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Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Aug 12, 2010 - 12:10pm PT

what if your emotional state affected the way you perceived what was going on around you, including your memories surrounding the event?

perhaps we are not aware of the influence that those emotions have over our perception of what is going on around us, and when we later try to understand those remembered events, we cannot reconstruct them in a logical fashion.

while one interpretation of that may be something beyond the normal occurred in the physical universe, another one might be that something beyond the normal occurred to ourselves, that selected one set of events to be remembered.

LEB must be familiar with people who are convinced of the most irrational things because of stress, to themselves they are acting rationally. There is just a gradation of mental states from not obviously irrational to totally crazy... which could be difficult to self-diagnose.

It is odd to me that we tend to believe that our own perceptions remain constant and true and seek to understand those strange experiences in the explanation that the universe is unknown rather than the most obvious explanation that we have mis-perceived and mis-understood our own experience.

So tortured explanations involving a universe beyond the physical one we know have a credence built on our belief in the continuity of our own, internal perception which has no basis in reality.

Our internal perception is built on a model of how the world works which is full of holes that we are not usually aware of, that model works well, but is just a model. When things happen that exceeds the model's ability to explain, then this sort of strangeness occurs.

It is why using quantities rather than qualities is preferred in scientific work, and why we are so comprehensive in understanding the limitations of our scientific observations.

What energy is there out and about in the universe?

As you sit reading this post, you sit in an lake of particles that fill the space with more than 5 times the amount of your own matter, and in ocean of energy exceeding 20 times the amount of what stuff you can see around you.

We don't know the nature of this stuff... we didn't know it existed 20 years ago and it will probably take 20 years before we map it all and get some idea of what it is...

...but it does not explain you experience. To explain that, you have to look into yourself and understand just how it is you know to ask that question.

My frustration, LEB, is that you are not interested in the question, but just the answer.
It is not so easy.

jstan

climber

Aug 12, 2010 - 12:38pm PT

"A friend of mine who is very grounded - to say the least - and quite a non-believer in this sort of thing, insists that the power went out on the street the night his father died (after a long protracted illness)..... but for the one street lamp outside his home."

Here's my paranormal experience perhaps like that above.

I threw all the individual circuit breakers at the cabin to "Off". Then I turned on the stove powered by two phase 240V. All the lights in the place came on weakly, even though their breakers were off.

When it comes to two and three phase hook-ups you need to follow the wires. In my three wire two phase supply the steel cable, all 255 feet of it, supporting the two hot wires is used for the "neutral" return. I have not followed it up since I don't know what SCE's side of the circuit is. I don't know what delta or Y hookups SCE uses to down convert their three phase to residential two phase. On my side I suspect the current drawn by the stove produced an IR drop in the neutral return and that produced a weak voltage on the circuits whose hot line was open. The cabin has "neutral" and "ground" running to a common ground plane. I thought even that sort of interesting.

Bottom line? When something weird happens in an AC electrical system

don't be surprised.

Karl Baba

Trad climber

Yosemite, Ca

Aug 12, 2010 - 01:00pm PT

I have also heard stories of "close calls" in life-threatening situations wherein people reported sensing a deceased family member.

My Friend and his Mom are/were total agnostics. So the Mom lived in San Francisco and her ex-husband lived 100 miles away and they didn't stay in touch. One day she woke up to a pounding on her bedroom door (or 'feeling of pounding') and intuitively knew it it was ex-husband and that he was now dead. (he had been in fine shape) She called her son in the town where the ex-husband was living and found that he had just blown his brains out.

My friend and his mom remained agnostics, even after that and some other experiences that clearly pointed to life after the body is dead. Denial is a big part of our mental makeup.

Peace

karl

Jan

Mountain climber

Okinawa, Japan

Aug 12, 2010 - 01:08pm PT

Thanks Ed and jstan-

You guys think so differently than I do, it's always fun to read what you write to keep stretching my brain in new directions. I think it's good that you don't give up on us also. Even though some of us will never come around to your conclusions, we have been forced to refine our thinking on the topic.

One of the reasons I prefer to discuss nonordinary experience within a more traditional religious or spiritual context is that much more has been experienced and written about in that context than the paranormal. Also, once you place it in that sphere, scientists don't feel the need to debunk it. They just shrug and tell us that it's outside of their realm.

