Empirical Evidence

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“A mind unwilling to believe or even undesirous to be instructed,
our weightiest evidence must ever fail to impress. It will insist on taking that
evidence in bits and rejecting item by item. As all the facts come singly, anyone
who dismisses them one by one is destroying the condition under which the conviction
of a new truth could ever arise in the mind.”
F.C.S. Schiller (1922)

Empirical-A central concept in science and the scientific method is that all evidence must be empirical, or empirically based, that is, dependent on evidence or consequences that are observable by the senses.((http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical)) What would it take to turn you from a hardened sceptic in to a confirmed believer? What would convince you off psychic or paranormal ability or events and that their is life after death? Would you need to find a top psychic or medium and have a first class experience or would you later doubt yourself and wonder if you had been the victim of some kind of paranormal fraud? Do the experiences of de ja vu, or mentally telepathy with a loved one send you into a spin and have you brushing them aside commonly described as ‘psychic’ or ‘paranormal’. How would that sit with you? You have to ask yourself if none of the above fit the bill for you what exactly would it take for you to be convinced?

Some examples of proven psychic ability matching the above criteria that warrant further reading from any skeptic and have been tested and scrutinized by science.

The Scole Investigation

A Study in Critical Analysis of Psychic Phenomena

Experienced psychical researchers investigated the activities of a spiritualist circle in Scole, Norfolk, based in the UK, claiming to produce under spiritual control a wide range of physical phenomena. During a two-year long study, lights, tape recordings and films bearing images, glyphs, poetry , symbols and messages in several languages were produces evidence. The investigators could find no evidence of deception or human interference. A comprehensive report, published as refereed Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, generated a controversy centering on the nature of acceptable scientific evidence they they believe constitutes acceptable evidence of the paranormal.

Late in 1994, the activities of this Group, named after the Norfolk village where the principal séances took place in the cellar of the home of its leader, Robin Foy, came to the attention of the society and was consequently studied.
They Reported on the activities of three couples who appeared to have dedicated themselves to the revival of physical mediumship, the practice of which had all but virtually died out in recent times. It has been argued that no amount of expertise in the deceptive arts could account for the wide range of phenomena experienced, and that in some cases the controls were as complete as even the most demanding sceptic could reasonably require. Based on two years of regular séances, their chief claims were that they had established contact with a “counsel” of spirit communicators comprising, or in contact with, a number of former scientists. These had been accessed through one of the couples, a husband and wife team both of whom entered swiftly into deep trance, remaining so throughout the proceedings, of which they retained no conscious recollection. The purported discarnate contacts had facilitated the manifestation of spirit lights, moved furniture, levitated objects, created apports (objects appearing from no known source and by no known means), displayed shadowy figures described as angelic forms, and produced films, allegedly employing a novel form of energy not involving the traditional ectoplasmic extrusions. Polaroid pictures of entities were taken by scientist present, the rooms used were checked for any form of trickery and critics have all failed to face what must be the most formidable objection to any variety of fraud hypothesis: that all the evidence must be taken together. All the positive evidence was based on observation and records; all the negative evidence was inferential. As far as any accepted means of scientific testing of any genre is concerned, the experiments and conditions satisfied all possible criteria so as to eliminate fraud and to gather evidence. To many skeptics, what was recorded and witnessed is an unacceptable miracle, a violation of the laws of nature and no matter what- they will never be convinced.ⁱ

Weight of the Soul?

The ancient Egyptians believed and had documented many times that they believed the heart had a weight. They believed that after death a long journey would commence to the underworld where the gods of the dead performed the “weighing of the heart” ceremony to judge whether the person’s earthly deeds were virtuous. The weighing of the heart was overseen by the jackal-headed god Anubis, and the judgment was recorded by Thoth, the god of writing. It was thought that the heart should not weigh more than that of a feather for the soul to be allowed to travel safely onwards to heaven. Could they have been on the right lines with this belief or could ‘heart’ have been translated incorrectly and should have read ’soul’?

