Ghosts, Time Travel, and Space / Inter-dimensional Neural Communication...

[Trenchfriend]

@LizzieMaine

In Germany, VW means "VIEL WERKSTATT!"

Their quality can't really match up with their former image of solidity/reliability. This old image was just around the Käfer/Beetle, I think.

German mainstream-cars from european productions-plants = unbelievable overrated. And their biggest problem: Massive variations in supplier-quality, believe me.

BUT: Not so much bad as the horrible Ladas.

 

[GHT]

If saying you like someone can be construed as a compliment, then indeed it is, Sir! Very nice, though I saw nothing wrong with your previous avatar.

Thank you, but it was your avatar that made me remember that I too have something similar. At a classic car event last year, one of the organisers commissioned an artist to capture my image in oils. How wonderfully complimentary is that? The finished portrait was displayed on their forthcoming event flyer. The event name, Crotch Cooler, stems from the war time, two seater sports cars, that had a rag top and flimsy side panels, in inclement weather you tended to get rather wet and cold in the nether regions.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I gotta say, if I ever decide to write a sleazy pulp adventure novel, there is nothing on Earth that can keep me from naming the main character "Crotch Cooler."

 

[Benny Holiday]

So if the universe is made up of star systems with planets in various formations orbiting single, binary, or multiple stars, would Heaven then be a planet? It's certainly referred to as a solid, tangible realm in the Bible. A place free of death, disease, war and misery (and anger, hatred and selfishness) sure sounds like paradise.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

My favorite VW ad line: "It makes your house look bigger."

 

[Zombie_61]

So if the universe is made up of star systems with planets in various formations orbiting single, binary, or multiple stars, would Heaven then be a planet? It's certainly referred to as a solid, tangible realm in the Bible...

If the soul is not solid or tangible, and it is that soul that travels to "Heaven" rather than the physical body it inhabits while it's incarnated, why would "Heaven" need to be solid or tangible?

...A place free of death, disease, war and misery (and anger, hatred and selfishness) sure sounds like paradise.

Enlightened souls have no need of, or use for, those very human concepts.

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Since we are so attached to the material, it is most often difficult to perceive spiritual existence, which actually could be genuine reality rather than abstract. Perhaps we are now living within an inferior image or copy of the more vividly divine for good reason....

 

[Lean'n'mean]

A place free of death, disease, war and misery (and anger, hatred and selfishness) sure sounds like paradise.

Sounds pretty dull to me, fortunately I'm booked in at the other place.

 

[LuvMyMan]

So if the universe is made up of star systems with planets in various formations orbiting single, binary, or multiple stars, would Heaven then be a planet? It's certainly referred to as a solid, tangible realm in the Bible. A place free of death, disease, war and misery (and anger, hatred and selfishness) sure sounds like paradise.

That is a great question! But as it is when we are no longer alive, to hopefully reside in Heaven, I have to admit, I am in NO hurry to relocate to there! HAHA! I'd gladly settle to just be able to visit our property down on the warm Island of St. Croix for now! haha!

 

[LuvMyMan]

Sounds pretty dull to me, fortunately I'm booked in at the other place.

You know, we may all have a surprise in store for us to some degree, and join in on the warmer end of things....haha!

 

[LuvMyMan]

Since we are so attached to the material, it is most often difficult to perceive spiritual existence, which actually could be genuine reality rather than abstract. Perhaps we are now living within an inferior image or copy of the more vividly divine for good reason....

So very true! How do we really know much more about those matters aside from what we can know from sources like the Bible, or from someone that could sincerely give an accounting of being dead and then revived?

When some folks start to bring up some of the great "minds" of famous people like Einstein or Hawkins, I simply have to really think yes, they are smart and yes they can do some really "whiz bang" math...but...in some areas of things they have no more idea than anyone else would! Until there would be a factual way for a person to even go to the fourth dimension or any other dimension, we here and now, are stuck in limbo on any knowledge about those dimensions. We can all guess...and be left with just that. A good guess.

