Legal Issues for Psychics and Fortune Tellers

I got a call from a woman in New York who somehow managed to find my phone number.  She was inquiring about getting a psychic reading from me, but when I asked more questions, I realized she wasn't really looking for advice in the psychic realm.  She needed practical information.  Basically, from what I could tell from her confusing history, she was terrified of putting up her "shingle" as a psychic in a public forum.  She did not doubt her abilities in the least.  She doubted whether or not she would be pursued by law enforcement for announcing her psychic services.

Naturally, I thought this was an over-reaction.  Psychics advertise their services all the time.  You see them on TV, radio, storefronts and billboards.  But I was intrigued by her concern.  As I also have a vested interest in making sure there are no legal problems with offering psychic services, I decided to investigate the issue for myself. What I found was much more complex than I had imagined, even as an attorney!

A number of states have civil and criminal statutes restricting the ability of psychics to practice their trade.  For example, a number of states require that psychics be licensed.  In Salem, Massachusetts, known for its historical burning of witches and tourist business attracted by occult witches and psychics, different types of licenses are required for psychics depending upon whether they have a store, attend psychic fairs, sell metaphysical products, and so on. 

I was surprised to find that in New York State, "fortune telling" is a Class B Misdemeanor under the New York Penal Law.  The statute, N.Y. Penal Law section 165.35: NY Code, passed in 1967, reads:

"A person is guilty of fortune telling when, for a fee or compensation which he directly or indirectly solicits or receives, he claims or pretends to tell fortunes, or holds himself out as being able, by claimed or pretended use of occult powers, to answer questions or give advice on  personal matters or to exorcise, influence or affect evil spirits or curses; except that this section does not apply to a person who engages in the aforedescribed conduct as part of a show or exhibition solely for the purpose of entertainment or amusement.  Fortune telling is a class B misdemeanor."

In New York (as in Oklahoma), it is thus illegal to engage in the practice of fortune telling unless it is identified as being for "entertainment purposes" only! 

I wasn't totally surprised when I read this.  I remember from law school reading about some of the most ridiculous archaic laws that remain (mostly due to neglect and laziness) on the books.  Just to give you an idea: In North Dakota, it is illegal to serve beer and pretzels together; In Minnesota it is a misdemeanor and a $3,000 fine to have sex with a bird if someone is watching you; In Carmel, California, it is illegal to wear high heels that are taller than 2 inches; In Maine, under Title 17, Section 3203 of the state code, you will get six months of jail time, a $1,000 fine, and your auto dealership license will be revoked, if you sell a car on a Sunday; In Orlando, Florida, if you park your elephant on the street, you must deposit the same amount of money in the parking meter as you would a car; In Hartford, Connecticut, it is illegal to educate your dog or give it obedience training.  Well, you get the idea.  Most of these silly laws are ignored by law enforcement.  So I was sure the same would be true of the fortune teller law.

But I was wrong.  These psychic laws are still being enforced today.  In the year 2010, reports indicated that more than ten persons were prosecuted in New York under this criminal law.  Canada has a particularly strict prohibition against psychics dating back to the inception of the criminal code in 1892.  During the decade between 1999 and 2009, 38 people were charged under Section 365 of the Canadian Criminal Code for fraudulently pretending to exercise witchcraft, sorcery, fortune telling or conjuration.  If convicted, it carries with it jail time of up to six months and a $2,000 penalty. The most recent case involved a 36-year-old psychic woman who allegedly scammed a seasoned criminal lawyer (yeah got that one right!) out of more than $100,000 by telling him she was the embodiment of his deceased sister and would help him achieve financial success.  The witchcraft charges were dropped only when she agreed to plead guilty to fraud.

In fact, that is really the heart of the matter here - fraud.  In the absence of legitimate definitions of occult powers in the legal world, legislators and law enforcement are obviously much more concerned about stopping con games involving false promises and large sums of money.  Think of an overzealous or unscrupulous stockbroker who tells you he knows about a stock that is a surefire winner and you will make a lot of money if you invest in his "prediction" and, of course, pay him his fee.  At what point does any prediction - by anyone - amount to a fraud or grand larceny?  The courts in Alexandria, Louisiana and Montgomery County, Maryland, recently rejected arguments that these laws prohibiting fortune telling constitute a ban on the Constitutional right to Free Speech. 

Given the fact that lawmakers clearly don't seem to have any understanding of the true value of psychic abilities, it then becomes incumbent upon the psychics to work hard to distinguish their services from the dreaded fraudulent practices outlined in the statutes.  So what do you do?

