Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ Beyond Human Affecting the Weather

HF

(I don't mean to sound like I am attacking you or defending my belief system at all costs. I encourge questions and debate. I love this forum.)

Oh, absolutely. This is not a selfish journey. But a journey to help mankind. My spiritual teacher teaches that growing spirituality is like a seed. At the beginning it is small and it must be nutured and protected. If you give too much when you are still growing, there will be not enough energy to grow and flourish. When the tree has grown massive and become strong, then the tree can give without affecting itself so much.

After all, (I know this sounds cynical and I don't believe I am cynical) people can be takers. At times, they would rather be given a fish than be taught to fish. And of course it takes much more time to teach people to fish.

As the spiritual moves grows and becomes strong, it's effects will be felt much more. As the momentum builds, as the energy builds, it will affect the consciousness of all people in a good way. See http://permanentpeace.org/ for an idea on how this might happen. Imagine paying people to meditate on peace every day. In Washington, DC one summer this reduced the crime rate in a measureable way. And as more poeple started meaditating, the crime rate declined further. More than 40 studies world wide have documented this effect, including one study in Isreal.

I believe the purpose of the internet to spread spiritual teachings and the Universe knew this and the internet was always destined to arrive here. The world wide network of fiber-optics, copper and wireless is like adding another nervous system to the planet to spread information. Imagine if you could add another way of collecting data from your body to your brain that worked faster and carried more and better information than your nerves.

Books were not spreading the words fast enough. There is not enough give and take between authors and readers. Movies are an excellent teaching tool (Star Wars trilogy, The Matrix, etc.) for new ideas that hundreds of millions of people world wide, but important spiritual movies only reach a few people.

Coyote

Dear Coyote,

Thanks for your note. I really do appreciate where you're coming from,
really, I do. And believe me, scientists as a whole desire peace and the
betterment of humanity, too. I believe you and I share common hopes and
dreams for humanity. Our methods and perspectives may be different, but
our ultimate desires are the same: that we find unity in our similarities,
that we understand the true nature of things, that we eliminate suffering,
and that we achieve heaven on earth. I hope these are the desires of any
person of conscience. I'm grateful for people of conscience such as
yourself, and truly wish you the best in your efforts along these lines.
Hopefully we will be able to "meet" someday in a higher realm.

Best, and please do continue to share your journey ...

HF

P.S. Since you raise the analogy of the X-men ... it really is a nice
picture where both the physical and metaphysical meet: In the story,
genetic engineering (the physical sciences) gave rise to the X-powers (the
metaphysical). Maybe that is a nice way to remember that both scientists
and "meta-scientists" share the same dreams for humanity.

"Science as it exists today will never admit openly to any paranormal ability because science despises the idea of creation."

I don't think this generalization stands.

A lot of people are scientists because they *love* creation. Many scientists are scientists because they have an avid curiosity about the world and really want to know it, to explore it.

They are often fascinated with life and the processes of life. They are more passionate about actual creation, about what is, than someone who is attracted to fantasy and magic.

Scientific types are held in the grip of reason. When I was a child and was exposed to science and scientific theories, I was amazed. Unlike religion, this stuff actually made sense, and it put mankind in the middle of things. It was up to us, with our limited intelligences and resources, to figure things out for ourselves. No God, no spiritual authority held dominion over reason and what we could discover and use.

More than one skeptic, I think, really wants to believe in the paranormal, but they can't, because it is repugnant to their reason. People for whom the rationality of a claim is their litmus test, based on what they know to be factual, simply cannot believe in that which does not make sense to them, that which is not founded upon what they know to be fact.

Some skeptics are hateful and venomous, and they make the biggest impressions, unfortunately, but many are good people with depth of feeling.

I can commiserate with people who have had bad experiences with doctors, unfortunately their jobs seem to do something to the minds and hearts of some. These do have tunnel vision.

While my brother was in a coma they denied that he could respond, because "people in a coma are unresponsive." When we indicated that he did respond to verbal requests, they said we were seeing what we wanted to see. But it was plain to us, through experimentation, that we could get him to respond.

