The SCIENCE of Monsters and Ghosts

Wisdom Quarterly HALLOWEEN SERIES

Too bad most of us do not believe in science. If we did, we'd believe in ghosts. What will happen when science dictates there is enough evidence for disembodied phenomena? Frightening thought. Science-lovers run out of haunted dwellings as quickly as ignoramuses. Why? The body knows what the brain cannot yet accept. What? Seen and unseen monstrosities roam about and among us. Wisdom Quarterly is only interested in the real-life ones in history and today.

• Buddhist Ghosts? Stories of the Departed
• Could dragons (nagas) have been real?

  The Science of Monsters
Matt Kaplan, The Science of Monsters (ScienceFriday.com, Oct. 26, 2012)

At their most basic level, monsters represent fears held by society, fears associated with dangers perceived in the surrounding world.

  

The Science of Monsters (Matt Kaplan)

These fears have a powerful evolutionary history by encouraging people to flee instead of fighting suicidal battles. When ancient hunters encountered a saber-toothed tiger by accident, they ran. When the human ancestor Homo erectus caught angry cave bears by surprise, it ran. When chimpanzees and [our sexy cousins the] bonobos, the nearest genetic relatives to modern humans, encounter large predators in the wild, they run.

  

While Hollywood heroes have made running away distinctly unpopular on the silver screen, every single actor who has ever portrayed a hero/heroine who stood his or her ground against some abominable terror comes from a long genetic lineage of cowards who fled in the face of danger.

  

Real life sea serpents: sturgeon (naga)

That is why they are here to act today. If their ancestors had fought against monsters far more powerful than themselves, as Hollywood heroes do all the time, their lineage would have been destroyed by predators long ago. Fear, in short, keeps people alive. But fear can also go too far.

  

Recent work in animal behavior has revealed something fascinating: There are personality types in animals. Among fish in a single species, there are adventurous individuals, ready and willing to take risks, and there are more cautious and timid individuals, fearful of doing anything that could put them in danger.
  

Yeti's bones, Tibet (factfictionandconjecture.ca)

Similar variations in personality are starting to be found in birds and mammals too. A recent study led by Kathryn Arnold at the University of York revealed... Being courageous or curious undoubtedly presents serious dangers. Ongoing studies indicate that fish with more daring personalities are...

  

Whether some humans are genetically predisposed to be more adventurous than others remains to be determined, but there clearly are some people who ultimately are more willing to take risks. Make no mistake, the instinct to flee from danger is still deeply rooted in every person’s brain, but some of us are more willing than others to go to places associated with danger....
  

LISTEN: Science of Monsters (Science Friday, NPR)
Parapsychology: Scary science (Coast to Coast AM) 
 
Like lion cubs play-fighting in the safety of their den, monsters may be allowing threats to be toyed with in the safe sandbox of the imagination.

  
So if monsters are present in society for both pleasure and mental practice for future frightening interactions, what happens when our fears are overcome? What then?
   

Camera catches real ghost (angelsghosts.com)

To a certain extent, danger should function as the life essence of monsters... Fears have changed a lot since the dawn of humanity, and with these changes have come alterations in the pantheon of monsters that lurk in our world.
  
The Minotaur is no longer with us, but aliens are. In a sense, monsters, while strictly the stuff of fantasy, experience evolution at a rate that is in stride with the pace of human understanding of the surrounding world. Science, the empirical testing and exploration of the world, which is about as seemingly unrelated to monsters as can be... [actually only denies their existence because of acceptability-filters not because of an absence of evidence.]

  
[Excerpted from Medusa’s Gaze and Vampire’s Bite:  The Science of Monsters (Scribner). Copyright © 2012 by Matt Kaplan. Kaplan is a science journalist and a regular contributor to The Economist. He has also written for National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature, Scientific American, Science, BBC Wildlife, and The New York Times. When not chained to a desk, he travels the wilds of the world as part of a London expedition group. He lives in London.]

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Paranormal Investigation: The Afterlife (video)

ParanormalTVchannel; Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

 

A real apparition (answers.com)

For five years a medium group and scientists witnessed more psychokinetic phenomena than any other experiment in the history of paranormal investigations. This included conversations with the dead that were recorded, written messages on sealed film, video footage of spirit faces and spirit forms materializing.

 

There is not only this world but worlds beyond. We have this life and many (more miserable) lives to come. 

  

Samsara's Six Sensual Spheres, Tibetan thangka

Enlightened beings make an end of ALL suffering by making an end of this endless round of rebirth (samsara).
  
How can one make an end of the "endless"? The Buddhist path analyzes what fuels the fire of this impersonal process called samsara ("the continued wandering on from birth to birth and death to death") then removes its principal supports: delusion, craving, aversion, fear. 

  

Besides, it is "endless" only in the sense that in and of itself it would never come to an end. Like a self-renewing hamster wheel, it would cycle on endlessly, hamster after hamster. Saying that it does not end, technically speaking, is wrong. It is constantly ending. It is radically impermanent: What arises almost immediately passes away moment by moment.
  
Each moment of existence breaks down into three blended phases or sub-moments: arising, turning, and passing away. The macro mimics the micro, for as above so below. Not only sub-moments but entire phases of our lives go like this: youth, aging, and decrepitude, birth, maturation, and death.

Many of us exist in realms bound by addiction.

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Zen: Banishing a Ghost

Roshi Jeff Albrizze (PasaDharma.org), Ron Crosthwaite, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

"Brown Lady" ghost (answers.com)

    
Banishing a Ghost
The wife of a man became very sick. On her deathbed, she said to him, "I love you so much! I don't want to leave you, and I don't want you to betray me. Promise that you will not see any other women once I die, or I will return to haunt you!"

