Young people experiences. John Mack

[plumbbob12]

Dr. Mack was very interested in the alien abduction phenomena, and was especially interested in the stories young children told. The reason for his interest, in part, was the idea that a child’s mind was not locked into our reality, or overly populated by media, especially in some of the African areas he went too in order to obtain these experiences first hand from young ones. From my own experience at the age of 5, and discussing other peoples experiences as young children, I think that there is a wealth of material to draw from, that might aid us in understanding this phenomena. I realize that the debunkers will rake us over the fire for using the stories of very young people as being unreliable, and full of fantasy, but in my experience, there are many stories where several children saw the same apparition, and can be individuality interviewed in order to separate fact from fanciful. A case in point:
When my brother and I were 5 and 7, we shared a bedroom with two individual beds. Our beds were separate from each other by about three feet, and we shared a night table. One night we had just been sent to bed, and were laying on our sides talking to each other. While the light to our room was off, we could see very well from the light that spilled in from the hallway. We were propped up on our pillows chatting, when all of a sudden, a “monster” hand of some kind just “plopped” on my mattress. This hand had long thin fingers, grayish with what looked like pock marks on the top of this hand. I cannot remember how many fingers this thing had, but it was more than three, and less than 6. Both my brother and I screamed our heads off, and my dad came dashing into our room, and flipped on the main light. The hand instantly disappeared, and we never seen it again. To this day, and its been over 50 years, both my brother and I know what we saw, and no one can tell us that we were dreaming or asleep. Needless to say, I have spent some time attempting to collect childhood stories of this kind, and found many. Something about how our minds work at that tender age lets us see things that “go bump in the night’ until we reach an age where we are convinced that we cannot be seeing what we once knew was there. pb<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
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[tyder001]

Please understand I am not making "light" of your experience. I for one would be a hpyocrite if I did. But, this falls under the "I'd have to see if for myself to believe it." Not because you are lying (I don't think you are.) But extraodinary things do happen to folks. But, unless it happens to you there is no real "reference point" in our current view of reality to account for it. I have related things that happened to me. It's hard for someone who has not expreienced it to believe it. I understand. I am on the "opinion" that the brain is a "filter" and actually "tempers" the reality of the universe so we can stay "grounded" Others feel it's the source of all reality. Honestly? Nobody knows. Have you or your brother had any other "experiences" through life either alone or apart?
Peace.

 

[plumbbob12]

Thanks for the comments PM. And, No, neither my brother nor I have had any experiences like the one we had when young. This question of defining reality gets to the crux of the matter. While I agree that my brothers’ and my experience was antidotal, and science will dismiss this out of hand for that reason, if one thinks about it, my work in our chemistry lab is also antidotal. I can do an experiment, and write down the data I find, and even publish said data in an accepted journal, and all of this is still antidotal. After all, one must take my word that I preformed the experiment the way I said I did, and got the results I said I found. (A good example of this is the cold fusion experiments done in the 1980’s that was published, and then debunked because the experimenters could not agree that the experiment was done to the reproducible satisfaction needed to show that the phenomena did happen as shown). I can even make an argument that the reproducible part of the scientific method is because of the well proven quantum effect of observer, and observed entanglement, much like the double slit experiment. So where does this leave us? We can either believe that the world has some kind of material “reality” or that our universe is only a mist or dream that is mercy of whoever is dreaming of it at the time. In my options, the only way to live without going insane is to accept that there is some kind of substance to our universe, and that it obeys certain unchangeable laws. pb
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[Kandinsky]

Thanks for the comments PM. And, No, neither my brother nor I have had any experiences like the one we had when young. This question of defining reality gets to the crux of the matter. While I agree that my brothers’ and my experience was antidotal, and science will dismiss this out of hand for that reason, if one thinks about it, my work in our chemistry lab is also antidotal.

First off, it's 'anecdotal' as in relaying an anecdote which is a short personal story. I'm not usually one of the spellcheckers of the internet, but why it detracts from your point.

I haven't a clue if you saw a hand on your bed or not. Can't say if your memory is real or if your brother has bolted-on a false memory through your prompts. If not for your word that your brother took part in witnessing this incident, I'd suggest you're recalling a vivid dream. That's not to assume I'm 'debunking' here, just that I have a couple of memories of events I later realised didn't actually happen and were dreamt. They remain 'real' memories of a false event in my case.

The reason I'm posting is to question the notion that children are more open to different realities in the way you describe. It's an oft-repeated statement that children are somehow psychic and lose the ability as they get older. To be honest, I don't favour that idea for a number of reasons. The main reason is that I was a kid once and don't remember seeing ghosts or weird stuff. I don't remember the other kids at school talking about seeing ghosts or weird stuff. I haven't known any kids since who see ghosts or weird stuff.

