Beware of this Psychological trap!

[Shanmugam]

Since there are a lot of posts in this forum regarding channeling, I just wanted to share something I found. Something to raise your level of skepticism.

True-believer syndrome is an informal or rhetorical term used by M. Lamar Keene in his 1976 book The Psychic Mafia. Keene used the term to refer to people who continued to believe in a paranormal event or phenomenon even after it had been proven to have been staged.Keene considered it to be a cognitive disorder and regarded it as being a key factor in the success of many psychic mediums.

Examples:

1. In his book The Psychic Mafia, Keene told of his partner, a psychic medium named "Raoul" in the book. Some in their congregation still believed that Raoul was genuine even after he openly admitted that he was a fake. Keene wrote "I knew how easy it was to make people believe a lie, but I didn't expect the same people, confronted with the lie, would choose it over the truth. ... No amount of logic can shatter a faith consciously based on a lie

2. An example of this syndrome is evidenced by an event in 1988 when stage magician James Randi, at the request of an Australian news program, coached stage performer José Alvarez to pretend he was channeling a two-thousand-year-old spirit named "Carlos". Even after it was revealed to be a fictional character created by Randi and Alvarez, many people continued to believe that "Carlos" was real. Randi commented: "no amount of evidence, no matter how good it is or how much there is of it, is ever going to convince the true believer to the contrary.

3.In the book When Prophecy Fails, Festinger and his colleagues observed a fringe group led by Marian Keech who believed that the world would be destroyed on December 21, 1954 , and the true believers would be rescued by aliens on a spaceship to a fictional planet, Clarion. When nothing happened, the group believed that their devotion convinced God to spare the world and they became even more feverish in proselytizing their belief. This is one of the first cases that led Festinger to form the theory of cognitive dissonance.

Source - Wikipedia

Lesson to remember:

Your beliefs can fool you. Seeking is not based on believing. Beliefs can delude you and stop you from seeing the reality the way it is.

 

 

[Nahm]

We all channel our self. 

[snowleopard]

Whether one believes that channeling is possible, or whether one believes that channeling is impossible, it's still a belief ... no?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." ~ WS 

[Shanmugam]

7 minutes ago, snowleopard said:

Whether one believes that channeling is possible, or whether one believes that channeling is impossible, it's still a belief ... no?

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." ~ WS 

Yes.. But being open-minded is not same as believing. Being a skeptic is not same as believing either...

Skepticism and open-mindedness, both are necessary.

[snowleopard]

@Shanmugam  For sure, I don't believe in it, nor not believe in it, just keep an open-minded attitude. I didn't believe that 'poltergeist' phenomena was possible either, until I experienced it.  Now I don't know what to believe about it. Not sure that is much different. An apparent energy/entity tossing objects around one's house, or speaking through a channel. Who really knows what is up with either with 100% certainty? Not I

[Nahm]

Just yesterday, my wife & I argued about garbage day being a day later due to the holidays, and I ended up being right. So, anything is possible guys! Never give up on your dreams! You can!

 

 

[Shanmugam]

@snowleopard I don't agree with everything Sadhguru says, but I totally agree with what he says in this video, about hallucinating. 

 

 

[Nahm]

@Shanmugam There’s all the scientific evidence necessary to see we are an illusion, but tell someone, and they would not believe it!

[Shanmugam]

@Nahm There is a reason why dreams are called as dreams

If anything happens, let it happen. If something doesn't happen, so be it. But why dream about it? 

[SOUL]

If it's my self on the channel I would change the it, heck I'll shut the whole thing off and take a nap.

Edited January 6, 2018 by SOUL

[Shanmugam]

8 minutes ago, blazed said:

You're not allowed to use sadhguru to support your debates!!!

1

Even I didn't like to do that.. But there are lot of people here who would consider if Sadhguru says it 

 

[snowleopard]

@Shanmugam  When considering channeled information, what its actual source might be is indeed a mystery, so I just consider the content of the message itself. Hopefully I can assume that I'm not hallucinating the content of the message. If I can get some useful lesson from it, I'm good with that. If not, then I let it go. Really, half the time I don't know where my poetry comes from either. That too is a mystery I accept with equanimity.

[star ark]

You can never be absolutely certain about anything, even your certainty itself.

[Shanmugam]

@snowleopard If a person feels like channeling, the content could be actually coming from his own mind.. There are lots of states that a person can get into.

For me, many things happen when I dream every day and the dreams I usually have during sleep are more vivid and real and different than the dreams I used to have many years ago. I love some of those dreams and enjoy it. But I never give much importance to them after I wake up.

You can even talk to your favorite deity in certain meditation states, which is quite possible. But the problem arises when we consider the deity as a real entity living somewhere. 

[Shanmugam]

@snowleopard sometimes  I talk while I sleep. And my wife says that I am very fluent when I talk in sleep. I am also conscious of the talking while I do it

Edited January 6, 2018 by Shanmugam

[SOUL]

33 minutes ago, Nahm said:

@Shanmugam There’s all the scientific evidence necessary to see we are an illusion, but tell someone, and they would not believe it!

It depends on what you mean by "illusion", how are you defining it?

[Nahm]

It’s atoms. Which are nothing. You can make a foundation, take enough psylicibin, and see for yourself also. The double slit is nice too. But, for the love of God, this is my opinion, it’s nothing more than nothing. I am wholly fake. Every word of this is fake. I’m not claiming to even know what the claiming is. 

[snowleopard]

@Shanmugam  Yes, as stated, I've really no idea where it's coming from. Jane Roberts, who channelled the Seth material, was herself highly sceptical of what its source might be, and considered that it might be some inexplicable communication from a transpersonal aspect of her own psyche. But in order to make it somehow acceptable, it was translated into a kind of personification that her audience could relate to. But again, this is highly speculative, and I can't pretend to know what is actually going on with these paranormal events or any other paranormal events, like OBEs, NDEs, ESP, Poltergeist activity, etc, etc. So why exclude the possibility of otherworldly entities. If the Divine can individuate into the apparent locus of perspective of you and I, then why not some entity called Seth from God only knows where?

Edited January 6, 2018 by snowleopard

[snowleopard]

1 hour ago, Shanmugam said:

There is a reason why dreams are called as dreams

Like the Divine 'self'-perpetuating dream of you and I, in its Lila dream of this Cosmic play ?

[Guest Annetta]

56 minutes ago, Shanmugam said:

 

You can even talk to your favorite deity in certain meditation states, which is quite possible. But the problem arises when we consider the deity as a real entity living somewhere. 

Dieties are their own consciousness, but they are developed through the Self as well as the archetypal unconscious.  Thoughts create reality, apparently.  The image of a diety is just a visual spaceholder.

The collective human shadow is an entity as well, but also not.

What are your opinions on this?