Inter-dimensional Entities!

I didn’t get a chance to get to this topic last night, it got too late and I was too tired.  So here we go.  Inter-dimensional Entities, a.k.a. ghosts to gullible people.  [Just kidding, I don’t mean to insult anyone.  I just think people who believe in the spirits of dead people remaining on Earth for whatever reason are superstitious and silly, like my fiancé, Becca.  I think Becca is absolutely ridiculous with this ghost crap.  She worships T.A.P.S. and forces me to watch those idiots saying “did you hear that?” every 10 seconds.  NO!  I did not hear that.  I never hear it.  Plus, you can find some nice videos on Youtube of the T.A.P.S. guys setting up fake events to make the episode more interesting.  Now, I don’t entirely blame them, I’m sure their producers strongly suggest that they “amp up the spooky” from time to time.  And hey, if I made the money they did, I would fake the hell out of some paranormal shit.]

As I said in my last post, while I was on the ghost tour in Colonial Williamsburg I took a couple photos at the suggestion of the tour guide.  She claimed that it wasn’t unheard of for guests on the tour to capture images of spectral forms.  I feel that I’ve made it fairly clear that I do not believe in ghosts.  Like I’ve said, when you’re dead, you’re dead.  What I mean by that is that you are dead to this Earth in most contexts.  I do believe in strong energy imprints, but that is not a ghost.  That is an energy movie that plays over and over until it dissipates.  It has no awareness whatsoever.

Let me quickly provide a loose definition of what I mean by the word “energy”.  What I mean is some sort of force that exists within the electromagnetic spectrum.  However, I do not believe that our current mechanical technology is capable of really measuring it.  Sometimes our measurement devices might get a slight hit regarding this type of energy.  You could consider chi in this category, spiritual energy that flows through chakras or energy centers in the body, psychic energy, and I even think consciousness falls somewhere in this spectrum.  Though, as I said, conventional technology is incapable of measuring it, so science doesn’t consider it to exist.  I believe they will one day.

Because conventional technology can’t detect it, doesn’t mean that it is imperceptible.  Humans are equipped to read, feel, perceive, experience this energy.  I mean, if our consciousness is in the same category, it would make sense that we could sense it.  The reason most people don’t [or not often] is because they are “psychically” weak [I’m using psychic to mean mental energy or force].  We are always distracted, our minds are in a million different places at once.  We don’t have the ability to truly focus our attention.  This is a big part of my personal philosophy and knowledge, that being, the focus of one’s attention.  If you can control your mind completely and focus your attention on one particular thing, you’d be very surprised at the things you could perceive.  It’s like a muscle, your attention.  You have to exercise it or it atrophies and becomes useless for any kind of real use.  Yes, I’m saying that most of our daily cognition isn’t really being used to its full potential.  Hell, I don’t think it’s being used to half its potential.  But this is a conversation for another post.  I’ve got lots to say on the subject of the intentional retardation of human consciousness and mental ability.

What I do believe, concerning “ghosts”, is that we know very little about the full scope of physics in the cosmos.  That’s not any kind of insult.  We are progressing as quickly as we can.  [Again, this will be a topic for another day, but that retardation of consciousness I was talking about is part of a larger plot to lead us to our own destruction or some sort of I, Robot or Terminator type future.  If we are not mentally, ethically, morally developed, but have extreme technological advancement, we’re looking down the barrel of a shotgun with our own hand on the trigger.]  Our knowledge of the cosmos is, obviously, pretty limited.  Now, we do know a lot, but we don’t know anything close to everything.  With that said, I believe that there may be a limitless dimensional spectrum and we only inhabit one.  Perhaps some are uninhabited, but I believe most are inhabited.  Now I don’t know how these other “dimensions” are laid out and I’m not great with theoretical physics [even though I love it, but math was never my strong suit and most of theoretical physics exists entirely mathematically], so I don’t know if these dimensions are stacked side by side or wrapped in some sort of never ending strip that somehow allows all all dimensions to touch on all surfaces.  I can’t say.  String theorists and their kin posit a limited number of dimensions and they have mathematical diagrams of how they exist physically, but those are just theories and we have yet to find a way to prove them.

