Classification of Psychic Experiences
Generally speaking, psychic experiences which deal with receiving information from an outside source, either living or passed on can be classified into the following categories: psychometry, telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, automatic writing and channeling. Two more psychic techniques, assumption and projection, deal with transferring the personality to a remote location.
Psychometry is the art of receiving information about someone by touching an object commonly carried by that person such as a key chain or jewelry. The scope of this paper does not include explaining how psychometry, or any other psychic art is performed, but they do work. I once held someone's keys, closed my eyes and waited for images to appear. Nothing happened. I was miffed and stopped trying to get an image. Then my hands started to itch and suddenly in my mind's eye, I saw boxes being stacked up to form a wall. The man whose keys I was holding was a mason. Another time, I held a woman's ring, closed my eyes and immediately my throat closed up, my chest caught fire and I couldn't breathe. I snapped myself out of it and found that the woman had serious respiratory problems. Her ring was extremely hot when I handed it back to her. These two people were complete strangers I partnered with at a psychic workshop. Psychometry does work, though it may not work all the time, or work for everyone.
Telepathy is more loosely defined. In general, telepathy is a method of receiving information about someone. Telepathy is different from psychometry in that an object is not used. The information pertains to past, present or future events. The way it is transmitted can be visual, as with clairvoyance,...
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...g. The CIA became interested because they wanted to know what the Soviets were up to and so they funded the graduates' work for twenty years. Eventually, the CIA stopped funding them and the grad students dabbled in the commodities market. Once again they met with success in eleven out of eleven tries. When asked why they didn't continue and become billionaires, they answered that their remote viewing talents gave them peace of mind, and somehow making money on their talent didn't seem quite right and so they stopped. They are still active in their research at Stanford.
This essay is by no means a conclusive discourse on the variety of psychic phenomena present in the world. Other fascinating abilities exist including everything from telekinesis, raising objects, to raising the dead. That, at least, is one psychic gift no one is practicing at the moment.
In the psychic community, mediumship is the most feared and least understood. That’s because psychic phenomena can’t be approached through intellect. Even in today’s enlightened society, skeptics analyze mediums as sitting in a dark room, watching tables rise from the floor, accompanied by woo-woo sounds.
In order to break the cultural norms of psychics, con artists, paranormalist and faith healers, James Randi debunks frauds by criticizing religion. As a debunker, Randi emphasizes that trusting fakers give them superiority to control a spectator’s
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
In a similar economic revolution, the colonies out grew their mercantile relationship with England and developed their own expanding capitalist system. The idea of a set amount of wealth in the world and that if one were to become wealthy, he or she had to take from someone who is already wealthy, is basically what mercantilism means.
Funerals have been around as long as humans have. “Research indicates that as far back as 50,000 years ago, man exhibited concern for the dead” Lensing (2001) stated. The Egyptians, Greeks and Romans also had rituals about death and the possibility of an afterlife. The Middle Ages society was one of the first socities to accpet the idea that death was a part of life and that all people had to die. Also during the Middle Ages, rituals of mourning became evident. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries the mourning rituals became more elaborate. The rituals included ornate tombstones and a plethora of mourning paraphernalia Lensing (2001).
