Bereavement apparitions..

Stories abound of people encountering loved ones who have recently passed away. I myself had a couple of synchronicities happen to me after my mom died. We had agreed before her passing that she would make contact somehow with me. But not to appear at the foot of my bed in the middle of the night! She came thru and gave a couple of powerful signs to me to say goodbye. I am at peace that she has moved on and is in the afterlife. Here's a brief article on this phenomenon.

Bereavement Apparitions
Do loved ones bid farewell from beyond the grave?


Death doesn't sever the connection between loved ones, say people who've experienced so-called crisis apparitions.


CNN —
Nina De Santo was about to close her New Jersey hair salon one winter’s night when she saw him standing outside the shop’s glass front door.

It was Michael. He was a soft-spoken customer who’d been going through a brutal patch in his life. His wife had divorced him after having an affair with his stepbrother, and he had lost custody of his boy and girl in the ensuing battle.

He was emotionally shattered, but De Santo had tried to help. She’d listened to his problems, given him pep talks, taken him out for drinks.



When De Santo opened the door that Saturday night, Michael was smiling.

“Nina, I can’t stay long,” he said, pausing in the doorway. “I just wanted to stop by and say thank you for everything.”

They chatted a bit more before Michael left and De Santo went home. On Sunday she received a strange call from a salon employee. Michael’s body had been found the previous morning – at least nine hours before she talked to him at her shop. He had committed suicide.

If Michael was dead, who, or what, did she talk to that night?

“It was very bizarre,” she said of the 2001 encounter. “I went through a period of disbelief. How can you tell someone that you saw this man, solid as ever, walk in and talk to you, but he’s dead?”

Today, De Santo has a name for what happened that night: “crisis apparition.” She stumbled onto the term while reading about paranormal activities after the incident. According to paranormal investigators, a crisis apparition is the spirit of a recently deceased person who visits someone they had a close emotional connection with, usually to say goodbye.



Reports of these eerie encounters are materializing in online discussion groups, books such as “Messages” – which features stories of people making contact with loved ones lost on September 11 – and local ghost hunting groups that have sprung up across the country amid a surge of interest in the paranormal.

Although such encounters are chilling, they can also be comforting, witnesses and paranormal investigators say. These encounters suggest the bond that exists between loved ones is not erased by death.

“We don’t know what to do with these stories. Some people say that they are proof that there’s life after death,” said Steve Volk, author of “Fringe-ology,” a book on paranormal experiences such as telepathy, psychics and house hauntings read more here www.cnn.com/…

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/20...ences-What-are-Bereavement-Apparitions-x1f311

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

Everybody's experiences are relayed in anecdotes or accounts. Even yours. They are firsthand descriptions of what happened to them. But we don't just dismiss them because they present no evidence of it. We accept the accounts as genuine and accurate because there is simply no reason to think they are making it up or are delusional. Such is the moving and compelling story posted here. It's a stunning confirmation of a well-known phenomenon that occurs again and again all over the world (see link below). I'm sorry you have to dismiss it out of hand to protect your skeptical belief system. But it doesn't affect the authenticity and credibility of the account itself in the least.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-darkness/202204/encounters-the-time-death

 

Log in or Sign up to hide all adverts.

EXCERPT: "I’m not entirely sure how to interpret these experiences. However, they are certainly a reminder that—as I have pointed out in my book Spiritual Science—our culture’s standard materialist worldview is inadequate."​

"Our culture." (Western or WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic)

The question of their therapeutic value arises, which in turn may rub shoulders with being inclusive about non-Eurocentric values, standards, orientations and methods. (I.e., that's the political backdoor to a degree of acceptance and enhanced epistemological status for these type affairs in the future.)

If cultures of population groups and regions formerly oppressed by Western colonialism and hegemony should feature apparitional experiences as part of their community traditions and practices -- especially with respect to spirituality and well-being...

