Have you had this experience? Care to share?

[Lucidity]

Are we connected in ways we don’t understand?

I was having lunch with my cousin in Spokane yesterday and she was telling me about an experience she had had the previous night when she felt a strong impression to call the mother of her friend, a professional climber for North Face. This was unusual. The mom told her that her son was missing, along with his two climbing partners, and it appears they were almost certainly killed in an avalanche.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/18/americ ... 3DClimbers

Obviously this is a terrible tragedy, but it also led to us discussing what exactly could be going on when we have these kinds of profound “impression to do something” experiences.

I had a similar experience a number of years ago. While driving back to Austin from Houston, out of nowhere, I felt a strong push to call my childhood friend who I very rarely talked to. I had no reason to call him, and he almost never actually picks up. I ignored the feeling at first but it persisted so I gave in and made the call. To my surprise he picked up and was clearly surprised. I told him I felt I should call him. He was stunned. He proceeded to tell me he had just gotten home to find his wife had left him and his dog passed away an hour afterwards. My friend had just sat down on the couch alone and desperate.

It may not sound like it, but since my TBM days I’ve actually become quite skeptical. You can tell because I use satisfying phrases such as “it’s an interesting idea but I don’t find the evidence of _______ to be convincing”, and “sure, but that’s anecdotal”. I might annoyingly point out when you have succumbed to a logical fallacy, name drop a science book I’m currently reading, and quote Dawkins on issues far outside his expertises. But even with these sterling credentials I can’t quite escape the feeling, yes feeling, that we are connected to each other, and the earth, in ways far beyond our understanding and likely our ability to understand. Sure these may just be coincidences. After all what about all times these “impressions” don’t occur? But I wonder.

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away? Would you mind telling me about them?

[20/20hind]

I have had similar things happen. I was reading D&C 132 and had this overwhelming impression that the church is totally made up. I later confirmed it through Google searches.

Tender mercies

[alas]

Yes, I have had these kind of experiences. There seems to be something, maybe more than one something, about our consciousness that is more than localized energy inside our brains.

We have had discussions on NOM before about NDE, and that is one kind of experience, often related to out of body experiences. But there is something going on that science has not explained. It just does not fit “dying brain shutting down.” I have had an out of body experience, and nothing that the scientists and skeptics have come up with yet explain it.

I have had other experiences that I will not try to explain in a pubic forum, things like ESP, and being given knowledge that no human being could possibly know yet, not exactly foretelling the future, but foretelling the unknown now. Things about death, life, sort of like in Stars wars, when they feel a disturbance in the force. I have had understanding open up, kind of like watching an intense movie that explains “stuff”. I have had experiences of communication with an outside “other” who tells me stuff in second person, like “you are going to have a baby.” Within hours of conception....too early to even hope for pregnancy. I have had experiences of communicating with other people, that there is just no scientific way of explaining, and it is too powerful and too different than normal thoughts to write off as coincident.

There is something to human consciousness beyond our physical brains, but I can’t begin to say what it is.

There is more to human consciousness than we understand. We try to explain things like this, and the only way is religion. Yet I reject all region as man made. You know, as I joked/no joke above about Star Wars, that explains it as well if not better than real human religion about Gods who have the head of an elephant, or die on a cross so big bad father god won’t punish us for eternity. But sit for an hour high in the Rocky Mountains and you will get “John Denver” syndrome...as he called it, “Rocky Mountain high” But you know ”the Rockies are living, they never will die.” There is something so sacred and alive about our earth. There is something of divinity in the rocks, rivers; they live and are sacred.

All right, I am starting to sound like I am over looking Bear Lake in Southern Idaho, just before sunrise....cause I guess I am. But I won’t quote you any more John Denver.

[Lucidity]

I have had similar things happen. I was reading D&C 132 and had this overwhelming impression that the church is totally made up. I later confirmed it through Google searches.

