February 1, 2015 — Burnt State

[Wade]

A really Great Shoe all around, Mr. BS you really got game and that's no BS

First things first

If it were at all possible I would ask the the parts of the episode between 54:00 and 55:40 be made a audio sticky and/or required listening and part of the agreement given to any prospective new members and sums up to a great deal my whole feeling about being here...with the understanding that some people do have a lot of time and money wrapped up in the study and pursuit of the paranormal...still, at the end of the day I find it to be a VERY interesting diversion and not worth getting all squirrely and rabid about or even rabidly squirrelly.

Some of you may have noticed I swap out avatars to a certain extent but in all my time here i have only had 3 signatures. Well that's about to change as i found a new and worthy signature to replace my favorite philosopher, Winnie ther Pooh. and it was uttered by one of this forum's leading lights in that one and a half minute interval.

It's a forum, people...Burnt State (02.01.15)

Congrats to Chris for his progress. interestingly I picked it up immediately but I was thinking he was coming down with a cold, go figure.

Robert's thinking on the cause and effect on most people's expierience's/perceptions pretty much mirrors my own, that we are responding to an outside stimuli in many cases but every now and then there is something that may make this theory inconvient. (That was the intent of my question to you in the question bank) is/was there a particular event that you or someone may have reported that messed with this idea ? You picked a good one on the Pier Zanfretta case.

I am also on board with your interest on the effect the phenomena has on the percipient indeed that is my focus, what we bring to the table and our "relationship" to these events i've said many times now i joined this forum because Chris was the first person i heard "push" this aspect and it really rang true to me. When it comes to ufo reports i couldn't pick apart a case even if i tried, even what i "know" from the more famous cases i picked up from this forum, but my looking at the cases usually goes beyond trace evidence. Although not as strong as it was a few years back i was soaking up a lot of humanoid contacts in albert rosales database and faascinated by the variety of reports thinking that at one time half the universe must have visiting us iat one time but realizing that couldnt be the case nor do i think it was just dimished mental capacity or if it was diminished mental capacity it wasn't just due to pharmalogical or alcoholic stimulants, that these people were responding to an outside force of some type.

And DS if you are reading this i would include holography as well but as i mentioned elsewhere these reports have been going on for centuries and while government black ops could account for some cases, as i pointed out earlier these black ops cannot be held account for reports from centuries ago UNLESS you want to consider time travelling black ops. Whatever forces were in play back in 1800 are just as likely to be the culprit today. No meddling government needed.

So let me ask you, Robert if we are responding biochemicaly to some kind of outside stimuli do you think this still constitutes someone's imagination ? If what we see or think we see is real to us but we didn't go about it by letting our mind wander...which is how i consider the act of imagination to be...could it truly be " all in the mind" it's almost a zen question if we see it but it is not tangible is it our imagination?

Regarding your personal expieriences, i really enjoyed the "heather" story, especially because of the coincidence of the charm in the snow spotted later on. I can tell it made a big impact on you as your tone got very animated in the retelling of it. but i was a little confused about the story of your dad's coworker. Maybe i missed something but to me this story summed up perfectly your feeling on the ouija board and the fact that it was an unconscious collaboration between the participants but your inclusion of it indicated to me that you found it circumspect. What i mean was this Heather contact came out of the blue but there was prior knowledge of your dad's coworker existence. Was not his death known as well?

 

[Polterwurst]

Whoa, what a roller-coaster of surprises. Believe it or not, I'd never heard of the Zanfretta or of the Delphos stories.

And although I had read about @Burnt State s childhood sighting, it's another thing entirely to hear you talk about it. To hear something like this from someone you've come to know as a highly intelligent, learned and actually very skeptical forum poster... amazing. No wonder the two of you went UFO-hunting all summer.

But what baffled me most was to hear that you've actually been dabbling in the occult. Did you write about that on the forum? If so, sorry it escaped me. I guess it would have explained a thing or two in terms of your replies to my posts.

Re: little girl Ouija demon
I know, it's such a trope, and for us it was our first major contact, or at least embodiment of that contact. For me, in retrospect, I see the little girl Ouija come demon, is something manifested by the group collective. Just as with the Conjuring Philip experiment I see this as something our group made, from start to finish. We fashioned her as a poor little ghost girl perhaps because that's the first thing that comes to mind when you are wanting a friendly spirit contact, and as horror movies go, don't they always turn evil? I feel like a lot of what happened we scripted ourselves without really knowing. Frequently people ouijaing would report that it felt like the Ouija could read their mind, and really it could, because it was our own mind revealing intimate info through a collaborative group writing experiment, using the planchette as pen.

