Can loved ones contact us from the afterlife?
And have you experienced this?
No they don’t, there isn’t any afterlife, and neither I nor anyone else has experienced such a thing. There’s quite a few gullible/desperate people who convince themselves otherwise and scammers who prey on them though.
Only by debt.
The most you can say is that all of the evidence and logic weighs strongly against such a conclusion, and all supposed evidence of it happening can be more simply explained through other means.
I don’t think there’s a GQ kind of answer for this one.
This, but in all honesty, I kind of hope to be pleasantly surprised.
I haven’t experienced it personally, but both my wife and Aunt say they have talked to a deceased father and grandparent. Each incident was a one time event with no future visitations.
My Aunt claims her father came to her while she was sleeping, sat on the edge of her bed and had a conversation with her. Essentially telling her that he loved her.
My wife’s says that when she was a child, about 9 or 10 if I recall correctly, that she was awakened from sleep by her Grandmother. Her grandmother told her that she loved her and that she had to go away and said goodbye. The next morning my wife says she was informed her Grandmother had passed away the previous night.
Do I believe them? Logically it seems impossible, emotionally I want to believe it can happen. In both cases the person who contacted them was very loved by each of them. In one case, my Aunt’s, the visit was years after the death. In the other, my wife says she had no knowledge of the passing of her Grandmother. Both are convinced the visits were “real”. Both my wife and Aunt are catholic, neither one a religious nut, and believe in God. I can’t really comment on my Aunt, but my wife is a highly educated person and not one to believe in superstitions (I’m not interested in those of you telling me God is one. We believe in God, if you don’t that’s fine I’ll respect your opinion). She swears that not only did it happen, but the visit was as real as her standing in front if me telling of the encounter. Neither has had a visit since.
I just don’t know. I can tell you that I miss my Grandfather very much and if such a thing were possible I would welcome a visit from him. I still talk to him all the time when I am alone. No, nothing crazy life full blown conversations and no he doesn’t answer, but I’d like to think that if an after life does exist he knows I haven’t forgotten about him. In the end I guess it all comes down to faith. Bring a catholic I was taught that there is a heaven and an afterlife. Of course we have no proof of that so it’s up to each if us to choose to believe or not to believe. I honestly don’t have a problem with anyone choosing one or the other. If it helps you get through this world believing that there is something on the other side then good for you. On the other hand if you are convinced it’s all a lie and we become nothing more than worm food upon death, God for you too. I do know that in time, each if us will find out for ourselves.
Sure there is. And post #2 covered it pretty well.
Join date guys…
No.
A few months after my Dad died, my Mother had a dream that she spoke to him, and it alleviated a lot of her grief and loneliness. She thought it was a real visitation, at the time, and may still do so.
If they do it’ll be in IMHO, not General Questions. Moved.
samclem, moderator
Wishful thinking, dreams and imagination seems to cover most instances. Others may need to bring in chicanery and delusions for full explanation.
But, as the spinster said when she bought a bicycle, you can believe whatever you want as long as you don’t demand I go along with it.
Can’t say for sure but I very much doubt it.
No, and I don’t know anyone who has.
I’m not sure what evidence there could be against such a conclusion, except in a negative sense. Of course, if “there is no afterlife” is one of your givens, it logically follows that loved ones can’t contact us from the afterlife; but I don’t see what positive evidence there could be of that either.
I do not believe that loved ones contact us through people like John Edward; that’s a scam.
I have heard of enough incidents like the ones obbn describes that I believe that such things do happen. I am agnostic as to whether they are ever a manifestation of anything outside the person’s own mind (as opposed to dreams, hallucinations, etc.). Even if it’s possible for the dead to contact the living, it is rare and should not be expected.
Well, if you want to go there, there certainly are mundane ways that loved ones could contact us after death, such as by letters they wrote or videos they recorded to be read/viewed in the event of their demise.
No, but I’m constantly swamped by messages from dead dickwads I can’t stand.
My wife died in 2006. Every so often she appears in my dreams.
My daughter also appears in my dreams every so often; always as a little girl. She’s still very much alive and in her 20’s.
For the fomer it’s more a matter of me processing my grief and not a “portal into the afterlife.” For the latter it’s another form of neural aftershocks from the time when being a dad was a major preoccupation on my mind.
Things like this:
[ul]
[li]There is no known mechanism that would permit the consciousness to keep working after the body is destroyed.[/li][li]There has never been a verified case of such contact.[/li][li]Consciousness surviving after death would violate the laws of entropy, which are the best-tested laws of physics we have.[/li][/ul]
That last one perhaps isn’t obvious: Consciousness is a very non-random pattern of neural firings, and there are a lot more ways to be not conscious than there are to be conscious. Even if it is a pattern of something other than neural firings, this still means consciousness is lower-entropy than the alternative, which means it can only be maintained by pouring energy into the system that exhibits it. Hence you need to eat. Consciousness being maintained once the mind has ceased to get energy from somewhere would violate the laws of entropy, which are the best-tested best-verified laws we have. They work at every level, from galaxies to the quantum sub-microscopic, so the odds of them being that far wrong are, really, too small to even consider.
I’ve mentioned this before:
I have a reverse banjo clock from 1916 that belonged to my maternal grandparents. It has two keyholes for winding, one for the clock itself and the other for the chimes. I was in the habit of only winding the clock itself, as the chimes were rather loud. At the time in question, the chimes had not been wound or rung for weeks if not months.
The mechanism of the chimes is that it would chime once on the half-hour, and chime the time on the hour. It would only chime on the hour or half-hour, not at any other time. The last piece of info is that if the chimes spring had mostly unwound, the chiming would be very slow and “draggy”.
As I returned to the house from my father’s wake, the clock started chiming. It chimed very clearly, not dragged out at all, and it chimed 10-12 times (I was so stunned I didn’t start counting), and was heard by my wife and daughter. It was 10:43. I’ve had enough math where I understand the power of coincidence, but the clock should not have been capable of chiming at that time. I have tried to partially wind the chimes, let them run down, move the clock to between the hour and half-hour, move the clock, shake the clock, etc. I’ve never been able to get the clock to chime at a time it shouldn’t.
My father was the type who lothed religion, but always felt that there might be something past death. I feel the same way, especially now.
A few more facts, for whatever they are worth -
I have a BS in Physics and Astronomy (back in '78, but still…)
I’m not convinced of the existence of ghosts, even with the above occurrence, but I am more than a little weirded out by it, and am more inclined that there may be some part of us that survives.
I tried like hell to reproduce this by varying the amount of winding on the chime spring, playing around with the position of the clock, banging on the wall, etc. My last try was to move the hands of the clock past the half hour mark, fully wind the chime spring, then move the clock around, bang on the wall, open and close doors, etc. The clock would not chime except on the hour and half hour.
The first two items on your list are the kind of thing I had in mind when I said “except in a negative sense”—which raises the (philosophical?) issue of whether lack of evidence that something does exist counts as evidence that it does not exist. #3 I think is really subsumed under #1: There is no known mechanism that would permit consciousness to get energy from anywhere after death.
People have been known to record themselves for the purpose of having the video played for their relatives after death. That would count.
Also, in my way of thinking there is an afterlife of sorts in the memories of still-living people. So if a person has a dream or whatever of said dead person, it might count. It’s entirely created by the brain of the living person, and not actually the dead person at all*, but from a certain point of view, you could describe it that way.
*: the dead person is dead, gone, not living, consciousness extinguished, and otherwise not available, just so we’re clear