Posted on 02/03/2010 3:44:51 PM PST by NYer
“But I know there’s nothing to it whatsoever. Completely imagined superstitious hokum.”
ZX12R
“My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!”
Charles Pierre Baudelaire, The Generous Gambler
“One of Satan’s best tricks in the Twentieth Century, is to make people believe he doesn’t exist”.
C.S. Lewis, Screwtape Letters
“The Devil’s greatest accomplishment was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
The late Jim Carroll
“Skeptics are rarely, if ever, deceived.”
An experiment was conducted: some people sitting in front of a ouija board were blindfolded. A board with letters scrambled was then put in front of them. The planchet still spelled out words in English. Demons are real.
I find it interesting that strongly religious people reject this notion of communicating with something not physically present, yet they pray. I've always wondered what they imagine is happening when they pray. Perhaps they think nothing is actually happening. Something like a Ouija board does seem to provide a "reverse channel", using a process that must be similar to prayer. The rub is, you don't know the identity, intentions, or the power of the entity with which you communicate.
People must be capable of telepathic communications with each other. A person can "send" and "receive" to some outside entity, so it does stand to reason that the transceiver apparatus in people should be more general case than needed for these Ouija communications. I guess that is just a little out of reach.
I do know that I experienced that Ouija board with total disbelief at the outset. Only by observing and experiencing the feel of the pointing process did I alter my viewpoint. After a few years, observed results were considerably more sophisticated. Understanding that there is indeed a spiritual component to life is one positive aspect to these experiences. Extending this concept to general telepathy is more of a stretch; and, I didn’t pursue that in any manner.
It does not surprise me that you reject this whole idea out of hand. Few people are open-minded about spiritual matters. Religious people also reject this even though it tends to corroborate life-after-death notions and the existence of invisible entities that are so crucial to religious beliefs in the first place. I’ve always been a little on the fringe. You do not irritate me by assuming I’m feeding you a line of BS. My experiences reinforce my beliefs, and also confuse my beliefs. I have benefited from the experience, so I have no need of acceptance from anyone. I would like to converse with someone on this matter in order to enrich my own knowledge.
In more recent years I practiced auto writing. That is pretty weird. You can do this by yourself with nothing but pencil and piece of paper. In the end, it is an enormous waste of time. That is a waste of your life. If you do those things an unseen entity requests, you have abdicated your life even without actually being possessed. Ask a Catholic Priest of possession is imaginary.
Still looking.
My monitor now is decorated with partially chewed grapefruit...............lol
“Skeptics are rarely, if ever, deceived.”
Not so.
It may be difficult to deceive them into thinking that a thing exists when it doesn’t, but it is comically easy to gull them into thinking that a thing does not exist when it does.
You know, all other issues aside, and they are LEGION, ...
“tots” are like two or three years old.
GingisK has posted the most authoritative "scientific" experience of the Ouija Board. Though highly educated, I do not pretend to compare my experience with his but do check out my post at #65.
It was not necessary to ask the questions out loud, especially when the sole operator. The entities are not made of matter, they really hear your thoughts. It is necessary for some people to speak before their thoughts are coherent.
The Ouija board is not an essential part of the process. It merely provides a focal point for the intent to communicate.
…what is the manner of propagation, and at what speed do they travel? If the entities can even affect you or the planchette, what is the source of the energy that is doing the work?
I really don't have a clue. I believe that the planchette is moved by their influence on the motor system, so the energy of motion comes from our own muscles. The nature of that influence is a matter for which I have no theory. I had to assume that there is something we mortals haven't figured out about life and the universe. The observed phenomena did not fit with anything I know about physics. The only recourse, barring insanity, is to assume there is something going on that surpasses our understanding. This isn't supposed to be a cop-out, it is the best I can do when fitting the observations into my knowledge base.
I assume that the external entities can hear the thoughts, and seemingly sense other signals in our minds. I experienced one event where the entity expressed gratitude for the classical music I was playing, and said that he could hear it with our ears.
…did you give fair consideration to the idea that the most appropriate and believable explanation is that your imagination was getting the best of you? If you rejected that, why?
Of course, I did give consideration to physical realities and even some sort of group-induced psychological effect. I started off a rather staunch skeptic, but was unable to reconcile the observations with anything I knew to be reality. It took a long time for me to acknowledge that something extraordinary was taking place. It is easy a lot easier to scoff this off than to objectively get one’s belief system destroyed. The most convincing evidence that we didn’t have an overactive imagination was the interruption of a session to get report that an absent member of our group just had a close call with a car wreck. That was verified once she showed up to the apartment. In another case, we sent a message to another group in another town without any other form of communication other than the boards. Imagination would be hard-pressed to provide those events, wouldn’t it?
Bear in mind that all of this happened in the mid 1970s. Communications was strictly land-line based in those days; and, we did validate long distance communications. We knew well the disposition of the telephone in the apartment.
I don’t spend any time with these things now. There is nothing useful to be gained, and I have a lot of things to do. The game THEY play is to influence your life’s decisions and perhaps tap into your sensory perceptions. They are very peculiar parasites.
Oh, dang! I meant to respond to that one. I got lost in the shuffle.
Yes, I have no doubt that your experience was genuine. I'm not sure that Satan is the influence in any of this. I got the impression those spirits enjoyed and perhaps fed on emotion. They often tried to induce fear. I notice that a lot of the 2012 kind of scares seems to be a favorite theme with those critters.
Edgar Cayce spoke of Ouija spirits, and not kindly. Many believe contact with them can be a precursor to spiritual possession. I developed rather frightening dreams, which were dispelled only through fervent prayer and abandoning that bad practice.
On the bright side, I am absolutely sure of the existence of life-after-death and a spiritual existence. It is more complicated "over there" than in real life. I'm not so sure that any current religion has this stuff figured out. Consistent with the short period of time we have had "high technology", I am confident that mankind knows very little about physics or the Universe. We are indeed sheep.
That is a wonderful attitude! ;-D
That is the way I work such things these days.
I have concluded that the human mind is very powerful, indeed. We don't really know the limits of our capability; and, dabbling with that crap convinced of that beyond question. It would be interesting to put some money behind this stuff. Can anyone say, "MK-ULTRA"?
“You could say that leprechauns actually exist, but if you want me agree with you, enlightening me is your burden.”
See? You missed my point completely.
If I assert the existence of something that does exist, you are highly resistant.
If, however, I assert the non-existence of something that does exist, you’re all over that like white on rice.
Consider this: the fact that another human is unable to demonstrate God’s existence to you in no way demonstrates that God did not demonstrate His own existence to that human.
“Maybe I’ve never experienced such things because they fear me, and know I’ll kick their asses.”
Or maybe it’s because your skepticism is taking you to Hell with no effort on their part, and they don’t want to take the chance that messing with you might wake you to your peril.
Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake, as they say.
I agree, its 2010, time to stop believing that a cardboard game will send us to hell.
I don’t believe in the devil, therefore it doesn’t exist to me.
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