Can anybody help me find a logical explanation for this stuff?

Well, you're assuming they're perfectly sane. Are you sure they are?

Even if they are, you might be making some assumptions about what it means to be perfectly sane. People without mental illnesses can still hallucinate when fatigued or under stress. How they interpret those hallucinations, or any emotional distress they might feel, will depend a lot on their cultural background.
 
While reading through this thread again I remembered this post.

The location was already important before Islam, but how exactly did they know it was such a special location?
 
Zanders said:
While reading through this thread again I remembered this post.

The location was already important before Islam, but how exactly did they know it was such a special location?
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It appears that a thread on this site has already debunked this.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=176572


Anyway, on the subject of the "being of light" that people often see and claim is Jesus. I have talked to three different people about their experiences, and they describe an overwhelming feeling caused by being in his presence.
 
I would probably feel the same way if I felt that I had been in the presence of a "being of light" whether it was Jesus or not. And then the "being of light" would go away. And then I would tell people about it. And people would ask for me to reproduce it or prove it in some other way. And I wouldn't be able to, because it would have been a personal experience that might have been a hallucination. If I were persuasive enough, I might be able to get a group of people to believe my story with no proof at all. Suddenly, I'm a cult leader.

Ward
 
Zanders, I notice in other threads you seem quite skeptic of claim sand ask for evidence and support.
When it comes to this thread you seem to want it to be true anddiscount any posts against it.
 
wardenclyffe said:
I would probably feel the same way if I felt that I had been in the presence of a "being of light" whether it was Jesus or not. And then the "being of light" would go away. And then I would tell people about it. And people would ask for me to reproduce it or prove it in some other way. And I wouldn't be able to, because it would have been a personal experience that might have been a hallucination. If I were persuasive enough, I might be able to get a group of people to believe my story with no proof at all. Suddenly, I'm a cult leader.

Ward
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The feeling isn't just like shock of seeing a strange being, it is usually described like a surge of energy.


Captain_Swoop, this was my first thread. I have grown more critical since the time this thread was most active.
 
I was assuming everything that comes with being in the presence of a "being of light." Warm feelings, messages of peace, new outlook on life. Of course, if I were a believer in Jesus, I would expect to experience all these things and if I didn't, I'd be disappointed. I might even exaggerate or embellish the experience a little bit. Since this was a personal experience, I could say whatever I wanted, and believers would believe.

Ward
 
The pattern seems to be broken, one of them said that they felt an overwhelming sense of shame. Nobody else I talked to said anything like that.

I'm sure there are many consistent elements to many of the stories out there, but there are likely just as many that contradict the others. I guess I am forcing connections.


(Oh joy. I was browsing a site and saw an add for the "New Church", which is related to Swedenborg. Funny coincidence, or is it Google trying to find ads based on my searches?.)
 
This guy is really haunting me. His name seems to be popping up everywhere now that I am trying to forget about him.

When I looked up Dr Oz on wikipedia, it mentioned that he followed the teachings of Swedenborg, and now I just saw somebody tweeting a quote from him on my Mom's twitter.

I know they shouldn't, but I find coincidences like this a little intimidating. I mean, he's not that famous, so I think it seems odd to be seeing his name so much.
 
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I'm sorry to revive this thread again, but I have one last question. Has anyone ever heard of the "ball of fire" phenomenon that Swedenborg supposedly experienced mentioned by any other "spiritualists"?

"As his consciousness expands from dreams and hypnogogic states to waking trances, conversations with demons and angels, and visits to the afterlife territories, ES actively seeks out ways of validating his experiences. In all these psychic states, he begins to experience the little-known phenomenon called photism or orbs of light. The meditator seeking guidance finds a signal system to guide him. ES sees an affirming flame. He observes: "Such a flame appeared to me so often, and indeed, in different sizes in a diversity of color and splendor, that during some months when I was writing a certain work, hardly a day passed in which a flame did not appear as vividly as the flame of a household hearth." Most people who experience orbs are puzzled by by their significance. ES tested the validity of his flame and soon discovered that it was "a sign of approval." He could, for example, correlate it with his scientific breakthroughs. Both by its color and warmth, his flame symbolizes love and feeling. During his expanded awareness, ES begins experiencing his guiding flame during his daytime trances and visions as well."

And another thing that he could claim to do. He claimed that he could talk to people's "familiar spirits" (not like the things commonly known as familiar spirits today).

http://books.google.com/books?id=ET...v=onepage&q=swedenborg queen familiar&f=false

The first paragraph on the page, the section on the "familiar spirit", is the only one that I was talking about. Do any of these teachings parallel what spiritualists claim today?


