Other Forms of Life (Evolution)

by dhw, Saturday, December 20, 2008, 13:59 (5613 days ago) @ David Turell

David asks: "If it is the healer who must have the faith in God and you saw your father's miraculous result, why don't you believe in God?" - I have absolutely no doubt that humans possess at least the potential for extraordinary powers ... and my father's cure was evidence of this ... but I don't know where they come from. The healer's belief that they came from God was his, but it seems feasible to me that his faith simply enabled him to tap within himself some of the powers that lie within all of us. My difference of opinion with you is that you attribute the cure to hypnosis, or to autosuggestion, and to my father being made to use his potential ... but just as your wife may have extrasensory powers, I am suggesting (especially because of my father's scepticism) that it was the healer himself who had a special, active gift. - I like your example of the desperate man who finds the strength to lift a car off an injured pedestrian. That is the sort of potential (over a wide range of fields) that I think is in all of us, but it's more highly developed in some than in others. It's even possible that certain people have a form of ESP that enables them to make contact with the "energy constellations" which you believe may survive the death of the physical body. In our thread on The Arts, I posed the question of where our ideas come from. It's all the same mystery: what is the origin and nature of these astonishing powers? I don't need any kind of religious faith to believe that the healer was able to release some kind of energy to cure my father. I can accept his healing ability in just the same way as I accept the ability of a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven, or your car-lifter to achieve feats far beyond the scope of an ordinary person. But like everyone else who is interested enough to log on to this website, I would like to know more! That's why other people's experiences and explanations are of immense interest and value to me, and of course it's the whole purpose of the forum.