Canadian born American citizen known for his skepticism, apparent critical thinking and zealous debunking of paranormal truth claims.
While Randi certainly does have something important to offer, especially when exposing actual frauds, he seems to emphasize only the naturalistic side of spiritual and paranormal issues.
Moreover, Randi demands scientific evidence of ESP and spiritual powers using science as he defines it, as evident in his rather circumscribed “$1,000,000 Paranormal Challenge.”
But there are alternate ways of viewing science, its meaning and appropriate methods. In fact, some postmodern thinkers, philosophers of science and theologians say that science is a kind of religion or myth–i.e. that these conceptual distinctions are not mutually exclusive.
The term ‘Remote Viewing’ (RV) was coined by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff.
RV is the alleged ability to internally perceive objects and events at a distance beyond the range of the normal senses.
Remote Viewers (RVers) usually say they perceive objects and events in the past, present and probable future. But RVers don’t believe they psychologically time travel when seeing the past. Instead, they say they access a holographic cosmic memory bank that records all of the events that ever took place, somewhat like the Akashic Records of Theosophy and Anthroposophy.
With regard to the future, RVers apparently see possible outcomes but don’t claim to predict the future with any certainty.
One difficulty with RV is a margin of error that researcher Dale Graff calls “white noise.” RVers strive to scientifically verify their distance visions and apparently are developing new methods to increase accuracy.
On this point RVers differ from some psychics who remain convinced that their distance visions are accurate without ever attempting to verify them.
Interestingly, RV researcher Russell Targ says his team got better scientific results when they kept the research environment “fun” and relaxed.
Although Targ admits to making money from RVing future probabilities, he reports that human greed came to interfere with the success of his experiments.¹
Targ later introduced the term Remote Sensing because RV may also be accompanied by an inner sense of hearing, smell and touch.
The paranormal writer Rosemary Ellen Guiley says that Remote Sensing is a well-documented phenomenon, both in ancient and contemporary times.
According to Anthony C. LoBaido at WorldNetDaily.com and Steve Hammons at AmericanChronicle.com, the CIA has used RV for intelligence gathering. LoBaido also claims that the FBI has adopted RV for the same purposes.
A fallen angel denotes something gone wrong, either with a person or, more traditionally, with a purely spiritual being who freely chooses to reject and therefore oppose God’s will.
Myths and stories about fallen angels are quite common.
In Paradise Lost John Milton (1608 – 1674) writes about legions of angels following Satan in rebellion against God. Massive wars break out. St. Michael leads the Lord’s Angels, who face ingenious contraptions built by Satan and his fallen army. But the final victory is reserved for Christ and St. Michael stands aside as Jesus defeats the evil army.
In apocalyptic Jewish literature, God exalts human beings above the angels and instructs Satan to serve mankind. Satan and his motley crew of followers refuse and are cast out of heaven, rebellious and revengeful.
Some say the powerful “Sons of Man” mentioned in the Old Testament are Fallen Angels. Others believe that aliens are really fallen angels.
In Islam the personification of evil is Shaytan. In the Koran God commands Iblis to bow down before Adam and serve mankind but through his pride Iblis refuses. God allows Iblis to tempt mankind until Judgement Day, at which time he will be cast into hell.
In Islamic thought Iblis is often seen as the master jinn, the head of demons allowed to torment humanity.
There is no such thing as a fallen angel in Islam. No doubt, in Islam, Iblis a.k.a. Satan is a jinn and he is most evil. However at the same time, he never is nor was an angel. Angels in Islam do not have free will and they cannot disobey God. In terms of Iblis, he used to be a rightous slave of God so much so that he was elevated to the level of angels before he refused to bow down, however, he was never an angel. Jinn, on the other hand, do possess free will and there are good and evil jinn just as there are good and evil humans.
fallen angel: Bùi Linh Ngân
In Hinduism the asuras are described as benevolent spiritual beings in the Vedas but devolve in subsequent Hindu scripture to become demons.
In the fictional Star Wars movies fallen Jedi – such as Darth Vader – could be seen as a rough parallel to the idea of fallen angels, mostly because both good and “dark side” Jedi possess paranormal powers and mental abilities.
» Aurobindo (Sri)
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Former Cambridge biochemist raised in a British Methodist family whose overall work attempts to integrate scientific and spiritual issues.
In Seven Experiments Which Could Change the World (1994) Sheldrake outlines low-cost experiments that he encourages readers to perform.
One experiment deals with ESP perception as a form of ‘looking.’ Sheldrake asks why we perceive somebody looking at us from behind or even at some distance (e.g. through a window).
Sheldrake suggests that some type of perception other than everyday eyesight is involved.
This idea is followed up in Dogs that Know When Their Owners are Coming Home, and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals (1999).
In keeping with this hypothesis, his subsequent book was called, The Sense of Being Stared At, And Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003).
Sheldrake has recently conducted controlled experiments on telephone and e-mail precognition. He found significant results suggesting that people knew when others were about to call them on the telephone, with a sample size of 63. A similar kind of precognition was also found with e-mail, with a sample size of 50.
Most recently his website asks: Have you thought of someone who then sends you a text message? offering a link for visitors to report their observations.
