What do New Thought followers do by way of practice?

P_Synthesis wrote:

Just because, with my flawed perception, I believe something, that doesn't make it "true."

OK, finally! We'll go with that, and I will match it up with the less-skeptical position later on.

Let's just establish that this is the case:

You believe you are looking at a screen right now, although you have no way to be absolutely sure? In other words, it seems as real as anything else does in this life, but there is no way to measure how real that might be on some absolute scale?

(Please note I am not asking you how you know you believe you are looking at a screen; the point is, it is something you know you believe.)

EDIT: I have to dash now, hope to be back on later...

Yes, there is a way to measure reality. Scientific methodology is the way we all depend upon. Reality is by consensus. If your reality doesn't match up with the consensus then your perception of reality may be skewed.

I know what a computer screen looks like, and this particular make and model, since there is a consensus about what (in my reality) a computer screen looks like. If I call you up and give you the make and model of my computer, you will describe the dimensions etc. and I will compare it to see if that matches what I am looking at. If you describe something different than what I think I see, then I will go to other people and ask them the same questions. We can compare pictures, we can put two screens together in a room of people and by using scientific methodology will arrive at a consensus about the reality of the computer screen. It is measurable and verifiable and other people can reproduce the same experiment and come to the same conclusions.

What you have been talking about is taking people's opinions - "beliefs" - about connections in their minds that they have made between unconnected things and "feel" that it is "true." It isn't verifiable. It hasn't been proven by scientific methodology. It a UPG.

The human mind plays all sorts of tricks on us.

My kid sister and I were talking about things we remembered doing as children shortly after our father's death. There were several things that I remembered very clearly, but she said that wasn't how it happened at all and vice versa.

We laughingly concluded that we must have been only half there at the time.

My speech students and I used to have fun with exercises in perception that demonstrate why eyewitness accounts to a crime are so faulty. After a few such exercises, you learn quite a lot about how flawed your perception is.

I'd get the cooperation of an office staff member or another teacher, asking the person to come into the classroom and create an agreed-upon diversion that would get students' attention. (The students weren't told that this was merely an exercise although I'm sure some suspected it might be.)

Then, after the person left the room, everyone--myself included--would write down immediately their observations of what exactly had occurred. I'd couch this as a test of how good an eyewitness each one would be and encouraged them to write down as many details as they could remember about the person's appearance, manner, and what was said.

We'd file those and then write another account a few days later, a week later and then a month later, filing each right after finishing the summary. After the one month summary, I'd give each student all four accounts and we examined them for discrepancies as time elapsed.

It was often astounding how people's memories altered details over time even though some students said they were certain they remembered quite clearly what had happened.

What you have been talking about is taking people's opinions - "beliefs" - about connections in their minds that they have made between unconnected things and "feel" that it is "true."

No I haven't, as we shall soon discover.

I'm glad you're skipping ahead in the argument since you have done some of my work for me; I totally agree that that there is what you call 'concensus' about reality, and that it is basically obtained by people's individual experiences verifying one another.

But we ought pin down what you really mean: do you still say that this 'reality which is by concensus' is 'not actually true' in any absolute sense, or do you now saying that the concensus is true in some absolute sense?

Now in the matter of verification/concensus your first thought is that 'you are looking at a computer screen and there is a concensus about what a computer screen looks like.' That's all well and good but I want to point out something about the nature of this concensus. I put a quote box below:

Verification.

Now my experience is that I have typed the word 'verification' in that quote box. What I am expecting is that, when you read this post on your screen, you will see the word 'verification' as well.

This is an example of our two experiences confirming one another -- your experience has verified my experience. With me so far?

(Dot -- it's true that memories change but I am not talking about memories just now.)

That memories change over time wasn't entirely the point, but oh, well...doesn't really matter.

Can we cut to the chase and get to how you propose that something like one person's claim of having seen a deity manifest can be demonstrated to others?

Can we cut to the chase and get to how you propose that something like one person's claim of having seen a deity manifest can be demonstrated to others?

Well you could probably answer that yourself already, if you look at things the way you might be beginning to suspect that I am looking at them -- but we are nearly there. It's just important to establish that the nature of verification is experiential.

P_Synthesis wrote:

Can we cut to the chase and get to how you propose that something like one person's claim of having seen a deity manifest can be demonstrated to others?

Well you could probably answer that yourself already, if you look at things the way you might be beginning to suspect that I am looking at them -- but we are nearly there. It's just important to establish that the nature of verification is experiential.

