EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES June 21, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
The subject of having lived before should be of prime importance to everyone. It gives credence to most religious beliefs that life will continue in the hereafter. It also strongly supports my numerous explanations of the immortal soul or “aura” we all have.
There are innumerable cases of past life recollections that can and have been verified and documented. The problem is that the world is full of skeptics who will use any means available, including “sophistry” to try and disprove these claims because claims of reincarnation are contrary to their own imbued religious beliefs.
Of all the hundreds of past life cases that I have studied, the case of Shanti Devi stands out as the most documented, provable instance of having lived before. What makes this so, is that Shanti Devi never lost her memory of her past life. The details of this case have freaked-out a lot of non-believers. In almost all past-life cases, the subject only has flashes and/or very vague memories of his/her past life. Detailed memories can frequently be brought out through hypnosis. Not so with Shanti Devi:
People hear of many cases of reincarnation these days, but in the early 1930s, information about a girl born in a little-known locality of Delhi, who a claimed to remember a past life, was considered great news indeed. The girl at first was known only to the local people, but gradually news of her spread all over the country and finally all over the world. It was natural that the world should wonder about the authenticity of her story.
On January 18,1902, a daughter was born to a family named Chaturbhuj, residents of Mathura, India. Her name was Lugdi. When Lugdi reached the age of 10, she was married to Kedarnath Chaube, a shopkeeper of the same locality; a practice often followed in India in the early 1900s.
When Lugdi became pregnant for the first time, her child was stillborn following a Cesarean section. For her second pregnancy, the worried husband took her to the government hospital at Agra, where a son was born, again through a Cesarean on September 25,1925. Nine days later, however on October 4, Lugdi’s condition deteriorated and she died at 10 A.M.
One year ten months and seven days after Lugdi’s death, on December 11,1926, a daughter was born to Babu Rang Bahadur Mathur of Chirawala Mohulla, a small locality of Delhi. The girl was named Shanti Devi.
Shanti Devi spoke very little until she was four years old. When she did start talking, she alarmed everyone in her family by telling them, "This is not my real home! I have a husband and a son in Mathura! I must return to them!"
This was India in the 1930s, so instead of taking their daughter to a psychiatrist for a dose of Ritalin, her parents told her, "Forget your past life. You're with us now." But Shanti Devi wouldn't give up. She talked about her former family to anyone who would listen.
One of her teachers at school, out of curiosity, sent a letter to the address Shanti Devi gave as her "real home" in Mathura, inquiring if here had been a young woman who had died there not too many years ago. To his astonishment, the teacher soon received a reply from Shanti Devi's previous husband, admitting that his young wife, Lugdi, had passed away some years previously, after giving birth to their son. The details Shanti Devi had given to her present family and teacher about her old house and members of her previous family were all confirmed in intricate detail.
This launched the most thoroughly researched investigation of a case of reincarnation in modern history. Everyone got into the act, including Mahatma Gandhi, several prominent members of the Indian government, and a team of scientific researchers.
The team of scientific researchers, working under stringent conditions to ensure that Shanti Devi couldn't possibly be getting her information from any other source, accompanied the little girl to Mathura.
On her own, she was able to lead them to her previous home, and correctly described what it had looked like years earlier before its recent refurbishing. She was also able to relate extremely intimate information, such as extramarital affairs of family members that no one, outside the family, could possibly have known.
In an attempt to trip-her up, when Shanti made her first visit to her former home, the research team hired an actor to pretend to be her former husband while her former husband pretended to be one of the onlookers in the crowd. Shanti immediately saw through the fraud and identified the man who had been her former husband recalling to him some intimate details of their personal life together that her former husband, in complete amazement, acknowledged.
The award-winning Swedish journalist, Sture Lonnerstrand, spent several weeks with Shanti Devi later in her life, recording her story and verifying information about the famous government investigation.
To those of my readers who still have doubts, I can only repeat what I’ve said many times: “If you don’t believe something, no amount of proof will ever convince you. If you do believe something, no proof is necessary.”
If you have any memories of a past life…confusing or not, write to me at stebrel@aol.com. Together we may find out something about your forgotten history.
As I said…nobody asked me.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
Have You Lived Before...Will You Live Again
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES June 14, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
One of the things that seems to strike a chord with many readers of this blog is the subject of reincarnation. Have we really lived before…will we live again?
The truth is that there is probably no topic in the paranormal world that has so much irrefutable factual support. Scientific proof? Of course not. But then nothing science has alleged can be proven scientifically, either, except for basic physics…and even that has as many exceptions as it has rules. Let’s look at some of the factual support concerning living before and living again:
Some of you may have read the “Before Mommy” story http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2009/01/2204-before-mommy.html. There is simply no rational way a little girl of two or three, living in a city, could even be aware of…no less describe…life in a mountain cabin…without indoor plumbing…using an outhouse for a toilet…hobbling around on makeshift crutches, etc. If you haven’t already read it, please do so. Then tell some of your “Doubting Thomas” friends to read it.
Then there was my blog on Bridey Murphy (one of my favorites) published on (November 8, 2008 Explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com) wherein a housewife in Madison Wisconsin, under hypnosis, recalled living in a small village near Cork Ireland. She spoke with a heavy Irish brogue using some words no longer in common use and named and described her husband, their house, their children and the scenery on a trip from Cork to Belfast..even detailing where her family Bible was kept in her house. Of course, she had never been to Ireland; did not know anyone from Ireland, etc.
The Bridey Murphy case became a best-selling book. Because of this, hundreds of newsmen, seeking their fifteen minutes of fame, went to Ireland to verify or disprove what Bridey Murphy had said. The problem was that almost two hundred years had passed and record keeping in small villages 200 years ago was not that good, so they found very little to verify except for her detailing of the scenery on her journey to Belfast.
Those who would challenge the validity of past lives often point to the lack of information which can be empirically validated. Their cry is, "Give us data! Give us names, dates, places.” O.K. How do the skeptics account for this?