Sheldrake continues to publish books containing his interviews and dialogues with other notables in the New Age / Holistic Health circuit, along with replies to numerous critics who say he’s lost touch with recent theories in neurobiology and, indeed, abandoned science in favor of so-called magical thinking.
Not all scientists are at odds with his views, however. The late physicist David Bohm said Sheldrake’s ideas were in keeping with his own about an implicate and explicate order.
Thee High Priestess ov Thee Temple ov Psychick Blah (T.H.P.O.T.T.O.P.B.) by Suzanna / Comtesse de Wurzeltod
Seer
In the religious sense a seer is a person with an alleged gift of inner sight. He or she apparently ‘sees’ the past and future, possibly across great distances and through different spiritual realms.
Some spiritual figures like Da Free John, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Chinmoy and Paramahansa Yogananda apparently receive other people’s thoughts, feelings and experiences, and claim to use these abilities to assess their disciples’ degree of spiritual development.
Mystical Hinduism, particularly the guru ideal, stresses the importance of the seer. And his or her gifts are said to coincide with and contribute to spiritual wisdom.
In Catholicism the seer often adheres to the rules and regulations of their order, as in monastic Catholicism. Spiritual abilities are viewed as gifts or charisms from God and are usually played down out of humility–that is, there’s no desire to puff oneself up as a big holy person, an unsavory approach which in Jungian terms is called inflation or self-aggrandizement.
Catholic seers allegedly have the gift of ‘reading hearts,’ which includes knowing another person’s thoughts, inclinations and overall spiritual condition.
In Greek myth Tiresias was a blind seer.
Some are willing to entertain the idea that a seer may possess unconventional abilities but question their source as well as the ethics as to how they are applied in daily life.
Meanwhile, skeptics like James Randi remain unconvinced about everything paranormal, the notion of ‘seeing’ and so on.
Deceased persons believed to be clinging to the material world, often to some particular locality and possibly holding a grudge against someone whom they believed wronged them in life.
Alternately, tramp souls are regarded as the victims of an accidental death who don’t understand why or haven’t accepted the fact that they’ve passed.
Tramp souls are said to be responsible for hauntings, obsessions and possessions.
An unofficial branch of Catholic thinking expressed by author Michael Brown (Prayer of the Warrior) attributes to homosexuality the psychological influence of tramp souls. According to Brown, a deceased woman’s spirit influences a man’s sexual preference or a male spirit influences a woman’s.
From this belief the opposite-sex spiritual influence apparently permeates the personality and the living individual comes to identify with it over time. » Demons, Obsession, Possession, Transmigration
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Rosemary Ellen Guiley says the word tarot comes from the Italian tarocci, meaning ‘triumphs’ or ‘trumps’ (Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience, 1991).
Today’s tarot consists of 78 cards divided into major and minor arcanas. The major arcana of 22 cards contains symbolism paralleling different mythic traditions.
The minor arcana of 56 cards is divided into four suits: Cups, Wands, Swords, and Pentacles. These in turn are separated into King, Queen, Knight and Page.
Believers use the cards for depth psychology, the achievement of goals, divination or some combination of the three.
The cards are usually shuffled and placed in one of several different patterns or ‘spreads’ (e.g. the “Horseshoe,” the “Star,” the “Celtic Cross”). The choice of a spread arguably reflects the dealer’s current state of mind, proficiency level and possibly their unconscious intentions, hopes and desires.
The origins of tarot cards have been variously traced to Hellenistic Egypt, India, Morroco and Atlantis. Guiley says that a French painter, one Jacquemin Grinngonneur, presented cards “that may have been Tarot” to King Charles VI of France in 1392.
My Tarot Decks by Chin
Alfred Douglas says that in 1415, the Duke of Milan had Tarot cards painted for his own personal use. Gordon Melton in The Encyclopedic Handbook of Cults in America (1992) says these particular cards were precursors to the current Tarot deck. Melton claims that the Tarot was first differentiated from playing cards in the eighteenth-century, mostly due to the efforts of the French Freemason Anntione Court de Gebelin (1719-1784).
Alphonse-Louis Constant, a.k.a. Eliphas Levi, (1810-1875) wrote extensively about the tarot. Levi was first headed toward being a Catholic priest but fell in love, discovered the occult and never looked back. As such his writings were later incorporated into the practice of magic. He also associated the tarot with the Kabbala.
On this Stuart Gordon says:
Levi developed the pack’s occult connection by associating the card of the Major Arcana with Qabalah, assigning each of the twenty-two trumps to letters of the Hebrew alphabet, with corresponding numerological significances (The Paranormal: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Headline 1992, p, 647).
Tarot 12 Le Pendu by Jorge Rangel
During this era the tarot was believed to have first been discovered (not devised) in Europe by gypsies, thought to have originated in Egypt–”(e)gyp(t)sy.”
The cards or, at least, the ideas behind them, were apparently preserved by scribes who, up to medieval times, quietly saved a lion’s share of ancient pagan texts, spells and incantations from the ravages of the war-torn Roman Empire and the official, outward condemnation of the Church.¹
The obvious influence of pagan Celtic symbolism in the tarot lends some support this view, as do the 22 Major cards corresponding to prominent deities from classical Greek and Roman lore.