Let's not play "I think you've guessed what I'm thinking" games, shall we?

Of course the nature of verification is experiential.

Gilly's example of showing her computer to other people deals with things that can be demonstrated, i.e. experienced.

Now, how would we go about demonstrating something like John's experience with the Valkyries?

Well I would rather gilly say it -- after it's she who gave the idea that 'all of life is UPG'.
If you accept that the nature of verification is experiential, then all of life is not UPG -- UPG stands for something 'unverified/unverifiable', but life actually runs on mutual verification for us.

Example: you are walking in the hills and you see a bird; you have no camera. You have no way to prove you saw the bird. But you did experience the fact that you saw it. If you have someone with you, they will verify that they also experienced it -- but still this is not proof, this simply two people verifying each other. There is no way to prove it, but there is a way to verify it between the two people who had a chance to experience it and can compare notes.

Is this ok so far? The reason I have to go so carefully is because of the all the objections raised!

Gilly's example of showing her computer to other people deals with things that can be demonstrated, i.e. experienced.

I'm not going to use the word demonstrate, I'm using the word verification because the kinds of things I'm talking about don't work by demonstration. Eg., with the bird there is no way to demonstrate. There was only one chance to see the bird at that time.

I will go to examples if the above is something you can agree with, since gilly isn't here right now it seems...

Don't lecture Dot for answering, will you, PS? She has an opinion and she's welcome to post it. She often says what I mean a lot better than I do. So in answer to you - What Dot said.

I believe that SG was the first to say it is all UPG if you will look back at the posts.

I get that you are talking about UPG, at least with your last post, and that there is no way to prove it actually happened because it is UPG, so now you want to move on? You are about to dispense with verification and Scientific Methodology because it doesn't fit your pet hypothesis?

PS. I'll try to stop editing this to sound less bitchy, but I've had a long day.

Don't lecture Dot for answering, will you, PS?

I didn't lecture her for answering, what I said was that I could not take her answer for yours. Although you may feel she speaks for you, I have no way to know it and did not want to assume. My first point was that verification is experiential -- you agree with Dot that this is so. Cool.

I believe that SG was the first to say it is all UPG if you will look back at the posts.

True but I believe you agreed.

I get that you are talking about UPG, at least with your last post, and that there is no way to prove it actually happened because it is UPG, so now you want to move on?

No, UPG means unverified/unverifiable. In the bird example I just gave, there is verification if someone else is with you. It is just that it cannot be proven. Correct or not?

(BTW if you would rather not answer, there is no need to force yourself. Wait until you are relaxed, or don't answer, it's fine...)

True you could both be lying your heads off as people often do, and back each other's stories up for your own reasons. Your point?

Yup it can't be independently verified that both of you aren't lying.

But it's not as though other people haven't seen a particular bird. Both people observing this bird could draw a picture of its appearance or describe its habits, maybe even mimic its call if they heard that, and come very close to proving that they saw a specific bird by submitting their descriptions to an ornithologist or experienced birdwatcher. Of course, the remote possibility exists that they saw a bird thought to be extinct, since there have been such occurrences, debunked until other sightings were verified. Even so, there is still a basis for comparison with prior experience.

Or as Gilly mentioned, they could both be lying through their teeth and supporting each other's claim that they saw this bird.

Obviously, there are various possibilities including their sincerely believing that they each saw the bird but actually did not.

The so-called sun phenomenon at Fatima might be an example of this. Hundreds of people claimed to have observed the sun's growing gradually larger and brighter and seeming to be moving closer to the Earth. Scientifically, of course, this is impossible, so what exactly did occur? Probably a mass hallucination arising from the fact that a large crowd of very suggestible people were present that day hoping to see an apparition of the Virgin Mary with their own eyes and at the least hoping for some sort of "divine" occurrence.

The problem that we have with comparing notes on what are presumed to be manifestations of deities is that we're usually talking more about things such as brief sensations, "mind's eye" images and misty apparitions than phenomena clearcut enough that we could assemble a crowd of people, point and say, "Look there. What is that, do you think?" And all of these phenomena are characterized by the observer's individual beliefs as to what it may be--angel, god, ghost, you name it.

I've read various accounts of people at the bedsides of the dying who witnessed a silvery mist rising from the person's body at what was presumed to be the moment of death. One of these by Jane Goodall who stated that prior to this instance she wasn't the least bit predisposed to regard it as the soul leaving the body, but when both she and her aunt saw this mist rising from--I think it was--Goodall's mother's body, she couldn't come up with a more mundane explanation for what they observed.