So, @Burnt State, I have to ask this, if only because this once I get to be the doubter (yes! ): is there any possibilty that someone in the group tricked you? Maybe even the grandmother's birthdate was a setup? And if your theory is right, if it was the group collective, why do you think it turned on you, threatening each one of you individually?

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Enjoying the show and I'll say again something I've said before and that is that to my knowledge, other popular paranormal shows don't tend to bring on their forum members as guests while The Paracast has being doing it for years. Burnt State is a supremely articulate individual with a very balanced mind - in fact, just the exact make up of enough scepticism along with an open mind that is to be found in many Paracast guests. You can compare this of course with other shows which too often feature those who have no scepticism at all and who tend to believe even 3rd and 4th hand information and take it at face value.

Robert (Burnt) has given his experiences a lot of deep thinking and it is great to hear how he is self-critical and able to question himself and his experiences. I am really proud to be a member of this forum community and it is fair in a sense to judge people by the company they keep. We keep Burnt State!

To be a student and have Robert as a teacher is a very lucky and privileged position to be in.

@Burnt - When at the graveyard and the fireman arrived - do you think you were experiencing what UK paranormal author Jenny Randles called 'The Oz Factor'?
Also, many people believe that when 'contacting' a little girl via ouija board, often you are often contacting a demonic entity, that demons often impersonate innocent children to draw people in. What do you think about this idea?

I realize this is a sore subject around here, but PARATOPIA brought forum members on all the time. In fact, they even allowed forum members to host the show at times!

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Burnt State you made an excellent guest on the Paracast. You were well spoken, very easy to listen to, and very informative. I liked the combination of personal information and knowledge from what you have studied.WELL DONE!
Gene and Chris, thank you for having Burnt State on the Paracast. I would like to second something that Goggs Mackay said "Enjoying the show and I'll say again something I've said before and that is that to my knowledge, other popular paranormal shows don't tend to bring on their forum members as guests while The Paracast has being doing it for years." Your best shows include those with forum members.

This is a sore subject but PARATOPIA did this often. In fact, they even invited forum members to host a show once in awhile.

 

[Wade]

btw is that a buckwheat pancake of your own creation that you posted earlier?

 

[SheaOlmsford]

BurntState, you really should consider your appearance on The Paracast as a harbinger of things to come. You speak every eloquently "off-the-cuff". You are a natural. Perhaps this is also an ability you have fine-tuned on all your years of teaching. But you really should consider doing your own audio blog, or some sort of podcast. Perhaps it could be part of THE PARACAST PLUS? I do think you have already created a large fan base from your one appearance. You have the gift, my son. LOL Are you considering taking all your knowledge and ruminations on the paranormal and perhaps presenting it to a larger audience via YOUTUBE or some other medium? I am not seeking competition to The Paracast, but instead supplementation. I would love to hear/see you doing a audio/visual blog, for example. Please consider it.

If I might respond to something you said.....you said that you theorize that the Little Girl was created by the group's collective consciousness. While this is a very popular idea now, that we can literally create doppelgangers and beings from without ourselves, isn't this just as unproven an idea (at this point) as the ancient concept that we can conjure up independent entities from the astral plane or other neighborhoods in the invisible realms? I just recall one time a medium had supposedly brought forth a grandparent, who told their grand daughter where to find a piece of jewelry. One paranormal researcher theorized that the medium had actually read the granddaughter's subconscious mind. I laughed at that. In a scientific evaluation of such situations, does it help to explain away one paranormal explanation by positing yet a different paranormal explanation?

I confess that I dimly recall an intentional experiment where a group did manifest a totally imaginary being (named something prosaic like Bob) from a made-up biography they all kept in their minds. Once manifested, I do not recall if they had trouble eliminating this construction or if it refused to be dispersed.

Anyway, my obvious point is just that if we have a paranormal situation, does it really move things along to propose a different paranormal cause? I realize you have a right to posit your own theory. But how will we ever know for sure?

Give the idea of having an informative show of your own some thought, OK?

 

[DissectionStalker]

Who would continue to belabor something so awkward, strange and alienating if not real?

