--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "curtisdeltablues" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > "Curtis, I'm *more* than open to suggestions from > > you or anyone else as to how these things could > > have been "staged" by a magician. I don't see that > > as being a relevant option when trying to "explain > > away" this particular guy's levitations." > > Your experiences are really compelling and I am not inclined to just > toss them handily in some "I know what happened" box." That is one > of the reasons I really enjoy your descriptions. I wish I could > have had my own mind blown that way!
Be careful what you wish for...you just might get it. :-) As I've suggested, having to live with this stuff is not as easy as it sounds. Thanks for replying...I'll spend my last post of the week bouncing off of your impressions (as opposed to arguing with them). > There are levitation tricks for small groups that can be practiced > on the street, but I don't think that is probably the most likely > answer. Nor do I. The environments in which I and others saw these things just didn't lend themselves to apparatus of any kind. I honestly don't think that's a possibility, much less a likelihood. > Here is how I break it down in my perspective. You have often > talked about how this guy seemed to exhibit a powerful ability > to change your state of mind and perceptions. If I had to choose > between a person having this ability over actually floating in > the air, I would probably choose the first. And I have *no problem* with this. As I've said many times, I not only don't know whether a camera trained on the scene would have recorded some of the siddhis I witnessed, I have severe *doubts* that they would have. I consider it *likely* that what I saw was some kind of "subtle level" phenomenon that wouldn't be perceived by a camera. In other words, I am *not* claiming that he was actually floating in mid-air because I have nothing with which *to* assert that. It could have been that something was happening that caused dozens to hundreds of people at a time to *perceive* him as floating in mid-air. One of the reasons I'm comfortable with saying this is another of the siddhis I witnessed often, "invisibility." I'll give you a sample scenario. I'm sitting in the desert on one of our hikes there, and the Rama guy comes walking along in front of the group and pauses when he gets to me. He's not looking directly at me or singling me out or anything; he just stopped there and continued giving a talk to the whole group. But as I'm sitting there watching this guy who is at best 2-3 feet in front of me, all of a sudden his body starts to turn transparent. First it gets a little opaque, and then fully transparent, and I can see the canyon in the background and the night stars *through* a faint outline of where he used to be. This is such a shock to me that I start leaning back and forth to shift perspective, to see if the background objects change perspective the way they really would if I were really looking through him. They do. OK, now in such a situation, did the guy *really* disappear? Well, of course not. Even in you can somehow justify violating the laws of physics and floating in the air to levitate, what is gonna explain someone really "going invisible." What it seemed like was more like the light got "bent" in such a way that it seemed not to reflect off of him any more, but passed through him, as if he were not solid, more a hologram. I'm pretty sure that if I'd had a camera, its "eye" wouldn't have recorded the invisibility. But mine did. So *something* happened to cause the *perception* of invisibility, of light passing through a body rather than bouncing off of it. What that some- thing is I don't understand. I know it wasn't suggestion, because in none of the many times I saw this phenomenon was it ever suggested to me that I should; it just happened, and was always a surprise when it did. So, similarly, is there a possibility that what happened with his "levitating" was that my state of attention was shifted such that I perceived something on a different level of existence that wasn't there on the surface level of existence? You betcha. > I do believe that our minds are mysterious > in many ways. I also recognize the limits of what we know about > nonverbal communication. Having the ability to change someone's > perception or state of mind isn't exactly chopped liver in my book. Mine, either. :-) Even if that were the *only* thing going on, as you say, that's not chopped liver. > There are so many levels of the power of rapport that are unknown. > > Here is a more mundane but powerful experience in my own life. We > were recently talking about a friend who passed away, Steve Shimer. > He was a guy who had one of the most unique "vibes" of anyone I ever > met. Since he was MMY's secretary I just always assumed that he was > enlightened when I first met him. But as I spent more time with him I > came to believe that this explanation didn't really cut it. He was > just a special human. Although it may sound trite, Steve would look > at me with such openness and kindness that it would shift my state > every time. It was completely hypnotic in the best possible sense of > the word. It created a space where thinking and feeling were > enhanced. When I think of the guy I feel it again. I'm sure you can > relate. Yup. > So if this teacher had some version of this ability, and you were in > deep rapport with him, it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch to > think he might have developed some other interesting ways to shift a > person's state. The French have a term "folie aux duex" that touches > on how two people can enter into a shared mental state. On a less > positive note, my personal interactions with mentally ill people have > produced some real strange moments for me. Since I enjoy sinking into > people, I have had my world rocked by entering into rapport with > someone who was running some broken software. In your descriptions of > how you relate to people you meet you have revealed your own empathic > rapport is at a high level, so I know you understand. Yup. > So those are my thoughts for what its worth. I am fascinated with > learning more about how humans effect each other mentally. I feel like > this area has some real magic to uncover as it is better understood. I, for one, do not for a moment claim to "understand" all that I experienced. I'm only relating the exper- iences. And, as I keep reminding people, it's not as if I have anything to *sell* here. The dude is DAID. If he *wasn't* dead I wouldn't necessarily recommend that anyone study with him, because I've seen how a lot of his students turned out, and I don't think that they wound up in as good a place as they should have. The Rama dude himself said it well: "Writers write because they're trying to figure things out." I'm just trying to figure things out, while well aware that I probably never will. > The fact is that you were there and I was not, so thanks for sharing > the stories. It is nice to be reminded that in so many areas of > life, I really don't have a clue! I was there, and I don't have a clue, either. :-) > Maybe the guy could actually float. I > wish he had allowed it to be studied if that were the case. Me, too, but that would have taken away the conundrum aspect of it all, and most of the time I really *enjoy* that -- not knowing exactly what to think about it all. See ya Saturday...
