A place for souls young and old to Learn and Share
Electric Ghosts: Where Science and the Paranormal collide
The Dummy's Guide to Measuring Life After Death Writer James Redfield said in his book, "The Celestine Prophecy," that all living things are infused with energy, in a field that can reach out and interact with that of other living things. Taking things a step further, in the introduction to the book, "Real Ghosts, Restless Spirits, and
Haunted Places," author Brad Steiger quotes paranormal researcher Brian A. Shill, stating that all living things have a bioelectric cycle operating at 60Hz.
While neither book could be considered a study guide in a biology class, they got one thing right: the human body does indeed employ electrical energy to function. Without that low-level electrical current, your heart wouldn't pump, your brain wouldn't work and in short, you couldn't be alive.
Here Comes The Science
This author performed an online search and found no other source to back that 60Hz figure for all life, except in reference to the damage that receiving a 60Hz dose of electricity can create in the human body. It's the energy equivalent of living in the vicinity of high-voltage power lines.
There isn't a question, though, that living creatures are dependent on tiny, naturally-occurring surges of electrical energy. In humans and higher animals, those impulses rush through our nervous systems, carrying messages from brain to limb, and from limb to brain. They regulate our heartbeat. They make breathing an automatic process. They keep us alive, give us sentience and the ability to think and feel as a single cohesive organism.
Several years ago, a physician at Barrows Neurological Institute in Mesa, Arizona, took the time to spell out to me, in detail, the electronic facts of the human brain. My eldest daughter had just been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder so severe that it bordered on Manic
Depressive (Bipolar) Disease. I've since lost track of the physician and therefore cannot obtain permission to use his name, but the gist of the conversation is a medical reality. Extremely low-power electrical currents leap across the spaces (or synapses) between neurons (nerve cells,) and it's those miniscule power jolts that control the workings of our minds and bodies.
A misfire across the synapses creates neurological disorders. If the messages don't transmit across the gaps, or get twisted as they leap from cell to cell, our perception doesn't match the external reality and we may experience hallucinations - or worse.
In my daughter's case, her eyes and ears function just fine. But for whatever reason, only two out of three neurons fire correctly. That means she literally doesn't receive a third of the information sent by her sensory organs. Her brain compensates by filling in the blanks, generating information that doesn't always agree with what the outer world experiences. The fact terrifies her to this day, because she knows she can't trust what she sees and hears.
Recycled Souls
According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, no energy is ever created or destroyed, though it may be transformed. Following that, the electrical energy jumping neuron-to-neuron inside our body doesn't go away, and in fact cannot just evaporate when we die. So what happens to those electrical pulses when they can no longer work within the framework of a functioning body?
Paranormal researchers claim that one of two things occur at the point of death. The bioelectric current either dissipates into the surroundings or coalesces into a disincorporated but cohesive being - a ghost. Ghosts, according to those paranormal experts, cause slight but measurable disruptions to ambient electrical fields. Furthermore, they say, the electrical ionization is why the air becomes noticeably chilly when you meet up with a dead electrical being. It's wide open to speculation whether any lingering spectral energy exhibits consciousness.
Is a soul (or ghost, if you will) just the electrical impulses left over when someone dies? And can we, by measuring disruptions in the electrical field when a person dies, track the actual process and aftermath of death?
If traditional science has ever attempted such an experiment, it's not talking about the result.
It hearkens back to the old philosophical question about the tree falling in the forest. For several years, science decreed that since there was no way to measure the existence of paranormal episodes, they didn't exist.
Auras, Halos and New Age
As far back as the first century A.D., artists painted and carved halos around the heads of religious figures. It was a way of attributing power and/or holiness to the person depicted. Several people claim today that they can see auras, a colored energy field extending around everyone
they meet. Those same people believe that the paintings of halos are actually artists' renditions of the auras of historic holy men and women.
Are auras real? The only people who can say that with certainty are those who can see them. And for the rest of us, there's no way of verifying whether someone truly can see an outward manifestation of the body's electrical field, if they're lying, or if they're experiencing some form of hallucination or optical illusion.
While there are claims that Kirlian photography can capture pictures of auras, it employs techniques that skeptics dismiss as explainable by much more mundane realities of moisture, electrical grounding and temperature. Where Kirlian works capture the missing half of a torn leaf, the impression is chalked up to leftovers from a previous photo, or outright fraud. Debunkers claim if the process really showed a life force, the effect would work when the subject was photographed inside a vacuum. (It doesn't.)
Then again, not many things can remain alive in a vacuum.
There is supposedly a way that anyone can learn to see auras. Sit a subject - an older child or an adult, since they'll need to be still to permit your concentration - against a plain white wall. For approximately 30 seconds, look into the area just outside the contours of that person's head, settling your focus into the inch or two of space in front of the wall and immediately surrounding their silhouette. You should begin to see a region of light after a while. When you've done this a few times, viewing auras will become an automatic process.
