Brushes with "the other side"?

[Rob4Hope]

From the book I've started....LOVE this statement:

In the extreme, pseudoskeptics seek to fit the phenomenon into their existing paradigm by cherry-picking certain facts, dismissing others, and ignoring the rest. Indeed, when one’s mind is made up, any alternate explanation must be incorrect and the facts do not need to be considered.

Rivas, Titus. The Self Does Not Die: Verified Paranormal Phenomena from Near-Death Experiences . International Association for Near-Death Studies. Kindle Edition.

I'm hoping to keep an open mind as I delve. This book is one of the latest published, and it was with money raised by the IANDS. It is going to present cases of shared NDE--where one person or people is alive and sees the NDE actually happen, and cases in which the NDE person appears or otherwise communicates with someone at a distance, and the stories come together and are independently corroborated by a 3rd party.

Either way, the book, like I said, is one of the latest and is going to present its material which "suggests" consciousness exists outside the body.

[slavereeno]

My assumption is this sister wasn't using any type of drugs and didn't have a history of any epileptic type of physical problems? No history of brain lesions, tumors or other such things?

None that I am aware of from before, during and up to about a year after the mission. Have lost touch since then.

What does the other sister thing was happening?

She said something was trying to get inside, and that with the blessing it went away.

What do you think was going on?

I can't say, since the faith transition I can only offer, I don't know. I suppose it could have been some kind of anxiety attack? A true possession attempt? Stress? I have tried to lay the facts out as I remember them to the best of my ability without embellishment for the purposes of this thread.

[wtfluff]

Let's expand this.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss

We think we know so much...

Opinions? impressions?

So... You think that savants are not actually performing the calculations that they do, and it's something "paranormal" that gives them their abilities?

Do any savants claim that it is ghosts that give them their abilities?

[Rob4Hope]

Let's expand this.

Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbASOcqc1Ss

We think we know so much...

Opinions? impressions?

So... You think that savants are not actually performing the calculations that they do, and it's something "paranormal" that gives them their abilities?

Do any savants claim that it is ghosts that give them their abilities?

I have only speculation. It seems interesting to me that NDEs talk about instant access to information about complex things, including math, physics, etc. This is a pretty common NDE report. So, I speculate.

I do know this much,...there are some serious things about savants that we don't understand. This math person, and the blind guy who can listen to a song on the piano and play it instantly, as well as improvise different songs via styles from disparate composers. Its just pretty amazing stuff.

[Thoughtful]

My grandpa had a NDE. My SIL is from a south American country and can tell some crazy possession stories from vudu.

I have seen ghosts -- some relatives, some strangers. Some poltergeist activity. I'm the kid that blows out lightbulbs and wristwatches. Some clairvoyant experiences, some seeing the future. Some mind reading. Not consistently enough to be profitable.

I am simultaneously curious and scared of what I've experienced. Some is good. Some is evil.

I will say a lot of it is so commonplace I wouldn't be surprised if most people haven't seen ghosts but didn't notice them or realize what it was/ that something was there.

Thoughtful, please don't take this wrong in any way, but what your grandpa saw, or your SIL saw doesn't interest me as much; its second hand for your grandpa, and possibly third hand or more from your SIL. Make sense?...it's too far removed. But having said that, let's talk about YOUR experience.

Be as objective as you can. I want to warn you before you share (and please please please don't take this wrong either), I also come from the skeptic side a bit myself, though I am leaning toward thinking there is more to this "other side" business than many. When you share, I want to ask questions--hard questions. Why would I do that?...because it helps to know if there are other things possibly going on. It also helps to establish the credibility of the account. The hard questions are NOT a personal attack--and I will be clear about that.

If you recall my posts above, I met 2 of the NDE survivors who wrote books. That was first-hand stuff from them, so I did what I could to really go after the credibility of the account. I was careful with the people, but I was pretty direct with questions.

