Magik???

[Kianier]

Introduction to Scientific Magic
by Wayland Skallagrimsson

There is an interesting kind of practice found in many countries in the eastern hemisphere of the world that are not religious (as the word is generally used in Western societies) but are spiritual nonetheless. They tend to be centered around cultivating those aspects of the spirit that will best give the practitioner an advantage in the physical world. Some of these practices involve attaining an altered state of consciousness where the mind is turned from discriminating thought, and is fully unified, and completed, and acts as one whole thing. (Note: though considered an altered state of consciousness from a Western point of view, the goals of such practices tend to be to make it the normal state of consciousness.) This is supposed to give the practitioners instantaneous wisdom, and knowledge of right action in any given circumstance. It is supposed to aid any physical action the practitioner takes, and is supposed to give deep spiritual insight.

Examples of such practices include Buddhism and Taoism. In devoted practitioners, unusual abilities are learned, such as the feats of certain martial artists who can break boards and bricks with their bare hands, or who can hit a target 20 yards away with an arrow, blindfolded, from memory. The way in which such unusual abilties are conferred, according to many practitioners, is that mind, body, and spirit all learn to move as one. This allows the practitioner to focus all of his or her resources upon the task at hand, instead of the minute fraction of them that is all most people can bring to bear.

Western science has observed such Eastern practices in laboratory settings, and found that many of the claims made as to the practices' effectiveness are indeed realistic. Harvard University has observed monks able to so control their own metabolsims that in near-freezing temperatures, naked, draped with wet towels, they were able to keep themselves warm enough to dry the towels. Other laboratories have similarly confirmed high pain tolerance. The increased healing capabilities of people with strong spiritual lives has been documented over and over again.

Many people wonder why such practices are almost entirely unknown in the West. But in actuality they are not as rare as is commonly thought. There is a form of spiritual practice followed by people from almost every Western nation at some point or other in its history. This sort of spiritual practice has different names in different languages but in modern english is usually translated as "magic".

I found this very interesting, if you want the whole article.
http://winterscapes.com/scientific_m...troduction.htm

[Yrizaria]

Thanks! I really enjoyed this article (went to the website and finished the intro) I found a lot of the points very interesting and I like the author's style.
Food for thought

[Kianier]

Yeah I really enjoyed it too, after reading it now, do you think you will try and apply some of these ideas to your everyday life?

[Yrizaria]

Well, I've always been curious about how people DO some of the things they do (like break bricks with their bare hands for example) I know is is real however when you ask how it's done you get some vague answer like "well they train and practice and then they can do it." Um yeah. Okay. So I was pleased with the explaination of right and left brain reaching unity. And the examples given like a near miss car accident or one of those amazing orgasms that make the ordinary ones pale by comparison.
As for applying any of it, I think it takes a lot of patience and dedication to train yourself to reach that state of mind "on demand" so to speak. I would need a lot more free time and a really good teacher I was comfortable with and if I had those two things I would LOVE to give it a try!!
Maybe when I'm independantly wealthy