There are no clear guidelines on how to avoid a criminal prosecution as a psychic.  There are only rough rules of thumb about how to avoid the appearance of impropriety or fraud.  Several commentators have offered suggestions.  Here are a few:

   1. Avoid encouraging clients to come back for frequent or regular visits

   2. Avoid giving clients the impression that you are absolutely right or sure about your predictions.  Never promise results.

   3. Avoid charging substantial sums of money for any types of psychic services including but not limited to lighting candles, removing spells, delivering information from deceased relatives or spirits, and so on.  Lawsuits against psychics tend to involve cases where the clients alleged they were bilked out of many tens of thousands of dollars over time by the psychic.

   4. In places like New York, include a disclaimer that your services are offered for "entertainment purposes only."  This will clearly feel somewhere in the range between "distasteful" and an outright lie for most serious psychics, but lawmakers leave psychics no choice in this matter.

   5. If it appears a client is overly dependent upon your advice, try to steer them toward getting more conventional help in the health care field.

   6. Avoid telling clients you have a perfect track record of accuracy.

   7. Think carefully about doing readings at psychic fairs and visits to other states and jurisdictions.  Read up on the local laws.

Naturally, these suggestions are not surefire ways to prevent prosecution under the psychic criminal laws but they tend to protect psychics against claims that they engaged in fraudulent acts.  Also, just to add my own disclaimer here, I offer this blog for entertainment purposes only  and not as either psychic or legal advice!  Sheesh!

 

The Bridge of Life

Photo by Ian Parker
 

I had a big birthday recently.  I share the same birthday as the great American psychic Edgar Cayce on March 18.  It was my first entry into technical "Old Age."  It is a strange place in which to find oneself because it is so surreal.  Anyway, I asked my husband to get a very specific birthday present for me.  It was a simple but beautiful ring set with a "twilight" cut (how appropriate) Spar-Hawk tourmaline from the only mines where they are found in the world in Maine, and some tiny diamonds.  I put it on my ring finger on my right hand and decided, in my mind, I would wear this lovely symbolic ring every day for the rest of my life.

Two days after my birthday I was attending a party at a neighbor's house.  It was nighttime when we returned to the car.  My hands were full holding a large porcelain pie plate with a quiche.  That day it had strangely snowed about 5 inches.  As I tried to march up the mound of snow next to the passenger side of the parked car, I slid and then did a bizarre twist in the air.  I landed, on rocks beneath the powdery snow, with the full force and weight of my entire body on the tip of my ring finger on my right hand.  I lay face down in the snow with my outstretched right hand that had tried to rescue the porcelain plate from shattering and had itself been shattered.

I knew immediately it was a bad injury.  When I got home I pulled my birthday ring off my finger since I was sure it was going to swell up.  Which it did.  That week it swelled up like a balloon and turned all shades of purple, then green, then yellow from the bruising at the finger joint.  That week I decided not to see a doctor.  Maybe it was just a bad sprain, I thought.  Maybe it will heal up by itself if I baby it, I reasoned.  I did my best to ignore my giant damaged finger.  The problem was that I was down to the wire writing my new book and the publisher had given me a flat non-negotiable deadline.  I had to finish writing the book that week.  If a doctor put a cast on my finger I would never be able to finish the book.  I worked furiously - using the old "hunt and peck" style of typing - and managed by some miracle to finish my book.  By then, people were telling me I was stupid not to get it checked out since it could result in the loss of mobility in the finger.

The X-rays came back and, sure enough, the finger joint was fractured and the ligaments were torn as they had ripped a chunk of bone off the joint when they were stretched out by the injury.  As I write this blog, I am struggling to type since my finger is still swollen and stiff.  I was told yesterday that healing may take up to a half a year or more. When I asked when or if I could ever wear my birthday ring again, the physical therapist told me to wait a year and then I will know if it will be possible...

Last night I had a peculiar dream.  I was walking with my husband and three "relatives" - although they were not people I knew.  It was one very old couple, husband and wife, and one exceptionally old lady close to 100 years old.  They wanted us to go sightseeing in their town.  It seemed vaguely European.  I surveyed the colorful townhouses and architecture.  Suddenly, we found ourselves walking up an enormous arched bridge.  They marched happily up the steep slope and talked about how it was the largest bridge in the world.  I was amazed that these very old people seemed to be so physically fit that this hike didn't seem to bother them.  The bridge seemed to climb up in a rounded arc into the mists of the sky.  It was superb.  When we reached the summit, I lost the others.  They seem to have disappeared and taken a path down the other side of the bridge where I couldn't see.  I stood there, a bit lost, and a man appeared from no where.  He said to me, "You are at the top of the bridge.  This is the most you will ever know about everything."  The dream ends.

And so, as I get older, I find myself in a rush to hurry up and acquire the maximum amount of knowledge about everything and to learn all the secrets of the universe before I die.  My message to myself, apparently, was to understand that I know everything, inherently, now - as I stand at the pinnacle of the bridge of my life.

