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We have so hijacked Velvett's threadjd_uk said:
Look, I really do understand what you're saying. But there is a VERY big difference between stage magicians and professional "psychics" who are out there to shake down people for enormous amounts of money and the type of people Old Vet, I and others are talking about.
The point I was trying to make with the medical profession is that there are frauds, everywhere. That doesn't mean you can paint an entire group as being full of shit.
I could teach you, hell, I could teach just about ANYBODY how to develop some type of "psychic" talent, it is like any other skill, it CAN be, to a degree, learned, but just like the piano player Hansel described who knows how to play but doesn't feel how to play, you won't be GREAT.
The thing is, it's a skill that takes frigging WORK, and it takes long work at something that, for a very, very long time, you will see absolutely NO obvious payoff. You literally have to build up the "muscle" (it's not a muscle in the literal sense of the word, it's a type of neural pathway that has to be developed) long before anything ever happens. If you don't believe in something, and you're seeing NO practical benefit to your efforts, you will, in very short order, get disgusted and quit. Generally, what happens is a person is motivated to do the exercises necessary for the sake of benefitting/bettering themselves and things start to happen from there.
Call bullshit all you want, but stop and think for a moment, an EKG can read brainwaves. Why do you accept that a machine can read the fluctuations in brainwave patterns but a human cannot? Why do you accept that an animal has more developed senses, but a human doesn't? That's just being foolish. Anybody can refine their senses, and humans HAVE the ability to sense electromagnetic fields. Thoughtforms and emotions generate electromagnetic fields. Being able to sense those fields and interpret that energy is what a LOT of being really "psychic" is all about.
As for knowing the future and so forth, I'm not going there. As Samoth has basically said, I don't have the time, energy or inclination to educate you, and you would need to understand some of the basic concepts. There are "theorums" out there, however, that state time does NOT flow linerally, that all time exists NOW. That's how you can get flashes of what is to come. But the future is NOT written in stone. That's why precognition is so unpredictable. The future exists as multiple possibilities. The further out you get from the "present," the more variables you put into the mix, the more complicated "seeing" the future becomes.
BTW, JD, I know I'm basically wasting my breath with you telling you this stuff, you've made your mind up, but there are other people out there who actually might read something I say and get something out of it.
I just hate the fact that skeptics are viewed as being respectable, logical, and hense, always "right," whereas someone who is, for whatever reason, open to alternative possibilties, is a fluffy bunny dingbat. It's insulting and patronizing to think that because someone is openminded, they're automatically suckers.
