Theos-Talk Archives (December 2001 Message tt00514)

Daniel: "I agree with what you say about CSICOP but of
course the organization and its fellows would strongly
disagree with both of us.

Fine with me. Let them.

Daniel: "But as Bill pointed out, Olcott is now dead.
Palladino too!

That is not an insuperable problem. Every cop who
stops a drunk driver asks him how many fingers he is
holding up. If the driver says twenty when there is
only one, the cop does not assume he is materializing
additional fingers paranormally.

If Palladino did things which are within the range of
human potential (my instinct is she was a fraud) then
others today can do the same things. She is not
irreplaceable.

The fact that most people can't do these things is
irrelevant. Most people cannot run a three minute
mile, but it has been done and will be done again. 
That proves it is within the range of human potential.
The question is whether these other things are also
within the range of human potential.

Daniel: "there are no doubt MANY plausible/possible
explanations to account for what Olcott testified

Olcott described various drug induced symptoms such as
profuse sweating, loss of consciousness, time
distortion, visual hallucinations, etc., in a room in
which two men were burning herbs of unknown species. 
It is hard for me to see anything mysterious about
what happened to him. Bear in mind I am assessing
this story entirely based on internal evidence.

Daniel: "Even if you have a personal experience of
materializing dishes, you can never rule out
completely the possibility that you are delusional. 
Argument can always be plausibly made that you are
delusional.

Not if you can do it under controlled conditions and
the dishes are tangible and the experiment can be
replicated.

Even if I do it only once, that is evidence to me that
it is within the range of human potential. That would
make previous accounts credible to me, but probably
not to anyone else.

Daniel: "Then another problem arises. THE PASSAGE OF
TIME. Eventually all the eye witnesses die and all
that is left are their written testimonies.

Not a problem if the challenge is to do it yourself.

Daniel: "Steve, please briefly cite the TWO CASES
regarding Blavatsky's phenomena that you mentioned
prior which you think 
constitute "scientific evidence"?

One of them occurred at the Gephard house and is
outlined in Sinnett's INCIDENTS. It involved the
reported materialization of a letter and was very
carefully observed by a trained conjurer, who said he
saw no evidence of chicanery.

The other was reported by both Sinnett and Olcott and
described in great detail by both. It involved the
reported materialization of dishes which were dug from
the ground. Tree roots were said to have grown
thickly around the stuff in question, and the ground
was undisturbed, meaning (1) the dishes were there for
some very considerable period of time, or (2) the
phenomenon must have been real.

Both of those accounts impress me, which is another
way of saying they baffle me. Whether they would
impress David Copperfield or Doug Henning or Houdini I
cannot say. Most of the rest are quite easily
explained.

Incidentally, if you watched 60 MINUTES Sunday night,
Mohammed Ali demonstrated "materialization" by sleight
of hand, and quite skillfully, too. I couldn't see
the trick, even though he has a neurological illness
which causes his hands to shake.

Daniel: "And going beyond Theosophy/Blavatsky, are
there other specific cases of the paranormal that you
can cite that convince you?

I used to do yoga regularly and have had hundreds of
experiences. No cheating would have occurred in most
of them because I was alone when they occurred. In
other instances I was with others whom I trust. No
substances of any kind were employed at any time.

One thing one learns doing this stuff: anyone who does
it for entertainment or money is suspect, not because
there is something morally wrong with that but because
the phenomena are so capricious. I read something
years ago by Carrington I think who said that people
with real ability have to supplement their real demos
with tricks if they do it on demand for cash or to
startle people. His view of it is that we are not
necessarily justified in being either cynical or
gullible in such a case. I suspect that is the
correct way to view Blavatsky. We have to strike a
careful balance between cynicism and gullibility. Not
easy to do.

The professional psychics I have seen are all
transparent charlatans. They use simple tricks to
gull people. I did, however, go to a party one time
and some woman who was not a professional offered to
tell my fortune. She got everything right, although
the things she described had already happened, and
some of them happened to others close to me and not to
me personally. Nonetheless, I was impressed.

I was introduced to another fellow who pretended to be
a psychic and I did not want to give him any
unconscious cues, so relaxed every muscle in my body
and said notning. He put his hands to his head,
grimaced, and said I was messing up the vibrations or
something like that. Baloney! I just wasn't playing
his game. He did say that I was working on a project
that would not come to successful fruition, and that
was true, but that's all he got.

I have seen lots of strange things, but have not seen
anything materialized out of thin air except by
sleight of hand. Several people assured me Sai Baba
could do this and had been videotaped doing it and I
thought that might be evidence, but unfortunately it
appears the videos expose him as a charlatan. H.
Spencer Lewis is said to have made roses rain down
from the ceiling of one of his Rosicrucian gatherings
years ago but I have no idea whether this was a
"paranormal" occurrence or not. The fellow who told
me about it heard about it from someone who was there.
Lewis claimed to be studying with Morya and said it
was Morya who did the demo, and not himself. So far
as I know, the feat was never repeated. The question
of whether or not this is within the range of human
potential therefore remains open for me.

As for the Hartmann letter, the mahatma letters
frankly admit most (but not necessarily all) of them
were delivered in a normal manner and palmed off on
people. Blavatsky frankly admitted most (but not all)
of them were written, not by the men whose signatures
they bear, but by "amanuensis chelas", i.e., herself
and Damodar. If there is a paranormal aspect to most
of them it is therefore her belief that she was
inspired with their thoughts or did automatic writing
or whatever. That said, it does not seem to me to be
good historical technique to insist that the Hartmann
letter was materialized. A letter could only be
assumed to have been materialized if someone who is
credible (not Leadbeater, in other words) actually
witnessed the process. Hodgson quoted an account by
Olcott of this.

