A few weeks ago I read through Global Mind Change by Willis Harman. If by some fluke you are not familiar with the book, it basically argues that the coming paradigm will be more holistic, spiritual, and "new agey". I liked it, and pretty much agreed with it, but I didn't really have anything to say about it until I came across one blurb of a forecast while copying stuff into the Knowledge base.
Forecast derived from article on telephone medical diagnosis.
Note: Ervin Lazlo reports on research demonstrating that remote diagnosis can be uncannily accurate. As this trend toward telephone diagnosis accelerates, there may be a corresponding increase in interest in remote diagnosis through mental channels that are poorly understood and incomprehensible in terms of mainstream science. Lazlo forecasts a breakthrough in theory that will open society to the potential understanding of phenomenon such as remote viewing and remote diagnosis. This would create a striking new blend of technology and human capability.
Nifty little forecast, and my hats off to Jonathan for making the connection. But one thing struck me, which crystallized something that gnawed at me from reading Global Mind Change. It's the last quote "This would create a striking new blend of technology and human capability."
The quote just struck me as rather blasé. To a much greater extent Global Mind Change seemed to reflect this rather ho-hum attitude towards what should be a revolutionary change in thinking. To me, I just have this gut feeling that the next paradigm in human thought should be fundamentally strange to us - perhaps even frightening. Something that really threatens the very underpinnings of the way the world works. Something that should seem rather nuts to us today. Global Mind Change presented a very lucid argument for the paradigm that is coming down the pike - but to me it all made too much sense. This is sort of what bugged me when I read the book - I found little to disagree with, but didn't really feel challenged by the new paradigm in any way.
Connections to Remote Viewing
But Jonathan's mention of "remote viewing" at the tail end of his forecast did trigger one connection in my mind. About 10 months ago I actually did some rather extensive web research on remote viewing myself. I heard a remote viewer on Art Bell's show, and was rather amazed to learn that the US Military had developed and sponsored the remote viewing program for years. While the military loves a big pork filled boondoggle, I couldn't really see them supporting a small and secret program (with no big bucks for defense contractors) that could get them mocked in the media unless the program got some results. The internet of course is a treasure trove of information on wacky stuff like this, but you have to turn the old "grain of salt" filters up to maximum.
So what did I find? A rather interesting subject indeed. They seem to get enough tantalizing results to give the impression that there was something there, but are wrong often enough to keep it a rather dubious field of research. One thing that I found particularly interesting was that the guys at SRI that developed remote viewing in the 70's were a bunch of ex-Scientologists. And even more interestingly, they used aspects of the Scientological paradigm for their remote viewing methodology.
Scientology and Copyright
Now, I've had a passing interest in the Scientologists for years. You always have to wonder about an organization that can succeed in intimidating the IRS... But I always sort of regarded them as a dangerous manifestation of L Ron Hubbard's infamous quote: "if you want to make a lot of money, found your own religion." But in trying to trace some of the foundations of remote viewing, I came across a wealth of material on Scientology on the internet. Which is a fascinating story in it's own right. The Scientologists have actually claimed copyright and "business secrets" protection for it's high level instructional material, and they used to relentlessly attack anyone who dared publish exerpts.
Much to their regret, this has only infuriated their opponents, who have set about to publish everything they can get their hands on through anonymous email remailers. Also, the internet has allowed Ex-Scientologists who have been expelled from the church to publish their own copies of Scientologist "scripture" on the web. These guys aren't out to expose the wacky beliefs of the Scientologists, instead they only want free access to what they consider their religious documents. It's an odd situation for these ousted Scientologists - they still buy into the religion, but the "church" denies them access to the basic texts and materials. It's as if the Jews decided to copyright the old testament and went about suing all the early Christians who dared to quote genesis. It's very strange and messy, and a rather extreme example of what can happen to religion in a corporatized world.
Oh yeah, back to the point. Well after reading some of these heretic Scientologists and some of the materials posted, I was rather surprised to come to the conclusion that the belief system of Scientology really does qualify as an actual religion. But the "church" that runs the show is basically an evil cult that pretty much deserves what's coming to it. But this was the real kicker, I found the actual belief system of Scientology to be very well developed. It's real wacky, I mean really, really wacky. However, it's fairly systematic and coherent in its wackiness. I guess what I'm trying to say is that given their rather unusual premises, they do manage to work out the ramifications of their beliefs. The rather bizarre thing is that if (a pretty big if...) you are willing to fully accept the notion of an immortal soul, reincarnation, a notion of karma, and mind over matter, the basic belief system becomes much less of a stretch.
Scientology an Example of Weird New Paradigms
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that once you are willing to accept such a phenomenon like remote viewing (like Global Mind Change argues, and Jonathan poses as a "what if") you've started to go down the rabbit hole into the realm of high weirdness. If it is possible to project your perception in space (and time...so much for no facts about the future...) then what? It would seem to entail a non-material consciousness (a soul?) just for starters, and the rest of the implications are rather immense to imagine.
What clicked into my head when reading Jonathan's forecast is that Scientology is not just a kooky religious beliefs system. It that for sure, but in addition it's serves as a good example of what one of these "high spirit" new-agey paradigms should look like. I'm not arguing that the Scientologists have it right by any means, but what am saying is that the "kook factor" is just about right. It was one hell of a jump from the medieval religious paradigm to the rationalistic paradigm of the enlightenment. To me, the next jump is going to be just as large...and (In my opinion) will seem pretty kooky from our perspective. And for detailed and elaborate sheer kookiness, it's hard to beat the Scientologists. I tell ya, Dator, for the futurist that wants to construct a really different vision of the future in a "Global Mind Change" scenario, the boys down at Scientology have a wealth of stuff that really rattles the 'ol mental cages.
But if the way to enlightenment turns out to be holding a pair of frozen orange juice cans that are hooked up to a lie detector, I'm going to be really bummed out....
Written by Mark Justman Copyright 1999 Posted 9/24/99 http://go.to/futureplex