I am counting on my faith to have been worth my heart and love for it all. I've been given such a wonderful person to share being "here" with, and sure hope to be able to continue that same love and sharing after being planted in the 6 foot deep hotel! Yes, I do so hope after that it will be, "take the elevator past the bight white light and then the first door to the right".

 

[LuvMyMan]

If the soul is not solid or tangible, and it is that soul that travels to "Heaven" rather than the physical body it inhabits while it's incarnated, why would "Heaven" need to be solid or tangible?

Enlightened souls have no need of, or use for, those very human concepts.

One thing for sure, we will know if and when we do arrive there!

My Husband thinks everything is "matter" including Heaven. He then adds to that, a very good possibility is that a "heavenly place" could be very much a physical issue, with atomic structure existing but with the atoms being farther apart then what we now could even comprehend. Similar to our living in our current existence with having that "heavenly place" all around us, but we have no way currently to detect it. That "heavenly place" perhaps being in another dimension that until we could factually experience it, we could not accurately comprehend it.

If one then decides to bring into conversation a personal belief in things pertaining to the Bible, then the streets of Heaven being paved with gold, pops up! My view myself is that would maybe mean to compare our dirt ball Earth a sort of shabby place compared to the glory heaven would be...thus the terminology for us minions to have in comparing being here on our streets to streets of gold.

Of course if heaven is more physical then not, I sure hope they have some nice vintage shops to stop in and take a peek at!

 

[LuvMyMan]

Thank you, but it was your avatar that made me remember that I too have something similar. At a classic car event last year, one of the organisers commissioned an artist to capture my image in oils. How wonderfully complimentary is that? The finished portrait was displayed on their forthcoming event flyer. The event name, Crotch Cooler, stems from the war time, two seater sports cars, that had a rag top and flimsy side panels, in inclement weather you tended to get rather wet and cold in the nether regions.

View attachment 43426

We think it is GREAT for someone to pay a tribute to you and your car! Fab! Just FAB!

 

[LizzieMaine]

I never liked the idea of the streets of heaven being literally paved with gold -- aside from the gauche nouveau-riche aspect of it, gold is a very slippery metal. I don't consider an afterlife where people are constantly falling on their holy-of-holies to be all that appealing. So I'm definitely not one for biblical literalism, especially where The Revelation is concerned. A book couched from start to finish in obvious symbolism isn't meant to be taken literally anyway. What that line says to me is that in the presence of God, the material wealth that humanity so obsesses over is as worthless and as trivial as a cobblestone.

As for the afterlife itself, I'm extremely willing to be open-minded about whether it exists, and what it would be like if it does exist. If we were intended to know, or if it was worth knowing for us to know, a loving God would have made sure to tell us, explicitly and clearly, and with no symbolic obfuscation, what it would be like and what would be there. That we haven't been so told suggests to me that such foreknowledge is of no consequence. We'll find out when we get there.

 

[GHT]

As for the afterlife itself, I'm extremely willing to be open-minded about whether it exists, and what it would be like if it does exist. If we were intended to know, or if it was worth knowing for us to know, a loving God would have made sure to tell us, explicitly and clearly, and with no symbolic obfuscation, what it would be like and what would be there. That we haven't been so told suggests to me that such foreknowledge is of no consequence. We'll find out when we get there.

The Situation in Hell: Essays.
The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. The answer by one student was so "profound" that the professor shared it with colleagues via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well.
Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following:
First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. Therefore, no souls are leaving.

As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell.
With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:
1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.
2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. So which is it? If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, "it will be a cold day in Hades before I go out with you", and take into account the fact that I went out with her last night, then number 2 must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over.
The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore extinct . . . leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being, which explains why last night Teresa kept shouting "Oh, my God!"

We think it is GREAT for someone to pay a tribute to you and your car! Fab! Just FAB!

Thank you very much, kind lady.

 

[Benny Holiday]

If the soul is not solid or tangible, and it is that soul that travels to "Heaven" rather than the physical body it inhabits while it's incarnated, why would "Heaven" need to be solid or tangible?

