Ghosts and Spooky Sensations
How does naturalistic pantheism deal with the concept of ghosts? The simple answer is that, it doesn't. As pantheism is non-dualistic, or more accurately, dual-aspect monistic, seeing no separation from the immanent and transcendent, there is no secondary 'matter' or spirit like world in pantheism. [More on dualism topics here]
However, this does not address the FEELING or experience of a disembodied presence. I have had quite a history of these experiences, and their depth, frequency, accuracy, and intensity lead me to believe they are not evidence of an afterlife, but suggest some capacity for receiving information beyond our known means.
Let me clarify, I do not believe in a supernatural, I see all phenomenon as natural and of this world. This does not mean we have a full and complete understand of all natural phenomena, and here are some examples from my own experience:
When I was a teenager, I had an intense experience, talking on the phone with someone where all of a sudden I started seeing things I couldn't explain: the way a kitchen was decorated, a meeting at a restaurant, the dress someone wore in their coffin. Somehow, I had tapped into this knowledge about this person I had never met and had no communication with.
For a little while I thought, that's it, there are ghosts and I can communicate with them! But then it occurred to me that all the knowledge I had about the deceased was through the experiences of the person I was talking to - not independent of them. The person on the phone knew all of these events, moments, the memories were his.
From here, it was a logical step to either A.) I have tapped into this person's memories for some unknown reason or B.) This person is explicitly lying to me for some unknown reason. So, like a good budding scientist, I tested the theory.
True, my methods weren't up to par, but at 14, all I could do at the time was enter a chat room and see if I could reproduce results with people who had no connection to me. And I did. Over and over again, confirmation came of my capacity to see things through their eyes, what their rooms looked like to great detail, I suppose it was more akin to the concept of remote viewing. But whatever it was, it didn't fit neatly into any box of communication we had or have today. What it did give me, was a sense that our feelings of those passed may be more related to what or who is still present.
But what about all those times I felt a presence and I was alone? During this same time period, things got very loud in the silence. I picked up on feeling others there at my bedside, walking through my house; at first I wasn't afraid but it became so frequent and disturbing that ultimately, I just wanted it to stop.
After many trips to the library and conversations with others, I lit a candle and essentially asked for it all to stop, to please take the blinking light off me as some train station for the departed. And after that day, 20 years later, I haven't had another experience like it.
Now, we could try to pull out theological implications, all sorts of reasons I felt this way or stopped having these experiences, but this simplest is this - it was all in my mind.
I don't mean that I had a lapse of sanity or a mental disorder, simply that I had consistently conditioned myself to believe that certain sensations meant something more than what they were. Watch a scary movie at night and then go to bed, you'll be hard wired to see danger in the shadows or jump at the normal creaking sounds of your house when they meant nothing the night before.
The truth is, I miss those feelings, I wanted them to be more and I still have this other very convincing experience that I have somehow gleaned information through some alternative means, so the answers are not concrete. What they do conclude though is that the experience of a ghost is likely more complicated and less spooky than we've come to believe.
