Paranormal: We May Have Clues, But Never The Answer

I've always had an instinct that there exists something beyond this physical, material world and that we are more than the body we inhabit. I have had unusual experiences, seen things that I believe may have been paranormal in nature, and I also suspect that many people the world over have glimpsed the other side, or witnessed other realms/dimensions.

Yet we do not have proof, and probably never will.

I have an unusual analogy. I'm not sure what other members here will think of it, but this is the way I see things and I think it highlights how ridiculous it is to try to claim we have all the answers, or that science has all the answers, or that religion has all the answers:

Human beings are limited in knowledge and experience. We can only know so much. We have limits. I compare this to a rat in a cage...That rat is alive, and healthy. It has food, it drinks. In interacts. It entertains itself. It sees the cage it lives in as home. Now imagine the lounge that the cage sits in. What does the rat make of that larger room? What does it make of the humans that go in and out of the room? To further that, the rat doesn't know the room is actually contained within a large house. Or that the house is within a street. And town. And County. And country. And world. And universe. There exists layers of reality beyond what that creature will ever see.

Do you see my point? We too, as human beings are alive, and testing out our knowledge and wisdom and understanding. But we are so impossibly limited - we know only glimpses of life, of creation, of spirit, of the world at large, other planets, or other spiritual dimensions. Just because we cannot see or understand, it doesn't mean it's not there. Much like a rat who will never know about the house beyond its cage, or the town beyond the street, we can only experience within limitations.

I believe there are just certain things in life that we are led by with clues, but this life we have now is probably only one paint-stroke on the canvas of a much larger picture. Perhaps we are not meant to know the whole truth yet. Only time can tell.

a reply to: AlmostRosey

As I briefly stated a couple of days ago on a similar thread. In this modern world controlled, engorged and perhaps to be extinguished by the efforts of science, psi won't be recognized until Science deems it so. Most of the paranormal is too important for the common citizen to be directly informed. As I said in that thread, Remote Viewing is a perfect example of how science has explored the phenomena, but to all but a few of us that have followed the trail, RV is very much a denied topic fraught with disinformation and absolute lies from TPTB.

a reply to: AlmostRosey

Yes OP, quite right.

This dimension we occupy has no limits. We can keep going smaller and smaller; we can keep going bigger and bigger; eternity stretches behind and in front in terms of time.

Dimensions, too, our senses cannot perceive anything above our own dimension. Our perception has a level on which we generally operate yet under certain circumstances this breaks down. I have had many experiences while in manic phases where there exists no rationalisation or correlative. Shamans are even called sha"manic", if you get my meaning.

This shamanic gene makes personalities that are ill fitting in the modern world. I'm a right old misfit. There is no place for my experiences and many others like me. Yet this gene is with us to stay as it is a natural occurrence that has an original social function and an evolutionary one, too. Well that is until gene manipulation starts to impose narrow human order of design upon us without the quirks. We may find out that we lose out big time with works of transformative art, literature, ideas of all kinds and many other areas where originality and development socially are conceived when genes are tampered with to human standards of desirability of design.

I hope that in the future there is a place for people like me who experience other realms of consciousness and that society comes to terms with the fact that life cannot be labelled and squeezed into pigeon holes of order.

To conclude, there is no answer because there is no correlative to these experiences. They are not rational to the modern mind at large. They do not make sense. In ancient cultures there was a correlative and context.

a reply to: lonesomerimbaud

I notice that your Icon picture is A Hamsa/Hand of Miriam/Hand of Fatima. A powerful symbol known to ward off the "evil eye" and other bad mojo. I been wanting to have that tattooed on my back. Very cool by the way.

The key to breaking through the physical/material limitations of our corporeal bodies and brains is our capacity for conceptual abstraction. If we can combine this capacity with our capacity to restrict possibilities by way of logical deduction (which is used by criminal investigators all the time) we can intellectually perceive a lot more than we can perceive through empirical means (which, by the way, is the least reliable means of perceiving).

The fact that all material reality is (at its foundation) quantized, is the best place to start.

Then, it's good to note that material reality is organized, and that this organization has its foundation on system precedence (or preferred outcome); Laws of Physics and Evolutionary Biology being the most obvious examples.