Tender mercies

Tender mercies indeed! Maybe one day we'll get a Elder Ronald E. Poelman-ish talk on Tender Mercies were he explains the final mercy reveals its all BS.

Or speaking to the Young Single Adults we will hear about "Tinder Mercies", that end with medical confirmation that indeed you don't have an STD.

[Mad Jax]

Most of the time I take stories with a grain of salt, and try to rely on the logos aspect of an argument rather than an ethos aspect, but when access to information is restricted and the only information is from the testimony of others, things often get interesting. Most specifically, I'm referring to the US military's remote viewing program, which lasted for decades and was shut down ostensibly because of limited results. This contrasts with those who have worked for the CIA and in high level intelligence units of the military (G3 on the Division level, basically) who argue they were employed successfully for decades.

This link is from a channel that leaves the question open, while exploring the evidence and presenting it concisely to basically give anyone a push if the subject matter proves interesting. Really one of the better channels for not making unsubstantiated claims.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQcHY2DUDd8

[Lucidity]

I have had an out of body experience, and nothing that the scientists and skeptics have come up with yet explain it.

We have to imagine there are certainly things that exist outside our ability to observe them. Maybe as our tools advance this will change, or maybe we will never get there.

have had other experiences that I will not try to explain in a pubic forum, things like ESP, and being given knowledge that no human being could possibly know yet, not exactly foretelling the future, but foretelling the unknown now. Things about death, life, sort of like in Stars wars, when they feel a disturbance in the force. I have had understanding open up, kind of like watching an intense movie that explains “stuff”. I have had experiences of communication with an outside “other” who tells me stuff in second person, like “you are going to have a baby.” Within hours of conception....too early to even hope for pregnancy. I have had experiences of communicating with other people, that there is just no scientific way of explaining, and it is too powerful and too different than normal thoughts to write off as coincident.

Thank you for sharing. I like the "disturbance in the force" as a figure of speech. Many cultures seem to believe mothers have a special connection to their children, and of course there are many anecdotal stories. Clearly there is far more to consciousness than we are even beginning to understand.

[Hagoth]

I think the majority of these kinds of experiences fall along the lines of Boyd K. Packer's admonition for gaining a testimony, the miracle is found in the retelling of it. Unintentional confirmation bias sweetens the deal each time the story is retold.

BUT

Really weird and apparently inexplicable things like this do happen with surprising frequency. Most of us have had it happen, or been very close to someone when it happens. Coincidence? Maybe, but I share your hunch, Lucidity, that there is undetectable interconnection going on in the cosmos, so I try to remain open minded about the possibility of such things without leaping to conclusions in specific incidents. Sometimes you just have to appreciate the weirdness of it.

I do, however, remain very skeptical about things like esp, remote viewing, telepathy, etc. As Larry Niven points out, "Psi and/or magical powers, if real, are nearly useless. Over the lifetime of the human species we would otherwise have done something with them." If anyone knows how to use such powers it would be the US military, and it wouldn't have taken 10 years to find Bin Laden.

[Nonny]

I like the idea that we are somehow connected to the people we love or are close to. I have had ideas or impressions come into my mind and sometimes they seem timely. Yet, more often when I have had impressions to call someone or do something (like the apocryphal story of dropping off a gallon of milk), these action amounts to nothing rather than something. So often in fact I have created an axiom for myself. “If something sounds like a good idea, it probably isn’t.” Then logic kicks in to make sure I don’t do anything too crazy.

I once vowed for a period of time to follow through on all these to try to cultivate this gift. The data was inconclusive. I concluded it was likely the “hit or miss fallacy”. We tend to count the hits and not notice the misses. I guess that if we follow through on compassionate hunches it will bring more goodness to the world whether they are psychic hunches or not.

