Wayfarer: Christian mystics don’t get psychic by lieu of reading the scripture, they get psychic through the concentration and realization of the meditation on those scriptures and the realization of wisdom that comes with that discipline, among other things.
Flux: Eh, that’s a big assumption. We don’t know why they get magick powers.
Wayfarer: Well, it worked better than you thought, but you went with cycling and math. In fact, the practice of religious mystics who develop psi abilities and the practice of psi abilities as a skill-unto-themselves are much more closely related than, say, cycling and math.
Rose Cinderfall: back to my point though, when you discard parts of science, it can be hard to not fall into fluffy bunny territory
Flux: Conceptually, sure. But that doesn’t mean much given our limited understanding of psi.
Wayfarer: I mean, the Buddha specifically instructed monks “hey, doing this is gonna get you psychic powers, but don’t get weird about it because they’re a distraction.”
Flux: From that lens and perspective, then yes, psychic stuff comes from meditation.
Wayfarer: Sure, but we’re not going to get anywhere with “welp we can’t do anything at all because we don’t have objective knowledge of how psi works,” so I find it a bit more useful to use what we do know from the field itself and related fields.
Rainsong: Rose: Don’t discard science at all. Just don’t get trapped by pseudp-scientific bullshit… there’s a lot of it around 😀
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: Is “psionics and psychokinesis and magick and energy work are impossible” pseudo-scientific bullshit?
senpai…: “Don’t get weird about it” Levaites through town while spining like a gyroball
Wayfarer: You certainly can use a skill-based approach focused on practical exercise to learn psi abilities without spiritual study at all, is the thing. But it’s not the only thing, because there are people who develop psi secondarily to another thing (spiritual development). Their goal is spiritual attainment, and they may or may not get that, but they do get psychic ability. They seem related in that regard.
Rainsong: Rose: yes
Flux: I’m not arguing against using what we have, only that the basis is a little flimsy, and that their is good opportunity to explore other methods and ideas.
Rare peypey: @senpai… good luck on enlightenment this cycle – buddha
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: I’d love some sources to back that up
Flux: There are people that develop psi abilities spontaneously. That’s a weird thing.
Wayfarer: I personally only teach psi using a psi-as-skill approach because I’m not comfortable teaching people spirituality (there are more qualified teachers). So I definitely don’t think it’s required.
Wayfarer: Sure. There are people who are supertasters automatically, and people who learn to taste things as a skill.
Flux: Btw, I don’t want to sound like a critic. I’m just voicing some personal bits of confusion.
Wayfarer: I gotcha, it’s all good.
Rainsong: Rose: https://www.livescience.com/20896-science-scientific-method.html
Flux: The difference is that the supertasters don’t usually spontaneously get that ability later in life.
Flux: That’s weird.
Rare peypey: you could compare that to savants who get their abilities from a car crash i guess
Flux: Yes.
Flux: You could.
Flux: Our the Hulk never needing to work out do to gamma radiation. Not a recommended route.
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: Okay, so what pseudo-science underlies western society’s claim that energy work and psionics and magick aren’t real, and what’s pseudo-scientific about it? Because I’ve never actually seen what’s behind those claims, other than some vague parts of conventional physics taught in schools
Wayfarer: Not usually. But the people who develop psi ability fall into 6 categories usually, per Naparstek’s researcch.
Rainsong: Joe McMoneagle is said to have started noticing psychic input following an injury. I’m not recalling the details at the moment, however, and could well be mistaken on that one
senpai…: I wonder if spiritual attainment worked just because of being so devoted to something to get the psi abilitys. like what if someone was highly religus level psycotic serial killer, doing like those blood rituals and chanting? Would that also count?
Wayfarer: I have to get the book (it’s downstairs) but off the top of my head they are
Wayfarer: Can’t get all 6 off my head but the main ones are contact with a guru and trauma for later manifestations.
Chirotractor: much of it is just about clearing out the subconcious noise and pigshit I think
Rare peypey: @Wayfarer we have anecdotally observed that everyone with an above basic proficiency in psi have been through some sort of childhood trauma. is that something you’ve observed too?
Wayfarer: A lot, not everyone.
Chirotractor: Most people have had /some/ sort of childhood trauma full stop
Chirotractor: it’s very easy to get traumatized
Flux: There are degrees.
Wayfarer: I’ve met people who had skills predating the traumas, and I’ve met people who just had spontaneous awakenings from other things (spiritual crisis, contact with a guru, just happened, etc.). Trauma definitely is one though.
Wayfarer: Also whoever asked about the establishment of belief vs non-belief, I hesitated because “quantified” is not something you can do with like, belief states. But it’s established within the parapsychological literature.
Flux: That was my question. Thanks for the answer.
senpai…: childhoodd trama? Ha this is Earth, most people live in a contant state of never ending trama. Like Earths just one very long tramatic experince.
Rare peypey: not the sort of trauma
Rainsong: Rose: actual scientific method cannot prove that psionics is impossible because psionic effects have been demonstrated in the lab, as well as spontaneously. If they have happened, they are therefore possible. That isn’t to say that the mechanism by which they operate has been discovered scientifically, because the mechanisms are still pretty much uinknown
Rare peypey: we mean emotional and/or physical abuse from bpd/npd parents, severe bullying etc
Flux: Almost dying.
