How Conscious are Ghosts?
July 20th, 2007 by John WolfeIt’s 11:30 P.M. The instant your head touches down on the pillow you feel a surge of relaxation come over your tired body. Between the coolness of the sheets and each individual muscle unwinding, you begin to lose consciousness. Your awareness of the gentle sound of rain drops tapping against the window pane fades into silence. Then it happens: the unmistakable sound of someone walking the staircase sends you reeling out of bed. Each creaking floorboard rings out like a shriek; you pause to get your bearings, analyzing the noise. Soon the steps release another groan. Peering into the darkness you wait, mind racing with fragmented thoughts- Someone is in the house! Impossible, I would have heard them trying to get in. What the hell is causing that sound?
The storm outside has intensified. Lightning zigs and zags, etching its way across the black sky, sending bright flashes of light flooding in through your bedroom window. That’s when you notice an ominous shadow next to your own, creeping across the wall, immediately in front of you. Your head spins around to find the source of this presence, fearing what may be lurking over your shoulder- no one’s there. Jerking it back towards the last place you saw the shadow; you come face to face with a translucent image of a woman, dressed in Victorian style attire, screaming your name. She stares a hole right through you, aware and very consumed with your presence. Frozen in terror, you slam your eyes shut…waiting. Five agonizing minutes pass. Mustering up the courage to again try and view your surroundings, you peer through tightly clamped eyelids. Shards of lightning slash through the night, illuminating your room, which is now completely empty of any presence but your own.
The above scenario (if it were true) would probably be considered an intelligent haunt by most paranormal enthusiasts and ghost busters. Intelligent haunts are usually classified as having very obvious cognitive interactions with people. Residual haunts are classified as only images, which appear to be stuck in a loop with no awareness or interaction with anyone. I agree with these definitions, and it’s obvious that there are different styles and classifications of hauntings, but to what extent are any of these ghosts truly conscious?
It’s a pretty common belief that most spirits are entities that were once physically focused, yet they are apparently now hung up in some sort of limbo state. The more I’ve thought about this concept, over the years, the less I tend to view ghosts in this manner. I feel that when we pass on, we come back into contact with our energy source. While there may be other options for us, the most appealing one is to come into the amazing awareness of how fantastic we are, basking in pure consciousness- similar to the death experience I described in Making the Death Transition. It’s the equivalent of a pulling sensation, drawing us into the aspect of consciousness that fuels our existence. However I don’t believe there is an actual journey to be made. While dying may take time, death is truly instantaneous. I feel you cannot get lost when making the death transition because there is no destination or separation from anything; those are all illusions created by the worrisome human mind.
So, if we do “assimilate” back into our own source awareness once we die, then what is it that continues to hang around the physical plane, in the form of ghosts? I’ve explored a few options to try and answer this in Specters, Spirits and Time, but I’m always working on expanding ideas and ways of interpreting these types of phenomenon. For example: What if our energy leaves a trail? What if it’s similar to watching someone move a laser pointer or other bright light source extremely fast? If it’s done quick enough your eye can’t catch up to the actual location of the source of the light trail- you can only see circular rings from the last place it was located. I believe the main portion of our consciousness always makes its phase shift, away from the physical plane, every time someone passes on. The portion of consciousness, which we identify with, never hangs around this environment once the physical vehicle is deceased, however there may be lingering trails off of our energy that still identify with our last physical body. So, in theory it’s possible to be fully withdrawn from the physical plane after we die, yet be a ghost at the same time.
The theory I’m describing may sound more like a residual type haunt. But maybe even intelligent haunts are more residual than they are intelligent. What if there is enough of our energy leftover (trailing behind us), after we pass, that it has a semblance of intelligence but it is not truly conscious? This could be similar to some form of artificial intelligence. Seemingly it can interact with things and people, but it’s not actually the true conscious source of the individual which has passed. If this is the case, then every person that is now physically focused has the potential for a small portion of their energy to become a ghost once they die.
These ideas could even explain why ghost hunters always talk about spirits draining energy from power sources, such as batteries, electronics and even people. If the spirits were full energy flowing conscious entities, then they shouldn’t need to draw extra energy. They would be a powerhouse of energy on their own.
Some ghosts seem to hang around environments, such as castles, for hundreds if not thousand of years. Why would a small trail of energy hang around this long? Time is only a human concept, not a law that extends into the afterlife. Thousands of physical years can pass in an instant (to our awareness) after we make the death transition.
While I know I’m not proving or disproving anything, scientifically or otherwise with this post, I do enjoy pondering these types of occurrences to try and make some sense out of ghostly phenomenon. Hauntings and evidence of spirits have been collected for many years and even though technology continues to improve, we are still not much closer to understanding these events. Perhaps there are some things that science will never truly understand or prove. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, nor should we ever forfeit our own personal pursuits for more knowledge.
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Family Spirits: Part II
Q & A: Seeing Body Doubles in a Haunted Location
Specters, Spirits & Time
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Through the Eyes of a Ghost
