Spirit
Posted in Faith, Parapsychology, Religion on | 4 minutes | 4 Comments →
The concept of a spiritual plane is a universal notion that has found expression in all cultures from antiquity to modern times. Goethe referred to it when he wrote, “I have a firm conviction that our spirit is a being of indestructible nature…” and Manly P. Hall echoes this sentiment with the following: “There are many levels of life which we cannot see and know, yet which certainly exist…” Indeed, our world scriptures speak of celestial beings including the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Koran and many others. The assertion that the true reality behind life is unseen or spiritual is a common one, and the Hebrew scriptures in particular contend that a human is a tripartite being consisting of body, soul and spirit.
Even if she is the most ardent skeptic, a truly objective scientist is forced to admit that the existence of spiritual phenomena is, at a bare minimum, possible. Open-minded scientists know that the idea itself is in accord with several lines of indirect evidence, both newly emerging and classic. I find it fallacious and closed-minded to assume that all we can experience empirically is all there is, mostly because the number of phenomena we can detect empirically grows in accordance with our technology and knowledge. Due to an unhealthy interpretation of the scientific method as the ultimate test of truth, modern society has conditioned itself to believe mainly in what it can see, experience and reproduce, and it is a very limiting proposition to frame reality in the context of orthodox naturalism.
Human perception is a wonderful servant but a horrible master. Scientifically speaking, normal limits exist regarding the physical senses such as hearing or sight, evidenced by a dog’s ability to perceive audio frequencies too high in pitch for a human to perceive. That is why those little whistles drive dogs absolutely crazy yet have no effect on humans. Just because we can’t hear those whistles doesn’t mean the frequencies they emit are not real. Just ask the dog! In similar fashion, the human retina is only able to perceive roughly five percent of the electromagnetic light spectrum. The rods and cones of the human eye are tuned to perceive energy only within the narrow range of 800nm to 400nm. Anything outside of this energy frequency goes undetected by the human eye. In other words, about ninety-five percent of the energy that surrounds us is visually imperceptible to us. Who is to say that spirits are not simply beings composed of higher or lower frequency energy that we cannot detect with our extremely short range of visual perception?
Exploring the religious or mystical side, the key words used to denote the spirit are ruach and neshemah in Hebrew and pneuma in Greek. Both words have strong connection to the ideas of ‘breath’ or ‘air.’ It is also interesting is that across the board, death is accompanied by a cessation of breath, and a cessation of breath is accompanied by death. We literally, "give up our breath" the moment we expire. Indeed a human being is a conglomeration of chemicals and elements that can be weighed and measured, but there is also an integral impetus that pushes these non-living chemicals into a progressive and life-unfolding organization. Like the proverbial Prometheus, we can cup this fire in our hands and dispense it in lesser increments. In the blink of an eye this deeper impetus halts its operation of the body, and upon that moment the same exact bundle of chemicals and elements that was just teeming with molecular dynamism begins an corollary process of entropic decay. The plight of all physical life in the current earthly sphere is disintegration into dust, which is in accord with Genesis 3:19.
An excellent deliberation of these concepts is afforded in the book Grand Illusions, author Little.
Brad
says...“Who is to say that spirits are not simply beings composed of higher or lower frequency energy that we cannot detect with our extremely short range of visual perception?”
Electromagnetic energy has physical effects and can be detected through empirical means, plus if the definition of “spirit” is to include some kind of interaction with our minds, or play some part in its activity, then there must be some kind of verifiable or falsifiable effects that can be seen in the brain, right? The very nature of energy is to interact with matter. As such, it seems to me a difficult task explaining how the above hypothesis could stay consistent with the fact we haven’t detected it yet (- if we have, then how so? -) and thus how it has coexisted with all that we know in science but has not been brought to light. Also, it’d be interesting to figure out how the brain could have the mechanism for capturing these spirit-frequencies whereas other kinds of matter don’t (or could a rock be conscious, so to speak?).
cl
says...Yes…
Yes again. Is not the brain’s activity itself arguable as such an effect?
I like this choice of words: “…mechanism for capturing these spirit-frequencies.” Although such presupposes the spirit-frequencies exist and isn’t any argument for them, such is an apt metaphor that helps one to think in that direction.
Every single thing that has not yet been brought to light has coexisted with all that we know in science so why would the spirit / soul be any different now that the brain itself was 2,500 years ago? I can’t help but ask: Was the theory that brainstates affect thought true or false in Nebuchadnezzar’s day? Similarly, was the theory of asteroids true or false in the 1700’s?
So a claim that appears currently unfalsifiable speaks nothing on its probability of correctness.
Also, if you can, get your hands on a book called Grand Illusions, author’s last name Little (Greg or Paul, I think). It’s a fairly level-headed discussion of UFO lore that I think you might find interesting because he devotes considerable work to offering a reasonable framework to explain the frequency / energy idea. If I can find one diagram in particular, I’ll try to scan it in and post it up here. That would be neat.
Brad
says...Brainstates were not accessible pieces of information in Nebuchadnezzar’s day, nor were there any comprehensive scientific theories regarding the workings of atoms and cells. In the 1700s, they had classical physics that could fairly well explain the motion of heavenly bodies (barring high speeds which break down in Newtonian mechanics), but they didn’t have the telescopic power to observe asteroids. So it’s not too difficult to explain why these facts ‘could stay consistent with the fact we hadn’t detected it at that time and thus how it had coexisted with all that we knew in science but had not been brought to light’.
Today, we have a much better understanding of how atoms interact; supercomputers can now simulate cellular activity millions of atoms at a time. Unless I’m missing something, the only thing on that level of magnification that makes scientific theory not 100% accurate are the uncertainty principle and the random and spontaneous quirks of quantum mechanics that infrequently but theoretically can work their way up to that scale. The only thing stopping us from using the groundwork mechanics and just simulating the entire brain is that we (a) don’t precisely know its structure and development so as to kick off our sim with initial data, (b) we aren’t using nearly the computing power required to embody the full organ, and (c) we don’t have a reliable way of feeding realistic input into such a digital brain – as far as I have ascertained.
Since we can’t make a brain simulation derived from our current scientific theory, we can’t compare it to the actual brain and therefore can’t see, on a holistic level,
whether or not the brain is beyond current scientific theory. If there’s more to it, then there are happenings in the brain not predicated by modern science and we would have a lead to go off of. But as it stands, we can see the brain in most of its glory and nothing is showing up out of place. (Correct me if I’m wrong…)
Given these facts, I’m saying it’s difficult to explain how there could be more undetected in the brain with all that we have on the table at the moment. (I’m not putting a probability estimate on it, though – that doesn’t seem to logically follow from anything.)
Brad
says...Update:
From Phenomenal World (Joan D’Arc) on Google Books Online, I read a bit about what Little’s Electromagnetic theory states. In an attempt to try and see your POV, I have fashioned one possible explanation for why we haven’t noticed anything out-of-whack in our observations of electromagnetic phenomena.
Say some intelligent beings exist in a parallel world, and that there could be lines drawn (I’m speaking figuratively, of course) between regions/points from one world to the next. If their world mostly coincided with, say, our terrestrial ocean, then they’d observe ocean currents most of the time – but on rare occasion a sea creature or such might interrupt. The chances they’d see sea creatures while they’re looking for them would be statistically slim, I’d guess.
That’s about the best I can come up with for now, I’d have to assess the book’s content directly for something better.