Videos

There’s a new video on You-Tube which shows the exam for a 3rd-level Nei-kung by the first westerner student of John Chang, the Magus of Java, who is teaching the Mo Pai school of kung-fu. To pass 3rd level a student must demonstrate certain telekinetic abilities by using his yin chi.

You can read more about Nei-Kung, John Chang, his amazing abilities and his school in the book The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal by Kosta Danaos, another student of his. I’ve read it and highly recommend getting it, if you’d like to read first hand account with this rare man.

The description to the following video on Youtube.com site tells the following:

It was just last year I found this person. He is the first Westerner to ever be admitted into the ancient school of Mo Pai. About four or five other Westerners have become students, but all have failed for one reason or another. There has never been another Westerner to have ever reached the 3rd level.

This person is currently in training to go on to the 4th level of nei-kung which is different from chi gong, despite what other alleged, pseudo authorities say.

The short segment is his testing for the 3rd level when he passed in 2000.

Notice that the boxes are against a wall, and they fall forward and not backward as if there was something blowing them backward from the front. There are two methods of either pulling them forward or pushing them backward. The distance between his hand and the boxes is over 9 feet; a tape measure is seen on the floor.

As you can see in the video, along with the Wester student is the world famous master/teacher, John Chang and his son.

I think the video speaks for itself, although the quality is quite poor, since for some reason the put the camera against a bright window, which washed out much of the detail. What do you think of this video?

On 3 March 2008, Sanal Edamaruku, who is the president of an organization called Rationalist International, challenged India’s tantrik (a black magician). The tantrik is thought to be the most powerful in India. Sanal has challenged the tantrik to kill him using black magic during a live TV program. The tantrik, Pandit Surinder Sharma, agreed. Sharma claimed during an earlier TV discussion that he could kill any person within 3 minutes using black magic. This has started because one of India’s former politicians, Uma Bharati, accused her opponents of using tantrik magic to hurt her, following a series of negative events in her life.

During the challenged, the tantrik chanted his mantras for a lot more than 3 minutes but it had no ill effect on Sanal whatsoever. In fact, Sanal Edamaruku only laughed all the time. The tantrik moved onto more “powerful” techniques and started to wave a knife and touch Sanal with it.

Only after two hours of this show, which overrun all other programs at that time on the channel, did the anchor declare the failure of the tantrik. The latter tried to explain it away with the thought that a very powerful god was guarding Sanal, to which he replied being an atheist.

The tantrik then said that his most powerful magic works only at night. Sanal has challenged him again. Under an open might sky several hours later they gathered for the ritual. The tantrik warned that once it is started there’s no way back and Sanal would get crazy and then scram in pain and die. Sanal laughed and they started.

Alex Tsakiris, the host of the Skeptiko podcast, selected replication of the "Dogs that know when their owners are coming home" experiment of Rupert Sheldrake, as the first one of his OpenSourceScience initiative.

Today, the project posted the first video, describing the experiment and some preliminary result. Our forums section now also added a new forum to discuss the replication, alongside the active Skeptiko podcast forum. After seeing the video, go to the new DogsThatKnow experiment discussion forum.

He also released show #41 of the Skeptiko podcast about the experiment.

Dr. Dean Radin (of the Institute of Noetic Sciences) posted on his blog a note about two recent speeches that he’s done. The first speech was on January 16th in the Google headquarters (Telepathic search engine, anyone ?).

The good thing about the speech is that the video is available on Youtube with the full speech (over 90 minutes), which is really great. The video is edited, showing the slides well and with good sound quality. The abstract of the speech is as follow:

Do telepathy, clairvoyance and other “psi” abilities exist? The majority of the general population believes that they do, and yet fewer than one percent of mainstream academic institutions have any faculty known for their interest in these frequently reported experiences. Why is a topic of enduring and widespread interest met with such resounding silence in academia? The answer is not due to a lack of scientific evidence, or even to a lack of scientific interest, but rather involves a taboo. I will discuss the nature of this taboo, some of the empirical evidence and critical responses, and speculate on the implications.

On January 19th, Dr. Radin talked in a conference entitled “Investigations of Consciousness and the Unseen World: Proof of an Afterlife?” where he talked about the possible implications of Psi on the possibility of afterlife.

