Noted Physicist: I combine science with the paranormal!

Science of the Paranormal
MIT and Princeton educated physicist, Dr. Claude Swanson (website), shared his thesis that cracks are appearing in the current scientific paradigm, and a revolution is underway that incorporates new physics and paranormal research.

Getting into the specifics of such research, Swanson said that he had investigated the "orb" phenomena seen in photographs, and mentioned that it is sometimes possible to see the floating globes with the naked eye with the use of flash or strobes. He postulated they may be related to what the Hindus referred to as an "astral form."

Swanson spoke of the skills he accrued from taking Remote Viewing courses, which he said demonstrate a technique to keep the "talking part of our brain occupied" allowing for the subconscious mind to access psychic information. During RV sessions he said, the "feeling of being somewhere else was very vivid." One of the most fascinating phenomena Swanson said he has studied is the OBE (out-of-body experience). The evidence suggests our physical bodies are surrounded by unseen layers of "subtle" energy, he said.

www.synchronizeduniverse.com...

I couldn't resist. Those of you that hang around a lot at ATS know my views on so called modern science. It needs a shakeup real bad. I like this guy, at least somebody out there agrees with me, and increasingly many of you.

woah. that is really all i have to say. woah.
i dont quite no what to make of this. ive actually heard of a few of these things, but nothing on this scale. the website seems real in depth, and, as it turns out, it is! this dude/group of dudes really know(s) what he/they're talking about.
if this thing blows up, gets the media attention it deserves, this should be huge.
id only like to see a little more detail by this dude - without having to buy the book.
gnite

But I am a physicist, and I have some ideas on the edge of things too- for instance:

Constellation Analysis of Ancient Sites

Physicists are pretty open to such ideas simply because our particular field is so old and established, we get some leeway that is attributed to eccentiricity.

edit:url punctuation

[Edited on 2-19-2004 by Thegl]

Thegl, your link didn't work. fix it please!

and that's really interesting THENEO. didn't something in the bible or some psychic or something say that eventually the sciences of the world would shift to include the paranormal?

commanderkeen,

great game btw, do you know how old it is? I can remember that game 10 years ago! There was a day when Keen and Wolfenstein and a handful of other games were the PC game industry.

answering your question not sure frankly. Since the bible is naturally quite interested in spirits and spirit realms, I have to say that in an indirect way the bible would suggest what you are suggesting.

didn't the learned men & women of yore?
know physics & medicine & mathematics
& metaphysics & alchemy ???

along with other earth, nature, plant sciences

seems they're going the full 360,
to get back to where they once belonged, eh
(whats old is new, again)....ole'

me no speaka da crazy!

in other words, what the hell did you just say?

Originally posted by THENEO

I couldn't resist. Those of you that hang around a lot at ATS know my views on so called modern science. It needs a shakeup real bad. I like this guy, at least somebody out there agrees with me, and increasingly many of you.

Damn straight. Modern science needs a shake up real bad.

Just imagine...Right now there are no paranormal sciences, and the such dealing with all these things, the paranormal...
When something new in science is opened up people flock, lots of new things are discovered.
Such as nanotechnology, Quantum physics, quantum computing, light and it's many uses...

If the paranormal was opened up to the world....Imagine how much we could all learn...

This has been attempted many thousands (millions?) of times over many hundreds of years.

Its not a matter of just declaring a field open and everyone starts to investigate. It is a progression. Perhaps a further understanding of many aspects of science will allow more research into what is now referred to as the 'paranormal'. But people have spent a lot of time trying to prove paranormal activity, all unsuccessfully. Without solid proof of what is occuring, no direct research is really possible.

reading 'the tao of physics' now. great book.

Not all science is garbage

Here's an interesting link-

www.issc-taste.org...

TASTE is an online journal devoted to transcendent experiences that scientists have reported. It lets scientists express these experiences in a psychologically (and professionally) safe space.

Science is a wonderful profession: I've worked at it for almost 40 years, and love it. As a process for gathering and refining knowledge, it is so useful! But the process is practiced by people, not machines, and we are each affected by the conscious and unconscious hopes, habits and fears of our individual histories and cultural heritages. As Aldous Huxley so nicely put it, each of us is simultaneously the beneficiary and the victim of our culture.