Can you share more?...can I ask you questions about the circumstances and your account? If this thread gets cynical and nasty, it will shut down others who might share, and I want to avoid that.

Please DO NOT feel threatened. That is not the intent of this. I just want to get down there into the good stuff and learning what I can, and unless questions (hard questions) can be asked, how can we widdle down to the good stuff?

And just so you know, the credibility of your account will probably go up if you are willing to admit there may be mistakes or questions about it you yourself don't understand.

-------------------------

Look, let me be fair here with a personal example, which is about the closest I have ever come to any type of "other side" event myself. I have asked myself all kinds of personal questions about this as well, which I will re-iterate here to be fair and transparent.

I served a LDS mission in Australia. While there, a young surfing bum guy asked for a blessing to help quite his smoking habit. Two very GREEN missionaries (myself and companion) proceeded to give the blessing. My companion was the voice person.

During that prayer, I felt a power manifest. It felt unmistakable to me: I felt a warm chill go up and down my back in a very profound way, and it came in surges and felt like it went through my arms into this guy we were praying over. I remember being shocked--not BEFORE but AFTER it started. I had the thought: "WOW! Pay attention! This is a once in a lifetime event!" I remember opening my eyes and looking around the room. I thought, for a moment, I would actually see someone standing or something like fire in the room. I had a really good look, checked my feelings and wondered why this was happening. Whatever was going on was unmistakable to me.

After the prayer, it was interesting that the other 2 (the guy who said the prayer and the guy receiving it) had VERY similar experiences. We were all shocked.

OK, now here are some questions I asked myself:

1. Was this a self-induced experience?
Answer: I was a TBM at the time, very devout and committed. So, perhaps. However, the magnitude of the event defied this in my own judgment. But to be honest, I can't conclude 100% I didn't bring this on myself. I STRONGLY lean toward this being something unexplainable by natural means. This event (which happened 16 additional times in similar circumstances) seemed like a brush with "the other side"....or something else like that. Its one of the reasons I'm on this weird quest, and why things like NDE and OOBE are so dang puzzling and interesting to me.

2. Did this event confirm the "power of the priesthood"?
Answer: I use to think this, and have since rejected this. I FELT something unmistakable, but I didn't HEAR a voice say: "The CHURCH IS TRUE!!!!!" I realize that something happened, but drawing conclusions about it are not warranted. So, no, I don't believe this confirmed anything. It just happened. When I get into interpretation, that is where I can start going off and making unwarranted conclusions that become difficult to untangle later on.

3. Was there anything going on that would lend to or induce this experience?
Answer: I've thought about this one pretty hard. The answer is NO. Nothing except what I discussed in #1 above.

I could share a hundred more questions.

The only conclusion I can make for myself is something unexplained happened. I personally do not think the warm chills were self-induced.

Now...let me be frank. I've had "warm chills" go up my spine. A good example is when I drink a tart lemonade. Sometimes it happens: WHOOOO--chills right up the spine. Sometimes if someone touches my neck with a pair of soft fingernails,...WHOOOO--chills right up the spine.

What happened in this event above?...it was beyond that, but I can't explain it other than something happened; it created questions for me. Is this "other side" business for real? ...because this felt like a brush against it.

Years later when I became aware of this double-slit experiment, the first idea/question that occurred to me was: "Does this experiment, in any way, suggest that consciousness may exist outside the body?" Clearly consciousness affects how matter manifests. THAT is a solid conclusion suggested by this reproducible experiment. Do you all know how ground-breaking this is folks? This stuff may possibly change the entire focus of science!--its that BIG.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

So, there you have it. There you have my experience (which happened 17 times to me). You think during those 17 times I didn't ask myself some credulity questions?

I wanna know about this "other side" stuff. I am hungry. I wanna get my own bias the H3LL out of the way and get down to some facts that lead somewhere.

Thoughts?

You can message me -- some of my experiences are vey specific and a friend reading this forum might be able to identify me.