It may be real to him. Possibly, some people screwed with him to begin with, and the psychosis grew from that point onward. I just don't think it "really" happened except inside his head possibly/probably within a hoax too that he did not understand. He was fooled. The story said he became a reluctant celebrity after the second abduction, and it got worldwide attention. I'm sure he was inundated with ET-UFO lore before the second abduction. Imo.

I have no idea what the political climate was like in 1978 Italy, what the interest was in ET-UFO's, but it wouldn't be the first time the media and other humans fabricates a story to make money and attract attention and distract a naive public. He does not have to be the one making 'that' money initially, but we know people in the media and people using the media did make money.

Shamans are part of a tribal belief system that supports that way of life. They usually take mind-altering substances, obtain vision quests, and they know how to heal using plants and other healing dances, chants, sacrifice, prayers, etc.

Zanfretta needed long-term care for his mental health, and he needed it FAR AWAY from the ET-UFO crowd AND the media. Far away! Imo. Doing that hypnosis was a mistake, imo, and he should have been helped by other means. Putting that on the Internet was just attracting attention to himself, and it may be a hoax for reasons he may not even know. Nonetheless, it is making him famous now with an English edition, and the aliens are making contact again too.

If he didn't want attention, then he would have learned his lesson 35+ years ago. Well, he didn't. He's infamous and famous, and it's gone into the English language as a book now too.

You're going to get smoke and mirrors from something that happened 35+ years ago. What can we possibly investigate beyond that book, articles, and all the agendas that will provide no "hard evidence" now? Paranormal Investigator is a concept invented by Cable TV and Reality TV. What a pile of shit, imo. Don't get me wrong; it's big money for those in the media business.

Vallee would NEVER take-on Zanfretta's case. Never. He's long since learned to keep the media out, and he interviews "UFO" people privately with follow-up sometimes over years or decades.

I'll certainly be reading your posts to see what you can come-up with after you read his book. I sincerely hope you find some value and useful information out of it. I'm going to pass unless you can peak my interest in it somehow.

Warning, trying this recipe more than once a decade may diminish common sense and open your third eye permanently.

One of the best recipes I know of.

 

[Wade]

@beyondthestargate I think you may be thinking of the Philip experiment which Burnt referred to in his appearance

 

[Wade]

@DissectionStalker I am not too keen on hypnosis as well, but pier is not responsible for "putting that stuff on the internet" so he was not/is not attracting attention to himself also the story was not sat upon 35 years after the fact. The story came out after the events and was in the Italian media.

I have yet to read the book but i am assuming it isn't a biography or even autobiography, merely a synopsis of the story and even then an English translation of a book that's been out for awhile so i can see no obvious intent at coming out of the spotlight. The fact that this comes across as new to some of our followers...including you (?) would indicate to me this one has escaped media attention so I just don't see any validity to the thought that anyone would be seeking infamy after a 35 year old lull.

 

[DissectionStalker]

And DS if you are reading this i would include holography as well but as i mentioned elsewhere these reports have been going on for centuries and while government black ops could account for some cases, as i pointed out earlier these black ops cannot be held account for reports from centuries ago UNLESS you want to consider time travelling black ops. Whatever forces were in play back in 1800 are just as likely to be the culprit today. No meddling government needed.

I think the collective unconscious works in ways we don't understand at present; it is possible Humans evolved to tap-in to this and gained an evolutionary advantage. The Universe is theorized to be holographic in nature, so I've jumped onto this idea in several posts recently.

Where the military comes in is in recent decades holography has been seriously researched and field tested too. Holograms can come four ways from the military, AND the collective unconscious has been doing it too before the military got in the game! You see?...

It's both ways, which includes all of history since Humans tapped into it. The Military knows how to tap into it too, obviously, with limited abilities.

The REAL PROBLEM now is how to distinguish which hologram is which, especially, with ET-UFO stuff given all its military potential and applications too. That's what I meant, when I said this is the keys to the kingdom! This is part of the military high ground, and where Gods can be created. New mythologies of Alien ET's can be found here in this realm.

I'll explain the four ways the military [and researchers for industry] may be using these holographic concepts too!

 

[DissectionStalker]

pier is not responsible for "putting that stuff on the internet" so he was not/is not attracting attention to himself also the story was not sat upon 35 years after the fact. The story came out after the events and was in the Italian media.

I'm referring to Zanfretta's hypnosis release. The video is copyrighted AND was ONLY RELEASED with their permission, including Zanfretta. It's right there on that Youtube video that BS linked to.

Also, someone is making money off the book. How do you know Zanfretta is not getting any money from it directly or indirectly???

