Thanks for weighing in Barry because this demonstrates what I was trying to get at with Robin. I was looking for the reasons he has for giving these accounts credibility.
Your reasons are transparent, you witnessed it. Even then you show some restraint in evaluating what it all means and I believe that is appropriate given the conditions under which you saw these things. But the reasons for your belief are present. And you are not extending the claim very far beyond your own experience. I have always enjoyed this wrinkle in the fabric of skepticism to have you say you saw this many times. I am not inclined to go any further than that you are reporting that you saw it. I can't verify if others did, or that they all saw the same thing, and I am not inclined to immediately assume that this guy actually could break the known laws of physics. It goes into my category of the relationship between perception and conception in our sensory perception for me. It is not a mechanical process and as we learn more how our minds construct our reality out of the jumble of choices available, it makes me less rather than more confident of our ability to sort this kind of perception out. Does this make me flawed as a skeptic because I don't automatically take your word for what it means? No, in fact it aligns me with your own caution about its objective reality. People can see weird shit. Now the personal implications of how this would affect a person is a different story. This sounds like the potential for some heavy cognitive dissonance and I don't envy your position...or maybe I do! Shit I would love to see someone floating above a desert. But if I had to bet, I would say that the chances of its objective reality might be diminished a bit by the fact that this amazing thing didn't cause more of a stir or was recorded somehow for outsiders to evaluate. Like Maharishi the guy seemed to like PR and this sure would have put him over the top if he could do it for the cameras with magician's present. My best guess is that it has a connection to the darshon experiences I had with Maharishi. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" fintlewoodlewix@ > wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > http://www.miraclesofthesaints.com/2010/10/levitation-and-ecstatic-fligh\ > ts-in.html > > > > > > It's just a shame that they seem to have stopped just before > > > the invention of cinema. > > > > I am so glad that I didn't offer my wordy response before you nailed > everything > > I could have said in just sixteen words! > > Just to pour gasoline on already-roaring flames, and to save a certain > someone from bringing it up in an attempt to demonize me :-), I shall > weigh in on the subject of levitation from a unique point of view. Other > than Nabby, whose credibility I submit is in the same ballpark as Rush > Limbaugh's or Paul Ryan's, I think I'm the only person here who has > claimed to have witnessed real, hang-there-in-mid-air levitation. > > And I have. Not once, but dozens of times, over a period of 14 years. > And it wasn't only me. Often I was one of a group of 200-500 students > watching the guy do this, in various locations, ranging from out in the > desert in the middle of the night to the Los Angeles Convention Center > to Carnegie Hall. In those environments, Rama - Frederick Lenz didn't > hop on his butt like a frog, he just lifted gently up off of the sofa or > the sand he was sitting on or standing on, and hovered there in mid-air > in exactly the way that a brick doesn't. For extended periods of time -- > minutes, not seconds. > > That said, I can tell you nothing whatsoever about the nature of what it > was that I saw other than I and others saw it. > > I do not know whether video or movie cameras trained on the guy as he > lifted off would have captured it; I strongly suspect that they would > not have. If I had to speculate, I would suspect that the phenomenon we > witnessed was -- if it truly existed -- taking place on an alternate > level of reality that might not have been captured by technology on this > level of reality. > > I am equally comfortable with the notion that it didn't really exist at > all, but that brings up more unanswerable questions. I don't know about > you, but I have a harder time with the notion that someone can hypnotize > 200-500 people at a time into seeing the same thing -- *without ever > pre-announcing what it was that they were going to see* -- less > believable than that something was actually happening. Something else. > > WHAT that something else was, I have no idea. > > Do I feel somewhat uncomfortable saying this? You betcha. I share almost > all of Curtis and salyavin's skepticism about such things. But I really > *did* see this shit. Over and over and over, for an extended period of > time. > > Am I supposed to *deny* that I saw it, or come up with some convenient > skeptic's "explanation" for what it was I and hundreds of others saw? > That, to me, would be the "easy path," a cop-out. > > I *did* see it. I have NO FUCKING IDEA what exactly it was that I saw, > only that I saw it. Many times. > > Lemme tell you, that is a great deal harder to live with than those who > think that witnessing levitation would be a Good Thing That Would Make > Their Incarnation might think. > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" > <curtisdeltablues@> wrote: > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "salyavin808" fintlewoodlewix@ > wrote: > > > > > > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "Robin Carlsen" <maskedzebra@> > wrote: > > > > > > > > > http://www.miraclesofthesaints.com/2010/10/levitation-and-ecstatic-fligh\ > ts-in.html > > > > > > It's just a shame that they seem to have stopped just before > > > the invention of cinema. > > > > I am so glad that I didn't offer my wordy response before you nailed > everything > > I could have said in just sixteen words! > > Just to pour gasoline on already-roaring flames, and to save a certain > someone from bringing it up in an attempt to demonize me :-), I shall > weigh in on the subject of levitation from a unique point of view. Other > than Nabby, whose credibility I submit is in the same ballpark as Rush > Limbaugh's or Paul Ryan's, I think I'm the only person here who has > claimed to have witnessed real, hang-there-in-mid-air levitation. > > And I have. Not once, but dozens of times, over a period of 14 years. > And it wasn't only me. Often I was one of a group of 200-500 students > watching the guy do this, in various locations, ranging from out in the > desert in the middle of the night to the Los Angeles Convention Center > to Carnegie Hall. In those environments, Rama - Frederick Lenz didn't > hop on his butt like a frog, he just lifted gently up off of the sofa or > the sand he was sitting on or standing on, and hovered there in mid-air > in exactly the way that a brick doesn't. For extended periods of time -- > minutes, not seconds. > > That said, I can tell you nothing whatsoever about the nature of what it > was that I saw other than I and others saw it. > > I do not know whether video or movie cameras trained on the guy as he > lifted off would have captured it; I strongly suspect that they would > not have. If I had to speculate, I would suspect that the phenomenon we > witnessed was -- if it truly existed -- taking place on an alternate > level of reality that might not have been captured by technology on this > level of reality. > > I am equally comfortable with the notion that it didn't really exist at > all, but that brings up more unanswerable questions. I don't know about > you, but I have a harder time with the notion that someone can hypnotize > 200-500 people at a time into seeing the same thing -- *without ever > pre-announcing what it was that they were going to see* -- less > believable than that something was actually happening. Something else. > > WHAT that something else was, I have no idea. > > Do I feel somewhat uncomfortable saying this? You betcha. I share almost > all of Curtis and salyavin's skepticism about such things. But I really > *did* see this shit. Over and over and over, for an extended period of > time. > > Am I supposed to *deny* that I saw it, or come up with some convenient > skeptic's "explanation" for what it was I and hundreds of others saw? > That, to me, would be the "easy path," a cop-out. > > I *did* see it. I have NO FUCKING IDEA what exactly it was that I saw, > only that I saw it. Many times. > > Lemme tell you, that is a great deal harder to live with than those who > think that witnessing levitation would be a Good Thing That Would Make > Their Incarnation might think. >