Something of this sort is a little more observable and potentially quantifiable than "I saw nature sprites tending the flowers in my garden last night." Even so, how do we go about determining what it is that people are seeing or experiencing? And then, it's another vast leap entirely to trying to determine whether a manifestation identified as a deity actually is something of that sort.

As I said, All UPG.


ETA: I know a couple of folks who swear they saw a Black Dog going down route 66. Not just a black dog, mind you, but A Black Dog.

According to the criteria you have set forth, that was indeed a Black Dog going down route 66. My friends have shrugged it off as a shared UPG. There's probably a term for that, but I don't know what it is. The point is, there is no reason I should be driving down Route 66 looking for a Black Dog. If I had been meant to see it, I would see it.
Do I accept it as a valid UPG for them? Certainly. Do I see it as impacting my life or my UPG at all? No, not at all. Do I believe there is a Black Dog running down Route 66? Never heard any stories of it before, but no reason to doubt my friends. I think on this one, I will stay agnostic.

This example make UPG clear as mud?

I think those sightings (for want of a better word) typically build on people's willingness to support what others say and to agree with people whom one trusts and likes.

So, what happened to your friends might have proceeded something like this.

Person A: "What was THAT?"
Person B: "What was what?"
Person A: "That thing over there."
Person B: "You saw something?"
Person A: "Yeah, something really black. Over that way...[pointing] see?"
Person B (doesn't have a clue what Person A is seeing if anything but tries to be obliging): "Oh, yeah...there's something kind of dark there."

Now, if there are Persons C and D present, one of whom claims immediately to see "what Person A sees," then the build to agreeing, "Yep, there's definitely a big black dog there," is off and running.

Gradually, everyone in the group becomes convinced that they're all seeing the same thing and will likely go around telling others what they're now certain everyone saw. They're friends, and people generally trust that their friend is telling the truth, so we're predisposed to agree that we see "something" there when the truth is that we've no idea initially what the hell our friend thinks s/he saw.

Now, on the other hand, there are experiences where both people clearly see something weird and completely contrary to everyday reality. What SG's friends saw might have been one such.

Once, I'd been talking with a friend about my ex-hubby's and my belief that our house was haunted. This could have set us both up to think we were experiencing something weird, but what happened was so matter-of-fact and unexpected that we both were baffled.

This occurred mid-afternoon on a sunny day in a well-illuminated room, so there wasn't any darkness to make things difficult to discern.

He was about to leave and was standing at our front door next to an upholstered armchair with about a half dozen daily newspapers lying on the seat.

Suddenly, we both saw the newspapers depress as if someone invisible had sat down in the chair.

He looked at me and asked, "Did you see what I saw?"

I shook my head no rather hysterically, because I had definitely seen the chair seat appear to depress as if sat upon.

When we each described what we had seen, our descriptions coincided.

There were no windows open, no discernible air currents suddenly blowing past us, and how many breezes depress a stack of newspapers rather than simply shoving one aside or fluttering the page edges?

I really have no idea what the hell happened.

P_Synthesis wrote:

DotNotInOz wrote:Gilly's example of showing her computer to other people deals with things that can be demonstrated, i.e. experienced.

I'm not going to use the word demonstrate, I'm using the word verification because the kinds of things I'm talking about don't work by demonstration....

Okay, objections aside for the moment...

What would constitute verification for you of John's experience with the Valkyries or of my insistence that I saw nature sprites tending my flowers at twilight last summer (presuming for the moment that I'm claiming this as an actual experience when I've only known people who told me they could see such beings)? Define "verify" relative to such phenomena, please.

One might reasonably assume that John's experience is unlikely to recur whereas mine might well.

And even though this may be a premature question, how would we set up any sort of replicating experiments to achieve such verification more than once? Belaboring the obvious momentarily, we can't verify anything if it only happens once in isolation and never again.

I'm pleased to see my point is coming across at last a little, at least to Dot!

Dot took it forward again and produced a number of examples -- I will respond, and I also want make the one point that has not been made properly yet about the nature of verification. I have wailed, stamped and ground my teeth about this precisely because it must be accepted that verification is about experience -- as I said, and as was agreed by Dot and gilly.

First a couple more examples of my own to show the importance of the experiential part, then I will respond...

The click Dot hears associated with her OBE activity -- she is not the only one to hear a click -- it's a quite commonly reported phenomenon associated with exiting and entering the body. But Dot can verify it from experience. Before she experienced it, it was not verified; she could believe in it or not, but that is just belief. Afterwards, you have personally verified.

