Paranormal stuff: is it a cultural thing? Rant ahead

by Whynot 46 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  OrphanCrow

  Why not: I don't have the funds to publish scientific research or get it peer reviewed. Although, I know there are researchers on such cases but their research, even though professionally done, keeps getting rejected

  Not only are you lacking the funds, but you are also lacking the fundamental knowledge of how scientific research is conducted or even what it is.

  Professionally done? I highly doubt that. Correctly done scientific research that passes the scientific requirements does not get rejected .

  Rejection means that the research has not been done correctly.

  Science is a term and discipline that is used incorrectly by people who are not scientists and who don't know anything about the scientific method. Just calling yourself a scientist doesn't cut it.
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  Anders Andersen

  It always strikes me as particularly odd that the behavior, visualisation and person of ghosts and demons seems to be region-bound, as is the frequency of their appearance.

  In some regions everyone has encountered them, in other regions almost nobody encountered them.

  Could it be that perceiving them is heavily influenced by the culture of those who perceive them (or not)?
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  Simon

  There are still a lot of things science cannot explain but I love seeing how there are scientists that are stepping out of the box trying to explain "weird" concepts. Like teleportation, reincarnation, communicating with people who are in comas, transferring memories from one animal to another. These are crazy ideas that are actually being studied. I'm hoping this can open the minds of other scientists and not be so narrowminded.

  First, I think people need to be more open-minded to the fact that these things are actually in their heads. They are the ones in denial / wanting to stick to a belief despite all evidence to the contrary.

  Second, there have been studies of memory. Not subconscious, but real, waking memories of real events. Scientists analyzed and then researched people's memories - were you actually living at that address when your memory of playing on the swings and your mother telling you Elvis had died happened? It turns out they are all a jumble and often a mishmash of the real and invention (often, it turned out, the inventions had the people themselves in the memory - we're in a first-person game remember).

  So given that the conscious memories can be such a mess and include projected and invented views, it's no surprise that the subconscious mind can also invent things that can then bubble up., especially if drugs or belief are involved - both make it easier to see what we want to see.
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  flipper

  As some here have so appropriately put it - we as humans DO NOT know everything there is to know about the paranormal. In answer to the question by one poster " have these experiences happened due to drugs " ? For me the answer is " no " - In the occasional experiences I've had I've been fully in possession of my own mind thank you very much. I'm not one of those " unstable attention seeking nuts " that another poster referred to.

  As the others who shared their experiences here stated , many of us aren't sure of what we've experienced , we aren't being dogmatic, just honest in disclosing certain experiences , in which there should be no shame in that- unless some here really ARE scared of imaginary " boogie men " or " Satan " or " demons " . lol. I don't see how that honest people just sharing their experiences threatens anyone's belief systems or existence in their life.

  In my personal experiences in two of the experiences I had - it seemed very much to me that both experiences were leaning towards two different deceased people trying to send me a message. Allow me to explain. I'm a big boy and can deal with any slings & arrows of insult I receive here. God knows I've been insulted on other threads by folks.

  So in the first instance in 2015 it happened at a commercial job inside an office I was doing work at. I had a worker named Rebecca, a young mother who had died of heart failure two years before at age 33. She had two sons of her own in their teens who were devastated when their mom died. We had had conversations when she was alive about how my JW daughters shunned me and she felt really bad about how this made me sad. I looked at her like a daughter myself and she had met my wife and worked on jobs with me & my son as well. She used to work at this one particular job in this same office in an industrial complex and after she had died sometimes I'd just talk openly about how much I missed her and the lights would start flickering in this little computer side room.

  O.K. so hear me out . I had just heard in the summer of 2015 that my JW daughter was going to have a baby, I'd be a grandpa for the first time. So I just started saying this out loud at this job " Hey Rebecca , I just wanted you to know I'm going to be a grandpa for the first time " - then immediately- these two cell phones that were turned OFF , yet plugged in two opposite offices start getting a bunch of static on them ! In the midst of the static - a lady started laughing !. I yelled out " Rebeccah ? " And i'd go into one office this lady would laugh and I'd hear this laugh transfer to the other cell phone in the OTHER office ! Freaking incredible. So I ran to the other office. This laughing sounded just like the way my worker used to laugh, yet it wouldn't speak to me. It lasted about 1 to 2 minutes and I kept saying her name " Rebeccah " - then all of a sudden the static went quiet and boom, nothing, no laughing, it stopped. All that came to my mind in my intuition is that possibly ( for those who might doubt, not being dogmatic here ) it MAY have been my deceased worker expressing joy & happiness that I was going to be a grandpa for the first time. There was really no scientific explanation for two cell phones to go off like this when they were turned off being charged.

