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stellauk -> RE: Do ghosts exist? (11/14/2011 2:25:58 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: BKSir
quote:
ORIGINAL: stellauk
I see the connection, and it's pretty logical to me and consistent enough not to be dismissed as being something else. When someone tells me that they've seen a ghost I believe them. I don't have their perception to know for sure, but I'm open-minded enough to accept what they say and their experiences.
This is where I diverge. I tend to be very very skeptical about things.
If someone tells me that they've had an experience, I tend to believe that it is possible, but, immediately want to know more as I sincerely doubt they did. It also depends on the individual. If it's someone I know is flighty, flaky or somehow otherwise kind of not quite all there, I have a LOT more doubt about their claims.
Myself, if I hadn't experienced things personally, I would probably be arguing as obnoxiously and closed mindedly as other people on this thread, without any intention of letting there be a possibility that there might be something more out there than this piddly amount we see in every day life.
I believe in science, in evidence, in details, in the tangible. I don't believe that anything is unknowable. I believe that there are a LOT of things we don't YET know though.
I see where you're coming from.
But is science really all that tangible? What about psychiatry for example which isn't that much more than 100 years old?
You also do realize that 'science' cannot agree on a universally applicable definition of the truth? I read somewhere a few months back that there's at least six or seven different theories about truth.
There are two states of being - reality or actuality and possibility. That what is known up to the present time is reality, present time actuality, and beyond that, into the future, that's possibility.
You see there's been a few statements here about dead people being gone - but how do we know? How does anyone know what actually happens after death? I've experienced clinical death for a few short minutes, but even I don't know. I don't know because at the time I was heavily sedated on a life support machine in an ICU unit. I know that there is something, but I don't know what it is and I won't find out until I die.
You see to know what happens or doesn't happen after death is to defy the basic principles of time and existence which is applicable throughout the entire Universe. As far as I'm aware there is only one Universe, of which we are all a part, and the principles are well.. universal.
Whenever I come across something which is unexplained I accept it within the parameters of what I know to be possible and preferably, credible. I may not see it at the start, I may not understand it, but if I apply myself and investigate, I discover and learn a bit more of what is possible through increasing my awareness and seeking answers to questions.
Some people have mentioned hallucinations. Okay, it could be. But then again if nothing has taken place to alter the state of mind then how do you explain the hallucination? Do people spontaneously hallucinate? If so, for what reasons? Under what circumstances do people spontaneously hallucinate? If the mind is producing a hallucination, then what is causing it?
This brings us right back to the Universe. Change is perhaps the only constant in the entire Universe. But what is change, if not an altered state caused by some action or reaction? Where is the action which produces the reaction of the hallucination?
I stand by my assertion that the most logical explanation is that all this takes place through perception and projection. We all perceive, we all project.
Which comes back to what you were saying just as much as it comes back to truth and reality. To understand what reality is, you first have to perceive it. But that what you perceive as reality may not be the exact same thing. We are all human, imprecise, we all have different levels of awareness, experiences, cultures, backgrounds, and we see pretty much what we want to see and that what we are aware of. We infer, different things go through our mind, we may be aware of it because it's happening consciously. But we may not, because it might also be happening subconsciously.
I know I can look at a picture maybe a dozen times, and notice something different every time I look at it. In fact I doubt I can perceive it exactly the same way twice.
I feel we're saying pretty much the same thing but arriving at the conclusion or end result differently, without any difference in validity of either your way or my way. It's just different.
I'm not going to dismiss anyone's claims here, because I can't. I'm not them, I didn't perceive what they perceived, but the fact that I can't equally means I cannot dispute it either. Therefore I accept it as possible. I keep an open mind.
This is exactly the discipline Rudolf Steiner said was necessary for studying or investigating anthroposophy, or spiritual science. You need independence of judgment and freedom of thought. The results of any such investigation is to be presented 'in terms accessible to logical understanding'.
This is because ghosts, spiritual and other paranormal phenomena are not part of the natural world, therefore they do not conform to the principles of 'natural' sciences.
I have also experienced such phenomena, although I haven't seen a ghost, and I have experienced enough to know not to accept that what I perceived as is, but to somehow find a way of verifying it. You see, I'm sceptical too, but in a different way.
I'm less inclined to believe such things as time warps and stuff. Time is relative and the way it is measured as a concept is constant. Time doesn't warp, but someone's perception of it might.
'The capacity for human understanding and knowledge is truly infinite.'
Rudolf Steiner.
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