Or another example: I talked of my early energy experiments -- here's something more specific. One of the books I experimented with, a set of Taoist techniques, said that after doing a certain exercise for a while "many people experience a large bubble of jing [a kind of thick, viscous, cold energy] rising up their spines." I thought nothing of this but one day, I unexpectedly experienced it as I was drifting off to sleep. It felt as if a bubble the shape of a tortoise shell were rising slowly up my spine, then it reached my head and energy-liquid poured my front -- a delicious sensation.

So I can count myself amongst the people who have experienced this and thereby verified that, yes, it does take place. However, the very next exercise in the same book explained that I ought to experience 'a flush of heat' upon doing it -- I never did. I was never able to verify that. (I soon gave up doing that latter exercise, and later I found out that most other people don't bother with it either, so I kind of verified my lack of verification if you will!)

So here's the point that's so important to be made about these examples -- they remain verifiable. Unlike with the bird seen in the hills which is a one-time thing, people have OBEs all the time and many of them report clicks. Plus, anyone who learns to OBE might in turn verify the experience. Therefore it is not UPG, "unverifiable". There are numerous other, similar phenomena verified many times for OBE, for example:

1. Experienced a jolt or jerk awake 98%
2. Heard buzzing, humming or roaring sounds 85%
3. Felt floating, sinking or spinning sensations 82%

... etc., that's the top 3 of the 'commonly reported phenomena' in Buhlman's survey. I can confirm 1 and 3 from my own verification, but personally, I cannot confirm 2.

So these verifications are ongoing, and anyone who is interested to investigate has a chance to verify for themselves. Therefore, although there's no "proof", and although there's not necessarily any explanation, one can't describe these things as 'unverifiable'. They are being constantly verified.


Responding to Dot and sacrificialgoddess:

First point that is being made over and over again: verification doesn't mean anything for someone else. I agree, it doesn't! That's what I mean by there being no proof. That's what I mean when I say that verification is experiential. The only people who can verify it are the people who experienced it.

The so-called sun phenomenon at Fatima might be an example of this. Hundreds of people claimed to have observed the sun's growing gradually larger and brighter and seeming to be moving closer to the Earth. Scientifically, of course, this is impossible, so what exactly did occur? Probably a mass hallucination

Yes but you seem to think I'm saying that, because they say they experienced it, we should believe them! I'm not saying that at all. That would mean that their experience was tantamount to proof which is just what I have consistently said it's not. Only the people who experienced this phenomenon can verify it. Verification is experiential -- I didn't experience the Fatima sun phenomenon, so I can't verify it! It's that simple. Of course I might believe all sorts of things about it -- that it's true, or a lie, mass delusion, great blessing, yarda yarda yarda. But it's pretty much speculation. If I believe it, it's faith. It's not experience. I can't verify it for myself.

But the click -- or the bubble of jing -- or many other things: those can be verified by someone else, and I can compare notes with them. It's not proof, but it is verification.

One of these by Jane Goodall who stated that prior to this instance she wasn't the least bit predisposed to regard it as the soul leaving the body, but when both she and her aunt saw this mist rising from--I think it was--Goodall's mother's body, she couldn't come up with a more mundane explanation for what they observed.

Yes and of course this sort of thing has been observed many times. Again, she and her aunt can verify it, and if they talk to others who have experienced or read their accounts, they can determine if they are verified or not from the personal point of view. But that's all -- the rest of us do not know, although we might believe/doubt etc.

Even so, how do we go about determining what it is that people are seeing or experiencing? And then, it's another vast leap entirely to trying to determine whether a manifestation identified as a deity actually is something of that sort.

I'm not even attempting an explanation at this point! The people who experience something will tend to have an explanation of some kind, but they are explaining something I have not experienced, so my viewpoint is likely to be of limited value. Unless of course I'm actively theorizing and researching, etc., but in this case I am not.

And to sacrificialgoddess:

sacrificialgoddess wrote:The point is, there is no reason I should be driving down Route 66 looking for a Black Dog. If I had been meant to see it, I would see it.
Do I accept it as a valid UPG for them? Certainly. Do I see it as impacting my life or my UPG at all? No, not at all.

Sure, absolutely not. You have no verification of it, so it isn't important to you. But if one night you do verify it over there on route 66, that will not necessarily be a straightforward UPG -- you might find you are verifying their experience, in which case it would not be "unverified". You'd have to compare notes and see how convincing the verification is.