[Rob4Hope]

Well...I'm past the introductory material of the book and through the first chapter.

I like the approach: they are not pontificating about the moral or spiritual nature of the event; they are just laying it out, showing where certain things can't be explained without some type of psychic, OOB of other types of event we don't understand happening, and letting it land wherever the data let it land.

It is clear the authors have an agenda sharing the information--trying to support the concept of OOB events being exactly what they purport--however, the authors are being very frank and honest about this, and it's not a major portion of the book either--they are just telling the events as they go.

So far, I like the book. Very non-sensationalized IMHO, which is nice for such a book.

[Rob4Hope]

OK everyone.

Reincarnation is something that some of the NDEs bring up, and it's brought up enough to not be simply pushed aside.

I've read that Eliza R. Snow felt that reincarnation was something real.

http://mormonmysticism.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Anyone have an opinion on this one?

[EternityIsNow]

OK everyone.

Reincarnation is something that some of the NDEs bring up, and it's brought up enough to not be simply pushed aside.

I've read that Eliza R. Snow felt that reincarnation was something real.

http://mormonmysticism.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Anyone have an opinion on this one?

Well, from an NDE/OOBE point of view, reincarnations certainly makes sense. If you consider that our universe is billions of years old, and there are endless worlds out there with intelligent life, and we are exploring those worlds as tiny drops of the essence of the consciousness of the whole, I don't see why we would limit ourselves to just one experience of a mortal life. The sense I have from my own NDE/OOBE experiences and studying the topic is that we are here to experience being human. I can imagine we want many different variations on that experience, so certainly makes sense we would "reincarnate" many times. On many worlds to experience many different life forms.

But I do think the term reincarnation is a bit misleading. Because per the NDEs we are not really incarnating in a creationist sense. Our consciousness is not directing the body's incarnation, we don't have the kind of spirit that would act as a template to create a body, or incarnate itself as human. As I understand this, our consciousness can manifest any type of spirit it wants to. Any gender, any species. So when our consciousness wants to have a spirit, a spirit is manifested to adapt to the evolved body it plans to inhabit. This is because a physical body already has its own form that evolved according to the laws of physics. So these bodies we are in now have evolved on their own over millions of years. They would be born, live, and die with or without our consciousness riding along for the experience. Our consciousness can choose to inhabit any body it wants to, as long as that body is not already occupied by somebody else's consciousness. This is less like the religious concept of incarnation and more like riding a horse. We are a rider, or a passenger, going along for a mortal life ride.

One other point. The consciousness we have here is not all that we are. Each of us has what some people call a higher consciousness. Only part of our conscious being is currently living this life. Part of us remains in a disembodied state. So each incarnation might be a slightly different mix of the elements in our whole personality. Therefore, the sense of self we have now in this life is unique in all the universe and across all time. Although we will remember the experience forever, who we are now will never be precisely replicated in any other life. I think this might be part of why we want to experience these incarnations. Because they are unique things that have a limited lifespan. And apparently the universe finds the experience of something unique to be fascinating.

I know this might be hard to believe if you have not had one of these disembodied experiences and studied this literature fairly extensively. But the reality of the reported NDE and out of body metaphysics is that reincarnation is part of a cycle of transformations we go through all the time. This earth experience we are having now is a transformative experience. But we also have transformative experiences in other dimensions of the universe. So when we incarnate again, we learn things, as we explore the many manifested experiences available in the universe. And we prepare carefully for each new incarnative experience. We might even invest more of our higher consciousness into a given life, or invest less of it. This would been based on the nature of the mortal experience we would like to have.

So in simple terms, reincarnation, I do believe it is real, so that is my opinion (you asked ). But the way the religious people think of reincarnation is overly simplistic. Sort of like they are setting up a straw man. The phenomenon of reincarnation is far more complex than just returning to another human life. The NDE version is that reincarnation is part of an ecosystem of the universe experiencing all the dimensions of itself.