Rainsong: And, the known forces that could produce the effects are all problematic, because of some weird factors involved in psionics… mostly distance and source-of-energy issues
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: Proponents of “it isn’t real” seem to argue using “it hasn’t been proven to be real, so it isn’t real” instead of “it hasn’t been proven to not be real, so it could perhaps be real”
Flux: But the way the person reacts is also important. Not everyone will react the same way to the same stimulus.
Rose Cinderfall: but, yes, that makes a lot of sense!
Rainsong: Those proponents don’t understand what science is, then
Flux: Negative proofs aren’t usually a thing in science. Hell, proofs aren’t really a thing.
Wayfarer: I am trying to find you some particulars also. I think Alvarado has some work on that in particular with regards to auras.
Wayfarer: Negative proofs are impossible, “proof” is questionable.
Flux: I don’t like saying impossible, but essentially, yes.
Flux: Math has proofs.
Rare peypey: @Wayfarer do you know which paper by naparstek has the 6 factors off the top of your head? i can’t find it
Wayfarer: The thing of proof generally is that it’s deductive and all scientific observation is inherently inductive but we’re getting hard into some philosophy of science stuff at that point.
Flux: Yes.
Wayfarer: It’s a book, not a paper. Hold on.
Wayfarer: I want to say it’s Your Sixth Sense.
Rose Cinderfall: Rainsong: That would mean that a large swath of western civalization doesn’t understand what science is…
Wayfarer: Yeah?
Wayfarer: That’s uh, yes?
Rainsong: Rose: yep
Rainsong: And?
Wayfarer: Most people who aren’t scientists don’t get science and even many scientists don’t.
Rare peypey: okay i’ll find somewhere to get your sixth sense then. thanks 🙂
Wayfarer: Because scientists tend to be good at science but not at philosophy of science, for example.
Wayfarer: It’s on Amazon at the very least.
Rose Cinderfall: ….well, as a child growing up, i assumed the people around me knew what science was…
Wayfarer: I’ll get the book later and at least get you the list.
Rose Cinderfall: and that science itself denied the possibility of psionics and energy work
Rose Cinderfall: instead of the people’s interpretation of science
Rainsong: And grant-funding institutions do not have limitless resources, so there is a tilt in what gets researched at any given time
Flux: I’m running away to take a walk. Looks like a fun lecture/discussion.
Rare peypey: science hasn’t denied the possibility, it’s the scientists that have
Rare peypey: and even then, only most
Rainsong: Be well, Flux
Flux: You too.
Rose Cinderfall: why did scientists deny the possibility? When it hasn’t been proven to be impossible?
Rose Cinderfall: And when so many of us practice it? And it has been demonstrated/proven in labs?
Rare peypey: it’s hard to prove a negative. and limited resources
Rainsong: Some of the effects are inconvenient and/or scary, so they don’t want to look at them.
Rainsong: It happens in other fields, too. Medicine is notorious for this
Vampire of Death: I just want to ask this question.
Vampire of Death: Is witchcraft, psionics, and energy work a form of metaphysics?
Rare peypey: also, regardless of your beliefs. this is a weaker more finicky phenomena than anything physical
Rare peypey: don’t be surprised if things don’t act like physical things
Rainsong: PK is physical, by definition. We just don’t know how it works
Wayfarer: If you’re talking about proof, you’re not talking about science. Straight up.
Vampire of Death: So, science isn’t proof?
Rare peypey: true, physical isn’t the right word. maybe corporeal
Rose Cinderfall: this lecture is amazing
Wayfarer: Proof is a thing of philosophy and math. It’s deductive. Science is always inductive.
Rare peypey: not even that actually
Wayfarer: An observation is a sign, an indication that other things probably work that way. Repeating an experiment gives us confidence that the induction “if I do x, y happens” is strong, but it doesn’t prove it, because a proof is a deductive thing.
Vampire of Death: Deductive, and science being inductive means science is a faith?
Rainsong: BlackBorn: There is some overlap, but I’m not sure if they all fit within Metaphysics as a field of Philosophy. But, as mentioned, I’m no philosopher
Wayfarer: “All ducks are birds, there is a duck, therefore there is a bird” is a proof. “That thing over there is a bird” is an induction.
Vampire of Death: I have played with astral ‘fire’ before, and also regular fire in experiments with friends.
Vampire of Death: And by myself when I was younger.
Rose Cinderfall: Blackborn/Strigoi: “Metaphysics” as we use it seems to be an umbrella term for anything occult, including energy work, psionics, and so on
Rose Cinderfall: not a field of philosophy
Vampire of Death: And the difference is the ‘astral’ fire seems to burn without needing fuel.
Vampire of Death: PK relies on the physics of the present plane.
Rare peypey: @Vampire of Death if you go deep enough, everything is faith. you can’t prove that your senses are real, and everything is from an input you can’t trust for sure
Wayfarer: No, it means that a lot of the discourse around science has resulted in people thinking that science is proof and must be taken as absolute fact. It’s not a thing of science, it’s a thing of “science.”