At the moment I'm living in a partly-restored Victorian and my landlady saw fit to wallpaper every square inch of wall space. I don't have a plain white wall to try it, so can't attest to whether or not it works. Even if at some point the viewer does see the described field, is it a real
perception of the body's electrical field, or just an elaborate optical illusion?
Take Note of Anecdotes
It's ironic that over time, we humans have learned to discount the evidence of our own senses, unless they happen to dovetail with science. Anecdotal evidence, after all, is subject to the gossip effect, the principle in which Person A tells Person B and so on. By the time the report reaches Person V or Person W, it's doubtful that Person A will even recognize what he or she originally said.
The trouble is that in dismissing all anecdotal evidence, you're also dismissing the impressions of Person A, who did in fact witness/experience the event.
On the flip side of that, society accepts the opinions and theories of science, often without question, despite the fact that any experimental result is actually first-person anecdotal evidence. Of course, any responsible scientist employs control measures to keep the result "clean." Any associated process is repeated to verify that the result wasn't a fluke or accident. Science will necessarily dismiss any result that cannot be reproduced.
Unfortunately, none of science's problems and limitations have a bearing on the experience of Person A. Whether or not a scientist can duplicate the event in a laboratory setting, the fact of the experience isn't affected. If Person A saw or heard or touched something, no amount of scientific denial will undo their experience or perceptions - paranormal or otherwise.
To Prove Or Not To Prove, That Is The Question
Paranormal research is a fact. It exists today because of people who were unwilling to dismiss the countless personal reports spread over centuries of human experienc. Since the advent of photography and other machines, of course, photographers captured images of ghostly figures, and audio recorders gathered the sound of disembodied voices. The popular SciFi Channel television show Ghost Hunters, while not as exacting as a lab setting, has debunked some claims of haunting, while conceding that in certain locations, something inexplicable is certainly occurring.
By its very nature, a study of the paranormal, ghosts and the afterlife cannot be constrained within a laboratory setting. Determining if electrical activity changes at the point of death would require being present at the time of a death (or more accurately, at several deaths.) It is
theoretically possible to perform the necessary observations, provided recording equipment is present at a location where deaths are frequent and somewhat predictable. That's not to say such a study would be simple - nor even possible.
Such a detailed examination would involve a joint effort with hospitals and hospices, approval of patients and bereaved families, and other potential legal entanglements. It would also require meticulous technical measurements. That level of recording might be impossible from within a medical facility, a place where saving lives takes precedence over everything else. Even within a hospice, external electrical "noise" could interfere with accurate measurements. Until science and medicine can make that leap, our best evidence will remain the misty figures, streaks of light, and non-corporeal whisperings captured by means of electronic wizardry.
Well, that and the thousands of eyewitness reports, the "anecdotal evidence," recorded from the dawn of man.
Haunted Places," author Brad Steiger quotes paranormal researcher Brian A. Shill, stating that all living things have a bioelectric cycle operating at 60Hz.
While neither book could be considered a study guide in a biology class, they got one thing right: the human body does indeed employ electrical energy to function. Without that low-level electrical current, your heart wouldn't pump, your brain wouldn't work and in short, you couldn't be alive.
Here Comes The Science
This author performed an online search and found no other source to back that 60Hz figure for all life, except in reference to the damage that receiving a 60Hz dose of electricity can create in the human body. It's the energy equivalent of living in the vicinity of high-voltage power lines.
There isn't a question, though, that living creatures are dependent on tiny, naturally-occurring surges of electrical energy. In humans and higher animals, those impulses rush through our nervous systems, carrying messages from brain to limb, and from limb to brain. They regulate our heartbeat. They make breathing an automatic process. They keep us alive, give us sentience and the ability to think and feel as a single cohesive organism.
Several years ago, a physician at Barrows Neurological Institute in Mesa, Arizona, took the time to spell out to me, in detail, the electronic facts of the human brain. My eldest daughter had just been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder so severe that it bordered on Manic
Depressive (Bipolar) Disease. I've since lost track of the physician and therefore cannot obtain permission to use his name, but the gist of the conversation is a medical reality. Extremely low-power electrical currents leap across the spaces (or synapses) between neurons (nerve cells,) and it's those miniscule power jolts that control the workings of our minds and bodies.
A misfire across the synapses creates neurological disorders. If the messages don't transmit across the gaps, or get twisted as they leap from cell to cell, our perception doesn't match the external reality and we may experience hallucinations - or worse.
In my daughter's case, her eyes and ears function just fine. But for whatever reason, only two out of three neurons fire correctly. That means she literally doesn't receive a third of the information sent by her sensory organs. Her brain compensates by filling in the blanks, generating information that doesn't always agree with what the outer world experiences. The fact terrifies her to this day, because she knows she can't trust what she sees and hears.
Recycled Souls
According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, no energy is ever created or destroyed, though it may be transformed. Following that, the electrical energy jumping neuron-to-neuron inside our body doesn't go away, and in fact cannot just evaporate when we die. So what happens to those electrical pulses when they can no longer work within the framework of a functioning body?