When Predictions Go Wrong

Last night, January 26, 2015, we all hunkered down.  Me, my family and just about every single person in the Northeast. 

Dire warnings were issued non-stop on every single television channel - a mega-blizzard snowstorm with hurricane strength winds will be moving in during the evening and early morning hours.  From northern New Jersey, New York City, Boston and parts of Canada - we were all told to expect anywhere from 2-3 feet of snow plus gale winds up to 70 mph.  The news media, including CNN, touted this storm as being "historic" in its killer potential.  "We have never seen anything like this before!" shouted the weather forecasters.  "Don't underestimate the power of this storm!."

Following suit, politicians up and down the Northeastern seaboard took extraordinary precautionary emergency measures the likes of which I have never seen in my life!  Entire cities were 100 percent shut down!

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie took to the airwaves and declared a state of emergency in the state of New Jersey.  He instituted a traffic ban on all private traffic on New Jersey roads after 11 PM.  More than 1,300 flights were canceled at the area's three major airports, Newark, LaGuardia and JFK.  Some hospitals canceled elective surgeries and staff slept overnight on makeshift cots.  All public transportation, trains, buses and light rail service were shut down. 

Similarly, in New York City, Mayor Bill De Blasio proclaimed a "winter weather state of emergency" and said no private traffic would be permitted on the streets of New York City after 11 PM and all persons would be banned from walking around in any city park after 6 PM due to the danger of falling branches and trees.  More than 1,800 snowplows were deployed, schools closed, and everyone warned to stay inside. 

Boston's Mayor Martin Walsh issued an almost simultaneous emergency announcement for the City of Boston.  He said a snow emergency would take effect at 6 PM, all cars parked on major city roadways would be towed, public schools would be closed for the next two days, all non-essential motor vehicle was banned starting at 12 midnight, and 800 pieces of equipment had been deployed to clear major roads of snow.  All three politicians declared they had taken these proactive positions on the weather because this blizzard was going to be unlike all other previous blizzards.  They called it "historic."

 It was the first time I have ever seen politicians reacting to weather predictions on such a massively proactive and rather panicked scale.  I grew up in Boston and I lived for 25 years in New York City.  I had never seen anything like this before.  This was wholesale panic.

When I was a kid, cold weather and snow was no big deal.  Most winters I waited outside for my school bus in weather often reaching 5-8 degrees or approaching zero.  The insides of my lungs felt "furry" and frozen, but it was tolerable.  I once went on a school field trip where we spent the entire day outdoors taking measurements for our science class in weather that was 40 degrees below zero with the wind chill factor.  We were fine.  Further, our schools were never closed unless and until there was 3 feet of snow on the ground.  When I moved to New York and later New Jersey I thought people were funny because they became quasi-hysterical at the sight of anything more than a few inches of snow on the ground. 

I once flew into Little Rock, Arkansas, to visit my father and was shocked to find myself on the last airplane allowed to land and was unable to find a single vehicle or taxi working.  There was one inch of snow on the ground.  People apparently had not figured out that you can drive when there's snow on the ground.

At any rate, I did some late afternoon shoveling of snow off the steps and driveway yesterday - just 3 or 4 inches - in anticipation of the dumping of 2 feet of snow overnight.  When I woke up today there was less snow on the ground than yesterday.  No snow at all last night.  What a disappointment.  What a tremendous let-down after all that crazy hype.

Then, today, a brand new phenomenon:  weathercasters making a formal apology to the public and the politicians for their failure to accurately predict the strength of this storm.  They grossly overestimated its impact, at least in New Jersey, and now the politicians have egg on their face, so to speak.

According to a local newspaper, the Parsippany Focus: A state of emergency was declared in New Jersey Monday afternoon, but the blizzard dropped less than expected amounts of snow on the state Monday night, with no more than 7 inches of plowable falling in Monmouth County, and half as much elsewhere."  That is to say, 3 inches or less.  Much less than the touted "historic" amount of snow estimated to be between 2-3 feet deep.

The article continued:  "Meteorologists took to Twitter to issue apologies and explanations.
'My deepest apologies to many key decision makers and so many members of the general public,' Gary Szatkowski of the National Weather Service in Mount Holly Tweeted early Tuesday. 'You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry.”There will also be a slight chance of snow showers before 10 p.m., with winds only reaching 9 to 11 miles per hour.'"

I say bravo to the meteorologists who had the guts to apologize for their mistake. 

But here's the thing.  Speaking as a (psychic) person who also makes "predictions," I am fully aware of the pitfalls and problems in advising people about the future.  Predictions, whether they are psychic or based on computer projections, are still nothing but the highest likelihood of trending data that indicates a particular outcome. 

