Things in the Room

[BrandonD]

If the some of the phenomena is not artificial, then why can people be treated successfully with medication?? If it were outside of the area of artificial reality then medication would have no effect, yet it does.

Here's a story:

There exists a chain of islands, and on one island in particular is a tribe of blind men. Because of this they are unaware of anything beyond the island. They believe that the island is all that exists.

However, one of the men can see. He tells the other men that other islands exist outside of this one, because he is able to see them. But these islands are distant and unreachable.

The others consider him nuts. They cannot see these supposed islands he speaks about, and have no idea of this perception of his. They tell him that his "visions" are based in imagination.

For treatment, they administer a local drug to this man which blinds him. He no longer sees the islands, he is now like the rest of the tribe, which confirms to all the men that what he was experiencing was an artificial reality. It was treated with medication, after all.

That was off the top of my head, it is not meant to be a literal analogy, but an example that shows how assumptions and lack of imagination leads one to the false idea that certain evidence leads to only one conclusion.

You are making assumptions in this case that there is only one conclusion, and there is not only one conclusion.

I think that the only way to the truth is to have a centered position of being open-minded yet truly skeptical. Taking into account people's experiences and stories(which is all we have) and that fact that we can reproduce the same things in a lab sways me towards the idea that PERHAPS it is all in the brain.

What are your reasons for thinking it is.... well, whatever you think it is??

I'm really not stuck on any specific theory, and in fact it may be all in the brain. But if that's the case then I'd contend that *everything* is all in the brain. Which places these experiences on the same level as everything else.

If you are truly open-minded yet skeptical, you should be equally skeptical towards all sources of information, regardless of authority. Assumptions are the arch enemy of learning.

 

[CapnG]

Still, I'm strongly opposed to the cultural pressure to "swim with the pack" which always seems to accompany paranormal subjects.

I'm not trying to pressure you, Brandon (and if it seems that way, I apologize) I just find it a little weird not to start from the mundane explanations and then move outward to the more esoteric ones when it's warranted. Leaping over the prosaic in pusuit of the arcane seems illogical to me...

Judging from my personal experience, there is *something* behind ghosts/shadow people other than just imagination. We will not reach that something if we succumb to the social pressure to view everything in terms of what we already think we know.

But isn't that tipping the scales in favour of personal preference? Comparatively, wouldn't it be like continuing to insist that the sun MUST be drawn across the sky by Apollo's chariot despite centuries of scientific data showing it's much more bland big, hot, ball-of-gas reality?

 

[TClaeys]

You are making assumptions in this case that there is only one conclusion, and there is not only one conclusion.

If you read my previous post I say :"I'm not saying all phenomena can be explained in this way".

So I'm not saying there is only one conclusion. But I am saying we can learn from it and gain some understanding. I mean how would we explain group ghost sightings like Davids? Similar brain patterns and chemistry?? I don't know about that. But I might lean a little more if it were reproduced in a lab setting.

And yes, we should all be skeptical of studies we hear about regardless of who did them. I wasn't there, I don't know all the conditions and controls, etc. And I don't know the intent or thoughts of the people involved. And these things are important. So good point there.

I guess all we can really do is take in as much information as possible in a genuine effort to understand.

 

[urkotic]

well sorry, "me too":

Many years ago while in college I fell asleep in a dorm room one afternoon, and while in some (I thought) hypnagogic state, I was certain there was a large black dog in the room beside the bed... I could hear it wheezing and whining but couldn't move or turn my head to see it but felt certain it was a sickly black dog about to attack me. Not cat-like but, kind of similar maybe. I did write it off in my case to some sleep paralysis / waking dream episode but it was pretty vivid fwiw.

I think one reason the episode has stayed with me is a follow-up happened. After getting out of school I moved out of the state (Ohio). A couple years later I went back to visit a friend for a few days and was sleeping on the couch in his living room. One morning while he was showering and I was still asleep on the couch, I became aware of two entities in the room with me, talking to one another about me and making all kinds of insulting remarks (the verbatim of which I've forgotten, unfortunately). I couldn't move or yell for help. The overall sensation - the fear and paralysis and certainty of a presence - in the second episode matched the first, except the first time it was some awful dog, the second it was two mocking something-or-others. In both cases I was quite relieved to "wake up", but was left very unsettled by the second instance.

I've had other sleep paralysis type episodes that lacked both the sense of a presence in the room, and the fear that seems to accompany the presence(s).

 

[BrandonD]

But isn't that tipping the scales in favour of personal preference? Comparatively, wouldn't it be like continuing to insist that the sun MUST be drawn across the sky by Apollo's chariot despite centuries of scientific data showing it's much more bland big, hot, ball-of-gas reality?

It's not a case of tipping the scales in favor of personal preference, but rather personal experience.

Just to be precise, my opinion is only that there's something more to the experiences taking place in that state right between asleep and awake... it is not simply "ramblings of the imagination" and nothing more, which is the standard layman's opinion on the subject.

I'm not saying I necessarily believe you are in another dimension or anything like that (though I might speculate about those sort of things), I'm just saying there's something more significant about it. I think that my personal experience is sufficient to make this very basic conclusion.

So in that respect it's not just a personal preference for "fantasticality" (invented word of the day), so the sun analogy doesn't really apply.