Sometimes I just have to get an idea out and this is one I’ve talked about at lectures for years and still have never really seen anyone else talk about it. When discussing “ghosts” I often hear people say, “It’s all in your head” to which I respond, “Right! Everything is in my head!”
So let’s get on with it shall we?
Millions of people, for thousands of years, have made the claim that they’ve seen what could be called a “ghost”. Over the years I’ve read and heard countless variations on the stories and each time I wonder to myself, “Where are people seeing ghosts?”
My question has little to do with the actual environmental location of the sighting; my concern is with where and how the eyes, brain and perception of the sighting is taking place. Were a ghost able to manifest a physical body then it would have to form a structure dense enough to reflect light making itself discernible to the human eye. Where would all the matter/energy come from to create this structure, and how much energy would it require to assemble that matter/energy?
Without delving deep into the mathematics behind it one could imagine that perhaps something like a Bose-Einstein condensate could be made by spirits. This condensate is made by slowing light down to a few hundred miles per-hour and in doing so creates a new form of matter. This idea was first proposed by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose in 1924 but due to technological constraints has only recently been shown to work. Also it takes a lot of energy; enough so that we should be able to recognize and measure it as it’s happening when someone “sees” a ghost. But what if most sightings are taking place not in a darkened hallway, but in the darkened recesses of our mind? Since the process of sight occurs not outside of our body but inside of our brain isn’t it at least a little possible that the sightings of ghosts and phantoms is taking place in there too?
Instead of an entity creating a “solid” body which reflects light into our eyes and therefore creating the visual image perhaps the entity is expending far less energy by circumnavigation of the eyes and firing the visual synapses directly. The entire energetic capacity of the human brain is less than the power of a low watt light-bulb, (20-40 watts) so the “sparking” of a visual/memory system is far less that trying to manifest energy in the environment around us. If ghost were “broadcasting” themselves from somewhere else it should be of interest for us to note that a UHF television station’s highest radiating energetic output is approximately 10 Mega Watts, (10,000,000 Watts).
So in this thought-game it would seem to be far more likely that a ghost would want to expend a tiny amount of energy, the visual/memory systems, than to manifest matter from energy in the outside environment.
A vast number of ghostly sightings are of loved one and close friends who have shuffled off this mortal coil. Since these people were friends then there is an enormous repository of visual and sensory memory inside of our brain regarding them. Perhaps the “ghosts” are doing something far more strange, and intimate, by manipulation of our recognition systems. Imagine if you will that grandma’s “ghost” looks just like she did when she was alive because she is triggering the image of herself when she was alive, the image stored in your brain. If indeed ghosts are manipulating our brains in this manner than let’s look at some of questions about spectral sightings that would be cleared up.
Why do ghosts wear clothes?
Well, unless we saw them naked in life we don’t have memory of them naked so we are simply seeing our own memory of them clothed.
Why do they look younger or older to different family members?
Because it’s that family, experiencer, member’s perspective.
But what about ghosts that aren’t family members or friends, ghosts we’ve never seen before?
Well, this idea might also account for the wispy, blurred version of ghosts that belong to someone unknown to us. Since we do not have a recoverable memory of that entity, it chooses something in our mind which is most “like” them, but, in a sense, adds a “filter” to the recovered image it as not to confuse the experiencer; so it makes itself blurry, and somewhat unrecognizable yet still viewable.
The speculation goes on ad nauseum, ad infinitum.
I’m just putting the idea out there… in your head.
I haven’t even got into the concept that there might be a genetic component which would make it easier for family members to see their own deceased relatives but I might take up that idea later on.
And don’t forget. Everything you experience which seems “outside” of your head you experience inside your head but it does happens in your head which is inside the outside.