This should be viewed in quantum physics point of view known as the Uncertainty Principle, developed by physicist Werner Heisenberg, in 1927.  Depending on the object of your study and whether you choose to examine its position or momentum, there is no absolute single answer.  As the principle states:  the more precisely the position of some particle is determined, the less precisely its momentum can be known, and vice versa.  Thus, a field of possible correct answers is generated.  When we make a prediction, it is predicated on what we are watching - and we may be watching the wrong thing. 

Meteorologists - as well as psychics - would be well-advised to remain humble about their predictions.  And skeptics out there should be as respectful to psychics as they are to meteorologists...

My Grandfather's Spirit in My Dream Saved My Sight

My grandfather H. Maurice Fridlund, Esq. (aka "Puff") and me

I have always had extremely bad eyes.  I have worn glasses since I was 8 years old.  I am extremely nearsighted.  At 20 feet away, my vision is equivalent to someone with 20/20 vision looking at something the distance of two football fields away!  My world is extremely fuzzy.  In addition, I have other annoying eye issues such as floaters, astigmatisms, cataracts, and retinal degeneration.  As I have gotten older, since my eyes don't change as frequently as they did when I was young, I just to the ophthalmologist once a year for a check up. 

About five or six years ago, I went to bed and was having an very average, rather boring, dream.  I was driving to a school in a neighboring community to pick up my daughter after her soccer game.  I got there, found the school, went inside, found my daughter and we started to leave, when I noticed that the door to the room opened.  Normally, since I am a lucid dreamer, I have very good control over the events in my dreams.  I usually know what is about to happen.  That was not the case here.  The door opened and there stood my Swedish grandfather who we called "Puff" (ironic in retrospect, I suppose, since he died in his mid-80's, when I was in my mid-20's, from a debilitating lung disease called emphysema). 

At any rate, I was very surprised to see him in my dream. 

I said, "Puff!  What are you doing here?"

He replied, "I'm here because I need to show you something, Nancy."

He shuffled slowly over to the other side of the room, just as I had remembered him in real life decades earlier.  He picked up a huge, leather bound text book, opened it up to a particular page and pointed to the writing just below a medical illustration on the top of the left page. 

"Here.  Read this," he said.

I struggled to read the words out of this medical treatise, but they began to look like unintelligible squiggles and floated aimlessly. 

"I can't read this, Puff," I said, "because I'm in a dream."

"Oh that's alright then," he answered.  "I just want to make sure that you go to visit your eye doctor because there is a problem with your eyes and you need to take care of it."

"Okay, I will," I promised.

We hugged warmly and he told me he had to go, and so we parted ways. 

I woke myself up from the dream sobbing with tears running down my face.  But they were tears of joy.  That had never happened before in my life.  I was quite certain there was absolutely nothing wrong with my eyes.  My vision hadn't changed and I had no symptoms of anything at all.  But, in my budding exploration as a psychic, I decided - just for kicks - to go and get my annual eye check up anyway.  So I did.

To my shock, at that visit, my ophthalmologist informed me for the very first time that I had early stage glaucoma and would have to start coming to see him every three months and take eye drops for the rest of my life in order to prevent blindness.  What was even more amazing to me was that my dream conversation with Puff could not have been the product of my subconscious mind trying to tell me about my eye disease. 

Glaucoma is a symptomless disease - until you begin to go blind.  There are only three ways to check for it and none of them would result in any conscious or subconscious awareness - thinning of the wall of the retina, high intraocular fluid pressure, and the beginning of the loss of peripheral vision.  Tests showed that my peripheral vision was still excellent.  So there would have been no way for me to know or sense the presence of glaucoma. 

This was enough to convince me that I had, in fact, been visited by my deceased grandfather - for real!  It would also account for my strange crying upon awakening from the dream.  I also found it ironic that Puff was the one who showed up to tell me about this eye disease.  He is the only other member of my family, on both my mother's and father's sides, who - like me - wore glasses.  It was only suitable that he would tell me about this eye problem.  Furthermore, it was perfect that he showed up with a medical text to convince me about the problem. 

Born in 1896, Puff was a brilliant man.  He spoke eight languages fluently, attended Harvard Law School on a full scholarship and graduated with some of the highest grades ever, and also studied law in France and Germany.  He adored reading books that classified things - like weather, animal species, birds, historical events, etc.  When he sent me a rare letter in the mail, the letter was always divided into a main topic, subheadings and separate clauses.  He wasn't exactly a warm and fuzzy guy, but he had a good heart.  He was a tax lawyer for one of the largest admiralty law firms in the United States and created a very wealthy lifestyle for my mother's family.  Former Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis (Jacqueline Kennedy's second husband) begged my grandfather to be his lawyer, but Puff turned him down.  He didn't like Onassis' dirty business practices. 