I’ll drop one specific story just for fun. DH and I planned a trip to visit our son for a holiday one year. DH couldn’t leave until a certain date, but I felt compelled to fly up sooner, like a real urgency. So we flew separately by a few days. In the interim time my son was in a terrible accident. It was like a fortuitous miracle that I was there to take care of the details of the accident and my grandson, who otherwise would have been completely alone (he was a young child at the time). I can’t explain it or if it was just a coincidence, who knows.

[wtfluff]

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away?

Nope. Absolutely nothing that I can think of. I'm sure there's still a part of me somewhere that wants to believe in this type of magic.

Why is it that it seems only an extremely tiny subset of humanity gets to experience such things?

[alas]

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away?

Nope. Absolutely nothing that I can think of. I'm sure there's still a part of me somewhere that wants to believe in this type of magic.

Why is it that it seems only an extremely tiny subset of humanity gets to experience such things?

This is something I have wondered. I have had many of this type of experience and while I would like to be the cynic who says there is absolutely nothing to them, because that would just make the world simpler, I really can’t explain some of them away as coincident, or my being slightly crazy.(1) oh, there are some things I can explain away that way. 99.9% of what most Mormons think is revelation, is just their own brain. My husband has some that are easy to see how it was his own brain on steroids. There was no point to his “seeing aunt Lydia” who is dead these past 60 years. Oh, he saw it as comforting, but really, his brain needed comfort, so it came up with comfort. So, why do some people get the things that are downright freaky, and most people get nothing?

My guess is that just like some people are brilliant at music, while I love it but stink at producing it, people’s brains are wired differently. Just like in doing our perception tests in cognitive psych, one guy was color blind, but didn’t even know it. And some people’s hearing tested up much higher frequencies than anyone else, and then also tested much lower, to the point the professor was flabbergasted, “you hear earthquakes, don’t you?” Yup, doesn’t everyone? “You hear dog whistles don’t you?” Yup, doesn’t everyone? She had no idea her hearing was so exceptional. And some people could taste things other people were totally unable to taste. We think we see and hear the same things, but we really don’t. And we have no idea how others experience the world, because you really can’t describe what salt tastes like. So, I think “extra sensory perception” is like normal perception. We all perceive the world quite differently. One person can perceive the changes in the “force” while another may not be able to feel it, or if they feel it, they don’t know what it means. Like the first time I heard an earthquake, I thought some Hill Air Force pilot had broken the sound barrier over the city. Only, I remembered that sound from when I was a kid and pilots did it over towns a lot and it wasn’t quite..... Then the world started shaking. Oh. That is what that means. Next time I heard that same low, low pitched booming, I knew what it was. So, some people swear they see light when there is ultra violet and bees see it, cats see it. Maybe some people DO see ultra violet, but they don’t know what color to call it.

But there is more to our brains than science can explain.

Heavens, when I was in school, there were 5 things you could taste. Wrong. Science has found and named two others, and they are testing for what humans actually taste in blood, besides sweet, salt. Perhaps iron? I know I taste iron as metallic and I can taste it in blood and cow licks. (Don’t ask, but I grew up around farming.) so, maybe there is a sense that detects what I am gonna keep calling “the force” because I don’t have a better name. Scientists are just figuring out that many humans can sense magnetic north....gee, then why not other electronic force fields? And our brains run on electricity, so maybe they send out waves that others can pick up?

Second question, if it is something real, why can’t it ever be reproduced under controlled circumstances? Even someone who claims they are good at ESP, flunks any scientific controlled test. Even someone who claims to be able to have OOBEs on demand, really can’t. They may have a little control, but they can’t always look at what the scientist says to look at.

So, again, I don’t know, but not being able to control it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Again, comparing to hard science, our ancestors saw lightening, but they had no idea how to control it. Then they started seeing some rules it followed. It hit high things, and it hit metal and water. Gradually science learned to understand what it was, what caused it to happen, and then they had better control over it. They could keep it from hitting their house by having a lightening rod for it to hit instead. Maybe NDEs and OOBEs are similar. Maybe we can’t control them because we don’t understand even what they are or what causes them. Or how they work. So, of course we can’t reproduce them in a lab, any more than our ancestors could reproduce lightening in their cave.

