Into the Void

I have been looking into a device called a Perkl-Light Energy Spa. Unfortunately the proprietor has a serious dislike of scientists. I don’t know if I can purchase the device from someone who has such disdain for empiricism. I could deal with it if he at least provided some background on how the device works. The implication is that the device likely hasn’t been tested and optimized.

I sent him a note.

I am an electrical engineer and a reiki master.

Your epistemological rant is a little offputting.

Reiki is about being a receiver of sorts, feeling Ki in the Chakras and the aura and situating the hands to help it move. It’s not a talent, it is a human sense that we all have but many ignore. You are surrounded by radio waves every day, but without a radio you can’t detect them. Before radios were developed, radio waves coming in from space met the definition of “Subtle Energies” that the New Agers like to bandy about. Does it make sense to state that radio waves don’t exist?

Science is a method for testing empirical data. If I can’t detect Ki with scientific tools, that doesn’t mean Ki doesn’t exist, it means I need different tools.

As an example, an electronic device called an operational amplifier or OpAmp typically has a minimum frequency of about 0.5 Hz (cycles per second). Low-frequency energies aren’t detectable with OpAmps. If you are measuring a patient’s brainwaves with a tool called an electroencephalogram (EEG) while he is being put under deep anesthesia, it is possible for the brainwaves to become too low to be measured. There isn’t a doctor in the world who would tell you that the anesthetized patient is dead, not sleeping.

One attribute of empirical knowledge is that by taking better and better measurements and improving my hypothesis, I can question authority and expand the horizons of human knowledge.

I tried asking questions in church and was told to leave and not come back. This experience taught me to reject exclusionary dogma, and that is precisely why scientific enquiry appeals to me.

Did the Perkl-Light Energy Spa come into existence in its finished, perfect form, or did you have to engage in a scientific process of testing, modification and retesting?

I attended a reiki share at a church in a nearby town. The fellow who ran it, I’ll call him “Paul,” told a story about a religious leader who visited from India. This leader sat in one of the chairs in the church, and Paul always told the story.

To a reiki practitioner, the chair seemed to have retained some of the religious leader’s energy. I like to call it “the God-Realized Chair.”

In order to recognize our self-image, we can no longer identify with it. In other words, we have to learn how to objectify our own mental processes.
-Matthew Flickstein, Journey to the Center
Reprinted in Daily Wisdom: 365 Buddhist Inspirations, edited by Josh Bartok.
www.wisdompubs.org

Photo Source – Flickr
Author *Gabisa Motonia

Powerful Sleep – Health & Energy Blog >> How to Overcome Procrastination with 4 S

As a lifelong procrastinator, I have to say Kacpar nailed it down pretty well. I think that where most of us fall short is this: when I make a commitment to myself, I have to treat it as seriously as if I’d made a commitment to someone else.

Powerful Sleep is great. If the only thing I got out of it was the concept of avoiding delta sleep during daytime naps, it would have been worth every penny.

Thought for the Day:

“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
– Jim Rohn
Quoted by Gary Craig in the EFT Insights Newsletter (July 6, 2007)

EFT emo

By way of BeliefNet:

[The] defilements are like a cat. If you feed it, it will keep coming around. Stop feeding it, and eventually it will not bother to come around anymore.

-Ajahn Chah, “Still Forest Pool”
From “365 Buddha: Daily Meditations,” edited by Jeff Schmidt. Reprinted by arrangement with Tarcher/Putnam, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

Early manifestations and first-contact incidence of schizophrenia in different cultures. A preliminary report on the initial evaluation phase of the WHO Collaborative Study on determinants of outcome of severe mental disorders.

Psychol Med. 1986 Nov;16(4):909-28.
Sartorius N, Jablensky A, Korten A, Ernberg G, Anker M, Cooper JE, Day R.

The results provide strong support for the notion that schizophrenic illnesses occur with comparable frequency in different populations and support earlier findings that the prognosis is better in less industrialized societies.

Technorati: schizophrenia WHO+Collaborative+Study

Didgeridoo playing as alternative treatment for obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome: randomised controlled trial — Puhan et al. 332 (7536): 266 — BMJ.

No, not a [tag]shaman[/tag]istic ritual.

The [tag]didgeridoo[/tag] is an Australian aborigine wind instrument. It is a long tube, traditionally made of wood. The timbre and tone depend upon the size of the instrument, whether the wood is straight or has a more interesting shape. If you attend folk festivals you’ve probably heard a digeridoo. You can buy quite nice ones made of plastic – the one pictured at left is a good example. You can even make one yourself out of a leftover length of plastic pipe.

The didgeridoo is sometimes used as part of a [tag]musical meditation[/tag]. Its droning tone is very relaxing. I found digeridoo music to be a nice complement to [tag]reiki[/tag].

In conclusion, didgeridoo playing improved daytime sleepiness in patients with moderate snoring and obstructive [tag]sleep apnoea[/tag] and reduced sleep disturbance in their partners. Larger trials are needed to confirm our preliminary findings, but our results may give hope to the many people with moderate obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome and [tag]snoring[/tag], as well as to their partners.

Long-term [tag]didj[/tag] use won’t ever take the place of Continuous Positive Airway Pressure ([tag]CPAP[/tag]), but the music sounds a whole lot better than an air pump.

Virtual Talmud: Principle, not Expediency

Jewish tradition is based on the principle of eilu v’eilu — that conflicting positions each have standing and integrity in their own right, provided that the argument at hand is made for the sake of heaven.

Referring back to Shamanism and Talking to Dog.

We have the ability to perceive *everything* until our society teaches us to block out of our minds what’s happening on the other side of the door. Privacy is how it starts. Later it becomes political. This is the definition of sanity, sharing a world-view.

My cat always has a complete aural picture of the world outside the house because her hearing is much better than mine. Her visual concept of the world is limited to what she can see by running from window to window – a very disconnected picture of the world, don’t you think? Now substitute the word “psychic” for “aural” and “sensory” for “visual.” There is nothing mystical about it. You know what you are taught to know and you de-reify what you aren’t taught.

I have no problem with concepts that lie outside the limitations of our technology. Not until some shady character tries to take my money. New Age practices, in general, are when a bunch of slightly better educated people try to sell the rest of us something that doesn’t really step outside consensus reality. Magic, after all, is nothing but a technology that you don’t understand.

I’m also an Electrical Engineer and I graduated with a minor in mathematics. I had 4 years of science and 5 years of math in high school alone. And I’ve forgotten more philosophy than most people ever read in the first place. I can tell bullsh*t from a new way of looking at reality. I’m a reiki master, by the way.

The first thing you learn in logic is that you can’t prove non-existence. Psychic ability requires breaking your mind so that you can see the things you were taught to make non-existent.

Society has a vested interest in controlling the hidden information, and quickly punishes those who step outside what is considered sane. Therapists, then, are the gatekeepers of consensus reality.

The moral? Don’t complain about your psychic abilities to your therapist unless you want to get rid of these abilities.

About schizophrenia – schizophrenia does not equal psychic ability, though a broken brain is more likely to take a big step away from consensus reality. Schizophrenia, they say, results from an inability to categorize the world in the same way the rest of us do. Imagine if your grocery store sorted things by the size of the package instead of putting sugar in the spice aisle and dryer sheets in the laundry section. Now imagine that when you complain to the manager, he sends the cops and psychiatrists over to your house to rearrange the furniture.