In 1910, Arthur Edward Waite together with artist Pamela Colman Smith devised a new tarot deck, known today as the Rider-Waite Tarot. Shortly afterward, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947) emphasized the tarot’s alleged Egyptian origin, devising a deck with commentary called The Book of Thoth, which rivaled Waite and Coleman’s tarot in popularity.
In the 1950’s, Jungian writer Marie Louise von Franz suggested that the tarot parallels steps along the individuation process.
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¹Along these lines Arnold J. Toynbee and others say organized Christianity effectively replaced pagan Rome as the creator of a persecutory culture of fear.
Clairalience is an alleged psi phenomenon, usually described as a type of clairsentience.
Clairalience is the apparent smelling of odors and scents beyond the usual range of human perception.
Reports of clairalience take three main forms:
Smelling a familiar odor or scent associated with a loved one who has passed. Often this will occur sometime shortly before, during or not too long after the loved one’s passing. In parapsychology it is hypothesized that this type of clairalience occurs to warn, prepare or possibly reassure friends and family that departed loved ones still survive but in another realm.
Smelling a hellish, rancorous odor (such as burning sulphur) or heavenly scent (such as roses). In parapsychology it is hypothesized that this type of clairalience occurs to warn of the dangers of hell and, conversely, to reassure of the joys of heaven.
Smelling another living person or thing at a distance beyond the range of the normal senses. This third form may be further differentiated into smelling at a distance (a) a physical body or ‘gross’ environment and (b) a spiritual body, essence or ’subtle’ environment.
Psychic Spell Breaker by Metrix X
In parapsychology it is hypothesized that type three occurs to teach human beings that all of creation is connected in some fundamental way, with the implication that we should strive to behave responsibly toward others, our planet and beyond.
As for the proposed connecting principle for the notion of clairalience, tentative explanations vary according to the worldview of the theorist.
For instance, a Catholic might talk of The Holy Spirit or Satan whereas a sub-atomic physicist might invoke concepts such as wormholes, quantum non-locality and quantum interconnectedness.
A psychiatrist would likely want to check for physiological factors contributing to so-called olfactory hallucinations (phantosmia) before considering the possibility of psi. And some with a strong materialist bias might entirely dismiss the idea of psi and prefer to explain according to a neuropsychological model.
To this Art Garza adds:
What sort of smells occur in your type three clairalience? And would the smells be all different or occur all at once? And as far as purpose goes, is there any purposed idea on what the individual smells mean? What are they smelling? the souls, essence, psyche… i know they are all related in some way but certainly there is a name which works best… personality? » See in context
Michael Clark replies:
I think you are pointing toward a distinction that could be made in type 3 between smelling at a distance (a) a living person’s spiritual essence or environment and (b) their physical body or environment. » See in context
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Alien Possession Theory (APT) is the idea that ET’s, embodied or disembodied, might try to manipulate individuals through the use of psi.
Alien sightings and abduction accounts have increased in the media, especially on Sci-Fi TV networks.
Also making the newsstands was an apparent U.S. military cover-up of a crashed flying disc and its inhabitants at Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
The Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) quickly modified an earlier announcement about a crashed flying disc, saying later in the same day that the disc was attached to a weather balloon.
The Air Force has responded to charges of “controlling public information” by stating that there was “no evidence” of UFO air traffic over Roswell and the case has been officially closed.
Public figures like comedian Dan Akroyd, however, continue to explore the possibility of a government cover-up-that is, conspiracy theories.
And some UFO theories get quite bizarre. Hollow Earth theorists, for instance, believe that UFOs originate from the bowels of the planet, where an advanced civilization apparently resides.†
The psychiatrist Carl Jung conceded that UFOs could be real but also saw them as modern archetypal images of the self.
Meanwhile Jacques Vallée likens UFO lore to fairy tales and mysterious trickster beings.†
Since Vatican Council II (1962-65) inaugurated by Pope John Paul II, the Catholic Church has endorsed inquiry into the possibility of ETs and UFOs.
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† See the excellent entries in works by Stuart Gordon.
» Adamski (George), Aliens and Extraterrestrials (ETs), Archetypal Image, “ET’s, UFO’s and the Psychology of Belief,” Foo Fighers, Moses and Monotheism, Possession, Rael, Strieber (Whitley), Talbot (Michael), Young (Neil)
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A kind of modern folk tale of highly questionable veracity but told as if true.
Urban legends often invoke strong emotions and are passed on by word of mouth, through the print media or via the internet.
Ghost stories, vampire tales and the fanciful idea of creepy things living in city sewers would be just some examples.
Urban legend is said to differ from mythology, especially urban myths, in that myths usually carry some kind of supernatural connotation, along with the contemporary understanding that they are essentially untrue.
And unlike myth, urban legends apparently linger in the imagination as if they may be true, however exaggerated they might become.
But this distinction seems spurious when we consider that many Hindus, for instance, really believe that the myth of Krishna is not myth but reality, as do many Christians take literally aspects of the Bible which arguably are mythic.
» Ticket
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