Enlightened souls have no need of, or use for, those very human concepts.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'soul'. If you take it from the Biblical perspective, nowhere does it say in the Bible that people have an immortal soul, as in the ancient Greek concept of a spirit that ascends (or descends) to some vague afterlife. What it does say is that only at the resurrection of the dead will people "put on immortality" (1 Corinthians 15:53). Furthermore, Genesis 2:7 says that when God created people He formed people out of the 'dust of the earth' (raw elements) and breathed the 'breath of life' (Greek pneuma, meaning air, breath, wind, spirit) into him, the spark of animation if you like, and the two together became a 'living soul'. So the soul is both flesh and animating spark, or energy, combined. Ecclesiastes 12:7 says that when people die, their body breaks back down into the raw elements (the dust returns to the earth) and the breath, or animating energy, (pneuma) returns to God. Soem translation of the Bible may use the word spirit there, but it clearly refers to air or breath, not a disembodied intelligence. How do I know that? Ecclesiastes 9:5: "The living know they will die; but the dead know nothing . . . their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished." Also John 3:13: "No man has ascended to Heaven, but He (Jesus) that came down from Heaven . . ."

Now, again from the Bible, when Jesus raised people from the dead, like the famous Lazarus, they didn;t come back as floating ghosts, but in real, solid bodies. The same with Jesus' resurrection. He had a real, solid body of flesh. So if people are raised at the end of time with real bodies, then Heaven mustbe a solid, tangible place. In keeping with what we know scientifically of the universe, I think we can reasonably surmise that it's most likely a planet.

As to whether anyone thinks it'll be dull without death, war and disease, having watched both my parents sicken, suffer and die, and seeing the misery around the world on the news broadcasts every night, you're welcome to it. I'll take the life free of it, thanks very much.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I never liked the idea of the streets of heaven being literally paved with gold -- aside from the gauche nouveau-riche aspect of it, gold is a very slippery metal. I don't consider an afterlife where people are constantly falling on their holy-of-holies to be all that appealing. So I'm definitely not one for biblical literalism, especially where The Revelation is concerned. A book couched from start to finish in obvious symbolism isn't meant to be taken literally anyway. What that line says to me is that in the presence of God, the material wealth that humanity so obsesses over is as worthless and as trivial as a cobblestone.

There came a time in my life where I was forced (if for no other reason, honesty) to apply the same standards of open minded skepticism that I exhort the triers of fact to apply to proffered evidence in a courtroom to long accepted premises of the spiritual realm. It's become impossible for me to even consider taking the Bible literally, if for no other reason that we do not possess the original autographs of any of the books of the Bible. We can profess that those autographs are "inspired and inerrant," but when the extant Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of those books that predate the middle of the 3rd Century C.E. contain between 200,000 and 400,000 textual differences in identical passages, determining precisely what was inspired is pure speculation. And it makes no sense to take anything that cannot be determined literally.

And the there is the matter of the canon of the Bible itself: there are a number of different canons that declare which books or portions of books are inspired or "God's word," even among various Christian traditions. When determining that, for example, the Revelation was to be deemed as inspired was the result of a show of hands at a church council (And not only was it the last book of the NT canon to be included- 415 C.E.- but it was not even considered to be inspired by Luther, nor is it still included within the Divine Office of the Eastern Orthodox church.), you realize that the decision to include books are purely human in origin. And I cannot regard that as divine- at all. Speculation about what transpires in the Great Beyond really has more to do with Dante than the Bible for most folks, anyway. And of course, there is no verse in the Bible itself that reads, "The Bible is God's word."

 

[Zombie_61]

...How do we really know much more about those matters aside from what we can know from sources like the Bible, or from someone that could sincerely give an accounting of being dead and then revived?...

Recent studies have shown that, contrary to popular believe that the brain dies immediately after the body ceases to function, there is actually a surge in brain activity immediately after death which leads to what some scientists are calling a "hyper reality", and that this is what's responsible for some people's memories of an "afterlife" during those moments while they're clinically dead before being revived. And if you look deep enough, science has an explanation for just about everything that people consider to be a spiritual phenomenon. So, unfortunately, we're right back to the hard truth that we as individuals will never actually know what happens to us after death until we die.