Wayfarer: And “PK relies on the physics of the present plane” may very well be true, but we don’t perfectly know the physics of the present plane.
Vampire of Death: Well, it isn’t like it is told to people how to think when they are trained to be told how to think?
Wayfarer: Because, well, PK is a thing, and our understanding of the physics of our world says PK shouldn’t be a thing. So…
Rare peypey: any resources on astral fire you would recommend @Vampire of Death ? seems interesting to look into at the very least
Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer: exactly
Wayfarer: What that means is the scientific understanding of physics is insufficient. Which, of course, any scientist would agree with.
Vampire of Death: I don’t have a resource, it’s actually equivalent to generating a psyball and oscillating the frequency of it until it is essentially ‘hot’, and anything that connects with it is ‘struck’ by a fireball if you can direct it.
Wayfarer: Because we don’t need scientists if we have perfect understanding. Engineers, sure, but not scientists. Because science is all about gaining an understanding.
Vampire of Death: I haven’t practiced it.
Vampire of Death: But this is what I’m going to try.
Rare peypey: ah it’s basically flaring but IR
Rose Cinderfall: Strigoi: seems quite advanced…
Rare peypey: that’s the incremental mindset speaking
Rose Cinderfall: ….yes, true
Vampire of Death: Advanced?
Vampire of Death: In what manner?
Rare peypey: people mess about trying to build up to things
Rose Cinderfall: in the sense that it seems like in order to do that you need to be manipulating temperatures first
Rose Cinderfall: (cryo/pyrokinesis)
Vampire of Death: I am starting with the basics, and then get to that point as well.
Rose Cinderfall: as they used to be called
Vampire of Death: If people report changing temperature from a distance, I wonder if I could actually manifest it infront of myself.
Vampire of Death: And try to ‘shake’ it, to be able to tell it’s real.
Rare peypey: man, those were the days. when there were wikis dedicated to different forms of pk
Wayfarer: lmao
Wayfarer: And all of them like
Rose Cinderfall: i kinda like how it’s all under the term “psychokinesis” now
Wayfarer: “to do the cryokinesis, visualize the thing colder”
Vampire of Death: I know one of the old ones I was going to give to Rose.
Vampire of Death: Yeah, pretty much, Wayfarer.
Vampire of Death: I was a roleplayer.
Rose Cinderfall: @Wayfarer aren’t I lucky my first introduction to cryokinesis was Rainsong’s article about it on PsiPog
Vampire of Death: So by the time I got here, it wasn’t hard to ‘visualize’ and then be descriptive because you have to consistently do that when you roleplay.
Rose Cinderfall: instantly went deep into “make the atoms move slower”
Wayfarer: It’s always been under the term psychokinesis or telekinesis, the subdivisions into all sorts of little shit was pretty much exclusively a thing of Internet people gamifying the field.
Vampire of Death: It’s essentially learning to write stories about specific characters and their life, and goals, etc, to put on the pretense of actually killing someone.
Vampire of Death: “Combat” RP.
Rare peypey: the article is called fire and ice. i remember it very well. i started practicing the week before psipog was archived
Rose Cinderfall: yes, fire and ice!
Rare peypey: and that was the last article i read before the archive
Rose Cinderfall: that article is actually what brought me to PSC
Rose Cinderfall: because i remembered that i had read it in my childhood
Vampire of Death: It’s essentially what sparked my interest into ‘super powers’ and then the pk stuff.
Rose Cinderfall: and realised “oh, that came from psipog!”
Vampire of Death: One of my characters had most if not all of the abilities.
Rose Cinderfall: “oh, Rainsong is around, the one who wrote that article!”
Vampire of Death: There’s an manga called “Akira.”
Vampire of Death: It has someone who has destructively gifted PK.
Vampire of Death: And how they struggle with that power within themselves.
Vampire of Death: Not to blow up the planet for instance.
Vampire of Death: In rage or anxiety.
Vampire of Death: They’re very, dangerous.
Rose Cinderfall: I don’t like all these fictional materials that convey “powers”, like superhero comics
Rose Cinderfall: it makes it seem so exclusive
Vampire of Death: It’s just very fun.
Vampire of Death: It’s an action manga set into the future.
Vampire of Death: Dystopia.
Vampire of Death: There’s other things to it.
Vampire of Death: It can be dark / mature, however.
Rose Cinderfall: i guess, but it hammers that message down even more, that psionics is supposedly impossible and is only in fiction and only for a select few in the global civalization
Rose Cinderfall: i find it kinda toxic
Rose Cinderfall: that’s just my opinion though
Vampire of Death: Well, no.
Vampire of Death: There were other characters.
Vampire of Death: With specialized abilities.
Vampire of Death: Because a lot of the time, they weren’t taught, they just awakened.
Vampire of Death: Or were experimented on.
Vampire of Death: The story gets more advanced
Rare peypey: but not everyone could do it. that’s the point
Vampire of Death: There’s a lot into it.
