Friday, November 19, 2010

Things That Go Woohoo In The Night

Houses are not haunted. We are haunted, and regardless of the architecture with which we surround ourselves, our ghosts stay with us until we ourselves are ghosts.  Dean Kootnz




Forgive me friends, it's been a few weeks since my last confession.  So why no further bloggage until now?  Well, my last few blogs were a bit on the heavy side.  Deep stuff there, difficult ideas.  A lot of calories for the grey matter to digest.  The well had run dry for me a bit, then.  The big things I wanted to deal with...basically that Yahweh has pretty good PR, but he's ultimately a failure,  a minor, depressing (and depressed) god, not a really powerful and important one like...oh, I dunno...say Teh Mighty Thor who picks his teeth with giant redwoods and craps in the Grand Canyon when no one is watching.  I also expressed the point of view that consciousness is part of nature, is concomitant with physical matter and that consciousness is everywhere, that spirit is present in all creation...a view shared universally with native peoples who haven't had their minds scrambled by "progress."  etc etc etc.

There's a truth about Truth.  Once some of it has been revealed, there's no need to keep crossing that bridge.  We all have the connection to truth and enlightenment is only a thought away.  I don't really need to say anything here at all.  But most likely as you have experienced, I myself had toiled in darkness for a long, long while, trapped in a narrow, repressive ideology and a worldview given to me by others who had that same worldview forced upon them by someone else and about a decade and a half ago, I began to try to dig myself out of that hole and try to understand what the true human experience is.


And speaking of rising from the grave...do you believe in ghosts?


Well, first of all, like many questions along this line, the question is wrong.  Another one is "Do You Believe in God?"  Which first of all is wrong because when that question says "God," in the Western World, due to Yahweh's PR, you automatically think of that Judeo-Xian deity.  But as I have pointed out, very few people worship Yahweh correctly, because, he being an anal retentive, wrote his own instruction guide where it spells it all out.  Do you eat shellfish, f'rinstance?  Wrong-a-ronie.  Do you support loaning someone money and then charging them interest as they pay it back, which is of course a fundamental part of the world economic system?...then you're in direct disobedience against Yahweh's will.  By the way, Xians...there's more verses condemning usury than those verses you use to condemn homosexuality.  But you don't find the Westboro Baptists showing up with signs that say "God Hates Mortgages" do you?


A better question is "If gods exist, what are they?"  Then you can point out all the people going back thousands and thousands of years that recognized such beings and even an atheist must give us the benefit of the doubt.  I'll have more on atheists later in this blog.


A better question regarding ghosts is "If ghosts exist, what are they and WHY are they?"  This blog will hope to integrate some of the topics I've already covered, that we are spirits, yay gods even, currently bound to flesh with the topics of death and the great phenomenon of consciousness in general.  Strap in folks.


First of all, lets examine some scientific principles and truths here.  Matter cannot be created and/or destroyed.  This would then be true for consciousness, if we agree that it is also a part of nature and that matter and spirit are peas in the same cosmic pod.  Despite the ideas of infinity, if we agree that the universe was created due to a "big bang" where all matter and energy was prior to that event coalesced into a single point, then there must be a limit to the amount of matter, and thereby spirit.  The matter that is with us today, from belly-button lint to the Rock o' Gibraltar comes from that original point.  This seems hard to fathom, but science has revealed that physical matter is really only energy that vibrates at a slow enough speed so that it can create stuff.  Stuff is actually empty space.  So the human soul, the spirit, is also a form of energy, which cannot be destroyed...and...therefore there is only so much of it.  I call this idea the Limitation of Soul.  And is why it seems that reincarnation, the idea of reuse and recycle is part of the cosmic system.  We as living beings are energy that in one way allows us to have mortal, physical bodies that allow our spirits to communicate with our physical environment and we are also energy that is our soul, the higher being of consciousness that we actually are.


What's interesting is how many Xians (and Christians) accept the idea of ghosts.  Most Xians would declare with absolute certainty that when a person dies, they either go to Heaven or H E Double-Hockeysticks, that they don't hang around wearing sheets.  The bible is actually less clear on this subject...in fact, sadly, like most of the theology of Xianity, the idea that an Xian goes to Heaven when they die is actually...well...it's simply not in that big book.  In fact, there is more scriptural references that say that an Xian "goes to sleep" and then is awakened on Judgment Day.  For example, why would Jesus bother raising Lazarus from the dead, if he had gone to his "eternal reward" already...and why was Jesus troubled by his death?  Jesus wept, right?  Lazarus was a friend of his.  Jesus missed him, and so gave him extra innings.  If Lazarus was in Heaven after his death, then he would have walked right up to Jesus and bitch-slapped him across his mush.  Some friend you are.


No, it is...like most things that apply to the spiritual aspect of reality...it is not that fucking simple.  


