Off Topic Did any ‘psychic’

I do agree with you about this, that any claim needs to be proven, regardless of whether it's talking to dead folk, caliming a spiritual experience or saying I love you, and I do somewhat agree that you can infer the existence of love from other behaviour that you already outlined. I suppose that my position is when everyone I know or read about or watch who has had DMT has had a spiritual experience, it's either everyone is having a similar delusion or everyone is experiencing something real, and anyone can check it out by simply having some themselves and deciding through their own experience whether it's real or not.

 

Good to see we can agree!! Not going to be me that does a personal test though. Never taken drugs (other than those prescribed) in my life, but the use of illegal narcotics and their physiological effects on the body is for another thread I reckon!

 

Aye, I deffo think claims need to backed up and also agree there are a lot of crack pots out in the old psychic field. I'll disagree about DMT and the like being described as narcotics though as they aren't addictive, which is a property of narcotics like heroin and cocaine. And unlike cocaine and heroin they are being used in clinical settings to see how effective they can be, especially when it comes to depression. I'm actually surprised by how much this research has gone main stream and I think if you give it a few more years and you'll see psychedelics being in use in therapy more and more. This is an article from earlier in the month in the Guardian written by the Head of Psychedelic Research at Imperial College London, which is a sentence I'd never anticipated writing.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/psychedelic-drugs-treat-depression

Right now, we are crunching data from a much larger depression trial that compares psilocybin-assisted therapy with a six-week course of a conventional antidepressant drug, a “Prozac-like” selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). Preliminary analyses indicate game-changing results.

Psychedelic therapy is a much more comprehensive treatment package. It entails a small number of psychologically supported dosing sessions, flanked by assessment, preparation, and integration (talking through one’s experience afterwards).

The impact of successful psychedelic therapy is often one of revelation or epiphany. People speak of witnessing “the bigger picture”, placing things in perspective, accessing deep insight about themselves and the world, releasing pent-up mental pain, feeling emotionally and physically recalibrated, clear-sighted and equanimous. This is very different from people’s descriptions of the effects of SSRIs, where a contrasting feeling of being emotionally muted is not uncommon.

Many of the insights these compounds awaken are of a Buddhist sort, and although timelessly relevant, they feel particularly so today: the self as illusory, suffering as inevitable, attachment as a common cause of suffering, impermanence as fundamental, and slowing down, contemplation, breath, and community as potent resources.

 

Yes, I have heard of this, the use of psychedelic drugs as an effective treatment for depression and the reaction 'ooh, that's drugs I'm not sure we should'

Is there a spiritual dimension to life? There are a declining number who buy into that and in the longer term I cannot see religion making a comeback. Fast forward into the future and any religious practice might only be found in fringe groups, away from mainstream society where children are taught how religious thinking has shaped our habits, customs and language. I can also imagine a more enlightened society that would not allow the word 'drugs' to impede mental well-being and no one outlaws epiphany and euphoria by their use.

 

This board is ****ing mental. I love it

 

I'm getting the word.....

 

Interesting. I’ve consumed DMT and it’s always a good debate. I’ve went backwards and forwards with this on my own experience and listening to other people. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is definitely a placebo going on with how people live after taking the drug, as for when you’re actually going through the high, it definitely opens your mind and takes you to places you would have never otherwise done so, but it’s all based on your life experience, up to that point. It doesn’t show you the future and you don’t talk to people that aren’t there, but going back in your life and going through certain significant events again may help a person get an understanding and peace with whatever that was.

 

Just skimming through this thread, well I'm at the being bored time of the week, I recall that when 9/11 happened we were staying in a cottage in Drumnadrochit. (It's near Inverness).

We had been walking and got back in, turned on TV to see the second plane fly into the World Trade Centre.

That evening in the Pub the talk was, as you would expect, all about this event.
Alarmingly quickly there was a general discussion about Nostradamous who had apparently predicted it all.

I wasn't alone in doubting this but we were a minority.

Being one of the few English in that night I got picked to justify my scepticism.
My response was that had they told me what Nostradamous was predicting last night, ie before it happened, I'd have been impressed and convinced.

Naturally this cut no ice with the believers and they continued to believe.

We sceptics continued to be, to put it mildly, sceptical.

You have to consider that Loch Ness is on the doorstep here and is very important to the local economy, so a certain amount of leeway when it comes to the para-normal needs to be permited.

 

I’m still waiting on the resident psychic on this thread to get back to me with a message from the other side from my grandad. Can’t be that difficult surely?

 

The Loch Ness Monster is a spirit dinosaur?!

 

You must cosider the possibility that he simply doesn't want to talk to you.

 

I’ve also considered the possibility that he can’t because he’s dead.

 

Matt Groening predicted a global flu pandemic. He has a creepy knack for predicting.

 

Undeniable proof that Psychics are liars. Derek Acorah didn't attend his own funeral

 

That made me chuckle

 

Jokes aside, I'm agnostic, I can conceive that it is real. I buy that God exists. I fully acknowledge that 99.9% of them are complete bullshitters, but I couldn't rule out that .1%

As for them being nasty, it depends on if they're delivering a positive message(entendre intended) and not giving out direct specific advice. I bet that's pretty rare to. People actually go out and make massive life changing decisions based on these decisions. Given that there's such a fine line in crossing the line and the amount of actual nasty psychics out there, bullshitters or genuine I think that it's unethical practice. Creates too many victims imo.

 

An irritating though that comes to me, from time to time.
I call it irritating because while I can be quite certain in my own mind about something, this gets the 'but what if going'

So, take a couple of examples that most rational people would claim not to exist.
UFO's.
Nessie (and Morag, and other Lake Monsters around the World).

There are, literally, thousands of people who claim to have seen and are firm believers.
There are millions of us who are not convinced about the first and are in total disbelife about the second, but it only needs ONE to be right about either, for that whole case to be proven.

Even at my most sceptical I find this thought disturbing, but it does mean that I'm at least prepared to see the other's point of view.

 

We went to see a spiritual healer last night

What a load of rubbish . . . . even the lad in the wheelchair got up and walked out !