Staff at hospitals have long noted that when a person dies whatever age or size, they immediate loose 13.5oz. There is no known physiological reason for this, and it bears no relation to a patients age, size or weight. An extremely intrigued doctor couldn’t quite believe that this was the case, so set up a study with the permission of a test group consisting of a control group of terminally ill patients, who agreed to be weighed at intervals and at the point of their death and shortly after. It has now been proven that it is indeed the case. The explanation that this is the souls weight as it leaves the body has been put forward as an explanation of this occurrence.ⁱⁱ

The secret of our DNA known for eons by native American Indians.

The long passed down fable held dear by native American Indians states that their ancestors had once communicated to them that we are made from ‘Stardust’ by the great spirit. Scientist have recently discovered that this is at least partially true and scientifically provable. Once samples of ’stardust’ were obtained, they can indeed concur that all human life had stardust embedded in their DNA. How did they know this years before there were any scientific means to even begin to look into it? They claim that ’spirits of their ancestors’ told them that this was the case.ⁱⁱⁱ

The Blackbox Phenomena
Paranormal ‘Eggs’

In the bowels of a dusty university library in Edinburgh laid a small black box, the size of two cigarette packets side by side, that churns out random numbers in an endless stream. They have affectionately been named ‘Eggs’. No one has any idea as to who made it or how it got there.
Encased in metal, it contains at its heart a microchip no more complex than the ones found in modern pocket calculators.
According to a growing band of top scientists, this box has quite extraordinary powers. It is, they claim, the ‘eye’ of a machine that appears capable of peering into the future and predicting major world events. The ‘eggs’ have now been duplicated or cloned and sent out for study at universities all over the world for further study. It’s Earth-shattering stuff,’ says Dr Roger Nelson, emeritus researcher at Princeton University in the United States, who is heading the research project behind the ‘black box’ phenomenon.

The machines have apparently somehow picked up on the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center four whole hours before they happened - but in the fevered mood of conspiracy theories of the time, the claims were swiftly knocked back by sceptics. But last December, it also appeared to have forewarn of the Asian tsunami just before the deep sea earthquake that precipitated the tragedy. This open a whole can of worms, how does a simple machine containing a piece oe quartz foretell the future? Dr Nelson, talks of such psychic machines - with the potential to detect global catastrophes or terrorist outrages - is of far less importance than the implications of his work in terms of the human race.

For what his experiments appear to demonstrate is that while we may all operate as individuals, we also appear to share something far, greater - a type of global consciousness. Some might call it the mind of God.
‘We’re taught to be individualistic beasts,’ he says. ‘We’re driven by society to separate ourselves from each other. That’s not right-way may all be connected together far more intimately than we realize.’^iv

Electronic Voice Phenomena- EVP
Try this for yourself, the only requirement is a tape and tape recorder.

Electronic voice phenomena is briefly, the process of capturing messages from the spirit world (or realm of existence), including our loved ones who have passed, by using an ordinary magnetic tape recorder. Some believe these are the voices of earth bound spirits or spirits that have never been chosen to incarnate or inhabit a physical body at all, many others believe it is merely a coincidence or background noise of various other devices such as radio, CB Radio or mobile phone waves-however it’s a particularly hard phenomena to ignore when recording are produced in rural areas, and the voices are actually heard to be chatting to the onlookers by name and to consider this phenomena has been reported to have occurred way back in the 1800’s on phonographs! This phenomena is actually child’s play and within the grasp of virtually everyone to try for themselves without having to wait for a long scientific trial to bring you the results. With an easily available piece of equipment you can more than likely find laying around your own home.
((http://ghostevp.org/))

Dr Steven of Edinburgh University said “Our research is not yet complete, but we may have found a significant pattern which we hope will demonstrate psychic ability and the underlying mechanisms responsible for it,” confirmed Dr. Stevens, who conducted the experiments at Edinburgh University’s world-renowned parapsychology unit.

The study looked at links between people with extremely well developed relationships, such as lovers, friends and relatives. Each couple was split up and the participants labeled as “senders” or “receivers” of the messages. Those in the first group were shown a series of randomly selected video clips and told to “send” the information to the partner who sat in a sound-proofed room 25 meters away.

Sound signals called “white noise” lulled the “receiving” partners into what is believed to be an ultra-receptive state and they were asked to say what came into their heads while their body was measured for any changes. Many subjects were able to talk about the information being read by their partners.