[Palerider]

I've had numerous experiences of this nature, all through my life. Not usually big deals but once in awhile.

The first one I remember was when I was about 8-9 years old. My mother had told me that a man we knew was going into the hospital to have something checked out. I was pretty young, absent minded; not something that a little kid would keep track of.

A couple of days later I was walking through the house and saw my mom and kind of out of the blue something said, ask how so and so is doing. It wasn't really "verbal" at all. More of an impression. Not something a little kid would think to say.

I looked at my mom and said, "I wonder how so and so is doing?"

She looked at me in an odd way and picked up the phone and called the hospital. This was back in the 60's when they would give out information a little more freely in a small town.

She hung up a minute later and said, "So and so passed away today...." It was pretty unexpected.

It's been that way all my life. On the one hand, I get surprised by life's events just as much as the next person. But every once in a while this stuff just comes. I stopped trying to figure it out a long time ago. It just is what it is. I have no control over it, that's for sure. Premonition is the best way that I can describe it.

[1smartdodog]

Probably the multiverses. Infinite realities bumping into each other. There a a billion things we do not understand about the working of the universe this may be one.

I use to think I had special powers, until I kept having impressions to do stupid things. After a few times of getting beat up for following up on impressions I got skeptical and avoid listening to promptings in my head. I guess I got stuck with all the misses and no hits..

[Thoughtful]

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away?

Nope. Absolutely nothing that I can think of. I'm sure there's still a part of me somewhere that wants to believe in this type of magic.

Why is it that it seems only an extremely tiny subset of humanity gets to experience such things?

I don't know either, though I have had a lot of things happen.

Then there's stuff like this--four out of 34 people could sense changes in the earth's magnetic field, even when repeated trials were conducted:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180971760/

Others could not. Hmmmm.

[Thoughtful]

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away?

Nope. Absolutely nothing that I can think of. I'm sure there's still a part of me somewhere that wants to believe in this type of magic.

Why is it that it seems only an extremely tiny subset of humanity gets to experience such things?

This is something I have wondered. I have had many of this type of experience and while I would like to be the cynic who says there is absolutely nothing to them, because that would just make the world simpler, I really can’t explain some of them away as coincident, or my being slightly crazy.(1) oh, there are some things I can explain away that way. 99.9% of what most Mormons think is revelation, is just their own brain. My husband has some that are easy to see how it was his own brain on steroids. There was no point to his “seeing aunt Lydia” who is dead these past 60 years. Oh, he saw it as comforting, but really, his brain needed comfort, so it came up with comfort. So, why do some people get the things that are downright freaky, and most people get nothing?

My guess is that just like some people are brilliant at music, while I love it but stink at producing it, people’s brains are wired differently. Just like in doing our perception tests in cognitive psych, one guy was color blind, but didn’t even know it. And some people’s hearing tested up much higher frequencies than anyone else, and then also tested much lower, to the point the professor was flabbergasted, “you hear earthquakes, don’t you?” Yup, doesn’t everyone? “You hear dog whistles don’t you?” Yup, doesn’t everyone? She had no idea her hearing was so exceptional. And some people could taste things other people were totally unable to taste. We think we see and hear the same things, but we really don’t. And we have no idea how others experience the world, because you really can’t describe what salt tastes like. So, I think “extra sensory perception” is like normal perception. We all perceive the world quite differently. One person can perceive the changes in the “force” while another may not be able to feel it, or if they feel it, they don’t know what it means. Like the first time I heard an earthquake, I thought some Hill Air Force pilot had broken the sound barrier over the city. Only, I remembered that sound from when I was a kid and pilots did it over towns a lot and it wasn’t quite..... Then the world started shaking. Oh. That is what that means. Next time I heard that same low, low pitched booming, I knew what it was. So, some people swear they see light when there is ultra violet and bees see it, cats see it. Maybe some people DO see ultra violet, but they don’t know what color to call it.

