18a. presences // 18b. the supernatural and story seven
In yesterday's blog, you added an article from sciencealert.com about biological elements from comets.
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1547. Now, that is an interesting comment. From your perspective, a representative of my heartansoulanmind, what am I? That is, what is left of me besides heartansoulanmind?
Grandma Earth and biochemical [elements] physics; mostly consciousness, water, and chemicals. – Ms. H.
[Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, and Sulfur. Combinations of these six chemical elements make up the large majority of biological molecules on Earth.]**
Selected from Blog's Science Alert article, December 6, 2020.
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And in context, the rest of yesterday's Blog continues:
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2250. Consciousness comes; first, consciousness comes with Grandma Earth.
That's the way it read in your blogs; the consciousness with a common 'c.' – Ms. H.
2253. Consciousness is similar in essence to background radiation from the Big Bang. 2254.
Yes, for purposes in a reasonable analogy in broader understanding within these books and blogs. Ms. H.
[December 6, 2020]
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Consciousness in terms of background radiation means "having a possible intuition sense of a spiritual presence in Nothing," which is not a normal definition of consciousness in terms of cognition. – Ms. Havisham
1122. The above is the essence of my basic human condition. I have, as long as I can remember, an intuitive sense of a spiritual presence nearby.
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The british psychological society's
the psychologist . . .
THE SILENT COMPANIONS
Ben Alderson-Day considers explanations for ‘feelings of presence.’
In Moby Dick, Herman Melville wrote:
'At last, I must have fallen into a troubled nightmare of a doze, and slowly waking from it – half steeped in dreams – I opened my eyes, and the before sunlit room was now wrapped in outer darkness. Instantly I felt a shock running through all my frame; nothing was to be seen, and nothing was to be heard, but a supernatural hand seemed placed in mine. My arm hung over the counterpane, and the nameless, unimaginable, silent form or phantom, to which the hand belonged, seemed closely seated by my bed-side… I knew not how this consciousness, at last, glided away from me, but waking in the morning, I shudderingly remembered it all, and for days and weeks and months afterwards I lost myself in confounding attempts to explain the mystery. Nay, to this very hour, I often puzzle myself with it.'
Someone is there, at your side or just behind you. A feeling of a person or agency without being heard or seen. It is a felt presence, one of the most unusual experiences a person can have, and yet also a feeling that will be familiar to many. Sometimes referred to as sensed presences or extracampine hallucinations, such experiences are described in a wide variety of sources and contexts, including survival situations, bereavement, sleep paralysis, and neurological disorder.
In the above passage, Melville describes a felt presence on waking from sleep. A range of unusual experiences occur in the no-man’s land between sleep and waking, usually including short bursts of speech or visions in the transition to sleep (hypnagogic hallucinations) or fragments from dreams on awakening (hypnopompic hallucinations) (Jones et al., 2009). Felt presences, in particular are a common feature of sleep paralysis. This is a phenomenon that will occur to one-third of the population at some point in their lives (Cheyne & Girard, 2007; see also tinyurl.com/jscf0809), in which the awakening from sleep is accompanied by muscle paralysis and breathing problems. During paralysis, many people describe the intense feeling of someone or something being in the room, often with a distinct location, occasionally moving towards them, in some cases pushing down on the person’s chest, and provoking a strong sense of dread. Folk accounts of visits by demon-like nightmares, incubi, and succubi are thought to derive from such sleep paralysis experiences (Adler, 2011).
More benevolent presences are also reported, however, with perhaps the most common examples coming from people who have recently been bereaved. In a review last year, Castelnovo and colleagues (2015) reported that up to 60 per cent of cases of bereavement are associated with some kind of hallucinatory experience, of which 32–52 per cent were felt presences. Strong feelings of loved ones still being present are often described in the first month of bereavement, but they can, in some cases, persist for many years. In contrast to sleep paralysis, the presence experienced is typically associated with comfort and longing rather than any sort of malevolent intent.