Then, it might help if it is realized that all systems (from quantum to cosmological) - by definition - feature coherence (meaning that one end of a system cannot violate the basic structure of the other end of the system, if that system is to remain a system) and that no human interpretation of empirical observation has the inherent authority to declare the existence of "lines of demarcation" between one system and another, based solely on that empirical observation (since systems exist within larger systems, forcing system coherence to exist between systems as well as within systems).

Logical requirements, like the rejection of infinite reduction, are also necessary to embrace, when working to establish the factual nature of physical reality. These requirements can really pile up when you get absolutely strict in your definition of what can and simply cannot exist, given the facts of reality that have been proven to be true again and again, from the relationship between Potentiality and Actuality to the simple requirements that exist between any two things that are able to interact with each other.

If you take the time and empty your data vault of every certainty concerning what is and isn't real, and just begin anew - applying the raw basics that we have been able to prove (the simplest of all clarifying reality anchors) - then you can see a lot farther than what's visible in the room where our cage is located. You can literally see everything's basis, and once you've thoroughly established that basis, the rest of what is real becomes extremely obvious.

Including the truth about the stuff that has mystified us for millennia.

The human mind did change the fundamental definition of reality, but it didn't change the basic structure of reality. It just added its own unique presence, which changed the nature of what exists as real - reality being the relationship matrix that exists between everything that is real. What's real is real, and the human mind can't affect that. It can imagine what it wants to, but imaginary stuff just exists as unrealistic intellectual abstraction. Just stories that people tell each other.

All that said, the evidence in favor of paranormal existence is overwhelming and its existence doesn't violate any of the above requirements. It takes a boat load of reality clarification, but when all aspects of reality are thoroughly detailed and qualified, the factual nature of "things that go bump in the night" becomes a certainty. It's not magical or mystical, but it's not bullsh*t either.

a reply to: AlmostRosey

For me, this quote says it all:

THE PRINCE AND THE MAGICIAN
from The Magus by John Fowles

Once upon a time there was a young prince, who believed in all things but three. He did not believe in princesses, he did not believe in islands, he did not believe in God. His father, the king, told him that such things did not exist. As there were no princesses or islands in his father's domaines, and no sign of God, the young prince believed his father.

But then, one day, the prince ran away from his palace. He came to the next land. There, to his astonishment, from every coast he saw islands, and on these islands, strange and troubling creatures whom he dared not name. As he was searching for a boat, a man in full evening dress approached him along the shore.

"Are those real islands?" asked the young prince.

"Of course they are real islands," said the man in evening dress.

"And those strange and troubling creatures?"

"They are all genuine and authentic princesses."

"Then God also must exist!" cried the prince.

"I am God," replied the man in full evening dress, with a bow.

The young prince returned home as quickly as he could.

"So you are back," said his father, the king.

"I have seen islands, I have seen princesses, I have seen God," said the prince reproachfully.

The king was unmoved. "Neither real islands, nor real princesses, nor a real God, exist."

"I saw them!"

"Tell me how God was dressed."

"God was in full evening dress."

"Were the sleeves of his coat rolled back?"

The prince remembered that they had been. The king smiled. "That is the uniform of a magician. You have been deceived."

At this, the prince returned to the next land, and went to the same shore, where once again he came upon the man in full evening dress. "My father the king has told me who you are," said the young prince indignantly. "You deceived me last time, but not again. Now I know that those are not real islands and real princesses, because you are a magician."

The man on the shore smiled. "It is you who are deceived, my boy. In your father's kingdom there are many islands and many princesses. But you are under your father’s spell, so you cannot see them."

The prince returned pensively home. When he saw his father, he looked him in the eyes. "Father, is it true that you are not a real king, but only a magician?"

The king smiled, and rolled back his sleeves. "Yes, my son, I am only a magician."

"Then the man on the shore was God."

"The man on the shore was another magician."

"I must know the real truth, the truth beyond magic."

"There is no truth beyond magic," said the king.

The prince was full of sadness. He said, "I will kill myself."

The king by magic caused death to appear. Death stood in the door and beckoned to the prince. The prince shuddered. He remembered the beautiful but unreal islands and the unreal but beautiful princesses "Very well," he said. "I can bear it."

"You see, my son," said the king, "you too now begin to be a magician."