Will This Change Anything?

I have often written about the way that mainstream discourses tend to marginalise discussions about subjects related to intuitive perception and spiritual experience. Here's an extract about exactly this problem, from a journal paper entitled "Entanglement: The idea that changes everything?", which I recently wrote for Foresight. I know many journal articles are about as fascinating as observing rocks erode, but I do try to make my papers personal, interesting and readable. I hope I have succeeded with that goal here. If interested, you can find the rest of the paper here, including relevant citations. (BTW, Brockman's This Will Change Everything is actually a very readable volume, and chock full of fascinating ideas for anyone interested in science and the future).

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I recently received my copy of John Brockman’s This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future. No self-titled futurist could not be excited by the prospect of reading such a volume, which contains a collection of short essays by more than one hundred of the self-described brightest and most influential scientific and philosophical minds on the planet, including Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Freeman Dyson, and Rupert Sheldrake. Contributions are taken from the Edge website (www.theedge.org). Edge was formed by Brockman in 1991, and each year a volume is produced outlining some of the most provocative and innovative ideas emergi

Love Ideas

Sorry for the lack of posts of late - I've been a bit busy! I have recently returned to beautiful Discovery Bay on Lantau Island in Hong Kong. I am also back working my full-time job as a secondary school teacher, even while polishing up these futures projects.

• I'm working with my editor on getting my book Sage of Synchronicity ready for its release with Inner Traditions next year.
• I'm finalising the booklet Urban Enlightenment, and the programme associated with it. That programme will be run in Hong Kong, over four weeks in November. I'm quite excited by that one, as it is a potentially life-changing event for participants.
• I am also working on developing a 'learning how to learn' programme for high school students in Hong Kong. Hong Kong kids are smart, but don't always have exposure to a wide array of learning skills. They can get caught up in the rote-style of learning that tends to dominate in schools, and this can have a disastrous effect of their developing the life-long learning habit that is so essential in the modern age.
• There is at least one more programme I'm developing. Recently HK tycoon Li Ka Shing decided he didn't need HK$300 million anymore, and has developed a great way to get rid of it - the "love ideas/love Hong Kong" campaign - www.loveideas.hk . I'm going to be submitting at least one programme, and I hope to be working with a few other wonderful people here in HK.

So you may not see so many long posts here in the immediate future, with my being so busy. However, I do promise to keep posting on a range of topics, although sometimes there may be only a little commentary, and a link to something worth noting.

Here's something that I found to be short, sweet, and fascinating. It's an easy-to-understand entry on Dean Radin's blog, and explains how one of the most famous experiments in parapsychology is undertaken. It's called the Ganzfeld, and involves a person being blindfolded and fed 'white noise'. Then the person has to try to guess what someone else is trying to send him/her via telepathy, from another location. It's worth checking out, for those who have always wanted to know how they do it - and perhaps why these kinds of experiments are criticised by skeptics. See if you can pick the correct card from the description!

http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2010/09/ganzfeld-telepathy-example.html

Cheers,

Marcus

Can People Really Read Minds?

In some popular and science fiction movies there are people who can read minds. In What Women Want, for example, Mel Gibson is able to read the thoughts of those around him. In the movie this is an involuntary process. The thoughts just pop into his head. Personally, I think it would have been a far better movie if we could have just seen what Mel was thinking about. Judging by recent media stories, there’s some mighty interesting stuff in there.

In another version of mind reading, usually found in science fiction movies, we have “empaths’ who can get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling. They are a regular part of Star Trek narratives. Empaths can also sense the future, including danger. They may not read minds thought for thought, but they can pick up “the vibe”.

Is there any truth to these tales of mind reading? Can some people actually read minds? Will all people one day read minds, as part of human evolution?