Let's take birth for example...according to Xian theology, when you are born, you are a brand new soul.  Now, this concept is agin the laws of science.  Remember, stuff cannot be created or destroyed, it's continually being recycled.  So no...when you are born, a new soul doesn't appear into your body from thin air, or from the breath of *G*O*D*, etc.  If we agree that organic beings go through a process of evolution, then the spirit must also evolve and grow and go through a period of tweaking and improvement.  Based on my Theory of Woohoo...that the point of absoluteness prior to the Big Bang was *G*O*D*, but in a vacuum with nothing in his head by empty space, then as the universe evolved, so did spirit and as time passes, the universe progresses (pun intended) toward some point in the future, or maybe simply ceaseless permutations of infinite variety, then so does spirit evolve.

This is why there appears to be so many crazy, stupid, generally idiotic people in the world today...we're scraping the bottom of the barrel given the population of this planet. When a baby is born, a soul is put into it and as a soul goes through it's karmic cycle, there is invariably going to be an expression of consciousness and continually sleeps during class and doesn't learn nothin'.  They keep watching Fox News over and over again in each incarnation and are a spiritual cul de sac.  This also why I feel a big change is coming because we may be getting to a saturation point where everyone who has a had a chance to evolve spiritually has had that chance and now it's time to go to phase two.


My own view is that yes, we are moving to a point where Humpty Dumpty does in fact put himself together again, and that we do reincarnate through successive incarnations until we reach a point where we are as perfect as we are going to get and that we reach what could only be called godhood and join back and are part of the cosmic consciousness and we will have "spiritual" bodies if we will have bodies at all.  Note this concept is biblical as it is said that the redeemed will have new, incorruptible bodies in that new life.  Which means you can eat all the Taco Bell you want without getting cramps.


But again, if we accept the existences of ghosts, which I do...it's not that simple.  Because ghosts would clearly be evidence that we don't jump from one failed bag of meat at death to a brand new one at the birth of a new incarnation, there must be some intermediate state that is available to an expression of consciousness than either being wedded to flesh or being like unto a god and enjoying an afterlife of harp-playing or being fed peeled grapes by dozens of virgins, or whathaveyou.


Having established that our human lives are not one ride on the merry-go-round and that's it, let's examine the concept of ghosts themselves and move from there.  Still with me?


We can agree that for the most part, the idea of a ghost is that a human, when they die, does not move on to another state of being, but lingers and "haunts" the locale it was associated with.  Often, those paranormal events that are said to be ghosts are the spirits of murdered people, or people who otherwise met their death in an unexpected or violent manner.  Other times, the ghost haunts a place it was closely connected to in "life" and stubbornly remains there.  In these cases there is either the idea that the spirit may not realize it's body has died or decided it was not going to move on to whatever was next.  Then there is the concept of a ghost being someone you knew well in life who comes back to show you where you lost a family heirloom or something like that.


Now this is not an exhaustive examination of the phenomenon of ghosts, I don't mention poltergeists, for example, but we can say that this is the general understanding:  that a ghost is the spirit of a person, that, when they died, their spirit stayed among us, untied to what we understand an organic body to be.  Frankly, there is a lot of silliness out there regarding ghosts.  Orbs, for instance and other things that weak-minded see in photographs and video clips and because they're looking for ghosts, why, what a coincidence, they see them.  There is an entire industry out there now that runs on the perpetuation of the idea of ghosts and of course you have the concept of (chuckle) "ghost hunting."  Which doesn't involve wearing camouflage or sitting up in a tree all afternoon.  Ever try skinning a ghost?  Better luck brushing a chicken's teeth.  Ghost hunting is now big business and you see many locations advertise the idea that their town is haunted to bring in the tourists.  And of course, given our current state of spiritual incompetence, these folks hunt spiritual entities with yes...a van full of electronic gizmos.  You can't see a ghost, but it'll show up on a polaroid?  These folks need a beginners course on How We See Things, succinctly stated that anything we see is seen because light is reflected/refracted off of it.  You can't video tape wind, only the effect it has on its environment.  You can't see a tornado, for example, just the clouds and dust and debris that it kicks up and gets trapped in the vortex of wind.


So no...if we are dealing with the spiritual, it's not going to show up on your video camera and it's not going to speak into a microphone, because based on the law of How We Make Noises, you need an apparatus for moving air over objects in order to make a sound.  And I don't think ghosts have lungs.  We have to deal with the spiritual like we deal with aspects of our religious lives, with our consciousness.  And if we "see" a ghost or "hear" a ghost it may only be happening on a level of consciousness or our minds may be trying to process information in a way that we can relate to it...given the narrow view of reality that our physical senses only allows us to have.  Can a ghost have a form, via the coalescing and otherwise manipulation of energy?  I am not disputing that.  What I am saying is the idea that modern technology is used to try to prove the existence to "capture" a ghost on film, etc is evidence of our failure to understand the nature of reality, it is the Lust of the Result, the need for PROOF and that if we have an experience that we are honest about and we can't explain it because it doesn't conform to the expected Consensus Reality, that is, how life is "supposed" to be, then it is a paranormal experience.  It doesn't have to happen over and over and over again in a controlled laboratory setting for it to have been real.  And yes, I have a ghost story to tell at the end of this novella.


