Dear
harmonica
My guess is that this photo and others are digitally altered and not real ghostly images.
However, a friend I met at a Buddhist retreat shared an experience she had after her father had died.
The family was gathering or eating together at home, when they ALL saw the "ghost or representation"
of their father walk into the room. They all reported seeing this at the same time.
Now you can believe that was a "group" hallucination. Some sort of mass hypnotic effect
that made them all believe they saw the same thing. Anything is possible.
But like I mentioned before, with why we believe it on faith when someone reports dreaming something.
I happen to believe my friend when she says she and her family members all saw this at the same time.
So whether or not this can ever be captured or proven,
it depends on whether we take it on faith that someone is telling the truth,
and they really saw or experienced such visions or images.
If dream images can happen while we are asleep and appear like real memories,
why can't such images occur in our brains while we are awake?
On what level of the mind do such images appear and exist?
Whatever that is can be considered a "level" or "state" of reality
even if it's not the same as they physical world we experience
and explain using empirical senses.
I would explain it as the same level where dreams occur and appear real at the time.
If you want to call that level "spiritual" or whatever other term,
it's still referring to the same thing.
..if there was proof it would be in the reputable news/books/links/etc
..it would be a big story
but there is not
Dear
harmonica
I found out this isn't true.
Some of the spiritual changes and experiences are so profound,
a person can take TEN YEARS to reconcile it, just to make peace with themselves
because their perception flipped totally around inside out.
And many do not want to share it with others because it is deeply personally.
If you read Scott Peck's book "Glimpses of the Devil" when he first
observed demonstrable proof of "demonic" behavior and voices,
PLUS the impact and change that "deliverance and exorcism therapy"
had in turning Schizophrenic patients from acting "inhuman"
to being able to think for themselves and relate normally with family
and doctors, when they were violently out of control previously and unable to interact sanely,
it still took him TEN YEARS to write down his observations and try to make sense of the
process he witnessed.
Peck was honest in explaining that these "spiritual" experiences COULD NOT BE PROVEN
OR DISPROVEN (even though his whole team witnessed the same manifestations)
and yet the measurable reactions and stages of the treatment process were enough
to document scientifically as following a consistent pattern. He could still make the honest recommendation that medical research be replicated on this therapy to help more people and save more patients, but WITH the understanding that the "spiritual" part that was 5% of what he saw could NOT be proven or explained but remained faith based. The other 95% was documentable as observable and quantifiable changes in the patients from a sick state of mind, through stages of recovery to reach a healed and humble mindset where the person could start to comply with treatment and act normal (whereas in contrast, previously they could not control their own minds or thoughts before but were violently destructive and dangerous to themselves). That part can be medically researched and replicated,
but the spiritual experiences vary from case to case and depend on the what people report.
The scientific part we can measure and agree on.
We don't have to agree on the reports of "spiritual" changes, experiences, voices, entities etc.
This is why I made the comparison with people reporting DREAMS where none of the content matches what other people report, yet we STILL AGREE that the DREAM STATE occurs and it is not something "delusional" or "made up for ulterior purposes."
One day we will understand these "spiritual visions" as something occurring in a Dreamlike
state of consciousness or brain activity, it is not made up.
As for reporting this publicly, YES
harmonica if you ever
watch people cheering and jumping for joy because they have been
FREED of addiction that was killing them, there are people all over
the world reporting spiritual experiences of healing and visitations
from Jesus or angels or voices of God, etc.
And then there are people like one of my friends who went through
spiritual healing and doesn't want to talk about it, it was so painful
it blinded him for several minutes where he panicked and didn't understand
what this was. He won't talk about that, but he did end up in a better place
with overcoming the problems that compounded because of past abuses
he experienced that the spiritual process helped to heal and remove so he could
function normally without constant rage obstructing his progress. He doesn't mind
sharing his exercise and recovery program for overcoming physical effects of
diabetes and anxiety. So that part he DOES want to share to help others.
But as for his spiritual process, he will talk to me about it but will not recommend
that to others because it was so painful he never wants to go through that or
have anyone else go through it. It reminds me of what one of Scott Peck's patients
said, describing it as "invasive" like "rape." That's the exact words my friend used
to describe what it felt like to be completely cleansed inside out by the spiritual deliverance
process.
But I told him afterwards, you will be completely freed of the garbage from the past
so the pain will be worth the freedom and peace of mind you gain when that's gone forever.
This gave me a whole new appreciation of why people don't share this except with
close personal friends. When they do share publicly, like their spiritual testimonies,
skeptics not unlike you merely mock and ridicule and reject it as sounding fantastic
and made up for ulterior motives. So they only share with people they can have an
honest conversation with.
harmonica if you look online there are tons of testimonies.
What Dr. Francis MacNutt did differently is work with Templeton Foundation to
set up a formal medical research study on the effects of spiritual healing on
Rheumatoid Arthritis, and they did find that it had positive effects on patients
which could not be explained except for the spiritual healing methods used by that team.
The placebo effect is NOT enough to incur the same changes
because the spiritual therapy is based on FORGIVENESS.
So you cannot "pretend" to forgive like a "placebo" and get the same results.
If you don't forgive, the healing process will fail. The unforgiven conflicts
and issues are what blocks the mind-body connection from healing itself.
So the process works by agreeing to RECEIVE forgiveness for whatever
conscious or unconscious blockages are obstructing one's natural healing process.
Thus there is a SCIENCE to the process, and STEPS that can be followed and documented.
The spiritual part may never be proven, but it can be documented "statistically"
and show CORRELATION between
* reports of FORGIVENESS correlating with effectiveness rates of HEALING
* reports of UNFORGIVENESS and degrees of this correlating with
failures to heal either body, mind or relationships with others.
We can prove a CORRELATION even if we cannot prove or disprove spiritual cause and effect relations.
Forgiveness studies on the impact on healing and health have been conducted
in the past, but I want to take this further and prove the statistics and correlation
by applying the more advanced deep healing therapy to curing patients suffering
from Schizophrenia and other criminal and mental illness and addictions,
eating disorders and self-harm addictions, and other conditions that can be
documented and measured by observable changes over time between stages of recovery.
Just because these studies have never been done yet on a mass scale and replicated
doesn't mean it will never happen and it's not true.
From the people I've talked with who either counseled others through spiritual therapy
including visions and manifestations on another level of consciousness,
they are either too busy helping others to heal or they are too absorbed turning
inward and dealing with their own spiritual process that this opens up and can
take years to fully resolve.
Some people are like me or Scott Peck and focus on advocating for medical
research and development. But most when they find out healing works, they
either share it locally such as starting their own ministry, they testify online
or on TV and get rejected by people who think they are making it all up,
or they focus on just resolving their own issues because the process is so deep rooted.
If you want to see another example, look up DAVID BERKOWITZ and you can see
the difficulty in someone trying to explain the spiritual healing process without
sounding like they are "making it up"!
The Official Website of David Berkowitz - Welcome
harmonica if you are one of the people who will not believe this are real experiences,
you have answered your own question. Your response is exactly why people don't bother
to share it, because nobody will believe it except the people who counseled them who already went through it and know that it works. This is why I have been advocated for medical research studies to be replicated, so that more people CAN access this knowledge and help!