Then I suppose the academic world must respectfully accommodate them in some fashion, similar to how it does indigenous science, native origin stories, etc.[1] As part of the social justice and decolonization protocol for the West purging itself of guilt (past injustices slash atrocities it committed) and remedying the "menace" of privileged hierarchies (in both social and knowledge contexts).

However, since Christianity was an instrumental part of the Western oppression of other societies, analysts and skeptics can probably (for the time being at least), still critically evaluate death-related experiences (etc) crouched in that religious domain without having to heed outcries of Western chauvinism and discrimination.

- - - footnote [1]- - -

Adapting traditional healing values and beliefs into therapeutic cultural environments for health and well-being
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8744804/

[...] better overall health and well-being outcomes, the Western model mainly focuses on treating symptoms. [...] The holistic nature of a Māori view of health contributes to understanding the interrelationship of mind, body, spirit, and place as the basic tenets of life.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Science creep is a menace
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2885925/science-creep-is-a-menace/

According to Thorp’s definition, even anti-science groups and outright quacks who promulgate dangerous disinformation could also be said to be participating in “science communication” and therefore be “scientists.”

What is a scientist?
https://holdenthorp.substack.com/p/who-is-a-scientist?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2

Anyone who thinks the Lakota authors are not scientists just because they don’t have a bunch of credentials doesn’t really understand how science works. [...] Following the success of Braiding Sweetgrass, indigenous science is starting to get the attention it deserves.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Defending science against social justice dogmatism and identitarianism
https://skepticalinquirer.org/2024/...social-justice-dogmatism-and-identitarianism/

A piece in Scientific American magazine about biotech crops stated bluntly: “At its base, GM [genetically modified] crops are rooted in a colonial-capitalist model of agriculture based on theft of Indigenous land and on exploiting farmers’ and food workers’ labor, women’s bodies, Indigenous knowledge and the web of life itself”.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Decolonization of knowledge
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decolonization_of_knowledge

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Spirituality and religious diversity in nursing: a scoping review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9498726/

Spirituality is a common theme in the field of healthcare research. This study aimed to examine nurses’ perceptions of spirituality in the context of the religious diversity of patients in pluri-religious settings...

[...] Spirituality is a common theme in healthcare research and on healthcare professionals worldwide, and it constitutes one of the six quality of life domains in the World Health Organization Quality of Life Instrument (World Health Organization, 2012). Spiritual diversity is widespread due to the existence of pluri-religious societies worldwide. Consequently, nurses commonly care for patients from diverse religious backgrounds. According to the literature, people with and without religious convictions report the need for and benefits of spiritual support in healthcare. Growing attention to spiritual aspects of care exists even within highly secular societal environments. Worldwide, nurses’ interest in spiritual care is increasing.

[...] There is a need for studies on spirituality in the healthcare setting, especially nursing, in Asian countries and in diverse ethnocultural and practice contexts.

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

Understandings of spirituality and its role in illness recovery in persons with schizophrenia and mental-health professionals: a qualitative study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4818963/

INTRO: Spirituality has received increased attention in the psychiatric literature; however, it remains underexplored on a global level. Knowledge about spirituality of persons with schizophrenia is often hampered by positive and negative symptoms, which limit their expression of spiritual needs and shift mental-health professionals’ focus from spiritual care to symptom control. Differences in the ways that the two parties understand spirituality may create different expectations and further hinder the provision of high-quality holistic care. This study investigated the meaning and roles of spirituality from the perspectives of persons with schizophrenia and mental-health professionals.

Both clients and professionals regarded spirituality as an inherent part of a person’s well-being, clients’ rehabilitation, and their lives in general. At the personal level, the clients’ descriptions were more factual, concrete, short term, and affective, whereas the professionals’ descriptions were more abstract, complex, and cognitive. At the communal level, both parties had a similar understanding of spirituality but different interpretations of its role in recovery from mental illness. The clients regarded spirituality as a source of giving and receiving love and care, whereas the professionals regarded it as a means of receiving support and managing symptoms.​

 

That's a question for Steve Taylor -- it's his article that MR provided the link to. What I emphasized and proceeded from was it being a view ascribed to "our culture", where he's possibly suggesting that this is some kind of relativistic matter.

