Your Opinions on the Paranormal?

I do "believe" Pele - but it might be very different from what you perceive and label with conditioned labels, such as "ghosts, vampires, werewolves" or "aliens".

So far I had the chance to experience far too much than being able to claim that telepathy and psychokinesis, astral projection, faith healing and other stuff does NOT exist. I am not talking about second hand, sci-fi books or movies, I am talking about first hand real life experience.

I do not have to prove any of this to anyone, because I do not wish to convince anyone of anything that is (entirely) against her/ his belief system. I used to be a missionary, but far too much energy got wasted to convince ppl who will sooner or later figure for themselves. Or may never have to figure.

After all we are all on different planes (ways) heading for the same destination. Sometimes it's nice to meet a familiar spirit, sometimes a sceptic is needed to challenge my belief - the bottom line is that nobody can experience the same in the same way, or they would have to be me.

But at the end of the day one thing is apparent: If any of this "out there" is aimed to make me scared of anything or anyone on a "supernatural" level, to make me feel paranoid - if anyone out there is utilizing her/ his belief system to make me scared, then it's not mine to take.

Respect is one thing, fear and generalized judgement is something completely different.

I've really enjoyed reading everyone's thoughts and responses.

I like your perspective on not proving it to anyone Tom. My sis is very "shove it down your throat" with stuff and I don't appreciate it at all, and therefore I am more resistant to even hearing her out anymore (years of conditioning to it).

Lots to think about.

Tom, you used to be a missionary?

(this is a serious quick-to-become-a-heated-discussion kind of topic for me, so I'll keep it short.)
I believe in all the things listed, in a way. Most of my beliefs center around angels and demons. For example, I think UFO sightings are a brief glimpse of something moving across the spirit realm.
If you want to get a look at some paranormal stuff, read the Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are good places to start. Revelations is bizarre too. There’s some weird and pretty cool stuff in there, just don’t take it out of context.

And feel free to ask me questions.

hmmm maybe not in the way you think, Silver. A missionary (behaviour) by telling ppl what MY concept and view is.

I still have it in some aspects and occasions - this you may be able to observe at my presence in SD...

As I see it we all have different paths and priorities in our lives. Missionaries need re-confirmation, a feedback loop - basically because they are either not strong in their own faith or believe in something the Buddhists name "the great vehicle" (meaning that only mankind as a whole can be delivered). I don't mind missionaries, it's up to me taking it, wearing them shoes - or leave their concepts up to them.

i beleave in the phenominon of the paranormal just not the hypothoises people come up to explain it.

to me it seems like theres alot of jumping to conclusions involved with the paranomral.

for example people see a strange light in the sky that glowed brightly and moved in an eratic unpredicatble way even sometimes appearing to pass though solid objects they dont know what it is but instead of saying we saw something we dont understand they conclude its aliens/ghosts.

people wake up and see a odd figure standing over there bed instead of saying that was weird how come i saw someone standing there who vanished leaveing no physical trace i dont know what just happend they say instead conclude its an angel, demon or ghost

500 years ago entire villages would experiance the most insain visions of demons walls bleading people appearing to melt or transform into things etc instead of saying we dont know what the hell is going on they concluded it was witches and black magic

however for each of these examples eventualy we uncovered what was going on

the objects reported as alien space craft/ghosts were finaly indentifyed as ball lighting a new and up till then unknown type of lighting which is very rare

people appearing over peoples beds at night leaveing no physical trace was eventualy identifyed as waking dreams in which the brain dosent come out of REM sleep properly and we experiance vivid convinceing dreams while we are awake.

the whole villages seeing crazy things was eventualy identifyed as a type of fungus growing on the crops which tainting there food supply (a fungus from which LSD was later derived)

so yes science can't always explain the paranomal and in most cases there probly is something going on

BUT it seems like most of the explanations people come with with are nothing more than wild guesses and stabs in the dark because they dont want to say.... i dont know.

which is fine if you clear that your just guessing and realy no one knows whats whats going on not yet anyways. what annoys me is the people who make out like what there saying is anything more than blind guess work and try and pass it off as some kind of science or worse still people that manipulate those belefs to there own personal gain for example that worthless f£"king cretin jhon edwards.


p.s. Silver blaze if you might find it intresting to know why revilations is so bizzar. if you look at the historical record you'll find that the author was on a magic mushroom trip when he wrote it. a common practise which aloud them to "experiance the divine", incidnetaly its also why monks have shaved heads so they could put the mushrooms in contact with there skin and let the chemicals soak through

I believe in ghosts yes, always have, believed in them more in the past few years though because my attic is haunted & the pub where my sister works in is.
I don’t believe in demons, werewolves or vampires though, Maybe ‘cos I’ve grown up seeing them as Fantasy Characters? I dunno, but I don’t


& yeah I believe in possession, no I have never personally seen it happen but I do believe in it.
I don’t believe in aliens.
Magic, yes I believe in that, witchcraft is really interesting when you read about it all properly & I do believe that spells & rituals can have an effect on someone.

I just found the best line ever on a bag of Yogi Tea: "Where there is mastery, there is no mystery."

Im suprised by the number of people who beleave in magic out of curiousity can anyone who beleaves in magic actualy perform a magic spell or know someone who can?

Hmm..

Frankly, I don't even know what I believe in. I was raised in.. how should I put this.. an 'extremist scientific' family..? Well, on my mother's part anyway.