Rose Cinderfall: this lecture is getting really philosophical xD
Rainsong: I often wish we didn’t publish “Fire and Iee” on Pog. It was written for a different purpose, and therefore left out some details that would have made sense to include ahd it been meant for a site aimed at beginners. Peebs and I decided to post it just because of some questions that had come up in the community that same week
Rose Cinderfall: what? why? I loved that article! And I loved practicing what was in it.
Vampire of Death: Because in the wrong hands it can be destructive.
Wayfarer: Did you succeed?
Vampire of Death: Information is not meant to be censored but controlled.
Wayfarer: Nah nothing to do with that lmao
Rare peypey: basics being like energy management?
Wayfarer: Pog in the late stages was already well past “fuck it, things can be destructive”
Rose Cinderfall: Wayfarer: I don’t want to answer that in this lecture room, but i’ll answer in #social-hall
Rare peypey: i’m not worried about a superhero attack irl lmao
Vampire of Death: Lmao, same.
Rainsong: I said already why: “It was written for a different purpose, and therefore left out some details that would have made sense to include ahd it been meant for a site aimed at beginners.”
Vampire of Death: We’re not trained or incentivized to learn this.
Rainsong: It was incomplete for that purpose
Vampire of Death: I want to learn it.
Wayfarer: I mean shit by 2003 or 2004 people were dying. Pog never really concerned itself with safety and held very strictly to an ethos of “all information should be free.”
Vampire of Death: For myself, and for control of what I can already do.
Rare peypey: what happened to that advanced site by float?
Wayfarer: Whereas the best teachers these days are all about “information should be $75 / hour or $50 / hour for regular lessons”
Vampire of Death: It’s their profession now.
Rose Cinderfall: …people died from the info on PsiPog?
Vampire of Death: ??
Vampire of Death: Of course they could.
Vampire of Death: But they’re not liable.
Rose Cinderfall: yeah but from practicing the stuff on there or from people killing people using psi? :sweatsmile:
Rare peypey: Both
Rare peypey: Not just from psipog though
Rare peypey: And signposting the basics doesn’t make you responsible for anything
Wayfarer: Eh? I mean I don’t think people likely died from practicing random shit on there, I just know that there were individuals there who were pretty specifically doing “let’s kill people” as their main goal and did succeed at times and that was just a kind of thing that went on.
Rare peypey: People can die from doing Psi practice (it’s rare of course). Many people practiced Psi using info from that site. It would follow then that people could have died
Wayfarer: I legitimately think that psychic stuff is a distraction from any kind of spiritual path but I teach it anyhow because people want to learn it and I’m good at teaching it. It’s distinct from the spiritual stuff I do. I don’t feel like I’m responsible for what people do with the stuff I teach but I also explicitly don’t teach people how to do violence with it. I can’t be responsible for people being on a spiritual path but I don’t teach people how to do things explicitly that I wouldn’t do myself. If they figure out those things on their own, that’s on them.
Wayfarer: That incidentally loops back around to the discussion with Flux earlier; they are sometimes adjacent things but they aren’t necessarily the same thing and in fact I necessarily make a distinction between them despite I do spiritual practices which also benefit my psi stuff.
Rare peypey: To clarify your point on spirituality helping, you think the benefits come from meditation type practices within the spiritual system?
Wayfarer: I think that meditation and contemplating the nature of existence as well as establishing a sense of self that doesn’t separate “self” from “other” and, ultimately, abnegation of the ego all result in improvements in psi performance, yeah.
Wayfarer: For example, for telepathy, breaking down the idea that there is a “self” that has “thoughts” that “belong to” it, and there are “others” that have “thoughts” that “belong to” them, and those are distinct things, helps considerably. It’s not necessary, but mystics generally abnegate the ego as a matter of course (it’s arguably the defining feature), and so doing will improve telepathic functioning without explicitly setting out to do so.
Chirotractor: I mean. I like to be distracted
Wayfarer: Specific kinds of meditation, and not even special spiritual meditation, but just bog standard mindful awareness stuff, can also improve psi functioning, because it helps us recognize sensations and perceptions that are arising and to recognize their causes. Our etheric and astral fields are constantly interacting with things around us and often translating those interactions into perceptions in the physical body that we ignore because we have been taught to ignore perceptions that don’t correspond to observable causes from the standard five senses.
Wayfarer: When we meditate mindfully, we can start to recognize those arising perceptions, and their causes, and that they are not physical in nature. For example, the arising of emotions when in a charged room or when making certain kinds of psychic contacts, or psychometric information, or so on. Through that recognition, we break down the habit of ignoring unsupported perceptions. Through breaking down that habit, we become more sensitive.
Wayfarer: When we incorporate these things into a plan for developing psi specifically, it works even better (and we can use journaling and specific kinds of meditations to improve it further). But it does so automatically, regardless of if we’re trying to learn psi. People who are spiritually advanced do this without “becoming psychic” being a goal at all, so they get all the same benefits, but they generally don’t label these things.
Wayfarer: In anthroposophical circles, this is where we see a distinction between psychic stuff and intuitive stuff. The intuitive stuff is “heart governed” and just sort of automatic. You don’t empathically feel another’s feelings, you just kinda know how they feel, and it’s not “psychic” or specifically identified as “psychic” because it’s just part of a person’s natural awareness.
