Science. Humanity evolving. Forms of atomic communication over large distances (which are documented) that have yet to be discovered by science. Plants communicate with each other, but this is typically by physical spores, pheromones, or other observable elements that have been documented extensively.

This is kind of metaphysical, if not supernatural. At that point you can argue anything, and I see you wish to avoid that, as does this forum. So all I'll say is, not all that glitters is gold.

Also: beyond that, the tech for both translating thoughts into words and words into thoughts is unfortunately here. With that in mind.. anything is possible now isn't it?

Thanks for the links. The aspect referred to in the link which I thought was most interesting was the whole idea of microwave effect and the whole question of this for understanding delusions, such as mind control.

Probably most people using this site are critical thinkers, but I am aware how so many people are extremely superstitious. One thing which I found was that, while I was working in mental health care, most staff were very quick to label people as delusional, but they were sometimes very superstitious themselves. For example, I remember working with a person who was extremely educated, but if I spoke of the ward being quiet, used to tell me not to say that in case I put a jinx on the situation.

So, really I am interested in looking at the whole way in which notions about magic and the paranormal come into play in everyday life. However, I am wanting a critical philosophy discussion, so I may update my title and add to it because it is probably the case that most of the people using this site are critically aware individuals in the first place.

I have altered my title because I realise that the majority of people who use this site are people who think in a critical way. However, I am interested in the whole deconstruction of ideas about superstition and the magical. I believe that we like to think that our ideas about the whole way reality is are the ones which are forward thinking. However, I think it is worth asking what is a delusion within philosophy and thinking about reality?

I have had a lot of prescient or precognitive experiences that defy all explanation except that there is a layer of reality beyond that which we routinely grasp. Probably due to my attitude, which is the almost reckless but certainly relentless pursuit of the unknown. I think that the "philosophical delusion" occurs when you make such experiences the focus of your thinking. I just accept them as natural events, like any other, and don't try to explain them.

I also had as you the delusion experience. I didn't dreamed about something that serious of seeing someone dying but I felt the same sensation as you. My dream was about (I had this delusion hundred of times) a meeting of persons that are very important in my life in a white diaphanous room.
This is not something random. I usually meet this persons in diaphanous rooms but why is it white?
Here is where philosophy arises. I want to give to the white colour a positive meaning and considerate it is something related to transparency because the persos I meet in the room are always evaluating me. So I want to understand this is the real meaning. White room can reflect transparency in they way they look at me.
But these are just my guesses.

I would probably accept most experiences of precognition as natural phenomena now, although I haven't had any for some time, so it is hard to explain for sure. However, when I first began experiencing them it was so intense and the experience were of other people's deaths. I did even wonder if I was responsible for the deaths at some point, although I was able to reason that this was unlikely and that I was simply having precognitions. However, it was puzzling and, having been brought up to believe ideas such as the virgin birth of Jesus, I did end up questioning the whole basis of reality.

This whole experience of questioning was began while I was still at school, and I think that if I had not been able to explore different ideas, I would have probably have become unwell mentally. I did even request to see a psychiatrist and, fortunately, he said that he thought that I was trying too hard to compartmentalise my own experiences. Looking back on it, I am so glad that he did not try to see me as unwell. I really don't know how many people have unusual experiences, because perhaps they are fearful of speaking about them. Anyway, I struggled on and the idea which I found most helpful was Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.

Probably the reason why I began thinking about this again recently was because when I referred to this idea on the site, I felt that people seemed to think that the whole idea of the collective unconscious was dubious. So, I began thinking about the whole idea of the unconscious and what does it mean? It does seem that in some ways it refers to that which we cannot explain or understand. Obviously, people are exploring more and more about unknown aspects of life, such as the areas pointed to in the links provided by @Outlander.

However, I definitely believe that some people are more sensitive and able to perceive subtle aspects of reality more than others. This may be about our biochemistry, and I do think that stress affects our neurotransmitters. I think that this comes into play when people become unwell mentally.

