What Are Ghosts, Part Two
In the last blog, I presented the idea that what ghosts are is consciousness, ill-described by either science or religion, and I related a scenario in which Western-minded people might be able to view the existence of ghosts, given that our perspective is formed out of the opposing zeitgeists of science and Christianity. It takes a huge twist of thinking to escape our particular culture, a thought experiment that begins to sink into philosophical double-talk, but otherwise we just can’t conceive of supernatural beings or events without this convolution.
However, the few things I’ve experienced have led me to start thinking outside the box. Outside the box enough to write a series of novels based upon this process (but funnier). This is because my few encounters, and this goes for most people who have supernatural encounters, seem to lie far beyond the trappings of scientific investigation or religion. They are very personal, sometimes disturbing or emotional, and real, and yet they cannot be correlated with the general though process of our ethos, i.e. the observer is thought of as crazy or mistaken, lying or attention-seeking.
People see what they see, and experience what they experience, regardless of our generally accepted principles and beliefs. Putting these events into context is an act of frustration.
I put to you, however, that it is not the haunting, UFO, or monster that is out of context, but the ingrained thought process we share, this collective skeptical/faith version of reality. Why would I say that? Because we seem to be the only culture that does think that way.
Classical, Pagan, Eastern, African and Indian cultures, in other words, the entire rest of the world, do not have the problem correlating supernatural events with mundane existence, and they have not since at least the time of Ancient Egypt. Included in their world view, and absent from ours, is the idea of animism, of ancestor veneration, of spiritual essence. We generally deride such cultural thinking as “folk religion.”
This, again, stems from the viewpoint honed by science and Christianity. On the science hand, spiritual essence cannot be measured, recorded or otherwise empirically studied, so it does not exist. On the Christian hand, spiritual essence—soul—is something specifically human that goes to heaven or hell upon death. I, for one, was taught the dogma (ironically) that animals don’t have souls, and thus, we won’t see Bootsie again in the great beyond.
So-called “folk religions” do not restrict soul or essence in any way, and in fact in Animism, spiritual essence permeates all things, organic and inorganic. Kinda like the Force in Star Wars. Ancestor Veneration often means seeking guidance from the dead, keeping them in treats and so forth to gain their favor. You don’t see non-Westerners with full spectrum cameras, EMF detectors and digital recorders looking for ghost evidence. You see them leave flowers and fruit for the ghosts they know exist.
If you’re scoffing, and I know some of you are, it’s because our tenets cause us to look down our noses at such beliefs, considering them primitive. We can’t help it, it is how we are raised and schooled.
If consciousness is the same thing as soul or spiritual essence, why can’t we accept the idea that consciousness might carry on without physical accompaniment? Since we can’t explain consciousness, either scientifically or religiously, or even agree on a definition, it seems to be the prime candidate for what ghosts are. It is, at least, a point where we can begin to have an open-minded discussion.
And if you can’t come to grip with this idea, you are, collectively and historically, in a teeny-tiny minority.