Zanfretta is still getting media attention on and off for over 35+ years. How do you know if he doesn't do appearances or talk to the media in Italy or the EU or ?

 

[mike]

Havent had a chance to listen yet, but i am looking forward to it

 

[Wade]

I think the collective unconscious works in ways we don't understand at present; it is possible Humans evolved to tap-in to this and gained an evolutionary advantage. The Universe is theorized to be holographic in nature, so I've jumped onto this idea in several posts recently.

Where the military comes in is in recent decades holography has been seriously researched and field tested too. Holograms can come four ways from the military, AND the collective unconscious has been doing it too before the military got in the game! You see?...

It's both ways, which includes all of history since Humans tapped into it. The Military knows how to tap into it too, obviously, with limited abilities.

The REAL PROBLEM now is how to distinguish which hologram is which, especially, with ET-UFO stuff given all its military potential and applications too. That's what I meant, when I said this is the keys to the kingdom! This is part of the military high ground, and where G,ods can be created. New mythologies of Alien ET's can be found here in this realm.

I'll explain the four ways the military [and researchers for industry] may be using these holographic concepts too!

I missed this, i did not know you were receptive to an outside influence ala Mr. Talbot ' s book. It's an interesting concept. I think there could be spots on earth where this potential could be harnessed, the native americans were onto this sometime ago and probably chose these areas to have a vision quest. Between any possible emminations coming from the area and their fasting (a known agent for causing visions) i can see where many myths could be born.and yes it would only be natural that the military grabbed onto this.

 

[Lionel Mandrake]

Great show with Burnt State. I look forward to the upcoming episode with Gene and Chris being interviewed!

 

[AlienEsq]

I was traveling for work when I listened to this episode and it certainly made my ride a whole lot better. Thank you, Gene/Chris/Burnt State, for all of your entertaining insight!

 

[Rizla]

Congratulations to Mr. State! Great radio! Great stories, too... they sound real, all too real. You really captured the feeling of oddball paranormal experiences. About halfway through but this is one of those I'm gonna listen to more than once. The best Ouija board stories ever, no mean feat. You need to write this stuff down... you've got a book here. Believe me, I've read a lot of paranormal stuff that is poorly organized crap compared to the way you think! I do radio at least once a year and you've got the gift... It has to do with how clearly you think in real time. To Gene/Chris: good choice of forum people for your show, Goggs and Burnt and others -- and interesting to hear about your lives also. We want this kind of thing, these days. Radio is fundamentally about people and their experiences, and you really let your guests talk (so long as they have something interesting to say). This is what we seek in talk radio: Ideas and interesting stories. We don't want to be yelled at by Limbaugh or Jones anymore: we want new ways to think our ways through this completely insane modern world. So, kudos to all.

 

[DissectionStalker]

So, @Burnt State, I have to ask this, if only because this once I get to be the doubter (yes! ): [...] And if your theory is right, if it was the group collective, why do you think it turned on you, threatening each one of you individually?

LOL. Glad to see you can offer some doubt.

Remember, the mischievous BtSt said he enjoyed scaring people. He went to the graveyard to do it too with a customized Ouija board. Ahh, hah, maybe his unconscious did it?

 

[LatentCauses]

Vallee notwithstanding, if something produces physical effects, it has to be physical.

The tag "physical" doesn't assist much any more unfortunately. "Spooky action at a distance" is assumed to be operative in the world of the very small. There is no need for a faster-than-light signal to tell particle A what measurement has been carried out on particle B, because the universe, including particle A, already ‘knows’ what that measurement, and its outcome, will be.

Assume for argument sake that what a UFO witness sees is something more than an interior hallucination - and this is a reasonable assumption in light of a long history of pilot and co-pilot corroborated sightings of patterned and sustained behaviour out the cockpit window - whatever is seen is likely to be information present in the form of something that has quantum organisation. There is no real basis for distinguishing this as nonphysical in my non-expert opinion.

A couple of thoughts from tonights show:

1. Amongst several insightful things said by BS was that we have to "honour the witness". For mine, this is the key. John Mack put it another way when he said the only really useful way to get any further in these fields is to be comfortable with, and understand intersubjectivity, as part of the investigative methodology. As soon as we demand criterion that are objective in the sense that we can all agree upon the method of measurement, and the categorisation of the result, we run around in circles in these areas.

