Do you believe in ghosts?

Postmaster said:
For many of us out there we do believe that the mind is limited to only the human body. However is it possible for a soul or a spirit to make a physical appearance on earth? The answer for me is yes. However it takes a special kind of human and a special kind of Ghost to make the appearance possible by some sort of connection.
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I...... see.... dead, people... Heh. No I don't believe in ghosts... They are to me like Santa clause, easter bunny, tooth fairy and the lochness monster..
 
For me, "ghosts" would not be the word I would use. But I very clearly "saw" two loved ones--a husband who passed on after a very long and serious illness, and my grandmother. I saw my husband immediately when I came home and insisted on being alone for a few minutes the day he "died". I saw him completely healed, jumping around and clicking his heels together, and saying, "Look, Deb! Look what I can do!" Ain't it great?" It was such a comfort. Anyway, I was totally awake when I saw this. I won't go into the details of how I saw my grandmother, as it would take a while to explain. But I saw her in a very clear dream. But bear with me just a bit...

Whether what I saw was actually how things are for my loved ones "on the other side" I don't know. I'm a spiritual-type person, so I wonder if it was simply "God's" way of letting me know they were okay. Some might say it was just my brain creating a way to comfort itself (sorry, I know that I am being awkward). But then, I believe in an intelligent Creator. So if that Creator could dream up a way to make something as complicated as the human brain, then surely "He" could devise a way to communicate with that creation. All I know is that there are certain things that happen in my life that are so significant that they remain extremely clear. These "visions" I tell you about are like this.

I have not "seen" my mother yet, but my daughter did. It was beautiful, and we thought Dad would dismiss it as just wishful thinking or typical dreaming. We hesitated to tell him about it, afraid it would somehow upset him, but to our surprise, he was very comforted by it. I think that the reason I have not seen Mom in the way I did others is that she and I were just so close that she is simply "with me". I just feel her, and as time goes by, this becomes more apparent to me.

I know I sound looney to some folks. But that's okay. I just want you to know that I would never make something like this up just to sound mystical or spiritual or anything. This is really how it is for me. I tell this in the hope that it might be a comfort to someone else. It seems wrong of me not to share these experiences where I think it is appropriate.

InPeace,
InLove
 
AndrewX said:
and it was quite easy for her to tell that this was not just a case of wishful thinking, or wish fulfilment at the subconscious level ...
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Hi Andrew

Please could you expand on this. How could she tell it was real and not just what her mind was 'wanting' to see/hear? Having never experienced anything like this I just can't work out how we could know the difference, is it just a matter of believing it?

Salaam
Sally
 
Chris have you had any vivid dreams about him yet? Im saying yet because I believe you will just as I believe everyone does that needs comfort. I had one of my dad that has carried me through that last 22 years.

I walked out the back door and my dad was sitting there and he looked so beautiful to me. I started crying and asked him to take me with him that I wanted to die so I could be with him and he said to me "No baby.. not yet... soon though" And he hugged me.. I can even remember the feel smell and the exact inflection in his tone. That dream brought me out of a stage of grief that was borderline suicidal at the age of 13. I had a comfort that I would see him again and an understanding that whenever that was would be soon enough compared to eternity.
 
Namaste Cavalier,

thank you for the post.

cavalier said:
You say this is the traditional view, is it a view you share? I'm curious.
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based upon my own experiences, yes, this is a view that i share. i am rather non-traditional in my own approach to the tradition and i would always suggest that beings form their own views with regards to these things.. especially as it has little relevance on ones praxis.

thus far, every aspect of the Buddhist teachings that i am able to test has been confirmed in a positive manner by my experience.. though i am not able to test many aspects of the teachings yet due to the paucity of my own practice.

metta,

~v
 
Asalaamulikum,

noo have not seen a ghost in my life,
but it would also be contradictory if someone was dead and was in his/her spiritual -like body to be here on earth. I do belive in Jinns aka Spirits. The Qu'ran and Hadiths are good examples what they are like. well Simply, they are like humans that they can choice to be good or bad! This is where I think it is contradictory to Christian idea of Trinity, the Holy Ghost, or now called Holy Spirit. When it is clear that this is taking about Archangel
Gabreal {SA}, how sent messages from god to messengers of all diffrent times. Gabreal {SA} is an Angel, like it says in the last testament (Qu'ran), and in Old testament (Torha aka Jaburr) and
new testament (Bible aka engill). Also Iblis was Jinn who was around the angels and in the heavens, that meant he was highly respected. Remember like I said Jinn like human can choice. And Iblis didn't obey to God's command to show respect his creation of man, called Adam {SA}. Both man or Jinn can be called Sayyitean aka Satan in english, which is a title given to well bad people. But question people say the most can people see them, well yes, some can if a Jinn choices make themsevls apear before human if they want and they can take diffrent forms like a person or animal and etc..
So what should we do if we see Jinns we should show respect, like we show respect to everyone else, what happens if it a bad Jinn?! than you should avoid, just like you would avoid a hostile human or not to let them take control of you.

