From: "[email protected] [FairfieldLife]" <[email protected]>
Suppose we made up a fake and derivative religion, telling people that there is a field of force that we are immersed in, called 'Dada'. And we tell people it is possible to experience this field if we put all our attention on sensing it, day and night. We tell them that after some time one can experience, say, 'Dada stage 1', which is the experience of silence at night while asleep. Now it seems possible that some people will now report this after a time, that they experience silence at night. This might be the result of the shift of attention, but is also might be the result of a general placebo effect, you tell someone things are a certain way long enough and with enough emphasis, they may start to experience it. Especially if the people reporting experience of the placebo feel that they're getting attention or pats on the back for reporting it. For example, the well-documented phenomenon in the Fairfield domes where someone reports a "new" experience, one that hasn't been mentioned before, and by week's end 20 other people are reporting that they've had that experience, too. And I think we all remember the was a certain former FFL member would react every time someone would report a new experience here. Not *only* would he report having had that same experience before, but he'd say that it was something he *used* to have, back a few years, but that he'd outgrown it now. So for him any reported experience became not only an opportunity to claim "Me, too," it became an opportunity to claim "Me, too, back when I was just starting...don't worry, someday you'll get past it, too, and become as evolved as I am," and thus assert his superiority. Presumably he's still doing the same thing on his new group. What I've always wished someone would do is MAKE UP a "new" experience, and then either report it in the domes or post it on The_Leak, and then sit back and watch how long it is until others start "piling on" and claiming to have had the same experience themselves. :-)