Since that time, I have continued to see my ophthalmologist faithfully every three months and have had to increase my eye drops since my vision is now slowly starting to deteriorate.  Ultimately, there is no cure for glaucoma.  All you can do is slow the onset of the disease.  If Puff had not shown up in my dream, I believe it is possible I could be partially blind by now.

So, I offer this story as proof that the dead can help the living and give accurate medical advice from beyond the grave.  It's wonderful.

Benjamin Franklin, Privacy and Non-Locality

Anyone reading non-mainstream news will see a new word to have entered the English language: "Sheeple."  This cross-bred mix between "sheep" and "people" refers, somewhat derogatorily, to people around the world who blindly follow their leaders, even to the brink of destruction, without a second thought.  The internet has fostered an underground current of popular discontent and revolution - a rumbling of powerless voices.  It is easy not to put your money where your mouth is.

As our Founding Father Benjamin Franklin once said: "Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you."

My 15-year-old son came home from school recently and said he and his classmates had been shown news clips of the extraordinary 17-year-old Pakistani girl, Malala Yousafzai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize after blogging in favor of education for girls since the age of eleven and who, in 2012, was shot in the head by Taliban terrorists while she sat talking to her girlfriends in a school bus.  She miraculously survived the ordeal, and even more miraculously, has continued to advocate for girls' education. 

My son made the interesting comment to me. "You know what really bothered me?" he said, "When my teacher asked us what we thought of the film, everyone in my class said, 'Wow, I wish there were more people like her in the world.'  And that made me really mad!  Stop wishing other people would be like her - you should try to be more like her yourself!"  I was struck by the wisdom of my son's words.  So few people seem to realize that they (we) are actual participants in our world.  The world is not a virtual reality.

This has led to passivity, a failure to become active in politics, an easy and automatic pessimism about environmental and economic issues, a resignation toward global warming, and a tendency to leave the "dirty work" of steering our collective reality to others.

Benjamin Franklin warned us about losing our American dream if we failed to participate in our own democracy.  It is the idea of "use it or lose it" - and we appear to be losing it.  It seems to be the intersection of two problems - Personal greed to fuel our personal destiny and the sense that larger capitalistic forces control our national destiny.  It is easier to control one's own life than help steer a national or global existence.  We just feel impotent no matter how angry we get.  But that's the wrong attitude - and it's dangerous.

According to a front page article in the New York Times, on November 18, the Senate Republicans successfully blocked a bill, authored by Democratic Senator Patrick J. Leahy and supported by President Obama and computer giants Google, Apple, Microsoft and Yahoo, that would have restricted the National Security Agency's ability to collect telephone and other private data on all American citizens without the normally required warrants demonstrating probably cause.  The reason given by the Republicans is that such a bill would thwart our efforts to fight terrorism at a key moment in time when terrorists, such as ISIS, are gaining ground.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S Constitution clearly states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
 
Benjamin Franklin once said:  "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." 

As Americans we have collectively opted to cede our political power to others so we don't have to contribute our own time and energy (blood, sweat and tears) to any true political cause, and thus "collectively" we have all "agreed" to give up our personal freedom from unconstitutional searches and seizures guaranteed to us under the Constitution in order to "keep us safe from terrorism."  We have just done what Benjamin Franklin warned us never to do.

One of my psychic mentors once surprised me by telling me she had had a vision that I was the reincarnation of Benjamin Franklin.  I didn't know why.  I knew little about him at the time other than the fact that he had something to do with electricity and was a Founding Father with some connection to Philadelphia.  Having reviewed his biographies, I now agree there are certain similarities.  Like Franklin, I too grew up in Boston, started out as a printer, newspaper publisher, author with an interest in science, have strong connections with France (he was Ambassador to France and my college thesis advisor was a Senator from France), am fascinated with the properties of electricity and Messmer's "animal magnetism" concepts leading to hypnosis (Franklin was appointed by France's King Louis XVI to investigate Messmer's claims on a scientific panel), environmental activist, and am a local politician. 

But more than that, I agree with many of his "tough love" positions on political activism and success - his belief that if you find problems in the world, don't just throw up your hands in resignation, fix them!  He was extraordinary in the things he recognized and tried to fix: he created his own phonetic alphabet, solved oceanographic trade currents that disrupted mail service, freed his own slaves and became an active abolitionist, created the first lightening rod and grounding device, Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, flexible urinary catheter, counter-surveillance techniques against the British, created the first American library, and started up countless civic and political organizations where he perceived problems that needed to be solved.  This was a man of action, not merely words. 