[Reuben]

What if consciousness can travel back in time, and there's only one of them?

[Rob4Hope]

OK everyone.

Reincarnation is something that some of the NDEs bring up, and it's brought up enough to not be simply pushed aside.

I've read that Eliza R. Snow felt that reincarnation was something real.

http://mormonmysticism.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Anyone have an opinion on this one?

Well, from an NDE/OOBE point of view, reincarnations certainly makes sense. If you consider that our universe is billions of years old, and there are endless worlds out there with intelligent life, and we are exploring those worlds as tiny drops of the essence of the consciousness of the whole, I don't see why we would limit ourselves to just one experience of a mortal life. The sense I have from my own NDE/OOBE experiences and studying the topic is that we are here to experience being human. I can imagine we want many different variations on that experience, so certainly makes sense we would "reincarnate" many times. On many worlds to experience many different life forms.

But I do think the term reincarnation is a bit misleading. Because per the NDEs we are not really incarnating in a creationist sense. Our consciousness is not directing the body's incarnation, we don't have the kind of spirit that would act as a template to create a body, or incarnate itself as human. As I understand this, our consciousness can manifest any type of spirit it wants to. Any gender, any species. So when our consciousness wants to have a spirit, a spirit is manifested to adapt to the evolved body it plans to inhabit. This is because a physical body already has its own form that evolved according to the laws of physics. So these bodies we are in now have evolved on their own over millions of years. They would be born, live, and die with or without our consciousness riding along for the experience. Our consciousness can choose to inhabit any body it wants to, as long as that body is not already occupied by somebody else's consciousness. This is less like the religious concept of incarnation and more like riding a horse. We are a rider, or a passenger, going along for a mortal life ride.

One other point. The consciousness we have here is not all that we are. Each of us has what some people call a higher consciousness. Only part of our conscious being is currently living this life. Part of us remains in a disembodied state. So each incarnation might be a slightly different mix of the elements in our whole personality. Therefore, the sense of self we have now in this life is unique in all the universe and across all time. Although we will remember the experience forever, who we are now will never be precisely replicated in any other life. I think this might be part of why we want to experience these incarnations. Because they are unique things that have a limited lifespan. And apparently the universe finds the experience of something unique to be fascinating.

I know this might be hard to believe if you have not had one of these disembodied experiences and studied this literature fairly extensively. But the reality of the reported NDE and out of body metaphysics is that reincarnation is part of a cycle of transformations we go through all the time. This earth experience we are having now is a transformative experience. But we also have transformative experiences in other dimensions of the universe. So when we incarnate again, we learn things, as we explore the many manifested experiences available in the universe. And we prepare carefully for each new incarnative experience. We might even invest more of our higher consciousness into a given life, or invest less of it. This would been based on the nature of the mortal experience we would like to have.

So in simple terms, reincarnation, I do believe it is real, so that is my opinion (you asked ). But the way the religious people think of reincarnation is overly simplistic. Sort of like they are setting up a straw man. The phenomenon of reincarnation is far more complex than just returning to another human life. The NDE version is that reincarnation is part of an ecosystem of the universe experiencing all the dimensions of itself.

I read what you posted carefully and believe I understand it.

Any opinion on where we are, or what we are between states of incarnation?

[Thoughtful]

What if consciousness can travel back in time, and there's only one of them?

Then we are all the same consciousness, and I am a part of everyone else, including Hitler, Ghandi, and Beyonce? We contend with ourselves, and against ourselves and in the end we really need to embrace total and unconditional love?

[Reuben]

What if consciousness can travel back in time, and there's only one of them?

Then we are all the same consciousness, and I am a part of everyone else, including Hitler, Ghandi, and Beyonce? We contend with ourselves, and against ourselves and in the end we really need to embrace total and unconditional love?

Exactly. But don't steal my story idea.

