[extropy-chat] Gravity, Energy , Mass and my mother

[Jef Allbright]

On 3/8/06, Anne-Marie Taylor <femmechakra at yahoo.ca> wrote:
>
> Thank you for the insight, when I wrote this I had been learning about
> Psionics and tried to incorporate the two. I thought everything in the
> universe
> has energy and mass (humans) and that interaction with other humans
> (not on an emotional level but on an energy level) could simply be that
> gravity could somehow be involved, that's why you meet specific people
> at a certain time.  I used radiation as an example to show that if your not
> aware of the energy field between two people, that your association may
> be contamination (warmful, useless ect..).  I was making an assumption
> that all humans have their own energy force and if interaction between
> humans is all about the energy then like Einstein's theory, a ray of light
> (and other forms of energy) could in fact change a human's own energy
> level or chemical reactions.
>
> But my mother always told me I have a wild imagination:)
> Thanks Jef for taking your time.
> Anna
>

Anna,

When I was about 19 I met a women who was a high priestess in a witch
coven.  We spent the entire first day and night talking, sharing and
comparing our ideas and views of the world.  We were both very
intelligent, and it was amazing how we could hold such different world
views but also communicate and appreciate each other.

I was just out of high school, having done fours years of
double-session self-guided electronics and teaching myself programming
at the local college where I was able to get a free account.  I had
soaked up all the math and science courses and was a true science and
engineering geek.

But I had also had a fascination with understanding how and what other
people thought, so I had read widely on psychology, the occult,
paganism, world religions and mythology.  It was too early for
evolutionary psychology, but I could see clear patterns relating
people's beliefs to basic human motivations that we all share.

So, this interesting witch and I spent many days together, I learning
her views, and she learning about mine.  We traveled around San
Francisco and I met friends of hers who followed Aleister Crowly.  I
met other friends of hers who were closely associated with the
Grateful Dead and were living life on LSD.  I met people immersed in
studying Kabbalah and others concentrating their Kundalini, and I
recognized that they all these diverse practices had something in
common:  Each was trying to make sense of their world in order to more
effectively interact with it.  I also saw quite clearly that while
many paths can be deep and awe-inspiring, few of these paths were
truly effective outside their limited circle.

I spent the next few years continuing to work in high-tech but also
studying eastern religions, Taoism and especially zen, and then at
some point I came to the understanding or experience that I call going
into the void, leaving behind the support offered by all these belief
systems, and coming out the other side, with everything just as it
was, but free of any feeling of being tied to any belief system. [But
not denying that I hold beliefs.]

Since then, I've spent time in several countries, lived in Japan for a
few years while setting up a high-tech service office, and discovered
the Internet and the Extropy list while in Japan.  I was amazed and
excited when I found this group and discovered that there were at
least a couple hundred people discussing topics I had been considering
alone all those years.  Talk about intelligent AND unconventional!

What I'm preparing to tell you is that for me there is no greater high
that gaining a new insight, a new piece to the puzzle that illuminates
the pieces one has already gathered, and clarifies the edges of
possibility.  I welcome and admire the unconventional, but not for
unconventionality itself, because some ideas fit the puzzle and work
better than others.

- Jef