Do you believe in Magic?

Almarg wrote,

"Geoff, could you explain precisely what you mean by "mind-matter interaction," which was your answer to most of the questions in the quiz you presented a few posts back. And which, if I followed your subsequent responses correctly, is unrelated to anything psychological or subliminal, among many other things you appeared to say it is unrelated to. Thanks."

When I use the term mind-matter interaction I'm referring to the concept that the mind is capable of interacting subconsciously with it's immediate surroundings, especially with certain shapes, materials, physical phenomena such as electrical charge, alternating current, flashing lights, as well as other things such as physical and digital media like books, especially telephone books, but also CDs, LPs, cassettes. The Princeton University school of engineering studied mind matter interaction for about 30 years - PEAR (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research). How and why the mind subconsciously interacts with its surroundings is not well understood, but I have a strong sense that it has a lot to do with how early man evolved, especially with respect to self survival and having to develop "extra-sensory" skills to help detect and avoid threats such as large, hungry predators.

Mapman wrote,

"Geoff, in that case, assuming you are right and everyone else is wrong, the you should help educate them. What better way to build credibility? That's kind of how higher learning works in general."

I never said I knew all the answers. Doesn't all the world love a mystery?

"OR you can continue to keep your secrets to yourself and convince people that you are right and that the rest of the world has their priorities wrong."

I keep some secrets to myself. Is that wrong? I think if you review my posts you'll find I reveal quite a bit, however.

Geoff, thanks for the clarification. Wouldn't that better be referred to, though, as "reaction" of the subconscious mind to the matter around it, rather than as "interaction"? "Interaction" would seem to imply that in addition to the mind subconsciously reacting to its surroundings, the (inanimate) surroundings are somehow reacting to the mind.

-- Al

Almarg wrote,

"Geoff, thanks for the clarification. Wouldn't that better be referred to, though, as "reaction" of the subconscious mind to the matter around it, rather than as "interaction"? "Interaction" would seem to imply that in addition to the mind subconsciously reacting to its surroundings, the (inanimate) surroundings are somehow reacting to the mind."

Good point. Actually the interaction does work both ways. In fact, the Mind Lamp from Psyleron (an offshoot of PEAR) was developed expressly to demonstrate that the mind is capable of influencing its surroundings, even inanimate things - in the case of the lamp an extremely sensitive quantum mechanical Random Event Generator (REG). Also, what PEAR primarily focused on for 30 years was to what degree a human operator could influence the outcome of scientific experiments. I suppose you could also call this direction of the interaction mind over matter.

Well, a belief in magic in its truest sense will certainly come in handy I suspect with a device like that!

Magic may be the modern frontier of audio tweaks after all! When all else fails......