Adam Smith gave the formal label of “mercantile system” and defined it as a set of policies in order to achieve favorable balance of trade or payments that encourages exports, discourages imports, impositions on colonial trade, regulated policies on commerce and money and regulation of the industry. To Eli Hecksher, mercantilism focuses on nation-building or transformation of the system. It is a system that’s combines economic protection, and economic nationalism. To German historical economists, mercantilism is an economic policy that aims to promote economic growth and modernization through means of protection and economic nationalism. Thus, mercantilism was justified to be a consolidation of state power, policy making, and economic management of the state to achieve mutual nation-state interests or goals and national economic progress. Early mercantilist assumptions were then created to strengthen the external powers of the state and they were: 1) power is essential and it is the key to acquiring and retaining wealth, 2) wealth is always an essential means to power whether for security or aggression purposes, 3) wealth and power always result to ultimate ends of national policies and both experience long-run harmony between the end. To achieve trade surplus in mercantilism, exports must always be encouraged, new routes for trade and products should be discovered or taken away from another country’s control, number of ships in other countries must be reduced and gold mines or new territories must be discovered and conquered. The export of bullions or gold and silver, must be banned. Consumption of imported necessities and luxuries must also be banned or restricted. The market of local merchants or sellers should be protected. Imports must not be encouraged if such goods are manufactured, supplied or produced
This has been a neccessarily brief and incomplete account. I have not mentioned Rabelais, the Rosicrucians, the decadent poets, Nietzsche, de Sade, Levi, Gurdjieff, James, Augustine, Shakespeare, Masonry, Paine, American utopian communities, Jung, Merlin, art and spirit, or Gnosticism, all of which are vital elements of the story; I have given short shrift to the psychical movement and its influence on nineteenth and twentieth century
Finding a definition of literacy is not as easy as it sounds. The Webster definition says that to be literate is to be” able to read and write.” But to some researchers, this definition is too simplistic, leading to multiple models of literacy. Most Americans adhere to the autonomous model, which falls closest to the standard, dictionary definition. Believers in this form say that literacy is a cognitive activity that students learn like any other basic skill. It has a set of proficiencies that one must master in order to be capable of decoding and encoding text (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). A competing theory is the ideological model, which claims literacy is intrinsically linked to culture, and therefore what constitutes a “literate” individual is ever-changing. Society is the largest influence on literacy, according to this thought, and it is affected by politics, religion, philosophy and more (Alvermann, 2009; SIL International, 1999). These two are just the tip of the iceberg. For example, some studies recognize “literacy as competence,” which is a “measure of competence to do a given task or work in a given field,” (SIL International, 1999) such as being computer literate. Although more researchers are recognizing and exploring multiple literacies, the one that most influences American schools is the autonomous, cognitive model – the ability to read and write. For many, it seems a simple task, but millions of adolescents are struggling or reluctant readers, and there are many reasons why young readers have difficulty with reading. XXXXXX------NEED HELP WITH THESIS STATEMENT HERE PLEASE—(This paper will focus on the effects of low reading skills, some of the possible causes of reluctant and struggling readership...
To be successful in the world today literacy is vital. But what is the definition of Literacy? According to Merriam Webster it is “the quality or state of being literate”, but can it also be expanded and redefined as Culturally Literate “the ability to understand and appreciate the similarities and differences in the customs, values, and beliefs of one’s own culture the cultures of others? This essay will utilize the writings of Fishman, Mary Ann Zehr, and Jean Piaget to compare the definition of literacy by mainstream society to that of the Amish culture.
Literacy has a strong impact on ones life’s in many reasons such as it can open doors for an individual to become successful in the world. Literacy is never easy to develop but once it is developed it is something that can never be forgotten. Achieving the quality of literacy can determine your efficiency in life. An individual environment throughout early childhood has an impact on the quality of literacy they develop.
To attempt to relinquish some of these concerns regarding the differentiation of mind and behaviour definition, Whiten (1996) established four distinct variations of mind- reading. These are implicit mind- reading, counter- deception, recognition of intervening variables, and experience projection. Impli...
...t al. "Paranormal Encounters as Eyewitness Phenomena: Psychological Determinants of Atypical Perceptual Interpretations." Current Psychology 29.4 (2010): 320-327. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
“Consciousness is defined as everything of which we are aware at any given time - our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions of the external environment. Physiological researchers have returned to the study of consciousness, in examining physiological rhythms, sleep, and altered states of consciousness (changes in awareness produced by sleep, meditation, hypnosis, and drugs)” (Wood, 2011, 169). There are five levels of consciousness; Conscious (sensing, perceiving, and choosing), Preconscious (memories that we can access), Unconscious ( memories that we can not access), Non-conscious ( bodily functions without sensation), and Subconscious ( “inner child,” self image formed in early childhood).
Mercantilism was known as the “greatest whipping boys in the economic history” (C.W., 2013). Mercantilism was a theory of trade that was adopted by major European powers in the 1500’s to the 1800’s (Mercantilism, n.d.). It was also an economic nationality for the purpose of building a wealthy and powerful nation. The “mercantile system” is used to describe the political economy that sought to enrich the country through restraining imports and focus on exports (LaHaye, n.d.).
There are some theoreticians who view literacy in a form of social practice. In their view, social issues are also important components, as well as linguistic competence and understanding cognitive processes in language studies. Freire (1974) views literacy not only as a process of knowledge transformation, but also as a relationship of learners to the world. Vygotsky (1978) suggests two stages of development at social and individual level. In his view, literacy is a phenomenon that is created, shared, and changed by the members of a society. Gee (1996) similarly argues that becoming literate means apprenticeship with texts and apprenticeships in particular ways of being. In summary, literacy practices are not just about language, but about their interrelation with social practices.