But there is more to our brains than science can explain.

Heavens, when I was in school, there were 5 things you could taste. Wrong. Science has found and named two others, and they are testing for what humans actually taste in blood, besides sweet, salt. Perhaps iron? I know I taste iron as metallic and I can taste it in blood and cow licks. (Don’t ask, but I grew up around farming.) so, maybe there is a sense that detects what I am gonna keep calling “the force” because I don’t have a better name. Scientists are just figuring out that many humans can sense magnetic north....gee, then why not other electronic force fields? And our brains run on electricity, so maybe they send out waves that others can pick up?

Second question, if it is something real, why can’t it ever be reproduced under controlled circumstances? Even someone who claims they are good at ESP, flunks any scientific controlled test. Even someone who claims to be able to have OOBEs on demand, really can’t. They may have a little control, but they can’t always look at what the scientist says to look at.

So, again, I don’t know, but not being able to control it doesn’t mean it isn’t real. Again, comparing to hard science, our ancestors saw lightening, but they had no idea how to control it. Then they started seeing some rules it followed. It hit high things, and it hit metal and water. Gradually science learned to understand what it was, what caused it to happen, and then they had better control over it. They could keep it from hitting their house by having a lightening rod for it to hit instead. Maybe NDEs and OOBEs are similar. Maybe we can’t control them because we don’t understand even what they are or what causes them. Or how they work. So, of course we can’t reproduce them in a lab, any more than our ancestors could reproduce lightening in their cave.

I can hear dog whistles. I can sing on pitch-- but have no pitch memory (can't sing a pitch that's played and stopped for a few seconds before I try to sing it.) I cannot taste whatever is in broccoli that makes people hate it. I could taste a substance in a supplement that is supposed to be tasteless though. Brain receptors and how they interact are so incredible--read Phantoms in the Brain by Ramachandran and its flooring how much we don't know that our bodies know.

When my children were small, I always knew if they were going to vomit. I always had a premonition, in the form of a vomit smell, and minutes or hours later they would. But it wasn't a "wet burp" I'd smelled on their breath, because so many times they weren't with me when I'd smell it. One time I was at Target. Smelled vomit so strongly as I stood on a corner of two aisles by a mannequin. Said to my friend "gross, someone threw up over here, that's overpowering" she couldn't smell it. It was as if someone had puked ON me that strong. Went home and sure enough got puked on a couple hours later. Some of my interactions with ghosts/ spirits have been smelling, not seeing things.

Some of the ghosts I've seen were so ordinary others in the room probably *could* see or feel them but also not notice them. Sometimes we see but do not recognize what we are seeing, hearing, smelling, or perceiving.

[Thoughtful]

Are we connected in ways we don’t understand?

I was having lunch with my cousin in Spokane yesterday and she was telling me about an experience she had had the previous night when she felt a strong impression to call the mother of her friend, a professional climber for North Face. This was unusual. The mom told her that her son was missing, along with his two climbing partners, and it appears they were almost certainly killed in an avalanche.

https://www-m.cnn.com/2019/04/18/americ ... 3DClimbers

Obviously this is a terrible tragedy, but it also led to us discussing what exactly could be going on when we have these kinds of profound “impression to do something” experiences.

I had a similar experience a number of years ago. While driving back to Austin from Houston, out of nowhere, I felt a strong push to call my childhood friend who I very rarely talked to. I had no reason to call him, and he almost never actually picks up. I ignored the feeling at first but it persisted so I gave in and made the call. To my surprise he picked up and was clearly surprised. I told him I felt I should call him. He was stunned. He proceeded to tell me he had just gotten home to find his wife had left him and his dog passed away an hour afterwards. My friend had just sat down on the couch alone and desperate.