However, I think that the nature of delusions is one which is often one in psychiatry, important for diagnosis. However, the way delusions operate in daily life is not questioned that much. Even within philosophy, it seems that people are inclined to think ideas, such as belief in God, or the opposite are delusions, but we can also ask on a deeper level, what is delusion in the ultimate sense?

However, when I first began experiencing them it was so intense and the experience were of other people's deaths. I did even wonder if I was responsible for the deaths at some point, — Jack Cummins

Yes, one very scary instance of this myself. I was up all night rationalizing why it was reasonable for the person to die, kept looping over and over in my head for hours. Happened the next day. Plus a precognitive dream of the circumstances a week before. I didn't recollect that until I was reviewing my dream journals a few weeks later. Not an old or sick person, car accident. Talk about feelings of intense guilt.

This is why I am not dismissive of religious intentions. No doubt some people do intuit more of reality than others. And some people don't have the depth or breadth of knowledge to do more than ascribe this to the existence of a deity.

One word: Pareidolia...and every other way of thinking that spawns from it.

Yes, I am not dismissing of people's beliefs of any kind because experience can be so strange, and our whole attempts to understand them from a logical point of view.

One of my strangest but horrible experiences was of having intrusive thoughts that a friend was going to kill himself. He did have a history of two previous suicide attempts but he had never ever expressed suicidal ideas to me. So, when I kept having the idea that he was going to commit suicide I thought I was the one with a psychological problem. This was while I was at university and I went for a few sessions to a Gestalt counsellor, who gave them to me for free because she was about to go on maternity leave, and the idea was that I could go for further paid counselling with her at some point in the future.During the free sessions, we looked at my fears about my friend as my psychological issue.

After my four free sessions, I felt calmer about my friend, who was smoking a lot of cannabis at the time. I was not smoking it, but felt affected by the cannabis passively. One night, I woke up and heard a voice, and I have only heard voices on 3 occasions in my life, and the voice said that I should throw myself out of the window. I shrugged this off, and went back to sleep. On the following day, the friend who I had been worrying about prior to the counselling threw himself out of the window and killed himself.

I never went back to the counsellor after she would have been due to return from maternity leave. She probably thought that I did not want to pay for counselling or did not need it any longer. The truth was that I just couldn't face telling her what happened. I do sometimes wonder what she would have said.

So, do you think it is all about seeing imaginary patterns?

I've had similar 'prophetic' experiences. Though I'm not really eager to call myself a prophet since most of my predictions seem to fail. Anyway, determinism helped me a lot.
Science seems to point a lot to a finite universe. If God or source is the singularity that sparked the Big Bang then it seems logical that existence at one point will collapse in itself and return to that singularity.
If that is the case, then happiness is about creating an illusion strong enough to be free. Or making captivity as enjoyable as possible. Which you can now master since lockdown is a prison term.

So, do you think it is all about seeing imaginary patterns? — Jack Cummins

Mostly, yes but, do keep an open mind. You never know where the next big scientific discovery will be made.

By the way, and this is where ESP, if real, will make a huge imapct, does anyone have any idea on which currently existing theories, scientific or non-scientific, will be ovrerturned if we get our hands on conclusive evidence for psyhic abilities? Do we throw everything out the window or can we keep those that have room enough for ESP?

It is so hard to explain these things. When under a lot of stress, especially if I have not slept or had eaten very much, I have intense experiences on the borderline of sleep. Sometimes, it is as if I am arising from my body and or of being in my bed and held down by alien entities. Some may say it is the astral dimension and others would say that it is strange dreams or nightmares.

I am in favour of looking for the most rational ways of looking at all matters, but it does just seem to me that some of the most conventional explanations for certain experiences are a bit inadequate. I am all in favour of new discoveries to explain what appears to be unexplainable.