So, my point in all of this is that I believe what others call “ghosts” are actually entities, people, from other dimensions that are close enough to cross over.  Maybe it’s a natural ability for them.  Maybe they have technology that allows them to breech dimensions.  Who knows?  I do believe that humans have one possible means of crossing into other dimensions.  Astral Projection, or Out of Body Experiences.  This is where that focus of attention stuff is helpful.  I always refer back to Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, that basically states, any sufficiently advanced technology appears as magic.  People like to call Astral Projection [which by the way goes by many many different names, and I recommend reading ‘SOUL FLIGHT’ by Donald Tyson soulflight to learn more about the history of this very common historical practice that I believe everyone should do as a means of psychological health and healing] a magical practice and in modern society, magic is either a stage show or superstitious nonsense with no scientific foundation.  I disagree, I apply Clarke’s law to this situation.  To me, Astral Projection or even psychic ability is simply a form of mental technology that is far advanced compared to current technology [or, more likely it is a simple technology that was lost to history, be it coincidental or intentional; probably intentional since the Christians destroyed anything considered Pagan, or assimilated it to make the transition to Christianity easier for the Pagans.  Just like Saturnalia, a.k.a. Christmas].

Anyway, all of that is not really important at the moment.  At least, not for what I want to show you now.  I had to give you a little context regarding how I feel about this subject before I showed the pictures I took in Colonial Williamsburg on the ghost tour.  So, let’s get to the pictures and I’ll comment briefly on each one.  You can decide what you believe is really in the pictures.

Here is the first shot:

specter

As you can clearly see in this picture, there is some sort of light artifact across the center and left side.  I can honestly say that there was no light leak in the camera [it was taken with an iphone], there were no reflective surfaces [since the flash was on], there was nothing that I can think of to explain the light.  I did use Instagram to increase the contrast to make the form more visible.  So.  If you look in the middle of the picture, at the right side of the light curve and directly between & below the two windows, you can see a figure.  To me, it looks like the head and shoulders of a man, falling away into a wisp.  Maybe it could be wearing a cloak or something, there seems to be a collar or lapel type thing around the left shoulder [its right shoulder I would think, though it could have its back to me].  It also looks like it might have on some kind of hat.  I don’t know.  I’ve looked at this picture over and over, so I might be seeing what I want to see.  But, as soon as the picture was taken, myself and Becca both immediately saw the light and then the figure.  I took a dozen other pictures in the area and none of them have anything at all resembling this picture.  No lights, no figures, no shadows, no anything, just normal pictures.  So now you can decide.

Here is the second picture:

photo (2)

This picture is something entirely different.  This one I can’t really explain with my inter-dimensional being theory.  Instead, I believe this is an example of an energy imprint.  I know you’re looking at this picture and saying to yourself, “What?  I don’t see anything.  It’s some trees, a building and a light.”, and you’d be right.  The only problem is, there was no light there.  On the left side of the picture you can see a white building with some windows.  Well, that building ran all the way to the right side of the picture and out of frame.  Where you see the light, there was a dark window.  I saw it, Becca saw it and my little sister-in-law saw it.  That window was completely dark, no lights of any kind.  But in the picture, it looks like there is a candle or lantern in the window.  Like I said, I can’t really explain this one.  Maybe it is some kind of energetic imprint.  Maybe it’s something else.  I just don’t know.  So again, I leave it up to you to decide.

So that’s it.  I took some pictures that turned out to be pretty interesting.  I’ve actually got some others in my library of photos from other events.  Some orbs, some glowing energy, some inexplicable lights and other anomalies.  Like I said, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I do believe there is a lot about our cosmos that we don’t know.  And sometimes, we manage to catch little glimpses behind the veil and see the mystery.

– @egodetox, aka personalreality, aka mr. cosmos, aka rusty.

