Since Laird just mentioned various angles of approach to these topics, including statistical analysis and formal research, as well as things like personal experience, I was reflecting on something I'd experienced many years ago. If I hadn't written it down, it would probably be forgotten by now. I did describe it in a letter I wrote to a friend more than forty years ago which would probably be the most accurate rendition, but I don't have access to that and it likely no longer exists. I did cover it on this forum under the subject heading "Time", which was a reasonable attempt at accuracy. One of the things which strikes me now is that those were experiences on very gradually waking from sleep, it was a continuous and uninterrupted transition from full sleep to full waking alertness. I don't see any way what happened could be mistaken or 'confirmation bias', it just seems to fit under the heading "weird stuff happens".
At that time I read what I could find in laymen's books on various phenomena, which I recall included the work of J. B. Rhine. Many years passed, I didn't study these things at all for years, they remained at the back of my mind, but not actively researched. At long last, someone invented the internet and I fired it up and searched for what I hoped would be updated news of the great progress made during the course of the decades. I was in for a shock. The first few articles I found, much like present-day wikipedia (but I must have been reading some other source) seemed to suggest that the whole thing had fizzled out, it had all been a mistake and no 'weird stuff' really happened at all. It didn't make sense. Stuff which I knew to be fact from my own experience was very much out of favour.
That really is a good justification for the existence of this forum. In order to provide at least some sort of voice, and a place to discuss those things which are not given proper consideration elsewhere.
Now I'm aware that the phrase "those things which are not given proper consideration elsewhere" could mean almost anything, my own focus is around things to do with consciousness, and often those things which I feel enrich our existence, such things as beauty or love, rather than just quirky oddities which might just be passed by with a reaction of 'so what?'.
(This post was last modified: 2021-05-27, 12:48 PM by Typoz.)
At that time I read what I could find in laymen's books on various phenomena, which I recall included the work of J. B. Rhine. Many years passed, I didn't study these things at all for years, they remained at the back of my mind, but not actively researched. At long last, someone invented the internet and I fired it up and searched for what I hoped would be updated news of the great progress made during the course of the decades. I was in for a shock. The first few articles I found, much like present-day wikipedia (but I must have been reading some other source) seemed to suggest that the whole thing had fizzled out, it had all been a mistake and no 'weird stuff' really happened at all. It didn't make sense. Stuff which I knew to be fact from my own experience was very much out of favour.
That really is a good justification for the existence of this forum. In order to provide at least some sort of voice, and a place to discuss those things which are not given proper consideration elsewhere.
Now I'm aware that the phrase "those things which are not given proper consideration elsewhere" could mean almost anything, my own focus is around things to do with consciousness, and often those things which I feel enrich our existence, such things as beauty or love, rather than just quirky oddities which might just be passed by with a reaction of 'so what?'.
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