FWIW, in all my musings about qualia and consciousness, this is the most disturbing idea I've had. At the same time, I credit it for helping to disabuse me of "I'm just glad that's not me" reactions to other people's pain.

[alas]

What if consciousness can travel back in time, and there's only one of them?

Then we are all the same consciousness, and I am a part of everyone else, including Hitler, Ghandi, and Beyonce? We contend with ourselves, and against ourselves and in the end we really need to embrace total and unconditional love?

Exactly. But don't steal my story idea.

FWIW, in all my musings about qualia and consciousness, this is the most disturbing idea I've had. At the same time, I credit it for helping to disabuse me of "I'm just glad that's not me" reactions to other people's pain.

The idea that we are all part of one consciousness fits in with some eastern philosophy and also would explain other psychic para normal experience. Such as twins who physically feel each other's pain. One is injured in a car accident and the other in some distant location doubles over in pain. Parents like the parents of Elizabeth Smart who "know" their child is still alive in spite of the odds that kidnap victims are usually killed within 36 hours. I don't know details of that specific case, but others I have heard of where the parent keeps insisting that the child is alive, then knows the exact time the child is killed and that is confirmed. Wives of soldiers in combat who know when their spouse is killed from thousands of miles away.

[slavereeno]

Other phenomenon that are real but currently unexplained... deja-vu, the placebo effect. The latter more so than the former.

[Rob4Hope]

I've known some mamas who have a pretty good radar on their kids and whats going on with them when they are "out there".

LDS people capitalize on those things from a confirmation bias: those who are LDS...well, that the Holy Ghost helping protect the kids; those who are not LDS, just coincidence.

[Rob4Hope]

OK...I'm gunna listen to this one as well:

God and the Afterlife
The Groundbreaking New Evidence for God and Near-Death Experience
by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry.

Don't worry folks...this thread ain't gunna die anytime soon. I'm gunna keep going, and when I learn something interesting, will post. Or if I learn something that is a credible disclaimer or contradiction, will post as well.

[alas]

Other phenomenon that are real but currently unexplained... deja-vu, the placebo effect. The latter more so than the former.

You know, I have wondered if scientists could understand the placebo effect, then they would be able to start to at least accept that some of this other stuff might be real, and just not understood, or even that there is something very powerful about the human brain, that we do not understand. They don't even accept that some things like ESP is real, because it is not consistent enough for them to test and prove. But some ESP stuff is too weird to be just coincident, and like Leroy Jetho Gibbs says, there is no such thing as coincident.

But figuring out how our brain, by believing something, can make our body do something like heal itself, just might be the key to figuring out some of the other weird stuff. From the perspective of psychology, I have always been fascinated by what is called parapsychology. The psychology text books run into it, but then back away, like they didn't just run into something REALLY weird. Let me give an example of something in a text book that was weird, but the book just skipped over the fact that they could no way explain. Y'all know what multiple personality disorder is, now called disassociative identity disorder or DID. Anyway, one case that they used in the book was someone with DID who one identity had an allergy to some food that none of the other identities did. So, one identity would eat, let's say it was peanuts because I don't remember what it was from the book 30 years ago. So, one identity eats peanuts, then an hour later, they switch, and the next identity taking control of "our" body has no idea that "somebody else" ate peanuts, but the peanuts are in the stomach and this identity goes into anaphylactic shock. So, they rush the body going into anaphylactic shock to the hospital. After an hour in the emergency room being treated, the identity switches again and all symptoms disappear because this identity is not alergic to peanuts. How did personality a know that personality b had even eaten peanuts in order to produce the physical reaction of the alergic reaction? How did personality c make the reaction disappear? Are all alergic reactions "all in our head"? What about the antibodies in the body of people who are alergic. When the doctors tested personality a for the anti bodies, the antibodies were in the blood. But if personality b was the one "in charge" of the body, no such anti bodies could be found in the blood. Nope, even in the DID person, the allergy was real and not all in her head. But why did the anti bodies appear and disappear when the person switched identities? Weird.

