GENIUS FORUMS

I recently watched some Darren Brown, but focused mostly on his conversation with Richard Dawkins.

If anyone really wants to make progress in the area of consciousness you need to get your understanding of Cold Reading as clear as Darren Brown, and then you have to bridge that over to Rudimentary Neurology (hind-brain, mid-brain, and fore-brain). Only then could you even begin to tackle the subject of telepathy.

The way Darren Brown explains it to Dawkins is very superficial, but he's perfectly correct to choose the mode of explanation he employs. He talks to Richard Dawkins a bit like a performer. Brown almost makes a caricature of himself, dancing like a puppet, doing a kind of magic show for Dawkins himself. Both of them realize that they are doing a show for the masses, so it doesn't tackle the core like it could.

The most important thing that Darren Brown emphasizes is that when you're doing cold reading, you have to create a relationship between introversion and extroversion. So much of self deception depends on the dialogue between one's introverted self, and one's extroverted self. As Brown says, the two cancel each other out. However, what's interesting is how a magician or shaman acts as a midwife not for wisdom, but for spiritual consciousness. For that brief moment, the individuals narcissism flowers beyond it's typical dualistic thinking.

Most people walk around in a kind of narcissistic-schizophrenia, with their extroverted self at war with their introverted self. The magician finds a way to unify those two polarities into an experience of wholeness.

The tragicomedy is that "the client" cannot sustain this transcendence on their own. After the magician leaves their life, the client is typically in a state of bewilderment. Perhaps a more generous interpretation is that the magician inspires them, breathes a bit of life back into them. It all depends on the magician, I can imagine a hierarchy of quality.

Do you guys think Darren Brown's career gets in the way of his very best capacity? I would say wherever there is worldly ambition, there is going to be some "missing out".

The most important thing that Darren Brown emphasizes is that when you're doing cold reading, you have to create a relationship between introversion and extroversion. So much of self deception depends on the dialogue between one's introverted self, and one's extroverted self. As Brown says, the two cancel each other out.

I did a bit more thinking on this particular point. These are roughly Darren Browns own words. When you unify your introverted and extroverted self, do they really cancel each other out?

I don't think so, I think they come together in a state of pointedness or arousal, and rather than being cancelled into a nothingness, the client actually gets a taste of self-overcoming, a kind of penetration into a deeper sense of who they are. To me, this is essentially liberation, but for most of us, we need magicians, drugs and various props to lift us out of our everyday anxieties and relatively substantial karmic issues.

Didn't Penn and Teller do an episode of "Bullshit" on cold readings to point out how they're done and that they're not as accurate as they pretend to be?

Orenholt wrote: Didn't Penn and Teller do an episode of "Bullshit" on cold readings to point out how they're done and that they're not as accurate as they pretend to be?

I'm sure they did, and the points they made were probably quite correct. My emphasis is getting to the very core of what is going on with a cold reading. You are essentially hacking into the persons psychology. If you can understand the core principles behind hacking into another persons mind, you can get an interesting perspective on what spiritual enlightenment is.

I'm quite sure that Penn Jillette would be mostly uninterested in enlightenment, despite he's a relatively intelligent person. Even magicians need to relate themselves to the audience in order to bolster their own ego. Their enlightenment (or their success, or self esteem) lies in their ability to conquer the audience by overwhelming their senses, or feeding the audiences need for illusions. The world wants to be deceived, and so a magician is like an elephant leaning on a tree. If the audience they are leaning against falls down, so do they.

The best description of the fraud behind cold-reading I've ever seen was delivered by Bart Simpson, but everyone so wants to believe. Not kidding; I can't find the episode.

OTOH, some interesting psychological testing done of late seems to indicate that there is a two-way street of recognition between psychopaths and "normal" folks, where incarcerated psychopaths to a significant degree stated that they can spot a potential victim simply by the way one walks. For the rest of us (wow, that's a presupposition), the effect of hair raising up on the neck, shivers down the spine, a sense of malevolence etc. alerted us.

A primitive survival mechanism is a long way from "...your Aunt Birdie wants to say, Hello."

As for the introvert vs. extravert part of your post, you got me. I've been reading C.G. Jung of late, and it was his belief that one trait is always dominate. Some accord between the two sides of self is necessary, but not that difficult, or as potentially self-annihilating as the tussle between the shadow and the ego.

If you haven't done so, take a Myers Briggs personality type test. It's kind of a hoot, but Jung is worth reading.

windhawk wrote:As for the introvert vs. extrovert part of your post, you got me. I've been reading C.G. Jung of late, and it was his belief that one trait is always dominate. Some accord between the two sides of self is necessary, but not that difficult, or as potentially self-annihilating as the tussle between the shadow and the ego.

Introversion seems to be thought-feelings related to character, minimalism, principles and painful inquiries related to identity and how it relates to God. If there is too much reliance on introversion, the tendency will be too much cowardice. A constant fleeing away from the human condition and into oneself, away from any confrontation. This is Daphne (female).

Extroversion seems to be thoughts related to narcissistic fantasy, measurement, status, anatomy and comparison. At it's lowest, extroversion produces trash tabloids. At it's highest, extroversion produces Myth. If there is too much reliance on extroversion, the only way you can have a relationship to someone is through neurotic worrying, envy and violence. This is Artemis (female).

The challenge is taking the two spheres and living a competent life, contributing to progress which is always measured by the degree that we reduce currency. Money seems to become of highest importance to people who are hiding from some great fear, fear of ugliness, fear of fear.

Ah, we're talking past each other here, coming from differing perspectives. According to Jung the introversion-extraversion types do not over lap, and only modest synthesis is even possible. This is in opposition to yin & yang theories of wholeness.

Per Wiki: "Types (extraverted vs. introverted) are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences between people, whereas traits might be construed as quantitative differences. According to type theories, for example, introverts and extraverts are two fundamentally different categories of people. According to trait theories, introversion and extraversion are part of a continuous dimension, with many people in the middle.

It is a fundamental differing world-view. Jung is perhaps best summed up as believing that the basic difference between the two is that extraverts gain psychic energy from interacting with other people, while introverts are psychically drained from it.

windhawk wrote:Ah, we're talking past each other here, coming from differing perspectives. According to Jung the introversion-extraversion types do not over lap, and only modest synthesis is even possible. This is in opposition to yin & yang theories of wholeness.

Per Wiki: "Types (extraverted vs. introverted) are sometimes said to involve qualitative differences between people, whereas traits might be construed as quantitative differences. According to type theories, for example, introverts and extraverts are two fundamentally different categories of people. According to trait theories, introversion and extraversion are part of a continuous dimension, with many people in the middle.

It is a fundamental differing world-view. Jung is perhaps best summed up as believing that the basic difference between the two is that extroverts gain psychic energy from interacting with other people, while introverts are psychically drained from it.

I think most entertainers are an example of how introversion and extroversion work together. Historically, entertainers are rather reclusive, solitary and introverted, but they also draw in energy (they feel more themselves) from becoming part of the crowd. An introvert who enjoys extroversion tends to have a larger than life personality. A moon-king or a sun-king.

I couldn't agree more.

The duality of comedians, especially, is a kind of rage combined (comorbid) with the need of an out-fullness, a "hale fellow well met," neediness.

I often find myself wanting to simply listen to the jokes rather than listen to the raw humanity they express; but how to listen to Richard Pryor, or any of the other tragic-comedians we've seen over the last several decades, and not "feel their pain?"

A "Janus faced image," the tragic comic, was known in antiquity. If we now understand the relationship between primal personality types, and use more knowledgeable/sophisticated terminology, then progress has been made. But, at what cost to those we purport to love.