Wayfarer: In so-called natural psychics, we see this also. @Rainsong will recall that I specifically sought out information about this stuff because I realized that I was working with information a lot of people weren’t. Until I realized that, I never considered myself “psychic.” I was just a kid being a kid, and it wasn’t until I was pretty old that I realized that my way-of-being was not the same as other people’s and then started looking around to figure that out.
Wayfarer: In fact I may have found that out after I’d already met her, I am vaguely recalling the realization that “telepathy” was a thing I did but didn’t realize had a name because it was just kinda a thing I did.
Rainsong: Yep, that’s true
Wayfarer: Like I knew what “telepathy” was but thought it must be describing something else because I mean why would we have a fancy name for a thing everyone does automatically all the time?
Rainsong: Especially when the neighbours are as “noisy” as yours were at the time
Rose Cinderfall: goodnight..
Wayfarer: Right I mean who doesn’t know what’s happening in their neighbor’s house all the time? I’d never experienced not that.
Rainsong: Goodnight, rose
Wayfarer: And with that dumb realization I bridged from “intuitive” to “psychic” and forever fucked up my life and doomed myself to be a fringe wonk lmao
Rare peypey: That could have been diagnosed as a learning disability if you had been seen by a psychologist about it. The lack of separation of self and other is something that develops at a young age but isn’t something you’re born with
Rare peypey: Separation of minds I mean. A baby covering their eyes to make the world dark because others can’t have different info and perspectives
Wayfarer: I was assessed for ADHD. In fact I really struggled with a particular face recognition task, where faces were drawn on a paper and I was asked to say what their emotions were.
Wayfarer: I struggled because they were faces on paper and didn’t have emotions.
Wayfarer: It didn’t make sense to me that I would connect faces to emotions because why would you do that? I mean just know what emotions people are feeling, what do faces have to do with it?
Rare peypey: So you probably missed out on development of non psychic empathy, that’s an interesting thought
Wayfarer: There was a discussion of possible autism but I didn’t have any trouble with actual human beings so we just kinda taught me what faces went with what emotions and rolled with it.
Wayfarer: I was really young at this point, 2nd grade, and I remember most of this story through a 25 year old lens, but that part certainly stuck out for my parents.
Wayfarer: 3rd grade, maybe.
Wayfarer: That part in particular is documented though, I have seen that particular report as an adult. But yeah, at the time we weren’t entertaining “he’s psychic” as a concept, it was just very confusing to me why I was being asked to report on the emotions of a piece of paper.
Wayfarer: @Flux https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/eada/9de9b6b6d153ddb6dd713f5adf0090d568c3.pdf this is one such study but this has been replicated pretty well. I haven’t read this paper, just the abstract, but it’s consistent with what I learned in classes.
Rare peypey: Thank you for all the info on your beliefs. It seems to parallel what flux and I have reached through our work using case studies and experiences. It’s encouraging to know that we aren’t just going off on some nutjob tangent away from everything
Rare peypey: I’ll read that now
Wayfarer: Based on our conversation earlier, the struggle you’ll likely have is one that the field in general is having: psi isn’t quantifiable but it’s something qualifiable through reports on experience.
Wayfarer: I took a class on qualitative research methods as part of my degree. I went into it actively hostile to the concept – my background is counseling psychology so I’m used to doing statistics and taking measurements and turning things into numbers that are “quantitative.” But that approach is really, really bad for psi research as well as for training psi performance.
Rare peypey: We noticed that it was bad for training Psi performance, which is why we moved away from the team telepathy methods and have improved by leaps and bounds in comparison
Wayfarer: Much better approaches are subjective, not objective. Affinity studies and surveys and things like this work much better for getting people’s experiences of psi. We can’t measure someone’s psi experiences, but we can talk about them and then do qualitative semantic analysis to determine what words they use. I want to say it’s Alvarado again who did a study of shamanistic intiations, the “death and rebirth” calling experience, and assessed it for consistency in themes and so on.
Wayfarer: The telepathy team methods are something I was using to try to grab some base metrics but I have also moved hard away from that.
Wayfarer: Telepathy team was something I was doing during a parapsychology course basically to replicate some experiments. I ended up really not liking it, and there are a number of reasons at this point that we can point to that discuss why it’s not a great method for training. The main one is that task repetition doesn’t lead to improvement in psi tasks usually, but the opposite in fact.
Wayfarer: Let me find you another good piece of reading you might like, though it’s a bit long
Wayfarer: http://summit.sfu.ca/item/17780 full-text is downloadable.
Rare peypey: Oh wow its a thesis paper. I’ll have a look, I thought it couldn’t be longer than some of the giant review papers I had to read for my masters, but it is by a long shot
Wayfarer: If you want I have like a 3 page summary of the relevant parts I wrote for that class as part of my weekly “is this guy actually doing anything” requirements.
Rare peypey: Maybe a good method for quantification is to get some baseline data using the team telepathy methods, followed by a period of training using methods conducive to improving with periodic data gathering via team telepathy method sessions
Wayfarer: Yeah, basically that’s what I stand on. I actually prefer subjective measures of progress even there, because the goal-oriented fixed-mindset approach is absolutely toxic to psi performance.