  O.K. The 2nd experience happened in December of 2017 right after my JW mom died. As most know here I had a really close relationship with my mom. While she was lying on her bed at the hospital in her final hours she was conscious, but could not talk as she had a massive stroke 8 days before taking her speech away. I leaned into her and told her, " Mom, I don't know what happens after we pass away, but I want you to know that IF there is something after you die, my wife and I invite you to please visit us in any way, shape, or form if you want to communicate to us. We would love to hear from you, so please let us know in some manner if you're out there somehow . " Kissed her on her forehead not really knowing what to expect.

  Fast forward 2 days later after she died I was typing on this same computer posting a thread on the private section about her death. I was typing a long thread for sure about her final hours, and just towards the end of the thread exactly at the time when I typed THIS statement " I told my mom to please contact me if there's anything after life if she was able to get in touch with us " - just THEN - the computer screen started getting static electricity and went totally dark along all 4 sides in a square and the only light on the screen then zoomed in to that statement I just told you in quotes ! I sat there absolutely stunned ! I couldn't believe it- but it seemed, or quite possibly appeared that my mom was letting me know she was there through this electrical energy experience. I had no other explanation. It lasted about 1 minute and I called my wife in to see it, she was gobsmacked as well. Then, boom ! As soon as I hit the submit post button the computer screen went back to normal working just fine. The computer had no malfunction, it had NEVER done this before with dark on the screen and static lines appearing on the dark part of the screen.

  So those are the two biggest possible paranormal experiences I've had. Hey look, it seemed to me it was pretty damning evidence that there's something in the after death experience that we humans just don't understand. There are plenty of things in this life that many of us just don't understand. In the words of the Kansas song " Carry on Wayward Son " it states, " If I claim to be a wise man, it surely means that I do't know."

  I had no reason to feel like this one poster stated, " No one is ever embarrassed or ashamed of being in touch with their dead ancestors it seems. " I for one have no REASON to be embarrassed or ashamed of ANYTHING. I left off all the " guilt " or "shame " feelings when I exited the severe judgmental cult called Jehovah's Witnesses. It was a warm, good feeling to think my mom might be contacting me in the afterlife.

  As most folks who personally know me here, I'm a pretty grounded, reasonable person who wouldn't just make things up or pull things out of my ass for attention. I'm definitely not one of those " attention seeking nuts " described earlier.

  But hey life is interesting. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone has one. It's what makes the world go around. I have a happy life , great friends, success in business, and any attempt made to discredit me falls off my back like water off a ducks back. Carry on then. I will continue to enjoy life totally
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  ShirleyW

  I'm not one that really believes in the "hokus pokus" stuff either but, after my mom died and I sold the house, the realtor and I were sitting at the dining room table and I was signing the paperwork. I was facing the wall where the furnace box was to turn on and off the heat, right next to it is the former opening in the wall where the old box was that was covered up with a small little framed picture my mother put over it. When she first put up that frame (more than twenty years ago) with just a nail I remember the frame used to just slide down to the floor a lot until I guess my dad made it a bit more secure.

  ANYWAY, as I was sitting at the table, at the actual point when I was signing my name, that little picture then didn't just slide down to the floor, it practically jumped off the wall, like a tiny little mini explosion, no, not across the room or anything, just about six inches or so from the wall. So I'm thinking my Dad or mom thought I wouldn't sell the house. That was really kinda creepy seeing that, the exact moment I was signing my name to finalize the sale!
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  I'm going to relate an experience I had with a college professor who taught psychology, I met him at a pentacostal meeting 16 or so year ago, we spent time hiking and we talked and he informed me about his past as a college professor. Seems he lost his credentials by writing a bad paper about his experience in Brazil with some voodoo priests. Anyway we got into some deep discussions about psychedelic drugs, enlightenment, he told me about some of his work with sensory deprivation on prisoners, and psychosomatic healing. He said that he took a bunch of equipment(EEGs and whatnot)to examine these people during certain experiments. Anyway long story short he claims these people alter him and his equipment with their powers.

  I guess that was why he was at the meetings it seems that these people caused his kundalini to be come awakened and he was seeking some relief from it(put it back to sleep).