Similarly, benevolent experiences are also reported by people in extreme survival situations. Known collectively as ‘Third Man’ experiences (see box, over), accounts of guiding or accompanying presences in polar treks, mountaineering expeditions, sea accidents, and natural disasters are numerous. The presences described are usually human-like, close by, and feel like they share an affinity with the person experiencing them. Occasionally they are associated with sounds or words (Geiger, 2010, p126) or vague visions, such as a shadow or outline, but more commonly, such presences are described without any sensory correlates. Like other presence experiences, though, the Third Man usually takes up a distinct spatial location, in some cases appearing to lead those in peril to safety.
The other common contexts in which presences occur are various neurological and psychiatric diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Lewy body dementia; and following traumatic brain injury. Sensations of presence are a frequent feature of PD, with one recent study reporting a 50 per cent prevalence rate (Wood et al., 2015). Presence experiences in PD are usually experienced without particular effect or intent, and they are reported as being felt alongside or just behind the patient (Fénelon et al., 2011). They are sometimes referred to as extracampine hallucinations, although strictly these refer to subtly different phenomena; following Bleuler (1903), extracampine hallucinations refer to unusual sensory experiences that go beyond the possible sensory frame; for example, one might describe seeing something occur behind you, or feeling a distant object move over your skin. Sensed presences, in contrast, are usually defined as having no clear sensory phenomenology (Sato & Berrios, 2003) and yet still feeling like a perceptual state (as opposed to a belief about someone being present, for example).
What’s going on?
Despite coming from such different contexts, the overlapping phenomenology of presence experiences raises the intriguing question of whether some underlying cognitive and neurological mechanisms may unite their occurrence. There are broadly three main hypotheses that attempt to explain felt presence: body-mapping, threat, and social representation (see Cheyne, 2011, for a review).
The most common interpretation of presence experiences is that they represent some kind of disruption to the internal mapping of one’s own body. Along with presence experiences, survival scenarios are associated with a variety of autoscopic phenomena, such as out-of-body experiences or seeing one’s own doppelganger. Given that felt presences in such situations often feel like they are linked to the person having the experience, it has been suggested that they may be a projection of one’s own body-map, prompted by extreme conditions and stress (Brugger et al., 1997).
This idea is supported by evidence from neuropsychology and neurostimulation. Presence and autoscopic experiences can follow damage to a range of brain regions; but are often prompted by lesions to areas associated with interoception and body position, such as the insular cortex and the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) (Blanke et al., 2008). The experience of a close-by presence can also be elicited by electrical stimulation to the TPJ, suggesting a key role for that region in the representation of presence (Arzy et al., 2006).
One thing that a body-mapping account misses out on is the role of effect in presence experiences. In particular, presences during sleep paralysis are experienced as strongly negative phenomena, prompting fear and distress in the sleeper and involving the perception that the entity in the room has untoward intent. Based on this, Cheyne and colleagues (e.g., Cheyne & Girard, 2007) have argued that sleep paralysis presences, in particular, may result from the mistaken detection of threat in the environment. Specifically, they suggest that the experience of waking while paralysed; and the continuation of REM-state brain activity related to dreaming prompts a threat-activated vigilance system that provides the feeling of a malevolent presence.
Finally, Nielsen (2007) and Fénelon et al. (2011) have described the experience of presences as a social hallucination (i.e., a kind of pure perception of social agency, divorced from its ordinary sensory correlates such as a face or voice). While presences vary in body position and emotional affect, they very often feel like they have a specific identity with its own agency (irrespective of whether that identity is actually known to the perceiver), suggesting the involvement of social-cognitive processes. Fénelon et al. (2011) argue for this by pointing to the common occurrence of presences with known and familiar identities in PD, which in many cases will be people who have just left a scene (what they term ‘palinparousia’). Similarly, in presences following bereavement, the persisting identity of the perception is a clearly crucial part of the experience.
Of these three explanations, the body-mapping theory has perhaps the most evidence to date but accounts emphasising the social, magnetic, and affective elements of presences are also likely to be crucial. Understanding how comforting presences can occur in grief while terrifying presences haunt sleep paralysis will depend on further examination of what drives such vivid alterations and dissociations to the mappings of self and others. And in addition to this, each may also have something to say about another unusual phenomenon: hearing voices.
‘Sometimes you just know he’s there.’
