Channeling: The Carlos Hoax.

"Carlos" was the name of a 2,000-year-old spirit allegedly channeled by José Alvarez when he toured Australia in 1988.  Channeling was all the rage in Australia and an Australian television program contacted James Randi about finding someone who might show Australians that channeling was something doubtful. Randi approached Alvarez, a performance artist and friend who had long toyed with the idea of creating such a character. The rest, as they say, is history.

"We like to be deceived." - Blaise Pascal
James Randi Speaks: The Carlos Hoax http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0hgP3ioAeA

 Carlos Hoax Cont'd http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBFzdvtwNaw&feature=relmfu

 

James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) is a Canadian-American stage magician and scientific skeptic best known as a challenger of paranormal claims and pseudoscience. Randi is the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).

In 1988, Randi tested the gullibility of the media by perpetrating a hoax of his own. By teaming up with Australia's 60 Minutes program and by releasing a fake press package, he built up publicity for a spirit channeler named Carlos who was actually artist Jose Alvarez, a friend of Randi's. Randi would tell him what to say through sophisticated radio equipment. The media and the public were taken in, as no reporter bothered to check Carlos's credentials and history, which were all fabricated. The hoax was exposed on 60 Minutes; Carlos and Randi explained how they pulled it off. (see wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Randi)

If you see something that's not there and it talks to you your nuts. If you see something that's not there and it doesn't talk to you  that's okay but if you hear something from something that's not there I don't want to hear about it.

 

 

Back then there was no Internet, Wiki or YouTube in 1988. Just New Age bookstores with various books dedicated to New Age stuff. I remember seeing someone channel in Toronto in the 80's Even though a book I read said never to drink coffee or smoke before you channel he did. I really began to have doubts about New Age stuff when I noticed the inconsistency of the information. Of course reading Thomas Troward warning about the power of suggestion around 1900 really hit home. Another thing was not the DVD "The Secret" itself but a book that criticized it. It wasn't what was in the video that was important but what was left out of the video. The video could portray things in the light it wanted will taking what had been said out of context. With this in mind think of the television shows of psychics. A one hour television show is actually taped for 2 hours or so and edited down to fit the one hour time slot, say 45 minutes allowing for commercials. I remember seeing one episode that was actually  about 25 minutes long the rest was commercials. Since only the hits are shown on television and not the misses that gives some indication of the accuracy. 

Some people probably still believe the Mayan calendar runs out Dec 21 2012 and the world ends.

  

Viral Memetic Infection

A meme has been defined as an idea that replicates in the human brain and moves from brain to brain like a virus, much like a virus. The way a virus works is -- it can infect and do the most damage to someone who is emotionally vulnerable What happens is that circular logic takes over.The mind makes it true. It creates "us" and "them," "right" and "wrong," "good" and "evil." And it makes anything possible. Makes anything rationalizable.
Examples: Moonies, Jonestown, Conspiracy Theories, Cults, 2012 end times, New Age beliefs.
Anyone who uses critical thinking on a regular basis would see the situation very differently.

If you can make the reader believe anything no matter how absurd it is, he will prove it to be true by his experiments. This proves that our beliefs make us act and our acts are directed by our belief, for the wisdom or knowledge is in the belief. People are not aware of this. Quimby 1863

At 17, Diane Benscoter joined The Unification Church -- the religious cult whose members are commonly known as “Moonies.” After five long years, her distressed family arranged to have her deprogrammed. Benscoter then left The Unification Church, and was so affected by her experience that she became a deprogrammer herself. She devoted her time to extracting others from cults, until she was arrested for kidnapping. The shock of her arrest caused her to abandon her efforts for almost 20 years. Now, after decades of research and study, Diane has begun to speak about her experiences. She recently completed a memoir describing her years as a member of The Unification Church and as a deprogrammer. Furthermore, she has embarked on a new project to define “extremist viral memetic infections”. She believes that defining extremism as a memetic infection, from a cognitive neurological perspective, might allow us to develop better memes that would inoculate against the memes of extremist thought. These inoculating memes could prevent the spread of extremist viral memetic infections and their inherent dangers.

http://www.ted.com/talks/ex_moonie_diane_benscoter_how_cults_think.html

The "Theory of Cognitive Dissonance" is born.

A housewife from Chicago, Dorothy Martin, had mysteriously been given messages in her house in the form of "automatic writing" from alien beings on the planet Clarion[1] . It reveals that the world would end in a great flood before dawn on December 21, 1954. The group of believers, headed by Martin, had taken strong behavioral steps to indicate their degree of commitment to the belief.