When we call it paranormal, then science gets involved and can not help but be disbelieving if not downright hostile. Even if both Ed and jstan secretly thought there was something to the paranormal (and I am NOT suggesting that they do), they wouldn't dare to say so on a public forum like this one because of the ramifications on reputations and careers.

Of course as soon as I mention religion or spirituality, that causes hostility as well on the part of many participants here so maybe we should be talking about transpersonal psychology or the collective unconscious instead, and leave paranormal out of it. A number of eastern religions sell themselves in the West as psychology anyway, as they soon picked up on the hostility toward religion on the part of many educated western people.

As for whether we're fooling ourselves, it's possible, especially if a person only has one or half a dozen odd experiences like LEB's cat. When they run into the hundreds and in many different contexts involving past, present, and future, then it becomes harder for the recipient of those experiences to believe that they are self created.

However, I am thinking on a daily basis now of the many things Ed and others have said about humans egotistically projecting their own fantasies on the universe and trying to figure out how we could possibly determine if that's the case or if we are all little bits of consciousness floating on the sea of the Great Consciousness which makes more sense to me.

For sure, if reincarnation exists, I want to come back a few hundred years in the future with the same cast of characters here to continue the discussion!

jstan

climber

Aug 12, 2010 - 10:22pm PT

"Unless a given ability or sensor is affording an individual(s) selective advantage, it is going to become extinct rather rapidly. Such is not to say that it could not spontaneously reappear occasionally as a mutation nor that there could not be some vestigial remnants of it. It is hard for me to believe that our 5 senses (4 for me) are literally all of the conceivable ones which could have evolved"

Lois:
Here you are leading us on. Very sneaky. You well know cave salamanders lose their eyesight. How fast it happens nether of us can guess. And you have heard whales are thought to be able to sense the earth's magnetic field and this is how they navigate at sea. We still don't have a mechanism by which sea birds navigate. Recent data gained by putting transmitters on sea birds indicates they fly day and night. So the sun is no help for many hours a day. You know all of this. You think we don't know you know this.

Gotta watch this chick.

Ed said a lot of good stuff. In short, what we remember and perceive is about as reliable as eyewitness testimony. It is highly questionable.

Jan:
Generally I will say whatever I think. At this point my reputation is long past the point where it could be either saved or lost. Anyway. Five cents and a reputation gets you only a five cent cup of coffee.

We all tend to think in the paradigm with which we are most familiar. This is probably a weakness. I understood Largo when he posted a picture. I still have not done anything he understands. The score right now is Long 1/ Stannard 0.

jstan

climber

Aug 12, 2010 - 10:41pm PT

Lois:
I was kidding you Lois. You knew we knew you knew we knew what you were saying. It didn't need to be said.

Wade Icey

Trad climber

www.alohashirtrescue.com

Aug 12, 2010 - 10:51pm PT

High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber

Full Silos of Iowa

Aug 12, 2010 - 11:29pm PT

Just watched Deal No Deal with Grandma. Reminded me of playing blackjack in Reno and my attempts at counting the cards over a couple of semesters. Casinos - along with Deal No Deal - win (over the superstitious, the psychics, etc. time and again) because they play in strict accordance with probability science. Any of you paranormalists or supernaturalists ever had a probability and statistics course or stochastic systems course (required in engineering colleges)? (If so, what was your grade?) You probably won't understand this (sorry for the condescending tone but you deserve it) but if there were such a thing as "hyperionic influences" (by ghosts, e.g., or telekenesis or of any sort), probabability and stocastics would go down the drain as the very effective spot-on applied sciences they are. Sorry to further spoil the fun. Carry on, hyperionic junkies.

jstan- Nice to read you know something about voltage drops.

Ed Hartouni

Trad climber

Livermore, CA

Aug 12, 2010 - 11:32pm PT

I wouldn't ask you, or the docs I talk to, a question that I hadn't researched...

but that's just me, I know...

allapah

climber

Aug 13, 2010 - 05:19am PT

possible syncronicity rating scale

Unit of measure is a "domain." Degree of syncronistic resonance is measured by how many causally-disconnected domains are interfacing. Because human perception is unreliable, we assign 0 domains to the reporter of the syncronicity. Other domains could be defined by: a person, a mountain, a body of tunes, a body of literature, an internet forum, a death, or better yet, a near-death (nothing like an adrenalin-infused near-death situation to crank up the happenings!) Each domain has its own set of boundaries, probabilities, and improbabilities...

