by jwfacts 21 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Has anyone communicated with the dead, and who do you think it was? What was your experience?
Do you believe it to be the spirit of a person, or a demon, or some other explaination such as a hoax?
Does the OT command not to inquire of the dead mean that going to a spirit medium, clairvoyant, fortune teller etc is wrong for a Christian?
If you are not a Christian do you still think such practices are wrong?
jwfacts:
Has anyone communicated with the dead, and who do you think it was?
No. People have talked to the dead, but the dead, being dead, never talk back. It's like asking has anyone ever read a book after it's been burnt? Of course they haven't, because it no longer exists.
Do you believe it to be the spirit of a person, or a demon, or some other explaination such as a hoax?
Sometimes a straightforward money-making hoax; sometimes a "pious hoax", or sometimes mental illness.
If you are not a Christian do you still think such practices are wrong?
Not wrong per se, but completely pointless. And they can be dangerous if people believe what they're told by the charlatans who propagate such nonsense.
I had a weird experience. It wasn't contacting the dead in so much that I'd sat down and tried it out. I had a near death experience, I found myself in this light, it wasn't a room or an area as such just Light, I couldn't see people but I could feel their presence the same way you can feel if someone walks into a room behind you and amongst all of this I could feel my (dead)grandfather standing next to me, reassuring me.
Now I was brought up a dub, I've never had any notions of life after death and never dreamed of ending up in heaven. To me when you are dead you are dead. I don't buy the "neurons firing off as your brain dies" theory, if random neurons fired off why was the image and feelings so structured and not random? I don't buy the demons theory either. The love, joy and exhilaration that I felt there cant come from a demon. What I experienced was pure love, something I've never experienced since and something that I've feel a bit cheated off since I came back.
Matt
Sounding off like a right nutter
Slugga
I felt that pure love, reassurance, approval when i saw my dead brother. He also had on his beaming smile and beamed golden yellow light. My grandmother came through a little less clearly. From her i got love.
It wasn't demons, for sure. I suppose the skeptics can argue that it was my imagination. Whatever. I don;t care. This stuff was just for me, and i share it cuz it was a bit similar to what you experienced. I'm 99% sure that, when i die, i will see them. Jesus and god, however, i'm not so sure that they exist.
S
I just communicated with the dead. However, after she finishes her coffee, she'll be among the living once again.
And who said the resurrection was impossible!
steve
Interesting experiences, and unusual that you say you believe in the dead spirits but not sure about Jesus and God. But then again, I guess over half the world do not expect to see Jesus when they die.
I once asked a girl at school who was into ouija boards that if she believed in the demons then that must give her strong faith in God. Her reply was "oh, i hadn't thought of it like that before".
The JDubs put the idea into my head that "entities" could talk to you but were always malevolent beings disguising themselves as your deceased loved ones. I've been clairvoyant and clairaudient for as long as I can remember, but only when the JW programming had dissipated did I go along with it.
I've had countless experiences of "spirits". As far as the bible is concerned I believe that the people who received that advice were primitive and needed protecting from themselves. Dabbling with spirits without protection and precaution, eg ouija boards can bring on some very nasty experiences.
Good story btw Matt, and pretty common of course.
My eldest sister became a spiritualist after having a 'poltergeist' experience. She was in the process of getting a divorce, had become pregnant by the new b/frnd, had just moved into a new house. The 'poltergeist' used to throw things around her house, threw a cycle across the hall way. In time it tried to appear to her and told her that it was the spirit of a man who had died before he could tell his unmarried pregnant daughter that he forgave her. My sister's b/frnd had been sceptical but he witnessed the incident with the cycle.
Another experience - my mother along with the aforementioned sister, became a spiritualist. She and my step dad lived in a flat, and upstairs lived a JW I knew well. One morning my step dad called me to say the JW brother had thrown a brick through their bedroom window. I was horrified. I went to see him, the story was that he had been persistently hearing my parents banging on the ceiling, or they would get up at 2am and bang their windows open and closed. I knew that my parents regular routine was to be in bed at 10.30pm. This brother was so convinced that they kept banging on the ceiling he had resorted to turning his tv low and invested in a headset to listen to the tv. This particular night the banging had got to him and he had thrown the brick through their window!
Make of it what you will....
The human brain and sensory cortex can create any image or sensation (in any modality:visual, auditory, etc) regardless of whether or not said object actually exists in reality.
Anybody claiming to have communicated with or seen an impression of a dead person would not be able to prove this either way. What is interesting is that there are RARELY more than 1 eyewitness to such encounters. The explanation is simple, we have alot of emotional energy invested in our memories of the dead. It should hardly be surprising that occassionally our brains generate some illusory image or voice leading us to "believe" we are communicating with a dead person.
I found myself in this light, it wasn't a room or an area as such just Light, I couldn't see people but I could feel their presence the same way you can feel if someone walks into a room behind you and amongst all of this I could feel my (dead)grandfather standing next to me, reassuring me.
That was pretty moving. I don't quite know what to make of it. But I'm very glad you shared this. Thanks. I wonder, if you were a hard-core JW at the time, was this the start of some true doubts?
