[rushiddink]

Oh, Chris, Chris, Chris....you know I adore you? I love all of your questioning and probing. You know I'm a skeptic, too. But, when things happen to me that are so synchronistic...I can't deny them. I wouldn’t class my self as a sceptic as such, and I bet you wouldn’t either, I guess I just question with the knowledge I have to date – be this scientific or personal experience. And I do learn, and change opinion. I would love to be able to just give up, settle into a nice comfortable belief system and progress within it. But I have a drive to learn past the knowledge I now hold or wish to believe. I’ve tried ignoring this in periods of my life, but it never lets up .

So, let me try this a different way. Almost all of the psychic abilities I have began (actually exploded) when I wasn't hoping for them, expecting them, or even AWARE of their possibility for me. They all started in a big way, and each had a wow factor of being confirmed by someone or something outside of me. One example is the first time I saw an aura, which by the way, was the largest, brightest, most colorful, and profound I have seen since. It was confirmed several minutes later by someone I didn't know. It seems like they all originally happen in this way, and then the ability decreases and I have to study and learn how to improve them.
This makes me think that something, someone, or even my Higher Self starts the kick-off when I'm not expecting, just to get me interested. I know, I know, this is all very intuitive, and there's no way I can prove it. I don’t think there is anything wrong with intuitive knowledge, I actually think we each would progress tremendously if we could access it, and listen to it, more frequently. The one problem here is trying to perceive that knowledge without intention (i.e. not interpreting it within the confines of a belief system we hold, or wish to hold) – but you seem to be open to other possibilities (sceptic ) so I don’t think this would be too much of a problem with you.

Ok, let me try to explain it more clearly. Your test failed for me. If I look directly at an object, no aura appears. When I say I "focus", I'm speaking of focusing attention, not my eyes. I look above or to the side of an object, relax my eye focus (like you would unfocus a camera lens), and relax my body. This is how I see auras. Directly staring at something does not work for me. The problem with what I wrote is that it’s hard to transfer how I see ‘auras’ into writing. It would be much easier to get this across in person, as much is lost in text.

But, I was never "taught". And, why didn't anything remotely like this happen to me in the 50 years before the first time? I had heard of auras, but had never read a book about them, or talked with anyone who claimed to see them. It was "spontaneous" in a very suspicious setting (meaning, why in a spiritual setting, where the energy in the room itself was high). The cirucmstances were too extraordinary to me. You may disagree, but then, you are unable to detect and feel what I feel, just as I can't live your experiences. It would probably be easier if I could. Then I might be more able to detect a difference in what we are seeing or experiencing. I know all about subjective and objective experience, so that argument is a little wasted on me. I don't necessarily believe there is anything that is truly "objective". It's just our perception of it on this physical level. I believe we are all in for a big surprise when we transcend the physical. We will be laughing at what we understood to be "objective'. Using the airplane example, it was objective reality that nothing but birds could fly, certainly not humans. Those who believed it possible, were...well, you know what they were considered. It is now objective reality that many kinds of craft can fly. I totally agree. If I was to see from your eyes, I would be ‘you’ and the meaning would still be lost to ‘me’. I also agree that, in the end, we can only ever know our experiences ourselves, at this place and time where we currently are.
I think with the aeroplane example, that plane flight still uses objective ‘laws’ and it was a discovery of the technology to make planes fly, rather than reality changing to allow it to happen.
I think if we ever find ‘the truth’ we will all be in for a surprise (the scientists and the spiritual).
The subject of what is objective and what is subjective is a difficult problem. I see external reality as an internally generated and experienced state. What makes it objective is my perception that it is external to my perceived body, and it seems to contain a consistency internal states do not.
There are so many levels to view this on, I can perceive the edges of something much further past the boundaries of my ‘human understanding’ of the subject. It’s an abstract knowledge which is more felt (in a non-tactile way). I currently don’t have the time to write lots, but I think most people take for granted human perception, and through it, perceive their objective and spiritual realties (however abstract they perceive these to be). Yet, human understanding of any concept is all that a human can understand – it doesn’t necessarily give it any greater truth, or show us how things truly are.
To use the brain as an example (as I’m not sure I’m getting across what I mean). The brain is hardwired to process information is a certain way. The universe as we perceive and understand it is just the product of the brains hardwiring. The universe could be nothing like what we perceive, but we can only perceive it in this way, at this moment in time.

This actually relates to something I said in a post this week. My theory is that our brain is hard wired for all psychic experiences. It can be stimulated either through "mechanical" means (i.e. - probes used during brain surgery, lack of oxygen, etc.) OR can be stimulated directly by our consciousness/spirit. But, like I said, this is a theory that popped into my head one day. I don't know if anyone else has looked into this, but I haven't heard about it. Rarely, though, is something original, so I'm sure someone has come up with the same idea. There has been similar theories, although I couldn’t name who wrote them off the top of my head. I think rick strassman used such an idea in his studies with DMT. That is, the brain is predisposed to certain spiritual events, and DMT acts as a trigger for them.
The idea I had related more to a possible connection between minds. If any true collective unconsciousness existed (astral), there would exist common undercurrents which we perceive to have certain meanings (simple examples are our perceptions of emotion i.e. at one point in time emotion of any kind didn’t exist, but such things were experienced and refined over time to become the emotions we experience now. Sort of like oils mixed with water separating into distinct layers over time). To use this in context of auras: Auras might have their reality in the structure of this biological body, but our belief in the information they convey could be gained from a deeper level. Such as we associate certain colours/structures with certain knowledge, this knowledge is pulled intuitively from the collective unconscious but we associate it with the colours we perceive as an aura. The aura acts as an anchor from which we can pull specific knowledge from a deeper source.

This is all babbling now, and my point perhaps has been missed

Chris