I would give Karl's syncronicity a few posts back a 1.8

The mom and her dream is worth 0 domains because she is the reporter.
The ex-husband (and everything he was about) is worth 1 domain.
The death is worth 1 domain (because energy is passing through a boundary layer.)

The number to the left of the decimal is the number of whole domains (minus the reporter, whose testimony is worthless) The number to the right is a subjective measure of just HOW FRIGGING unlikely the acausality was. The fact that the people were agnostics drove the number up a bit.

Seems like this is not OT because climbing decisions sometimes concern these things. But if it seems totally silly, well, i guess it is....

jstan

climber

Aug 14, 2010 - 02:24pm PT

Lois has pleaded for help in resurrecting this thread so I'll do my best.

HFCS commented:
"jstan- Nice to read you know something about voltage drops."

A story I thought funny after I figured it out.

In temperatures some where above 100ºF I traced out all my wiring and then took the potentially huge risk posed when one tears out all the as-built. After rebuilding it the way god intended using a multimeter I checked two circuits that should have had no connection at all to make sure god understands voltage drops.

I got 0.5 Ohms!

Two hours later after rechecking everything I noticed I had left the refrigerator plugged in with hopes of keeping the beer below luke warm. Inductance had led me astray. A refrigerator motor looks like a half Ohm in DC but its impedance is orders of magnitude larger at 60 Hz.

I did learn something though. When powered down that refrigerator defaults to motor "on".

Now as to the paranormal domain. The experience clearly shows our neurological systems cease normal functioning above 100ºF. This we should have long known based upon middle eastern history. All the trees in the middle east were cut down thousands of years ago and brains there are permanently exposed to 100 Watts/meter2.

We here in the US, however, know how critical brain temperature is. Why, otherwise, would scalp injuries bleed so profusely. I mean...... that is obvious. So it is we protect our trees so religiously.

Here.

jstan

climber

Aug 14, 2010 - 02:29pm PT

Mission accomplished.

Oxymoron

Big Wall climber

total Disarray

Aug 14, 2010 - 02:38pm PT

Pate was correct. There is NO reasoning with the delusional.
Who made you the Empress, anyway? Bite!
Maybe you'll be hit by a truck.

jstan

climber

Aug 14, 2010 - 02:45pm PT

Very interesting and it gets to the point I raised. Our brains are not, always, working normally. When someone is near death is it so hard to conceive the brain remains unaffected?

Everywhere you turn you see evidence for faulty brain function. Capech?

And on the electrical energy side; if you stand below a major power transmission line running at as much as 750,000 volts while holding a long fluorescent light bulb up in the air

it will light up!

Our knowledge is limited as regards all the external factors that may be affecting our brain function.

Reilly

Mountain climber

The Other Monrovia- CA

Aug 14, 2010 - 02:55pm PT

If you've ever held someone's head in your hands when the light in their
eyes goes out then you might find some merit in this thread. Much of
what Lois says is valid and worthy of discussion. The literature is pretty
extensive and so many people who have 'come back' seem to express similar
experiences. Granted, they may be influenced by prior knowledge but it
would seem that there are enough to validate it to some extent.

Jaybro

Social climber

Wolf City, Wyoming

Aug 14, 2010 - 03:12pm PT

This a thread to among other things explain and share things that on the surface seem irrational. Often, through talking about it we can see where our emotions and preconceptions have mislead us. With any luck we get a better understanding. We pretty much always open new doors.

I'm not a big follower of supernatural hibijibi, But I know there's sh#t we just don't understand. A good way to start is to talk it out, as crazy as it sounds.

A lot ofrational stuff is wild enough bee magic , to most of us;ie dark matter, string theory, geologic time......

I' m taking a break fixing up my rental and it's time to get back to work. Doesn't somebody need to rent a pad in portola with a fifty foot ow roof crack (wooden) I'd hate to take it down