Salaamulikum
 
cavalier said:
I wonder though, if these are the ghosts of people, or if they are spirits(good and bad) taking on the form of people.

quote]
that is almost spot on , but it would only be the bad rebellious angels or demons that would be pretending to be dead loved ones , the Good angels would not be doing that because they would be doing the right things inline with Gods purpose. and pretending to be dead people is not a good thing in the eyes of the most high.
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I don't know.

I'll be honest, I am mostly a metaphysical physicalist. I don't make a lot of room for what I believe to be supernatural. I try to base my beliefs off of inductive logic and empiricism, with epistemic humility.

However, I used to be pretty close to Quimbanda and Spiritism. I've had some experiences that make me question things. I've had spirits give me information in private rituals that I not only didn't know but couldn't possibly have worked out on my own. It's enough to give me some pause.

Perhaps there are reasonable explanations for it, but every "skeptic" I talk to just tries to downplay the details given or come just short of saying I'm telling a tall tale or fabricating a memory, even if I wrote the experiences down in my journal directly after they happened. Sometimes it makes me feel crazy because the only people who tend to believe me about these experiences frequently also seem sort of gullible to me and believe a wide range of other outlandish things.

As such, I just keep my experiences to myself. At best, it attracts the wrong sort of crowd. At worst, people think I'm insane. Thankfully, a handful of people were with me during some of these experiences and they know I'm not making things up, so I don't have to live completely alone with them. It does get isolating sometimes, though.
 
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I have had far too many experiences for me to dismiss the paranormal. The variety of these events makes it likely IMO, that they are not one specific type of entity.
 
I see what we call ghosts, G!d, supernatural or paranormal as simply currently unexplainable natural happenings.

Like an eclipse...rain, round earth, gravity, magnetism, the rising sun etc were to the ancients.

For some learning the magicians trick ruins their magical beliefs...others are enthralled at the reception when the truth is revealed..others pissed off for being fooled.

Currently I believe G!d to represent some ultimate scientific principle that explains everything...

Ghosts...no clue what they are...they are UFOs (Unexplained Freaky Objects) just like the flying ones...till they are explained.
 
Ella S. said:
As such, I just keep my experiences to myself. At best, it attracts the wrong sort of crowd. At worst, people think I'm insane. Thankfully, a handful of people were with me during some of these experiences and they know I'm not making things up, so I don't have to live completely alone with them. It does get isolating sometimes, though.
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Good friends are the most valuable resource, IMO. Those who don't need to bolster themselves by offering unsolicited advice or pushing their understanding on others. Those who can listen and contain what they hear.

I count myself lucky to have some good friends who are into exploring and discussing things like ghosts without requiring me to buy into their narratives or wanting to adopt mine. This forum is one such place, at this time.

In this spirit, here are my ramblings:

I've never had an experience of a ghost, but I have found a few places which evoke a strong impression of being haunted, for lack of a better, more specific term. One such place is a small strip of woodland sloping down to the river in an otherwise unremarkable part of the upper Rhine valley, between Basel and lake Constance. A few hundred meters across, less than a kilometer down the valley side, crossing a road. No buildings or ruins or springs or rock formations, just a wooded area with a hostile atmosphere. Many people noticed this, even those who just drove along the road.

How to explain this? Which frame of reference to choose? Why even explain it?

For me it is sufficient to acknowledge the sense of being unwanted there, and to walk further along the forest path and out if the area. Others feel more comfortable giving a name to their experience: A forest inhabited by a fierce spirit, or echoes of a great tragedy in the past (unrecorded in any local chronicle I checked), or the slant of the light into the valley, or picking up on the uncomfortable feelings of those "in the know".

I think these attempts at explaining the experience are intetesting but don't address the immediacy of the "something wrong" impression. To make a feeble analogy, it's like the difference between appetite, which can be triggered by external factors like pictures of tasty food, and hunger, which is caused by internal factors like depleted nutrient depots. The feelings evoked by the haunted forest arise from the inside, like hunger, not from external factors such as apparitions or spooky lighting.
 
I would not like to suggest what a 'ghost' is. One recent article did interest me. Traditionally ghostly activity is accompanied by a drop in temperature and flickering lights. Moving on in time some locations of interest have received increased electricity bills. In the modern-day, there are reports of mobile phone batteries going flat.
Suggestive perhaps, that whatever ghosts are, they need energy when becoming noticeable.
 