The point or goal (for such movements) is just to get the "experiences" smuggled in for a higher status of respect, by whatever means. If a context of "emotional benefit" alone can accomplish that, then that's fine. But the addition of ideology is probably going to be required for some of the heavy lifting (which is influentially already in progress, anyway).

If that distinction allows this or whatever _X_ to enter the mainstream or for science to become "co-partners" with items like indigenous science, then all the better. Again, the initial method of infiltration may not matter in the long run since it is an incremental process of seduction, anyway.

Or even without demonstration. When social morality (the "structural oppression" diagnosis) is the tail wagging or chastising the dog, then it is achieving radical parity of both individuals and cultures that matters. The world as it ought to be, rather than supposedly is (to onerous Eurocentric standards).

William Reville (the biochemist): "Science is based only on evidence and logic. No genuine scientific conclusion can be “good”, “bad”, “sexist”, “racist” etc – only true or false. The PC a priori rejection of scientific investigations on moral grounds is anti-scientific. Science describes the world as it is; PC describes the world as PC thinks it ought to be."

The footnote section pertains to the overall picture of what [1] was placed beside in the reply above the footnote section. The latter in turn connects to the potential "culture" matter that Taylor introduced. Which MR (the starter of the thread) provided.

It's an example of the Western oppression meme being deployed, for the benefit of those oblivious to much of what transpires in the political and humanities arena. (I could also add "for those in denial", but obviously to be in that state to begin with means that one is cognitively and fundamentally non-receptive to information in that regard to begin with. I.e., it is futility to provide anything for that population segment.)

And the more ambiguous "spiritual" or "spirituality" is, the better. As far as importing various items (one of which this topic concerns) through that gate that the Old Guard might have once barred or strictly monitored.

That growing interest in "spirituality" (the papers and their excerpts) is an available portal into the science publishing community, for potentially bootlegging "apparitions of whatever kind" through, especially should they be a Western persecuted feature of one's traditional culture. Not just for any claims that might be crouched in Abrahamic ilk. Again, the latter has limited potency, anyway, since its missionary endeavors were a cohort of Western colonization and subjugation of regional societies. Which is not to say that may change in the future, as decolonization of knowledge progresses, evolves, and globally disseminates. (IOW, even some conservative Christians may give up and jump into the club to enjoy any protective advantages it eventually secures.)
_

 

Sorry you lost your mum.

This is a well documented phenomenon, about 1 in 8 have an experience.
A part of the grieving process.
Splitting from a loved one can have a similar effect.
This phenomena was thought to have played a part in the resurrection claims in the NT.

I personally do not think the phenomena is an actual contact with a dead person.
I do not think any element of the deceased persist after death bar the dead body.

 

I think people should be able to ask questions of others who have had these experiences, and that calling the questioners mentally ill and paranoid seems to be an overreaction on a discussion forum.

Sets a great atmosphere for 'discussion', especially when the incident has now been posted on the web 3 times in 9 years.
2018

Aug 2014

 

Assuming you actually want to discuss the OP and are not just trolling users by digging up their old posts like you always do.

So tell me foghorn, do you believe every person who has a paranormal experience is lying about it? On what basis?

 

If I can just answer for me before Foghorn does.
No one has to be lying, religious experience, paranormal and such.
These people and yourself included can see and feel things that are a genuine real experience.

I thought I saw my ex, it very shocking, upsetting and put me on my arse at least three times.
Looked like her, dressed like her moved like her. Similar possibly, dreamt about her nights previously possibly? She was already in my head and I didn't know it?
Anyway it was not her,I felt stupid, sad angry.