Every inch of the way, they were wrong in their pessimism. My brother progressed regardless of their predictions of doom. He never really was good at doing what he was told. I guess doctors do it to protect themselves.

While I am all for people seeking whatever means they find necessary to better their lives, I am not convinced by the "you need to be believe" argument. I don't need to believe in gravity in order to sense its effects. I don't need to believe that food is nourishing in order for it to sustain me, nor do I need to believe in the affects of poison in order for it to harm me.

My beliefs can alter my sensory perception, certainly, but as a reasonably open individual, I have never witnessed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that paranormal phenomena are real.

I suspect some may be, but I still have my doubts.

I certainly believe, however, that the mind can affect the body. I've witnessed it in my own experience, and it has been backed up by studies. I believe that Chi Kung and other energetic forms are simply the mind affecting the body.

I am, however, not going to rule out the possibility that this "energy" may really exist. But as of now, it remains a grey for me.

I also seriously doubt that people can make clouds form and disperse with their minds. I used to believe that I could do it when I was a kid, but I know that it was because at that time in my life I felt helpless and worthless and wanted to have some special power that would make me feel special. I was fooling myself.

In order to believe a huge claim like that, I'd have to see it for myself several times.

Here is a link to a photo bucket account I set up. I uploaded 4 pictures of a cloud that I worked on 2 days ago.

http://s75.photobucket.com/albums/i299/CloudBust/

The pictures were taken over a 12 minute period (before, during 2x, and after). I did not make the cloud completely disappear. I had been working on clouds for about 30 minutes prior to this effort and I was ready to quit. I estimate that this cloud had a surface area about 20 times bigger than any cloud I had previously worked on. I wanted to use a big cloud so it would be visible on film. I did not know if this cloud would work. I imagine the volume of the cloud might be 50 times bigger than any cloud I had previously worked on. It also took me much longer to bust this cloud. Usually, for a small cloud, I can bust it in 10 seconds to 1 minute.

I admit the pictures could be better. I should have set up my camera on a tripod so the angle was the same every time. Also I was using the zoom, so the cloulds could be seen better and there was enough of a time delay between the pictures that the camera shut off and reset the zoom to the default (so the zoomed in area varies in the pictures). Also the photobucket system reduced the pictures from 4Mb to 350kb. It would have been better to have someone else take the pictures.

Coyote

Another interesting note that proves nothing. There is someone else whose photobucket account uses the user name cloudbusting but their pictures are not listed at public so I could not view the album.

Hartreefoch

Yes science is self correcting....one death at a time.

Every significant advancement has been called heresy and vigorously opposed by the establishment then in power. "Those who already know everything about everything".

"All truth passes through three stages. First it is ridiculed; Second it is violently opposed; Third it is accepted as being self-evident." Shopenhauer.

It wasn't that long ago in our history that we "knew" that the earth was flat and vehicles heavier than air cannot fly.

Science like Religion is based on faith. Faith in the theories of the past, of the authority of the current priesthood. Look at how evolution clings to our idea of the world even though it has long been shown to be inadequate.

Rational thinking is not always what it seems. Often the truth does not seem rational at the time it is discovered because the paradigm of the observer is insufficiently developed to understand the concept. Imagine taking a CD player back in time 100 years. At one time the idea of flying an airplane was irrational.

You speak of what "experiments reveal" but fail to mention the conflicting results they often divulge because of the consciousness affecting the experiment and the agenda of the person attempting to prove his pet theory, the next big drug, etc. Data fabrication in science is rampant and has been for some time.

I don't see science as "know(ing) the weaknesses of our current paradigm and we are working full speed to take the next step of discovering even deeper theories of
Nature." All one has to do is look at the holy grail of Relativity and the patch work that continues to be made of it to explain evidence that doesnt fit. Dark matter, Higgs Bosons, Super String, are all attempts at evading evidence that does not fit the evidence we have available.

Being objective and fair in science doesn't do much good if you want to keep your grant money flowing in. Step too far out of line and the system knocks you around till you fall back in line or are booted out of the club completely.

