It's mystical, man!
Posted on: July 12, 2007 - 4:09pm
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It's mystical, man!
So let's say I have a "mystical" experience. I'm meditating over my Lucky Charms cereal and I have a vision of a pink pony and it tells me there is a coffe can of gold double eagles in the back yard under the Tumtum tree. So I go out with a shovel and , DAMN, there is a coffee can with gold coins uner the Tumtum tree.
What is this evidence of?
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That you are f***ed up on some serious drug. Unless you also have to beware the Jabberwocky (with its jaws that bite and its claws that catch), you shouldn't be running into any Tumtum trees.
"Tis better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven." -Lucifer
It is evidence that you have a shovel around the house and you know where a tumtum tree is located.
True, but WTF is up with the pink pony?
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Ahhhh, that my friend is the result of the spoiled milk you added to those Lucky Charms. LOL
It's evidence that sometimes the right thing is done for the wrong reason.
I really hesitate to open this can of worms, but I've had "mystical" experiences that may as well have been pink ponies and coffee cans with gold in them. Having hallucintations of a pink pony because of the sour milk I can deal with. But when the coffee can ends up really there, it messes with your head.
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I have never had one of these experiences and have never personally known anyone who has had an experience like this that could not be attributed to circumstance and naturalistic reasons.
I am not saying I have knowledge of everything but the knowledge I do have leads me to believe this type of thing is more benign. Additionally I would need more particulars of the event to determine my opinion of it.
I say this is evidence of way too many hits of acid.
If god takes life he's an indian giver
Meh.
Were it not for these things, athiesm would be easy. Let's just say that I found I could enter certain states of mind that defied catagorization. Drugs were not required. And for 25 years I have been unable to integrate these things into a cogent view of reality. And if I could put the coffee can back under the tree I would have a long time ago.
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Alliteration
'Twas chilling, and the 4 leafed clove,
Did mark with 'X' the thimble by the copse;
All amazy were the bored-droves,
And the Mormon the Tumtum lops.
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.
Props dude.
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I've experienced strange things too, but I've never taken it as any kind of evidence for an unseen consciousness, especially not on such a grand scale. I simply organize the facts that I can in my mind, try to find all the benign explanations possible, and if there's anything left I simply admit that I don't know and sometimes that it's a hell of a coincidence.
In your example, I would doubt that you could rule out that you heard something about a long-past relative burying the tin can, but it was a very long time ago and you never really paid attention until a hallucination brought the memory up in the only way your mind could make sense of it. With your current set of beliefs, you're just more willing to take some perceived 'divine message' more seriously than some obscure memory of overhearing some gossip from a time that you can't really remember.
God isn't required.
But in this case, Occams razor would suggest that because I was eating my Lucky Charms in a new house and there was no chance at a supressed memory from some forgotten conversation and the pink pony was not a simple hallucination.
I am really digging myself a deep hole here, but wtf. It's problematic that I have fastidiously avoided replicating the conditions that led to these experiences. I suppose to settle the question I might have to go there again.
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You can't rule that out by definition; yo don't remember.
Not to mention the fact that since this is an imaginary scenario, you can just keep saying 'no' to every possibility. Reality doesn't work like that. I could probably give you a run for your money on these kinds of experiences, but the fact is that when you put the desire for mystery aside and look at them objectively, they're almost never as mystical as they seem at first blush. Even if such an event is completely unexplainable, it would be foolish to draw such grandiose conclusions. It's almost certain that you would be far off the mark when everything else disputes the conclusion.
If nothing else, Occam's razor would suggest that you simply don't have all the correct facts to explain the incident in full, and that it's better to reserve judgement for such a time that those facts come to light. The nice thing about true facts is that they have a tendancy to explain more than individual experiences.
I'm done here.
Just thinking about it gives me a headache.
In all seriousness, yes it is.
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I'm totally speculating here, because I'm honestly lost between My Little Pony and Maxwell House, and have no idea what kind of mystical experience you've had.
However, something you may want to consider: Perfectly sane people sometimes have bizarre neurological reactions to odd combinations of stimuli. There are many kinds of hallucinations, affecting all the senses, and we can't even begin to explain what causes them all.
Furthermore, since the brain is a chemical/electric factory, it's quite common for acute phenomena to happen to perfectly sane people.
Furthermore, there are plenty of known syndromes, such as the one whose name I always forget, where people get their senses crossed up and see sound.
What I'm basically saying, wave, is that it's quite possible that you had a brief "psycho moment" for lack of a better term. Something went haywire in your brain, and caused you to have some kind of experience that seemed incredibly real.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
Oh, one more speculation, wave...
I'm not convinced that you don't want to believe that your experience proves the supernatural.
Might it be that you're a bit scared of a naturalistic world, because you might have to question your own sanity for a certain part of your life?
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
I've been thoroughly evaluated. Neurologicallly, I am perfectly normal. A test for epilepsy was negative though such tests are only accurate when abnormal brain activity is actually observed so they can't prove a negative. MRIs show perfectly normal blood flow and physical brain structures. Too bad James Randi wasn't around at the critical moments. He'd have figured it out.
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Supernatural is meaningless to me. Even if god exists s(he) cannot interact with this world unless somehow connected to it. That connection makes it part if what is natural.
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Seriously, dude. You have a good sense of humor.
I guess all I can say is that if it were me, I'd go on the assumption that something abnormal happened, and now it's back to normal.
BTW, your complete disavowal of the supernatural is why it seems to me you're an atheist with a bizarre sense of what is possible naturally.
Atheism isn't a lot like religion at all. Unless by "religion" you mean "not religion". --Ciarin
http://hambydammit.wordpress.com/
Books about atheism
This topic reminded me that I need to pick up some salvia for this weekend.
This is a great answer but I disagree.
This image presumably came from the intuition.
The intuition is a mysterious faculty that subconsciously processes all sorts of information, and when the intuition says something, it's usually worth listening to. There might've been several independent and obscure clues that your intuition put together to suggest where the treasure was.
If there were no such clues and the whole incident was without explanation then it would show that amazing coincidences can happen sometimes, but I think all this does is spell out how unlikely it would be for the event to actually happen.
Couldn't agree more Strafio
Intuition can be very helpful in 'do they like me' situations, it can subconsiously read body language.
R.R
Glad I could be of some help!
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