8 comments on “Inter-dimensional Entities!

  1. You pointed out: “Though, as I said, conventional technology is incapable of measuring it, so science doesn’t consider it to exist. I believe they will one day. Because conventional technology can’t detect it, doesn’t mean that it is imperceptible. Humans are equipped to read, feel, perceive, experience this energy. I mean, if our consciousness is in the same category, it would make sense that we could sense it. The reason most people don’t [or not often] is because they are “psychically” weak [I’m using psychic to mean mental energy or force].” (brackets yours) …

    “Where you see the light, there was a dark window. I saw it, Becca saw it and my little sister-in-law saw it. That window was completely dark, no lights of any kind. But in the picture, it looks like there is a candle or lantern in the window.”

    Summarizing:

    Three sighted people did not see the light where there was a dark window (and most people typically would not see it, because of our psychic weakness), and conventional technology cannot sense such as-yet unexplained energies, but a camera recorded it.

    My puzzlement:

    How does a camera record what most of us “often” can’t detect because our psychic condition is weak, especially when a camera is common conventional technology and has been for over 150 years, which we humans created for the now relatively simple purpose of recording visible light?

    Eyes and the brain science involved with them are well understood, too. (Including things seen by the brain that the eyes did not “put” there.) So human eye detection seems to me a kind of conventional technology. Or, to put it another way relative to conventionality: conventional technology not only explains human physical sight’s ability to detect visible light, but reproduces its workings by machine. That’s why I say that eyes are, at least relative to detecting light of the kinds recorded by simple digital camera CCDs, are conventional technology.

    Is conventional technology able to detect it or not? What makes a camera able to pick up invisible energy and show it to us as an image of light energy, yet the invisible kind of energy involved can’t be sensed by other conventional technology, including the human eye, without the help of a camera to sort of “translate” it for us?

    Is a camera able to record a kind of energy not in the visible spectrum but the camera translates it as light, because it is unable to reproduce it in its pure, original nature? In other words, the camera is giving us a light-based notification of something else present, something other than visible light. Any thoughts on the likelihood that cameras can do this?

    Or am I missing some factual or logical point? (It happens.)

  2. Completely valid. Maybe nit-picky. My example goes too far I think. Taken there both by me and you. On one hand, eyes are well understood. On the other, the way the brain translates any sensory signal isn’t. Maybe I’m being naive, but it could be possible that there is something about machines capturing light that is unique when compared to the human eye. As analogy, consider medication, in general. Ask any doctor (especially considering psychiatric medicines and doctors; we are talking about the brain right?) how or why a medication works beyond a chemical compound fitting into an open receptor. If they are honest, they’ll tell you that we don’t really know how most medications work, yet they do. That fact turned me away from psychiatry a while back. A professor nonchalantly once said that they don’t really care how a medication works, only that it does. That is entirely different from not knowing, and it seems to be an opinion that is shared by many. Excuse my ethical tangent. My point is that something pertaining to how a human brain translates information (because that’s all anything is right, information) is inherently ambiguous. That’s the definition of the mind-brain problem. I understand that your point is a simple one. Cameras are based on eyes and are effectively a mechanical reproduction of an organic machine. But, please excuse the pun, aren’t there always ghosts in the machine?

    Not saying it’s fact. Just possibility. Maybe there is something happening in translation. I’m not saying that 100%, yes, there is something that cameras can pick up in the electromagnetic spectrum that eyes can’t. But I’m not saying no either. I think the most valid interpretation is that I exaggerated an example to make a larger point. A point about my feelings toward superstition, possibility and mystery. I concede a logical error, but that’s what imagination is for, to imagine beyond cold hard logic. This is a blog focused on the mind, and the mind is dynamic, organic (meaning basic, natural, not carbon based per se) mysterious thing. And that gap in our knowledge concerning how our mind and brain interact is my milieu. A great place to speculate. I do apologize for overlooking obvious observations sometimes though.

  3. I look forward to the day when audio recorders start playing back inaudible voices. I’d like to hear what the non-existent has to say for itself. Jesting, of course.