It may not sound like it, but since my TBM days I’ve actually become quite skeptical. You can tell because I use satisfying phrases such as “it’s an interesting idea but I don’t find the evidence of _______ to be convincing”, and “sure, but that’s anecdotal”. I might annoyingly point out when you have succumbed to a logical fallacy, name drop a science book I’m currently reading, and quote Dawkins on issues far outside his expertises. But even with these sterling credentials I can’t quite escape the feeling, yes feeling, that we are connected to each other, and the earth, in ways far beyond our understanding and likely our ability to understand. Sure these may just be coincidences. After all what about all times these “impressions” don’t occur? But I wonder.

Have you had these kinds of experiences that you seem unable to explain away? Would you mind telling me about them?

For two weeks before my nephew suicided, my spouseman talked about him every day, "need to call him, need to get together." We hadnt seen or really thought of him in months before that. He paused phone tag with N but didn't get together or even to talk before the death though.

[Random]

Are we connected in ways we don’t understand?

I honestly believe we are. I grew up with it. But it didn't happen 100% of the time.

Here's the strongest example I have:
My mom worked in someone's home, and had told me not to call her collect. She lived/worked in Salt Lake City. I lived/worked at Bryce Canyon (and the only way to call out was to call collect). One day, all day long, my mother nagged me to call her. I didn't because of what she'd said. Finally, she drove me so crazy that I gave in around 3:30 or so in the afternoon.

In those days, collect calls were operator assisted and you could hear the conversation the operator was having with the other person. When the operator told us we could talk to each other, the first thing out of my mom's mouth (no "hello") was, "What took you so long?" "You said not to call collect," I replied. (Turned out a fairly near family member had taken her own life.)

I tried to explain this family trait to a coworker at Bryce, and he dismissed it, saying people were reading each other's body language, so I didn't bother to tell him that experience. I mean, how could I read the body language of someone that far away? This was before cell phones, before ordinary people had computers, before the internet.

[RubinHighlander]

From a purely evolutionary point of view I have a theory that some hominids have similar capabilities as other animal species in that they have some innate metaphysical connections to a greater awareness. One example of this in the animal kingdom are large flocks of birds or schools of fish that can stay in sync in movements in fractions of a second.

Then there's like 5% of my belief system that I keep for the possibility of a power that kicked off a big bang and some greater conscience or existence of intelligence beyond the physical world.

My wife has had hundreds of these experiences since I've known her, where it's seems statistically beyond coincidence. My own experience with uncanny coincidence falls within the range of probability, so I have nothing to convince me I have any abilities beyond the average human.

[Lucidity]

Why is it that it seems only an extremely tiny subset of humanity gets to experience such things?

Is it an extremely tiny subset though? It seems to be pretty common for people to at least think they’ve had an experience like this. I’d bet at least half of my friends and family would have some experience they felt would qualify. Whether legitimate or not. We tend to think these are only happening to superstitious people, and although they seem to be more prevalent for them, skeptics and atheists aren’t immune. Michael Shermer shares a interesting experience of this in one of his books and his appearance on Tangentially Speaking.

Thanks for chiming in even though you haven’t had an experience like this. I enjoy hearing you thoughts on it.

[Lucidity]

Then there's stuff like this--four out of 34 people could sense changes in the earth's magnetic field, even when repeated trials were conducted:

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-ne ... 180971760/

Others could not. Hmmmm.

“but No, It Doesn’t Mean We Have Magnetoreception ‘Superpowers’”

Dammit, they could of at a least waited til the end of the article to burst my bubble.

[wtfluff]

We tend to think these are only happening to superstitious people, and although they seem to be more prevalent for them, skeptics and atheists aren’t immune.

Yeah, it wold be nice to see real statistics on such things, but that will never happen, so all we have is anecdotes.

Edit: Or we could look at it this way: I just checked and as of this moment we have 766 members on NOM. How many of the total have chimed in to say they have these experiences?