On February 11, 1942, the U.S. Submarine Shark, on which James Edward Johnston was a crew member, was depth charged and sunk by the Japanese Destroyer Amatsukaze. All hands including James drowned. The spirit that occupied the body of James appears to have reincarnated again on January 19, 1953 in the body of Bruce Kelly. James Johnston lived so recently that many of the memories recalled by Bruce Kelly have been authenticated by people who knew James Johnston.
Bruce Kelly went to a hypnotherapist because all his life he had a phobia about water and getting aboard an airplane. Under hypnosis, Kelly was regressed and started to say "I'm in a submarine ... I'm dying." The therapist then asked him for the name of the submarine, its ID number and where the incident happened. Bruce answered easily, that the submarine was the Shark SS-174, and that it was part of the Asiatic Fleet, stationed in Manila Bay. He was a crewman aboard the submarine and his name was James Johnston. Bruce was able to answer questions such as the date and time of his death immediately and without apparent effort. He was also able to recall where he was on the submarine and what was happening around him. Friends and family of Johnston have authenticated every detail of what Bruce Kelly said. The therapist also verified information provided by Bruce as to his Navy, civilian and school records.
As James Johnston, he had drowned in a submarine, an elongated, cylindrical pressure vessel which was similar to an airplane in form, fit, and function. Bruce said that he observed the separation of the spirit from his body.
Then there is the case of six-year-old James Leininger of Lafayette, Louisiana. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/news/s_189477.html . "He has always been extraordinarily interested in airplanes," said James' mother, Andrea Leininger. “Lots of kids love airplanes, but James' story is unique: He has memories of being a World War II fighter pilot from Uniontown, Indiana -- Lt. James McCready Huston, shot down near Iwo Jima in 1945.”
At 18 months old, his father, Bruce Leininger, took James to the Kavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, where the toddler remained transfixed by World War II aircraft. A few months later, James Leininger’s nightmares began.
"They were terrible, terrible," Andrea said. "He would scream, 'airplane crash, on fire, little man can't get out!' He'd be kicking, with his hands pointing up at the ceiling."
When James was 2 1/2 years old, he and Andrea were shopping and he wanted a toy airplane. Andrea said to him, 'Look, it has a bomb on the bottom' and he told me, 'That's not a bomb, it's a drop tank.' I had no idea what a drop tank was." Neither of the Leiningers have ever served in the military, nor are they involved with aviation. Until James showed an interest in planes, they had nothing aviation-related in their home.
"I was reading him a story and he got a faraway look," she recalled. "I asked what happened to your plane? 'Got shot,' he said. Where? 'Engine.' Where did it crash? 'Water.' When I asked him who shot the plane, he gave me a look like a teenager, rolling his eyes, 'the Japanese,' as if to say ‘who else could it have been?’
"What little kid knows about the Japanese," she asked. "He said he knew it was a Japanese plane because of the red sun. My husband and I were shell-shocked." James provided other information. He said his earlier name was also James. He flew a Corsair and took off from a small aircraft carrier named the Natoma, and he remembered a fellow flyer named Jack Larson who was later contacted. Larson said he witnessed Huston’s plane crash and verified every detail of what James Leininger had to say.
Foods can set James Leininger’s memories off, too: James’ mother said, "I hadn't made meatloaf in 10 years, so James had never eaten it. When he sat down, James said, 'Meatloaf! I haven't had that since I was on the Natoma.' When we were getting ice cream one day, he told me that they could have ice cream every day on the Natoma."
At first, James’ father, Bruce, was skeptical and set out to disprove his son’s rantings. Instead, he wound up proving every last thing his son said. Bruce began researching his son's memories and discovered a small escort carrier called the “Natoma Bay”, which was present at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Twenty-one of its crew perished. Bruce also discovered that only one of the Natoma's crew was named James, James Huston. James Huston's plane was hit in the engine by Japanese fire on March 3, 1945, went down in flames and sank immediately.
I could go on and detail many more verifiable incidents of past life regression, but this blog has gotten too lengthy already. Next week I’ll detail the most amazing, verified, ‘past life’ of all: The case of Shanti Devi.
If you’re interested in your past life(s), let me know. Stebrel@aol.com
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
One of the things that seems to strike a chord with many readers of this blog is the subject of reincarnation. Have we really lived before…will we live again?
The truth is that there is probably no topic in the paranormal world that has so much irrefutable factual support. Scientific proof? Of course not. But then nothing science has alleged can be proven scientifically, either, except for basic physics…and even that has as many exceptions as it has rules. Let’s look at some of the factual support concerning living before and living again:
Some of you may have read the “Before Mommy” story http://thesilkentouch.blogspot.com/2009/01/2204-before-mommy.html. There is simply no rational way a little girl of two or three, living in a city, could even be aware of…no less describe…life in a mountain cabin…without indoor plumbing…using an outhouse for a toilet…hobbling around on makeshift crutches, etc. If you haven’t already read it, please do so. Then tell some of your “Doubting Thomas” friends to read it.
Then there was my blog on Bridey Murphy (one of my favorites) published on (November 8, 2008 Explaininglifesmysteries.blogspot.com) wherein a housewife in Madison Wisconsin, under hypnosis, recalled living in a small village near Cork Ireland. She spoke with a heavy Irish brogue using some words no longer in common use and named and described her husband, their house, their children and the scenery on a trip from Cork to Belfast..even detailing where her family Bible was kept in her house. Of course, she had never been to Ireland; did not know anyone from Ireland, etc.
The Bridey Murphy case became a best-selling book. Because of this, hundreds of newsmen, seeking their fifteen minutes of fame, went to Ireland to verify or disprove what Bridey Murphy had said. The problem was that almost two hundred years had passed and record keeping in small villages 200 years ago was not that good, so they found very little to verify except for her detailing of the scenery on her journey to Belfast.