They had left jobs, college, and spouses, and had given away money and possessions to prepare for their departure on the flying saucer, which was to rescue the group of true believers.

Leon Festinger and his colleagues saw this as a case that would lead to the arousal of dissonance when the prophecy failed.

Leon Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated the group and reported the following :
• December 20. The group expects a visitor from outer space to call upon them at midnight and to escort them to a waiting spacecraft. As instructed, the group goes to great lengths to remove all metallic items from their persons. As midnight approaches, zippers, bra straps, and other objects are discarded. The group waits.
• 12:05 A.M., December 21. No visitor. Someone in the group notices that another clock in the room shows 11:55. The group agrees that it is not yet midnight.
• 12:10 A.M. The second clock strikes midnight. Still no visitor. The group sits in stunned silence. The cataclysm itself is no more than seven hours away.
• 4:45 A.M. Another message by automatic writing is sent to Martin. It states, in effect, that the God of Earth has decided to spare the planet from destruction. The cataclysm has been called off: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction."
{Her husband was upstairs sleeping through all this}

The "Theory of Cognitive Dissonance" is born.

Dorothy Martin left Chicago after being threatened with arrest and psychiatric commitment. Dorothy Martin continued to receive messages from the Guardians, who told her to change her name to ‘Sister Thedra’ and to travel to Lake Titicaca in Peru. Once there, she established - along with Charles and Lillian Laughead and seminal mystic and contactee George Hunt Williamson [one of the "four guys named George" among the mid-1950s contactees] - the Abbey of the Seven Rays.

From this base Dorothy Martin began to prophesy the coming of the ‘Time of Awakening’ when Atlantis would rise from the deep and a new Saviour would rescue the righteous. In 1961 she returned to the United States, as “Sister Thedra”, claiming to have undergone initiation at the Abbey of the Seven Rays. She continued to preach her message until her death in 1988.

There are various new age accounts of Peru:
 Dorothy Martin lived in Peru for several years before returning to Arizona. In 1965, she founded the Association of Sananda and Samat Kumara. Under her new name of "Sister Thedra", she continued to act as a channel for Sananda and was prominent in the UFO contact community until her death.
 ” One women of the group, Sister Thedra, spent five years at the abbey undergoing intensive spiritual training and initiations. She had been sent there by Jesus Christ who had physically appeared to her and spontaneously cured her of cancer. He introduced himself to her by his true, esoteric name, "Sananda Kumara," thereby revealing his affiliation with the Venusian founders of the Great White and Solar Brotherhoods. When Thedra eventually left Peru, she traveled to Mt. Shasta in California and founded the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara. Through the work of Sister Thedra and her organization the Kumaras have disseminated information concerning their history and the coming Earth changes.”
 “ … In 1954 Sister Thedra of Mount Shasta, California and Sedona, Arizona, in her 50’s at the time, suffering from terminal cancer, days numbered had Jesus suddenly appear in front of her and instantly healed her. From that moment she addressed him as Sananda Kumara. She began receiving messages from him and he sent her to the Peruvian Andes in 1956 for protection and to study at an ancient monastery, The Monastery of The Seven Rays, the early records and teachings of the Kumaras. Founded by the Lemurian sage Aramu Muru to preserve the records of Mu, and the golden disc the Kumaras brought from Venus. She remained there 5 years returning to Mount Shasta, a powerful vortex ethereally connected to the Kumaras, in the US in 1961. Later to keep her safe he orchestrated her move to Sedona, Arizona. In Sedona her Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara was headquartered in a house on a road with the strongest vortex in the area. After she passed the ASSK returned to Mount Shasta.”

[1]On Sept. 24, 1953, Redondo Beach resident Truman Bethurum(1898 – 1969) told a Daily Breeze reporter that he saw them, the Clarions. In fact, Bethurum did a lot more than see them. According to several articles, he rode on their flying saucer 11 times. And its captain, Aura Rahnes, promised to take Bethurum to visit Clarion in the near future. Capt. Rahnes was a beautiful woman who had a "slender Latin-type face" and wore a radiant red skirt, black velvet short sleeve blouse and a black beret with red trim. And they didn't refer to their ship as a saucer. They called it a "scow." And they enjoyed polkas and square dances. The ship itself was 300 feet in diameter, 6 yards deep and made of burnished stainless steel. It hovered silently inches above the ground.