Daniel Tammet

The story of Daniel Tammet is a rare story. And although it is not about psychic abilities, it is still a story of extreme, paranormal mental ability. Daniel Tammet is what is called a Savant. A savant, while literally means a learned person, and comes into English from the French, usually means a “polymath”, or a person of exceptional genius, like Leonardo da Vinci. But there’s also the kind of people who are called Autisic savants, and these people are more special. Daniel Tammet is one of them and he’s more valuable to the scientific world that most of them, for reasons to be disclosed below.

Autistic Savants are usually people who have really extraordinary mental abilities in some areas but are usually so at the expense of social skills and they are all autistic by definition, which makes contact with them harder. One of the more famous living savants is Kim Peek, who was the inspiration for Dustin Huffman’s role in the movie “The Rainman”. Daniel (born 1979), on the hands, is almost normal and can express himself very well, including how his mind seems to work. Daniel has the following extraordinary abilities:

I came upon the name of Miroslav Magnetic when looking for information about Dr. Alexander Imich, which has (by error, I guess) called me. When I saw what I saw about this man (on his personal pages) I was totally amazed. A rare skill like his, displayed on high quality video. Rare sights indeed.

Miroslav Magola, the Magnetic Man, seems to possess strong psychokinetic powers as he can attach to himself quite heavy objects. He can attach them to his hands or to his forehead. Perhaps he can more than that, but that’s what I’ve seen in the videos. Moreover, he can hold this way not only metallic objects but also ceramic or plastic, thus eliminating real magnetic force as the source of his ability.

There are lots of videos of him displaying his ability in good quality (see two videos embedded below). Apparently he was also verified by lots of scientists and skeptics, including the Lord of the Skeptics – Mr. James Randi, who did not agree to test his powers scientifically (maybe he was too afraid to lose his $1M. Need more reference on that). On of his websites the following information is written:

I’ve written before about my first qigong lesson. Nowadays, I still go the classes and am much more knowledgable on the subject.

But first, what is Qigong, anyway? Qigong (pronounced like chee-kong) is an ancient Chinese system of working with the Qi (Chi) energy. The translation from Chinese is something in the lines of “energy cultivation” or “Working with energy”. It is a system of exercises involving postures, movement, breathing, meditation and mind body interaction. Qigong was the basis both for the Chinese healing and to martial arts. As such there are many variations to qigong and some are more relevant to combat while others to healing.

I’ve learned that the specific form of qigong that I study is called YiQuan qigong (pronounced e-chuan). This specific form of qigong was founded in the 1920ies by master Wang Xiangzhai, who developed it out of another martial arts system, xingyiquan. Although it started as a form of martial arts qigong it is now studied mostly for health benefits. In many places it still learned as a martial arts qigong, similarly to kungfu. At the end of the post I attached two videos of master Yao Zongxun (1917-1985), who was the formal successor of Wang Xiangzhai. In these videos one can see the exercises.

As I wrote before, there are several types of exercises in the Yiquan. One type is call Shi li and they are motion exercises. The motion is usually slow and has many aspects to mastering it, including body control, relaxed and diaphragmic breathing, synchronous movements of various joints and energy control. You can see many Shi Li performed in the first video of Yao Zongxun starting with around 2:43 minutes.

I wanted to write about Psi-wheel for some time and now that Pete sent his Jar and pendulum exercise and asked me to write about the Psi Wheel exercise, here some info on that.

I first mentioned Psi-wheel a long time ago in the post Telekinesis videos and instructions. Now, I’ve searched the internet once again to see if I can find something new that’s interesting.

But, first, what’s the psi wheel and why it’s interesting. So, psi wheel is a simple construct that can be built by anyone at their home using just plain paper and a needle. What makes it special is that its design makes it very light. And the general presumption is that it easier to influence light things using telekinesis than heavy things. In that sense psi wheel is even better that the pendulum in jar that Pete proposed, since it’s even easier to move. And this is one of the reasons why telekinesis proponents and want to be’s like to use it. The problem with it, though, is that it’s too easy to influence a psi wheel using regular means, like air currents, and that’s what I personally don’t like about it.

