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« Top Stories: October 31, 2005 | Main | Debate Montage »

Feedback: Psychics and Media

October 31, 2005

Listen to today's "Cult of the Occult" segment featuring Mary Roach, author of Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.


Subject: mediums
Recently, NJ Monthly ran an article on a woman who has helped a NJ police dept. solve crimes through her psychic abilities. In one instance, she was taken to someone's bedroom, the site of an alleged murder, where she had a vision of a murder weapon, and of several other things not apparent to other investigators, that led to the perp and to his conviction. She continues to work for that PD, as far as I know. More info at www.njmonthly.com.
-ES

Subject: correction - halloween/samhain
Halloween/Samhain (pronounced sow-en …like pig sow) as it comes from the Celts is not to ward OFF evil spirits but to celebrate and dance with them as the “veils between the worlds” are very thin at this time of year.
-JF

Subject: Psychics
I think the most compelling argument against the "supernaturalness" of psychics is that there has never been a psychic whose "powers" couldn't be reproduced by a skilled magician. (The Amazing Randi has made a career out of reproducing psychic phenomena.)
-TH

Subject: Psychic psegment
First of all, there is in fact such a thing as time, a thing that we call
time. The psychics love to go there to try to explain their work and give
it an air of veracity. Read any of Jane Robert's "Seth" books.

The psychic world and gestalt is real, however, however overblown or
ignorant may be some claims that emanate from the followers or
practitioners. There are many scientific statements one can make
concerning the psychic experience and psychic facts, and consequently,
reproducible proofs and disproofs. I know of a woman who telepathically
tunes instruments and performs healing of people and of animals. She
really accomplishes changes in instruments that are measurable with
acoustic tests as well as with subjective experience, i.e., they sound
better. Healing is tougher to prove or disprove.

I think it relies upon an as yet poorly characterized integrity and unity
of all sentient, all conscious, and all living things, indeed, all being
exists in unity and integration. We of the scientific West are the first
two centuries of humans to so thoroughly doubt the validity of the psychic,
though Maimonides eschewed it utterly more than eight hundred years ago.

Would you please do a longer segment on this? You were surprised to see
how many of your show's listeners want to chime in.
-HE

Posted by leboheme at 02:39 PM