I do think that the whole question of 'prophetic experiences' is one which raises questions about scientific determinism and it is questionable of how much our freedom is an illusion. My own experiences of premonitions, especially in adolescence, was what made me not accept the materialistic explanations, because, otherwise I think that I might have done so. I am inclined to the view that a picture of reality which may be more adequate would be one which is being perceived in the new physics, which sees life more in terms of vibrations and energies.

Not all of the elements of human being are located in time and space. Moderns are ‘naturally naturalistic’ - they understand themselves wholly as physical beings located in time and space, and relating to others only via the sensory capabilities. I don’t think extra-sensory perception is anything like that. I’m not claiming to understand it, but notice that time and space don’t seem to come into it.

One family of phenomena that has been well-documented are persons having apparitions of loved ones at the moment of that loved one’s death. This is said to have happened more than once during wartime.

sees life more in terms of vibrations and energies. — Jack Cummins

And fields. So far, science has become aware of electrical fields, however the existence of morphic fields has been suggested.

By the way, and this is where ESP, if real, will make a huge imapct, does anyone have any idea on which currently existing theories, scientific or non-scientific, will be ovrerturned if we get our hands on conclusive evidence for psyhic abilities? — TheMadFool

Materialism as now understood. Maybe it can be extended to accommodate such notions, but I can’t see how. But this is why the discussion of these topics is a taboo - it threatens the general consensus about the nature of reality according to science.

I recall reading an article some years back about research in remote viewing, which is a standard PSI test. One of the sceptics quoted in this article said that the indicators for remote viewing were strong enough to rate a positive in any other field of research. But, he said, ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ - which is frequently trotted out in respect of anything claimed to be evidence fo such.

Consequently, this subject area is very heated and often very nasty, animated by gullible enthusiasts on one side and cynical naysayers on the other. Not a nice place.

I am certainly not wishing to start a debate that becomes nasty. To some extent, it seems that all debates on this forum are heated and there is a whole undercurrent of thinking surrounding the philosophical underlying religious and spiritual questions. Just now, since I started this one today, I have noticed that someone else has created one about the supernatural.

I am wishing to explore the whole question of belief surrounding the whole experience of the extraordinary. It is an area for the gullible but people who are struggling to make sense of life. There are shelves of books on angels, demons and all kinds of occult or new age ideas. Really, I think that there is some big rift between those who subscribe to materialism and those who look for spiritual systems of thought. This may be more of a divide now than the conflict in religious beliefs and atheism.

I think many people are questioning deeply. As people on the forum probably know by now, I embrace a wide spectrum of thought rather than having one specific one. Perhaps people would prefer it if I had one fixed belief. However, I don't see this as easy, but I do think that if anything we need ways of seeing and thinking which can reconcile a lot of conflicts raised by the findings of science and the whole quest for understanding our lives, especially the realm of the mysterious. But, I am certainly wishing to think beyond delusions.

I am certainly not wishing to start a debate that becomes nasty. — Jack Cummins

I hope it doesn't! It's just a subject matter that often stirs controversy.

Really, I think that there is some big rift between those who subscribe to materialism and those who look for spiritual systems of thought. — Jack Cummins

You're not wrong!

I don't know why people get nasty with others in such discussions. Perhaps the threat is the whole idea of uncertainty which emerges, and it gets projected onto others who see a bit differently. I prefer to have the conflicts of opposing ideas in my own consciousness, and live with that, rather than trying to just look for one clear scientific or spiritual view. I believe in trying to think as clearly as possible, evaluating ideas. If there was one clear picture for guiding all other thought, surely it would be apparent. Of course, the search for truth is subjective in many ways, but it is easy to get lost or bogged down in this information age, amidst the whole array of competing ideas.

I don't know why people get nasty with others in such discussions. — Jack Cummins

It poses a threat to the consensus, which is that psychic phenomena are imaginary and that the world is wholly physical. People buy into that, they take it to be true and when it's questioned it upsets them. It's a social taboo. I've had some very vexed conversations on this forum about children who remember past lives.

