[John Freestone]

I think I understand better today, almost like I set myself the question last night and have slept on it - why, if one believes in SR (as I've been reading about it from Steve Pavlina's blog), would one do experiments?

I'd like to clarify what the question means, and actually I could use Steve's writing as an example (although I won't bother quoting him exactly). The basic philosophy of SR (subjective reality), he says, it that reality is very different from how the materialist view goes. Reality is, in "fact", consciousness: nothing more. Your body, including your brain, and also your personal mind, are constructs, ideas, created by consciousness. Other people, too, and the environment - the whole world - is actually inside your consciousness, as it were, rather than outside it.

Fine. That's a philosophy. It has a certain degree of internal logic to it. However, soon Steve introduces new conditions in this cosmology: you manifest things in the physical plane by what you think. Pardon? So there is something called the "physical plane" then, not just consciousness, which a moment ago was the sum total of the universe - one divine cosmic consciousness. Presumably, then, the physical plane is an illusion created by consciousness, or the original proposition (that consicousness is all there is) was incorrect, a simplification, and in fact there is also this other place we live - the physical plane. Death, Steve also promised, was merely a construct, an illusion of consciousness, BTW.

So that's my difficulty, my confusion, my question, which is a genuine one ALG, and I'm sorry if you find it "boring" (I think the word you're looking for is more like "irritating", however).

Is all this SR stuff (which I see as very much the basis of IM and LoA) saying that reality is just one cosmic consciousness, and absolutely anything is possible if I overcome my habitual thinking patterns (karmic), and we spend time experimenting to see what we can change though an act of will simply because of that same karmic illusion - in fact we could do anything at all? Is that what your experiments are, exercising the will-muscles, kind of thing, to confront and destroy those self-imposed mental limitations?

And if so, why bother discussing whether ALG is a master manifester, since ALG doesn't actually exist, he's just a figment of the Cosmic Consciousness's delusions? Or are there actually different people, different beings, souls and all that? If so, why does the SR theory say that all there is is cosmic consciousness and all the people in my life, everything even in my past and future, the whole of the content of consciousness, is an illusion? Do you believe that people aren't really real? Do you believe in SR/IM/LoA so much that you're prepared to say it's perfectly safe for a person to jump off a cliff?

You see, I've never dismissed the idea that our thoughts influence reality, I just think that it might possibly be a big mistake to take it to extremes and believe that the whole of reality is sitting inside consciousness, and I rather wonder if all the experimentation isn't so much the development of IM skills towards an infinite will power, but an attempt to discover the limits of the Law. Those of the first persuasion will say they can't manifest a coin or a feather or do some other miracle for me on demand because "they're not good enough at it yet". The second kind, like me, would say that there are things I can influence with my will and things that I can't.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, moonrambler, by "personal development on steroids", but it sounds like you're asking a similar question there. It is a natural human tendency (in the "normal" philosophy of separate human beings with distinct brains and thoughts) for us to extrapolate things to untenable conclusions. New science is often cited as a reason why we should all be able to be in several places at once, levitate at will or have any amount of money we want, and I used to make that suggestion without much real understanding myself, but my conversations with real particle physicists have brought me back down to earth, put my ego in check again, and reminded me that reality might be a lot more complicated than I like to think. It's that liking to think that is the problem.

I agree completely with wolfgang that people could be doing a lot more with their minds in terms of healing their bodies. I would go further and say that positive thinking does make a difference to outcomes in the physical world that seem disconnected with our thoughts - the LoA, in effect - I just see the limits of the LoA being closer to home, I see it as probably being located in an individual human mind, and I see it as probably working (if and when it does) through complex, non-mystical processes. These may be many and varied. One example would be communication between people on an unconscious level through body-language, pheromones, etc., which can account for experiences sometimes interpreted as telepathic. A great deal of success in the lifestyle experiments reported here (of the "I made millions!" kind) can be thought of in terms of this theory, which I might call the "Weak Law of Attraction". If you set your mind to doing something, you unconsciously and consciously instigate all manner of events that you would not by thinking it unlikely, and those events set off other events. By thinking positively, feeling confident, etc., you make those around you notice you more and respond to you more willingly and obligingly. Those inclined to believe in magic will interpret the results in mystical terms, but there are sound, scientific, material reasons why most of these effects take place. The good news is that you don't have to stop doing your positive thinking and meditations. You don't have to stop practising the Law of Attraction. You don't have to stop deciding to get rich and being more likely to get rich. It's just that you retain a degree of critical intelligence that recognises you can't - AND WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO - fly, levitate, drink hemlock or walk through walls...and you remain immune to the influence of those who, either innocently or to deliberately take advantage of you, might persuade you of impossible things.

These effects - the subtle manipulations of body-language, verbal and sub-verbal cues, subliminal messages of all kinds - are the stock in trade of the confidence trickster and the innocent but deluded cold reader of "messages from beyond" or "fortunes", and they work in tandem with the suspension of disbelief, the susceptibility, the hypnotic programmability, of the other.

I therefore have no doubt that intending to increase your IQ, ALG, is likely to do so, and intending to get published is what causes people to get published. We seem only to be arguing about the mechanisms involved. Doubts, rejections of theories, trying new ideas on for size, discussing things, arguing - these are things I enjoy doing at forums. I have never told you you must believe what I believe. I'm just arguing with you. You can withdraw from that argument at any time. It seems my discussion of superstition has offended you, since you pretend that I am calling you a superstitious villager. I am just as susceptible to superstition as anyone else, and I don't mean to insult your intelligence at all. Often, I believe, it is those of the highest intelligence who get caught up in extravagant theories and fail to see their limits (the whole history of science and philosophy is full of them).