I am curious as to where you developed this extremely idealistic perception of how science operates? While it may sound good in theory it is not what happens in practice. Drug companies pay to have studies "prove" their drug works, NASA scientists corrupt and hide data from their missions so people don't see the wrong things, Government employed scientists decide what drugs people should be given in the water supply against their will and often without their knowledge. Doctors decide that we must be inject healthy people with virii and bacteria in order to protect them. In truth we are still selling snake oil, bloodletting and using leaches to extract the evil blood we carry.

if science were fair there would be no such thing as a outrageous theory. All ideas would be welcome and encouraged because the biggest advances didn't come from the people who were toiling away with things we already knew to be true. It was the people who dared to say, "what if". Now those people are druged and suppressed in schools and forced to conform. Molded into good little robots who don't question things and don't think for themselves.

This needs to change if science is ever to become what you suggest that it is. but that means overhauling the system and getting rid of the way we do things now. it means being proactive about your health rather than living on drugs and quick symptom fixes. It means using the best technology we have rather than the easiest, cheapest we have. It means allowing all ideas in the arena of discussion and not clinging to our old understandings.

The second a scientist thinks he has it figured out, is the second he needs to go back to the drawing board.

How different would physics and cosmology be if the universe is not acutally expanding? This is one of the fundamental ideas of in theories about our universe. The quantized red shift should be putting serious doubt in someone's mind. In fact, this the expanding universe is so important in so many other theories, cosomologists and physists should drop everything and solve that problem.

How different would physics and cosmology be if the speed of light is not constant. Of course, when measured with a cesium clock, (all measurements sinces the 1940s) the speed of light is constant. But what if the decay of Cesium changes at the same rate as the change in the speed of light. Before 1940, many people thought that the speed of light was slowing down and they had experiemental results to prove it. It might be interesting to go back to the old ways and check.

Coyote

Dear Lord_Shandor,

Thank you for your thoughts and the further opportunities you offer me to
help clarify some misunderstood issues regarding science and how it is
done.

I had originally composed a long-winded reply to defend each of your new
attacks, but then I realized that it probably wouldn't be appreciated
anyway. The debate we are engaged in began in ancient Greece, and I
laughed at myself that I could ever hope to resolve it with something as
simple as a forum posting. Instead, I point you to other authors who have
more eloquently regarded the issue, for example, Dr. Seven L. Goldman
(Lehigh University), who recently produced a fantastic lecture series,
"Science Wars & Science in the 20th Century" produced by the good people
at The Teaching Company.

The one thing I do feel compelled to answer in this response is your
question to me about who I am and how it is that I came about my vision
and appreciation for the scientific enterprise. I am a physicist (Ph.D.)
and have been engaged in active research and education for the past two
decades. I have been schooled at some of the most respected institutions
in our country (which I will not name out of modesty), and have worked in
industry, government, and academia. I have been involved in numerous
cutting-edge projects at the frontiers of technology and knowledge, and
have been responsible for the allocation and usage of significant
resources to these ends. I'm well-published and well-respected among my
colleagues, and I have many friends in high-places, so to speak, including
NASA, the Space Science Institute (which operates the Hubble Space
Telescope) and various national laboratories, not to mention universities
and colleges. Over the years, I have lectured to thousands of people,
given countless specialized seminars/colloquia, as well as regularly
reached out to the public in outreach-type of events.

Of course, at this point, I know you have to take me at my word when I
claim these things, as the Internet is rampant with deceptors and
agenda-pushing cons. If you are truly interested in verifying my
identity, I invite you to contact me via e-mail, and we can set up a
meeting. This offer is open to anyone else, too.

So, with this experience, let me say that in all my years of actually
doing science, I can assure you that the notion that all scientists are
self-serving, agenda-pushing "priests" of a highly technological "cult" is
a myth that must've been created by some psychotic lunatic who must've
been offended at one point in his life by someone in the scientific
establishment (or maybe by an impatient high school teacher?) and decided
thereafter to devote the rest of his life to spreading disinformation.