Rare peypey: Yeah the summary would be great. I’ll read the actual paper but that’ll take a long time, so the takeaway points would be good for now
Rare peypey: It really is bad for Psi. Anecdotal example but flux’s telepathy accuracy decreased from 40% to 0-10% over many sessions using that method
Rare peypey: And where we are now, we describe actions, surroundings, feelings, the direction of thoughts etc spontaneously. The data driven method got us nothing, but the more free method helped us grow
Rare peypey: Just realised it’s been over 18 months since we started
Wayfarer: Yeah. The main reason for that effect that people have come up with is that the task repetition leads to boredom and the goal fixation leads to discouragement on misses. Without feedback on when you’re doing it “right” vs doing it “wrong” all you get is reinforcement of “bad” sessions.
Rare peypey: There may be some truth to that. We observed that when we got one success, we usually got 4-5 successes back to back. It could be explained by our mindsets or that a link had been established though
Rare peypey: Back in team telepathy that was
Rare peypey: When done more qualitatively, you can have partial hits and feel improvement
Rare peypey: Similar to rv protocols except less worrying about analytical overlay
Wayfarer: The single biggest problem of the approach is that you’re training for a lab task but not in general. The vast majority of psi experiences don’t take place in laboratories, so training under lab conditions restricts us in an unnatural way. It’s kind of like trying to learn a martial art but you only train in an inflatable funhouse.
Rainsong: That could be fun, but would get expensive if you’re using thrown weapons or live steel…
Wayfarer: If you look at the work of, for example, Ian Stevenson, you see that telepathic experience has this wide range and variety and that the way those telepathic experiences are experienced isn’t even consistent. So when you train with a limited range of phenomena and those phenomena must be from a multiple choice selection, you aren’t working in a natural, psi-conducive environment.
Wayfarer: For my part, and specifically with my students, I have decided to emphasize an approach that removes those kinds of situations but instead focuses on a subjective sense of telepathic awareness. The goal is not to perform statistically better than chance on forced choice tasks, but rather to be telepathic. Whether or not one is telepathic is really best assessed by the person him or herself.
Wayfarer: I am fully aware that the approach I choose doesn’t provide a level of scientific evidence that’s statistically verifiable and which can serve to demonstrate the existence of psi and all that, but that’s because that’s not the task. The task is to increase people’s intuitive and psychic abilities.
Rare peypey: Some would say confirmation bias, but I don’t think those people have experienced the phenomena
Wayfarer: Realistically, even if I’m training people to develop strong confirmation biases, if their functioning in the world is enhanced and they are receiving the results they want from that confirmation bias, then that’s … okay? I mean I’m not doing that, but if I were, it wouldn’t be a bad thing necessarily. That’s also what I was saying in the other channel about pragmaticism vs “being psychic.”
Wayfarer: I want to improve people’s awareness, intuitive function, and psychic ability, but not for the purpose of being able to make big statistical effects. Least of all because the big statistical effects are already out there. People say sometimes “you should do some studies so you can prove psi is real” but there are extremely, extremely significant studies already published. No number of statistical studies is going to make parapsychology accepted by the mainstream scientific community.
Rainsong: Or as DanielH put it, those many years ago, “I don’t care if it’s natural, as long as it happens when I want it to”
Rare peypey: By the significant studies, you mean the autoganzfeld metanalysis stuff?
Wayfarer: So I’m not interested in wasting my time with that. Yesterday my wife was outside in the hammock. I was inside talking to a friend. I stood up, told him “my wife is about to come in, so I’m going to go sit in the hammock with her before she does.” I opened the door as she was sitting up. She had just decided to come in. Is that scientific proof that Ray Hyman has to personally apologize to me? Absolutely not. But it’s the life I live. If that were an isolated thing I might say “oh okay, what a neat coincidence.” But that’s so completely normal for me that the people around me say I’m psychic. That’s good enough for me.
Wayfarer: Yeah, Honorton’s autoganzfeld work and a lot of the RV corpus both are extremely compelling statistically but Hyman is a fantastic champion for his side and if those studies aren’t compelling enough (and the scientific community is willing to accept “the studies must be flawed because they demonstrate an effect that can’t be demonstrated” as legitimate criticism) then there’s really no point.
Wayfarer: I mean it’s not perfect. A few weeks ago I was walking the dogs with my kid strapped to my chest and there was a couple waiting on a street corner that I felt very strongly were going to try to snatch my kid. They were definitely trying to grab a kid.
Wayfarer: As I came back around the block I saw their kid get off the schoolbus and meet them at the corner.
Wayfarer: They 100% wanted to snatch a kid, but it was their kid. Not perfect information, but definitely information.
Wayfarer: lmao
Wayfarer: And that’s just kinda how telepathy is, because it happens through the lens of our own mental interpretation. All telepathic experiences are kind of through a lens, darkly, and it’s another thing that we can’t really account for with forced-choice card calling tasks.
Wayfarer: The lab tasks simply don’t reflect what the actual phenomena is like.
