All In Your Head?

[anonymousdark]

I was wondering...do you think that psionic abilities may be nothing more than psychoses? Like you believe in something so hard that your brain makes it seem real, even if it isn't? For instance, psi balls...you concentrate so hard on making the ball that eventually you psych yourself into believing there is one. What do you say about this? Do you really manipulate energy when you make a psi ball or is it just your imagination getting the better of you? Please respond with reasons for your position...I'm having trouble getting over this.

-Anonymous

[The Devil's Advocate]

I have had to choose whether to believe that psionics are real or whether I am crazy. On one hand I lean toward psionics because well if I'm crazy they'll put me in one of those funny jackets that makes you hug yourself all the time, and I don't like me that much.

More seriously there have been personal circumstances spanning about 16 years that lead to me coming out of the worst case of denial you're likely to ever see. The final culmination of that coming about 2 years ago shortly after I joined Psionline. I am a natural empath with a very large passive range. This gives me several lines of observation.

1) The first time I was shielded I didn't know what was happening. I just knew that all of a sudden it had gotten 'quiet' on a level that was not auditory. The friend I was speaking with on line confirmed that he had put up a shield around me. Given that it wasn't coordinated and was simply DONE it was rather convincing.

2) Remove the concept of Psi, and I exhibit no more signs of psychosis than most of the people out there who fall in the rather broad range of 'normal'. Much as I dislike to admit it.

3) I can take shields up and down and notice the impact on my surroundings. Other people can put shields around me without my knowledge and I notice the change.

4) In a practice session I can simply tell someone "I'm sending you something to play with" and send them a specifically designed construct and get an accurate description of what I had done with the construct, without any specifics ever being discussed.

5) There is an independent consistency of account in scanning results once we filter through the difficulty of language for psionics.

4, 3, and 1 imply that control of this is possible outside of my own means and what my own mind is doing. If I can notice a difference, and coordinate with people to pin down timings, and discover they are accurate without prior arrangements, I can safely conclude that something beyond psychosis is in play. 5 backs the previous statements, and points out a limitation we have in actually comparing results: There is no precise language for psionics except in the most general terms. It also makes it more difficult to chalk it up to imagination.

My own results are consistent enough and coordinate enough that it is increasingly difficult to even doubt. I hope this helps.

~The Devil's Advocate

[innerfire]

I'll go with DA, just my two things to add:

1) This is kinda like DA's last point: scanning backs it up. Twice two people have nailed the specific pattern I have on the outer layer of my shields, with no leads whatsoever as to what that would be. The chances of guessing something like that are astronomical.

2) I do tk, while the results are completely locked down, I've done so many practices in different places under different conditions and had success, the probability of all of them being some coincidental cause is also astronomical.

Also, my personal thoughts about the insanity thing, the only way in the face of what I and DA said for things still to be just "crazy," would mean that I'm so far gone that there's not much I could do about it anyway So I may as well just sit back and try to enjoy the ride.

[confuded92]

1. I could read most of the simple constructs. But i am not accurate enough, but enough to give myself a proof.

2.Spinning a psi wheel under plastic. TK is a really good proof for urself.

3.I am having recently overloads (not sure in which field) and shield help a great deal! I could notice the difference witha shield and without.

[darkerside]

anonymousdark said:

I was wondering...do you think that psionic abilities may be nothing more than psychoses? Like you believe in something so hard that your brain makes it seem real, even if it isn't? For instance, psi balls...you concentrate so hard on making the ball that eventually you psych yourself into believing there is one. What do you say about this? Do you really manipulate energy when you make a psi ball or is it just your imagination getting the better of you? Please respond with reasons for your position...I'm having trouble getting over this.

This is THE biggest issue I'm having with practicing right now. There is no way for me to tell whether it's real or whether my brain's playing tricks on me. And even if it's real for other people, like you guys, there's nothing that tells me what I'm doing is real. You could be doing it while my brain is tricking me into believing I'm doing it when I'm not.

The only way I can think to prove its reality is to, as everyone says, find another person to test it with. If another person can sense what you're doing, that proves it's not purely within your head. Unfortunately, all the people I know think this stuff is crazy and would probably throw me in the nut house if I asked them of something like that.

(If you're wondering why I thought you all were crazy at one point, I did come from this same group of people.)

[The Devil's Advocate]

Have you checked out the chat room. A good practice session in scanning can be aranged with 'pass the bouncing psiball' from place to place and tell me what you scan when you get it. We're usually in the chat room around 3pm CST 4pm EST, (GMT-6). Sometimes you just have to trust that it is real, keep practicing, and slowly you'll start noticing the subtle signs that differentiate between your mind playing tricks on you and the real thing.

