Anyone here have any experience with the "super-natural"?

by Knowsnothing 114 Replies latest jw experiences

  • Nickolas
    Nickolas

    thanks, SBC. The relevance to this thread compels me to repeat myself.

    People who train themselves can induce and control their lucid dreaming. It is a capability all of us has but few of us even know about. You have the capability to shape your world, including the world in which you are awake and, indeed, you do shape your world. Your perception is your reality and your perception is shaped by your upbringing and things you have learned on your journey through life. Strange and wonderful things, things that no-one else experiences, intensely personal experiences (such as God speaking to you, for example) can exist in your mind because of its capability to go in between lucidity and dreaming. If you are disposed to a belief in the supernatural, your brain will be disposed to seek out evidence of it and you will be disposed to interpreting what you experience as supernatural even when you are wide awake.

  • Mary
    Mary

    Just because something cannot be measured, studied, dissected andobserved in a controlled laboratory and then written by someone with a PhD ina peer-reviewed journal, doesn't mean it can't happen.
    That's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? Who ever made that claim?

    Surely you jest. This is exactly the claim made by many on this board over the years(and elsewhere) to downplay the possibility of something 'supernatural'. They demand evidence that can be verfied and studied in physical terms. If that is not available, then the stories are pooh-poohed as being nothing more that someone's over-active imagination, the result of mental illness or an old house making weird noises.

    I do think that many occurances can have a rational explanation, but many experiences that people have do not. I'm unsure as to what I believe at the moment, but I don't concede that everyone who has these experiences are off their meds, or on too many meds, or paranoid delusional. Strange shit happens that defies what we know of in our present physical world.

    Lowkey-lysmith's experience is an excellent example. I will assume that he is of sound mind, does not take hallucinagetic drugs and is not mentally disturbed. How exactly do you explain what happened to him?

  • Nickolas
    Nickolas

    How exactly do you explain what happened to him?

    I would explain it in the same way that I related my own personal experience in my previous two posts. His brain made it all up. It doesn't mean he's mentally disturbed, it means that he like every other normal human being shapes his own reality.

  • Mary
    Mary

    Nicolas, I think you're an intelligent person but that's a pretty lame explanation don't you think? 'His brain made it up'?

  • Nickolas
    Nickolas

    Not lame at all, Mary. Unless he is lying (which I don't think he is) then there remain only two possibilities

    1) it actually happened (and since I do not believe in the supernatural, then that leaves ... )

    2) it happened only in his mind. It seemed very real, but it was real only to him.

    What characterises experiences such as this one is that they are almost always solo events. They are intensely personal experiences. There are most definitely examples of groups of people who have experienced what they described as supernatural happenings (the Lourdes visions is a good example) but even these have solid psychological explanations. Either Mary mother of Jesus visited all those people in Lourdes or they got wrapped up in a self-induced dream state. I'm an atheist. For me it can only be the latter.

  • Joey Jo-Jo
    Joey Jo-Jo

    Nickolas like my old post, some of these have explanations but when something weird occurs and more than person saw that weird occurrence how would you explain it? Lets say you are hironing and I am folding the clothes away and later you go to a draw to use one of those folded clothes and find out they are wet, all folded but all wet? In a space of 1 minute since the last wast done. Even more weird, you are drink hot coco, im sitting on the same room watching tv with you and saw the same things i did, lights turn on and off and the tv switches on and off by itself, then the spoon in the mug starts moving mixing the coco with milk more and more violently untill the mug flys out the door and the spoon violently flies and hits in the forehead leaving a red mark. All this happened. Still not convinced, how about this, the old landlord lived in level 1 (it was a two storie house, we lived in level 2), the landlord was on a lot of medication and suffered from depression, he had no family and his wife deceased, one night all us in the living room and the landlords stomach increased in volume making him look like a 4 month old pregnant lady and then a voice of his wife came out from it, I, my mum and dad, grandma and two other people saw this, explain that.

    I want to point out that the country that lived before was mainly catholic but a lot of witchcraft was done, I know a witch from my cousins (his grandma) side which at one stage he at to live there but left the following day because a black dog appeared out of nowhere and started talking to him in his language.

  • Nickolas
    Nickolas

    explain that.

    There are explanations for what you are recounting, Jo. I might suggest you read some expert articles on the psychological phenomenon called mass hysteria. In my view it is what happened at Lourdes and Fatima and, again in my view, it is what happened to you. It is much like the phenomenon of the planchette moving mysteriously on a ouija board. The players are moving the planchette, not some demon. One member of your family could have been seeing these things and the power of intense, emotional suggestion made you and others see the same things.

  • Joey Jo-Jo
    Joey Jo-Jo

    Yes that makes a lot of sense.

  • watersprout
    watersprout

    Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. Yes many strange things happen, some can be explained some can't... I am a huge believer in the ''spiritual'' and i have had many things happen to me. That's not to say that some people have told me some crazy things that are a result of an urban legend... People know what they see/have seen and it's unfair to to competely disregard those experiences as ''in the brain''... You expect all the believers in supernatural to believe what you all have to say on the matter, you know that's never going to happen.

    Peace

  • Nickolas
    Nickolas

    Just because you don't believe it, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

    Yes, but the corollary is also true. Just because you believe it doesn't mean that it happens, however because you believe it means that it is more likely that it will happen in your mind.

    What do you think actually happened in Fatima back in 1917? Did the sun actually tear itself out of the heavens like those thousands of people said? If it did, then it would have been seen over half the world and the acceleration forces generated would have been great enough to throw everything on the surface of the planet into orbit. So, it didn't happen except in their minds. An illusion. Did God make all those people see the illusion? For what reason? Or did they experience a common hallucination? I subscribe to the latter.

    What do you think actually happened in Salem back in 1691/2? Did all those people actually see the demonic things they saw and put all those innocent people to death as a consequence? Modern theory suggests an environmental factor, specifically the psychoactive effects of ergot fungus (LSD) that grew on the rye crop during those wet summers and disappeared during the normally hot and dry summer of 1693. It was a celebrated, extreme case, but it could not have been the first or last time such a thing could happen. It could happen anywhere there is a particular fungus, mildew or mould growing that can have variable effects on people. It could happen in your house in Seattle or your cottage in Wales. It could happen anywhere conditions are right.

    These are but two examples, both illustrate that the remarkable things seen by people were only in their minds.

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