But back to the general idea that a ghost is a person who died either unexpectedly or violently or otherwise in a fashion that was not of their choosing...or when they died, they wanted to remain and therefore haunt the place(s) that person was closely associated with in "life."  This implies that for our consciousness to move on, once the physical body no longer is able to operate, we have to be and are involved in that process.  That at the moment of death, if we know we are going to die, we mentally are prepared for that transition and somehow actually make a decision to move on.  You'd have to die to prove this theory, so we'll just have to speculate, but we see that, in the case of a violent death, for example, where the body fails quickly without the consciousness having sufficient time to understand what is happening, the spirit lingers.  Also, we can say there are people who, having been so deeply connected to their earthly life, choose to stay around.  Maybe it's unfinished business and they want to intervene in the lives of their families, friends, etc, maybe they don't trust anyone to look after the library like they did, etc.  Maybe they want to haunt those who brought about their untimely end and scare the fertilizer out of them.  Maybe they died young and said "no fair" and are still playing in the hallways.  

Then of course you have the idea of a ghost being someone who didn't linger, but appears in spirit, not necessarily visually, for a specific purpose...like Jacob Marley for example...which is a pretty good example.  In the Christmas Carol, those who were eeevil people in their lives, meaning they were Republicans who were okay with, say...illegal immigrants dying by the hundreds while trying to cross the border into Arizona, and generally wanting to keep all their wealth for themselves while people who are out of work due to their irresponsible financial practices can just do without and starve, or they can have some benefits if they only can pass a drug test first.  If you think we need to cut medicare and social security and that every Uhmurkan doesn't have the deity-given right to medical care...you can look forward to an afterlife of wandering the earth wearing heavy chains with your stock options and your 401K and your stockpile of gold bars attached and having to support your lower jaw with a handkerchief.

Then there are ghosts who come back to help you, like say, turning the wheel at the right instant, or maybe you felt someone unseen shove you out of the way of that falling piano, that sort of thing.  All these cases universally present the concept of a person who, divorced from the flesh, has a state as a spirit and that there is an intermediary state in between simply jumping from a corpse immediately into the next baby that comes along.  There are variations on this theme, of course.  My own idea is that there is perhaps "waiting rooms," humorously shown in the movie Beetlejuice, where those recently deceased have to be processed and sometimes, are simply ghosts because of the bureaucracy.  The Catholic concept of Purgatory shows this idea of a halfway point between living and the next phase.  There is also in cultures around the world the concept of an "Otherworld" where a person can visit and then come back.  Shamans visit these places where the gods and spirits dwell and then come back with wisdom from that place.  There is also the idea of travel between both places by spiritual beings.  Both the Cherokee indians and the ancient Celts for example had in their myths the idea of invisible beings that live in mountains or mounds and that you can visit their magical realm and that they come out and interact with humans.  To the Cherokees, they were invisible warriors that could also appear be be just like them, although from another tribe altogether and to the Celts, they were called Elves and Fairies, etc.  There may very well be a whole range of beings from high gods like Thor or Krishna or Zeus down to the little household spirits that you also see worldwide from both past myths and in the theology of current indigenous peoples.


It may very well be that what is sometimes perceived as a ghost is actually one of these spiritual beings that appears in a shape that we can relate to.  Take demons for example...these are spiritual beings that are said to be able to interact with us in certain ways...but are most potent when they can actually inhabit a living person and "possess" them.  Also, if you notice when you watch those ghost hunters folks on teevee, often they are talking about demonic activity when they are turning out the lights and scaring themselves.


So, yes...we do see through a glass darkly and there are beings that do not obey the natural laws as our science understands them to be, yet are part of nature.  Here follows my "ghost story":


A few years ago, the wifey and I went to the Shiloh National Military Park, the site of the Civil War battle.  Civil War battle sites are regularly said to be haunted, and they certainly meet the criteria of a place where people died violently, and of course in great numbers.  I knew there was stories of Shiloh being haunted before we went, I need to express.  The problem with going somewhere where people have said there has been paranormal activity is it is all too easy to be looking for it and interpreting an experience as paranormal.  All I can do is tell what happened and let you decide.  One of the places in Shiloh where the most bitterest fighting took place was an area called the Sunken Road which links up with a place called The Hornet's Nest...after the idea that the bullets were buzzing by like hornets.  The Union troops during this point of the battle set up a line at the Sunken Road, which as it's name suggests was a road that was at a lower elevation than the surrounding land, basically a natural low trench.  We walked down the Sunken Road path to the Hornet's Nest and back.  Now this was in early September, if I remember right.  There was a breeze, there was the hum and buzz of insects and the bushes and grass and such was moving in the breeze.


