Paranormal Experiences
Bunks
Australia Veteran
Hi all
Paranormal events are purported phenomena described in popular culture, folk, and other non-scientific bodies of knowledge, whose existence within these contexts is described as beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding.
I have become a little obsessed after hearing a couple of ghost stories recently. Never really had any experiences myself but curious if others can share a story or two.
The first story was second hand through my father.
A friend of his moved in to a new home in the country and swears blind there's a ghost in the house. My father is as cynical as they come but is truly puzzled as he says this lady is one of the most down to earth and honest people he knows. She now says the ghost is talking to her grand daughter. It's apparently an old lady.
A good friend of mine (very down to earth, honest, non spiritual) told me he and another friend of ours were driving out on a country road near our home town late one night. They passed a turn off and he was surprised to see a young boy perched atop a road sign. The sign was about 3 metres high and the top as thin as signs can be (a few millimetres at most). He asked if his friend had seen the boy but he hadn't so they turned around and went back. The boy was still there as they went past again so the other friend saw him too. They turned around again and went past but he'd gone. They thought about stopping and getting out but they were a bit freaked out so left.
Comments
When it comes to paranormal experiences, perhaps it has something to do with the release of karmic energy...cause (unfinished business) condition (avenue for release) effect (release/sighting/experience)
Whenever I have a slightly paranormal experience, and I’ve had several, I tend to forget the specifics soon afterwards. The world is just the world, and sometimes it can be a little strange, but those things can be explained.
It’s like card tricks. They seem magical at first, but when you know how they’re done, it turns out they were perfectly ordinary after all.
Well you’re no fun!
That’s true, my life is a relentless struggle against rationality. I keep telling myself, don’t be too reasonable, allow room for the wondrous in your life, don’t become a dry old shtick. But it only seems to work in short bursts...
Hence my admiration for @lobster’s presence on this forum.
Yes! I understand. I've grown up in a very similar environment @Kerome.
Just trying to inject some more magic and wonder in to my life...
Ah ha!
We haz plan!
As some of you know I keep the rainbow bodies of imaginary demons and deity pantheon of vajrayana in a REAL cupboard. I am thinking of moving this into a portable mandala sack similar to that used by Hotei/St Nick.
I regularly allow/imagine/visualise demons feasting on my endless bad karma/faults/impediments/pandemic viri etc. This is free service for the hell realms.
… and now for the magic and wonder.
Siddhi and super-natural qualities are really just refined sensitivities. The result of virtue/practice/reflective polishing of our real Bodhi Buddha Rainbow of Perfection. Here now.
I was born in London, a place which has more ghosts than you can poke a stick at...haunted churches, haunted houses, haunted cemeteries, the Tower of London and its hoards of ghosts....However....
Paranormal
This is not to say that the sciences are always right...It is important to have an open mind when it comes to these sort of things......, but as Carl Sagan once said... “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.”
I’ve always done this by reading copious quantities of science fiction and fantasy, watching films like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter. It expresses my love for the wondrous, without giving away my respect for and understanding of the natural.
My father is more the man for the esoteric and the paranormal, he gets into areas like Edgar Cayce and Atlantis, the Pyramids, crop circles, ancient aliens, and so on. He is a mix of the rational and straightforward, with a sideline into meditation, guru’s and the esoteric.
He does believe in ghosts, or at least the presence of loved ones who have died. Once, a few months after my stepmother had died, he went to visit a medium’s show, and this medium picked him out of the crowd and said how grateful my stepmother was for the help he had given her with the dying process. Nobody there knew him, or that she had died, or that he had helped her in the last days by telling her information from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So I guess he has reason to believe.
Yes, Shoshin1, high dopamine also associated with psychosis. I've often had experiences that occur during my more psychotic periods of my life that afterwards I wonder if some of them were accurate/legitimate patterns or meanings amidst the many that surely must have been inaccurate.
Well you know Joseph Campbell’s saying, “the psychotic drowns in the waters where the mystic swims with delight”. It always seemed to me to say that any psychotic had best learn to be like a mystic and swim.
It's interesting how paranormal things only seem to appear/happen to some people whilst the vast majority never have such experiences, no matter how much they would like to have a paranormal experience....
Also I guess one has to take into account, how our six sense doors take in/process data ...bearing in mind....
We're just vibrating bundle of energy flux held together by karmic glue
Who tend to process things differently, things we may wish to be true
The neuropathways form in the brain and patterns begin to emerge
Some create feelings of pleasantness (dopamine) . these feelings create an urge
Our mind may create what is not really there, in order to appease
The cravings of the clinging aggregates. a short lived sense of being at ease
And so the cycle of craving continues, we get caught up in this ongoing flux
The pleasantness will eventually turn sour and one finds that Dukkha sucks
I was walking with my first teacher and two other students. We were near a small river in open country. A very light breeze blew. He suddenly looked across at a group of wild iris leaves sticking out of the water. “ There are nagas there” he said quietly. We looked, could see nothing. He smiled and intoned something in Tibetan. Suddenly the water around the plants began to churn and the plants twist as though a large animal was swimming through them.
We looked open mouthed. He laughed, and we went back for lunch.
Strange things DO happen. And we seek to explain them. But most of the time, there is more than one possible explanation (one normal, one paranormal) so I just leave it with a sense of wonder, rather than trying to pin down what happened.
Indeed. He would brook no woo-woo talk.
He said things like..”You can’t yet follow your breath for two minutes without your mind wandering. What would you do with siddhis?”
~So much unknown left inside our dimly lit known part of the world / reality. I like to remain skeptical, but sometimes I cannot stop but wonder. What are these karmic clouds up to? Hm..
If you think about it, the mind is amazing, as is this psychophysical phenomena we call the self, which for the most part is beyond the scope of normal scientific understanding
Look around at your surroundings , this piece of fatty flesh. muscle, gristle and bone is experiencing all what's seen, heard, felt, etc, through its sense doors, the colours, shapes, sounds, smells tastes, touch, and sensations/feelings, it has a magical mystical feel to it all...
For the most part we are a walking talking paranormal experience but have yet to fully experience/explore/appreciate what really lies within...
One hour and then another.
Inexorably march. step by step
Whenever I meet you, we each smile.
But who is dragging your corpse around ?
~Chan~
Exactly so @Shoshin
We hypernormals are dead already. With time to live. A list of miracles:
and now back to the real-fantasy …
Attending a funeral of a well-known monk, the Zen master Joshu said “is it not strange, that we go to watch a procession with one living man at its head and many dead ones following on behind?”
Maybe I'm just weird but I don't see why there can not be a healthy mixture of reason and wonder. In fact, I wouldnt recommend using one without the other as the ratio seems to be in line with compassion:wisdom.
Reason without wonder leads to dogma. Wonder without reason leads to flights of fancy.
If ghosts or other paranormal phenomenon happen, there will likely be a reasonable explanation as to how they happen.
If it is a case of the snake really being the rope then we get a good laugh when we see the illusion but just because the mind is conditioned to look for patterns doesn't mean there are no patterns.
"When you believe in things that you don't understand then you suffer"
--Stevie Wonder
I so wanted to attribute it to Stevie Reason but nah.