Can psychic experiences be misinterpreted?

[Gukkor]

I've never had any psychic or paranormal experiences myself (at least not that I know of), but this is something I've always been curious about. If a person has a psychic experience, NDE, or anything like that, is it possible for that person to misinterpret the meaning or significance of that experience, or does something about the nature of the experience ensure that they take what they should away from it?

For example, could a psychic have an intense vision regarding some event, but then be mistaken about what the vision is trying to tell them?

[Dannyboy1]

No way. Absolutely impossible. They're completely infallible.

[Gukkor]

Perhaps the fact that it's in text is throwing me off, but I sense sarcasm.

[MattFYF]

Taking into consideration what all of the scientific research says, my personal believe is that psychic phenominon is always misinterpreted normal events that have perfectly rational scientific bases. We might not know everything, but given the body of evidence that's been established, we can pretty much say that what X person is experiencing has a fairly good chance of being based off of Y.

For example, Penn and Teller did a great Bullshit! episode with a part on Near Death Experiences. (The audio and visual is off a bit, but you only really need to hear what they're saying!) They went into an explanation on how people subjected to the G-Forces in those wacky G-Force machines (not sure what they're called) could have the same types of experiences that people with standard Near Death Experiences have. Apparently cutting off blood supply to your brain could make you hallucinate! So we can "recreate" Near Death Experiences just like people experience them - what once was thought to be a "psychic" phenominon is now just a normal variation in what could happen in a human's life, given X circumstance.

[Erin Pavlina]

Gukkor, yes psychic experiences can be misinterpreted. You can misintrepret the meaning, or you could misinterpret the experience as psychic when it is not psychic.

[lasti]

Originally Posted by MattFYF

Apparently cutting off blood supply to your brain could make you hallucinate! So we can "recreate" Near Death Experiences just like people experience them - what once was thought to be a "psychic" phenominon is now just a normal variation in what could happen in a human's life, given X circumstance.

Just because you can recreate them it doesn't mean it's not psychic or it must be a hallucination.

[Gukkor]

Originally Posted by MattFYF

Taking into consideration what all of the scientific research says, my personal believe is that psychic phenominon is always misinterpreted normal events that have perfectly rational scientific bases. We might not know everything, but given the body of evidence that's been established, we can pretty much say that what X person is experiencing has a fairly good chance of being based off of Y.

For example, Penn and Teller did a great Bullshit! episode with a part on Near Death Experiences. (The audio and visual is off a bit, but you only really need to hear what they're saying!) They went into an explanation on how people subjected to the G-Forces in those wacky G-Force machines (not sure what they're called) could have the same types of experiences that people with standard Near Death Experiences have. Apparently cutting off blood supply to your brain could make you hallucinate! So we can "recreate" Near Death Experiences just like people experience them - what once was thought to be a "psychic" phenominon is now just a normal variation in what could happen in a human's life, given X circumstance.

Perhaps, but even if you can reproduce the effects of a given experience, that doesn't necessarily disprove the possibility of any potential causes for such an experience. Besides, not all NDEs happen in circumstances where one would expect blood to be cut off from the brain.

Just out of curiosity, though, how similar are we talking, here? The vast majority of NDE's have a specific set of phenomena which are usually reported by those who experience them. To be sure, exposure to extreme gravitational forces can certainly cause hallucinations in the right circumstances, as can the cutting off of blood to the brain in general, but not all hallucinations are alike.

[Angela]

I did a tarot reading for a friend, and I got the very, very strong sense that the man in her life would be leaving her suddenly and soon, but I did not trust myself to tell her that, and I knew she loved her husband hugely and would be devastated by hearing such a prediction, so I kept quiet.

Her dad died the next morning.

[Gukkor]

Originally Posted by Angela

I did a tarot reading for a friend, and I got the very, very strong sense that the man in her life would be leaving her suddenly and soon, but I did not trust myself to tell her that, and I knew she loved her husband hugely and would be devastated by hearing such a prediction, so I kept quiet.

Her dad died the next morning.

I see. So, as with any other experience, we read our own understanding into psychic experiences, assume certain visions mean certain things by default and stuff like that. That makes sense.

[Angela]

Originally Posted by Gukkor

I see. So, as with any other experience, we read our own understanding into psychic experiences, assume certain visions mean certain things by default and stuff like that. That makes sense.

I would think that's a big challenge for anyone who offers her services as a psychic -- keeping her own stuff out, keeping herself "clear."

[Erin Pavlina]

Yes, keeping yourself out of a reading is vital when you're doing psychic work. That's one of the reasons professionals will meditate before doing readings. I spend between 10 and 30 minutes clearing before I start doing readings for the day.

My guides show/send me symbols a lot. And metaphors that I have to interpret. It's easy, if you're not experienced, to get the symbols wrong.

[MattFYF]

Just because you can recreate them it doesn't mean it's not psychic or it must be a hallucination.

