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.

  

Denial

is a defense mechanism postulated by Sigmund Freud, 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.

The French hamlet of Bugarach in France has been inundated with New Age people, cults, sects and others in anticipation of December 21, 2012, when many believe the world will end according to an ancient Mayan prophecy.


Among the groups are the American Ramtha School of Enlightenment and the Raelians.


http://goalhypnosis.blogspot.com/2011/03/cognitive-dissonance-ii.html


Freud is best known for his theories of the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and for creating the clinical method of psychoanalysis for investigating the mind and treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Freud established sexual drives as the primary motivational forces of human life, developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association, discovered the phenomenon of transference in the therapeutic relationship and established its central role in the analytic process; he interpreted dreams as sources of insight into unconscious desires. He was an early neurological researcher into cerebral palsy, aphasia and microscopic neuroanatomy, and a prolific essayist, drawing on psychoanalysis to contribute to the history, interpretation and critique of culture.