I am becoming quite a fan of Derren Brown…

This documentary-styled one-hour film sees Derren in America attempting to raise questions about the validity of certain religious and spiritual belief systems; belief systems that people are encouraged to base their lives upon - such as new-age faiths and mainstream Christianity.

Link
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1175300547407479800


From Derren’s website….

PSYCHOLOGY OF SPIRITUAL SECTS.
The psychological dynamics underlying the creation and growth of spiritual movements.

Link
http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/psymove.html

I'm impressed. I bought a few of his DVD's so my family can watch and learn how to read people and their patterns, but more importantly, to be aware of how much we are 'controlled'. To have the knowledge is to be empowered to make your own decisions. Just one more thing to add to the list of raising children and loving spouses.

Anyone seen Criss Angel

http://crissangel.com - he can do everything that is taught at the Ramtha School of dollars - drives throught the city blindfolded - walks on water - walks across buildings in thin air - walks through glass - got buried alive and crawled his way out - check it out - his show on tv is called Mindfreak.

When I first saw him I thought - wow, he must have graduated from the Ramtha school - dahhhhhhhhhhh

-

it is amazing how changed I have become in just 4 months - don't believe anything anymore - just me. And I feel great, safe and full of joy - no more fear - wow, what a life lesson this one has been.

I don't know quite what to make of Derren Brown. In the "Messiah" video how does he manage to get so much information correct?

The remote viewing was impressive yet he claims he is not doing anything

Ideas, anyone?

Derren B is a brilliant 'mentalist' who is honest when he states that he has no psychic power---it is all tricks, misdirection, suggestion, and stage magic. Like any good magician he will not explain everything he does--they have a "code."

I know how to do a few tricks that fool nearly all the people I've tried them on, so I can understand how an expert like Brown can be so effective.
If he explained the remote view trick, you would probably feel really naive for not picking it up--but he will not. I do not know how he did it....sorry.

As I watched him perform that one in Sedona it reminded me of a minor stunt I pulled off there once. A client asked me to see if I could locate his brother who had joined a weird somewhat secretive cult, an offshoot of Ashtar Command, that believed in contact with aliens from another star system. In fact, the brother was one of ten or so members that claimed to be "walk-ins" or beings that had taken over a human body. My client received a letter from his brother saying "This body is no longer your brother" and he gave its new name while stating that family should no longer attempt to contact him. I guessed the group from certain details the brother gave and so I told the client that his brother may be in Sedona.

My wife and I were passing through Sedona later that month. I stopped in the Eye of the Vortex bookstore. It was early so I was alone at the time with one of the owners, a tall thin rasputinlike fellow with full beard. We chatted, I got him into a discussion about Jack London's (White Fang, Martin Eden author) paranormal beliefs. The owner was very impressed with me, he claimed he was a seer of sorts and wanted to "read my palm." I let him do it and in a few minutes had him believing that I was trained in martial arts (I am not) and that I had some kind of New Age destiny. Once I established rapport my palm reader became quite open with me about the goings on in Sedona. He knew the 'aliens' group (I figured he would) and the person I was looking for by his 'alien' name (this was luck).

The client was relieved to know where he could at least find his brother.

I think that mentalists like Brown take these same skills I used and refine them to a level that is way beyond me and the average observer. As a result the effect appears to be paranormal or 'miraculous'.

btw, the mentalist Amazing Kreskin 'read my mind' once in 1972 at a show on Steel Pier in Atlantic City in front of a thousand people---I know precisely how he did that trick--but that's another story.
Joe

Oh..common Joe... Re Kreskin..

You can tell us..
We won't tell anybody..

From what I have observed of Derren Brown…he states that he is using everything from trickery to hypnosis, subliminals and mind control. Put that lot together with his photographic memory and a keen understanding of the human mind….
Thats how he does it...and honestly,
Not like some people I know.

Thank goodness he was not traumatized as a child, or perhaps we would have another 35.000 year old enlightened Neanderthal wreaking havoc amongst the faithful..

Dark chuckle

David

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Some info from Derrens website
Derren was born in 1971 in Croydon. It was a difficult birth: his mother was in Devon at the time. A precocious and puzzling only child for some years, he liked to paint, foster obsessive habits, and once set fire to a neighbour's boat by accident. Later, after his brother was born, Derren went to study Law and German at Bristol University and fell in love with the city. This was still at the time when marriages between man and city were frowned upon, so rather than risk public derision, Derren decided to just live there after graduating and vowed never to leave. During this time he didn't have two pennies to rub together, which was a shame as it was his only way of keeping warm. He began to perform magic in bars and restaurants, and gave occasional hypnosis shows. Meanwhile he continued to paint unflattering portraits of the rich and famous.
In 1999 he was asked by what was then Channel 4 to put a mind-reading programme together for people's televisions. Their first choice, Cheryl from Bucks Fizz, had turned out to be **** at it. A year later, Easter 2000, at ten in the evening, Derren and his family gathered round a fuzzy grey picture on the corner of their living room. It was of the once popular actress Nerys Hughes, and this had become something of a festive tradition. Later in the year, at Christmas, 'Derren Brown: Mind Control, with Derren Brown' quite literally aired. It was an immediate success, and gained Derren a cool, underground kudos which he described as "not enough".
Mind Controls 2 and 3 followed, then a series, then a brief spell in prison, and then in October 2003 Derren caused an international furore with 'Derren Brown Plays Russian Roulette Live'. This secured his notoriety with the public and his big apartment in London. "Bristol can shove itself", he said.
The Seance followed soon after, which was Derren's first look at the area of spiritualism and paranormal phenomena, and the first show where his intelligent scepticism could be expressed. Derren says of the show, "By now I was properly famous and could pretty much buy whatever I wanted". Further specials have followed, including 'Messiah', which took him undercover to the US to see if leaders in paranormal belief systems would wrongly endorse him as the real thing.
Since then he gets several letters of complaint a week from psychics and Christians. He is sensitive to everyone's objections, but knows that at least the latter group will forgive him. His workload keeps him exhausted and irritable 52 weeks a year, and he continues to live in London with a large collection of taxidermy and two rather fatalistic parrots, where he spends any free weekends painting.

"Magic isn't about fakes and switches and dropping coins into your lap. It's about entering into a relationship with a person whereby you can lead him, economically and deftly, to experience an event as magical"
Derren Brown

Link
http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk/biography

David...okay, I'll tell the Kreskin story. I was working on Steel Pier as a portrait artist in 1972, took a break one day to watch the Kreskin show. He was wowing the audience with people's rings and watches that people had no idea how he got them off them. He asked everyone to write the name of something or someone on a card his assistants passed out. He would guess what the name meant and how it was related to the writer. He ran around helping them take the cards that were supposed to be put in a bin that he could not touch. He slipped mine in his coat pocket as he ran away from me back to the stage.

I wrote "Mandrake" on the card. Sure enough, after calling and correctly identifyng three others, he called out that he was thinking of "Mandrake" and he asked who wrote it. I stood up and thought real hard of my pet black cat named Mandrake but Kreskin kept saying something about the comic strip, Mandrake the Magician. I let the crowd think he got it right....back in those days I was not into exposing anything.

Joe