there’s a take i think of internally as the “minimal but respectful take” on astrology, tarot, magic, etc. which is that nothing is happening that violates known physics, but that the human mind is capable of discerning real signal from more info than the west assumes
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i see the human mind as an exquisitely delicate and powerful learning machine, sifting through vast reams of sensory data constantly looking to make sense of the world and guide action through it. most of this data is filtered out of consciousness but it’s still there. storytime:
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at burning man a friend of mine took an unfortunate mix of psychedelics and prescription drugs, and for the rest of the day he lost much of his ability to sensory gate. he became extremely sensitive to light and sound, asked us to speak softly without hard consonants
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he asked us all to do this, even though some people were maybe 20 feet away and quiet already. he requested that someone hold his hand while staying grounded and when that person’s posture was ungrounded he could feel it through the hand and he asked them to shift it
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through the hand, he could tell how grounded someone’s posture was in their *hips*
this isn’t the only story i have of someone exhibiting high levels of sensitivity but it’s one of the most extreme. gave me a visceral sense of how much raw sense data is being filtered
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another story: another friend of mine told me that once when he was a teenager he had a very unusual day (i forget if it was triggered by drugs again) where he felt like he knew what people were going to say a few seconds before they said it. never happened again
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he’s not a woo or hippie guy, if you met him you might think he was a trucker or an ex-football player, iirc military background. i have no reason to believe he was lying or even exaggerating this story for effect. at the very least i believe this is how he remembers it
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but actually i’m pretty inclined to just take him at his word, that for a day he could, in a limited way, see a few seconds into the future. i believe the raw sensory data is there to permit this level of inference, under conditions, in a totally physics-compatible way
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all of it. i don't think it actually matters much which; i think the mind will look for whatever signal it can in anything. wind currents, electrical / magnetic currents, smells, facial expressions, body language
It's the same as "telegraphing" in fighting. You read cues to let you see the future. And rightly points out that the cues are abundant, if you have the knowledge and/or the state of mind to read them.
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