Another thing Bethurum noticed: The Clarions all dressed like Greyhound bus drivers. And, not only did they speak perfect English, but they also spoke in rhyme. At the time of his encounters, Bethurum, was working on a construction job in the Nevada desert when the Clarionites, as he called them, stopped by for a visit.
He refused lie-detector examinations, and also refused to provide physical evidence he claimed to possess, such as supposedly unique items given to him by Captain Aura Rhanes.

I noticed a hypnosis convention this summer where one workshop was on "Ascended Masters". Does hypnosis really have anything to do with that?
In the 30’s Guy Warren Ballard introduced the concept of "Ascended Master Teaching”s and the “Ascension”. Borrowing from Theosophy and “A Dweller on Two Planets or The Dividing of the Way” by Frederick S. Oliver, he claimed to have met St. Germaine at Mount Shasta and spread the word. At it’s peak his followers numbered 1 million. His death in 1939 created a quandary in that his body remained. This was rectified by the concept of “levels of mastery”. Between Ballard and Elizabeth Clare Prophet from the 60’s to the 90’s more than 200 "Ascended Masters" were named.
This book is openly acknowledged as source material for many new age belief systems, including the once-popular "I AM" movement (whose founder, Guy Ballard, read more

Unveiled Mysteries by Godfré Ray King (pseudonym of Guy Warren Ballard)[1934] see text

Cognitive dissonance is the mental conflict that people experience when they are presented with evidence that their beliefs or assumptions are wrong.

According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.

For example, consider a situation in which a woman who values financial security is in a relationship with a man who is financially irresponsible.

The conflict:
• It is important for her to be financially secure.
• She is dating a man who is financially unstable.

In order to reduce this dissonance between belief and behavior, she can either leave the relationship or reduce her emphasis on financial security. In the case of the second option, dissonance could be further minimized by emphasizing the positive qualities of her significant other rather than focusing on his perceived flaws.

There are three key strategies to reduce or minimize cognitive dissonance:

1. • Focus on more supportive beliefs that outweigh the dissonant belief or behavior.
2. • Reduce the importance of the conflicting belief.
3. • Change the conflicting belief so that it is consistent with other beliefs or behaviors.
   

Ideo-motor reflex

The ideo-motor response (or "ideo-motor reflex"), often abbreviated to IMR, is a concept in hypnosis and psychological research. It is derived from the terms 'ideo' (idea, or mental representation) and 'motor' (muscular action). The phrase is most commonly used in reference to the process whereby a thought or mental image brings about a seemingly "reflexive" or automatic muscular reaction, often of minuscule degree, and potentially outside of the awareness of the subject.

The cognate term "ideo-dynamic response" (or "reflex") extends to the description of all bodily reactions caused in a similar manner by certain ideas, e.g., the salivation often caused by imagining sucking a lemon, which is a secretory response. Here, "ideo-dynamic" means "the power of an idea (over the body)". In the Victorian psychological terminology from which this concept derives, an "idea" may include any mental representation, e.g., a mental image or memory, etc.

The ideo-dynamic response became the original neuro-psychological theory of suggestion in hypnotism.

The term "ideo-motor reflex" or "ideo-motor response" was introduced in the 1840s by the eminent Victorian physiologist and psychologist William Benjamin Carpenter[1].
See http://goalhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/03/adaptive-unconscious.html
Carpenter was a friend and collaborator of James Braid.


James Braid (1795 –1860) was a Scottish physician and surgeon, specializing in eye and muscular conditions, Braid was an important and influential pioneer of hypnotism and hypnotherapy. Braid adopted the term "hypnotism" as an abbreviation for "neuro-hypnotism" or nervous sleep (that is, sleep of the nerves), in his lectures of 1841-2, and it is from his influential work that others derived the term "hypnosis" in the 1880s. Braid is regarded by many as the first genuine "hypnotherapist" and the "Father of Modern Hypnotism".

In The Physiology of Fascination (1855), Braid wrote:
“In order that I may do full justice to two esteemed friends, I beg to state, in connection with this term monoideo-dynamics, that, several years ago, Dr. W. B. Carpenter[1] introduced the term ideo-motor to characterise the reflex or automatic muscular motions which arise merely from ideas associated with motion existing in the mind, without any conscious effort of volition. In 1853, in referring to this term, Dr. Noble[2] said, “Ideo-dynamic would probably constitute a phraseology more appropriate, as applicable to a wider range of phenomena.” In this opinion I quite concurred, because I was well aware that an idea could arrest as well as excite motion automatically, not only in the muscles of voluntary motion, but also as regards the condition of every other function of the body. I have, therefore, adopted the term monoideo-dynamics, as still more comprehensive and characteristic as regards the true mental relations which subsist during all dynamic changes which take place, in every other function of the body, as well as in the muscles of voluntary motion."
[1] The ideo-motor reflex. Diagram from Carpenter's The Principles of Mental Physiology (1874).
[2] Daniel Noble (1810 - 1885) was a Catholic physician. A friend of surgeon James Braid and physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter, he is distinguished for his contributions to the study of mental illness and epidemic diseases.

