The other side 4

Ron from Princeton had this response to my paranormal posts:
****I'm always curious about those stories, and what is not being told. There is usually a logical reason why things happen, and your story about the woman who died, and then a light that wasn't even hooked to wires worked, the washing machine broke down, I generally discount these completely.

I have never been in a house where a light fixture was in place but "didn't have any wires running to it". Very unlikely. Who was the electrician who checked it out? Let's get him on the phone. The washing machine goes out, and the error message suggests "mother is no longer here" by saying "The motherboard is out"? First of all, I doubt seriously if the manufacturer actually put in an error message that said "the motherboard is out", more likely, a "system failure", or some other code indicating a problem.

Stories tend to get better with each re-telling, as the facts are adjusted to fit the wishes of the person telling the story. There is usually a logical reason for almost anything that happens, and "coincidence" plays a big part in many of these." *******

This expresses the skeptical view well, a view I shared years ago but no more. The eminent psychologist and philosopher William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience answers this logic in his comment on “the convincingness of these feelings of reality. . . . They are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic . . . if you do have them . . . you cannot help regarding them as genuine perceptions of truth, as revelations of a kind of reality which no adverse argument, however unanswerable by you in words, can expel from your belief.”
He states that intuitions from such experiences “come from a deeper level” than our rationalism. “Something in you absolutely knows (his emphasis) that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it.”

I'll just continue telling stories as they come to me, and now I'll tell a story about myself.

About 25 years ago I was agonizing about a decision that would direct my life’s course and beseeching God for help in the decision. As I paced by my hutch, a plate that was propped up sat down and sent a cup into my hands. The drop from above startled me into accepting the answer that my insides had been telling me but my head had argued against. I then knew what I had to do, although the message was not explicit and I couldn’t have presented a logical case for this decision that set an unconventional life course. My future was uncertain but the Something I usually call God was there with me.

The cups and plates had been arranged in exactly the same way for several years before that and have been ever since then, without moving. Like Cindy who just KNEW it was her mom, like Carol who knew her dad rang the bells, I KNEW the other side had spoken to me.

Now a series of encounters with the other side in disconnected notes I’ve taken here and there. If you’re familiar with this sort of happenings, you recognize them as authentic. Skeptics will disbelieve no matter what. I was one when I was determined to be “scientific.”

** A dying man finds himself going up stairs and coming to a door. He opens it and sees a pleasant gathering of persons he knew before they died, but he can’t join them. Assured about what follows death, he passes over shortly thereafter.

** Three weeks after Marie died, Katherine was sleeping when she woke to a touch on her body. Marie was sitting on her bed. “How did you get here?” Marie didn’t say anything and looked the same as always.

** Mona was sleeping and woke up to her deceased dad’s voice, “Mona.” It was “so real,” she told me, “just like him.” She looked around and saw nothing, but had no fear. This has happened “a couple times,” she said.

Once when she was doing dishes and crying about losing her precious grand-daughter, she had a fleeting glimpse of something white going by—like sheer, sheer flimsy material. The same appeared while she was walking in her living room. “Don did you see Mindy?” “No,” he said.
Other contacts have happened in bed, where she first thought maybe there was a mouse.

Mindy’s cousin visits “all the time,” Mona was told. This cousin from the other side of Mindy’s family was two years older than Mindy but both were the only girls in the family and they grew up together, very close to each other.

Since her death, Mindy’s cousin visits with her “all the time,” Mona was told. This cousin was two years older than Mindy but they grew up together, very close to each other, and both were the only girl in the family.

Mona, like me, has enlarged her ideas as a result of these experiences. She’s sorry she didn’t believe her mom when she told Mona she was on the ceiling as her doctor said, “We’re losing her.” She came back to this life for a while, then died, and Mona lives with the regret of not having believed her.

Spirit visitations tend to be dreamlike but are “more real” than dreams. They often come at bedtime or sleep-time, and they come unexpectedly—we have no control over such things. But some people seem likelier than others to receive them. In my experience, they are persons with spiritual sensitivity, but they range from fundamentalist believers to open-minded religious to agnostics who dislike religion.