Hearing the Voice is an interdisciplinary research project at Durham University funded by the Wellcome Trust. It was created in 2012 with the aim of investigating the phenomenology of hearing voices that no one else can hear (sometimes known as auditory verbal hallucinations). At one of its first research meetings, a voice-hearer, Adam, described the voice that he heard in the following way: ‘You know, sometimes he doesn’t even have to say anything; sometimes you just know he’s there.’ That is, the ‘voice’ that Adam often heard speaking could somehow be perceived, even when it was silent as if it had an identity or agency that could be present without its ‘usual’ sensory form as a heard object.
Interpreting the phenomenology of this apparently paradoxical experience has to be done carefully. Voices without sound do, in fact have a long psychiatric history – Bleuler (1911/1950) made reference to such ‘soundless voices’ in his original descriptions of hallucinations – but usually, these denote specifically verbal or linguistic experiences that lack an auditory phenomenology. Instead, Adam’s description of a voice-identity that just happened to be silent seems closer to Nielsen’s (2007) idea of a purely social representation: in other words, a felt presence.
Although this kind of experience is not necessarily a frequent part of how voice-hearers describe their experience, it is also not a one-off. Anecdotally voice-hearers will talk about their voices being present without speaking, taking up spatial positions even when silent, and in some cases ‘looking’ at the world alongside the voice-hearer. In the Hearing, the Voice phenomenology survey published last year (Woods et al., 2015), 69 per cent of a sample of 153 voice-hearers described their voices as being characterful or having a distinct personality, while 66 per cent associated their voices with unusual bodily sensations or changes. And in some cases, descriptions of presence were explicitly made:
I have never encountered anyone with as powerful a presence as my voices. They are loud and feel enormous. …They feel very much here when I hear them.
In these cases, the idea of a voice not just being an auditory experience but also one with a social and agent-like presence becomes much more tangible (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, in press).
Thinking about hearing voices in this way is not necessarily new. Bell (2013) and Wilkinson and Bell (2016) have argued for social representations being key to understanding how voices are experienced and persist over time; various psychotherapeutic approaches focus on the social relations that voices seem to create (e.g., Hayward et al., 2011), and the Hearing Voices Movement itself has long argued for an understanding of the experience that involves interaction with voices as meaningful entities.
What research on felt presence has to offer is a comparative perspective on how feelings of agency and accompaniment could come about in similar ways, albeit in very different scenarios. For example, the involvement of the TPJ in presence experiences overlaps with evidence from voice-hearing: the posterior section of the superior temporal gyrus, extending up into the TPJ area, is often implicated in fMRI studies of hallucination occurrence (Jardri et al., 2011); the TPJ is a target for neurostimulation in the treatment of problematic voices (Moseley et al., 2015); and there is evidence of resting connectivity differences in the same area in voice-hearers (Diederen et al., 2013).
The TPJ is a multimodal area that is both anatomically and functionally diverse, so clear overlaps between voice and presence experiences are yet to be established. Nevertheless, for such phenomenologically unusual experiences, any clues that may shed light on overlapping or similar cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms are important to consider. And feelings of presence arguably provide a wealth of such clues: understanding the Third Man provides a model for how one’s own body could create the feeling of another; explanations of sleep paralysis highlight the role of negative affect and threat in driving unusual experiences; while the presences that follow bereavement provide examples of how identity without form can persist over time. Taken together, accounts of presence show us the ‘others’ that we carry with us at all times, the silent companions whose visits can either guide or haunt; support or confuse, comfort or terrify.
Box Text: Spirits, magnetic fields, and extrasensory perception
Unusual feelings of presence have always been associated with similarly unusual or unorthodox interpretations. Some presence experiences appear to share qualities with the feeling (and subsequent discovery) of being stared at; a phenomenon argued to be a real faculty of perception by some (Sheldrake, 2005), but without any strong empirical basis (e.g., Colwell et al., 2000). Persinger and colleagues (e.g., Booth et al., 2005) have argued that felt presences can occur as a result of changes to the earth’s magnetic field, although such effects seem likely to arise from participant suggestibility (Granqvist et al., 2005). Finally, some psychotherapists and spiritual healers consider presences to be evidence of an entity that must be persuaded to depart its host, a controversial approach known as ‘spirit release’ therapy (Powell, 2006).