    “My point is that something pertaining to how a human brain translates information … is inherently ambiguous. That’s the definition of the mind-brain problem. … But, please excuse the pun, aren’t there always ghosts in the machine?”

    It seems to me that science, as it so often does so well, has established a good non-ambiguous base from which to gradually understand things well enough that less and less of it seems ambiguous. The only ambiguity is based in our ignorance about the brain, not in how the brain works. It does exactly what is its nature to do.

    Obviously the ghosts exist, but why? For me, they are not supernatural, nor have a supernatural cause. (I haven’t read enough of your work to know whether you support that; seems like you’re on the fence.)

    From what I hear, I think science has come a long way in understanding why the brain handles information the way it does, and why there are apparent ambiguities, malfunctions, aberrations, ghosts in the brain, even attitudes of a person. They have a vastly greater understanding of it now than they did merely 20 years ago. And the good news is that the RATE of change in our knowledge is increasing. We’re learning faster all the time (in some things).

    They even have some science to show certain patterns and locations of brain activity related to belief in the supernatural. And thanks to the ways our brains have been doing that, we have things like religion to dupe us into denying science. Talk about ethics. Whew.

    They still wrestle with the nature and causes of consciousness, but I have made a conscious decision to discard all notions that it has anything to do with a supernatural reality. There is one reality, the natural one.

    It’s probably irrational to close the mind to implausible possibilities. But, personally, as a basis for my view of reality and the world, my money is on plausibility.

    Over the long run, science wins over supernatural belief when it comes to figuring out how things work and why, and is gradually taking on figuring out the causes of fuzzy stuff like superstition and belief in the supernatural.

    I speculate that New Age spirituality began probably somewhere not long after Neanderthals. Yet it is always new, to brains that work that way.

    I think that science is on track to learning why, eventually. Too bad the ethical dilemmas will increase proportionately.

    I think that propagation and rationalizing supernatural-based beliefs, and those world views, policies, opinions, and practices based on the beliefs, or nurtured by the beliefs, harms the effectiveness of science to leave the world better than we found it.

    • I’ll give more depth later, I don’t have a lot of time right his second. But I did want to say that I don’t agree with assuming that neuroscience is really as far as neuroscientists think. Just personal feeling on the subject. Supernatural is not a word I’d use. If I have to, I prefer to say “non-physical” when describing anything beyond what is currently known about “physical science”. It’s just a way to try and separate the study of consciousness and experience of consciousness from superstition. I admit, openly, that I have been influence by “New Age Spirituality” in my life. Though, I don’t care much for it and I have tried to separate my thoughts from it as much as possible. So I like to coin/use/find different words as often as possible. I don’t believe in ghosts. I do believe in a cosmos that is beyond comprehension in a lot of ways. And it’s arrogant to assume that we really know what we’re talking about.

      I’ll respond at length when I have more time.

      • “It’s just a way to try and separate the study of consciousness and experience of consciousness from superstition.”

        I admire that intent and effort, seriously. Superstition needs to be answered. You can find a wealth of really potent anti-superstitious reasoning in people like these:
        ( http://preposterousuniverse.com/naturalism2012/participants.html )
        See same info in list below.

        And they have a far greater grasp of the nature of consciousness than any New-Agey types, and they all agree it is slippery.

        “So I like to coin/use/find different words as often as possible.”

        That in itself is a science, of a sort.

        Non-physical is a great word for believers to use to describe what they believe transcends natural law, or all known natural law, as if science doesn’t “get it” about the way reality includes more than science can deal with, confined as it is to mere things like mathematics, physics, logic and practical philosophy.

        I understand this. I was once an evangelical fundamentalist religious believer, among other efforts regarding the numinous, religious and otherwise, to make sense of reality through understandings of supernatural forces.

        Leaving that because it didn’t make the world any better, mine or at large, or ever, I have settled for this small world of scientifically provable realities meeting with agreement by most scientists, relative to their respective fields.