All my colleagues are the most level-headed, rational people I know.
Quite a few of them have ideas which challenge the prevailing theories,
and such outside-the-box thinking is routinely encouraged, because
sometimes, they lead to measurable progress. But sometimes, these ideas
make predictions which are not validated by experimental evidence, and
these ideas must be re-examined more critically in light of what is
actually observed. Every one of us knows that if we truly have a truly
significant and verifiable idea far outside the current paradigm, we will
surely be in line for a Nobel Prize. Doing science is very exciting and
lively, and filled with (sometimes heated) argumentation and debate, which
are regular aspects of our work. I wish you could see how science is
actually done, and that would instantly change your view that science is
some kind of religion. Believe me, if it were as you say, I would be the
first to leave the "religion."

Let me add one more thing regarding how science projects are funded.
Many of my proposals (which were based on the prevailing theories and, if
I may say so myself, quite good) have been rejected over the years. The
reality is that there just isn't enough money to support every project, no
matter how good they are. It's not that we selectively pick and choose
our pet-favorite theories and only support those ideas. It's just that
with a limited amount of money, we can only try to fund projects which
seem to have the highest chances of success in telling us something
important about nature. When one of my proposals are rejected, I don't
become disgruntled about the scientific enterprise, I don't bash the
funding agents as blind and ignorant and self-serving, and I don't trash
my original ideas. And I certainly don't quit and devote my life to
bashing science as a whole. Rather, I find other ways to do my project,
sometimes at my own expense. And you know, there were times when I
actually succeeded, and the results, even though not formally supported by
grants through official channels, contributed significantly to our
understanding of nature and were well-received by the scientific
establishment.

Anyway, I think I've rambled long enough, and while I have a hunch that
while you won't appreciate what I've shared, my hope is that someone else
surfing the net who, after reading one too many baseless anti-science
web-sites out there on the Net, stumbles across this posting will perhaps
be inspired to think rationally for herself. I invite that individual to
actually visit a lab where science is done, perhaps at a college or
university, and to judge for herself how lively and open is the current
scientific endeavor and the good intention of those scientists who are
engaged in this worthwhile goal. If that person happens to be in my neck
of the woods, please e-mail, and I would be more than happy to give you a
grand tour of the kinds of projects which I am doing.

I wish you all the best, and may we find strength in our similarities and
devote our energies to those things which support the common good,

HF

P.S. Out of respect for Coyote and his thread about cloud-making, perhaps
you could start a new thread to continue our interesting exchange about
science, if you wish. This will allow Coyote to focus this thread on
reporting his progress. Thanks.

Dear Coyote,

Thank you for our continued correspondence. You raise two issues which I
would like to respond to:

1. Expanding universe. There are many non-expanding models of the
universe in cosmology. They are called steady-state models. Indeed, when
Einstein first developed general relativity (GR), the steady-state model was the
prevailing cosmological model in his time, and he believed in it so
strongly that he had to invent a constant, the cosmological constant, to
make GR agree with the steady-state universe. When Hubble found evidence
for the expanding universe, Einstein declared that introducing the
cosmological constant into his GR equations was the biggest blunder in his
life, because had he not so firmly believed in the steady-state universe
to begin with, he could've been in a position to predict universal
expansion years before Hubble actually discovered evidence for it.
Today, we have evidence that the universe is actually ACCELERATING in its
expansion, and some have invoked Einstein's original idea of the
cosmological constant to account for this acceleration. It's too bad that
Einstein is no longer alive to appreciate how his cosmological constant is
being used today, because he may in the end actually be right, although
for the wrong original reason.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universe


2. Speed of light. Einstein's special relativity (SR) is founded upon the
experimental results of Michelson and Morely, who used interferometry to
measure light's speed. The prevailing theory at the time was that light's
speed would be different depending on the direction of Earth's motion
through the "ether," a substance once thought to permeate all of space.
Michelson and Morley's experiment showed that the speed of light is
decidedly independent of the direction of Earth's motion, thus dealing a
severe blow to the ether paradigm. Thus, Einstein proposed a radically
new idea: light's speed is actually fixed in all inertial reference
frames. Of course, at the time, no one else liked that idea, because the
logical consequence of fixing light's speed would be to make time and
space relative (hence the term "relativity"). Over the next 20 or 30
years, experiment after experiment, observation after observation
confirmed SR (and all its implications). And every single day at the
particle accelerator labs, SR is being indirectly confirmed because its
effects are much more pronounced at high energies and speeds.