Perhaps, but even if you can reproduce the effects of a given experience, that doesn't necessarily disprove the possibility of any potential causes for such an experience.

That's like walking into the doctor's office, worried that you have a bad case of the flu. You tell him what you're feeling, and you match up 99% flu-like symptoms.The doctor then says "Well, you know, it might not be the flu!" And he's right - it may not be! There's that... you know, little, small, 1% chance! But chances are, it is the flu. And with like NDEs, it follows the same logic. If I can recreate very, very similiar experiences in normal, unbiased people, it's likely the two events are one and the same.

People often hallucinate and dream up similiar scenarios when they have NDEs, similiar to "alien abductees" telling the same similiar stories about what happened when they were taken on the space ship. "I saw a glistening white light!" from the NDE experiencer becomes "I was probed!" by the person taken aboard, and vice versa. You're told "how" NDEs feel by your peers and culture, and that's reinforced when your brain hallucinates. Another similiar example is dream content. People often dream about what's on their mind and what they went through the day before based on the input they received from their sensory systems - noises, sights, sounds, etc..

Single hit and misses, and even strings of "hits" from psychics or from normal people doing readings does not prove psychic ability no more than science can disprove psychic ability by a few tidbits of research here and there. But when science says "This is most likely what happens based on the evidence we have now," than there's a good chance that science is right due to the vast amount of research out there. The little science research that seems to point towards psychic ability often is almost always flawed - the research itself isn't peer reviewed, the research methods themselves are seriously flawed, the subjects are biased, the testing isn't done accurately and so the results are skewed, and so on. If you look, there is probably a research paper here or there that demonstrates a finding of psychic ability... but it'd be one in a sea of millions that say the opposite, and there are probably flaws with the paper and research itself.

EDIT - since I'm getting close to going off on a tangent and derailing the thread, I made a new post here about what I was talking about, to start a discussion on it. Sorry!

[SonoranBob]

Originally Posted by MattFYF

Taking into consideration what all of the scientific research says, my personal belief is that psychic phenomena are always misinterpreted normal events that have perfectly rational scientific bases.

After-death communication can be clinically induced in more than 80% of subjects with certain sequences of eye movements. Others induce it with hypnosis (so-called past-life regressions).

People report experiences similar to NDE's and ADC's during various physical crises that fall short of clinical death.

True NDE's are however beyond the ability of science to explain currently. When the heart quits beating, the brain very quickly flatlines. There is no known way the brain can produce the sorts of awareness that people have of things going on around them while they are out of the body, and there is no physiological explanation for the lucidity and coherence of these visions, which should at the least be much more dreamlike if they could occur at all.

That isn't to say that science won't come up with an explanation, but I don't see the slam-dunk you do at this time.

To get back to the original poster's question, though, it's interesting to me that NDEs do include experiences that appear to be congruent with the person's belief system. Christians see Jesus or a heaven consistent with their belief in a linear afterlife. People of other persuasions see what they expect to see. This causes me to lose interest in the phenomenon as a potential source of reliable information about the afterlife.

--Bob

[TIK]

Originally Posted by Erin Pavlina

Gukkor, yes psychic experiences can be misinterpreted. You can misintrepret the meaning, or you could misinterpret the experience as psychic when it is not psychic.

Erin,

Thanks for shairing this.

I had a Huma Card Reading done a few months ago that left me quite disturbed. Not all bad news. Some was good, some was really cool, some was scary too; but it left me really confused and annoyed, not so much scared.

I have been participating in meditation classes at a local meditation school that teaches us to trust in what we observe. OK, so after many months of wondering where all the stuff is coming from (is it my own conscious thoughts or stuff from my guides, etc...), I had experienced several very tightly connected dreams (at night) and meditations. I had begun to learn that these are very tightly connected to a karmic connection.

The card reading completely contradicted a lot if not all of what I thought I had learned from my own meditations. I found that the information from these 'sources' were do diametrically opposed, I did not have a clue as to what to make of it. At this point, I cannot actually comment on what the 'truth' of any of these experiences is. It left me very disillusioned about the whole notion of readings and meditation! I am not saying that I or the reader are right or wrong. I just cannot make any sense of any of it!

Not trying to add any wisdom, just offering my experience....

Thanks for 'listening' and I hope this is not the wromg place to post this commentary....

TIK

[MyEyeIsOpen]

Erin is totally right, but I wanted to offer one other piece of insight.

To the people saying that experiences can be "induced," you are correct. However,

1) Just because a scientist can "induce" my leg to move with a shock to the right part of the brain, doesn't mean I can't freely move my leg when I chose. It just means they have an understanding of the mechanism I use to achieve that goal

2) All of our senses can be duped. Computer generated imagery fools us day after day, perfume smells like flowers, and artificial fur feels like real fur -- we pay for such stimulus! I am not impressed that someone can fool another into believing they have experienced communication with spirits.