Do You See Into The Spiritual Realm?

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Of course, anything is possible. You can’t really disprove anything. For example, a unicorn deity could be frolicking in a field of rainbows while my life plays out in some sort of matrix.

I prefer to stick with the reality I’ve been presented with and what I can know and prove with science because I don’t see a lot of benefit with going with the infinite amount of unlikely “what ifs.”

Life is too short to wade through the infinite number of unlikely possibilities. I’m sticking with what is most likely and beneficial. Without doing so, it would be that much harder to live this current existence and make appropriate decisions and goals. I need evidence and proof in my current reality to believe in something metaphysical that’s beyond myself.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 19 Jan 2020, 7:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That's what John Vervaeke often calls the infinite possibility space, ie. there's no sensible way to engage with it because there's no organization or way of tacking it down to reality. That's why I was saying earlier - it's probably better in mixed company to talk about what substantial reasons there would be to take a different model of reality over reductive materialism, because that's at least really close to being the core issue. Talking entities across those lines really won't be satisfying for anyone whose trying to understand who believes what or why.

I’m not going to give much credence to a reality other than my own without a substantial amount of evidence to support it. There’s not a lot of benefit to it in that it detracts from living a full life in my present reality and it may not be true in the first place. My present reality may not be real, but considering my own extensive experience, I think it’s much more likely to be than anything else I could envision.

I believe in working with what I’ve got. Based on my own struggles with mental illness as well as observing the struggles (mental and spiritual) of others, I view the need for verifiable evidence in my current, physical reality a strength.

I appreciate that you have a different opinion, but reducing the spiritual world into generalised tropes with unicorns and green fairies makes it difficult for members to discuss metaphysics or their own experiences in a constructive way. I also understand that many people think that objective science forms a basis for reality. I've studied the philosophy of mathematics and I see that math, science and the material world are constructs of imagination. Math in its truest form does not exist, but rather was invented by humankind to explain the cosmos. We don't even know that "we exist" so it is very difficult to measure the reality of human constructs such as time, space or matter.

I agree with techstep that WP and PPR may not be the place for conversations about ancient or modern philosophy, but I was hoping there could be more of a reciprocal discussion showing respect to Mountain Goat's question.

I was just giving a quick example while I did state that there were an infinite number of possibilities. Just because you disagree with me doesn’t mean that I didn’t have something valid to say.

I get that but that's not good grounds to haggle with people then on something you don't care to learn a lot about for some combination of it being too long of odds in your estimation or finding your balancing of your own states tricky enough that you couldn't go out on that limb safely.

If you're participating in this thread out of concern for peoples mental health that could be an interesting conversation on it's own but we're probably better off leaving out where this leaves the rest of the conversation. Otherwise we'd be going round in circles about whether the existence of schizophrenia disproves Kant's theories on the noumeal (the point of that - it's a mismatch).

I've had a talk with some people on other philosophy forums, people who even completely disagreed with me on this stuff, but did agree with me that there's a funny sort of automated assumption people have about what's 'real' and it gets dragged into philosophy discussions all the time.

That assumption goes something like this - if the current state of science says it's not real then it's not real. If we take 16th century standards seriously then next to nothing we believe today is true even if it's scientifically demonstrable, or the suggestion could be turned into saying that nothing is real until confirmed by science - then it 'becomes' real (I've never thought of science as a way of pulling rabbits out of hats - apparently some people do). For an absurd example it's like saying panda bears didn't exist until a wildlife biologist saw them.

I'd agree with most people who say that science has cleaned up certain relationships, for example we can be certain that Darwinian evolution is how we got here and if the theory is 'wrong' in any way, at most, it could be partially incomplete but nothing close to wholly wrong. Similarly with an extended space in the universe for mind there'd be absolutely no reason to throw the math or physics books out, ie. everything made credible by scientific discovery at that point is simply the reality we know plus some extra we didn't know.

Techstep,
I'm not sure if you saw my earlier recommendation but an excellent book about this subject is Donna Williams' "Autism and Sensing: The Unlost Instinct". She posits that autistic people are especially sensitive to the metaphysical world. It's a good read in conjunction with any research on Aristotle, Kant, Hume, Wittgenstein, et al.

This topic is in PPR. Is it not open for debate?

There is a lot of concern as far as mental health goes, especially when it comes to beliefs regarding demons. I’ve seen more than my fair share of that. It can be quite problematic, especially as far as children are concerned.

But if one is only going to focus on healthy stuff from the supposed Spirit Realm (whatever that means), that’d be a bit like cherry-picking.

Also, depending on how far one takes it, psychologists may not view it in such a favorable light. It can be a fine line as far as where spiritual beliefs end and mental illness begins.