Those who would challenge the validity of past lives often point to the lack of information which can be empirically validated. Their cry is, "Give us data! Give us names, dates, places.” O.K. How do the skeptics account for this?
On February 11, 1942, the U.S. Submarine Shark, on which James Edward Johnston was a crew member, was depth charged and sunk by the Japanese Destroyer Amatsukaze. All hands including James drowned. The spirit that occupied the body of James appears to have reincarnated again on January 19, 1953 in the body of Bruce Kelly. James Johnston lived so recently that many of the memories recalled by Bruce Kelly have been authenticated by people who knew James Johnston.
Bruce Kelly went to a hypnotherapist because all his life he had a phobia about water and getting aboard an airplane. Under hypnosis, Kelly was regressed and started to say "I'm in a submarine ... I'm dying." The therapist then asked him for the name of the submarine, its ID number and where the incident happened. Bruce answered easily, that the submarine was the Shark SS-174, and that it was part of the Asiatic Fleet, stationed in Manila Bay. He was a crewman aboard the submarine and his name was James Johnston. Bruce was able to answer questions such as the date and time of his death immediately and without apparent effort. He was also able to recall where he was on the submarine and what was happening around him. Friends and family of Johnston have authenticated every detail of what Bruce Kelly said. The therapist also verified information provided by Bruce as to his Navy, civilian and school records.
As James Johnston, he had drowned in a submarine, an elongated, cylindrical pressure vessel which was similar to an airplane in form, fit, and function. Bruce said that he observed the separation of the spirit from his body.
Then there is the case of six-year-old James Leininger of Lafayette, Louisiana. http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/dailycourier/news/s_189477.html . "He has always been extraordinarily interested in airplanes," said James' mother, Andrea Leininger. “Lots of kids love airplanes, but James' story is unique: He has memories of being a World War II fighter pilot from Uniontown, Indiana -- Lt. James McCready Huston, shot down near Iwo Jima in 1945.”
At 18 months old, his father, Bruce Leininger, took James to the Kavanaugh Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas, where the toddler remained transfixed by World War II aircraft. A few months later, James Leininger’s nightmares began.
"They were terrible, terrible," Andrea said. "He would scream, 'airplane crash, on fire, little man can't get out!' He'd be kicking, with his hands pointing up at the ceiling."
When James was 2 1/2 years old, he and Andrea were shopping and he wanted a toy airplane. Andrea said to him, 'Look, it has a bomb on the bottom' and he told me, 'That's not a bomb, it's a drop tank.' I had no idea what a drop tank was." Neither of the Leiningers have ever served in the military, nor are they involved with aviation. Until James showed an interest in planes, they had nothing aviation-related in their home.
"I was reading him a story and he got a faraway look," she recalled. "I asked what happened to your plane? 'Got shot,' he said. Where? 'Engine.' Where did it crash? 'Water.' When I asked him who shot the plane, he gave me a look like a teenager, rolling his eyes, 'the Japanese,' as if to say ‘who else could it have been?’
"What little kid knows about the Japanese," she asked. "He said he knew it was a Japanese plane because of the red sun. My husband and I were shell-shocked." James provided other information. He said his earlier name was also James. He flew a Corsair and took off from a small aircraft carrier named the Natoma, and he remembered a fellow flyer named Jack Larson who was later contacted. Larson said he witnessed Huston’s plane crash and verified every detail of what James Leininger had to say.
Foods can set James Leininger’s memories off, too: James’ mother said, "I hadn't made meatloaf in 10 years, so James had never eaten it. When he sat down, James said, 'Meatloaf! I haven't had that since I was on the Natoma.' When we were getting ice cream one day, he told me that they could have ice cream every day on the Natoma."
At first, James’ father, Bruce, was skeptical and set out to disprove his son’s rantings. Instead, he wound up proving every last thing his son said. Bruce began researching his son's memories and discovered a small escort carrier called the “Natoma Bay”, which was present at the Battle of Iwo Jima. Twenty-one of its crew perished. Bruce also discovered that only one of the Natoma's crew was named James, James Huston. James Huston's plane was hit in the engine by Japanese fire on March 3, 1945, went down in flames and sank immediately.
I could go on and detail many more verifiable incidents of past life regression, but this blog has gotten too lengthy already. Next week I’ll detail the most amazing, verified, ‘past life’ of all: The case of Shanti Devi.
If you’re interested in your past life(s), let me know. Stebrel@aol.com
As I said…nobody asked me.
Sunday, June 7, 2009
Instinct and Intuition
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES June 06, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
Last week I received a comment on my blog from my daughter, Frieda. Frieda is a very insightful young lady with a J.D. degree and about to receive her PhD in nutrition. I’m really quite proud of her and love her very much.
The fact is, however, that she misinterpreted what I wrote. If someone as intelligent as Frieda misunderstood my writing, perhaps other readers did, too. More likely, my writing was simply not clear enough. In my last blog I spoke about a “sixth-sense”. Of course the term “sixth-sense” has become another trash-pot into which many paranormal/ mentalist buffs put a lot of different things.
For example: Most people tend to put all déjà vu experiences into the sixth-sense pot. Others will throw dreams and/or encounters with ghosts into that pot. Still others will include retrocognition (past life experiences), faith healing, instinct, intuition and numerous other non-scientific experiences into that one pot. The fact is that none of those things I have named really fit the meaning of a sixth-sense…although they all border on it.
Each of the things mentioned above can be experienced by most people without a sixth sense. You start thinking of someone you haven’t seen in a while and suddenly the telephone rings and it’s that person. You meet someone for the first time and you get a “gut-feeling” that the person is good (or evil). You have a dream in which a dead loved one appears only he/she really seems to talk to you….and even gives you a message, etc. These are things that happen to almost all normal people…and they are not indicative of a sixth sense.
