Are visions from God, or the Devil or indigestion?

Quote from schrafinator

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So, is the reason you believe someone is the conviction with which they believe what they are saying?

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I'll be there are at least 30 or 40 people who believe that they are Jesus, and they hold this belief passionately, with all theiir hearts.
Yes , but if any of those 40 people ROSE FROM THE DEAD you would need to acknowledge some validity there. There are some things beyond our explanation and clearly beyond the realm of physics. It is very possible that I would have been dead more than 20 years ago if an angel didn't intervene on my behalf. I might add, that this was BEFORE I called myself a "born again christian". I will give the details of the experience in my next post, but I promise that it defies the law of physics. This was NOT a dream. It was real.DanA growing LIST OF Musical Equipment to BUY or SELL

Now that IS cool and deeply fascinating! You've convinced me. I love it.Can anyone prove it wrong? Anyone?------------------
o--greyline--o

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Here's a funny thing: I'm not sure this would happen. I have a playful - partly serious - notion of why this might not be so.

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Well, what I described is how sleep/dream research is done. Subjects get hooked up to an EEG monitor through electrodes stuck to their scalp, they go to sleep, and when REM waves show up on the monitor and they are woken up, they almost always report a dream. If you wake them up during stages of sleep where other kinds of brain waves are going on, they do not report dreams.It's really very consistent.

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I frequently have dreams which lead up to an unpredictable waking waking event. For example, in my dream I'm driving and I crash the car: I wake up at that instant just as an overloaded bookshelf in my library crashes to the floor. I know many people have similar experiences and find them very mysterious.

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Hmm, I am skeptical of this, sorry.Are these dreams really leading up to this unpredictable event, or did you dream the car crash because you heard the bookcase crash to the floor? The timeline is very important here, but it is difficult to be clear because you are in a semi-awake dreaming state where fantasy and reality can be blurred.Have you recorded the number of times this kind of thing has happened, and is it greater than chance would predict, or are you just remembering the times that it has happened and ignoring all the times that it hasn't?

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Yet you are right, too. The "activity" of dreaming seems very real - the REM sleep, the twitching, speaking even.

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Imagine if it actually happens like this. During REM sleep, during what appear to others to be our dreaming state, our mind is actually just firing off largely out of its normal patter and therapeutically - you could compare it to defragging a hard drive, perhaps. See it as a way of relaxing those neurons that are overused during the day, and exercising the underused ones - the better to ensure that rarely activated, but potentially valuable, neural pathways are still "primed."

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Might be. I don't know.

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On waking, we now have our memory in a given state, and critically it likely includes our waking event if there was one.

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How do we interpret this state? By doing what the human mind always does - we construct a narrative which explains, however bizzarely, how we got there.

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I certainly agree that this is how the brain often works.

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Think of it like the martian vacation in the movie Total Recall - all the memories of a vacation with none of the inconvenience of actually having one!

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It would be interesting to consider what experiments might confirm this notion, were it to be fleshed out to a hypothesis.

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Well, it is certainly quite easy to implant false memories in a large percentage of the population, and they can be wide awake.

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Philosophically there would be an objection, I suppose, to even the possibility of determining that an unconscious subject was dreaming at a given moment. Norman Malcolm, the American logical positivist, outlined such objections in his fine book "Dreaming."

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Nah, it's clear that people are almost always dreaming when they are in REM sleep, and the EEG can tell us when that is happening, and we can confirm it by waking people up and asking them if they were dreaming.

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S: I'll be there are at least 30 or 40 people who believe that they are Jesus, and they hold this belief passionately, with all theiir hearts.

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Yes , but if any of those 40 people ROSE FROM THE DEAD you would need to acknowledge some validity there.

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Yes, I would, but that is physical evidence, isn't it?Without such physical evidence, all we have is your assurances that you have received "massa", just as all we have are a bunch of people who assure me that they are Jesus.

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There are some things beyond our explanation and clearly beyond the realm of physics.

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Really? Like what?

