NationStates Jolt Archive

Ok that was probably misleading..

Still, I wanted to ask you all: what's with stuff like past-life experiences, near-death experiences, elves in pink underwear & other nifty spiritual/divine/superstitious stuff?

I ask, because someone asked me. All this religious/spiritual stuff is beyond what I can read up on, especially if I want to post here, read my newspapers every day & hold on to my job. Normally I'd simply dismiss it out of hand & assume people experience the stuff because they expect to experience it (or something similarly mundane). But I'm not about to tell someone there probably is a perfectly ordinary explanation when I haven't got the faintest idea what an ordinary explanation might be. Religious/spiritual explanations for such phenomena are welcome as well.

So help me out if you can, thank you.

Just don't hijack this & turn it into a thread about God vs. atheists.

I think a lot of the visions people experience during NDEs are supposed to be due to the way the brain shuts itself down.

What is an NDE?

What is an NDE?
Near death experience.

Near Death Experience. My friend was struck by lightening recently, and he said he had an out of body experience, watching as they pulled his body out of the bath house. (don't ask why he was there). He's all right now. In fact, we found a patch of some guy getting hit by lightening for him.

Err. Well, I've been experiencing some of the things (e.g. Past life experiences) you've mentioned since before I knew what they were. For about two years I've had a "dream" of my death in a past life. How vivid it is varies, but I've woken up from time time time bleeding or with cut marks on my body. As for OBEs (out of body experiences, not "Order of the British Empire"), you can in fact learn to control these, often termed "Astral Projection". However, I don't think this is the place to discuss such matters. If you wish to research any of these, going to Google and typing "Otherkin", and then clicking on some of the links, will tell you something close to my theories on past lives. Similarly, you may find something from searching "Astral Projection" or "Out of body experiences".
Hope I've been of some help.

Ok that was probably misleading..

I thought this was about DnD.

I thought this was about DnD.
Life is cruel.

Oh wow. That's a big area to cover. I'll try throwing a couple of things in now and see where this goes. Bear in mind that a lot of my ideas of Systemity will come out here (yeah, it's still sort of there, though I think it suits the title Philosophy better than Religion).

Basically, a significant amount of the spiritual can be explained in terms of interactions between the physical. If you consider the soul a compound entity, built up exponentially from almost limitingly small blocks that are essentially information being exchanged between two biological compounds, and consider the possibility that a soul itself might form part of another compound entity higher up on the heirarchy, you can at least conceptually reason why these things seem to happen as they do.

To start with, let's separate mythological creatures from the rest of them, since those can be fairly trivial to explain. Generally, creatures have a strong basis in the actual animal kingdom, since some of the first stories told about them would have based their form on things the listeners could visualise and identify with. Songwriters would be very adept at forging new types of beings where it suited their narrative. This is most likely the origin of the likes of elves, unicorns and the original chimera (they do conceptually exist now, which is interesting in itself, but anyway). Generally, most mythical beings are simply a literary device that has become canon in pre-modern tales. There are the odd one or two that are simply confused retellings of actual encounters with animals, or possibly even people, because we were all racists back then.

For the most part, I think something similar is the case with ghosts. Particuarly in the sense that a ghost can actually manifest physically and interact with objects. However, whether or not a person's spirit can return in whole is another issue. I could argue that people share parts of themselves with those they meet, and these parts can continue to influence the compound spirits they have interacted with even long after the general body has been disbanded. This seems to work well if you consider the human soul a deconstructable entity.

In fact, Past-life experiences are almost the same thing. Each of us is made up of a lot of material that might once have belonged to someone else. Perhaps our spirit is in part comprised of other spirits, with whom we can experience some sort of connection or of whom we can develop a sense of awareness.

Near death experiences, on the other hand, are kind of the reverse process. As the links that hold your own consciousness together begin to weaken, you can briefly expand into other stages of awareness, hence some unusual experiences on the part of the observer.