2. I think BS used the phrase "the brain responding to anomalous stimuli". Maybe we need to shift the focus from looking for the stimuli to searching for the commonalities between the circumstances in which people report these things. Perhaps it is the environment that is key to the experience. What is it about the environment that lets these things in? Why is it that it is so common for one witness to see something that the other cannot?

3. So much of what we read about in these areas defies rationality – the experiences are essentially a non sequitur. Maybe that is because certain environmental conditions allow a superimposition of something else - something from otherwhere, something that doesnt belong - So what is it that the witnesses share in their environmental conditions, or their brain electrical activity or chemistry, that opens up the filter and lets far more in than is necessary to function in day-to-day life?

4. BS Mentioned that he polled his students on the veracity of psychic mediumship and that it scores poorly. I don't claim to have been through the entire back catalogue of the Paracast, but I don't understand the show to have investigated the topic in any depth.

I would urge people to not be too hasty in writing it off as mere cold reading and crude psychology. The Windbridge Institute (Dr Julie Beischel)has been doing some very sophisticated quintuple blind experiments with a group of 20 mediums and conducting statistical analysis of the accuracy of the readings by some very sophisticated crosschecking methods.

There are so many overlays between mediumship, the near death experience, astral projection lucid dreaming, the DMT experience - and UFOs - to keep Gene and Chris busy for...well. forever!

PS Chris - congrats on giving up the bungers! (as we call them here in Oz)

 

[Wade]

3. So much of what we read about in these areas defies rationality – the experiences are essentially a non sequitur. Maybe that is because certain environmental conditions allow a superimposition of something else - something from otherwhere, something that doesnt belong - So what is it that the witnesses share in their environmental conditions, or their brain electrical activity or chemistry, that opens up the filter and lets far more in than is necessary to function in day-to-day life?)

I've been scratching my head coming up with a metaphor or simile to best explain to myself the dynamics behind many cases and i think you may have summed it up for me brilliantly, but i am having a little trouble understanding your theory why ? Are you saying this may be a case of too much superfluous information being received in many of the contact reports ?

 

[LatentCauses]

several

Are you saying this may be a case of too much superfluous information being received in many of the contact reports ?

BS identified the term in the Paracast - ANTI-STRUCTURE - I first came across it in George Hanson's Trickster and the Paranormal - which IMHO everyone owes it to themselves to struggle through. Part of what the book addresses is the correlation between ritual, the change phase between two steady states (the "liminal") and the outcome, namely anti-structure arising in certain limited instances.

So with that acknowledgement in place, the reason that we feel as though the witnesses describe non sequiturs, is because their senses are overwhelmed with far too much information, and information in a form that our pattern recognition processes have never seen before. At this juncture you can throw in a pinch of Jung and say that when confronted with this information, our brain scrambles around for the closest analogy, and drags bits and pieces from popular culture, mythology, our fantasies [insert whatever you like here...] and mixes that with its best approximation of what is actually there. Hence the persistent confusion and bizarre nature as to what is reported.

Its connected to the idealism school of mind that says, grossly simplified, that the brain of all the creatures that live on this planet are essentially reducing valves, and brain function is the process of limiting how much information gets through. Take psylocibin, for example, and recent study suggests that brain activity quietens, rather than intuitive excitement of activity in areas one associates with vision. So the hypothesis goes that it is allowing more information in, rather than the production of anything per se in the brain i.e. hallucinations.

For me this is a simple hypothesis as to why nothing makes sense, all seems bizarre, language (with the possible exception of poetry or experimental forms of expression) and maths don't assist in comprehension - its because we've had an Escher-like world imposed on the human brain - which has evolved like it has to light fires, hunt sabre tooth tigers, have sex and draw on cave walls...

There appears to be a full spectrum of circumstances associated with its occurrence– from the accidental (and I'm thinking here about some very well-known spots around the globe such as a street in Manchester UK where people periodically report walking into cooler and darker areas and finding themselves transported back in time to the exact same location), right up to the UFO/fairy experience – where I don't discount the possibility that some other intelligence out there has figured out how to rip a hole, and impose or bleed their world on ours – albeit temporarily. Ley lines, magnetic anomolies, solar activity etc may all prove to play a part in anti-structure - given that we are are all, amongst other things, complex electrical systems.

So my thinking for a while has been - who among us has been having these experiences and under what conditions? That strikes me as an easier research project than tackling the "what is it?" - the psychadlic users such as shamans, the psychotics, the 3% who report interactions with the dead, the UFO witnesses, the NDE experiencers etc etc etc...