I don't have anything in particular I want to push as a topic. I just want to hear opinions (from believers only!) and to share our experiences.
For about the past ten years or so I used to get frequent and vivid deja vu. This isn't your regular deja vu, either. First, it would pop in my dream, and feel like deja vu. It would be a whole experience And then, it would happen in real life, exactly how I remembered it from the dream -- even peoples' actions etc. I have heard a few explanations for this -- mostly a dysfunction in memory. But that doesn't really explain the precognitive aspect of it.
Anyway, my metaphysical explanation for this phenomena is that since our consciousness is nonlocal/nonlinear then it is our brain picking up on a future "possible" reality. I think it has happened a lot less lately because I am entering "unknown" (novel) territory which I can't access or shouldn't know.
Yesterday I finished reading Jacques Vallee's book Passport to Magonia. It posits the hypothesis that the modern UFO phenomenon is actually the latest chapter of a millennia-old story and that basically the greys, the fairies, the religious apparitions, etc are all just different disguises of the same mysterious intelligence that has been toying with us since the dawn of time, and whose true motives remain unclear. He thinks that trying to catch UFOs is as pointless as chasing fairies, and that we should instead focus on analysing the influence that these stories have had on our history and culture. In an interview he offered the suggestion that we might be dealing with some kind of mental (metaphysical?) control system, and expressed an interest in devising methods to proactively test it, but I don't know if he ever followed up on that. Anyway, as outlandish as this is, it kind of makes sense to me.
What is so outlandish about it? Clearly there is a conspiracy of massive proportions surrounding this aspect of our humanity. Are we to believe our ancestors to be so genius as to have created the precursors for our modern world and yet have no idea what reality is? There are discrepancies between mainstream history and alternative history.
A book that I love also addresses the metaphysical, Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. It's fiction, but also an extraordinarily entertaining read. Most of Murakami's books and stories touch on the metaphysical, but this one is more clear-cut and accessible than his other novels, I think (although it still has dead ends, including an antithesis to Chekhov's gun). The book is a monster though, so you trade clarity for sheer volume.
A shorter read that also deals with a metaphysical sort of reality or dreamscape by Murakami is Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World. It's two novels in one. All the odd chapters are Hard Boiled Wonderland and the even chapters are The End of the World. I recommend read through all the odd ones first. Then go through and read the even chapters. Hard Boiled Wonder land is a sort of cyberpunk novel and the end of the world is kind of a fantasy story or dream like story that's kind of hard to explain. It is an absolutely fascinating book, and it was my first exposure to Murakami. I've read a couple of more since then (Wind Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark).
Berkeleyian idealism is interesting. Basically that all of the world as we know it exists in our minds. That there is nothing outside of the mental realm. The idea that trees and rocks and stuff exist is an illusion. Or you have Kantian idealism which essentially says the same thing that we only know things through our sense and that the "actual" real world is far different from the way our sense experience it. Maybe your experiences come from some ability to access the "real" real world. If I'm off on my descriptions of these philosophies someone please jump in and inform me.
Isn't that pretty much an accepted fact by now? There are colours we can't see, sounds we can't hear, energies we can't feel. The real, "unfiltered" world is quite unlike the one we live in...Or you have Kantian idealism which essentially says the same thing that we only know things through our sense and that the "actual" real world is far different from the way our sense experience it.
Then I think about higher dimensional beings that we only see partial aspects of. Like flatland. Or Douglas Adam's hyperintelligent pandimensional shades of the color blue. Or the H.P. Lovecraft quote "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."
But, if everything exists within our minds how could one explain things which should be unknowable based on one's limited experience? Is the only two alternatives then that: 1. Reality is not just within our minds... 2. If reality is within our minds, then our minds are much more expansive than we are led to believe?
Give an example. You only know things based on your senses anyway. This is basically what Decartes, Berkeley, Kant, etc were interested in. Kant actually wrote a lot about ethics too, but he began with that "how do we know what's real" question.
We don't know what's real. That's my point. The issue is how much "encompasses" reality, if you know what I mean. Like why do some people live "normal" existences completely unaware of X, Y, and Z, while others have extraordinary realities/perceptions since they were young?
Not necessarily. It is possible to believe in idealism and still believe that there are multiple people. Just that we inhabit a world of ideas. Basically "we're all in God's mind" kind of.
I know I can't control the discussion but there seems to be more speculation than sharing of experiences and opinions on such experiences. So, if anyone has more of that, I'd be interested. Thanks!
Except, during my experience of deja vu, the clincher is you don't know it's something that was actually precognitive until it happens. Though I think there are such abilities.
Then its not precognitive. Your brain is laying down new memories, and it's wiring them in wrong, so that the new memory looks like an old one. This is just a quirk of how our brains work that we don't understand. Its not evidence of psychic ability. It would be nice to live in a world with magic, but then we'd have to deal with dragons too, and those things are buggers when they get big.
First off: I already know of this explanation which I clearly stated in the post. Another thing I clearly stated: that I was looking for believers ONLY. Lastly: there are whole swaths of reality that science doesn't comprehend and I'm looking for those who have experienced such things and their opinions on what they are. This was both implied and explicit. Please, for the love of all that is still quite mysterious to our existence, get the hell out of here. PS: Even scientists experience weird unexplainable shit, so don't come on here patronizing people.
Read the wiki page
Several of them. Some of them closer to this reality than others. At least one of them, if not several, are related to dreaming. Some of them are related to other planes of consciousness (and at least three of those are close to our reality, one of them so close that it needs to be empty of what can be thought of matter because it interfaces with our world - it is the reality I associate to OOBEs or 'astral projection', and others close enough to closely mimic a past/present/future of our reality where consciousness can be trapped in - hence ghosts). There is also, I believe, the "positive" reality - where black holes end up, a reality containing about 1.2 times the mass-energy of this one. These are the realities I am convinced exists. Now - I also think that, theoretically, there may be three more realities: the negative entropy reality where the laws of thermodynamics work in a way opposite to this reality, and which might interface our reality at a so-called "point-zero" where, given the right circumstances, entropy can be traded (which results in a positive energy extraction for us, and a relief of pressure for the other), several empty sub-realities where it might be possible to travel, and the "master reality" which could be equalled to the Olympus or Heaven/Hell.
I have no idea how many there really are, though - but I know there's several.
I wonder about what is being kept from us when more inquisitive minds like our own keep questioning earnestly and have possibly been across multiple lifetimes..
I'd wager that it is nothing that this... part? iteration? form? knowledge base? of our consciousness could comprehend.