Thursday, August 13, 2015

Illusion versus Reality - Exploring the Power of Mind and its Limits



Keith Barry, a TED Talk fellow, demonstrates the power of what he calls ‘a second sight’ in a televised car driving while he was sitting blindfolded on the driving wheel with another girl next to him whom he used as a medium to see through as he was driving fast along a winding path to come back safe to the starting point. His demonstration could hardly been explained in a logically plausible manner. We could possibly think that he might have practiced earlier along the same route to the point that he could quite easily maneuver along the way without relying on visual inputs any more. But the speed at which he was driving the car would defy such explanation as it would hardly be possible to drive a car at such a high speed blindfolded. Hence, could this possibly be an indication to a real possibility on mind to mind synchronization leading to the uses of someone else’s sense organs?    

In his talk, Keith made a reference to a blind Russian woman in a story he read when he was only fifteen from Life magazine, who claimed to have been able to identify colors by mere sense of touch. That was what inspired him to explore the potential uses of mind power what he now calls mind manipulation involving directing attention. He then proceeds with on the stage demonstration picking on two people from the audience, a man and a woman, in which the later as she closed eyes felt a sense of touch at her back while Keith actually touched the back of the man, not that of the woman. May be would it be the case that Keith actually touched the back of the woman earlier while moving his hand up and down over her body? We are only able to see one of his hands in front of the woman moving up and down in the air while the other did the same at the back of her but could not actually verify he did not touch her on the back in the process. He also established a mind to mind connection to the man to actually show lifting some sort of pressure on the man’s hand without any physical contact. Keith said that was not the same as hypnotization. What could it possibly be then? We were also able to see the woman creating similar effect on the man following Keith’s instruction.

He even demonstrated the power of the mind over physical objects as he instructed the woman to imagine about her broken relationship and direct it to a small piece of sharp metal she held in one hand, which she later dropped in the bottle she held out in the other hand and shook it gently. We then see the cock bottle so easily broken at the bottom which was proven very hard to break in earlier attempts by dropping it on the ground and banging it hard against a table. Keith explained the phenomenon as the effect of the negative energy the woman had stored as a result of her broken relationship. To our utter amazement he was even able to correctly tell the name of her former partner who had caused her so much pain.            

How all these could possibly happen as a mere illusion fooling the human perception? Could he have handpicked the lady who he already knew and prearranged for pseudo-demonstration? But the selection of the woman apparently looked random among from the audience. Even if we may have some doubt about the authenticity of the lady’s involvement in the demonstration, it may still be very hard to account for the broken bottle as a result of a small sharp pin despite the obvious attempt earlier to smash it on the floor or against the table? Perhaps, we may need to see first that the pin does not actually have the capacity to break open the bottle without any imagined negative energy that purportedly directed to it and gave it that special power to break the bottle. If all that were shown happened for real, then could we take them as proof for the possibility of mind to mind connection and the power of attention over physical objects? We may still need more supporting evidences to unquestionably verify such explanations.

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