For several months after her death, the husband avoided other women. But then he met someone and fell in love. On the night that they were engaged to be married, the ghost of his former wife appeared.
   
She blamed him for not keeping the promise, and every night thereafter she returned to taunt him. The ghost would remind him of everything that transpired between him and his fiancee that day, even to the point of repeating, word for word, their conversations. It upset him so badly that he could no longer sleep.
  
Desperate, he sought the advice of a Zen master who lived near the village. "This is a very clever ghost," the master said upon hearing the man's story. "It is!" replied the man. "She remembers every detail of what I say and do. It knows everything!" 

   

The master smiled, "You should admire such a ghost, but I will tell you what to do the next time you see it."

That night the ghost returned. The man responded just as the master had advised: "You are such a wise ghost," the man said. "You know that I can hide nothing from you. If you can answer me one question, I will break off the engagement and remain single for the rest of my life."

  

"Ask your question," the ghost replied. The man scooped up a handful of beans from a large bag on the floor, "Tell me exactly how many beans there are in my hand."

At that moment the ghost disappeared and never returned.

 

Commentary

Ghosts are real (lifeslittlemysteries.com).

   

This story speaks to the way we often let past experiences and subconscious thought patterns crowd out our experience of our present day life.

• How do we let thoughts and memories about the past “haunt” us?
• When has a self-limiting belief, based on a past relationship, interfered with a current relationship?
• Do we have harmful emotional survival patterns subconsciously adopted and, if so, how can mindfulness practice help us see and release them?
• How can our Zen practice of being in the moment be related to “counting beans”? 
• Can this mindfulness help us put painful memories in perspective and loosen our “death grip” of clinging and attachment to how we think things must be?

See the discussion live or participate. PasaDharma has chosen this old Zen story as the group reading for tonight (Thursday, 7:00 pm, Aug. 30, 2012). Roshi Albrizze explains.
    
When I first read "Banishing a Ghost" about 15 years ago, it didn't make much sense to me. After revisiting it this week, it really opened up for me. The way it spoke to me is that the symbolism of the "ghost wife" is really the way my mind wants to hold on to old stories and conditions as a permanent abiding sense of self. The "handful of beans" symbolizes the present moment and the liberation from the suffering of grasping at thoughts and memories that comes when we commit to being present in the moment, experiencing our everyday activity as the Buddha Way.

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Nancy Pelosi saw ghosts in White House

CNS News; Fox News (for Unfair and Unbalanced reporting); Wisdom Quarterly

Ghosts are real on a different (invisible energetic) material frequency (angelsghosts.com)

 

Representative Nancy Pelosi

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, CA) told a recent gathering of the Women’s Political Committee that the spirits of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul spoke to her at the White House.
 

"Look up."

Pelosi said she heard them say: “At last we have a seat at the table.”

  

A video recently posted on YouTube shows Pelosi speaking in May describing her first meeting with President [G.W.] Bush in the White House after becoming part of the Democratic House leadership.

  

In the video Pelosi says, “He’s (Bush) saying something to the effect of we’re so glad to welcome you here, congratulations, and I know you’ll probably have some different things to say about what is going on -- which is correct. But, as he was saying this, he was fading and this other thing was happening to me.”

  

Leader of the Lesser of Two Evils party (AAL)

“My chair was getting crowded in,” claims Pelosi. “I swear this happened! Never happened before, it never happened since.”

  

“My chair was getting crowded in and I couldn’t figure out what it was, it was like this,” she said.

  

“And then I realized Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, you name it. They were all in that chair,” said Pelosi. “They were, more than I named, and I could hear them say: 'At last we have a seat at the table.' And then they were gone.” More
  

Subtitled Asian animated reenactment of the paranormal incident

• Hensel: the two-headed American girl

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Halloween from a Buddhist's Perspective.

First of all let me wish those who celebrate Halloween today a "Happy Halloween!!" Or maybe I should say have a "Scary Halloween!!" I don't believe in ghosts, ghouls and goblins. Except for the state of being a "hungry ghost" but they aren't exactly the kind of ghosts thought about during Halloween. Hungry ghosts are too consumed with their own suffering to go out and "haunt" or "scare" other beings.

Halloween is my favorite holiday because I enjoy spooky movies and dressing up. As a former actor I really enjoy being able to dress up as just about any character that I want for at least one day a year and not be looked at as a loony. As a Buddhist Halloween also reminds me of death and the importance of this human birth in over-coming samsara, which includes death, fear and anxiety, which are all aspects of Halloween. However, it also reminds me of my belief that along with death comes rebirth so there is hope in death. Such reflection helps take the fear and sting out of death.

Our minds make up so many delusions that confuse us and scare us into thinking that we have no ability to transcend such strong emotions. So Halloween is a way to face some of our fears and work through them and to train our mind to concentrate upon the present moment rather then let our mind carry us away into a state of paralyzing fear. Halloween is presented in a fun way, which can greatly help take the power out of our fears and even laugh at how irrational they are.

When we can take the power out of our fears then they basically disappear back into the ether of our deluded mind, which is where they came from in the first place. Fear is a deep instinct to try and protect us but it can be so powerful that it actually works against us. For example, being crippled in fear by the supernatural, which is debatable that it even exists. However, more importantly Buddha either said nothing on the subject of advised us not to give it much attention because it only feeds delusion and distracts us.

I'm not sure if ghosts in the traditional western sense are real (I currently don't believe in them) but the point is that we should overcome our concern and focus on them and worrying that if they are out there that they can somehow control our minds. It is my firm belief that nothing can control our minds unless we allow it to happen. Other than some aspects to severe mental illness, which make controling one's mind much more difficult even with medication.

PHOTO CREDIT: Buddha image carved into a pumpkin lit up with a candle by Nalini Asha.

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