Let’s break some of it down for everyone to understand: The two most common things often referred to as a sixth-sense are instinct and intuition. These are really not a sixth sense although there are many similar aspects to them:
Instinct – Instinct is not learned, it is inherited. Instinct makes an insect with almost no mind run away and hide from someone about to swat it. Instinct makes a baby turtle run towards the ocean as soon as it is born. Instinct makes a human avoid the path of a falling boulder or hitting the brake on your car when someone swerves in front of you.
Intuition – This is the part of your mind that comes to a conclusion without any reasoning. You meet someone and you get a “gut feeling” that this person will be good (or not good) for a relationship. Someone writes you a check and you feel strongly that this check will not be good at the bank. You’re thinking of going on a trip and, without any real reason, you feel it will be unsafe if you go.
Now let’s look at a sixth-sense:
The sixth sense tells you things that you should have no way of knowing: A specific person is going to die shortly. A business deal you are involved in is being plotted against you behind your back. You’ve met and communicated with ghosts of dead people not necessarily from your own family. You pick up a piece of someone’s jewelry and it communicates the owner’s life history to you. You are sitting in a room with someone and their thoughts come to you as if they were your own.
Instinct and intuition belong to everyone to a greater or lesser degree. Having a sixth sense, obviously, is far more rare. But because it’s rare, it has a material value and can be worth a lot of money. Most people alleging to have a sixth-sense are nothing more than frauds cashing-in on that material value.
I’ve had the pleasure (or honor) to meet two people who really had a sixth-sense. One was Peter Hurkos, the internationally famous psychic and a German woman named Christa Gantz. Peter took my keys in his hand and related a number of things that had happened in my lifetime that he had no way of knowing…or even finding out about. Christa was met at a “Psychic Fair” in Wiesbaden, Germany. I tested her by looking at cards with different geometric symbols and she identified each one as I looked at it. Although I could see the faces of the cards, she couldn’t. To be certain there wasn’t some trickery involved, I did the same thing with my own deck of cards and made her guess the identities of five cards. She was correct on four and only missed the one by naming clubs instead of spades (she got the number correctly). I tested her further by thinking of a sentence, then I spoke the beginning of the sentence aloud…and she finished the sentence correctly.
Unfortunately, both of these people have passed-on.
If you believe you have a sixth sense, please let me know. Stebrel@aol.com.
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
Last week I received a comment on my blog from my daughter, Frieda. Frieda is a very insightful young lady with a J.D. degree and about to receive her PhD in nutrition. I’m really quite proud of her and love her very much.
The fact is, however, that she misinterpreted what I wrote. If someone as intelligent as Frieda misunderstood my writing, perhaps other readers did, too. More likely, my writing was simply not clear enough. In my last blog I spoke about a “sixth-sense”. Of course the term “sixth-sense” has become another trash-pot into which many paranormal/ mentalist buffs put a lot of different things.
For example: Most people tend to put all déjà vu experiences into the sixth-sense pot. Others will throw dreams and/or encounters with ghosts into that pot. Still others will include retrocognition (past life experiences), faith healing, instinct, intuition and numerous other non-scientific experiences into that one pot. The fact is that none of those things I have named really fit the meaning of a sixth-sense…although they all border on it.
Each of the things mentioned above can be experienced by most people without a sixth sense. You start thinking of someone you haven’t seen in a while and suddenly the telephone rings and it’s that person. You meet someone for the first time and you get a “gut-feeling” that the person is good (or evil). You have a dream in which a dead loved one appears only he/she really seems to talk to you….and even gives you a message, etc. These are things that happen to almost all normal people…and they are not indicative of a sixth sense.
Let’s break some of it down for everyone to understand: The two most common things often referred to as a sixth-sense are instinct and intuition. These are really not a sixth sense although there are many similar aspects to them:
Instinct – Instinct is not learned, it is inherited. Instinct makes an insect with almost no mind run away and hide from someone about to swat it. Instinct makes a baby turtle run towards the ocean as soon as it is born. Instinct makes a human avoid the path of a falling boulder or hitting the brake on your car when someone swerves in front of you.
Intuition – This is the part of your mind that comes to a conclusion without any reasoning. You meet someone and you get a “gut feeling” that this person will be good (or not good) for a relationship. Someone writes you a check and you feel strongly that this check will not be good at the bank. You’re thinking of going on a trip and, without any real reason, you feel it will be unsafe if you go.
Now let’s look at a sixth-sense:
The sixth sense tells you things that you should have no way of knowing: A specific person is going to die shortly. A business deal you are involved in is being plotted against you behind your back. You’ve met and communicated with ghosts of dead people not necessarily from your own family. You pick up a piece of someone’s jewelry and it communicates the owner’s life history to you. You are sitting in a room with someone and their thoughts come to you as if they were your own.
Instinct and intuition belong to everyone to a greater or lesser degree. Having a sixth sense, obviously, is far more rare. But because it’s rare, it has a material value and can be worth a lot of money. Most people alleging to have a sixth-sense are nothing more than frauds cashing-in on that material value.
I’ve had the pleasure (or honor) to meet two people who really had a sixth-sense. One was Peter Hurkos, the internationally famous psychic and a German woman named Christa Gantz. Peter took my keys in his hand and related a number of things that had happened in my lifetime that he had no way of knowing…or even finding out about. Christa was met at a “Psychic Fair” in Wiesbaden, Germany. I tested her by looking at cards with different geometric symbols and she identified each one as I looked at it. Although I could see the faces of the cards, she couldn’t. To be certain there wasn’t some trickery involved, I did the same thing with my own deck of cards and made her guess the identities of five cards. She was correct on four and only missed the one by naming clubs instead of spades (she got the number correctly). I tested her further by thinking of a sentence, then I spoke the beginning of the sentence aloud…and she finished the sentence correctly.
Unfortunately, both of these people have passed-on.
If you believe you have a sixth sense, please let me know. Stebrel@aol.com.
As I said, nobody asked me.