Franklin put his money where his mouth was.  As for all his potentially lucrative inventions, he refused to patent any of them.  He wrote: "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."

Our democracy is at risk due to apathy, lack of concern, personal greed and the continued encroachments into our civil liberties.  The question of surveillance is very different today than it was 40 years ago.  It is no longer a matter of physical bugs or wire taps on the phones obtained by waking up a judge at their home and pleading urgency in order to obtain probable cause to sign a search warrant.  Today, information exists out in the "ethers" to be gathered quietly by satellites, computers, microchips, software programs, cell phones, televisions, cameras and other types of apparatus using frequency wavelengths in the "public domain."  Nothing is private any more because our legal definitions of "public" and "private" are very different today.  Information is non-local.  It reminds me of how, in our legal system, we try to pinpoint a "location" for purposes of determining jurisdiction of a contractual dispute when the contract was signed by two parties on the internet!  The idea of an actual physical location doesn't exist.  The contract was signed in cyberspace.  So we must invent the location by legal definition.  The same goes for our Constitutional definition of privacy.  We must become activists in protecting our private speech.

Even Benjamin Franklin was spied on without his knowledge.  According to a an in-house CIA journal "Studies in Intelligence," a recently declassified document states that Franklin was such a security risk, due to his insistence that his three-man American Commission in France had not been successfully infiltrated by at least four or more British spies despite the facts available to him, it was a miracle that he didn't screw up the entire American Revolution! 

But he didn't.  And the fact remains, he effectively changed the world for the better.  As he once wisely said, "If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking."  We don't need to give up our Constitutional rights to privacy as long as we become activists in our own democracy.  If we allow our democracy to rot from within, it doesn't matter how many terrorists from without we defeat - because the system will crumble all by itself.

Is Aging Reversible?

I find myself to be a kind of strange observer of my own life as it hurtles, like a car without brakes, toward certain death.  I don't want to die.  I absolutely adore life and I have been exceptionally privileged to live such a wonderful and extraordinary life in this lifetime.  Yes, I believe in reincarnation of the soul - into different physical and spiritual "bodies" or space-time "points" of matter.  My lifelong search into the world of the paranormal has been a search for answers about the meaning of life and death.

Why am I thinking about death?  Well, not so much death. Just aging.  Well, maybe not so much aging, as a reflection of this ironically long yet short journey I have been on since I was born.  Most people don't talk much about how their ideas change over a lifetime, preferring instead to talk about the physical changes. 

Once a person reaches young adulthood, the human body doesn't seem to change much.  This is very comforting.  After all the trials and tribulations of being a morphing child and then a spurting teenager, achieving physical stasis is very reassuring.  This continues on for a long time and one begins to get quite comfortable in one's physical body.  We begin to take it for granted.  We begin to think our adult body is synonymous with our identity.  Wrong!  Just when we start to feel like we know ourselves and our bodies, we change. 

One of the good things about getting older is that my dreams are really, really interesting now that I have the background knowledge of history, technology, psychology, politics, analysis and life experience.  My dreams are really entertaining now.  When I was a child (I remember my first dream was a 5 years old), my dreams were simple and a bit stupid.  The component parts were not well-developed. 

On the downside of aging, I remember watching the skin on my hands change.  I could see tiny little - almost imperceptible - diamond, snakeskin-like patterns slowly appear on the surface.  At first, it was only when I tried to wrinkle my skin.  Then it occurred all by itself.  Over time, the skin slowly began to have the appearance of crepe paper - thinner, more paper-like, just like a real old person!  As I have watched the skin sink slightly below the blue veins on the back of my hands over recent years, losing the smooth fatty tissue, I constantly have the feeling of watching a movie - a play about someone else, not me.  I feel helplessly trapped inside this old person's body.  Other times, I am simply fascinated.  For some reason, I never anticipated that my young adult physical body would ever change.  I thought it had stabilized. 

I have watched all my contemporaries get old.  Sometimes when I look at my friends I think they are in my parent's generation.  I get confused.  When did we all go bald and wrinkly?

I have been blessed, to great degree, with some excellent genes.  I was very pleased when I went into the nail salon this weekend and announced my age for some reason and the Korean woman doing my nails (and everyone else working in the salon) stopped working, stared hard at me, and kept shaking her head, saying, "No! No!  I don't believe it!  Skin is so good!"  Knowing full well that Occidental types tend to show their age a lot faster in their skin than Asian people, I was deeply flattered.  True, many people assume I am much younger than my true age.