Box Text: Shackleton’s ‘Third Man’
The ‘Third Man’ factor takes its name from The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot.
Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or a woman
– But who is that on the other side of you?
Eliot’s description was based on his memory of reading about one of Ernest Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions. Referring to the lines in his notes on The Waste Land, he wrote, ‘it was related that the party of explorers, at the extremity of their strength, had the constant delusion that there was one more member than could actually be counted.’
While for the poem, Eliot specifically chose two travellers and a companion, in fact, the third man was number four: the story that Eliot recalled came from the experiences of Shackleton, Tom Crean, and Frank Worsley when they crossed South Georgia during the Imperial Transantarctic Expedition in May 1916. Following the loss of the Endurance to pack ice, the expedition had decamped to the harsh and inhospitable Elephant Island. Shackleton and five others then crossed 800 miles of the Southern Ocean in an open lifeboat in an attempt to reach help for the rest of the crew, with Crean, Shackleton, and Worsley making the final journey across the interior of South Georgia itself. During their 36 hour trek to the north coast of the island, all three men were convinced that they were accompanied by a fourth on their journey. As put by Worsley: ‘I again find myself counting our party – Shackleton, Crean, and I and – who was the other? Of course, there were only three, but it is strange that in mentally reviewing the crossing, we should always think of a fourth, and then correct ourselves’ (Thomson, 2000).
Meet the author
‘This piece was developed from a Guardian article, ‘The strange world of felt presences,’ that I wrote with David Smailes (Leeds Trinity University): see tinyurl.com/ozptw8e. I joined the Hearing the Voice project at Durham University three years ago, and through that, I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to speak to a number of voice-hearers and clinicians about what it’s like to have the experience. One thing that kept coming up was a sense of many “voices,” having a strong sense of character or identity – including, in some cases, a feeling of presence. This is important because it has implications for cognitive and neuroscientific research on voices – which has often focused more on speech and language – and reflects a number of popular therapeutic approaches to managing unpleasant voices. Since then, I’ve been interested in exploring the ways in which unusual experiences might relate to inner speech, dialogue, and social cognition.’
Dr. Ben Alderson-Day is a Research Associate in the Department of Psychology at Durham University
benjamin.alderson-day@durham.ac.uk
References
Adler, S.R. (2011). Sleep paralysis: Night-mares, nocebos, and mind–body connection. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Alderson-Day, B. & Fernyhough, C. (in press). Auditory verbal hallucinations: Social but how? Journal of Consciousness Studies.
Arzy, S., Seeck, M., Ortigue, S., Spinelli, L. & Blanke, O. (2006). Induction of an illusory shadow person. Nature, 443(7109), 287–287.
Bell, V. (2013). A community of one: social cognition and auditory verbal hallucinations. PLoS Biol, 11(12), e1001723.
Blanke, O., Arzy, S. & Landis, T. (2008). Illusory perceptions of the human body and self. In G. Goldenberg & B. Miller (Eds.) Handbook of clinical neurology (3rd series, Vol. 88, pp.429–458). Edinburgh: Elsevier.
Bleuler, E. (1903). Extracampine Hallucinationen. Psychiatrisch-neurologische Wochenschrift, 25, 261–264.
Bleuler, E. (1950). Dementia praecox; or, The group of schizophrenias (J. Zinkin, Trans.). New York: International Universities Press. (Original work published 1911)
Booth, J.N., Koren, S.A. & Persinger, M. A. (2005). Increased feelings of the sensed presence and increased geomagnetic activity at the time of the experience during exposures to transcerebral weak complex magnetic fields. International Journal of Neuroscience, 115(7), 1053–1079.
Brugger, P., Regard, M. & Landis, T. (1997). Illusory reduplication of one’s own body: Phenomenology and classification of autoscopic phenomena. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, 2(1), 19–38.
Castelnovo, A., Cavallotti, S., Gambini, O. & DAgostino, A. (2015). Post-bereavement hallucinatory experiences: A critical overview of population and clinical studies. Journal of Affective Disorders, 186, 266–274.
Cheyne, J.A. (2011). Sensed presences. In J.D. Blom & I.E.C. Sommer (Eds.) Hallucinations (pp.219–234). New York: Springer.
