Really scary stuff: My ideas!

Intro:
There is going to be a bit of a change-up this week. I believe I have finished telling most of the significant stories in my collection. That is, stories that seem to have some sort of commonality, that happened to me, or that I think have credibility. After this it will be mostly curiosities, fun stories, or whatever stories.

This week I have decided to put forward some ideas that I have about the supernatural, for what ever its worth. And in turn I am going to open up the blog to comments. I’m still not getting many readers of Ectoplasm, so if I get comments from one or two readers I guess I will have to be satisfied.

My thoughts:
To begin, I’m not saying that I actually believe the following to be true. It is just sort of my working hypothesis. I have a handful of reoccurring facts and I’m trying to figure how they fit together.

I’m starting to wonder whether when people experience a supernatural event that the event is just localized. That is, something strange did happen to the person but what happened was only intended for that person. In essence reality shifted, but only briefly, and only in one place, and only for one person. Outsiders that are nearby may or may not notice something. In the stories of Tara and Henrietta, Mark and I only saw a light or felt being rubbed, but we didn’t take in the full event. And even in the case of my wife she only heard a voice. Was she also supposed to have seen Henrietta? When I was pushed down along the wickets in the bank it seemed that only I was aware of what had happened. No one else in the bank seemed to react. Rat was woken by bells in the middle of the night, but no one else. She saw only half of Terry’s ghost. Was she supposed to have seen his full body? The chap who saw the flying saucer saw it until he went to wake up his friends, then it was gone.

I think this idea makes sense because of the contradictions found with supernatural or inexplicable events. No one could ever make me believe that those events that happened to me didn’t really occur. It wasn’t just in my mind. Those papers from the windstorm were still on the floor the next morning. Something really did happen. Maybe some of the details have blurred over time, but the events occurred. But if someone else had been around during the windstorm in my bedroom, would they have seen the same thing? UFO stories demonstrate this best. A person sees a UFO, but the rest of the city doesn’t? How could that be? Yet the person is certain they saw a UFO. Possibly the UFO existed only for them. It also explains the irrational nature of UFO stories. Why would aliens come to our planet and just zoom into a city for a sixty second visit and then zoom out again? What was gained? Why risk being seen? Out-of-body/near-death experiences are another example. Anyone who has had this happen is absolutely convinced that what they experienced really did happen, yet other people that are around at the time usually report seeing something different at the time. Did the person hallucinate the event, or did they experience a different reality?

Another question I have is this: is it an outside force that is warping reality or is it the person experiencing the event? The person mourning the death of a loved one could be altering their own reality. Admittedly it is a weird idea, but on the other hand the idea of ghosts or spirits returning to Earth is just as unbelievable really.

I have this idea. There is really no basis to it at all; it just came to me in a dream once. And it just makes me wonder. The dream was very short. It probably lasted just ten or fifteen seconds. In it I was in another world, as in another universe or plain of existence. I was asked whether I was going to carry on with the test and I replied that I had decided to quit and not be tested anymore. And that was the dream. Not much was said, but much was understood. I understood in the dream that I was being tested on Earth – for what I do not know – and that I had abandoned this challenge, if you will; presumably a challenge for some sort of advancement in the other world. Now I think this dream was just a dream and nothing more than that. I don’t think really that I caught a glimpse into another world, but then again the idea is interesting. Ever since I have wondered whether possibly we simultaneous exist in two worlds: one on Earth and a second in … well I don’t know. It could be a spirit world, it could be a world in another dimension of space, I really can’t say. To surmise further, I wonder whether that self in the other world isn’t constantly interacting with the self in this world. People often believe that God or a guardian angel is constantly looking after them. Could it be that it is really just themselves in another plain of existence? And what if there are times when they interact with us, possibly preferably while we are asleep, that a ripple occurs in the fabric of reality. That reality warps just briefly as the two universes interact.

Thus when we say we saw a ghost, was it really a ghost, or was it just the way we in that the other world warped reality for us? True, if we in that other world can warp reality for ourselves then why not for other people? When we die in the physical world why not continue interacting with the living from this other world? I have no real answer for this. And how does this explain UFOs? A spaceship is a pretty big warp in reality. Do aliens also visit us this way? But are the UFOs really physical or just visual? Maybe we just create the appearance of them for unknown reasons. This could explain why UFOs are mostly a western phenomena.

Well clearly I’m just rambling here. But that is because there are still many pieces to this puzzle that do not fit, so I keep turning them around to see what happens.

If I haven’t bored you to death I would like to comment on one other aspect of the soul or spirit or what ever you call it. I have proof that the spirit must exist and I have proof that the spirit can’t exist. First, I don’t know about you but I have this minds eye that experiences life. Life doesn’t just happen; it is experienced by something else that sees my body as being some sort of extension. But how can that be because my brain is made up of only neurons that have electro-chemical discharges; one being fired by the other. It doesn’t matter how complex the circuitry of the mind is, in the end it is just synapses firing. There is nothing about our understanding of physical reality that can explain why one neuron firing in coordination with a million others should create a sense of existence. What makes all of the neurons firing in millions of locations of the brain at once create a singular experience. Therefore the unification of the mind is just an illusion. If you say yes, but it is millions of neurons firing, which makes it so much more complex. But what is it that is unifying them? It has to be something non-physical.

On the contrary, I know that a spirit can’t exist outside the physical world. We know this from brain injury studies. If a portion of a brain is damaged, that part of the mind, including the mind’s eye also disappears. If you sever a connection between two parts of a brain then so is the mind. There are no channels for communication through the spirit world to tie the disconnected halves back together. And as the mind slowly deteriorates so does the mind’s ability to perceive its own existence. If there is a spirit that can sense and think outside of the physical work then the loss of the physical mind shouldn’t affect it.

I have no resolution to this paradox, but I think it is important to resolve. But possibly the idea of the two selves in two worlds could be the key.

I have said enough for this week but will get back to these topics again later. I would enjoy hearing about your personal experiences with supernatural or inexplicable events, as well as your ideas on the topic.