There has been an age-old debate over the existence of psychic powers in the scientific community and scholarly elite. Amongst all types of psychic power, telepathic ability has long been dismissed as superstitious by many traditional academics. But with Dr. Stevens’ study showing many subjects capable of mental telepathy, these preconceptions may be about to change. Speaking at the 45th Convention of the Parapsychological Association, Dr. Stevens will present an international audience of researchers and academics with the results of his experiments. It also has to be stressed here that not a single pair of test participants were thought to be or claimed that they had any psychic or paranormal abilities. This was a test performed with randomly chosen, previously thought of as “non-psychic” individual members of the public whom had never attempted anything of this nature before.^v

Watching US-Watching You

For over twenty years, the United States government funded a top secret military program, designed to grant intelligence teams access to the most sensitive and secret sites all across the world via psychics performing “Remote Viewing”. The program, which started as a research project at the Stanford Research is now a matter of public record.
Instead of spy training or unarmed combat they decided to delve into the very depths of the subjects minds and consciousness, harnessing the innate abilities present within.
The technique they discovered and utilized was famously named Remote Viewing. Something psychics have been doing for years as a matter of course. Once held in the inner sanctums of military intelligence, Remote Viewing was taken into the public sector by the former Operations and Training Officer for the military Remote Viewing unit. Establishing a company known as PSI TECH, this unique system of attention management and psychic training was soon being taught to civilians and creating a new wave in human consciousness. The Military and governments of many countries have been convinced enough by their own scientist and research to spend time and money looking at psychic ability as a very viable and desirable alternative method to employ,as an alternative to traditional and dangerous, and often unreliable methods of espionage.^vi

This example is not unique as it is well known and documented that the British and German Governments long before this have employed the same methods. Churchill used astrologers during World War Two, to enable him to try to second guess Hitler, who also had astrologer advisors.
A group of psychics were regularly consulted by the Churchill for the same purpose right through out the war to enable him to gain a ‘Psychic Edge’ to his plans and military operations.
Many police forces and individual policeman retain psychics for use on difficult cases and achieve great results and convictions from this practice. Rarely are the above facts admitted or publicized for two main reasons:
The first being public opinion and mainstream ridicule. The second being, would you like to spill the beans to competitors /criminals/hostile governments or enemies on exactly how you obtain your best information?
No-didn’t think so.
Once the Stanford Research was made known to the public, the research project was closed down, with officials claiming that they had realized Remote Viewing wasn’t possible, a myth a fallacy….took twenty years to reach this conclusion did it? Or were they merely annoyed by the public interest and promptly recited the project once more elsewhere-away from the public gaze?

I myself have worked in the past with individual police officers and I know of many psychics who have and regularly do the same. I am also very good friends with a psychic who is salaried by the British Navy and supplies information to them that they seem to find extremely valuable. Never be fooled into thinking that top level officials, the military,governments and those
in high office are psychic sceptics! Many know full well how to make the very best use of a strong psychic individual.
How much more testing needs to be done to satisfy the ardent sceptic?

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting different results.”

Albert Einstein

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

–From Hamlet (I, v, 166-167)

Resources.

Society for Psychical Research.
Founded in 1882 by a distinguished group of Cambridge scholars, the Society for Psychical Research was the first of its kind to examine allegedly paranormal phenomena in a scientific and unbiased way. Today the Society continues with its aim of understanding events and abilities commonly described as ‘psychic’ or ‘paranormal’ by promoting and supporting important research in this area. Through the publication of scholarly reports and the organization of educational activities, it acts as a forum for debate and promotes the dissemination of information about current developments in the field. Includes or has included among its ranks philosophers Henry Sidgwick, C.D. Broad, Henri Bergson and H.H. Price; Prime Minister A.J. Balfour; psychologists William James and F.W.H. Myers; physicists Sir William Crookes, Sir Oliver Lodge and Lord Rayleigh; physiologist and Nobel Laureate Charles Richet; classicist Gilbert Murray; zoologist Sir Alister Hardy; and parapsychologist J.B.Rhine.