Cheyne, J.A. & Girard, P. (2007) Paranoid delusions and threatening hallucinations: A prospective study of sleep paralysis experiences. Consciousness and Cognition, 16, 959–974.
Colwell, J., Schröder, S. & Sladen, D. (2000). The ability to detect unseen staring: A literature review and empirical tests. British Journal of Psychology, 91(1), 71-85
Diederen, K.M.J., Neggers, S.F.W., De Weijer, A.D. et al. (2013). Aberrant resting-state connectivity in non-psychotic individuals with auditory hallucinations. Psychological Medicine, 43(8), 1685–1696.
Fénelon, G., Soulas, T., Cleret de Langavant, L. et al. (2011). Feeling of presence in Parkinson’s disease. Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, 82(11), 1219–1224.
Geiger, J. (2010). The Third Man factor. Edinburgh: Canongate.
Granqvist, P., Fredrikson, M., Unge, P. et al. (2005). Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields. Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), 1–6.
Hayward, M., Berry, K. & Ashton, A. (2011). Applying interpersonal theories to the understanding of and therapy for auditory hallucinations. Clinical Psychology Review, 31(8), 1313–1323.
Jardri, R., Pouchet, A., Pins, D. & Thomas, P. (2011). Cortical activations during auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(1), 73–81.
Jones, S.R., Fernyhough, C. & Meads, D. (2009). In a dark time: Development, validation, and correlates of the Durham Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations Questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(1), 30–34.
Moseley, P., Alderson-Day, B., Ellison, A. et al. (2015). Noninvasive brain stimulation and auditory verbal hallucinations: New techniques and future directions. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 9, 515.
Nielsen, T. (2007). Felt presence: Paranoid delusion or hallucinatory social imagery? Consciousness and Cognition, 16(4), 975–983.
Powell, A. (2006). The contribution of spirit release therapy to mental health. Light, 126, 1.
Sato, Y. & Berrios, G.E. (2003). Extracampine hallucinations. The Lancet, 361(9367), 1479–1480.
Sheldrake, R. (2005). The sense of being stared at – Part 1: Is it real or illusory? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(6), 10–31.
Thomson, J. (2000). Shackleton's Captain: A biography of Frank Worsley. Christchurch, New Zealand: Hazard Press.
Wilkinson, S. & Bell, V. (2016). The representation of agents in auditory verbal hallucinations. Mind & Language, 31(1), 104–126.
Wood, R.A., Hopkins, S.A., Moodley, K.K. & Chan, D. (2015). Fifty percent prevalence of extracampine hallucinations in Parkinson’s disease patients. Frontiers in Neurology, 6, 263.
Woods, A., Jones, N., Alderson-Day, B. et al. (2015). Experiences of hearing voices: Analysis of a novel phenomenological survey. The Lancet Psychiatry, 2(4), 323–331.
Selected and edited from - https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/april/silent-companions
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1314. The article appears to cover the subject well. As a science-oriented person and a spiritual person, I presently feel a basic dissociative sense in terms of the human spirit as I use the term in this Blog. 1323.
In this sense, your heartansoulanmind are self-aware of their existence within your physical framework while at the same time, your neurological systems recognize the self-reality from 'scientific' oriented observations of conscious reality. The brain recognizes the science is shown to be factual while at the same time it recognizes the emotional and intellectual aspects of being a human being by definition, and in your case, your will accepts that G-D exists (within a probability of Reason) and so thus does the soul (by any other name) also exists. – Ms. Havisham
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Below is a broader definition of 'the supernatural.' – Grandma Earth
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SUPERNATURAL
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about unexplained or non-natural forces and phenomena.