One thing is for sure: figuring where the baloney ends
and the truth begins is an excellent exercise in
developing critical reasoning ability which serves one
well in aassessing other issues in other areas of
life.

Steve

--- danielhcaldwell <danielhcaldwell@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Steve wrote:
> 
> > > CSICOP exists for the purpose of pleading a case
> > > decided before the fact, just as theosophical
> > > fundamentalism does. What I am saying is that
> the
> > > question remains open until solid evidence is
> > > produced. There is an important difference
> there.
> 
> Bill replied:
> 
> > Agreed
> 
> Daniel comments:
> 
> Well, Steve, I agree with what you say about CSICOP
> but of course the 
> organization and its fellows would strongly disagree
> with both of us.
> But your point about CSICOP is off the subject of
> what I was trying 
> to illustrate and that was the use of the
> "possibility/plausibility" 
> method of argument. The example from the book by
> Kurtz is a good 
> illustration and I could give you literally hundreds
> of other good 
> examples just confining myself to the realm of the
> paranormal.
> 
> Daniel wrote:
> 
> > > > That is not to say that the questions
> entertained by
> > > > Kurtz are not 
> > > > worthy of consideration. But such questions
> should
> > > > lead to further 
> > > > research on the subject and to the
> accumulation of
> > > > evidence. 
> 
> Steve replied:
> 
> > > The questions should be dealt with by
> replicating the
> > > experiment with improved test conditions.
> 
> Bill also replied to Steve's comment:
> 
> > I think that developing a test to verify Olcott's
> paranormal
> > experiences is impossible. Olcott is dead. 
> 
> Daniel commetns:
> 
> Yes, under IDEAL conditions one should try to
> replicate the 
> experiment with improved test conditions. In the
> case of Palladino, 
> instead of armchair speculation, the critics should
> have worked with 
> Feilding and his associates to replicate the testing
> of Palladino and 
> improve the test conditions. As far as I know, the
> critics of the 
> Feilding report did NOT choose to pursue that
> avenue.
> 
> But as Bill pointed out, Olcott is now dead.
> Palladino too! But 
> through the historical method of inquiry which
> underlies the subject 
> matter of our discussions, one should try to
> research and investigate 
> the cases of Olcott and Palladino and determine in
> light of known 
> facts what is the most PROBABLE explanation to
> account for what 
> happened regarding these individuals. Here I am NOT
> talking about 
> what is possible or plausible for there are no doubt
> MANY 
> plausible/possible explanations to account for what
> Olcott testified 
> to or to account for what observers saw regarding
> Palladino.
> 
> Steve commented:
> 
> > > As we have seen with Sai Baba, some people are
> so good
> > > at sleight of hand and some witneses ae so
> dishonest
> > > that even seeing is not believing. The only way
> to
> > > prove that dishes can be materialized out of
> thin air
> > > is to do it yourself. That was you can
> absolutely
> > > rule out sleight of hand and every sort of other
> > > nonsense. Once you prove it possible, then you
> prove
> > > the plausibility of claims made in the past.
> 
> Daniel replies:
> 
> But can you ABSOLUTELY rule out sleight of hand and
> every sort of 
> other nonsense? I don't think so. To paraphrase
> Barzun and Graffe, 
> the possibility and plausibility of some kind of
> nonsense is always 
> there. It is only when you PROGRESS on to
> considering probability 
> (i.e, in light of evidence, known facts, specific
> details) that you 
> can rule out certain things, but even then never
> ABSOLUTELY for it is 
> always possible to come up with some sort of
> scenario in which 
> sleight of hand or some other sort of nonsense could
> have occurred or 
> is plausible. Read the books of Houdini and the
> Amazing Randi and 
> Paul Edwards for examples of what I'm talking about.
> 
> Notice what Bill writes later in his comments:
> 
> "In my mind the only evidence of a paranormal
> experience that I could 
> accept as proof of probability over possibility
> would be my own 
> observation of my own experience. And even then I
> COULD BE 
> delusional." Caps added.
> 
> COULD BE is an admission of possibility and
> plausibility.
> 
> Even if you have a personal experience of
> materializing dishes, you 
> can never rule out completely the possibility that
> you are 
> delusional. Argument can always be plausibly made
> that you are 
> delusional.
> 
> Of course, if you could replicate your feat time and
> time again then 
> you have a better chance of proving to yourself as
> well as to others 
> that you are NOT delusional and that you have the
> ability to 
> materialize dishware.
> 
> But then another problem crops up. This problem is
> written about in 
> Mahatma Letter No. 1:
> 
> "What then would be the results of the most
> astounding 
> phenomena . . . ? . . . Test after test would be
> required and would 
> have to be furnished; every subsequent phenomenon
> expected to be more 
> marvellous than the preceding one. Your daily remark
> is, that one 
> cannot be expected to believe unless he becomes an
> eye-witness. Would 
> the lifetime of a man suffice to satisfy the whole
> world of skeptics? 
> It may be an easy matter to increase the original
> number of believers 
> at Simla to hundreds and thousands. But what of the
> hundreds of 
> millions of those who could not be made
> eye-witnesses?"
> 
> I call this problem the "doubting Thomas" syndrome.
> 
> What if HPB had produced dozens of cups and saucers
> on demand time 
> after time. Would anyone who was not an eye witness
> really believe 
> it? And if they did, the skeptics would simply have
> called 
> them "gullible" or "theosophical fundamentalists". 
> 
> Then another problem arises. THE PASSAGE OF TIME. 
> Eventually all 
> the eye witnesses die and all that is left are their
> written 
> testimonies. 
> 
> If we had all of these eyewitness accounts of HPB
> producing dishes 
> time and time again, would Brigitte living now in
> 2001 be willing to 
> accept any of this evidence? I do NOT know what
> Brigitte's 
=== message truncated ===


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