See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity

Also, we who do science don't hold GR and SR as though they are our holy
grails. We recognize that they are wonderful theories which make
predictions which are confirmed to the best of our abilities, satisfying
every objective test with astonishing accuracy. It has been a century
(1906-2006) since Einstein first laid down his relativity principles, and
in this time, countless tests have been performed, all of which are
consistent with relativity. This does not say they are the final word on
this aspect of nature. Not at all ... it just says that given our current
ability to test these theories, they are verifiable and seem to say
something objective about nature. As our technology advances, we will be
able to perform more precise experiments in the future, and maybe a deeper
theory will be required to explain those measurements. This does not
"disprove" GR and SR, just as Newton's laws are not "disproved" by GR and
SR. It just says that Newton's laws, GR, and SR are fabulous ways of
looking at the world in their respective regimes where they offer
verifiable predictions. And we can confidently use these theories to
guide our way toward a deeper understanding of nature.

By the way, as I'm sure you know, there are many alternative theories
about gravity and light which researchers are developing. Some show
promise, others not. All must submit to objective experimentation to be
validated and accepted. So far, GR and SR beats them all, hands down.
That is why we prefer to use GR and SR as the current working models, not
because we have some perverted attachment to these theories based on
faith, but because the evidence speaks for itself.

Best,

HF

P.S. As I mentioned to Lord Shandor, perhaps we could start another thread
to continue the more general debate, and dedicate the current thread to
your cloud-busting theme.

Perhaps I have been practicing too much this week. There has not been a single cloud in the sky in 3 days.

Since I have been posting this on a public forum, I have been awaiting a ceast and desist request from The Society For Cloud Preservation (SFCP).

Here are some more observations based on further practice (I hesitate to say experimentation, because I have not yet fully designed an experiment that would meet the scientific method). I have attempted to disapate more than 100 clouds in the last 3 weeks.

Once the cloud I was focusing on did not disapper but the cloud next to it did. Once the cloud I was focusing on got larger not smaller and eventually I had give up on that cloud. Then I picked another cloud nearby and did make it disappear.

I have also spent hours watching the sky to see how often a clould would disappear without me willing it to. I have not yet seen cloud disappear that I did not intend to disappear.

Clouds at lower ceilings are easier to dissapate than at higher ceilings. Smaller clouds are easier than larger clouds. For very large clouds, if I make is disapate, another cloud tries to re-form in another area. I suspect the moisture is still in the air, just no longer visible. It is easier to disapate clouds when there is more blue sky available but it can also be done if the the sun is not at all visible through a layer of clouds.

I strongly suspect this is a skill anyone can learn, but it probably requires a certain state of mind. Here is some context about my state of mind. I have been meditating two times per day for 1.5 years for 25-45 minutes per meditation. During my meditations, I most times reach a state of non-thought. A better definition might be no words or visualizations during my meditations. Recently I also often find this state of non-thought present at other periods during my day, although it is easier to achieve when I am in nature walking than sitting in my office surrounded by paperwork and computers.

Occansionally I reach a state of mind during meditation that I can only describe as transcendant. I have never read words that I could point to and say "yes", it was like that. My general state of mind has also been trasformed. As an example, I rode my bike to work two weeks ago. When I was ready to go home, it was raining. By the time I left, the rain had turned into a deluge (1.5 inches in 1 hour). I enjoyed the experience so much, I started laughing. And I continued laughing until I got home. I even detoured and took the long route home. I don't think I could have laughed in the rain one year ago.