Paranormal researchers claim that one of two things occur at the point of death. The bioelectric current either dissipates into the surroundings or coalesces into a disincorporated but cohesive being - a ghost. Ghosts, according to those paranormal experts, cause slight but measurable disruptions to ambient electrical fields. Furthermore, they say, the electrical ionization is why the air becomes noticeably chilly when you meet up with a dead electrical being. It's wide open to speculation whether any lingering spectral energy exhibits consciousness.
Is a soul (or ghost, if you will) just the electrical impulses left over when someone dies? And can we, by measuring disruptions in the electrical field when a person dies, track the actual process and aftermath of death?
If traditional science has ever attempted such an experiment, it's not talking about the result.
It hearkens back to the old philosophical question about the tree falling in the forest. For several years, science decreed that since there was no way to measure the existence of paranormal episodes, they didn't exist.
Auras, Halos and New Age
As far back as the first century A.D., artists painted and carved halos around the heads of religious figures. It was a way of attributing power and/or holiness to the person depicted. Several people claim today that they can see auras, a colored energy field extending around everyone
they meet. Those same people believe that the paintings of halos are actually artists' renditions of the auras of historic holy men and women.
Are auras real? The only people who can say that with certainty are those who can see them. And for the rest of us, there's no way of verifying whether someone truly can see an outward manifestation of the body's electrical field, if they're lying, or if they're experiencing some form of hallucination or optical illusion.
While there are claims that Kirlian photography can capture pictures of auras, it employs techniques that skeptics dismiss as explainable by much more mundane realities of moisture, electrical grounding and temperature. Where Kirlian works capture the missing half of a torn leaf, the impression is chalked up to leftovers from a previous photo, or outright fraud. Debunkers claim if the process really showed a life force, the effect would work when the subject was photographed inside a vacuum. (It doesn't.)
Then again, not many things can remain alive in a vacuum.
There is supposedly a way that anyone can learn to see auras. Sit a subject - an older child or an adult, since they'll need to be still to permit your concentration - against a plain white wall. For approximately 30 seconds, look into the area just outside the contours of that person's head, settling your focus into the inch or two of space in front of the wall and immediately surrounding their silhouette. You should begin to see a region of light after a while. When you've done this a few times, viewing auras will become an automatic process.
At the moment I'm living in a partly-restored Victorian and my landlady saw fit to wallpaper every square inch of wall space. I don't have a plain white wall to try it, so can't attest to whether or not it works. Even if at some point the viewer does see the described field, is it a real
perception of the body's electrical field, or just an elaborate optical illusion?
Take Note of Anecdotes
It's ironic that over time, we humans have learned to discount the evidence of our own senses, unless they happen to dovetail with science. Anecdotal evidence, after all, is subject to the gossip effect, the principle in which Person A tells Person B and so on. By the time the report reaches Person V or Person W, it's doubtful that Person A will even recognize what he or she originally said.
The trouble is that in dismissing all anecdotal evidence, you're also dismissing the impressions of Person A, who did in fact witness/experience the event.
On the flip side of that, society accepts the opinions and theories of science, often without question, despite the fact that any experimental result is actually first-person anecdotal evidence. Of course, any responsible scientist employs control measures to keep the result "clean." Any associated process is repeated to verify that the result wasn't a fluke or accident. Science will necessarily dismiss any result that cannot be reproduced.
Unfortunately, none of science's problems and limitations have a bearing on the experience of Person A. Whether or not a scientist can duplicate the event in a laboratory setting, the fact of the experience isn't affected. If Person A saw or heard or touched something, no amount of scientific denial will undo their experience or perceptions - paranormal or otherwise.
To Prove Or Not To Prove, That Is The Question
Paranormal research is a fact. It exists today because of people who were unwilling to dismiss the countless personal reports spread over centuries of human experienc. Since the advent of photography and other machines, of course, photographers captured images of ghostly figures, and audio recorders gathered the sound of disembodied voices. The popular SciFi Channel television show Ghost Hunters, while not as exacting as a lab setting, has debunked some claims of haunting, while conceding that in certain locations, something inexplicable is certainly occurring.
By its very nature, a study of the paranormal, ghosts and the afterlife cannot be constrained within a laboratory setting. Determining if electrical activity changes at the point of death would require being present at the time of a death (or more accurately, at several deaths.) It is
theoretically possible to perform the necessary observations, provided recording equipment is present at a location where deaths are frequent and somewhat predictable. That's not to say such a study would be simple - nor even possible.
Such a detailed examination would involve a joint effort with hospitals and hospices, approval of patients and bereaved families, and other potential legal entanglements. It would also require meticulous technical measurements. That level of recording might be impossible from within a medical facility, a place where saving lives takes precedence over everything else. Even within a hospice, external electrical "noise" could interfere with accurate measurements. Until science and medicine can make that leap, our best evidence will remain the misty figures, streaks of light, and non-corporeal whisperings captured by means of electronic wizardry.
Well, that and the thousands of eyewitness reports, the "anecdotal evidence," recorded from the dawn of man.
About
© 2009 Created by yig on Ning. Create Your Own Social Network