        The believer’s vocabulary has some terrific words that fit nicely within their sense of “non-physical” reality. Here are some more handy words to hang one’s hat on for things outside of science’s reliance on reason and the concrete, objective, real, substantial and scientifically repeatable evidences of reality via silly things like mathematics, physics, and logic, that is, other ways to say “non-physical” in the sense that it is beyond natural law:

        (Some of these words the average believer is not accustomed to using, but are handy especially when talking to people who are not actually professional scientists, or those with limited vocabularies and not enough sense to resort to dictionaries.)

        apparitional, asomatous, discarnate, ethereal, imponderable, incorporeal, metaphysical, abstract, deep, difficult, esoteric, intangible, intellectual, jesuitic (… oops, no, not that one), mystical, nonmaterial (an easy alternative for non-physical), numinous, psychic, spiritlike, spiritual, subjective, abstruse, fundamental, impalpable, oversubtle, philosophical, preternatural, inexplicable, profound, extraordinary, recondite, psychotic (… oops, no, not that one), superhuman, superior, supermundane, suprahuman, supramundane, supranatural, theoretical, transcendental, universal, unphysical

        Among my favorites: immutable, ineffable, incredible, unreal.

        None of them trump that mundane old science that gives us boring physical things like brain surgery, microwaves, Hubble scope views, and the satellite system carrying this message from me to you.

        I’m serious. Save these words. They can be very useful.

        “I admit, openly, that I have been influence by “New Age Spirituality” in my life. Though, I don’t care much for it and I have tried to separate my thoughts from it as much as possible.”

        This is truly good news. Music to my ears.

        Recommended reading:

        Owen Flanagan, Philosophy
        Books: The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World
        The Problem Of The Soul: Two Visions Of Mind And How To Reconcile Them
        The Bodhisattva’s Brain: Buddhism Naturalized

        Steven Weinberg, Physics
        Facing Up: Science and Its Cultural Adversaries
        Lake Views: This World and the Universe
        Dreams of a Final Theory: The Scientist’s Search for the Ultimate Laws of Nature

        David Poeppel, Neuroscience
        Website http://psych.nyu.edu/clash/poeppellab/

        Daniel Dennett, Philosophy
        Books: Freedom Evolves
        Consciousness Explained

        Richard Dawkins, Biology
        Books: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
        The God Delusion

        Sean Carroll, Physics
        Book: From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time
        Blog: Cosmic Variance
        http://cosmicvariance.com/

        Jerry Coyne, Biology
        Book: Why Evolution Is True
        Blog: Why Evolution Is True
        http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/

        Terrence Deacon, Anthropology
        Book: Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter

        Simon DeDeo, Complex Systems
        Book: Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
        http://tuvalu.santafe.edu/~simon/

        Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, Philosophy/Literature
        Books: 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction
        Betraying Spinoza: The Renegade Jew Who Gave Us Modernity

        Janna Levin, Physics/Literature
        A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines

        Massimo Pigliucci, Philosophy
        Answers for Aristotle: How Science and Philosophy Can Lead Us to a More

        Meaningful Life
        Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk
        Blog: Rationally Speaking
        http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/

        Alex Rosenberg, Philosophy
        The Atheists Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions
        Darwinian Reductionism: Or, How to Stop Worrying and Love Molecular Biology

        Don Ross, Economics
        Economic Theory and Cognitive Science: Microexplanation
        Everything Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized (with James Ladyman)