Rare peypey: Yeah perfect info is hard. That reminds me, slightly more practical but I wanted to ask about something you mentioned on telepathy being good for getting over the language barrier. We tried encoding sentences in meaningless sounds that we would repeat, but got nothing. It seems to be harder because language is more abstracted than sensory info and imagined sensory info
Wayfarer: Telepathy gets over the language barrier because it grabs the concepts underlying the words before the formation of the intent to speak, as far as I can tell. This is subjective/experiential stuff.
Wayfarer: So the quick tangent on models is they’re all guesses and they vary. This isn’t gospel stuff here.
Wayfarer: My model for telepathy builds off the yogacarin/cittamantrin model of consciousness. There are karmic “seeds” that “fruit” into consciousness-events. People in a room will all see the same table because we have a collective karma that fruits in that particular experience. Based on other experiences the expression of that karmic seed varies.
Rainsong: Thanks for participating tonight, everyone. Please feel free to continue in my absense. 🙂 Good night
Rare peypey: Thanks for the lecture, rain. Goodnight
Wayfarer: When people “have thoughts” they are again the fruition of karmic seeds. In Tibetan, it’s an interesting thing to note that you don’t “think something,” but rather the thought of something arises at you. It’s a passive, not an active verb.
Wayfarer: “I think we should go” is rendered “the thought ‘we should go’ arises”
Rare peypey: That’s a more accurate way of describing our experience of thoughts most of the time actually
Rare peypey: Most are spontaneous, not deliberate
Wayfarer: My experience of telepathy makes sense through this lens in that I get the fruition of “other people’s” thoughts arising in my own mind as well. I don’t see them as different, my thoughts or theirs. The thing that is tricky about telepathy is that we don’t ever actually have access to “other people’s” thoughts. We have access to our thoughts about other people’s thoughts.. The thoughts arise in our minds, it’s not that they arise in the other person’s mind and then we “get” them afterwards.
Wayfarer: So, why it’s been useful for me in working across language barriers is I have a sense of the topic and actions that the other person is thinking about and trying to communicate that comes before the attempt to communicate. I might not know the word for a particular object in their language, but when they say “go get the [thing]” the concept of [thing] is sitting there in my own mind and basically manifests as if they’d said it in English rather than in Tibetan (or whatever language)
Rare peypey: That’s a huge perspective shift. I’ve never considered it to be like that. But how would this model explain getting info someone isn’t currently thinking about? Like past memories etc
Wayfarer: Generally it’s prompt-query and it gets a bit woo-ey at that point. But that’s an active task, not a passive one, and I’m specifically talking about passive telepathy here. When we’re doing that, we’re basically trying to prompt the thought to arise in the person then getting the information. OR…
Wayfarer: The other way that’s done is more akin to remote viewing than telepathy itself. You’re getting the information about the information from this kind of field-of-all-knowable-information. Essentially prompting a signal line and getting the information down the signal line.
Rare peypey: Some sort of akashic records type thing
Wayfarer: Sort of like that, yeah. Essentially at a certain point even models of psychic stuff break down but it’s consciousness-events, right? So using that yogacarin model again, in this case we’re kind of going “okay, let’s assume self and other are false distinctions. If I am this other person, and I think about [topic], what phenomena fruit?” and then the phenomena fruit because the distinction between self and other is illusory and why shouldn’t those phenomena arise from that prompt?
Wayfarer: The visualizations we might use, such as “you’re in the other person’s head and you’re going through a filing cabinet of memories,” are a way of communicating the intention of what information we’re trying to access. The result is the information being accessed the same way that person would themselves access it.
Wayfarer: The information doesn’t belong to anyone because self-other duality is illusory, right? So the idea that my filing cabinet and yours are different is also illusory. So I can get that information. The information itself is, in the end, just a series of experiences (colors, sounds, whatever) that I’m trying to get.
Wayfarer: And in all cases, even when I am doing that kind of deep-dive active telepathic snooping, the experience is taking place in my mind, and so it’s going to be tainted by my own experiences, thoughts, ideas, biases, language, etc.
Wayfarer: Which is why telepathic people are by necessity also fairly impressionable and, to an extent, vulnerable to other people’s strongly held beliefs, right? Because if you have strongly held beliefs and ideas and so on, you aren’t really open to those ideas. In fact I’ve used that as a “check” before, where I’ve noticed “oh, shit, that’s not something I believe, okay I need to be shielding now”
Rare peypey: So the ideal telepath has no sense of self and no held beliefs. It’s a bit of a balancing act once you start running into these issues
Wayfarer: And we actually see that when we look at the research. In Remote Viewing Secrets McMoneagle says straight up that the military’s research showed that the best remote viewers have an alternative sort of perspective on reality and tend to be very open to new ideas. You don’t need to have total ego abnegation and be without beliefs at all, but you do absolutely need to have a slightly diminished sense of self and be open to new ideas and at least not strongly averse to specific ideas.
Wayfarer: Because let’s say I uh, I hate oranges for some reason, right? This is gonna be super abstract but just roll with it.
