Quote:
Ellis Amdur wrote:
I - can't - help - it.
One other whole area of questioning and research that people brush off. Shamanism. Paranormal powers. I can hear the scoffing - but is it any different from scoffing about IT?............
Just sayin'
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Well, here we all are finally having a nice logically exchange in this thread, and then
SHAZAM!, the master pot stirrer himself jumps down from the clouds and throws in a bit of his own magic
IMO, I think the stories of supernatural and/or paranormal powers are just a result of ego fueled self delusion - when accomplished martial artists were confronted with power they could not understand or duplicated, it just had to be from a supernatural source; after all, if it was not, they should be able to duplicate it. Also, there probably was a certain amount of deliberate exaggeration to build up and foster along the reputation of O Sensei from his dedicated disciples. I believe Tohei talk about those exaggerations in one of his interviews in Aikido Journal; I think it was the same interview where he said O Sensei only taught him how to truly relax.
Now I am not discounting the possibility of Shamanism. The truth is, if you can not say "been there done that" with O Sensei, you will never know for sure the source of his power - and even if you can say that, you probably still won't know; that is somewhat evident from his deshi since no one has duplicated his skill level.
So, the two choices for the source of his power appear to be shamanism or IP/AIKI - personally, I think too much has been attributed to shamanism in the past, and I do not know of anyone actively teaching a particularly successful shamanistic approach nowadays, so I think I will continue the pursuit of IP/AIKI - at least in that, there now appears to be a path to follow that is producing results
Greg