If you are referring to spiritual things as in something being contacted from afterlife in one way or another, then I certainly do not believe in it. Although it does not change the fact that I most definitely have seen a ghost.
If you are referring to things that are psychic in terms of telepathy, astral projection, ESP and whatnot. Then my answer is pretty much the same as with ghosts and goblins. As psychic stuff is usually connected to UFOs and their inhabitants, I most certainly have seen one.
Personally I believe that for me definitely not believing in either is partly because of Hollywood turning both into nothing but parlor tricks and partly because I have been taught from childhood that being rational is a virtue and nothing that cannot be proven scientifically is suspect.
But I do have empirical evidence about both, although the strength of such induction does not hold when put into scientific scrutiny I have started to doubt the worldview being fed to me since I was a child.
Mainly because of few reasons.
In both cases there was more than one person there who shared the same experience.
In both cases there was at least one person that did not share the experience or denied it afterwards.
As stated before, human brain is a wonderful thing, but lately I have been noticing that even though people can use their brains for wonderful things they are not connected to their bodies and thus their senses.
I'll try to keep this from spiraling down into new age hippie bullshit or coming off like an utter loon.
Human brain is the thing that controls the whole system, some parts through limbic system, some parts through more directly controlled parts of the nervous system (limbic system controls the reflexes and other things, it is usually called the reptilian brain because in evolution it was the first thing that was evolved.)
If the human brain is busy thinking about things, worrying about the future, beating itself up about things what have happened in the past, wondering about what to buy from the store, singing along to the latest pop hit, wondering if you could have sex with that wonderful person, then your body keeps reacting to these stimuli that you are just thinking about.
Basically it is the 'Tiger in the grass' thing that happens to your body, you think there is a tiger in the grass, your body triggers the Fight or Flight reflex, your heartbeat goes up, adrenaline starts flowing, you attention gets focused, your breathing goes up, you may relieve your bladder, muscles get readied for what may be happening next.
Because of the mind having the habit of not being in the present, your body gets flooded with imagined stimuli from moment to moment, day to day, year to year.
It starts to get worn down by being in a state of constant alertness (also known as stress.)
The brains do their wonderful thing and think that this is the norm, not living in the present moment, being focused, having high blood pressure, having panic attacks because of constricted breathing, not being able to release emotional pressure, basically being the robotic guy having his monologue in Radioheads Fitter Happier.
When all of this (and other things I really do not have time to get into) is going on the sensory information that you get is restricted (when your attention is focused then you can only see an area roughly about the size of the television) and therefore unreliable.
On top of that you add the fact that this is the norm, and with science the strength of the induction is determined by on how common some piece of information is.
I'll just leave you with that, I don't want to make 10 foot fiery letters for you to spell it out.
I might tell you the story of the blind flies and the elephant to further drive the thing home but I have run out of time.
tl;dr?
I am full of awesome and Izzeh too.
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Topic: Spirituality and related ideas (Read 3402 times)