Science and Scientism

As scientists, we have discovered a body of precisely observed factual data about the world, created a lot of good theories that make sense of much of that data � and we are part of a cultural heritage of scientism. Sociologists coined the term "scientism" back in the 1940s, when they realized that many scientists unthinkingly accepted many scientific theories as simple, unquestioned Truths, just like believers in any "ism," and thus we often acted like any prejudiced "believer," especially outside our immediate areas of expertise.

Transcendent Experiences

This all-too-human narrowness is a significant distorting factor when dealing with the area of life roughly called transcendent, used primarily in the sense of definition 1b above, "extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience." TASTE is primarily about gathering data on transcendent experiences.

Related words which describe the kinds of experiences I am soliciting for posting on this TASTE site are spiritual, mystical, psychic or paranormal, all imprecise ways of describing experiences which seem to transcend the ordinary limits of the physical world. All these terms have multiple connotations and semantic baggage that are often at odds with the scientific process, but they are nevertheless in common use. I would prefer to use the term transpersonal experiences, experiences which involve apparent functioning beyond, trans, the ordinary limits of what we think is possible. Transpersonal has been an empirical and psychological term from its coining by psychologist Abraham Maslow, but it is still not widely enough known. Thus transcendent is the key word for TASTE.

Language Difficulties

Many, if not all, transcendent experiences are "ineffable," i.e. the experiencers feel that ordinary language is inadequate at conveying the full scope and vitality of the experience. But words can have a reminding function or a pointing function: the words resonate with something in the reader's own experiential knowledge and direct attention. The challenge to the submitters is to use their words as best they can to be both accurate and communicative. If this results in some scientists waxing poetic, so be it! And some of what seems ineffable at first glance can be communicated well as we work at it.

Fear of Admitting to the Transcendent

Over the years I have had hundreds of fellow scientists from all sorts of fields quietly come up to me at meetings or write or phone me � when they had decided I was safe � to tell me about their unusual experiences apparently going beyond everyday reality, challenging our concepts of what the world is . These were experiences that intrigued them and/or were emotionally important to them, but which they could not tell to their colleagues or friends for fear of rejection or ridicule. Without worrying about more formal definitions, these transcendent experiences have included things such as:

altered states of consciousness (ASCs), often involving new kinds of apparent knowledge and insights
deep feelings of connection with life or the universe
the apparent paranormal/psychic overcoming of ordinary barriers to communication
various kinds of apparent transcendence of our ordinary physical selves.
Sometimes being able to tell me about such experiences in confidence has gotten them off people's chests or even been "therapeutic" (although I'm not a therapist). Sometimes I've been able to give scientific information about these experiences that relieves the reporter, producing a reaction something like: "Oh, it happens to other sane people? There's an established name for it? I'm not alone, it doesn't mean I'm crazy?!" And often the reaction is further on the order of "We only know it happens? But we don't know why? Why aren't we intensively researching these things? I ought to research it, but I can't, I would be. . . ." (reasons to not research it have included being laughed at and rejected, thought crazy, not getting tenure, losing a job, couldn't get any results published, etc.).

Purpose

The TASTE project is an attempt to work toward rectifying this strange, scientistic situation where too many people are forced to deny or repress parts of their own human experience. These Archives are an online journal performing the essential scientific function of full and honest communication of data in this badly neglected area.

I emphasize the word data: no particular theoretical interpretation will be made at this site, other than that such experiences are important. The point is to let the data come out and stimulate us. Commentaries (mentioned below) are secondary to the data.

Either Dr. Claude Swanson is a fake, or he's never thought about the kind of claims he makes on his website.

He's blatantly twisting truths.

He says things like:

5. STABILITY OF "CHARGE CLUSTERS" IN SPARK DISCHARGE SUGGEST THAT LAW OF ELECTROMAGNETISM MAY BE WRONG IN PRESENCE OF HIGH CHARGE CONCENTRATIONS. IT HINTS THAT "ZERO POINT ENERGY" IS MODIFYING THE EXPECTED BAHAVIOR.

Yes, the law of Electromagnetism is wrong in extremely high charge situations, that's because things unify as they stretch towards the Planck energy. EM unifies with Nuclear, which unified at an even lower field. This is all known and classical physics, and we have perfectly good reasons for it, but then he goes and says:

IT HINTS THAT "ZERO POINT ENERGY" IS MODIFYING THE EXPECTED BAHAVIOR.