On the walk back from the Hornet's Nest area along the Sunken Road path to get back to our car, about midway along the trail, the breeze immediately stopped, there was NO insect, bird or bush or tree noise and the bushes and grass and such around me froze.  I continued walking and for a few more steps, it was as if nature was just frozen in time and space and the only noise was my footsteps.  Then, after a few yards, immediately, like someone turning on a switch, I felt the breeze again, the insects and other nature sounds started up again and the bushes and grass moved slightly in the air.  I instinctively turned to my wife who looked a bit dazed and I asked, "did you feel that?" and she replied that she did.  We had felt and sensed the same thing together.  Now I'll let you take from that what you will.  But there was a physical change in the environment that could not be explained.  There was nothing to block the breeze, etc.  There was a general hush over creation that we both experienced.


I'll also now tell you about something that I haven't told my wife that also occurred at Shiloh.  Also on the grounds of the park are some old Indian mounds.  They're well off the path so I walked to them by myself, so it was just me.  When I got to the location of the mounds...I felt the same thing.  It was like there was a vacuum.  A hush was present over that place.  It has taken me sometime to process this experience and this is my conclusion:

Both the experience on the Sunken Road trail and at the indian mounds was not due to the visitation of a spirit...but the absence of the same.  On the Sunken Road, the hush was due to the movement from that area of ghosts, which itself qualifies as a ghostly encounter.  The energy that a ghost may be did not coalesce into the form of a Union or Confederate soldier, but moved in such a way to make their presence felt by removing from a certain area the energy of that spot.  At the indian mounds, the same would be true, except I was in a place that had been occupied by a certain people for who knows how long but are no longer there...and which no other person has claimed.  It is set aside and has not been paved over by us.  The implication is that whatever spiritual energy that was at that spot has left.  There are no spirits there anymore, either of the indians or the spirits of that land, as the people who the land was used by are gone, and so are the spirits who were also a part of that community.  They have moved on to be somewhere else and nothing else took its place. 


The realization that the phenomenon I experienced was the absence of spiritual energy then reveals that being surrounded by spiritual energy is our normal experience and a "paranormal" experience in the context of a ghostly encounter is when this energy moves in such and such a way.  So this why so many are today spiritually incompetent and why an atheist can glibly say that there is no such thing as spirit.  It's something we naturally experience all the time, like breathing.  And we only truly experience our true spiritual nature when we pay attention to it.  We are, at this moment in a haze of spirit, the air is alive with it.  We are only one thought, one mental decision, away from being part of that larger world.  We are distracted by stuff and petty concerns when the gods and other beings running the entire spectrum of intelligence are all along all around us.  If you want to be a good athlete, you have to work at it, "gifted" athletic ability only goes so far, you have to practice, watch your diet, etc.  The same is true for intellect, you have to study, you have to read, you have to work hard at it.  To be spiritually mature and competent, you also have to exercise and research and pay attention...you are not going to be spiritually complete by simply walking down a church aisle and saying yes to a couple of questions asked by the pastor.  It is not that simple or easy and that is why so many Xians are completely out of touch with reality...they've been suckered into thinking they're reached that place of spiritual completeness but they have not...because you know them by their fruit juices.  And they taste like vinegar.


If there is a Hell, a place where souls are punished, like Luke Skywalker was by the Emperor for his "lack of vision," then Hell is a place not to punish "sinners" because they didn't follow the arbitrary rules set down by Yahweh or another "loving" god, but a place to sequester away that quantity of spiritual energy that refused to grow up and recognize what it was.  A place where defective consciousness is either simply disposed of or isolated so it can't poison the sacred well or...more positively...can be purged by fire and/or cleansed by ice until it's suitable to join us in Heaven or the State of Nirvana or the Halls of Valhalla or the Sephiroth of Kether or what ever name you want to give that that perfect other place we may be destined to inhabit when we are perfected and when all our gold has had the lesser elements burned away from it and we are pure.  When the chaff is separated from the wheat and the sheep are separated from the goats.  Hell would be a place where a spirit would realize the truth and be separated from it and beg and plead to warn, like Jacob Marley did, those still living to realize the truth.  Jacob Marley was allowed to come back...but some are not and told so sad, too bad.  For verily, if they would not listen to the prophets, they will not listen although the dead come back to life to preach unto the lost.  Except in the case of Ebenezer Scrooge that is.  So yes, Glenn Beck...there is even hope for you.


Selah.