If the abilites that the "adepts" or "masters" have proclaimed are real, are indeed real, why have none of them demonstrated them under close scrutiny? Surely, if any of them have the ability to be exterior to their bodies and see something at a distance, then why haven't they proved it? I have heard the usual excuse, that one does not show off for the sake of it. Or, that demonstrating that power is counterproductive to progress. However, that excuse seems like bullshit to me.  There is now, about 8 billion people on this planet. The entire world is being subjected to the control of very evil people, who are trying their best to depopulate it and have total control over the ones left. Overpopulation is a lie, btw, anyone with basic maths understanding can verify that fact. 8 billion can live on a land mass the size of texas and have just under 2 acres each, if the need arose. The planet has much more land than that. It is only because of corruption by bankers, corperations and governments, that we have starving people. If someone could truly leave their body at will and go anywhere, they could expose every secret, these evil people have. They could prove to all people that we are not just a body, that are essesence is awareness and we are eternal. The fear of death is false narative.  Surely a "compassionate" enlightened person could do this for humanity? Do we HAVE to have evil to learn about goodness? Do CHILDREN have to suffer to learn they are "immortal"? What kind of sick system has this universe created? Is this universe a creation of our own minds? Do we each create our own universe to learn from? Does every choice we make, move us into a different universe? If we reincarnate, then death does not matter from a certain perspective, but there is a LOT of suffering because of it. All these past "masters" have done nothing but talk. Extreamly clever talk, but talk, none the less. Some, apparently have done miracles, but not in this day and age where it can be proved.  I leave the rest up to you lot.    

The only  magic is getting g our  ego under control. 

Omg, Julia Roberts?!

I removed the "Julia Roberts" post and locked the account out of DhO. She's a spammer!

Damn she really fell off

Hi Thor,

What would qualify as close scrutiny?

They're real but only in the mind.

For example Astral Projection is not traveling to some other dimension, you're just traveling in your own mind. The experiences seem very real, so people confuse them for external reality.

I am skeptical also. I partially agree with Dave. I think 4th jhana could  be an accidental  jumping point to lucid dreaming or sleep paralysis possibly.  Some of the magical feelings might just be subjective.  I am open minded though to possibilities  but it seems not probable for people to actually  bi locate etc.

Let's look at it like this.
Consider the Shepard Tone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzNzgsAE4F0

It sounds like the pitch keeps increasing forever, right? But in some sense I could easily "debunk" that -- I could make the argument that what we perceive as "sound" is really just air molecules moving back and forth, and that "pitch" is the frequency, i.e. how fast they move back and forth. But I know that humans can't hear sounds above 20kHz or so, and going even further I know that air molecules can't move faster than the speed of light; so clearly, if the pitch "actually" kept increasing forever, the speed of the air molecules would have to keep increasing (or they would move back and forth at the same speed but over ever smaller distances, I suppose), and this is clearly impossible. Thus, the increasing pitch is an illusion.

This is all fine and good, but now imagine I played the tone for someone who doesn't know or understand any of this, which is most people in the world right now, and almost everybody who has ever lived, since it's very recent for anyone to know this at all. They would rightfully say something like this: "I don't really get what you're talking about, and maybe it makes perfect sense within your framework, but I don't see how it has any bearing on the sound. I have heard sounds all my life, as have all my acquaintances and ancestors and so on, and we know what a low pitch and a high pitch sound like. Everybody agrees that the sound is increasing in pitch; I don't see why all this talk about 'air molecules' should have any bearing on that."

Whether you choose to mark the rising pitch as "real" or an "illusion" is just a matter of whether you want to give primacy to your experience of it or your ability to draw conclusions from it within the framework of scientific materialism. You don't just get to freely mix and match the two, however; you don't get to say "I've been sitting here for a couple hours listening and it still sounds like it's going up, therefore clearly humans can perceive sound waves of far higher frequency than 20kHz".

Likewise, if you have the ability to fully, vividly experience yourself flying or somesuch, you can get away with saying "I clearly experienced flying; someone else says they saw me just sitting on the floor, but all they have is their word for it and some scientific mumbo-jumbo that I don't feel takes precedence over my experience".

But you can't get away with saying "I'll nab that lady's handbag and if the cops get called I'll just teleport away" -- at least, on the implicit but important assumption that most magick users still want to play by the rules of "concensus reality" at least some of the time. If someone is fine sitting on the floor of a jail cell with a blissed-out expression on their face astral projecting into the birthday cake dimension that is ultimately their own prerogative

I'll add some more notes to that;

First, mind that these two perspectives play by very different "rules". The scientific materialist perspective plays by rules of logic applied to observations and certain axioms we have scientifically determined, where "scientifically determined" is better than "guessed" but very much in "all models are false; some models are useful" territory. It's a game of the form "if this is true, then that is true; if A is false, then either B must hold or C must not hold"; "E=mc^2, energy is always conserved, all interactions obey CPT symmetry" etcetera.

On the other hand, experience is always primary by itself; knows itself, is complete in itself. Thus as soon as you start even asking the question of "is this real or not?", you are already playing the game of scientific materialism. There is nothing about direct experience that can validate or invalidate it.

Note that the perspective of direct experience is more intuitive and more natural. Experience is always complete in itself, though I'm sure here we all know that dilligently observing it may be simple but not always easy; but you can learn. With science, the rules have to be discovered. Science has not just unknowns but unknowables.

Note that the perspective of scientific materialism is often more practical. Note that buying in fully to "just experience" can be dangerous, especially if you can muster enough power to make your experience very malleable. Note that constructive interference is common with such powers and it's not uncommon for people to suddenly, briefly shift into levels of powers much stronger than they would normally have access to.

Note that with pure experience there's always a fundamentally unbreachable gap between people (and beings in general); experience is in some lens always "your own", which in another lens is "nobody's" (true-self versus no-self perspective, which is its own can of worms).  On the level of science there really are hairless monkeys running around fiddling with microscopes and we can agree on things much more.

Note that just experience in itself can have very large, helpful impacts even when analyzed from the level of the hairless ape! I just got back from a nice two-day mini holiday to the coast and I feel much better now, which translates, for instance, to having a much easier time writing a post like this. There's nothing particular about dragging my body to that physical location that does that; sitting here in deep magickal meditation could've probably accomplished the same thing, if I had access to that level of stuff like that, which I don't.

Likewise, imagine sitting with a family elder like a (great-)grandfather and hearing stories of your ancestors and getting inspired by them, or having a spiritual teacher reassure you of your path and give you gentle guidance. Now imagine the same thing, but with mystical visions of ancestor spirits in a different realm, or having an experience of being taught by the Buddha directly. If you can have that kind of experience and fully accept it, open up to it, that can be incredibly healing.

It seems to me that the most difficult thing about the powers is juggling these two perspectives, fully embracing and opening up to the right one at the right time. That takes a lot of finesse and earnest confidence and faith. Practice a loving, non-harming ethic at all time and greet life with humor and equanimity so that you may have that level of confidence in "yourself"!

"Likewise, if you have the ability to fully, vividly experience yourself flying or somesuch, you can get away with saying "I clearly experienced flying; someone else says they saw me just sitting on the floor, but all they have is their word for it and some scientific mumbo-jumbo that I don't feel takes precedence over my experience".

But you can't get away with saying "I'll nab that lady's handbag and if the cops get called I'll just teleport away" -- at least, on the implicit but important assumption that most magick users still want to play by the rules of "concensus reality" at least some of the time. If someone is fine sitting on the floor of a jail cell with a blissed-out expression on their face astral projecting into the birthday cake dimension that is ultimately their own prerogative"

The force is strong with this one, sais I