The supernatural encompasses all entities, places and events that would fall outside the scope of scientific understanding of the laws of nature.[1] This includes categories of entities which transcend the observable Universe, such as immaterial beings like angels, gods, and spirits. It also includes claimed human abilities like magic, telekinesis, precognition, and extrasensory perception.[2]
Historically, supernatural powers have been invoked to explain phenomena as diverse as lightning, seasons, and the human senses which today are understood scientifically. The philosophy of naturalism contends that all phenomenaare scientifically explicable and nothing exists beyond the natural world, and as such approaches supernatural claims with skepticism.[3]
The supernatural is featured in folklore and religious contexts,[4] but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal.[2]
ETYMOLOGY AND HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT
Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, descendants of the modern English compound supernatural enter the language from two sources: via Middle French (supernaturel) and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin (supernaturalis). Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis (see nature). The earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue (orcherd of Syon, around 1425; Þei haue not þanne þe supernaturel lyȝt ne þe liȝt of kunnynge, bycause þei vndirstoden it not).[5]
The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. Originally the term referred exclusively to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean "belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal" or "more than what is natural or ordinary; unnaturally or extraordinarily great; abnormal, extraordinary". Obsolete uses include "of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics". As a noun, the term can mean "a supernatural being", with a particularly strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.[5]
Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD contributed the development of the concept the supernatural via Christian theology in later centuries.[6] The term nature had existed since antiquity with Latin authors like Augustine using the word and its cognates at least 600 times in City of God. In the medieval period, "nature" had ten different meanings and "natural" had eleven different meanings.[7] Peter Lombard, a medieval scholastic in the 12th century, asked about causes that are beyond nature, in that how there could be causes that were God's alone. He used the term praeter naturam in his writings.[7] In the scholastic period, Thomas Aquinas classified miracles into three categories: "above nature", "beyond nature", and "against nature". In doing so, he sharpened the distinction between nature and miracles more than the early Church Fathers had done.[7] As a result, he had created a dichotomy of sorts of the natural and supernatural.[8] Though the phrase supra naturam was used since the 4th century AD, it was in the 1200s that Thomas Aquinas used the term "supernaturalis", however, this term had to wait until the end of the medieval period before it became more popularly used.[7] The discussions on "nature" from the scholastic period were diverse and unsettled with some postulating that even miracles are natural and that natural magic was a natural part of the world.[7]
EPISTEMOLOGY AND METAPHYSICS
The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected.
One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism.
For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of.
And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of [Divine] grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural.[9]
— Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
The term "supernatural" is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural — the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics.[10] Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.
Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" (1948: 311) and "which are non-physical in nature" (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory perception (ESP), an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sensory means" (1962:309) or inferred from sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), "the direct influence exerted on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy or instrumentation" (1945:305).[11]
— Michael Winkelman, Current Anthropology
Supporters of supernatural explanations believe that past, present, and future complexities and mysteries of the universe cannot be explained solely by naturalistic means and argue that it is reasonable to assume that a non-natural entity or entities resolve the unexplained.[citation needed] In contrast, detractors appeal to empiricism as a counter[12][13] using historical examples of mysteries that had been supposed by some to require supernatural attribution later explained through naturalistic means.[3]
Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as:
· indistinct from nature. From this perspective, some events occur according to the laws of nature, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to known nature. For example, in Scholasticism, it was believed that God was capable of performing any miracle so long as it didn't lead to a logical contradiction. Some religions posit immanent deities, however, and do not have a tradition analogous to the supernatural; some believe that everything anyone experiences occurs by the will (occasionalism), in the mind (neoplatonism), or as a part (nondualism) of a more fundamental divine reality (platonism).
·
· incorrect human attribution. In this view all events have natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe supernatural attributes to purely natural events, such as lightning, rainbows, floods, and the origin of life.
RELIGION
DEITY
A deity (/ˈdiːəti/ (listen) or /ˈdeɪ.əti/ (
listen))[16] is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred.[17] The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion)", or anything revered as divine.[18] C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life."[19] A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess.
Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God),[20][21]polytheistic religions accept multiple deities.[22] Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle;[23][24] and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die, and are reborn just like any other being.
Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God. A deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or eternal,[27][28][29] The monotheistic God, however, does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous and gender neutral.
Historically, many ancient cultures – such as Ancient India Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Nordic and Asian culture – personified natural phenomena, variously as either their conscious causes or simply their effects, respectively. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts.[38][39] In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living being's body, as sensory organs and mind. Deities have also been envisioned as a form of existence (Saṃsāra) after rebirth, for human beings who gain merit through an ethical life, where they become guardian deities and live blissfully in heaven, but are also subject to death when their merit runs out.