It was totally real though. Losing somebody can play cruel tricks on your mind, if you want something bad enough.

 

Thanks for that.
Would you call your experience supernatural if yes, then why.

What I mean there, is that you seem to have come to a conclusion it wasn’t, my bold above in quote." tricks on your mind"

Whereas MR would link it all in with his old cut & paste ghost photos and the afterlife of those passed over sending signs or messages back to the living.

 

If she would have died, I would have still have Checked it definitely was not her even, though every part of the reasonable, logical part of me would have been saying, "it's not her, she's dead."
The reason I posted was that the internal experience, is every bit as real as seeing a real person.
From the outside, it's just a guy missing his girlfriend, seeing her in random women.

So no, not supernatural for me, I can explain it.
I have the opinion that other people experience this with, sightings, ghosts or experiencing a loved one.
We are pattern seeking mammals (not my phrase) we strive to make sense of things, putting familiar faces to strangers.

 

What about the many accounts, included in the OP and the posted link to the Psychology Today article, of people encountering loved ones or friends before they even know they have died. This is a common experience called "crisis apparitions" and certainly suggests something more than just wishful thinking.

 

Seeing a patch of water on a New Mexico highway is a firsthand description of a mirage I saw. No one dismisses the mirage as a genuine experience, but reasonable people may dismiss it as not a puddle of water. One needn't be delusional or mendacious to be wrong as to the objective nature of a phenomenon. If I claim it's water, I need to get a sample and produce it as evidence.

Also, emotionally fraught experiences coincide with ignoring Ockham's razor when an anomaly presents itself. We may prefer the non-Ockham option that soothes our grief over the one that requires no new physics or supernatural assumptions.

 

That succinctly captures what I am getting at.

Having experienced it, then having to demonstrate it to myself that I was wrong, I can empathize with those who that also see passed loved ones.

 

The fact remains is that if you told most people you saw a puddle on a New Mexico highway they'd probably believe you because most people trust your firsthand experience. It's just the way the world works. Always questioning what people tell us would make for a very lonely existence.

 

That is kind of the opposite of the scientific method. Doubt everything, even your own findings.
Test, repeat, verify, other teams test in a different way.

Nothing wrong with the experience as I said, however question what is likely to be real.
Take nothing on faith.

 

In a simulated reality... Meaningful coincidences (synchronicity), hallucinations, misinterpretations of perceptions, dreams, etc could occasionally be methods of the prior-in-rank level communicating anonymously with the intelligent agents (humans) residing in its product. Since avoiding flagrant disruption of a "natural" world's regulating principles and mechanistic processes would be of key importance.

"Enlightenment philosophers under the influence of Newtonian science tended to view the universe as a vast machine, created and set in motion by a creator being that continues to operate according to natural law without any divine intervention."​

Such covert interventions would allow the simulated agent to either be prodded in a particular direction or to derive some intended therapeutic value from the specious events, while those events still conformed to or worked within the bounds of the overall system. A rule in effect at the prior-in-rank level might be: "No outside intervention without it supervening on a material explanation or set of circumstances within the simulation (including those falling out of statistical probabilities)."

A crude or imperfect analogy might be the phenomenal experiences of consciousness itself. Where there are these private, anomalous manifestations which are concomitant with neural processes whose technical descriptions do not resemble what is experienced at all. These "sense and thought manifestations" are alien and intrusive with respect to the conventional character of matter, yet still deemed within the context of "natural" due to the strict correlation between the two (no experience without it supervening on biological activity).

But switching to this speculative territory of proposed apparitions and other oddities potentially plaguing the inhabitants of a simulated reality ... It would instead be personal meanings being projected upon the "natural explanations" underlying the pertinent coincidences, hallucinations, misinterpretations of perceptions, dreams, etc. (A relationship or outcome which the prior-in-rank level would anticipate or hope for, albeit the approach or method arguably susceptible to firing blanks at times.)
_