Paranormal phenomena Tom Campbell

[Jannes]

I have just watched Tom Campbell on the Joe Rogan podcast and he talked a lot about paranormal phenomena.

There are two main things this makes me think about:

1) Which role does experiencing these phenomena have in growing mankind's consciousness? It might get us out of our materialistic paradigm but it doesn't open us necessarily to deeper truths. But perhaps it's an important first step. And for non actualizers this might be just the perfect amount. 

2) Which of the paranormal phenomena are the most promising in terms of being true and accessible? Remote viewing or telekineses if it is true might be the best as its easily verifiable and when you get even just a toe into it it can break a paradigm. 

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Jannes said:

1) Which role does experiencing these phenomena have in growing mankind's consciousness? It might get us out of our materialistic paradigm but it doesn't open us necessarily to deeper truths.

The realm of the "paranormal" arguably by definition contains the deepest parts of the human experience. The kind of elevated levels of perception, clarity of vision, intution, feeling and empathy that underlies paranormal experiences, is at the peak of human consciousness.

Edited Sunday at 11:16 PM by Carl-Richard

[Jannes]

16 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

The realm of the "paranormal" arguably by definition contains the deepest parts of the human experience. The kind of elevated levels of perception, clarity of vision, intution, feeling and empathy that underlies paranormal experiences, is at the peak of human consciousness.

I see. But wouldnt you say a profound mystical experience tops that?

[kavaris]

The Thomena Phenomena

4 hours ago, Jannes said:

~ But perhaps it's an important first step. And for non actualizers this might be just the perfect amount....

@Jannes   yeah, this is sorta the role i took w/ my mom, who desperately needed to enter into the spiritual side of things, from the mystical , and the only clear direction that was tangentially related to her new found drug use and throwing everything away was to investigate paranormal/necromancy. And it worked, only enough so, that later on, when things normalized, it gave her that reference point—to question the mysterious.

p.s. it did take all the years later

Edited Monday at 12:12 AM by kavaris

[The Crocodile]

Aurobindo said paranormal powers are necessary to transform human nature, the body, politics, society, the physical world, etc. in accordance with the Divine and the Truth, and that spirituality and powers complement and strengthen each other and have no contradiction.

Sri Aurobindo : That evidently shows that the power working is either psychic or psycho-physical. This phenomenon is quite possible. In her childhood the Mother was able to see even in the dark and she had developed the power of sight everywhere. She is, even now, able to see from behind and this general sight works more accurately than the physical eyes. It works best when the eyes are closed.

Disciple : I saw Prof. B. from behind my body when he was going away. This power, I then felt, could be developed. Is this psychic sight?

Sri Aurobindo : The psychic vision is between the eye-brows, in front, above the head.

In fact not only are all the senses everywhere in the body, but they are even outside the body. You can feel the touch of two different persons and, remaining at a great distance, know how they must be feeling it.

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Disciple : Would all these powers come automatically after transformation, or are they to be developed by the Sadhak.

Sri Aurobindo : Everything is there, but you have to organise these things. In my case I have to develop each of them. The Power is there and is working but the physical has not the faith and so it has got to work out.

Disciple : Can it be said that this way of developing each power is part of the general fight with the physical obstacles ?

Sri Aurobindo : Yes.

Disciple : Is it not dangerous for small adhars to try to concentrate on these powers, because they may be swallowed by them?

Sri Aurobindo : It may be. I can never understand that stupid fear of acquiring Siddhis – occult powers – which our people are having. Why should every one be spiritual? Those who want to attain power must do that. I mean if that is the only thing they can do in this life let them do it. He was telling me the same thing this morning. For instance, if a man is capable of writing good poetry why should he be expected to do all things in life? Let one thing be well done. That way the soul develops.

Disciple : But suppose some hostile power gets hold of him ?

Sri Aurobindo : That does not matter; one has to take one's chance, risk is always there. The soul develops by undertaking adventures and even stumbling often. Before that you can't hope to win the crown. It is good to have a certain protection in the beginning and to progress on the spiritual side. But one has to take the risk, reject the lower path and take to the higher truth. Besides, all these things are necessary for the divine manifestation. .

Disciple : Are these things really necessary ?

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Sri Aurobindo : They are. In society, in politics, in fact in every field progress is like that. That is why a moderate policy is foolish. They believe that by gradually going on they will reach the goal, but that is never the case. You go on to a certain extent and then something comes up and envelops the being. The whole of what you have done is broken up and you have to begin over again.