The instructions to construct the psi wheel are as follows (from Wikipedia entry on psi wheels):

In August 2006 I wrote about an amazing video in the post Amazing video of the power of chi. This video is an excerpt from a documentary movie called “Ring of Fire”, shot in Indonesia. During the filming, one of the crew members got some problem with his eyes and was treated by a local healer using acupuncture, but different than regularly used. Then, the healer demonstrated his powers on the crew by “shocking” them with what felt like electrical charges from his hands or abdomen. The most shocking part of the footage is where he puts a newspaper on fire, allegedly only using his Chi energy. It is very famous footage and you can see it below:

A few days ago, drew hempel, who wrote some articles for this site, including You Can’t Fake The Full-lotus! Testimony of a qigong practitioner in the context of parapsychology, posted in comments a link to another video of the same person, done much later by brother of the crew member above. In this new footage, the brother tells more about the story and brings 3 people with him from the US to “check” this man’s claims and see his abilities. This footage is a must see as the man performs some amazing feats under pretty controlled conditions:

I’ve taken some time to look up this man and it seems he’s become quite famous since his brief and chance appearance in the “Ring of Fire” documentary. His name is John Chang (or John DiJang) and he is a direct heir to an ancient lineage of sages called the Mo-Pai. After the “Ring of Fire” was aired in the west, many people went looking for this man. One of these people was Kosta Danaos from Greece. He found John Chang and has asked him to be his teacher. Apparently, about a hundred people came to Chang to ask to become his students but he only accepted five and Kosta was the second.

In 2000, Kosta Danaos published a book, called The Magus of Java: Teachings of an Authentic Taoist Immortal where he tells about John Chang, his system (called neikung or Nei Kung). The book has some great reviews on Amazon and other sites and the first review on amazon is by Cynthia Sue Larson whom I interviewed for this site in May 2006 (see Interview with Cynthia Sue Larson). Cynthia is also a Top-500 reviewer on Amazon and hosts the great site Reality Shifters. Based on her review I decided to order the book from Amazon myself. This all is getting more interesting as I learn more.

After all the “discussion” on the post Spoon bending instructions and pictures and the skeptics requiring from Shannan to record a video of him bending a spoon, here it is. Shannan has recorded the video, sent it to me and I’ve uploaded it to YouTube. Watch the video, decide for yourself if it’s for real, and write in the comments. By the way, the original video is higher quality 640×480 pixels, but YouTube only allows 320×240.

Further discussion on spoon bending is in the forums at Spoon bending discussion.

One of the prizes of the Psi Experiments is a DVD from Bradley Gilbert. The DVD, called “Reduce Your Stress, Improve Your Health. Daoist Healing Qigong”. Brad has sent me one of the DVDs for a review. Bradley is a Master of Medical Qigong.

This DVD, produced in 2005, plays for a little more than an hour and is divided into to major parts:

1. A basic Qigong posture, followed by description and demonstration of 13 exercises (about 43 minutes)
2. A 20-minute video where the whole exercsise set is performed without narration, with only a background music. As I understand it, this part is a do-along track.

This program is based a healing qigong and is not for learning martial arts qigong. Its purpose is to release the stress and balance your body’s energies. The back of the DVD cover lists the following benefits of the Doaist Healing Qigong:

• Strengthen your energy
• Release tension in your body
• Feel relaxed and invigorated
• Calm your mind by releasing mental tension
• Know that you an be proactive in your health
• Enjoy your life more fully – your health, relationships

Wow, this must be the most amazing telekinesis video I've seen (together with the one where the guy light a newspaper). The following video footage is from a television program, I believe in China. It shows an elder moving bricks, a small tank with water and breaking glass cup only with the power of his Chi. What's also interesting is that he can both move the things away from him (push) and towards (pull) him as well.

I'd like the visitors speaking Chinese to translate what's being said in the video and write it in the comments for all to know.

Update: A reader posted a link, in a comment below the article, to another great video from Ripley's believe it or not program about a Qi Gong healer that can heat very strongly with his hands (about 200 F). He also demonstrates "Light Qi Gong" where his body weight is low. It's an amazing video as well. Check out the comments