John Mack raised some interesting questions about consensual reality and the possibilities of many other equal realities. It's stuff that I think about now and then. Throughout these thoughts, I tend to return to the physical reality being the one less subjective to perceptions. For all his ideas it was consensual reality that he looked the wrong way crossing a road and was killed by a driver. It's more parsimonious to give consensual reality the upper hand and doubt your own senses when 'other realities' begin to take form. Since my early teens, I've had regular incidents of a weird nature and put them down to a genetic predisposition that my intellect can explain using conventional psychology. Yeah, I allow for the small possibility that they represent more than just a synaptic car crash at the crossroads of my corpus callosum.

I guess my view is that people seeing/hearing/experiencing ghosts and weird stuff doesn't necessarily make them more evolved or spiritual, it's more likely to indicate an underlying psychology or organic diversity from the norm.

 

[tyder001]

I can certainly understand your points Kandisky. Sounds very likely to a large extent. I do beleive there are real honest "paranormal" for won't of a better word events. But, that could be because I"m more "comfortalble" with a paranormal explanation (of course that could also be turned around to skeptics.) I think this honestly sounds more like the explantion you have provided so I'm kind of with you on this one. However, all it takes to prove all crows are not "black" is one white crow. When it comes to a "total" "materialist" viewpoint I have seen my "white" crows so I don't go there. But, I am with Saint Thomas "Unless I feel the scars and see the marks I can't beleive." I can wonder and I can search and I can hope. But, the paranormal is a very elusive and debatable reality. Still, so is just about everything in this world. Somebody, somewhere can debate and "debunk" any worldview. I know cause I've never seen anything religous, scientific or psychological that didn't have detractors. But, good points on your post.

 

[Kandinsky]

However, all it takes to prove all crows are not "black" is one white crow. When it comes to a "total" "materialist" viewpoint I have seen my "white" crows so I don't go there. But, I am with Saint Thomas "Unless I feel the scars and see the marks I can't beleive." I can wonder and I can search and I can hope. But, the paranormal is a very elusive and debatable reality. Still, so is just about everything in this world. Somebody, somewhere can debate and "debunk" any worldview. I know cause I've never seen anything religous, scientific or psychological that didn't have detractors. But, good points on your post.

Seems we're on the same page. Cognitive dissonance can be like a bad Velvet Underground bootleg....feedback, noise and a moving signal.

 

[plumbbob12]

Thanks for the spelling critique. I tend to get in a hurry at work, and just click "accept”, which is lazy, but, then again, I don't have to worry about my fiber content.
I get the impression you are expressing a belief system in positivism, which if fine, and works well enough to get folks on the moon. When we start discussing the kinds of reality that children see, we tend to leave the realm of science. While I did not suggest that I, nor my brother were psychic, as I do not know what that term really means. I do suggest that younger minds might interpret reality differently than we do as older folks. The question then is: What is the true version of reality? Is it the reality we are taught to “see”, or is there a larger picture we are not seeing? A physical analogy would be the difference in frequencies our eyes can detect. While we can only detect a narrow band of light frequencies (I believe it is somewhere between 400 and 800 nm if I remember high school physics). This does not mean that there is not another “world” of colors and associated patterns out there that we just do not see. I would suggest that our world concept is learned and that there is also another cognitive world out there that our minds are conditioned to ignore so that we can agree upon our reality. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o>
The one point I would take issue with was the comment you made debunking our shared experience as: “Can't say if your memory is real or if your brother has bolted-on a false memory through your prompts”. This is somewhat typical debunking tactic, as you offer no data or evidence of how easy it would be for a 5 year old to “implant” a false memory into a 7 year old that would last a life time, and have an emotive quality to it 50 years later. While you might be correct in your idea that this could be an implanted memory, I am reminded of the expression: “"What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence”. This applies to both of us in this case. I have no physical evidence that this experience was not made up, or even hoaxed, and you have no evidence that implanted memories from children too children is an easy process. <o></o>
The John Mack comment about his demise: this fallacy is called “Straw Man fallacy”, which is used a lot by debunkers. This would be akin to saying, “If you are psychic, then you can give me the winning lotto numbers”. While I don’t know very much about the psychic issue, what I do know is much more complex than being able to see the future on command. <o></o>
In the end, we are left with our beliefs. Because if we really look at this experience, and those of others in a true skeptical scientific manner, we would have to say that we do not have enough physical data in order to make a determination, and leave it at that. I think this is the primary difference between a debunker and a true skeptic. A skeptic keeps an open mind, and looks at the data. A debunker, just like the “true believer”, on the other end of the spectrum, has his/her mind already made up, and no amount of arguing or data will convince them. pb