You said you have "never heard any stories of it before". If you had, there would be more verification... but that also goes to the trustworthiness issue, whether notes were taken etc. etc... all sorts of things. And none of that is verification -- only experience is verification.

Any clearer?

Dot wrote:Now, on the other hand, there are experiences where both people clearly see something weird and completely contrary to everyday reality. What SG's friends saw might have been one such.

Yes indeed, but I am talking about one level beyond that. I am saying that if you do the exercises I did, there is a chance you will verify what I experienced. That makes the experience verifiable -- it is not a one-time bird-in-the-hills thing.

I could go on about other examples but this is definitely enough for now!

-----------------

EDIT: Dot I just noticed your post which has anticipated everything I have said above about verifiability. (I don't call it 'replication', because in science that means experimental conditions.) But tell me what you think of the above before this post gets to biblical lengths.

It already is!

It's a case of tl:dr for me because it missed the obvious counterpoint over and over. Just because two people exchange with each other discussions about a strange and similar mental experience, and because they have been reading/talking about something that has a box that they think it could fit in, doesn't mean that the explanation you or they have decided upon is correct about what they might have experienced. This is not verification of anything except that they think that they have had a strange experience or were hallucinating or hoped so much to have something happen that they convinced themselves that it did.

I think you are in that same position. You seem to have convinced yourself that people shouldn't need to use scientific methodology in order to believe in woo-woo stuff. All we need is another person to massage the egos! It's all UPG, like SG said and I think it's mistake is to try to make it more than that.

I've already answered those points... one more time and then I'll leave it.

ust because two people exchange each other they've had a strange and similar mental experience, and because they have been reading/talking about something that has a box that they think it could fit in, doesn't mean that the explanation you or they have decided upon is correct about what they might have experienced.

That doesn't affect my point since I never said the explanation had to be correct -- nor indeed that there had to be one.

You know very well that none of my examples involves merely reading or talking about something. It involves experience and only experience is the arbiter.

This is not verification of anything except that they think that they have had a strange experience

Plus the fact that you yourself could also verify it. I can't quite understand how you are still missing that simple idea.

You seem to have convinced yourself that people shouldn't need to use scientific methodology in order to believe in woo-woo stuff.

No, to experience 'woo-woo stuff' -- a rather judgmental way of putting it.

Take the example I gave earlier of the book of healing visualizations. Many times the nurses using the techniques found them helpful, so much so that they gave an award. There's no proof that the techniques work, and there's no explanation for how they work. Maybe therefore they are 'woo woo', a term you did not define! But if you are cured or your condition improves, why do you care if they are 'woo-woo'? The personal experiential verification is considerably more important in that case. What you care about is that you are well.

Similarly, if a cure is 'scientifically proven' to work, but does not happen to work on you, what good is scientific methodology? Your experience is that you are still ill. And that's not entirely a 'mental experience' is it?

Now if you are ill you could test those techniques and see if you get better. If you do, you verify on a personal level. Doesn't matter whether a.n.other person says -- that is woo-woo, not if you are cured of something.

The experience is the final arbiter for the individual person. If I haven't experienced it, I don't believe it... but if I have, I certainly am free to make of my experience what I will. If in addition other people keep on directly observing the same thing in their own experience, that is certainly of great interest because I can verify -- but someone without the experience can't verify.

As you have pointed out, that's how the world always works.

In short, we're right back where we started. That we each may be convinced we have verified our own experiences by comparing our recollections to accounts of what seem to be similar experiences other people have had doesn't mean squat to anyone but ourselves.

When Gilly says she's experienced communications from her gods, I don't really have any way to know what that means to her and to then determine whether or not certain "woo-woo" experiences I've had are similar.

And before we even got to the stage of comparing notes, we'd have to sift through how much our perceptions of our respective experiences could have been altered by prior knowledge of what we might be experiencing. People reach conclusions remarkably quickly on extremely few, possibly quite faulty perceptions, especially when they are as well-read as many of us. We're also frequently loath to admit to ourselves that we might be mistaken about the nature of our experiences. No one wants to be seeing things that are only our minds playing tricks on us.

Hell, I don't even know if I've actually been out of body at all. I don't have any recollection of having gone anywhere, seen anything unfamiliar, come back into body with knowledge I didn't have before this assumed OOB. Even the one I recounted above is easily explained by other possibilities. I was very concerned about my friend's health since she looked quite ill after lunch, said she felt very unwell and might need to see the nurse. Well, there wasn't a nurse on duty at the center full-time. If someone not a local became ill when there was no nurse available, the person was usually directed to the ER.