Denial, Denialism

Denial is a defense mechanism in which a person is faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept and rejects it instead, insisting that it is not true despite what may be overwhelming evidence.

Denialism is choosing to deny reality as a way to avoid an uncomfortable truth: "It is the refusal to accept an empirically verifiable reality. It is an essentially irrational action that withholds validation of a historical experience or event".

see http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/07/leon-festinger-1919-1989-was-american.html

Cognitive dissonance and 2012

Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions. Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying. It is one of the most influential and extensively studied theories in social psychology.

Experience can clash with expectations, as, for example, with buyer's remorse following the purchase of an expensive item. In a state of dissonance, people may feel surprise, dread, guilt, anger, or embarrassment. People are biased to think of their choices as correct, despite any contrary evidence. This bias gives dissonance theory its predictive power, shedding light on otherwise puzzling irrational and destructive behavior.

A classical example of this idea (and the origin of the expression "sour grapes") is expressed in the fable The Fox and the Grapes by Aesop (ca. 620–564 BCE). In the story, a fox sees some high-hanging grapes and wishes to eat them. When the fox is unable to think of a way to reach them, he surmises that the grapes are probably not worth eating, as they must not be ripe or that they are sour. This example follows a pattern: one desires something, finds it unattainable, and reduces one's dissonance by criticizing it.
• The Great Disappointment of 1844 is an example of cognitive dissonance in a religious context.
• True-believer syndrome demonstrates carrying a post-cognitive-dissonance belief regardless of new information.
Mayan calendar and Gregorian Calendar

Is 2012 any different than 1618 or 2407 other than the fact we’re living through it? Remember 2000!

There has recently been still another revival of the talk about the end of the world. Once again newspaper articles are being written and public meetings held, both in America and in Great Britain, where more or less sensational statements are made to the effect that the end of the world is now due, and may be expected at any moment. Ever since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914 the prophets have been exceptionally busy in this direction, and on several occasions groups of people have actually sat up all night waiting for the end. ...
Lecture delivered by Emmet Fox at Victoria Hall, London, on September 6, 1933.

There is a simple test by which anyone can tell a true teacher from a false one.
It is this:
If he points you to his own personality; if he makes special claims for himself; if he says that he has received any special privileges from God that are not equally accessible to the whole human race anywhere; if he attempts in his own name or in that of an organization to establish under any pretense a monopoly of the truth about God, then, however imposing his credentials, however pleasing his personality may be, he is a false teacher, and you had better have nothing to do with him.

If, on the contrary, he tells you to look away from himself, to seek the Presence of God in your own heart, and to use books, lectures, and churches only as a means to that one end, then, however humble his efforts may be, however lacking his own demonstration may seem, he is nevertheless a true teacher and is giving you the Bread of Life.

You are what you really believe yourself to be. You experience what you really believe yourself to be. All there is to any phenomenon is our belief in it. There is no difference between the thing and the thought of the thing. We often hear it said thoughts are things, but the actual truth is that things are thoughts. From this it follows that when you “un-think” a thing it is disappears. The world you live in is the world of your own beliefs. You created it by thinking it, and you can destroy it at any moment by un-thinking it.

Again I would impress upon the reader not to forget the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind (usually called in medical books, the unconscious) is that part of your mentality of which you are not aware. You may be unaware that you have been holding a certain thought or a certain belief, and yet it may be in your subconscious, and if so it will affect your life, in spite of the fact that you did not consciously know of its existence. You probably picked it up in childhood.
Alter Your Life

Emmet Fox 1938

Cognitive dissonance

was first investigated by Leon Festinger and associates, arising out of a participant observation study of a cult which believed that the earth was going to be destroyed by a flood, and what happened to its members — particularly the really committed ones who had given up their homes and jobs to work for the cult — when the flood did not happen.

While fringe members were more inclined to recognize that they had made fools of themselves and to "put it down to experience", committed members were more likely to re-interpret the evidence to show that they were right all along (the earth was not destroyed because of the faithfulness of the cult members).

http://pvrguymale.blogspot.com/2011/07/leon-festinger-1919-1989-was-american.html