Monday, June 1, 2009
The Sixth Sense
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES May 31, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
I’ve often heard so-called psychics and mediums say that ghosts are visible to them and not to other people because psychics/mediums have a “sixth-sense”. The fact is that all people are capable of seeing…or hearing…ghosts to some degree. It depends of the strength of the spirit, its location, its desire to be seen or heard, etc.
In truth, however, some people do have much more sensitivity to paranormal phenomena than others.
We have only five senses here on Earth: sight – sound - smell – taste and touch. If we can’t sense something with one of our five senses, we say that it doesn’t exist. But, again, there are many things we can’t see, or sense with our five senses.
Among those things is the very air we breathe. We can’t see it or feel it (except when the wind is blowing) and we can’t smell, taste or touch it. But it’s definitely there and science labs can analyze it. What about or minds? We can’t see it, smell it taste it or touch it. But we “hear” it, and so we say it exists. In truth, we do not hear our minds. What we hear is the sound of our own voice talking to us. But where does it come from? It must have a source…
As my readers recognize, I have often stated my belief that what we hear in our head comes from our aura and is computed by our brains into language we understand. If you stop to think about it, no physician or scientist has been able to locate what we call the mind. There is no particular part of our brain that seems to control it. In fact, if you speak with someone whose brain has been damaged (maybe by a blow, a stroke or by Cerebral Palsy), you will immediately discover that although the brain has been physically damaged, the mind still functions with clear and concise thoughts. The damaged brain may not allow those thoughts to be expressed because the brain controls physical movements of the body and, if it’s damaged, it’s damaged. Ask anyone who’s recovered from a stroke. The mind functions perfectly.
That’s why it’s logical to conclude that the mind is actually outside of the body.
The aura?
And since we mentioned the aura, our five senses can’t detect that, either. We know it’s there only because infra-red photography allows us to see it.
So, without belaboring the subject, there are things our five senses apparently cannot detect. Thus the claim of a sixth-sense by some. Whether there is actually a sixth sense that allows some people to see (and communicate) with ghosts is a subject that may never be proven. What we call a sixth-sense may only be a person whose five senses are more acute. Let’s take a moment to look at it closely:
There are people I have met who can actually smell death. They can walk into a room where someone died recently and will say that the room smells of death. It’s never happened to me. But I have met people who, without exception, can sense this.
I’ve met people who can meet someone for the very time and sense whether this is a “trustworthy” or “untrustworthy” person. Forget about the way they’re dressed or how much money they have. My daughter, Debbie, has been unerringly accurate about people. Since I can’t do it, I ask Debbie to meet with someone before I will do any business with them.
I’ve met some people who can definitely know when someone is lying to them (with apologies to the TV Show “Lie to Me”). I wish more judges could do that. I have met people who, miles from an event, know the details of that event without ever having been told.
But is this really a sixth sense or is it a more finely honed part of our five senses?
I have met genuine psychics: people who can sense things about your life by holding your keys or your wallet or some piece of jewelry in their hands. I have met psychics who can complete a sentence you started to say…with accuracy.
And, of course, I have met people who claim to be able to see and communicate with ghosts.
If the so called sixth sense is really an additional sense…why don’t we all have it? Or, as some people claim…we all have it but have not taken the time or made the effort to develop it.
These are some of the questions I intend to tackle in future blogs.
If you have some exceptional senses, please write me and let me know. stebrel@aol.com
As I said, nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
I’ve often heard so-called psychics and mediums say that ghosts are visible to them and not to other people because psychics/mediums have a “sixth-sense”. The fact is that all people are capable of seeing…or hearing…ghosts to some degree. It depends of the strength of the spirit, its location, its desire to be seen or heard, etc.
In truth, however, some people do have much more sensitivity to paranormal phenomena than others.
We have only five senses here on Earth: sight – sound - smell – taste and touch. If we can’t sense something with one of our five senses, we say that it doesn’t exist. But, again, there are many things we can’t see, or sense with our five senses.
Among those things is the very air we breathe. We can’t see it or feel it (except when the wind is blowing) and we can’t smell, taste or touch it. But it’s definitely there and science labs can analyze it. What about or minds? We can’t see it, smell it taste it or touch it. But we “hear” it, and so we say it exists. In truth, we do not hear our minds. What we hear is the sound of our own voice talking to us. But where does it come from? It must have a source…
As my readers recognize, I have often stated my belief that what we hear in our head comes from our aura and is computed by our brains into language we understand. If you stop to think about it, no physician or scientist has been able to locate what we call the mind. There is no particular part of our brain that seems to control it. In fact, if you speak with someone whose brain has been damaged (maybe by a blow, a stroke or by Cerebral Palsy), you will immediately discover that although the brain has been physically damaged, the mind still functions with clear and concise thoughts. The damaged brain may not allow those thoughts to be expressed because the brain controls physical movements of the body and, if it’s damaged, it’s damaged. Ask anyone who’s recovered from a stroke. The mind functions perfectly.
That’s why it’s logical to conclude that the mind is actually outside of the body.
The aura?
And since we mentioned the aura, our five senses can’t detect that, either. We know it’s there only because infra-red photography allows us to see it.
So, without belaboring the subject, there are things our five senses apparently cannot detect. Thus the claim of a sixth-sense by some. Whether there is actually a sixth sense that allows some people to see (and communicate) with ghosts is a subject that may never be proven. What we call a sixth-sense may only be a person whose five senses are more acute. Let’s take a moment to look at it closely:
There are people I have met who can actually smell death. They can walk into a room where someone died recently and will say that the room smells of death. It’s never happened to me. But I have met people who, without exception, can sense this.
I’ve met people who can meet someone for the very time and sense whether this is a “trustworthy” or “untrustworthy” person. Forget about the way they’re dressed or how much money they have. My daughter, Debbie, has been unerringly accurate about people. Since I can’t do it, I ask Debbie to meet with someone before I will do any business with them.
I’ve met some people who can definitely know when someone is lying to them (with apologies to the TV Show “Lie to Me”). I wish more judges could do that. I have met people who, miles from an event, know the details of that event without ever having been told.