Also, something I thought of myself. The royal purple he mentioned earlier could have a slight connection to the "Violet Flame" concept. Although it is a rather big stretch


What I am trying to do right now is see if any of his concepts parallel modern spiritualist ones. Mostly, they don't fit anything I am familiar with. though I am interested if anyone is aware of any that fit with these.

This isn't about proving his abilities or anything, just looking for parallels with what spiritualists are teaching today.
 
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One of his techinques certainly seems to parallel the yogic concept of "Pranayama"(link).

"Swedenborg sums up the matter by saying that when he communed with spirits he would for an hour at a time hardly draw a breath, “taking in only enough air to serve as a supply to his thoughts.”"

And here is a section with more detail on it.
It is the section titled with "inward breathing and other indications of a spiritual constitution", and the part that matters the most ends around page 51.


Practices like this could easily cause hallucinations and trances like the ones he had. Or one could say that it is proof of the effectiveness of the technique. Of course the first option is the most likely one.


And some other link I just want to share. Here is a link to a page that gives an interesting overview of Swedenborg's life, and it talks about his great scientific knowledge around the bottom.

Also, I find his encounter with Jesus interesting, because of what he claims he said.

"Looking at Christ’s smile, which Swedenborg thought was as it must have been “when he lived on Earth,” Swedenborg was surprised to hear the Lord ask if he had a “clean bill of health,” a reference to a time when Swedenborg was almost hung for breaking quarantine during the plague. Humbled, Swedenborg replied that he, Christ, knew the answer to this better than he did himself. Christ agreed and replied, “Then do.” Swedenborg took this to mean “Then do.” Swedenborg took this to mean he was to fulfill his promise to abandon his scientific work and to concentrate instead on investigating the spiritual worlds within. "

Most people agree that Swedenborg was not a liar, so he must have been delusional. How vivid can hallucinations be when had by people with no history of mental problems, and what all kinds of things can they say? What he said seems rather odd to me.
 
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Zanders said:
Most people agree that Swedenborg was not a liar, so he must have been delusional. How vivid can hallucinations be when had by people with no history of mental problems, and what all kinds of things can they say?
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Well, as a schizophrenic who hears Voices I can tell you they can be very detailed and vividly heard. And it started up quickly, when before I was normal.

Or consider the case of Jani Schofield who at 5 began having both extremely vivid Voice and Visual hallucinations. After 5 months at UCLA psych the docs agreed she was not lying or playing, but just reporting honestly what she was seeing, and so had SZ.

This 2 1/2 minute youtube clip of Jani at 7 years old shows clearly how real, detailed, lifelike, and vivid they are for her.

http://www.youtube.com/user/channel4jani?feature=mhum#p/u/0/2O4vUTe0E-s
 
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Watching that video you posted now, but what doesn't fit is that she actually had signs of mental problems. No one ever said that Swedenborg did anything abnormal, they all said he seemed completely sane.



Let's shift the focus to his scientific insights. So you don't have to go to the page, I will quote some here.

"For 22 years he thought about this, and he eventually came to the conclusion that way back in ancient history, the sun had been spinning so violently that it threw off the materials that make up the planets. Our solar system, he said, was created by gravitating gasses."
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"Something that still forms a foundation for the modern theory of origins being taught in our schools today. But Swedenborg himself told people that spirit beings from other worlds had come to tell him his information was correct. " (Of course this could be delusion since they confirmed what he already discovered. And they sure didn't give him good information about life on other planets
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"His theory of expanding gasses was called the Nebular Hypothesis, and it still forms the foundation for most theories on the origin of stars and planets today. And men like Immanuel Kant, Charles Darwin, Chamberlain, Moulton, Whipple and Kuiper built on this theory."
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"In the field of biology, Swedenborg stressed on the importance of cerebral cortex. Apart from these, he drew feasible sketches of futuristic machines, including an airplane, a submarine, a steam engine, an air gun and a slow-combustion stove. Emanuel Swedenborg was offered the position of a professor in mathematics at Uppsala University, in 1724. However, he declined the offer, because he dealt with geometry, chemistry and metallurgy mainly, not maths."
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"After three years he published his great work, Opera Philosophica and Mineralia, of which the first volume was called The Principia, or the First Principles of Natural Things. In this, Swedenborg posited atoms within atoms, or discrete orders of particles, such that the smaller or more fundamental particles had discretely higher energies and moved internally in rapid vortical patterns. The appearance of solidity was provided by the speed at which the internal parts moved, and because this motion was in a directed spiral, there was a polarity to the motion which Swedenborg used to explain the magnetisation of solids. The ultimate constituent was the 'natural point' which was infinitely small and had infinite tendencies to motion. He then proceeded on the astronomical scale to explain the origin of the solar system as the progressive condensation of solar matter. "
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"There are considerable similarities of these early ideas with what science has subsequently discovered. The modern atom with its rapidly circulating electrons appears to be solid in the same way he suggested, and rather differently from what Boyle and Newton imagined. Modern physics too has realised that the constituents of atoms have higher and higher energies, with the proposed quarks having energies much larger than appear in normal molecular, atomic, or nuclear processes. His ideas of intrinsic polarity in the constitution of particles is a remarkable anticipation of the notion of spin in modern particle physics, while the same ideas applied to magnetic materials produced pictures of magnetisation which are still valid today. "
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He also developed crude ideas for submarines, and flying machines and designed more practical things such as dry docks, pumps, and a way to transport small ships fourteen miles overland to help the king win a battle.
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He was certainly a very intelligent man. On the page for the Nebular Hypothesis on wikipedia it says that "It was first proposed in 1734 by Emanuel Swedenborg."