Certainly, I won't be trying to put down anyone's personal beliefs, but would just be trying to offer thought for reflection. The thread may just die overnight anyway, as so many are being created everyday. So, I think that I will just log off for the night and hope that any discussion is one from which positive, constructive ideas can emerge. I will look in the morning and do my best to follow through....

Good night, Jack

Materialism as now understood. Maybe it can be extended to accommodate such notions, but I can’t see how. But this is why the discussion of these topics is a taboo - it threatens the general consensus about the nature of reality according to science.

I recall reading an article some years back about research in remote viewing, which is a standard PSI test. One of the sceptics quoted in this article said that the indicators for remote viewing were strong enough to rate a positive in any other field of research. But, he said, ‘extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence’ - which is frequently trotted out in respect of anything claimed to be evidence for such.

Consequently, this subject area is very heated and often very nasty, animated by gullible enthusiasts on one side and cynical naysayers on the other. Not a nice place. — Wayfarer

Something feels slightly off here. On one hand science claims to know stuff about reality and insists that it has sufficient proof to back up its claims whatever they maybe. On the other hand, scientists make it a a point to let us know that they're more concerned about disproving rather than proving their own theories.

That ESP is "extraordinary" and thus needs "extraordinary" evidence only makes sense in the context of the image that science projects of itself as the authority on facts but is meaningless if we take into account the words of its practitioners (scientists) who are, by their own admission, eagerly seeking disproofs of their own theories. If scientists put their money where their mouths are, if they really mean what they say, there should be an explosion of interest in parapsychology for the simple reason that any evidence of psychic phenomena would require a reworking of the whole of science not just parts of it.

What is a philosophical delusion?

Delusion denotes persistent belief that a demonstable falsehood is true.

Reifying ideas (or images) is fallacious, that is, interpreting abstractions literally as concrete things. Idealism, like platonism, is guilty of burying reification fallacies (re: e.g. essences, forms, universals, categories, etc) in their premises. This is a form of "philosophical delusion".

Another is "supernatural" entities (e.g. spirits, ghosts, demons, visions, qi, chakras, etc), which are strongly correlated with, or derivative of, idealism and the like.

So, I am asking people on the forum about their experience of the extrasensory and how such experiences can be explained, in the most critical but helpful way? — Jack Cummins

I spent several years in the 1980s in a purple haze of hallucinogens such as LSD & mushrooms, to name two of the best known, that deconstructed the unity of my self-conscious identity and flirted a little too closely at the time with a schizoid-like break (-down? -through?) which finally scared me back from the (l)edge. Whatever I'd "perceived" in various altered states had not really fascinated me nearly as much as how memories of those "perceptions" assaulted – began to rewire – my ordinary conscious states. I'd become conditioned, I guess, to conceive of 'my self' in different tenses (i.e. a non-unitary past self – present self – future self simultaneously) rather than in the clinically schizoid manner of 'different personalities'. That was/has been quite liberating for me both philosophically and psychologically.

And so I've spent the last three decades "hung over" recovering from my purple daze ... Philosophical reflection, I'd submit, is a mode of "perception" which is nonsensory rather than "extra-" ( :roll: ); as one reflects, or contemplates, elements & patterns of one's understandings, one perceives one's memories as abstractions of increasing generality, always open to new/novel elements & patterns, growing and fragmenting and reassembling ... like maps or models of concept-scapes (mandalas), which enrich and are enriched by enmeshing them with nonphilosophical concepts and knowledge.

Through nonsensory perceptions, I'd like to think, I focus my sensory perceptions almost like corrective lenses and occasionally understand more than I see and know, hear and even feel.