I know this has nothing to do with "other side" kind of stuff, unless DID is really demonic possession, but it has to do with the power of the human brain that we do not understand. So, couldn't all this stuff we don't understand have the same basis, in the power of our brains doing something we do not understand.

[slavereeno]

I know this has nothing to do with "other side" kind of stuff

I think it has to be at least tangentially related. Faith healings, IMHO are related to the placebo effect. We can't currently explain why these things work, so there is something more to our consciousness than is currently explainable through natural scientific means.

The placebo effect is intriguing to me, because it does NOT work for everyone or every time. But it does work for some of the people some of the time (hmm, sound like talks on priesthood blessings much?). I guess I feel like priesthood blessings are nothing more than a religious mask on the placebo effect. If we could unlock the reasons why it does/doesn't work, it could be a big win. We could eliminate the need for many, if not all, chemical drugs. So placebo results are not consistent, and yet we use the placebo in scientific trials so we can't just relegate it to the "crazy" bin with the rest of the "other side" stuff. Some dismiss it as only masking symptoms and not actually curing anything, but there are documented cases of things like Cancer and Asthma. This stuff happens but its not very repeatable in a lab, same could be said of a lot of this "other side" stuff.

We don't really, scientifically understand consciousness yet, so for me personally it seems premature to definitively accept nihilism.

[MoPag]

OK everyone.

Reincarnation is something that some of the NDEs bring up, and it's brought up enough to not be simply pushed aside.

I've read that Eliza R. Snow felt that reincarnation was something real.

http://mormonmysticism.blogspot.com/200 ... ation.html

Anyone have an opinion on this one?

Well, from an NDE/OOBE point of view, reincarnations certainly makes sense. If you consider that our universe is billions of years old, and there are endless worlds out there with intelligent life, and we are exploring those worlds as tiny drops of the essence of the consciousness of the whole, I don't see why we would limit ourselves to just one experience of a mortal life. The sense I have from my own NDE/OOBE experiences and studying the topic is that we are here to experience being human. I can imagine we want many different variations on that experience, so certainly makes sense we would "reincarnate" many times. On many worlds to experience many different life forms.

But I do think the term reincarnation is a bit misleading. Because per the NDEs we are not really incarnating in a creationist sense. Our consciousness is not directing the body's incarnation, we don't have the kind of spirit that would act as a template to create a body, or incarnate itself as human. As I understand this, our consciousness can manifest any type of spirit it wants to. Any gender, any species. So when our consciousness wants to have a spirit, a spirit is manifested to adapt to the evolved body it plans to inhabit. This is because a physical body already has its own form that evolved according to the laws of physics. So these bodies we are in now have evolved on their own over millions of years. They would be born, live, and die with or without our consciousness riding along for the experience. Our consciousness can choose to inhabit any body it wants to, as long as that body is not already occupied by somebody else's consciousness. This is less like the religious concept of incarnation and more like riding a horse. We are a rider, or a passenger, going along for a mortal life ride.

One other point. The consciousness we have here is not all that we are. Each of us has what some people call a higher consciousness. Only part of our conscious being is currently living this life. Part of us remains in a disembodied state. So each incarnation might be a slightly different mix of the elements in our whole personality. Therefore, the sense of self we have now in this life is unique in all the universe and across all time. Although we will remember the experience forever, who we are now will never be precisely replicated in any other life. I think this might be part of why we want to experience these incarnations. Because they are unique things that have a limited lifespan. And apparently the universe finds the experience of something unique to be fascinating.