That's the supernatural dealt with. The religious is better dealt with in the light of other ideas; ultimately, there's not an awful lot to it, but its real awesomeness is in its ability to pull other ideas together.

Why not Gretzky as well?

Why not Gretzky as well?
Ice hockey is beyond paranormal. 0_o

May I recomend The Demon-Haunted World: Science As a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan? The book is quite excellent and goes into great detail about debunking most of what you asked about.

I don't believe in anything that starts with the letter "G." So no Gnomes, Gods, Ghosts, Gremlins, Geriatricians, Gratuities, or Graceland! It's all a lie!

I grew up in a house that I thought was haunted. I would always get these creepy feelings, and have bad dreams and such.

I think most of it was in my imagination though, because this guy killed himself in my room before we moved in. When we were replacing the carpet we pulled it up and found a blood stain on the floor where my bed was, so I quit sleeping in my room.


At the time I was sure it was haunted, but now I am pretty sure that I was just freaking myself out.

Thanks a lot all of you. Seems the title was a bit misleading, since I didn't actually mean to ask about mythological animals. It was just too tempting to include Goblins when asking about Ghosts & Gods & such.
Speaking of which, you should've just said Gretzky is God ;)

Anyway, to be a bit more precise, I'm asking for your opinions & explanations concerning near-death experiences, past-past life experiences & ghosts/hauntings.

By near-death experiences, I primarily meant incidents where people have been clinically dead, experienced something & then been revived. Though I suppose out of body experiences counts as well. Glad to hear your friend is alright by the way, Pschycotic Pschycos.

Past-life experiences would be stuff like people who can relate real happenings & locations from a past life, though they've never been to these places & never heard about the events they relate. As far as I know, people need to be under hypnosis to pull stunts like this.

By ghosts, hauntings & such, I meant people who've actually encountered ghosts, or people who've had visions of family members & friends appear before them, only to find out these people have just died.
I too managed to scare myself silly over my imagination as a kid. Everyone has I think. I'm asking for your thoughts about the incidents where people have actually seen something, or had their china thrown at them.

I'm an Atheist with a capital A. I don't believe in anything supernatural what so ever. And regardless of what anyone throws at me on here, I think it's highly unlikely that will change.
However, I'm interested in hearing all explanations & opinions, not just ones I'll be inclined to believe. I also have a library fine of nightmarish proportions, so while book references are appreciated, links, personal explanations or things snagged from books, are much more helpful right now.

Kamsaki, that's an intriguing idea. You believe 'souls' to be something similar to the currently dominant hypothesis about gravity? And you believe them to be intelligent things, or at least carry traits from the persons they were part of?

I tend to be somewhat skeptical, but given that some of these things have been reported by cultures all around the world for thousands of years, I'm almost inclined to wonder whether there is something more behind them.

I tend to be somewhat skeptical, but given that some of these things have been reported by cultures all around the world for thousands of years, I'm almost inclined to wonder whether there is something more behind them.
Which is why I'm disinclined to give my curious friend some hollow answer & why he managed to pique my curiousity.

As for OBEs (out of body experiences, not "Order of the British Empire"), you can in fact learn to control these, often termed "Astral Projection".

Actually, I have had experience here. And there is a scientific explaination. I occasionally suffer from a condition known as sleep paralysis. It is usually associated with narcoleptics, but can affect others.

There is a trigger (I don't know the medical terms) in your brain which partially paralyzes you while you sleep. This is why you remain motionless for the most part, even though you may be running or whatever while dreaming. Tossing/turning, etc occur when this "trigger" isn't completely off. Now, in some cases (for whatever reason), the person can be AWAKE, yet the trigger is still in the "off" position temporarily. This almost always occurs right before falling alseep, or while you are "waking up". You are conscious, yet your body is paralyzed. In this state, a person often feels an "evil presence" around them, and severe paranoia. For people with experience in lucid dreaming, (where you know you are dreaming and can affect what happens in the dream) you can overcome the paranoia, and imagine yourself floating and even seeing things from a perspective outside your body. (OBE's, Astral Projection) Some people have even greater control, and can actually enter this state voluntarily when on the edge of falling asleep.
For those who do not have control, another semi-dream state can take over, triggered by the feeling of evil, one which is VERY unpleasant. This state is theorized to be the explaination for many "alien abductions", because they often fit the facts. You are paralyzed. You feel a malevolent presence. And either at the time, or in retrospect (upon hearing of such abductions) a person believes that was what occured in their dream-like state.