Disciple : But the physical is simply idiotic.

Another Disciple : Because it is so, the work becomes interesting

Sri Aurobindo : Interesting! The vital, you may say, is interesting. But the physical is most idiotically stupid. It is full of Tamas; it wants to go on in its own slow process.

Disciple : The new scientific discoveries which the Westerners are stumbling upon are bound to change their mentality.

Sri Aurobindo : Of course; after the discovery of radium and the theory of light science has taken a higher step. Now it can hardly be called materialistic.

Disciple : The phenomenon of eyeless sight reminds me of the case of a man who emitted "blue light". The scientists were puzzled and thought that they were hypnotised to see the light. Then they exposed photographic plates and found that the light was being emitted.

Sri Aurobindo : (smiling) All these phenomena – eyeless sight, light-emission or miraculous cures-are psychic and it is absurd to try to explain them away and more absurd to doubt them.

Disciple : There was the reported case of a missionary who cured a blind man, and also miraculous cures are reported from St. Xavier's tomb at Goa.

Sri Aurobindo : Those kinds of phenomena are very common even to-day. In France at Notre Dame at Lourdes lame people are cured. Only, the power that is working there acts very irregularly, some get absolutely cured,

Page 64

while some are not affected. But all those who want see and be convinced can see them. A friend of The Mother – a lady – was so cured. This working is due to the presence of some psychic power. There are no limits to its capacities. There are authentic cases of men effecting such cures without themselves being conscious of the psychic force working through them.

Disciple : Ramakrishna felt the blows given to a bullock and there were marks of the stripes on his body. Is this action due to the kind of extended sense of which Dr. Joules speaks ?

Sri Aurobindo : Yes. That kind of story is current about many yogis. It is, of course, due to the psychic sense – which is not limited to the physical body – but the intensity of it is due to something else.

 

"It is the firm basing of the Jnanam Brahma which admits of a more & more complete telepathy.” In another diary entry we read:

 

The whole day has been devoted to a struggle, attended by revived asiddhi [imperfection, the contradiction of siddhi] . . . to establish the organisation of the ritam [truth] in trikaldrishti, telepathy etc on the basis of entire Brahmabodha [Brahman-consciousness] including especially the jnanam Brahma. In the awareness of Brahman, if it could be made complete and constant, evidently the separative mentality that is the normal human condition might be replaced by a unity of consciousness in which obstacles to the direct communication and interaction of mind with mind could be largely abolished.

 

Sri Aurobindo writes in The Life Divine:  “If there is an evolution in material Nature and if it is an evolution of being with consciousness and life as its two key-terms and powers, this fullness of being, fullness of consciousness, fullness of life must be the goal of development towards which we are tending and which will manifest at an early or later stage of our destiny.  The Self, the Spirit, the Reality that is disclosing itself out of the first inconscience of life and matter, would evolve its complete truth of being and consciousness in that life and matter.  It would return to itself, — or, if its end as an individual is to return into its Absolute, it could make that return also, — not through a frustration of life but through a spiritual completeness of itself in life.  Our evolution in the Ignorance with its chequered joy and pain of self-discovery and world-discovery, its half-fulfilments, its constant finding and missing, is only our first state.  It must lead inevitably towards an evolution in the Knowledge, a self-finding and self-unfolding of the Spirit, a self-revelation of the Divinity in things in that true power of itself in Nature which is to us still a Supernature."

[kavaris]

@The Crocodileiuno if you'd consider this a supernatural, but when ive takin lsd w/ friends i always go on about this circular pattern that i always see, its like a circular relationship, or an orbit between three or four bodys, and its always spinning—in that orbitalish way, and when i tell people about it while in the midst of it, they wouldnt see it (though ive never prodded and pushed them on the issue)

Online i think some people have suggested theyve seen more similar experiences, however they say that its strange that i keep seeing the same exact thing. i call it a cascade, but i guess its also just like, the three + bodies in rotation or relation, such that they appear to spin around one another. its also echoed in everything, as its happening, in terms of that juggling, take-turns behavior, but afterwards i dont see it, and then im not fixated on anything.

it doesnt sound terribly spectacular, but its what i could point to—or describe as the least-psychic magick—of all the psychic experiences (i think im often doing whats mostly psychic/intellect magick—which opens-up too wide a realm of magic-options) — and, it could also be a mathy-feeling magick im tlkin bout.. i think there is a math/geometric magick. Mathamagica, maybe? magic mushroom magick. i wrote it down before but i cant find it.