      • I can’t say that I was ever a fundamentalist, though I was raised Southern Baptist, which is not far from fundamentalism if you’ve ever been. I never found solace or comfort in “the Lord’s arms”, and so I too sought meaning in science. And I still have “faith” in science as the most likely path for meaningful answers, apologies for the term. But, that doesn’t mean I have complete faith in scientists. How do you maintain objectivity when you’re taking measurements through a subjectivity engine? I don’t use the word non-physical to imply something “beyond the laws of nature”. I just use that word to identify phenomena that have yet to been identified by physical science with mathematics and atom smashers. Physics for example. To be a theoretical physicist requires a great imagination and the ability to perceive things in a unique way. Did Newton deny gravity because he couldn’t see it? Did Einstein stop thinking about the movement of light because he couldn’t grasp it? Certainly not. The same kind of skepticism is a prerequisite to furthering understanding. My only question then, is, do you really think that we’re any closer to understanding the real nature of natural law just because we have better mathematics and instruments of measurement? The natural world doesn’t seem to think so, as it recoils against our advances. So, I don’t presume to know anything with absolute certainty, yet I try to maintain an open minded skepticism along with my sense of experiment. Of scientific exploration. I suppose that I prefer to keep my toolbox forever open so that it may accept new tools. I still keep the old ones, but I look at them differently as I see the complexity of new ones (trying not to forget their inherent purpose). I appreciate the list of suggestions.

  4. Supernatural is a limited word for the constellation of belief systems I have in mind. For example, preternatural is a big one. But I don’t want to have to identify all of them every time I mention them, so I’m sticking with supernatural as a catch-all term, even though you individually probably are more receptive to the preter-kind, with a good degree of skepticism, as you say.

    “Did Newton deny gravity because he couldn’t see it?”

    Oh, but he DID see it. That’s why it caught his attention. Things fell. Fortunately he did not conclude that it was caused by a spiritual essence in things. He only cursed the gods when gravity and inadequate friction made him slip and fall on the ice, even though he knew it was just gravity causing that pain.

    “Did Einstein stop thinking about the movement of light because he couldn’t grasp it?”

    I think he had a super-duper grasp of it. But if you mean grasp it in his hands and put it in his pockets … only irrational people would concern themselves about that, BUT there is a scientifically attainable, ultimately explainable (at least in rationally observable symptoms at first) reason for them doing that.

    Somebody also wondered what was over the horizon besides mythical monsters, without seeing, I suspect, ever, not even one mythical monster nor a continent parked in the way to India. Somebody also wondered what natural forces make some people experience states of body and mind with characteristics like those that some supernaturalists call demon possession, having never seen a neuron, and they don’t have a perfect grasp on why all psychiatric drugs do what they do, but those demons are usually treatable (by a highly fallible medical science), at least to some practical extent.

    I don’t know why you brought this up. Did I make the ridiculous mistake of saying or strongly implying that science can’t deal with seemingly or even actually undetectable aspects of nature?

    Newton and Einstein do not support your case for another nature beyond nature as can be known through the natural sciences (not ALL known today, but can be known … including through the creation of sciences we never knew about before, but which still deal with scientifically identifiable reality), despite the fact that no science ever known has proved the cause of everything, and scientists should be the first ones to say science never will explain everything, because, among other reasons, as you sort of pointed out, the science is practiced by human scientists, meaning that there is a subjective influence on the way they do their work, when they do it imperfectly, which is always.

    You can say that I have absolute faith in science. That’s cool. But it’s not a faith in the infallibility of science. That would not be smart. But it is a certain kind of fallibility that involves errors or limitations in knowledge and reason, not the same as the kind of infallibility that over a billion supernaturalists SAY they give the Pope. And sometimes errors in science are willful, another thing that is subject to scientific analysis.

    It seems to me that application of the imagination in scientifically trained minds interested in something that inspires their imagination works very differently from those who have direct experiences of sentience in blobs of light shooting across the sky, or demons telling people to slaughter Jews and school children. As I see it, the main difference is that one has a better connection to rational reason than the other, because of differences in their brain activities.

    Supernatural believers think that they have a toolkit for doing what science can’t do, yet the former never get it done, except sometimes in their own imaginations, because that’s where they live.

    As I mentioned earlier, science has made steps toward understanding what happens in their brains to incline them to think/believe the way they do. But if science pins it down, which it does always imperfectly, never absolutely (and I never said science knows everything) because there is always more to learn, believers will just deny it on the grounds that there are still unknowns, and the biggest deniers experience the unknowable spiritually. That is counterproductive, if making a better world is an issue.