  Here is something about the spiritism in Brazil:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AXKulvZfsw
  
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  Brokeback Watchtower

  Chess game from beyond:

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1S6y1-Pz_w
  
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  wozza

  Joeyjojo -to answer your question about drugs ,no I was a child when my experiences started .

  I think maybe my experiences started because of the environment of people I grew up into ,similar I guess to indigenous people adopting what is their ways ,whether I had some trigger in my mind that started things happening I do not know.

  I agree the stuff I got into before I shut down things was hard to believe and I was aware of that at the time. Again I think because I had a girlfriend with paranormal powers way beyond mine ,that it may have triggered something in me to adapt due to association. Before I met her I would not entertain moving objects etc even though I had watched these things done by some of my mothers friends. As far as evidence ,this was 45 + years ago along time before the mobile phones of today, besides the proof at the time was the people who witnessed the events.

  Simon - I agree that memories can come back mixed up but my memories have been constant and I lived with the repercussions of them all my life ,so to raise doubts over the credulity of them ,well ,I would not be being honest with myself ,and I do not wish to cower to undue influence from others because they have never had my life experiences and have a different point of view . Honestly I do not harbor resentment for your view on things, we all need to be cautious of what people say or do, If I was you I would not straight away believe everything that comes my way, but I did have the life I have had and I have never tried to profit from it , the things that happened were at random that I did not "call" up ,they were unwanted.

  You believe what you believe and I would not try to sway anyone ,never have ,I merely chimed in on this post because it was interesting and I know others have similar experiences too and I'm at an age where I do not feel a need to hide what happened because it's unpopular with some. With respect thank you for providing me and many others with a way to talk about things.
  
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  mentalclarity

  My boyfriend took a course that was being offered at our local community college on the topic of what happens beyond death. The instructor is a kind of a big wig parapsychologist who actually got a degree in the material when it was possible to do that. Anyhow, he teaches these 6 week courses on witches and voodoo, what happens after death and metaphysics and parapsychology. It's all based on his own research and labs at universities (back when they could find funding for these type of things). So here is a person, who is not talking about his own personal experience, but has actually done and collaborated in scientific studies with others. I only went once to his class out of curiosity and because i liked the idea of hearing about the studies and not just something anecdotal. His description of things was through a scientific lens so I thought that was pretty cool. Of course, I'm a big skeptic too so I filter things through my critical thinking brain and just listened.

  My personal conclusion is that there are things that we do not fully comprehend and that there seems to be people who are able to perceive things that others cannot. I mean, is it such a stretch when you think how animals perceive differences in temperature/atmosphere/sounds etc that humans can't? anyhow, I don't know exactly how any of this works, but I just can't dismiss the evidence that is out there by claiming it all in one's head.

  I actually asked why some areas seemed to have more paranormal occurrences than others- he answered it had something to do with magnetic fields. I think there's alot more to it than that too but that was his kind of basic answer.

  Some cultures are obviously more open than others - the States was inhabited by puritans- this had an effect on multiple aspects (social/religious/cultural/psychological). There are cultures around the world who live quite harmoniously with a "spirit" world. I think people in some cultures might be paying more attention than others so they might catch things we would just shrug off. Of course there is the other extreme of folks who are very superstitious and attribute everything to "spirits" or demons. That reminds me of JW stuff.

  What was really interesting for me to discover was that there used to be a group of scholars who were doing these experiments on university campuses which would be completely impossible to do now because of changed attitudes and perceptions regarding was is considered "science"

  Here's an article he discussed in his class: http://www.newsweek.com/where-do-you-go-when-you-die-increasing-signs-human-consciousness-after-death-800443
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  Simon

  The instructor is a kind of a big wig parapsychologist who actually got a degree in the material when it was possible to do that. Anyhow, he teaches these 6 week courses on witches and voodoo, what happens after death and metaphysics and parapsychology. It's all based on his own research and labs at universities (back when they could find funding for these type of things).

  Yes, these people definitely don't do it because there is money to be made from the gullible.

  It's a pyramid scheme selling snake oil, you need more believers to keep getting paid.

  What was really interesting for me to discover was that there used to be a group of scholars who were doing these experiments on university campuses which would be completely impossible to do now because of changed attitudes and perceptions regarding was is considered "science"

  Thanks god! Though sadly, now money is pissed away on gender studies instead - just a new religion to part the feeble-minded from their money.