The logical conclusion was that she had gone to the ER and quite probably her condition wasn't serious. Most people I've known who were able to get themselves to an ER turned out not to be as ill as they feared or not ill at all. For all I knew, she was a malingerer who frequented ER's. I'd only just met her a few days previously.

I've had all sorts of equally strong convictions that I knew things psychically which turned out never to have happened. But those one tends to forget because they don't validate one's beliefs. I even kept a dream journal for well over a year once to see if any events I foresaw in my dreams later happened. I didn't score anything but a few minor similarities that couldn't truthfully be called fulfilled premonitions, unfortunately for my ego.

Honestly, I don't know if I've been OOB at all but merely describe my experiences as such because I don't otherwise have any explanation for being awakened by a loud cracking noise with no evident cause.

PS's verification may be very personally satisfying, but sorry to say, it's not anything I'd call even the beginnings of verifying that these are actual experiences and not simply applying "This must be a <you name it> I'm experiencing" to what occurs.

Well in closing I will just say this: the other element I've been avoiding trying to bring up is the strength of the experience. I mentioned the healings of medical conditions by visualization and so forth, and I really think in that case (with personal physical evidence) you are speaking of something that is strongly verifiable. If you no longer have cancer, then you no longer have cancer. (Doesn't mean you won't relapse of course.)

That's beyond 'personally very satisfying' for anyone who actually experiences it, I would think.

The other experiences mentioned are tending to be put in the category of 'mental', 'fleeting', etc. Problem is, my experiences simply are not of that kind! At any time I choose I can feel the 'levels of being' -- I can do it right now. I can feel my physical body, my energy bodies, and my mental body. I can sense that there are higher bodies that I can't feel yet.

I can sense that these bodies will separate from one another. When I do OBE that is precisely what happens; I am conscious throughout. And I say more -- I say anyone who puts in the same amount of work on the same kinds of methods I do will be able to feel the effect, and will know the difference between something vague or imagined and something very real and unmistakeable. The first time you deliberately lift your energy body out of your physical one, the body thinks it is death, because you are mimicking the death process. It can cause gut level panic. It's not a subtle sensation!

OBE sensations in general are even stronger than physical sensations in many cases. But you do have to feel them in order to believe that -- that I grant. What I say is, anyone can do so and verify that what I say is true.

P_Synthesis wrote:OBE sensations in general are even stronger than physical sensations in many cases. But you do have to feel them in order to believe that -- that I grant. What I say is, anyone can do so and verify that what I say is true.

This is a somewhat reckless conclusion, IMO. You believe that ANYONE can have an OBE? On what basis?

P_Synthesis wrote:Well in closing I will just say this: the other element I've been avoiding trying to bring up is the strength of the experience. I mentioned the healings of medical conditions by visualization and so forth, and I really think in that case (with personal physical evidence) you are speaking of something that is strongly verifiable. If you no longer have cancer, then you no longer have cancer. (Doesn't mean you won't relapse of course.)

That's beyond 'personally very satisfying' for anyone who actually experiences it, I would think.

How powerful an experience is doesn't necessarily make it what a person thinks it is. Ever talked to a schizophrenic convinced that s/he hears voices? That's a completely convincing experience for that person despite the fact that no one else can hear any such voices.

No, we are not dealing with something "strongly verifiable" unless a definite connection can be established between the visualization and the absence of the cancer.

We simply don't know enough about what causes cancer to go into remission as it's called. We also don't yet know why a cancerous tumor can suddenly vanish which does infrequently occur.

You seem to be using "verify" in the sense of "as long as a person is convinced that what happened was the result of a particular cause and was an actual experience," then that constitutes verification. It still means nothing much to anyone else unless other means can be used to prove the accuracy and validity of this person's conclusion.

Strength of conviction means nothing much but that someone is gratified to have reached personally satisfying conclusions or to have experienced something unexpectedly fortuitous such as being cured of cancer. Even the medical board that evaluates so-called "miraculous cures" at the Lourdes shrine labels them "inexplicable cures."

I love ya'll, but this whole thread has made me

Some of the posts are way too long for my little brain to read.

TED, have a look (and anyone else who is interested) at this website which is for One Spirit Learning Alliance. One of my daughters went there for a do and was intrigued by what they have to offer.

http://www.onespiritinterfaith.org/osla_vision.htm

Gilly, that's very neat!