Last edited by TwilightPrincess on 19 Jan 2020, 8:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Exactly. Dinosaurs wouldn't have believed in the internet. Science only proves itself is possible, nothing more.

It's only a debate if we're attempting to match facts. Talking feelings or corralling other people's behavior with intuitions isn't debate.


So some thoughts on this:

If some guy or girl grabs a copy of the Ars Goetia off of Amazon, sets up a room with an altar, circle, triangle of art, and decides to call one of the kings or dukes up for a specific question or to obtain an experience of what that king or duke's identity is, and that magician experiences said king or duke's presence as a secondary force in the room - they put in a lot of work to get there, it should be no more surprising that something happened then that something didn't, they have their discussion with said entity, give license to depart, they close the right, they go have a late dinner or early breakfast and they aren't seeing things - that's an open and shut case where there's no question as to whether medication is needed, they did something, got what they came for, they aren't seeing things at random.

If a normal person living every day life has some sort of demonic experience and it makes no contextual sense, or if you're like Makaila Peterson after getting off the meat diet to have tofu and then seeing that her brother looked like a demon, there's a really good chance you're having a metabolic or neurochemical emergency and yes - that's something to see a doctor over.

Context is king here and if someone's confused, their thought quality is degraded, and they aren't functioning they should probably either seek medical help or someone should find it for them even if they're not seeing demons.


Or it's a completely different topic.

TY, I'll take a look. For a second I actually confused Donna Williams for Donna Haraway, figured it would be fascinating to have a Bruno Latour acolyte chiming in on this.

I just wanted to clarify that in my understanding "the spiritual realm" incorporates anything metaphysical or epistemological that cannot (necessarily) be explained by traditional science at this point in time. Examples might include psychic intuition, telepathy, premonitions, time, space, relation, causality, coincidence, karma, dreams, prayers, near-death experiences, etc. It does not necessarily relate to the philosophy of religion, creation, angels, devils or gods.

I happen to have psychic insight sometimes. It's verified by me. The events come true exactly as foreseen, so it is verifiable. I am not on drugs and I am not psychotic or in an agitated state (as Fnord suggested), nor do I need a psychiatrist for these interesting occurrences. They are part of who I am, just as I have synaesthesia and I have autism.

There is more to the world and to the behaviour of energy than we can measure with quantifiable instruments at any point in time. This is a subject which has been studied since the beginning of time, and I imagine our understanding of reality will only improve in the future.

Mountain Goat can correct me if I am wrong about his OP.

That's the other thing.

I've had dreams, very specific, odd-angled, and memorable ones, that came true a few months later. Another person's credibility for self-monitoring and self-assessment will always be easily expanded or contracted into the box of the reader or listener's metaphysical beliefs happen to occupy and if one's view is that such things are impossible it's quite often seen the same as self-declaring as a simpleton or idiot. Statistics become infinitely elastic as well, like saying you need to take the tens of thousands of dreams you've had in your life as a denominator - that's fine, what's the numerator then? Without knowing whether the numerator could be in the millions or even trillions such comparison is pointless and just a shot at someone's capacity to accurately self-report. The right way to make that assessment accurately of course would be to figure out who you're talking to, whether (assuming their self-report is honest - if you can't then forget any steps after this) that the details are truly odd, how well their intuition and filtering about life holds up under scrutiny, and from actually getting to know how they're put together you can tell whether or not they're prone to sticking to flights of fancy and declaring them as turning points in their beliefs about reality. I also think there has to be the possibility for some type of statistical quantification for subjective events, ie. you don't get to just think anything or see anything without some sort of biological or sensory reason - the alternative is believing in something like libertarian free will for internal experience (which IMHO shouldn't exist anywhere, inside or out).

I think completely ignoring ideological divides where this puts me is that I'm insatiably curious to understand things that don't fit cleanly into the box and I'm driven to figure out which cases for the 'purely psychological' and 'psychological plus' models are the strongest. I'm equally hard on myself to try to vet and falsify things that could just as easily be explainable by other means and I do that constantly. If we're strictly gauging sanity on results it's not philosophy or science for that matter, it's dogma.

Here's Shelly Kagan for everyone's enjoyment.

The point I was trying to raise, is that just because someone can see or sense things on a spiritual level, it does not mean that there is anything wrong with those who can or do, as one or two were implying that anyone who sees or has spiritual experiences needs therapy because it does not match the experiences of those who don't have any spiritual experiences.

I do agree that there can be a situation where the mind can see things that are not there if the mind has certain issues, but I certainly do not believe that most cases when someone sees or feels spiritual things going on that it is the persons mind that is at fault, as in no way can I deny that the spiritual realm exists. My experiences prove to me without doubt that spiritual things exist and it is not my minds imagination. Many of these experiences were seen or felt by others at the same time.