ANGEL
An angel is generally a supernatural being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks.[46] Within Abrahamic religions, angels are often organized into hierarchies, although such rankings may vary between sects in each religion, and are given specific names or titles, such as Gabriel or "Destroying angel". The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spirits or figures found in other religious traditions. The theological study of angels is known as "angelology".
In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty;[47][48] they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings,[49] halos,[50] and light.
PROPHECY
Prophecy involves a process in which messages are communicated by a god to a prophet. Such messages typically involve inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of divine will concerning the prophet's social world and events to come (compare divine knowledge). Prophecy is not limited to any one culture. It is a common property to all known ancient societies around the world, some more than others. Many systems and rules about prophecy have been proposed over several millennia.
REVELATION
In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.
Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai. Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God. Muslims believe the Quranwas revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel (Jibril). In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apauruṣeya, "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is heard". The 15,000 handwritten pages produced by the mystic Maria Valtorta were represented as direct dictations from Jesus, while she attributed The Book of Azariah to her guardian angel.[55] Aleister Crowley stated that The Book of the Law had been revealed to him through a higher being that called itself Aiwass.
A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity,[56] or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation.[57] The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.
In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will, and his divine providence to the world of human beings.[58] In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy, and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.
REINCARNATION
Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures,[63] and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato.[64] It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy, and Eckankar, and as an esoteric belief in many streams of Orthodox Judaism. It is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia, and South America.[65]
Although the majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Cathars, Alawites, the Druze,[66] and the Rosicrucians.[67] The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism, and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions have been the subject of recent scholarly research.[68] Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teaches reincarnation.
In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation,[69] and many contemporary works mention it.
KARMA
Karma (/ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, romanized: karma, IPA: [ˈkɐɽmɐ] (listen); Pali: kamma) means action, work or deed;[70] it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect).[71] Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and future suffering.
With origins in ancient India's Vedic civilization, the philosophy of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions(particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism[74]) as well as Taoism.[75] In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives - one's saṃsāra.
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent, defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny."[79] The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as "the sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere powers and capacities of human nature."[80]
PROCESS THEOLOGY
Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead(1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000).
It is not possible, in process metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a "supernatural" intervention into the "natural" order of events. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if "the natural" is defined more neutrally as "what is in the nature of things," then process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, "It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity" (Whitehead 1978, 21). It is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and thereby highlight that the processed God cannot do in comparison what the traditional God could do (that is, to bring something from nothing). In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be part creators of the world with God).
— Donald Viney, "Process Theism" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
HEAVEN
Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter Heaven alive.
Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places", and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.
Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka,[82] and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.
UNDERWORLD
The underworld is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living.[83] Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.
The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself".[84] Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose.[85] Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.[86]
A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination.[87] Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors".[88]
SPIRIT
A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a ghost, fairy, or angel.[89] The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions,[90] and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.
Spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality.
Historically, it was also used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.[91]
DEMON
A demon (from Koine Greek δαιμόνιον daimónion) is a supernatural and often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore.
In Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity, below the heavenly planes[92] which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology,[93] a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.
MAGIC
Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces. Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious, and medicinal role in many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is.
Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylorand James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within scholarship since the 1990s.
The term magic comes from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional, and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BCE. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the first century CE, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion. This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former largely influencing early academic usages of the word.
Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who practiced magic and referred to themselves as magicians. This trend has proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of magicians appearing within the esoteric milieu. British esotericist, Aleister Crowley, described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will.
DIVINATION
Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.
Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. In the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet", trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure, and successions to estates",[103] even though most Romans believed in prophetic dreams and charms.
WITCHCRAFT
Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally, and thus can be difficult to define with precision,[104] and cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role,[105] and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.[104]
MIRACLE
A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws.[106] Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), magic, a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.
Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds.' Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.[107]
A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring the violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed, for instance, by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God.[108]
SKEPTICISM
Skepticism (American English) or scepticism (British English;) is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief. It is often directed at domains such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism), religion (skepticism about the existence of God), or knowledge (skepticism about the possibility of knowledge or of certainty). Formally, skepticism as a topic occurs in the context of philosophy, particularly epistemology,** although it can be applied to any topic such as politics, religion, and pseudoscience.