Recently, on Facebook, I have been indulging in a bunch of silly online quizzes.  Strange, but they seem to be revealing something true about me.  The first one was "What is Your True Age?"  Turns out, according to this quiz, I am a young, single black woman in my early 20's who enjoys going out to eat, going to nightclubs, and has a pet.  My next quiz was "What is Your Best Hair Color"?  Turns out, my best hair color is not blonde, brown, red or black (and I have tried all of them except black) - but rather electric blue!  The blurb said something about my unique and adventurous personality.  The next quiz was "What Was Your High School Type"?  My answer - "The Stoner." 

What does this all mean?  Clearly, I am not reflecting my true age!  These quizzes seem to indicate that I am "young at heart."  I have young energy inside a chronologically older body. Since I believe in the Mind-Body connection in all matters of physical, emotional and spiritual existence, this makes sense to me. 

What is young?  It is the willingness, coupled with joyous curiosity and sense of adventure, to want to explore something new every day.  I actually force myself to do at least one new thing every day. 

The physically "old" body is still influenced by the young energy of the mind.

I have watched every American president turn grey after a few years on the most stressful job on earth.  Grey hair is a sign of age.  However, grey hair is reversible. A friend of mine is a Tai-Chi Master.  His teacher, a great venerated old Chinese Tai-Chi Master who died in his late 80's, taught his students some amazing secrets of life.  According to my friend, his teacher had grey hair.  Strangely, his hair began to turn black again in his mid-80's.  When my friend inquired about this, his teacher said he was doing this with the power of his mind.  So, age is, to some extent, reversible!  As odd as that may sound!  Can we control the physical body even after death?  Perhaps.  There are recorded reports and photos of some yogis to halt the process of decomposition of the physical body after their death! 

What is "old"?  In my opinion, it is - energetically speaking - a desire to maintain status quo or to stay the same.  Actually, that is also the definition of death.

"Nancy's Blade" Replaces Occam's Razor Logic for Paranormal Theory

Nancy's Blade: "If there are competing
theories or hypotheses, the one which
sustains the fewest rebuttals of fact, 
should be selected."

Occam's Razor: "If there are competing
theories or hypotheses, the one with the
fewest assumptions, should be selected."

 

Unless you live under a rock, if you have been involved in any discussions of anything remotely paranormal, then you have undoubtedly heard the term "Occam's Razor" often used by skeptics to discredit any paranormal theories.  

Back in the 14th century, a fellow named William of Ockham, an English Franciscan friar and logician, developed a principal of logic which has become commonly known as "Occam's Razor."  It was supposed to help with problem-solving.  Basically, it states that if there are competing theories or hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.  It is meant as a guidepost for investigating a theory, but doesn't suggest that the theory with the fewest assumptions is actually the right answer.  It is a principle of parsimony or economical succinctness.  It is quick and dirty.
Unfortunately, skeptics have twisted the true intent of this logical format and used it to completely annihilate any investigation or scientific exploration of paranormal theories for unexplained phenomena.  Therefore, I have decided to investigate the validity of Occam's Razor and, as you will see, have replaced it with my own principle of logic that I call "Nancy's Blade."

Let's take an example.  I do many paranormal investigations.  Let's take a hypothetical case of an alleged haunting of a private residence. It is a fairly classic case of a haunting.  The residents, a young couple, claim their apartment is haunted by a ghost.  They say the television sometimes switches on by itself; the small table in the hallway shakes and bangs against the wall by itself; the apartment has acquired a strange, unpleasant pervasive odor not related to anything inside or outside; violin music is heard at 3:45 AM underneath the rocking chair in the bedroom; the husband has seen a shadow figure walk through the hallway; the couple hears disembodied footsteps walking around the apartment; and both have begun to experience strange health effects such as headaches, nausea, and tightness in the chest. 

So, the question is:  Is their apartment haunted by a ghost?  Applying Occam's Razor, since we are dealing with two competing theories (ghosts exist versus ghosts don't exist), we must select the theory with the fewest number of assumptions.  Most of us would agree that ghostly and paranormal phenomena can sometimes but not always be explained by common experience and laws of physics.  It requires more assumptions about the nature of the universe, spirituality and possible unknown laws of physics, to account for the existence of ghosts.  Therefore, skeptics argue that Occam's Razor requires us to conclude that ghosts do not exist.  End of story.

However, this is where it gets fact-sensitive and much more complicated.  So let's examine some of the number of factual assumptions necessary for both theories - not just the assumptions about the theories!

Television Set Turns on By Itself

Ghosts Don't Exist
TV may have had a surge of electricity which caused it to turn on. 

Ghosts Exist
There would have had to have been multiple surges; the TV's are plugged into surge protector outlets; this still happened when the TV's were unplugged; and this doesn't explain why all the other electrical appliances didn't suffer simultaneous electrical surge problems.

Violin Music is Heard Under a Rocking Chair at Night

 

Ghosts Don't Exist
The violin music is probably music being played by the neighbor who lives below and is likely playing a real violin or a radio late at night.