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It is very possible that I would have been dead more than 20 years ago if an angel didn't intervene on my behalf. I might add, that this was BEFORE I called myself a "born again christian". I will give the details of the experience in my next post, but I promise that it defies the law of physics. This was NOT a dream. It was real.

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Can't wait.

I'm waiting too. I'm also wondering whether the event defied the laws of physics because of the presence of angels, or whether the apparent defience could only be due to angels? In either case, I'll wager that angels were not actually witnessed, or they are included to make the story worthy of recital.Excuse my skepticism, but I've heard many anecdotes involving demons and angels etc. In all cases the anomalies were nothing more than a religiously bias hypothesis to an extraordinary event (or non-event more often than not).

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Subjects get hooked up to an EEG monitor through electrodes stuck to their scalp, they go to sleep, and when REM waves show up on the monitor and they are woken up, they almost always report a dream. If you wake them up during stages of sleep where other kinds of brain waves are going on, they do not report dreams. It's really very consistent.

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Yes I agree entirely. I am just not sure how one would infer that the dream reported by the user had extensibility in time, rather than being a memory on the moment of waking, as a result of brain non-experiental brain activity during the REM sleep.

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Have you recorded the number of times this kind of thing has happened, and is it greater than chance would predict, or are you just remembering the times that it has happened and ignoring all the times that it hasn't?

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"Frequently" may have given you the wrong impression - I mean a couple of times a month, more or less. However, the present a possible, highly tentative, conjectural [insert hedging qualification of choice here] falsification of the time-extension of dreams during REM sleep.

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Nah, it's clear that people are almost always dreaming when they are in REM sleep, and the EEG can tell us when that is happening, and we can confirm it by waking people up and asking them if they were dreaming.

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But you can't ask them if they are dreaming during REM sleep. As I say, how would you distinguish between a dream occuring during REM sleep and a dream "composed" on waking from REM activity?It's an interesting question, though, don't you think?

Hello Mr Pamboli,
This reminds me of some neurological experiments that I read about a few years ago. Sorry I cannot give any references, but the drift was that we start responding to a stimulus, and then invent the reason for our response, but we remain 'convinced' that our response followed and was a consequence of the reason. Makes one think that the only reason for consciousness is to invent 'after the fact' justifications for our actions - depressing thought.
Mike.

Thanks Mike - that sounds really interesting. I'll try to track it down.

I remember seeing that experiment in a documentary in the UK. The abstract to the article is here, though I don't have a subscription to see the full text. PE

I have started a new thread on my "angel" experience because this thread is about dreaming. It is called "Is this an angel or not?"Dan
"This website features FREE drum videos and lessons"

There are definitely psychics among us (even in the church, although the terminology for them is different). As a matter of fact, we all have psychic ability. People outside the church who are called psychics (actually, most of them refer to themselves as "Intuitives" or "Empaths") are simply people who have been more encouraged to develop and practice their ability. Of course, there are some (like Evangelists) who use it for profit and gain--nobody is perfect. There is no such thing as a good or an evil "psychic" or a good or evil "prophet." There is simply "accurate" or "inaccurate." Basically, it depends on ones ability to get himself out of the way and allow the information to come through with no "twists" or "Spins" from his own personality. In Metaphysics, we refer to a person like that as a "Clear channel." The clearer the person is, the more accurate the informaton. Many people in Metaphysics (and many Eastern religions) believe that there is no such thing as "time" as we perceive it--all events are actually taking place simultaneously, so that past, present, and future are all one. This is how the psychic is able to "see." One cannot actually see something if it hasn't taken place. You can almost picture all events placed on a vertical line--situated in different places but all occurring at the same time. The person with more developed psychic ability is simply able to move back and forth along that line and view events in a way that others cannot. It's really nothing "mysterious."In the Metaphysic world, we believe that a person is actually "astral-projecting" or leaving their body during the dream state. In fact, we believe that is the entire purpose of having to sleep. We are not actually our bodies--we are spirit beings, and those spirits can only endure being cooped up in bodies for so many hours at a time. When we begin to feel tired and exhausted, it is an indicated that the spirit has been "housed" for too long and needs to get out. We also believe that there are many planes of "existence" and many "realities" occurring similtaneously, and during the dream time, the spirit is able to visit some of these other planes & realities--sometimes what we would refer to as "past life" experiences, (although there is actually no such thing as past, present, or future). This is why we might see ourselves in events that to our knowledge have never taken place. In some other reality, these things may very well be taking place.