But is this really a sixth sense or is it a more finely honed part of our five senses?
I have met genuine psychics: people who can sense things about your life by holding your keys or your wallet or some piece of jewelry in their hands. I have met psychics who can complete a sentence you started to say…with accuracy.
And, of course, I have met people who claim to be able to see and communicate with ghosts.
If the so called sixth sense is really an additional sense…why don’t we all have it? Or, as some people claim…we all have it but have not taken the time or made the effort to develop it.
These are some of the questions I intend to tackle in future blogs.
If you have some exceptional senses, please write me and let me know. stebrel@aol.com
As I said, nobody asked me.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Dying and Living to Tell About It
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES May 23, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
One of the things science finds impossible to explain is “returning from the dead”. Medical science refers to this frequently as “near death” experiences, almost all of which are discounted as dreams and/or hallucinations. This occurrence, which is not uncommon, is one of those paranormal things that must be looked at closely and carefully:
Whether we are looking at a scientific or spiritual view of the world, there is one thing that cannot be refuted: There is one and only one universal order to the world in which we live: We are born, we grow-up and mature, and we die. What we accomplish or fail to accomplish while we are alive is an individual thing, but the fact that we enter this world, mature in it and leave it, cannot be refuted.
The way we are raised and our own consciousness will determine, to a large extent, what we will do while we are alive, but there is a universal order to the basics of life and death.
Just about every religion and philosophy teaches us that life here on Earth is followed by a life-after-death. A good question might be, ‘How is it that all these hundreds of scholars came to the same conclusions?’ There are relatively few religions that believe that death is the end. Some religions teach people that death is a celebration of entry into a new dimension and a rejoining with their loved ones. Far Eastern religions, generally, teach that death is merely the entry to a different life. Their funerals are happy occasions. Catholics teach that life is merely preparatory to life-after-death and that, upon dying, your life will be judged. Zoroastrians teach that living the right life enables us to communicate with those who have passed-on.
There is a clear disparity in what people are taught during their lifetimes. Yet virtually every “near-death” experience (stories told by people who were pronounced clinically dead) are identical! The way clinically dead people describe other dead people when they have entered the after-life dimension will vary, markedly, depending on what they had been taught during their lifetimes…i.e. some see their dead family wearing flowing robes, some will see the spirits of the dead wearing the clothes in which they were buried …but there is a universal order to what they report: All their dead friends and family appear very much alive as they were when they were about thirty years old (unless, of course, they died when they were younger); all infirmities they had during their lifetime are gone…and everyone appears happy.
You should ask yourself how it is that people from totally different cultures…who speak different languages…who come from a wide disparity of economic circumstances…all report the same thing? Observe what some who have been declared clinically dead had to say:
Mrs. Virginia S., a resident of California, had formerly held various responsible jobs in management and business. On March 13, 1960, she underwent surgery. During surgery, she lost so much blood she was declared, clinically, dead. Nevertheless, surgeons worked feverishly to bring her back and she did recover. Mrs. S. said: “I was climbing a rock wall and was standing straight in the air. Nothing else was around it; it seemed flat. At the top of this wall was another stone railing about two feet high. I grabbed for the edge to pull myself over the wall, and my father, who is deceased, appeared and looked down at me. He said ‘You cannot come up yet; go back you have something left to do’. I looked down and started to go down and the next thing I heard were the words ‘She’s coming back’.”
Mrs. June L.H., a Canadian, was on her way back from her stepfather’s funeral with a friend, Clarence, when they were involved in a terrible automobile accident. Clarence was killed instantly and June was declared almost dead while surgeons tried to save her. “I don’t remember anything except seeing car lights coming at me, for I had been sleeping”, she explained. “I first remember seeing my dead stepdad, George, step forward out of a cloudy mist and touch me on my left shoulder. He said, ‘Go back, June, it’s not time yet.’ I woke up with the weight of his hand still on my shoulder.”
Mrs. L.L. of Michigan was in an automobile accident with her husband on December 19, 1968. Her husband was killed and she was hospitalized, and given up for dead by the doctors. Her sister visited her while Mrs. L. was still unconscious. Although unconscious her sister reported that Mrs. L. spoke freely about a place she was seeing and her dead relatives she was in contact with. She knew her husband had died, and also knew that her time had not come…that she could not stay on the “plane” she was temporarily visiting. The sister asked whether Mrs. L. had seen God or visited Heaven. The unconscious Mrs. L. replied that she had not seen God or Heaven but was visiting a different “plane” of existence. The sister thought this was all nonsense but related what Mrs. L. had said to other members of the family. Mrs. L. remembers nothing about what she said while unconscious, but quite clearly remembers how life returned to her: “I felt life coming to my body from the tips of my toes to the tip of my head.”
These are merely three of thousands of examples of people, living great distances apart, with totally different family and religious backgrounds who experienced an almost identical phenomenon: the transition from the dimension of life to the dimension of after-life. Death is not a word to be feared. It is merely your soul’s or aura’s shedding of a worn-out or infirmed body to be replaced with another, younger, body.
If you’d like to hear more about other “near-death” experiences, let me know. Contact me at stebrel@aol.com
As I said…nobody asked me.
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
One of the things science finds impossible to explain is “returning from the dead”. Medical science refers to this frequently as “near death” experiences, almost all of which are discounted as dreams and/or hallucinations. This occurrence, which is not uncommon, is one of those paranormal things that must be looked at closely and carefully:
Whether we are looking at a scientific or spiritual view of the world, there is one thing that cannot be refuted: There is one and only one universal order to the world in which we live: We are born, we grow-up and mature, and we die. What we accomplish or fail to accomplish while we are alive is an individual thing, but the fact that we enter this world, mature in it and leave it, cannot be refuted.
The way we are raised and our own consciousness will determine, to a large extent, what we will do while we are alive, but there is a universal order to the basics of life and death.
