Dowsing revisited

[udor]

I think I was just trying to prove it to myself and to the wife who didnt believe it. Now she does because she had control of the coin, and I always got it right. Having said that, I'm not interested in proving it to anyone else. I don't see myself using or developing the skill as I don't really see a need in the modern world with all the high tech gizomo's we have.

[Dave J.]

I discovered quite by accident in my teens that I had an ability related to dowsing, although I wasn't thinking of it in "dowsing" terms at the time. About 8 years ago I decided to explore dowsing by doing it, reasoning about the results, and reasoning about what other people were saying on the "old" Treasurenet LRL forum. In other words, my interest was in a scientific perspective rather than in dowsing becoming a hobby.

The only kind of dowsing that interests me is blinded dowsing, since unblinded dowsing already has good explanations.

I came to the conclusion that despite the very compelling feeling that the rods are moving themselves, it is in fact the hands that are moving them subconsciously and since it's subconscious, the conscious mind feels only the rod movement hence the sensation that the rods are moving themselves.

About a year ago my daughter mentioned dowsing to a friend, he didn't know what it was, so I offered to demo. I bent a couple of coathangers and volunteered to locate utilities crossing the parking lot while I walked with my eyes shut and he watched for traffic. Going back and forth I got good solid hits at a particular location noted by my daugter's friend. ......When I was done with that, I opened my eyes and I was at 90 degrees to a phone line pedestal. So I said "Aha! Success! .....but not until it has been verified!" (Because no dowse is a good dowse until it's been ground truthed.) The following day I brought an electronic utility line tracer from work and traced the utilities. They didn't cross the parking lot, they went alongside it.

I got good solid consistent hits in both directions, dowsing blind. It was a good demo at the time, since what was visible to the eye seemed to validate it. The puzzle is this: why consistent hits in a blind dowse when there was nothing there, the utilities ran elsewhere?

My "controversial unprovable theory" is that "someone up there" was jerking me around. It ain't much of a theory but it's better than nothing and it has no need to rely on pseudoscience.

--Dave J.

[udor]

I'd say there was something there. You don't get blindfolded solid hits for nothing.

[Dave J.]

In any other area of life, if I obviously screw up, then it's a screwup. I apply this same standard to dowsing. I traced the utilities with a Fisher TW-6, the industry standard 2-box unit of which I was the design engineer. Furthermore, I determined that some distance from where I'd got the hits, utilities did cross the parking lot, and there was physical evidence of that area having been trenched (plus it jogged my memory of the trenching job which was for the purpose of installing those utilities). I had gotten no dowsing response there.

Where I got the solid dowse, there was in fact "something there"-- a good laugh. At my expense.

Eight years ago I invented a new kind of dowsing-- "dowsing without alabis". Nobody on Tnet liked the idea but me. Other dowsers when they get skunked don't want to admit that maybe they're not all that good at it, so they create alabis. Of course when you have an alabi that redefines every failure as a success, all possibility of learning is extinguished.

--Dave J.

[udor]

Oh well ;-).

I'm pretty sure dowsing works. But as I said before, what's the use of it?

[Dave J.]

I suppose the most productive use of dowsing is in locating utilities. The guys who do it are not the likes of Hung and Art who are ideologue braggarts praising LRL's, they're typically guys using coathangers who only do it because it seems to work for them. And their locates typically get ground truthed, unlike most LRL supposed locates.

This doesn't mean they're ready to throw away the more respectable tools of the trade. Nobody paints a locate mark based on a dowse, you have to verify it using conventional methods. A dowse is usually either a clue how to begin a technical locate that you were having trouble with, or for your own work that someone else isn't going to have to rely on.

Dowsing is on the decline in the utility locating business because it is becoming more of a professional service that is contracted and which is accompanied by potential liability.

If you read my "Art's bedtime story" post, it provides an explanation why people using coathangers sometimes seem to get good results whereas the LRL guys have nothing to show for their efforts but a bunch of bragging about what they could do if Amazing Randi would stop requiring a double-blind test protocol.

--Dave J.

[g-sani]

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The simplest explanation is that the mindset of trying to prove something is not the mindset of trying to find something, and so under "prove it" conditions whatever dowsing ability you might have, isn't going to be active under those conditions.
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--Dave J.

words that hold gold!

Mind you that there are people that can do it always and they don't really care doing it even infront of many others.
Simply they have reached much higher levels as dowsers but it is more likely that you will not come across one since they don't like talking about that whith others.
You see probably this is because they belong to some other category now and they prefer talking about dowsing whith people close to their level.The best experience I had once was when I saw one of them in action talking about the shape of a silver target when he dowsed it from 300meters away.Up to that time I thought you must step on a target before you can do such an evaluation but I was wrong.There are people arround that they can tell a thing like that from a distance but it is only a few.
Of course they were amateurs themselves once and I know they were discussing their progress or dowsing more openly at that time.
Well thats how it goes we like it or not, and when I asked why he is so mystique now one he replied that after some time you get bored of saying the same things all over again so you stop doing it in order to keep getting better yourself.
Regards
g-sani

[Don Jose de La Mancha]

good morning Rudy, You posted --> Sorry but reincarnation runs counter to my strong beliefs in Frisbeetarianism.
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I have recently read that that is a belief that after death the soul gets stuck on the roof??
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UDOR my friend: You posted -->I'm pretty sure dowsing works. But as I said before, what's the use of it?
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If you can program yourself to find that coin, you can also program yourself to find 'anything'. For help in concentrating, without realizing why, many resort to a "witness".

Don Jose de La Mancha

"I exist to Live, not live to exist".

[Carl-NC]

I'd say there was something there. You don't get blindfolded solid hits for nothing.

Not only is it possible, dowsers get 'em all the time.

[Rudy]

good morning Rudy, You posted --> Sorry but reincarnation runs counter to my strong beliefs in Frisbeetarianism.
__________________

I have recently read that that is a belief that after death the soul gets stuck on the roof??
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Fundamentally.