Excellent, thanks. Intentional binding seems to be acquiring a canonical meaning in neurosychology these days. It's a very interesting area for philosophers of mind.

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There are definitely psychics among us (even in the church, although the terminology for them is different).

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And you know this how?

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As a matter of fact, we all have psychic ability.

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Really? How do you know this?

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People outside the church who are called psychics (actually, most of them refer to themselves as "Intuitives" or "Empaths") are simply people who have been more encouraged to develop and practice their ability.

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They might also be called "cold readers", or "frauds", depending.

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Of course, there are some (like Evangelists) who use it for profit and gain--nobody is perfect.

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More common is the non-religious huckster or self-deluded self-promoter, such as Sylvia Browne, VonPraugh, and Jon Edwards.

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There is no such thing as a good or an evil "psychic" or a good or evil "prophet." There is simply "accurate" or "inaccurate."

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Skilled cold readers, regardless if they are knowingly pretending to have mystical abilities or if they are self-deluded, can be amazingly accurate. However, when they are not led by people, given information to help them, and basically made to perform under normal experimental protocols, they fail. Not just some of them; ALL of them fail or perform no better than chance would predict.

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Basically, it depends on ones ability to get himself out of the way and allow the information to come through with no "twists" or "Spins" from his own personality. In Metaphysics, we refer to a person like that as a "Clear channel." The clearer the person is, the more accurate the informaton. Many people in Metaphysics (and many Eastern religions) believe that there is no such thing as "time" as we perceive it--all events are actually taking place simultaneously, so that past, present, and future are all one. This is how the psychic is able to "see." One cannot actually see something if it hasn't taken place. You can almost picture all events placed on a vertical line--situated in different places but all occurring at the same time. The person with more developed psychic ability is simply able to move back and forth along that line and view events in a way that others cannot. It's really nothing "mysterious."

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In the Metaphysic world, we believe that a person is actually "astral-projecting" or leaving their body during the dream state. In fact, we believe that is the entire purpose of having to sleep. We are not actually our bodies--we are spirit beings, and those spirits can only endure being cooped up in bodies for so many hours at a time. When we begin to feel tired and exhausted, it is an indicated that the spirit has been "housed" for too long and needs to get out. We also believe that there are many planes of "existence" and many "realities" occurring similtaneously, and during the dream time, the spirit is able to visit some of these other planes & realities--sometimes what we would refer to as "past life" experiences, (although there is actually no such thing as past, present, or future). This is why we might see ourselves in events that to our knowledge have never taken place. In some other reality, these things may very well be taking place.[QUOTE] Sorry, this is nice and all, but is not any kind of explanation.It's really just a story.

I'm not sure that some of your comments cannot
be reflected back.I am sure that not ALL who claim to be psychic have undergone
laboratory assessments, so the best that can be said
(dispasionately) is that such individuals do something
which we do not entirely understand at present.Have you, for instance, heard of remote viewing ... several
government agencies have active programmes in these areas
(allegedly).[This message has been edited by Peter, 04-09-2003]

all this talk of psychics makes me think of that book...
psychic?? behind the iron curtain... I can not recall the actual title... but it goes into the government experiments in Russia back in the 40s... very interesting stuff, I wonder if one could track down some of the peoples mentioned in that book.. more speciafically the doctor whom wrote about the impossibilty of telepathy and than became a strict believer after having met a self-made telepath, which resulted in this doctor writing to the government giving the importance of further study (having been in war times and rumors were affloat of the Americans using telepathy to communicate with submarine personal)...
hahaha... this is all rather interesting