Just about every religion and philosophy teaches us that life here on Earth is followed by a life-after-death. A good question might be, ‘How is it that all these hundreds of scholars came to the same conclusions?’ There are relatively few religions that believe that death is the end. Some religions teach people that death is a celebration of entry into a new dimension and a rejoining with their loved ones. Far Eastern religions, generally, teach that death is merely the entry to a different life. Their funerals are happy occasions. Catholics teach that life is merely preparatory to life-after-death and that, upon dying, your life will be judged. Zoroastrians teach that living the right life enables us to communicate with those who have passed-on.
There is a clear disparity in what people are taught during their lifetimes. Yet virtually every “near-death” experience (stories told by people who were pronounced clinically dead) are identical! The way clinically dead people describe other dead people when they have entered the after-life dimension will vary, markedly, depending on what they had been taught during their lifetimes…i.e. some see their dead family wearing flowing robes, some will see the spirits of the dead wearing the clothes in which they were buried …but there is a universal order to what they report: All their dead friends and family appear very much alive as they were when they were about thirty years old (unless, of course, they died when they were younger); all infirmities they had during their lifetime are gone…and everyone appears happy.
You should ask yourself how it is that people from totally different cultures…who speak different languages…who come from a wide disparity of economic circumstances…all report the same thing? Observe what some who have been declared clinically dead had to say:
Mrs. Virginia S., a resident of California, had formerly held various responsible jobs in management and business. On March 13, 1960, she underwent surgery. During surgery, she lost so much blood she was declared, clinically, dead. Nevertheless, surgeons worked feverishly to bring her back and she did recover. Mrs. S. said: “I was climbing a rock wall and was standing straight in the air. Nothing else was around it; it seemed flat. At the top of this wall was another stone railing about two feet high. I grabbed for the edge to pull myself over the wall, and my father, who is deceased, appeared and looked down at me. He said ‘You cannot come up yet; go back you have something left to do’. I looked down and started to go down and the next thing I heard were the words ‘She’s coming back’.”
Mrs. June L.H., a Canadian, was on her way back from her stepfather’s funeral with a friend, Clarence, when they were involved in a terrible automobile accident. Clarence was killed instantly and June was declared almost dead while surgeons tried to save her. “I don’t remember anything except seeing car lights coming at me, for I had been sleeping”, she explained. “I first remember seeing my dead stepdad, George, step forward out of a cloudy mist and touch me on my left shoulder. He said, ‘Go back, June, it’s not time yet.’ I woke up with the weight of his hand still on my shoulder.”
Mrs. L.L. of Michigan was in an automobile accident with her husband on December 19, 1968. Her husband was killed and she was hospitalized, and given up for dead by the doctors. Her sister visited her while Mrs. L. was still unconscious. Although unconscious her sister reported that Mrs. L. spoke freely about a place she was seeing and her dead relatives she was in contact with. She knew her husband had died, and also knew that her time had not come…that she could not stay on the “plane” she was temporarily visiting. The sister asked whether Mrs. L. had seen God or visited Heaven. The unconscious Mrs. L. replied that she had not seen God or Heaven but was visiting a different “plane” of existence. The sister thought this was all nonsense but related what Mrs. L. had said to other members of the family. Mrs. L. remembers nothing about what she said while unconscious, but quite clearly remembers how life returned to her: “I felt life coming to my body from the tips of my toes to the tip of my head.”
These are merely three of thousands of examples of people, living great distances apart, with totally different family and religious backgrounds who experienced an almost identical phenomenon: the transition from the dimension of life to the dimension of after-life. Death is not a word to be feared. It is merely your soul’s or aura’s shedding of a worn-out or infirmed body to be replaced with another, younger, body.
If you’d like to hear more about other “near-death” experiences, let me know. Contact me at stebrel@aol.com
As I said…nobody asked me.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Where or When
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES May 17, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
“It seems we stood and talked like this before…
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can’t remember where or when…”
The lyrics of the haunting song, “Where or When” by Rodgers and Hart first came out in 1941 with the Benny Goodman band playing for a 21-year-old Peggy Lee. It was far from being the first song whose lyrics talked about a déjà vu experience. There have been stories, songs and even poems about “haven’t we met before”, “haven’t we known each other before” and “haven’t we had this conversation before” dating back to Homer’s “Iliad” and “Odyssey” written in approximately 400 BC.
So, why do skeptics and the so-called scientific community keep denying the possibility of having lived before? Or perhaps that we may be living the same life more than once in a different dimension?
Granted that nothing paranormal can be proven scientifically. But, even the claims of science are virtually not provable by their own standards. Still, if we look at the few things that science claims they can prove we must ask ourselves where they are headed? The answer is that they are headed for paranormal answers…and back to God.
If you look at the Super String Theory (which even very few physicists seem to fully understand) the existence of other dimensions containing planets just like Earth is now becoming a scientific reality. Is this really fact or is it science-fiction?
One of the questions no one seems to be able to answer, as of yet, is where these other dimensions are located and/or how we can communicate with them. Some quantum physicists believe these other dimensions are in our microscope; others believe they are too large to be seen with our telescope; still others believe they exist parallel to us.
In my book, “Explaining the Unexplained” I set forth a scenario wherein we are existing in some giant world’s microscope. I don’t say that this is the way things are, I just set it out as a “possibility “ to stimulate the imagination. Yet, there are some factors that are undeniable: Bodies in space act like bodies under the microscope. There are undeniable similarities in the way electrons spin about a nucleus and the way planets spin about the sun. The seemingly absolute limit for any atom is to have eight electrons spinning around it. For many years, we thought we had nine planets spinning about our sun, but just last year, astronomers decided that the planet, Pluto, was not in our solar system and that our system had only eight planets. Coincidence?
It is not my position to state that my little scenario is true, but if it doesn’t get you to start questioning things about our existence, then I’m not doing my job well.