That's just to get you to read the damned book.

It is a money-making ploy, not an outreach to a wondrous new world of metaphysical discovery. If this guy is a real physicist who works at MIT and _anyone_ backs him on this, why is his website obviously a 1 man template Html job? "Your Heading Goes Here" is the title of this page, does this not scream volumes of his in-credibility?

Excellent point viendin, the entire page comes of as charlatanism.

Trying to use dark matter as something mysterious is lunacy- its not mysterious, its just dark because its not visible- there are no shortage of credible mainstream theories as to what it is, its just that there is not enough evidence to convince us one way or another at this point.

Credible scientists do not research such a broad array of topics, and the topic list reads like a laundry list of paranormal science buzzwords.

There are certainly anomolies in science. There is (IMO) paranormal phenomena that does need study. But we're not even close to the 'revolution' he's talking about. If there is going to be a revolution, it'll be in medicine concerning the nature of the human body and healing.

He isn't the only one....

I remember one site that explained the idea of a soul, and integrated it with physics... It very much matched my own ideas... I have a printout of it somewhere, where the link should be.... It was about the Science of life after death, and I first saw it here as a thread on ATS....

That is all very adequate and lovely but try BEING the somewhere else that everyone is hanging out in! You, The Neo?!

NEO
EON
ONE

It is like X's and O's, Perfect Circle, straight through every time,
'cause time IS money, Lol! Mono El Tiardo! Triune, Perfect, Trinity!

YOU MUST BE AWARE BY NOW THAT EVERY...ONE...BOUGHT THE BOOK AND IS BEING SCRIPTED OR 'CAST' INTO THE LAKE THAT BURNS FOREVER AND EVER. OF COURSE ONE MIGHT SAY THAT I KNOW THE KEY TO THE BOTTOMLESS PIT OF MY HEART IS WIDE OPEN AND THAT I KNOW WHERE IAM IN MY SOUL...But then again, maybe those of us here DO know what the hell we are talking about. Lucifer. (Amber M.) That's 3T's!

Ah the usual collection of those seeking the truth and then we have those that fear the light.

Frankly I think that anything can be explained in scientific terms but of course you need sufficient science first in order to speak a suitably complex language.

once while on lsd i had an experience ...
a screen opened upon my consciousness whereby i could see this screen and also the room i was in.
it was orb shaped and there was tiny orbs inside this larger orb each containing forms that were moving.
This was also accompanied by the feeling of leaving my body so powerful was the feeling that i asked my buddy to take my hand and not let me leave...the overwhelming feeling was that what i was seeing was not to be seen until i had died or that i wasnt ready to see it . i wasnt .it was to mind blowing!
i also some how knew that what i was seeing was somehow connected with eastern religion...strange cause at the time i never had studied it and knew very little about it ...intuition...most likely was from past lives
i now realize what brought it about was my friend was talking while we were on this powerful acid and when he stopped to continue his sentence in mid speeech , he said like we so often do. ummmmmm and bam! that screen popped up. I now know that word is so close to the holy word for aum or om or if said to sound like that
aumen. that was what set it off
lsd acting upon the spinal column in such away set it off
the ancient chakras which are located in the spinal column when you concentrate upon them can induce the type of vision but only after much practice and the use of yoga.... I know this from practice but have not had this vision persay but something just as powerful
which i wont go into extensively unless you personally u2u me neo
the ancient rishis knew of the existence of the atom long before the western science knew of it
i could go on forever but im at work...this existence we are living is a dream within a dream ....god dreamt us into existence
he is the sole reality
beyond the beyond
the vibrationless realm is there
all is wave form here
i will speak further on this matter

Originally posted by cmdrkeenkid
me no speaka da crazy!

in other words, what the hell did you just say?

didn't the learned men & women of yore?
know physics & medicine & mathematics
& metaphysics & alchemy ???

along with other earth, nature, plant sciences

seems they're going the full 360,
to get back to where they once belonged, eh
(whats old is new, again)....ole'

Speaking simply of our contrived 3,000 year history which if viewed in full resembles swiss cheese.

There are three bodies that surround us ..of course the physical and there is the astral and after that is the causal which is very subtle and consists of nothing more than thought form and the original energy that came forth from god which was the original thought which produced a sound which is the sound aum.. the word of god