I know this might be hard to believe if you have not had one of these disembodied experiences and studied this literature fairly extensively. But the reality of the reported NDE and out of body metaphysics is that reincarnation is part of a cycle of transformations we go through all the time. This earth experience we are having now is a transformative experience. But we also have transformative experiences in other dimensions of the universe. So when we incarnate again, we learn things, as we explore the many manifested experiences available in the universe. And we prepare carefully for each new incarnative experience. We might even invest more of our higher consciousness into a given life, or invest less of it. This would been based on the nature of the mortal experience we would like to have.

So in simple terms, reincarnation, I do believe it is real, so that is my opinion (you asked ). But the way the religious people think of reincarnation is overly simplistic. Sort of like they are setting up a straw man. The phenomenon of reincarnation is far more complex than just returning to another human life. The NDE version is that reincarnation is part of an ecosystem of the universe experiencing all the dimensions of itself.

I read what you posted carefully and believe I understand it.

Any opinion on where we are, or what we are between states of incarnation?

Wiccans call the place between incarnations Summerland. It's kind of like the LDS version of the spirit world. But you get to rest and regroup. Kind of assimilate all the stuff you learned in your most recent life with all the stuff you learned from your past lives. Then if you gain enough energy you progress to a higher being.

I like the idea of reincarnation. I like how you described it EIN.

[alas]

I know this has nothing to do with "other side" kind of stuff

I think it has to be at least tangentially related. Faith healings, IMHO are related to the placebo effect. We can't currently explain why these things work, so there is something more to our consciousness than is currently explainable through natural scientific means.

The placebo effect is intriguing to me, because it does NOT work for everyone or every time. But it does work for some of the people some of the time (hmm, sound like talks on priesthood blessings much?). I guess I feel like priesthood blessings are nothing more than a religious mask on the placebo effect. If we could unlock the reasons why it does/doesn't work, it could be a big win. We could eliminate the need for many, if not all, chemical drugs. So placebo results are not consistent, and yet we use the placebo in scientific trials so we can't just relegate it to the "crazy" bin with the rest of the "other side" stuff. Some dismiss it as only masking symptoms and not actually curing anything, but there are documented cases of things like Cancer and Asthma. This stuff happens but its not very repeatable in a lab, same could be said of a lot of this "other side" stuff.

We don't really, scientifically understand consciousness yet, so for me personally it seems premature to definitively accept nihilism.

I do think faith healing is the religious version of the placebo effect. It is a case of if you believe that it works, then it just might work. But like you said, it does not work with all people. And why not? The question of why it has zero effect on some people is also a mystery.

Specific people respond to the placebo effect, and they are consistently the same group. But it would take several experiments to weed them out, so scientists just control for it.

I think I an one of the people it doesn't work on. I think my childhood Doctor also knew that it would not work. When I was five my big brothers both had warts on their hands and my mom takes us into the doctor. I was with them because no baby sitter. So, the doctor tells my mom that first of all, he wants to buy the warts off my brothers, and if that does not work, to bring them back and no charge, he will use the second choice of treatment. So, he puts on his best Voodoo act and tells my older brothers that he is going to buy the warts from them. He gives them each a quarter, and says the warts now belong to him, and this magical bandaid will help transfer the wart to him. So, they are to go home, and keep a bandaid over the wart, and the doctor will receive the warts by magic within one week. And the wart will be gone off their hands for good, because the doctor owns them. So, my brothers keep a bandaid over their warts, which disappear within that week, leaving no scar and no trace.

So, after watching this method of getting rid of warts work on my brothers, I am a believer, right? So six months later, I have a wart on one finger. Mom takes me into the same doctor, he looks at it, and says we are going to burn it off. No even attempt to use Voodoo, just we are going to burn it off. And oh, by the way, I still have a bad scar from that wart, but the Voodoo method didn't leave a scar. My doctor did make a joke about the burning smell. He said, this is what a cannable smells when his dinner is burning. Something about cynical little alas, he just didn't think the Voodoo trick would work. But my gullible older brothers, yup, good candidates for witchcraft. Yup, those older brothers of mine were believing in Santa long after I caught on, gullible twits.