It works on a similar principle like when you fall asleep with the TV still on, and you dream of something that is on the TV, but in a weird way.

Ganesha the Lord

I heard a theory somewhere that ghostly visions in old, abandoned houses might be caused by mold spores having a psychidelic affect on the brain. I don't remember any evidence to back that up but it is a possibility.

Also, this may not be what you're looking for but I'm a sleep walker. Once I woke up with my phone in hand and in the morning I found out that I had called six different people. It may not be spirtitual, but it was weird.

I heard a theory somewhere that ghostly visions in old, abandoned houses might be caused by mold spores having a psychidelic affect of the brain. I don't remember any evidence to back that up but it is a possibility.

Also, this may not be what you're looking for but I'm a sleep walker. Once I woke up with my phone in hand and in the morning I found out that I had called six different people. It may not be spirtitual, but it was weird.
Hahaha! I know a girl who managed to walk naked to a busstop at 4 am in the morning. Thankfully nothing bad happened & a busdriver contacted the police.

I like the mold idea. Even if it isn't true, it's fun.

By ghosts, hauntings & such, I meant people who've actually encountered ghosts, or people who've had visions of family members & friends appear before them, only to find out these people have just died.

One more thing. My dad told me that when he was younger, he slept at a freind's house, because the guy's wife had just been buried that day. He swears he saw her shadow in the hall, but he also admits that he was that he was barely sober enough to unbutton his shirt.

Kamsaki, that's an intriguing idea. You believe 'souls' to be something similar to the currently dominant hypothesis about gravity? And you believe them to be intelligent things, or at least carry traits from the persons they were part of?
In some sense, I guess. Certainly, the idea of exchanged information plays a vital role in the idea, and the degree to which information is exchanged depends exponentially on the amount of exchanging going on within each body (what I like to call its complexity) as it does in gravitational theory.

I don't know about intelligent things, as such; the idea of a soul is that it's comprised of the interaction of its component parts, so it's not that those parts carry traits but more that they're what contribute to forming those traits in the first place. To use a computer analogy, they're like state devices. These component parts can form a sort of a feedback loop within the complex system of the soul; they'll change states under external variables. Interactions with other systems at higher levels can filter down and affect the states at the lower levels.

If states are such that one individual has been significantly affected by the states of another, you'll notice these interacting in exactly the same way as they did in the host. You'll have made a little copy of some of yourself in the other person, effectively. It's like a mini ghost. This may be sufficient to mess about with your own spiritual sense. In fact, you may not notice it, but we experience a sort of ghost-perception of those we're close to even while they're still alive. It's only because we happen to know they're not alive any more that we pay particular attention to it later on.

Past life experiences, on the other hand, are where your components still retain some sense of their previous owner. They're still interacting in a way that was preset by the lives of those in the past.

As for near-death experiences? We're being constantly influenced by "souls" on a grander scale than human. Pack behaviour is an interaction between you and your mates, community is an interaction of human clusters, society is an interaction of communities, ecosystems are interactions of societies and so on. The idea of near-death experiences is simply that, for a while, these "souls" influence you a lot more than usual due to your weakening internal ties that would otherwise give you a strong sense of self.


And ultimately, that's why prayer seems to work in circumstances that depend on other people fulfilling your request. Appealing to the soul community (often called God) can have a knock-on effect on those humans connected to it. Admittedly, I haven't really thought about this one too much due to the slightly surreal nature of it, but it seems to fit the general idea.


Of course, the chances are that people could just be making up the stories. It's a nice little thought experiment though. ^^;