Wayfarer: I fuckin’ hate oranges, and I go in a mind looking for someone’s memory of a certain day, and they were at an orange grove picking oranges and bathing in orange juice, right?
Wayfarer: That person might fuckin’ love that day, but it’s going to be really hard for me to not impose my hatred of oranges onto that memory.
Wayfarer: And that means I might fuck up the memory. I might remember how miserable that person was, even though they weren’t, because they love oranges. I might change oranges into something else. I might just not be able to make the information work at all because the idea of that experience is something my ego decides to just shut down.
Wayfarer: It works the other way too. Let’s say that person hates oranges and I don’t hate oranges, but I get in that memory. Well, they aren’t thinking about oranges, they’re thinking about [thing I hate], so I instead see the whole memory as if it’s apples, because in the new scenario I hate apples.
Wayfarer: Ultimately, telepathic experiences are still experiences we’re having, so they have to go through our own psychological filters and mechanisms and bullshit, and this fucks up our functioning.
Wayfarer: When I talked to my parapsych professor about the telepathy team stuff, his first reaction was “well that’s a good model and it’s consistent but if the symbols are too emotional, you see an inverse effect”
Rare peypey: The symbols weren’t really emotional to anyone other than a cold War era American patriot I thought
Wayfarer: Emotionally charged content does transmit easier, but emotionally charged symbols where the percipient has a strong emotional reaction fuck things up badly.
Wayfarer: Yeah I don’t think we had that problem in that particular experiment.
Wayfarer: But I’m mentioning that because it’s a notable and known effect.
Chirotractor: So emotionally charged things where people biases are the same would transmit best?
Wayfarer: And where the emotional charge isn’t so great as to cause resistance to the concept itself, yeah.
Wayfarer: Ultimately, rapport is the biggest factor there, but the rapport comes from familiarity and why that matters is if you’re familiar with someone you can kinda render their thoughts more accurately to how they are rendering them and so you don’t end up seeing more sensitivity but you end up having the sensitivity solid.
Rare peypey: We did have a bit of an encounter with that though. Flux has an ideologically different view of Christianity to me, so we had different emotional reactions to the cross symbol. Wrong emotions often led to missed results that would otherwise be hits
Wayfarer: A friend of mine moved into my house a few weeks ago, and we’re familiar enough that we’re doing the “wholly formed complete sentences” transmission thing reliably.
Wayfarer: Like the other day when I went “why the fuck is the final countdown stuck in my head” and he told me he’d had it stuck in his head for a few minutes from something he’d read online.
Wayfarer: Right, that’s more or less the thing. I’d put to you that it’s the incongruence in the reaction that changes it. How I teach sensitivity development is by journaling reactions to certain things. Not like, emotional reactions, but visceral physical reactions that don’t result directly from an environment.
Chirotractor: Thanks for that little though virus
Wayfarer: And when you start paying attention to that kind of thing you’ll start to notice stuff like where you feel pressure when talking to a guy.
Wayfarer: Yeah the thing that was amusing was we were sync’d up actually and also we both couldn’t get past the first part of the first verse so we’d just loop the intro. It was a hell of a thing.
Wayfarer: Neither of us know the words. I know the concepts of the first verse, something about leaving for Venus and some shit
Wayfarer: But yeah, so for example churches make me feel a certain way and actually churches of certain denominations feel differently, right? So you can note that kind of thing. Then when you feel that same way in a different environment, that’s useful information because there’s probably a conceptual relationship. Maybe the person you’re talking to is from that kind of church and very devout. Maybe there’s a spirit that is part of that religion. And so on.
Wayfarer: It’s important to take notes because otherwise we can’t map things consistently or reliably. And while the feelings can change, they don’t tend to, because they come from the interactions between energetic fields, which themselves are shaped by consciousness and information.
Wayfarer: Aaaanyhow, I’ll be doing those videos I mentioned I guess hopefully tomorrow? I should’ve done them tonight but now I’ve talked about it way too much and it would get weird. But yeah, aiming for 5-10 minutes with the first one being why I treat psi like skill development, what that means, and how it differs from learning it via spiritual paths.
Rare peypey: So the goal of the journalling is to understand your emotional reactions to phenomena, not remove them. It’s like making a tourists phrase book but to your mind and for your purposes only
Wayfarer: Not emotional reactions only, but physical sensations and so on. But yeah, exactly that.
Wayfarer: I also suggest doing fucking hokey new age “inner self” work and guided meditations and shit, not for the spiritual benefits, but to build a symbolic vocabulary.
Wayfarer: This is another video topic but for example, auras and aura colors, right? Those vary from person to person.
Wayfarer: And people are sensitive to different shit. Think about a really complex chili, right?
Wayfarer: 5 people can taste the same chili and describe it 5 different ways. Why? It’s the same chili.
Rare peypey: They try to communicate it with different experiences as points of comparison, different words and emotions based on their experience in the moment and what comes to mind. But it’s all the same chili
Rare peypey: Yeah I see what you mean
Rare peypey: Hey you’ve given me a lot to think about, I appreciate it. It’s after 3am in England though so I’m gonna go to sleep. Goodnight
Wayfarer: Word. Catch you later. And with that let’s close lecture. lmao