Ghosts Exist
The neighbor doesn't own a violin and is a quiet college student who says he doesn't play the radio in the middle of the night and doesn't hear the violin music heard by the couple upstairs.  The music is only heard briefly by the couple, only at a specific time at night, and only directly under the rocking chair not elsewhere beneath the floor or in other rooms.

The Small Table in the Hallway Rattles, Shakes and Bangs Against the Wall

Ghosts Don't Exist
There may have been unbalanced items on top of the table that shifted slightly causing the table to tip over; the floor may have vibrated due to an earthquake or trucks on the road; or this is a fantasy of the occupant in a semi-sleep state at night.

Ghosts Exist
There were no items on top of the table when it made the noises, and besides it was actually banging back and forth against the wall; no earthquakes have been reported; the apartment is located in the interior of a large, quiet residential housing complex located a quarter mile away from the road; both occupants were awakened by the noise suggesting it was not the fantasy of one person or the collective hallucination of two people, and the wife actually sees the table moving by itself one night when she gets out of bed.

Alright, I could keep going on and address all of the phenomena, but you get the basic idea.  Skeptics would still argue that Occam's Razor requires us to conclude that there was no ghost or haunting in this apartment.  Why?  Because it would require us to make too many outlandish assumptions about reality and the known laws of physics in order to conclude that these events were caused by a ghost.  Therefore, we must conclude these events were unrelated, fully explainable, and not caused by a ghost! 

However, the skeptics are violating the basic rules of logic and twisting them in order to make Occam's Razor seem to work in their favor. 

If you study the rules of logic, you will quickly see that this cannot be a case of logical "deduction" - which is A = B, C = B, therefore C = A.  (E.g. "All widows have a dead husband, this woman has a dead husband, therefore she must be a widow").  Nor is this a case of logical "induction" -  which is all A which has been observed is B, therefore all A is probably B.  (E.g. All swans we have observed are white, therefore we logically infer that all swans are probably white.)  Both of these types of logic lead to the conclusion that there is a single right answer (if A, then B).

However, as I have shown above, all of the necessary preconditions or facts necessary to substantiate a "logical" conclusion are missing.  Every single one of the preconditions suggested as reasons for the strange events was rebutted (e.g. the neighbor was playing the piano or radio - she didn't own a piano and wasn't playing the radio!).

This leaves us in the uncomfortable position of not being able to confirm the logical conclusion mandated by Occam's Razor.  What do we do to solve this problem of logic?  I propose we look at another, perhaps less dignified, less well-known type of logic known as "abductive reasoning."  Under this principle, the consequence "B" (the existence of a ghost) can be inferred from the preconditions "A" (strange piano music heard under the bed). 

As explained in Wikipedia, "For example, after glancing and seeing the eight ball moving towards us, we may abduce that the cue ball struck the eight ball. The strike of the cue ball would account for the movement of the eight ball. It serves as a hypothesis that explains our observation. Given the fact of infinitely many possible explanations for the movement of the eight ball, our abduction does not leave us certain that the cue ball in fact struck the eight ball, but our abduction, still useful, can serve to orient us in our surroundings. Despite infinite possible explanations for any physical process that we observe, we tend to abduce a single explanation (or a few explanations) for this process in the expectation that we can better orient ourselves in our surroundings and disregard some possibilities."

Abductive reasoning means we take the evidence and extrapolate the conclusion.  Thus, "B is likely, if A occurs."  This doesn't mean B is the only correct answer.  In fact, this type of reasoning provides for multiple correct answers, unlike deductive reasoning which only provides for one correct answer.

Therefore, I have created a new principle to replace Occam's Razor.  I call it "Nancy's Blade."   This principle states that "If there are competing theories or hypotheses, the one which sustains the fewest rebuttals of fact, should be selected."   I have eliminated the language about the fewest number of "assumptions" because that has been terribly misinterpreted as referring to the conclusion (B) and not the facts (A). 

My principle also provides for the possibility of multiple "right" answers among multiple competing theories.  Causality is multidimensional, as any student of the paranormal knows.  There can be many "causes" or "explanations" for any event because we are all interconnected and any "cause" or "effect" can be localized or remote.  All causation is relative in the Einstein sense of the word.  The fact that a tree falls over in my backyard could be caused by a failure of its root system, a local storm, shifting trade winds over the continent, or a solar electromagnetic storm over the planet - or all of the above!  All events are interrelated.  Thus, it makes more sense to have a logical principle that allows for multiple explanations for causation.

Nancy's Blade eliminates the problem of skeptics choosing preposterous, implausible - but theoretically "possible" - factual explanations to justify their "correct" conclusions.