...My Husband thinks everything is "matter" including Heaven. He then adds to that, a very good possibility is that a "heavenly place" could be very much a physical issue, with atomic structure existing but with the atoms being farther apart then what we now could even comprehend. Similar to our living in our current existence with having that "heavenly place" all around us, but we have no way currently to detect it. That "heavenly place" perhaps being in another dimension that until we could factually experience it, we could not accurately comprehend it...

That's an interesting theory, and for all we know he could be more "right" than any of us. I do believe the afterlife, if there is one, is in a dimension or plane of existence that we, with our human limitations, find difficult (if not impossible) to comprehend. And, with the exception of dreams and/or hallucinations, since our life here on Earth is a very tangible one, most of us cannot conceive of our consciousness being contained in a "field" of energy (i.e., the "soul" or "spirit") without a physical vessel, so we rationalize it by creating theories such as your husband's. I am in no way attempting to dispute his theory by stating that, I'm merely trying to take all of the possibilities into consideration.

I guess it depends on your definition of 'soul'...Now, again from the Bible, when Jesus raised people from the dead, like the famous Lazarus, they didn;t come back as floating ghosts, but in real, solid bodies. The same with Jesus' resurrection. He had a real, solid body of flesh. So if people are raised at the end of time with real bodies, then Heaven mustbe a solid, tangible place. In keeping with what we know scientifically of the universe, I think we can reasonably surmise that it's most likely a planet...

Each of these examples describe an event that (allegedly) occurred here on Earth, so they bring us no closer to an answer about the true nature of "Heaven" than anything else that's been discussed in this thread.

With regards to the rest of your post, I know so little of the Bible that I couldn't possibly agree with or contest anything you stated. But I do think it's worth considering.

 

[LuvMyMan]

Recent studies have shown that, contrary to popular believe that the brain dies immediately after the body ceases to function, there is actually a surge in brain activity immediately after death which leads to what some scientists are calling a "hyper reality", and that this is what's responsible for some people's memories of an "afterlife" during those moments while they're clinically dead before being revived. And if you look deep enough, science has an explanation for just about everything that people consider to be a spiritual phenomenon. So, unfortunately, we're right back to the hard truth that we as individuals will never actually know what happens to us after death until we die.

That's an interesting theory, and for all we know he could be more "right" than any of us. I do believe the afterlife, if there is one, is in a dimension or plane of existence that we, with our human limitations, find difficult (if not impossible) to comprehend. And, with the exception of dreams and/or hallucinations, since our life here on Earth is a very tangible one, most of us cannot conceive of our consciousness being contained in a "field" of energy (i.e., the "soul" or "spirit") without a physical vessel, so we rationalize it by creating theories such as your husband's. I am in no way attempting to dispute his theory by stating that, I'm merely trying to take all of the possibilities into consideration.

Each of these examples describe an event that (allegedly) occurred here on Earth, so they bring us no closer to an answer about the true nature of "Heaven" than anything else that's been discussed in this thread.

With regards to the rest of your post, I know so little of the Bible that I couldn't possibly agree with or contest anything you stated. But I do think it's worth considering.

I certainly have to say, with an open mind, yes....we may not fully know the journey into life after death until we open that door....for me however, I have faith there will be something of a door to open and lots of loved ones waiting there. As my Husband states, he would be fairly ticked off to merely be "worm food material" when that time comes. And as much as he has been a fighter most of his life, his health is slowly bringing him to a day when he will be looking to open that door to heaven.

 

[HudsonHawk]

So I'm flipping around on the TV last night, and I run across a show about Einstein. It's from a few years ago, and it's a mix of Einstein the man and his scientific theories. They started explaining how gravity isn't the earth pulling objects to it, it's the bending of the space around the earth which in turn *pushes* objects toward the earth and so forth...made me think of this thread. Lots going on both from a scientific perspective and the fact that Einstein was one odd duck.