I'm not familiar with the new physics. But the theory that everything has a vibration and an energy seems plausible. Even the theory that everything is a vibration and energy.
The question for me is: Are we more than just that :)

I have to admit that I explored psychedelics briefly. I can empathise with the whole idea of needing to 'focus my corrective lenses', because I sometimes seem to see a bit differently. However, I think that I felt this prior to any psychedelics and it only changed a little as a result. I don't think I have ever got to the point of becoming clinically 'psychotic'. The way it seems to affect me is that I struggle to do physical tasks, as if I have to almost focus myself into the world of the physical body to do practical tasks. I often joke with others about being a bit, 'out of body.'

I would say that I probably began being interested in the world seen by Aldous Huxley, in 'The Doors of Perception/ Heaven and Hell'. At the time when I read it, I did not plan to experiment, but it got to the point where I felt compelled to explore. Definitely, I can see where Huxley is coming from, in viewing the senses and brain as a reductive perspective on reality. I cannot say that I enjoyed my experiments entirely, but I think that was possibly due to the settings I had to enter into to experiment. I am not into clubs really but that my two acid experiments involved these. I do think that psychedelic experimentation probably works better in the context of more shamanic cultures, which have a place for the idea of a 'vision quest'.

In my own view of how psychedelics work, I do embrace the Eastern idea of the chakras. There is a lot of writing on this, but I am not sure that it is really respected that much within the Western philosophy view. However, the Eastern view incorporates this, and a similar and, perhaps overlapping idea is the Chinese meridian system, which underlies holistic systems of medicine.

A particular approach on the chakras is taken by Gopi Krishna, who speaks of the idea of kundalini awakening. The kundalini is the life force, which is often described as the 'coiled snake' rising from the various chakra points, based from the spine upwards to the head, including the third eye. The kundalini life force can awaken spontaneously, through meditation or psychedelics. The third eye can be awakened too prematurely through psychedelics, and this may be what leads to psychosis. I take an interest in these ideas, but with a certain amount of scepticism, because it may be that it is when such ideas are accepted too concretely or literally that there is a danger in slipping into the realm of delusions.

Minor quibble: I think "psychedelic" indicates a social or (counter)cultural affect distinct from hallucinogens which are the substances at issue.

I am afraid that I am not a physicist and as field of thought it is enormous because it is a whole paradigm in it's own right, including the ideas of Einstein and many others. For the present purpose of discussion, I will just give a short summarised view by Fritjof Capra, (1996), 'The Systems View of Life':
'Ever since Newton, physicists have believed that all physical phenomena could be reduced to the properties of hard and solid material particles. In the 1920s, however, quantum theory forced them to accept the fact that the solid material objects of classical physics dissolve at the subatomic level into wave-like patterns of probabilities of interconnections. The subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities but can be understood only as interconnections, or correlations, between various processes of observation and measurement. In other words, subatomic particles are not '"things" but interconnections between other things, and so on.'

In giving this extremely basic idea which underlies the new physics, I would suggest that the main emphasis is on relationships in a way which scientists had not described before. It does not lead to any clear conclusions but Fritjof Capra himself thought that one could see some comparisons between the new emerging picture and the idea of God, which had been described by some Eastern thinkers, as the Tao.

I think that the word psychedelic and hallucinogenic are not identical, although in some books people do use the word psychedelic substances. I would probably say that the psychedelic counterculture is a movement and it is possible to be part of that without hallucinogenic substances. Personally, I had always embraced the whole tradition of psychedelic music, ranging from the Beatles, The Psychedelic Furs, The Stone Roses and countless others. I read Tom Wolfe and Timothy Leary independent of using any substances. If my life had gone in a different direction, with more ups than downs, I probably would have never risked experimentation with substances. However, I do sometimes wonder if it was almost inevitable that I would experiment, with my whole leaning towards the psychedelic movement. But I am sure that there are plenty who have been influenced by the movement who have not tried any hallucinogenics at all.

Thank you. Food for contemplation

I notice in your post previously to this that in relation to vibrations and energy, you asked are we more than that? That is a big question and I am inclined to think that we are, but I am also interested to know your view.