Re: Channeling - is it legit or bogus?

Author: J.Amenta
Date: 1997/02/25
Forums: alt.paranormal

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>Now, I also agree with your comments regarding many who claim to be
>channeling when in fact they are not. The idea of many in the psychic
>world is that if they claim they are channeling then that gives them
>more credibility and that is false. So the bottom line is this.
>Channeling is an art form held by very few. Many who claim to be
>channeling are not decieving the public but themselves as well. for the
>public, recognize that many claimed channelers are simply using what
>ever little intuitive capability they have and are not messengers from
>anywhere except from their own minds.

Curley has hit it on the head here when he states, "Channeling is
an art form held by very few." William James, the "real" father of
psychology (not Freud), often commented on how much fakery, slough,
and people who thought they were so called channelers but were not
he would have to wade through to even get at the real cases to be
observed. Even after he had discovered Mrs. Piper, and the years
of study and recording of her mediumship by himself, Hodgson and
the SPR group - one is left with a record of bizarre material
interspersed with astonishing gleams of psi perceptions. James
almost gave up on Piper due to all the nonsense he would have
to put up with, especially given his own remarkable scholarly and
intellectual capacity. And yet, there was no doubt in anyone's mind
on the veracity and lack of trickery on the phenomena that Mrs.
Piper brought forward from clearly her unconscious.

Now we all bring material out from our unconscious like Mrs. Piper
did on a very regular basis - when we dream at night, our
unconscious is quite active and creative. However, it is clearly
no surprise that the unconscious is different in different people -
just as some people are born master pianist's and by the age of
four can out perform someone who has spent their entire life at
the piano, so it easy to imagine that some people have a virtuosity
with the unconscious uncommon among the crowd.

What indeed is in the unconscious? I would put forward that we
humans really don't know. There has been a lot of study of the
unconscious and some amazing aspects have been uncovered
about it over the last century - our brain, our psyche is a truly
amazing natural phenomena. We really don't know all there is
to know about it yet, and I would agree that among the most
mysterious and puzzling aspects our human psyche is capable
of, is the feats of precognition and telepathic insight - that seems
to defy logic - in which true mediums such as Mrs. Piper proved
the existence of.

John