They do start magic circles off w/ geometry in mind, though it couldve just evolved as a way to make something coherent, symmetrical, etc (probably wouldnt have made sense if someone drew a very sloppy/jagged trapezoid or rhombus XD)

Edited Monday at 01:10 AM by kavaris

[The Crocodile]

@kavaris Castaneda called it the whorl, and yes I've seen spinning. In Buddhism it's called the nimitta. When the attention can move in a clockwise or counterclockwise way, and it can get more complex or structured depending on the energy objects.

[kavaris]

@The Crocodile

The Words To Describe

Caution: Its kindve long and hard to follow.

I just realized something. Ill just add it into our conversation here, but when Tom Campbell said "Intuition side, versus...", That is, he had invoked this idea of there being "something that you want to be in the foreground of..." (those are my words, but thats my take on it) and that has some merit to it, but the words intellect, and intuition arent really finite enough, and the emphasis on each made it feel he wanted to really capture it all between ONLY two sides, which may not have been the case, we'll never know (it just made it seem like there existed two sides, without any other sides in competition together),... lol if we ignore that all those things arent accurate, we can say theres something that he was trying to say that he didnt find the right words for...

And to no fault of his own since the words arent really easy to come up with on the spot, but i was in a dream a few hours ago, and i wouldve called it "an intuitive sequence", if not for the fact that it has moments where im easily scared, or easily disappointed... or like, shrinking into this vulnerability state...

Anyway, i just thought id throw that in there as i am increasingly interested in the states that exist inbetween sleeping and waking, as.... you might know what im talking about when i describe the following: When, the last image you might see in your dream, happens to be the same object (or similar in shape and color) to the one your eyes are looking at when awakened—the object in your immediate awareness?...

Ive had this many times, and this time i experienced the object as a black cat (on my chair, it was just a black shirt) suffice to say that, this black cat wasnt in my dream for the first half (majority) of it... instead, it just coincidentally happened to be the very last image, aligned, almost like, breaking time? does that make sense?... Almost like, how weve all probably had the thought about how the last image we see in death could be the first image of new life, except this was like the friggin wyrd of web fabric, wata coincidence, since i had experienced this cat (and came awake) and realized it was my shirt, as if i had navigated, either through time, or through my room.

Iuno, i hope that made sense, as theres alot of moving parts there i was tryina capture. point being, i dont understand what you can call something that is "partly coincidence" or destiny, partly breaking time or breaking my understanding of what im doing when im not awake, atleast... we could just call that all intuition, alas theres some layers in there, that which we dont have the words to describe.

[The Crocodile]

@kavaris Yes, a lot of my dreams usually have a finalizing image that makes a greater imprint on my waking memory than the rest of the dream.

[kavaris]

@The Crocodile I oooooh n/m ... i left something out that was most important to understanding it... the fact that i became scared at the exact same time, really lends itself to what mightve been happening... as a really large part of the story... like, i was following an emotional trail or something, as opposed to a visual or logical... So,.. yeah i guess its an emotion trail that we are hunting... but im very often not in an heroic state, im like, dying... scared and dying all the friggin time.

[Carl-Richard]

8 hours ago, Jannes said:

I see. But wouldnt you say a profound mystical experience tops that?

A profound mystical experience is squarely within the paranormal. My first sober mystical experience I had, I was hovering 10-15 cm over my head and my visual field was expanded as if I was viewing the whole room all at once, and it was as if the sky was opening up above me and I was moving upwards and slowly dissolving. 

A similar thing happened during another mystical experience I had on an airplane where when I was getting up to leave the plane, I took a look behind me down the aisle and I could see every person's face in focus simultaneously.

If you have only had mystical experiences with eyes closed, then it's harder to get the paranormal aspect, but even there, if you simply ask any normal person about such experiences (e.g. "I closed my eyes and slowly my body disappeared and then my mind disappeared and all that was left was a vast blank void with no sense of time or space"), they would probably respond with "that's not possible!".

So while a mystical experience can be extremely transformational, while something more innocuous like a premonition or telepathic experience is probably less transformational, they're cut from the same cloth, "chips off the old block" as Campbell would say.

But there are degrees within this as well, for example Campbell recounting his experiment of him going out of body and interacting with another guy who were also going out of body in the other room. That experience was extremely transformational for him in terms of his worldview. And to be able to get those types of experiences where you're also able to control them without losing them or becoming afraid, you need to have extreme levels of meditative and mystical ability. Campbell himself is by my estimation enlightened.

Edited Monday at 07:41 AM by Carl-Richard