We sort of have a family history (though not her) of mental illness, and I think she's sat through a few too many completely nuts conversations, so now won't believe anything that isn't 'scientifically proven'.. some people cling to religion I guess.. *shrug*

So.. weird things have happened round me, one of my best friends is.. shall we say.. gifted in odd ways.. I'm pretty sure I've had some experiences of knowing what was about to happen, and have a big tendency to say the same as certain other people at the same time as other people..
But I do know the human mind is a pretty unreliable witness, especially when it *wants* to find/not find something..

There's definitely a lot as goes on we don't understand, but I guess I can only go as far as keeping an open mind- which is what true science is about, really.

The only thing i certainly believe exists between the things you posted is thelepathy, i've experienced it once myself when i was young...

I see the rest of the paranormal stuff just as you do, just don't know to believe or not, but i must admit the more i think about it the less reasons i find to say such stuff don't exist.

ow yea, i don't see werewolves and vampires and stuff as paranormall things, according to me they're just fantasy characters.

I do believe in aliens, but i don't see that as paranormal stuff, i just think that there's no reason to believe we are the only life form in the whole universe.

eeeerrrm ghosts and spirits n stuff - yes, but i didnt know that anyone thought warewolves were real...do they? warewolves and vampires are only as real to me as the hammer horror *which by the way is amazing* origanals were :P all makeup and fake blood...

aliens?? maybe! heehee i will admit i searched google earth once looking for them :P i was a very bored bunny

so our survival evolution has discarded some of our brain power, its full potential is truly mindblowing, and it is arguably certain that some people are capable of "paranormal" actions, which are perfectly natural to them, but just beyond us!

actualy savants dont have more brain power than the average person. there brains just dont encode information like the rest of us do. normaly our brains get rid of information it thinks is irelivent to prevent us becomeing overwelmed by it. so by removeing these filters savants can do some impresive things. however it comes a price they are easly overwelmed and confused. also they tend to be very poor at abstract thought as well as socialy impaired. many of the worse cases also lack the theory of mind (understanding that other people think just as they do) as a result are often unable to take care of them selfs or function independently.

savonts aren't an example of the true potential of the humman brain they simply illustrate how problems we would regard as difficult e.g. advance matmatics, photographic memory etc. are actualy very easy problems compaired to say decideing what your going to do today or cracking a well timed joke with friends. but because we do these things so regualy we dont appreciahte how difficult it actualy is to do them. we are already useing our brains to there full potental we just take it for granted.

Actually we use all of it.

http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/10percent.asp

Gist of it is that the 10% idea is untrue, while not all the brain is active all the time, it is all used.

ive always thought that 105 thing wasnt too accurate. although i dont beleive that our whole brain is used, but definatly mroe then 10%. You know when you see those videos of like brain activity? ya the spots are poping up all over the place but the brain is pretty thick, and who knows whats going on underneith. Also ive heard about people who get impaled by a rod or shot right thru the head and there is absolutly NO damage. sometimes it isnt even felt.

thanks domino you beat me to it

just to add to the reason our brain only uses a small part at a time is to conserve energy our brains are incredably efficent things.

to put it into perspective the average human brain is about on par with the worlds most powerfull super computers when it comes to raw computational power.

however the super computer uses the same amount of power as a small village in a first world country.

the more possibly primitive abilities become more apparent, so you could reason that all sorts of things lie dormant in there, unused, as you said, to avoid overwhelming us.

well thats not quite right the brain isn't hideing extra sences and abilitys from us (why would it do something so harmfull to its own survival) what it is doing is managageing that information to give us the ability to focus on things by blocking out irelivent information.

savants dont have this ability they aren't able to focus on a particual area they get the full blast of information all the time but there not geting information we couldn't get. the only diffrence is if we want that information we must focus our attention on it they get it wether they want it or not.

did anyone see "enemies of reason" on channel 4 last night (monday 13th August) it was a guy (scientist) who was going around looking at astrology, seancing, dowsing and some other superestitions / paranormal.

He was saying how he believes the spread of these is a blight on the human endeavor, and how astrology is still based upton the model set up 2000 years ago even though the worlds axis has changed throwing the data off by 23 degrees but the original map etc apparently still hold true.
He witnessed a double blind test on dowsing which through up results of 1 in 6 success (about the same as blind chance).

I found it quite a refreshing change and balance to all the religious and paranormal television that is shown. it wasn't all that balanced (him being a cold sceptic) but he did admit that he didn't know how all things worked but would like proof before he believed, his session with a tarot reader was quite good the reader got a lot wrong and defended himself saying not all things will be true for a person in a reading, when much of that shown was blatant generalism or attempted cold reading.

the worse bit though was the showed a spiritualist church where the leader "spoke to spirits" he "linked" to a girl and she later told how he had spoken to her before about how a family member, they had died in a car crash and the spirit said it was the fault of the front left tyre he had just had replaced at a garage.

yer i saw that was an awsome program and while i agree he was bias i thought he was very fair about how he delt with there clames. like the astrologer instead of saying this is rubish he said lets do a simple test to see if what your saying is actualy happening. at which point the astroleger started to panic and accused him of trying to create misscheafe.

and yer the spirtualist guys realy got me angrey pissing on the memorys of peoples loved ones to con money out of them frankly i dont know how they sleep at nite.