What Is PSI

This post is very childish Stan.

Don't forget to say "In my opinion" 

Don't forget to say "In my opinion" 

Yes, Stanley it's gets you out of all kinds of problems ! (IMO) That's another fine mess you've gone and gotten me into !

I see synchronicity as more of a "spiritual"/"metaphysical" phenomenon than one of mind interacting with matter. 

Synchronicity can be "meaningful coincidences" (Jung) however, more specifically, the term used in its proper operational sense, is the result of following your passions in Life. Synchronous events automatically occur and are markers that you are walking a path that is exciting to you and is aligned with your Higher Mind (and its themes that you are exploring with its assistance and direction).

Or it might mean to slip the clutch and easily up/down shift a manual tranny. 

[Laird]

Synchronicity can be "meaningful coincidences" (Jung) however, more specifically, the term used in its proper operational sense, is the result of following your passions in Life. Synchronous events automatically occur and are markers that you are walking a path that is exciting to you and is aligned with your Higher Mind (and its themes that you are exploring with its assistance and direction).

Or it might mean to slip the clutch and easily up/down shift a manual tranny. 

Hehe. Thanks for the comments - not sure whether they were a gentle critique of (disagreement with) my suggestion or whether they were purely informative i.e. explaining under what conditions (following your passion) synchronicities occur.

Hehe. Thanks for the comments - not sure whether they were a gentle critique of (disagreement with) my suggestion or whether they were purely informative i.e. explaining under what conditions (following your passion) synchronicities occur.

I suppose most any conversation includes "gentle critiques" and pure data. Just ask Ian and Jake.

Note: I found this in my "drafts" folder - it'd been sitting there several days - I figured I should post it though perhaps it becomes a bit pretentious towards the end.

Right - or even not all the time but just at "random" times, meaning times that had no obvious significance (neither the experimenter predicted them nor was there a "global event"). This seems to be how human synchronicities work - nobody can predict when a synchronicity will occur; they are in this sense "random".

If you use the word 'predict' to mean down  to the day, hour and minute, then perhaps I would agree.

But in general, I find synchronicities are highly predictable. At certain times in my life they have been prolific in their appearance. Other times, not a single one at all. Learning to recognise what was different about the state of my existence during these different phases has been perhaps the most vital, and I use the word 'vital' because of its connotations of vitality, the most relevant things which it seemed necessary for me to understand, simply in order to be able to live an ordinary mundane day-to-day existence. The crossover point of the esoteric and the mundane is a rich ground to explore.

Anyway, there's another thread for discussing that if people want to, so I apologise to Chuck for getting drawn into the off-topic comments.

I'll have a go at a definition of psi - an interaction between a mind and its environment for which currently accepted physical laws provide no mechanism.

This is good - I would just extend the definition a little to say: an interaction between a mind and other mind(s) and/or its physical environment for which currently accepted physical laws provide no mechanism.

This is good - I would just extend the definition a little to say: an interaction between a mind and other mind(s) and/or its physical environment for which currently accepted physical laws provide no mechanism.

Yes - I had meant other minds to be implicit in the environment, but better to say it explicitly

Now we just have to define "mind".

[Laird]

Now we just have to define "mind".

How about: "A (personal) consciousness possessed of associated faculties or properties such as (free) will, cognition, reason, emotion, imagination, creativity, etc"?

How about: "A (personal) consciousness possessed of associated faculties or properties such as (free) will, cognition, reason, emotion, imagination, creativity, etc"?

Thanks. My first thought was that people could find things in that definition to argue about, particularly free will. But I wonder whether the list of attributes is really necessary for the purpose of defining psi. 

For example, if we could imagine a consciousness devoid of emotion, and that consciousness could interact with other minds and/or the physical environment in an unexplained way, would the lack of emotion disqualify that interaction from being psi? I don't think so.

I think probably the same thing goes for "personal". Could we just (for the purpose of defining psi) replace the word "mind" with "consciousness"?