Probably completely inappropriate to this forum

[getojack]

Hello all,

I've been reading up on different views of the afterlife and reincarnation and came across something interesting and am wondering if anyone has had similar experiences. Apparently, there was a Dutchman some time ago who knew extremely precise details about places where he'd never been before. For example, he could find his way around a city where he'd never set foot.

The author attributes this to evidence of reincarnation, but interestingly, the Dutchman didn't believe in reincarnation and instead came up with a different theory. His theory was that psychic traces of individuals that are incompletely integrated with the personality leave the body after death and float around in the atmosphere as shreds of mist. He thought that people with similar psychic traces could pick up on those traces.

Now from personal experience, I know that I've often felt some mysterious connection with the past when wandering around ancient ruins or tombs, but whether this is merely cognitive or something deeper I don't know. Usually the connection seems stronger when there is a lot of mist around, but again maybe this is just rationalisation. It's an interesting idea nonetheless, and I'm wondering if anyone else has had similar experiences or can shed some light on the topic.

To bring this all back to the trigrams, I've heard that in China and Korea (maybe Japan too), the burial mounds of emperors were in accord with the principles of Feng Shui and I wonder if this might theoretically have an effect on those psychic traces staying in those areas.

 

[autumn]

Do you know who the Dutchman was and what exactly his theory was?

It sounds similar to an explanation for ghosts I've heard that rejects the idea that the actual spirit is present. Instead, the idea is that energetic traces of an individual are imprinted into the physical environment and replay like a psychic recording in "haunted" places.

It's very common to be aware of energy, the way you've described. The term 'empath' refers to a person highly sensitive to the energetic vibrations of people. You can feel another's internal state, or have access to it, in different circumstances. Everyone has a little bit of it. If you tune into it, you can train yourself to access some precise details about the inner states of other people and/or the energy of the people once connected to a place.

A great example of inherent empathic ability is, for example, the ability to "feel between the lines" on the Internet. You get an email from someone, and you know exactly what emotions they were feeling when they wrote it. Logically, you shouldn't interpret the words any differently than a computer. You didn't hear any nuances in their speech. The modern explanation, of course, would be this is a prime example of Freudian projection. But, sometimes people are uncannily accurate, even when it doesn't appear on the surface that there was any evidence of hidden emotion in the words.

I guess you could connect it to the i-ching by asking the i-ching what it thinks of the idea.

 

[getojack]

I don't know who the Dutchman was, and the only reference to it in the book I'm reading seems to be a couple of sentences and a reference (Van Nes 1958: III) which isn't listed in the bibliography.

I took your suggestion and asked the I Ching what it thinks of the theory that psychic energy continues after physical death on the earth plane. The answer was 43 with no changing lines.

 

[autumn]

43, "Breakthrough", "Decisivness"- the weak line is expelled upward and removed. Hatcher, "To understand where things begin and end is great power". Putting things where they belong. Finality.

Unchanging hexagrams have a special flavor, in my opinion. They tend to occur in "idea" answers, when nothing much actually happens externally, and there is nothing to show the querent- no lesson, no path, no insight into a relationship. Just a statement- this is the answer. This is how it is.

There are some people who would disagree about asking these kinds of questions, but honestly, in my experience I've seen real, coherent answers to even the most vague or seemingly silly questions.

Actually, here's a question. If psychic imprints being re-played in a physical environment are responsible for "hauntings", and for imbuing individuals with memories of other lifetimes, then what in the world would prevent a live person from haunting a place? If you had an intense experience in a place, and your energy was imprinted there, but you went on and moved to a new place, what would prevent someone from being haunted by your experience even though you were alive? And maybe that does happen, who knows.

 

[bruce_g]

Interesting. I speculate both are true: residual particle traces and cohesive subtle entities.

An example of the first: Most people have experienced walking into an empty room or house and feeling a definitive vibe. When I moved into this house I distinctly felt “nervous” vibes, as though intense and chaotic vibrations filled the house. After a week of cleansing rituals – prayer, meditation, white sage smudge burning, and out and out commanding the chaos to leave – the house became quiet and peaceful, and has remained so. Only recently I learned that the prior occupants used the house as a meth lab, and that it harbored transient meth addicts, until the police raided the house and busted the occupants.

In this case, it was residual traces which (seemed to) remain on after the living moved on to live somewhere else. Whether like residual traces from bodily departed beings can also remain on in the gross physical plain, I don’t know. I personally believe they can and in some cases do. When enough residual traces are gathered, they bond together. It is not unthinkable that the individual's intelligence gathers along with the rest of the traces, and forms or reconstructs a departed being.

 

[bruce_g]

Something else I found quite funny. I felt the source or center of the chaotic vibration was coming from the attic. Twice I climbed up there with a flashlight to look around. I was told later that the chief occupant hid out with his stash in the attic, as a safe place to hide in case the house was raided - as though the cops wouldn’t look there! (Add paranoia to the chaos.)

Strange freakin world we live in.

 

[martin]

Hexagram 43 makes sense to me in this context. The hexagram gives off seeds (*). Our seed, if we have offspring, survives us.
What the IC says is, apparently, that this is not only true for our biological seed. We also give off nonphysical seed and that seed might germinate.

(*) the idea is here that 43 and 44 are in fact images of the male and female sexual organs. I think this is quite clear, although the ancient writers didn't say it in so many words. In their culture it was probably considered not done to speak too openly about sexuality.
The message of line 2 of 44, for example, seems to be "don't make the woman pregnant" (keep your semen inside, "in the tank") and I suspect that most diviners in ancient times knew that it meant that.

 

[bruce_g]

Is anything that is, not physical on some level? For example, do thoughts not embody substance? Or do radio waves have physical properties? This thing we call “spirit”, isn’t it a more subtle form or vibration? Can nothing which is even be comprehended?

I don’t perceive this clear distinction between body and spirit, as Yang contains the seed of Yin, and Yin contains the seed of Yang. I’d translate this as: When in body, spirit is in seed form, and when in spirit, body is in seed form. In this sense, spirit and body are always present, whether “dead” or alive. One just predominates over the other, depending on which part of the cycle one exists in at the moment. One increases, the other decreases. Consider, for example, what happens during meditation, or in sleep and awaken-ness.

 

[nicky_p]

A couple of years ago I was living in a 14th century building with an ex boyfriend. He was in the services so I stayed there during the week by myself. It was our first place so we were low on the furniture front and I was sleeping in the front room on the sofa. Something used to throw things across the room - not at us - it just seemed as though it was mucking about. It used to turn my TV and stereo on and off when I was trying to get to sleep and a really wierd thing that I couldn't understand - there was this clicking in the corner of the room. One night I got really frustrated so I told it that I'd had enough for one night and I needed some sleep and it all went quiet - which was more freaky than it doing stuff!
I was telling the bloke that lived next door to me and he went all quiet and a little white. He got me to show him where this clicking was. Turns out 2 occupants before me a man had commited suicide in that corner after finding out his girlfriend had been cheating on him. He was diabetic and he'd ODed on insulin with one of those clicky pens.

Echoing Bruce: strange freakin world indeed!

 

[martin]

In England I once heard a story about a small cottage. It was empty but everyday around the same time there was a smell of bacon around it. The people who lived nearby finally decided that it was probably a ghost who continued his breakfast habits as if he was still in the flesh. One day they all went to the cottage around "bacon time" and suggested to the ghost that it was perhaps time to move on.
And indeed, from that day on the smell of bacon was gone.

 

[nicky_p]

Poor bloke - I can just imagine it now:
"Begone with your bacon!!"

There's a space round mine if he wants to cook breakfast in bed for me