On another site it gives a reason that could have mentally stressed him enough to cause some sort of delusions.

"There's no question about it. Emanuel Swedenborg was a genius. In fact, he might have been the greatest scientific mind of the 18th century. But then something happened that changed the course of his entire life. It was the death of his father.

When Swedenborg's father died, he had trouble coming to grips with it. All of his learning, all of the books in his library, none of it had really prepared him for the ugliest reality of human life."

"Cadaver after cadaver failed to produce any results, even though he worked long into the night, trying to find the secrets of life and death. And then something important happened. He made a dramatic shift from pure scientific inquiry to what could only be described as mysticism. Instead of gathering raw data and analyzing it, Swedenborg began to rely on his instincts and inspiration.

He believed that every time he was on the verge of a great discovery, a mysterious flash of light would blaze through his mind to let him know that he had just uncovered one of the secrets of the universe. These flashes of light, however, did not answer his questions. His own brilliance failed to reveal the secrets that cadavers refused to yield. Convinced that he would never unlock the secrets of immortality, Swedenborg sank into terrible depression. He had mastered countless subjects as an intellectual, but the grave simply wouldn't speak to him."
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This was right before his "encounter with Christ". Although there is one problem, there is no good citation for this whole section. But if this is all true, it would be enough to make somebody delusional.
 
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Ok, I made an embarrassing blunder earlier.

Here is the page that I copied the information on Wallace Fard Muhammad from, and I somehow missed the fact that he said the other planets were inhabited.

"Master Fard Muhammad called Mars an “inhabited planet.”
"Master Fard Muhammad said, “Mercury is also an inhabited planet"

There goes any shred of credibility.

But something I didn't ask earlier. At the risk of sounding stupid, about his calculations of the planets and their distance from the sun, is that unusual knowledge for the time? We already debunked the stuff about the earth and sun, but I forgot to mention this part.

I looked up a few of them and they were pretty close. Though, this could have been known at the time.
 
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Ok, I finally found the name of the other person that described their encounter with Jesus in almost the same way. Her name is Margaret Tweddell, and she decribed her encounter like this

I have seen the Lord Jesus in all his radiance, in all his glory, but not immediately on arrival because then you are still with the dust and vibrations of your own thinking.

When I first saw him, the light and the glory and the surging of power was so tremendous. It was like an avalanche of feeling over me. At the present time I just don't feel that I have found a way in which to describe what it was like - an indescribable contentment and uplifting, a tremendous ecstasy of feeling on all realms, being completely out of yourself, an unusually vivid knowledge of the intense, sympathetic love around you - the warmth of it, the light of it - something that is not external but is part of you. It is like a sunrise on a mountain that is covered with snow, when the colors come down and reflect on you - a dazzling brilliance that would make you close your eyes and yet feel it in every pore of your body. This is the feeling that you have as you come toward the LIGHT.
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More on her here

Again, a being of light. And the feeling she got is extremely close to what Ben H. Sewtt said.

http://bswett.com/1965-10Proof.html

Does this not piece together a rather consistent image?
 
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Zanders said:
On top of the being of light and the feeling they get, I think there are a lot of consistencies to what they say about the "Astral realm" and how it works.
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Yeah, comparative mysticism is one of my interests. You are right in that there are too many consistencies in comparative mysticism, comparative religion, and comparative mythology to be chalked up to coincidence or to mundane cross-cultural influence.

I've been to the the Astral realm in lucid dreams and in out-of-body experience. You just gotta see it.
 
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