Leveller said:
Suggestive perhaps, that whatever ghosts are, they need energy when becoming noticeable.
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Where does the energy go once the ghost is done with it? Energy (in the physics sense) is not created or destroyed, just moved around.
So in this understanding of ghosts removing energy from their environment, would it end up in some object heating up, or being moved (poltergeist style)?
 
'Amir Alzzalam said:
What do you guys (and gals) think a 'ghost' is?
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I am a Gnostic, so I gravitate towards the explanation of discarnate spirits that are too attached to rejoin with the One in the Pleroma, but not so attached that they would reincarnate. They are just attached to the material world enough to linger here until they are "put to rest."

That's pretty speculative, though. All I can say for sure is that they're something that seem to be able to tell me things only the dead people they appear as would know and they seem to be able to move objects and possess people, in my experience.

These three phenomenon (information, moving objects, and possession) might have naturalistic explanations, but I've read a lot of proposed explanations for them that, uh... don't really account for the experiences I've had. Of course, the spirits themselves always claim to be souls of the dead, but that might not really mean much.
 
Hi @Cino What you write does make sense, providing, that 'ghosts' are the only unknown factor that we add to the world of physics as we know it.
I suggest that if we accept the existence of ghosts as being of spiritual/supernatural origin, we must equally accept that current physics is insufficient to explain their exact nature.

This goes for god/s, angels, demons, fairies and karma too.
 
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While I studied Neurotheology in school we briefly touched on the idea of ghosts. My interest in paranormal activity and the brain/mind, especially in regards to the Occult led me to research further into this. Here is my understanding of the Ghost Phenomenon.

When something occurs somewhere in space because something else happened somewhere else in space, by no detectible means by which the cause produces the effect, the two events are connected by a "field". There is more to a human being than mere chemistry, it requires an organizing field. There exists a layered network of electromagnetic fields throughout and within the entire body, altogether comprising a “master plan” field for the entire body. Dr. Harold Saxon Burr, Professor Emeritus of Anatomy, Yale School of Medicine, called this the L‑Field. (The Fields of Life).

The human L‑field is an electromagnetic field and thus is subject to external Electro-Magnetic fields. This is your personal connection with the organizing master plan of the objective universe: fields within fields. Anything that can organize has to exist before what it organizes. Hence the mere removal of the resultant organism does not remove the field. Your L‑field doesn’t die when your physical body dies. Conception creates nothing since it is merely the fusion of preexisting organizations, the sperm, and the ovum. An L‑field is naturally attracted or assigned and commences the organizing process, then leaves upon the death of the body. It may retain an “image” of that body (i.e. Ghost) and be detectable or even perceivable by other L‑fields under certain circumstances.

As L‑fields are distinct from the physical body, T‑fields (The Fields of Thought) are also superior to and separate from the physical machinery they manipulate and use. Here I am talking about the basis for Out‑of‑Body consciousness, the persistence of the psyche after physical death, and possibly the temporary or permanent attachment of subordinate T‑fields to other forms of matter, resulting in Magical Objects and Haunted Houses.
 
'Amir Alzzalam said:
While I studied Neurotheology in school we briefly touched on the idea of ghosts. My interest in paranormal activity and the brain/mind, especially in regards to the Occult led me to research further into this. Here is my understanding of the Ghost Phenomenon.

When something occurs somewhere in space because something else happened somewhere else in space, by no detectible means by which the cause produces the effect, the two events are connected by a "field". There is more to a human being than mere chemistry, it requires an organizing field. There exists a layered network of electromagnetic fields throughout and within the entire body, altogether comprising a “master plan” field for the entire body. Dr. Harold Saxon Burr, Professor Emeritus of Anatomy, Yale School of Medicine, called this the L‑Field. (The Fields of Life).

The human L‑field is an electromagnetic field and thus is subject to external Electro-Magnetic fields. This is your personal connection with the organizing master plan of the objective universe: fields within fields. Anything that can organize has to exist before what it organizes. Hence the mere removal of the resultant organism does not remove the field. Your L‑field doesn’t die when your physical body dies. Conception creates nothing since it is merely the fusion of preexisting organizations, the sperm, and the ovum. An L‑field is naturally attracted or assigned and commences the organizing process, then leaves upon the death of the body. It may retain an “image” of that body (i.e. Ghost) and be detectable or even perceivable by other L‑fields under certain circumstances.

As L‑fields are distinct from the physical body, T‑fields (The Fields of Thought) are also superior to and separate from the physical machinery they manipulate and use. Here I am talking about the basis for Out‑of‑Body consciousness, the persistence of the psyche after physical death, and possibly the temporary or permanent attachment of subordinate T‑fields to other forms of matter, resulting in Magical Objects and Haunted Houses.
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In your opinion, what role, if any, does camouflage play in this?
 
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