One reason why skeptics assert that the supernatural cannot exist is that anything "supernatural" is not a part of the natural world simply by definition. Although some believers in the supernatural insist that it simply cannot be demonstrated using the existing scientific methods, skeptics assert that such methods are the best tool humans have devised for knowing what is and isn't knowable.
The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was an offer by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) to pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. A version of the challenge was first issued in 1964. Over a thousand people applied to take it, but none were successful. The challenge was terminated in 2015.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia
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You, Richard, do not consider metaphysics and 'the supernatural' to exist as such. Neither do I in this context. Nature includes the term 'the supernatural,' as far as this Blog is concerned. Metaphysics is a part of Nature, not a separate distinction. – Grandma Earth
The article above contains a section on SPIRIT which begins:
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"A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity, such as a ghost, fairy, or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost," i.e., a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person."
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This seventh, quite short story includes a ghost, a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. I should know as I, poetically, am a supernatural being myself. I have her spirit in my pocket. - Grandma
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STORY SEVEN
For those of you who have never witnessed a ghost firsthand, I have one for you. The ghost's size is that of a regular green pea in a lighter shade of green. Those of you who may not have seen a spirit similar to this, make that an electrified pale green baby pea color. Grandma reaches into her pocket and pulls out the small spirit-like orb, which then floats off and up from Grandma's black right palm. Here, Grandma pronounces, "I'll let this little apparition tell her story."
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A Ghost's Existence
I am the shadow of a shade of my former self. What is black to me is green to you. Grandma put me in her pocket because I was off over the Atlantic Ocean. I always wanted to see the Atlantic when I was alive, but I never did. I lived on a beautiful island in the South Pacific my entire life. My sole contact with the outside world was the disease that killed me some centuries ago. I appear as a small dot because the eye cannot see my flat self. I could slice into someone, I suppose, but I am comfortable as I am. I like the Atlantic Ocean, so I float above it in a dream, in a conscious hypnotic-like trance.
I know I am not in what the Living call the real world, but I am close to the Living. I'm close enough that you can read of me. I think it is funny that I am a dot within a capital I. The human eye is not built to see me as I am, so it won't. Most real ghosts can pass through a living person more often than you think. Some of us call it dead-dreaming, the reverse of an out-of-body experience. It is an into-the-mind experience from my point of view. You are conscious of me as an odd green pea in a Grandma Story. Dead, I am still comfortable in the shadow of Grandma's hands. That is the point.
Grandma smiles and gently slides the pea-sized object back into her pocket as if she were a caring farmer and the tiny ghost was a baby gosling.
Wind in a spirited wit, or a lively wit in the wind,
Appearing a shimmering electric green or boney white,
The mind's dark and witty night rests with chagrin,
In the natural trancephysics of this spiritual light.
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There are Wiki articles and definitions along with a short story, number seven, in today's blog. Do you have anything to add, Mr. Orndorff? – Ms. Havisham
2132. I remember the 'electric green' shimmering from the wall baseboard in the hallway in the Fall of the late 1980s or early 1990s. It appeared as a spirit ghost to me, but it was the spirit of a dead Navy man who died in the Pacific during World War II. He wants to leave this world, but he finds himself still trapped in a sunk submarine. He was the uncle, I believe, of a neighbor on our street. The neighbor had a priest exorcise the spirit from their house a few days earlier. The sailor appeared as a small greenish light dancing the baseboard. Carol and Kim, about age ten or so, we're on the first floor of the watching bilevel watching television; it was about eight o'clock in the evening. The electric-green is the only part of Grandma's story. I have a memorable visual of, even today. 2142. Grandma is a better storyteller than I am because she has no doubts, which makes her story effective. I have doubts, but the experience was real enough at the time. The witnessing caused me to sweat and feel a sickness in my stomach at the time. I dreaded telling Carol and never did, though later that night in bed, she said she thought she heard something in the hall. She got up to look but saw nothing and returned to bed a bit uneasy but soon fell asleep; meanwhile, I spent some time quietly staring at the ceiling and wondering about the reality of the incident. It would have helped if the next day I asked the neighbor, and he said they thought his uncle, who had been a sailor, was 'along the top of the wall' in the living room and had a priest do the exorcising; and, of course, Carol hearing something. 2152.
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