Spirits and other incorporial things

PY,Thanks for sharing some experiences. I'm interested in things like this, and I always have been. However, in order to understand these things, I always thought that understanding ourselves was a really important prerequisite. So I've eventually followed a path to study perception, consciousness, and what makes the human mind. From what I read, I think this must be interesting to you, too.I have 2 comments:1. Maybe I missed you mention it in another post, because I didn't read this thread very diligently before posting. If this is a very consistent phenomenon, have you thought about submitting to scientific testing? As Ned posted, there's a huge reward. Furthermore, it would help others discover the nature of yourself. Who knows, maybe it would help you understand yourself better as well.2. I'm not really interested to try and explain away your experiences without real evidence; however I think it is important to motivate that it's possible. There's something in your explanations that is implicit, but that I think is wrong. For some of the examples, I think it's a key point, and in investigating in the future, I think it's important to be aware of.There are more ways to communicate than 'meets the eye.' This means two things:1. There are ways to communicate besides just seeing and hearing.
2. Not all communication is conscious.In your experience, you've described a lack of conscious visual and auditory communication. However, it's really possible that there's communication going on in other ways.- Unconscious visual cues (from your friends to you, or from you to your friends) about what you or your other friends believe about the photo (easy to happen in a 'yes' or 'no' scenario); this is how horses 'learn' how to count. This is also related to how ouiji boards are explained to work (control of motor function beneath the 'conscious will' level). This can't explain many of your experience, but it's important to control for in a scientific experiment.- Sense of smell - I think this is the most important one. As discussed in this video (~4:00 - 7:00), there is some really unexpected and interesting behavior that is controlled via ferramones. For example, ovulation cycles in a community of females become synchronized over time due to ferramones. This isn't unique to humans, but is found strongly in other mammals. I think this is an important thing to controlOf course, these are just the thoughts of an amateur; this list is not complete or even really too important. The main point is that there truly are ways to communicate that I believe you're not considering, and that's important to investigate and to control. Because, like you, I'm interested in what lies behind all of it.I hope this post provides some meaning for you; I appreciate your open-mindedness and your search for others of the same ilk.Ben

PY,I think the important difference is that something like general relativity makes predictions that can be observed by any number of people. And it has made quite a few (einstein cross, correctly predicting mercury's strange orbit, etc.).The problem with others accepting what you say is that it's not predictable, and it's not something that (at our knowledge of the subject so far) they themselves can choose to observe. The physics is observable by vision (telescope( and by math--two subjects we're all familiar with, and that we have faith that others can do them very accurately.I definitely wouldn't dismiss your experiences, but I really have no idea where to go with them. What can we do in order to learn more about them? What methods of investigation is this subject open to? I'm not saying this to dismiss anything--I'm saying this because I really don't know. Without a way to investigate, I just have no idea how to proceed in learning more on the subject.Ben

Because science requires reproducability. And the only reproducable behavior that is said to be caused by spirits (i.e. our own behavior) is confounded 100% with behavior that is said (by others) to be caused by the brain.I think it's just that simple.Ben

In some sense, it's really not.There's video reports of the Loch Ness monster, UFOs, weird sea creatures, probably ghosts too. There's photographic proof of many of the same things.There's a bunch of differences:

1. Video evidence is objective--everybody can see it. This doesn't hold for ghosts. If we were all seeing them, we wouldn't be asking the simple question of their existence
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2. The authenticity (and motivation) of the objects are in question. It's the choice of the scientific community to doubt PY's findings rather than a video tape, because it's not objective. It goes against the methodology. Scientists are also prone to making up data (and some do), but it's scarier for them--because their results must be verifiable. In other words, in order to 'make up' interesting data, they have to give a method for others to expose them as liars!
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3. WHAT is actually pictured is unknown. And people will question what it 'actually is.' When this happens, reproducability is very important to confirm the find; otherwise the find is very weak. It can happen for ghosts, but it can also happen for giant squids. People question what it was (i.e. the 'plesiousaur' carcass taht was found and photographed; is it a plesiousaur? Is it a decayed shark corpse?)
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4. It must be, IN PRINCIPLE reproducable. Just expounding on the point given above... Lots of studies aren't reproduced, but they must be in principle. In fact, their "power" depends on their reproducability.


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I think the most important point is that EVERYBODY can watch the video. Not everybody can see ghosts.

It's just that simple. It's not reproducable.I don't have anything more to add. I'll leave it up to you to agree or not.