I haven’t seen the film “Angels and Demons” yet, but I have read Dan Brown’s book. It starts with the premise that science and religion are mortal enemies. It’s an excellent novel, but it creates lots of so-called “facts” in an attempt to justify that premise.
The truth is that science and paranormal phenomena are one! The research and discoveries of science only serve to create questions that science cannot answer. If science cannot answer them we must look elsewhere for answers. We must come to the conclusion that there are things out there that lie somewhere outside of science’s limitations. Paranormal? Perhaps something or someone far beyond us that created everything? Science, alone, will never provide the answers.
It’s silly to believe that the heavens and the earth were created in six days or that Noah put two of every living species on an arc to survive a planetary flood. To me, it’s just as silly to believe that man came from the sea via a walking or flying fish and evolved, through monkeys, into human beings. There are so many basic differences between humans and every other species that inhabit this planet that Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution” makes about as much sense to me as the theory of our world starting less than six thousand years ago with Adam and Eve.
So why does science fight everything connected with religion? Why do they try and label the paranormal as pure fiction and its believers as less-intelligent people? Why does science say that déjà vu is impossible when billions and billions of people have experienced it? Why does science continue to call millions of people “liars” and “frauds: when they claim to see UFOs or when they have claims of recalling a past life?
The fact is that the closer science comes to the truth, the closer it comes to belief in a Creator and in the paranormal.
“...And so it seems that we have met before…
and laughed and loved like this before…
but who knows where or when.”
If you’d like to comment, send me an e-mail at stebrel@aol.com
As I said…nobody asked me.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
PROOF
EXPLAINING LIFE’S MYSTERIES May 9, 2009
By Stephen Ellis
Nobody asked me, but…
There are several really good paranormal blogs on the web, and if you have a genuine interest in such things as ghosts, psychic communication, communicating with the dead, UFO sightings, etc., these blogs should be read or, at least, reviewed. Probably the best one is called “Phantoms and Monsters”. I like this best because it is not merely someone’s opinion, but it extracts paranormal news items from around the world and reprints them. You can visit them at www.phantomsandmonsters.wetpaint.com and subscribe to their daily reports. It’s free.
Another one of the better sites is paranormal@google.com. The Google site provides an even greater variety of reports than does phantoms and monsters, but the quality of the items leaves a lot to be desired.
Another good one offering a variety of reports is www.area51.org . The only problem this site has is that the reporting tends to be slanted towards their own beliefs. Nevertheless, it is well worth reading.
More than any other single thing people write to me about is “proof”. What proof do I have that the UFO reports are not made by people seeking their 15 minutes of fame? What proof do I have that John Edwards or Patricia P. can’t really talk to the dead? What proof do I have that some psychics have pulled memories out of inanimate objects, etc., etc.
The answer is very simple: There is no “proof”! How can I prove that a dream I had about another life was for real? It can’t be proven. There may be all kinds of evidence to show that a life such as the one I dreamed about actually existed (although historical records of simple people like myself either don’t exist or do not go back many years)…but even if we can prove that such a life existed, how can we possibly prove that I was the person in that life? You may ask questions as to how I got that memory…but that really doesn’t “prove” anything.
Then, too, for every person who acknowledges the existence of paranormal phenomena, there will be someone who feels it’s merely a lot of baloney. Take the case of Bridey Murphy where a hypnotist, regressed a Wisconsin woman back to a previous life: she spoke with a heavy Irish brogue and described her life in a small village near Cork, Ireland including a description of her husband and children. This caused a veritable barrage of skeptical newspaper reporters to go to extreme lengths to prove her statements were false. A few of them even went to the extent of making-up stories to try and prove that there was no previous life for the woman. The fact is that she had never been to Ireland and yet was able to describe the landscape there…her home…her type of life, etc. How do we really prove that some memories were not implanted in her? The answer is, again, we can’t!
Using logic and common sense we begin to realize that the efforts of hundreds of skeptics to prove she didn’t have a previous life in Ireland were far more ridiculous than to accept the possibility that she did live before. That’s where common sense and logic must come into play: There will never be “proof” that we lived before…but, if you stop to think about it, there will never be “proof” that we didn’t. It’s a matter of what you choose to believe…and, of course, taking a close look at the evidence:
There have been, literally, “millions” of reported ghost sightings throughout history. I find it difficult to believe that in each case people were only seeking their fifteen minutes of fame or that they were hallucinating. There have been thousands of cases where information ostensibly known only to the dead was conveyed to the living via dreams, via visitations and/or via “automatic writing”. There have been millions of reports of communication of one sort or another with dead people; millions of cases where objects physically moved from one place to another without explanation. Similarly, there have been millions of cases of UFO sightings, of psychic phenomena, of déjà vu experiences, etc. It would take an enormous amount of arrogance to call all of the people making these reports “liars”, “phonies” or “psychos”. Yet, that’s exactly what the people insisting on scientific proof are doing.
Science can’t tell us why we’re here or how we got here…with any scientific proof. The Darwinian Theory of Evolution has almost the same number of “holes” in it as does the Biblical story of Creation. Neither can be proven scientifically.
In my opinion, the evidence is conclusive that there is more to our lives than our five senses can detect from the time our body takes its first breath to the time our body takes its last. Proof? Of course not. But neither is there any proof that what I believe is not so.
I feel very sad for people who refuse to allow for the possibility…even when the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming…that things genuinely exist that are outside of the range of our senses. They are living a life without meaning. If some people want to be skeptics…fine! But they should never allow their skepticism to preclude or “pooh-pooh” paranormal reports. Remember, there is no more scientific proof the skeptics are more correct than we are.
If the non-believers of the world would simply allow those who believe to tell their stories without being “put-down” by the skeptics, I’d be willing to bet that there would be millions of additional reports that would be impossible to explain scientifically.
The fact is, that as the science of quantum mechanics discovers more facts concerning our universe, it tends to give significantly more credence to some paranormal claims. Interesting!
If you have any questions, write me at stebrel@aol.com.
As I said…nobody asked me.
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