~The Devil's Advocate

[TC]

On the believing part: We can all sit here and give our amazing testimonies as to why we believe in psionics. We can list reasons upon reasons. We can even try and prove it. But a skeptic will ALWAYS have a counterpoint or a reason as to why this is not justifiable. I like all of your reasonings and I love hearing people's testimonies. I like them, really I do. But it all comes down to the individual and what they decide upon.

I'm not sure why there have been so many posts lately that are related to this topic of "is it real or not?" but it's kinda beginning to sound a little repetitive. I know that two "skeptics" have just recently entered psionline, so I guess its reasonable. But we've had this discussion three times in the last two weeks I think, and I think we've all agreed that it's really up to the individual to believe what their going to believe.

So how do we know it's psionics, and not us making it up? We don't. There's no way to prove that we do have something here called psi. I don't want to rant, but here's what it all comes down to: We can help people with testimony and reasons, but ultimately it's going to be up to them. That's your answer. "We show them the door, but it's up to them to walk through it." I don't remember where I heard that line.

[darkerside]

It's from The Matrix. (Love that movie!)

As far as sending psiballs across the internet goes, I'm just wondering, how is it that you can find someone across the internet only by knowing the screen name and messages of that person? Say you wanted to find me; there might be 100 "darkerside"s on the internet, and I don't think I'd really stand out among them because I'm not psychically inclined.

Also, if you CAN pick people out of the internet, that's almost....scary. That means that, just by posting something on the internet, you become open to god-knows-what in the realms of psychic attack. Hackers already crack people's computers over the internet for fun; what if a new breed develops that attacks the PEOPLE over the internet for fun? Scary thoughts.

[innerfire]

darkerside said:

It's from The Matrix. (Love that movie!)

As far as sending psiballs across the internet goes, I'm just wondering, how is it that you can find someone across the internet only by knowing the screen name and messages of that person? Say you wanted to find me; there might be 100 "darkerside"s on the internet, and I don't think I'd really stand out among them because I'm not psychically inclined.

Also, if you CAN pick people out of the internet, that's almost....scary. That means that, just by posting something on the internet, you become open to god-knows-what in the realms of psychic attack. Hackers already crack people's computers over the internet for fun; what if a new breed develops that attacks the PEOPLE over the internet for fun? Scary thoughts.

I think the concept is that most people connect their minds slightly when talking, even on the internet, which means that you got a line for constructs and such to *follow* to and from people. That's how I assume it works. And unfortunately the situation you were saying can happen, I've been nailed with stuff as a result of walking into the wrong IRC room which really isn't fun -_-

[The Devil's Advocate]

As have I. There are certain chat rooms I will not go to and certain websites I will not visit because of that. It is, however, harder to 'pick up on' someone through just a post than through live interaction, though not at all impossible. The better you know the person the easier it is to pick up on them from 'risidual' things like posts. It's not something I usually do, other than to ID sigs (your psionic 'voice' if you will, that tells me when its YOUR psiball that just splatted on my shields or someone else's.)

~The Devil's Advocate

[psi]

it IS all in your head

[The Devil's Advocate]

Would you care to substantiate your claim or have you come to heckle?

~The Devil's Advocate

[wolfdancer]

Psi would you care to elaborate? I really would like to hear /your/ reasoning behind that statement. I can come up with plenty of my own philosophical explanations that would lead to that conclusion. Descarte did a wonderful job exploring such a possibility and it's effects on how we live life and deal with it as have many others. What exactly /is/ your validation of that statement?


Yes, I realize this is basically the same statement you made DA, but I had already typed it before reloading the page and seeing your post.

[mjmccul]

I believe in TK. I have actually never used TK yet since I have only been practicing for a few days now.
But I have seen people use it.
I don't know about psi balls though. I guess it could make people think that your insane since it is all in your head. Nobody else can see it exept you. But it does have phisical effects on you and other people. Psi balls are very confusing to me.

[wolfdancer]

mjmcul: This is not the place to be posting that style of post. You are liable to get smashed (especially in a thread that has been dormant for some time). Please re-read the entire thread and then take a look at your answer. Consider asking, "did I add anything useful to the discussion? Is it a repeat of someone else?" If the answer to the first is no and the answer to the second yes....it shouldn't be posted.

This is D&D. This means that we debate and discuss topics heatedly in here. The gloves come off. This is a place for stating opinions and why you hold them. While your post had some attempt at analysis, if re-read, I think you will see that you didn't really wind up stating anything on the topic at hand. You questioned it. You didn't give any definitive opinion/answer or support.

~Wolfdancer