    “Certainly not.”

    Certainly? CERTAINLY? Bite your tongue, for your own stated reasons.

    “The same kind of skepticism is a prerequisite to furthering understanding.”

    That’s what science does, but people mistake some unscientific approaches for science.

    Although … I think that there have been cases where seemingly unrealistic optimism about a conclusion — devoid of skeptical distrust of the conclusion — has lead to some good science. But I agree with applying rational skepticism. People say I am too skeptical.

    “My only question then, is, do you really think that we’re any closer to understanding the real nature of natural law just because we have better mathematics and instruments of measurement?”

    “Just because?” No. There are other causative components besides math and measurement. But you probably meant generally the whole of “better science.” I hope so, because I sure do really think so!

    We continually move closer and closer to understanding nature fully. In some areas, at very slow speed, others faster, and there are setbacks where the old science was wrong. That’s that fallibility thing.

    I think that good science holds the view that there is no finite end to our learning to understand nature. In my simple-minded opinion, it’s because change is so persistent and because our brains are limited, as a result of evolution.

    “The natural world doesn’t seem to think so, as it recoils against our advances.”

    If you mean recoiling against our stupid, ignorant, arrogant, profiteering, selfish abuse of resources to the point of approaching destruction of the environment upon which we depend for existence, I have to agree that these characteristics of human nature are really bad in their detriment to leaving the world better than we found it, and science is, so far, very limited in its ability to do anything about these “sick” (i.e., still early in evolution toward becoming more rational beings, if we are headed that way) aspects of ourselves.

    I don’t see where that infers a basis for an alternate, supernatural or preternatural reality, and especially not for one that we can make any use of. Mystified thinking is incapable of doing anything about carbon dioxide. Or monoxide, for that matter. Science is not only capable, but is making progress, and even making progress in understanding some of the things that go on in our brain when we choose the love of money over rational behavior toward the planet.

    “So, I don’t presume to know anything with absolute certainty, yet I try to maintain an open minded skepticism along with my sense of experiment. Of scientific exploration.”

    Our notions of “scientific” seem to live on different sides of a gulf. We are waving to each other, so there is something in common.

    I prefer the kind of open, skeptical mind that works on the unknown with actually usable, productive, practical scientific tools and methods, not the ones that just incite brains into unproductive states.

    It’s not that I don’t see any scientific value in altered states of consciousness. I think they’ve learned a lot from that arena for use in psychiatry, psychology, and … I’m guessing … maybe neurology. Sociology, too. And philosophy.

    My skeptical open mind prefers the practice of science without mystification (which has a cause, too, one potentially fully explainable some day) by promoting misleading declarations of “evidence” of alternative realities, by people who “sense” things through unknown and/or unknowable aspects of kinds of awakened or gifted consciousness that can be seen happening in brain scans, but the output of such a state doesn’t do much for the world or for the people having these brain farts.

    Causes for altered consciousness and unexplained detection, conception and perception of supposedly unknown (by science) realities are things partly and increasingly identified and explained by scientific methods. Not just in brain scans, but in behavioral studies. Behavioral health care (a scientific service of the medical industry and others) benefits from scientific study of these aberrant behaviors. The far side is here.

    They are just phenomena of human nature, not something beyond nature poking it’s head into reality. Sure, human nature is hard to pin down scientifically, especially the part that experiences verbal communication with invisible entities. But we won’t learn to understand it by listening to those voices. Yeah, yeah, I know. Some such things arising from altered consciousness — channeling spirits for example — can actually have something good to say. Why not? The “spirits” are in the brain of the channeler, a brain possibly capable of amazing insight.

    It’s part of the nature of consciousness to be able to do that, and there is a reason we came to be that way. I don’t know the reason, but it’s not God’s fault, since we made God in our image.

    “I suppose that I prefer to keep my toolbox forever open so that it may accept new tools.”

    I hope the new ones are practical ones.

    I sometimes find old tools ready for the dumpster.

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