Mum's Monday: Halloween special with Mum (Sandra) and Son (Antony)

Our observations help us learn, and it is what we learn that generates our opinions. For this year’s Halloween special, me and my son will be discussing the world in which we live in, and the supernatural, and putting forward our opinions based upon what we’ve observed and learnt.

Is it better to have more advanced technology or a more in-depth understanding of nature?

Mum: I think it is better to have a more understanding of nature, as nature is going to happen no matter what. Whether it is a storm/hurricane, earthquake, volcano or even an illness, having a more understanding of what is happening can lessen the risk of people being caught up in a natural disaster or becoming ill. We can evacuate from around the base of a volcano, board up our houses against a storm/hurricane, and have a better diet and do more exercise to prevent heart disease or type 2 diabetes. The more we know about what the signs are or the signs to look out for, although we cannot prevent nature, we can minimise the impact.

Antony: Whilst the benefits of understanding nature better are great, we won’t be able to if we didn’t develop technology first. We won’t know when to evacuate a volcano if the technology isn’t powerful enough to detect certain changes in the atmosphere, or small quakes in the ground. It’s extremely difficult to predict an earthquake, but even harder if we didn’t have technology to at least give us some insight into what might happen. If we didn’t have X-rays, we wouldn’t know that we were ill, and if we didn’t have scanners, we wouldn’t be able to detect small changes in the Earth that would go undetected if we were on our own. Once the technology has been successfully developed and is working as intended to predict what nature is going to throw at us, we can use those breakthroughs and implement them into developing other forms of technology, and science.

Mum: Without an understanding of nature, we then won’t be able to produce the technology to detect what is happening.

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Are ghosts proof of life after death?

Mum: I didn’t think ghosts were proof of life after death but more of an energy after death, as a spirit is more of an energy left after the body has deceased but we talk about the afterlife, the spirit world and crossing over. So when you look at it like that it can be seen as some sort of life force. If a spirit has unfinished business, wants to get a message to someone or left their body in a quick or brutal manner (accident or murder) the spirit energy is left in limbo and has not crossed over. Some spirits come and go from the afterlife and this is where we experience paranormal activity. Where the energy is trapped in a situation and the event that took the person’s life and the event is played out like a tape recording playing out over and over again it is called a residual haunting. Where the spirit is able to interact with living people, this is called an intellectual haunting. The body is no longer living just the spirit energy.

Antony: I believe I have seen a ghost. I came to that conclusion after narrowing down all the possibilities. Was it a trick of the light? Was it an optical illusion that could only be seen from that angle? Or was it really just my imagination playing tricks on me? No, if it were a trick of the light, then it wouldn’t have moved with intent and purpose, nor would it appear to be a solid object moving through the room; it couldn’t have been an optical illusion because I looked in that particular direction every day and nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary; whilst it would be hard to explain how I believe it wasn’t my imaginations playing tricks on me, there was a sense that I knew I was awake and aware of my surroundings enough to prevent my mind from running away from me.

The question I would like to answer is, because I do believe I saw a ghost, which is disembodied energy that we call the spirit that dwells within us, do ghosts go against the science that we know today. Spirits are energy, and they can manifest into an empty room, and then disappear again before reappearing later and disappearing once more; we see the energy come together to form an object solid enough for us to see, and with enough energy to interact with other objects – generating enough force to move inanimate objects, making the floor beneath them creak, and even talk.

The second law of thermodynamics state that any energy released will spread apart far enough that it cannot come together later on. If you spray a small amount of air freshener in one corner of the room, eventually those particles will spread all around the room so the person standing in the opposite corner would then smell the scent of the freshener, but it doesn’t recollect back in the same corner you sprayed them into. Only intellectual energy can, and even us humans and animals cannot manipulate energy, only dissipate it via typing on a keyboard which; the movements of your fingers releases energy out into the open, and it continues to spread further and further until eventually it leaves the world and enters the universe, where it will continue to spread. This is the most believed theory for the fate of the universe, and we were able to devise that theory from observing the way the galaxies are continuously moving away from each other, along with the laws of thermodynamics.

From what we’ve observed and learnt from ghosts is that they take energy from the room, or drain the batteries in cameras, to form a solid enough mass to then interact with their surroundings, which whilst may be explained by all that energy being brought together by gravity, it’s hard to ignore that it does have some intellectuality.

We do not have the technology today, or may never have the necessities to discover another dimension, but if we were to look at the afterlife from a scientific perspective along with all the evidence that we have collected concerning thermodynamics and physics, then maybe the afterlife is really just an alternate dimension?

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Can we control our dreams?

Mum: No I don’t think you can control what you initially dream even if you can then control what happens in your dream. What you dream before you start to control cannot be controlled. I wouldn’t be able to go to bed tonight and think I am going to dream a certain thing tonight and dream it.  Sometimes I have just mentioned or thought of something or someone in a fleeting moment during the day and then have dreamt about it or them that night. Thinking for a fleeting moment doesn’t warrant the control of dreaming about it that night. While we are asleep we are not in control of our conscious self or brain, we are asleep resting our brain and re-charging. Even if we could control our dreams we tend to forget most dreams 5 seconds after we wake up anyway.

Antony: Controlling what we dream is known as Lucid Dreaming. When we are dreaming and standing in a familiar area but you notice that something’s different, such as a different TV, or a different sofa, you start realising that you are in a dream and can start controlling it and doing whatever you want. As for being able to control what you start off dreaming; studies have been conducted that gives evidence indicating that the first thing we dream of is the last thing we think about, and from then, the dream changes from there. The day can influence what we dream, and sometimes, those sudden changes between one dream to another can also trigger Lucid Dreaming. We usually dream up to four to five times a night, and the majority of the time, we forget about the dreams. In the morning, when you think you haven’t dreamt, it’s only because you’ve forgotten what you’ve dreamed. Even when we can remember snippets upon waking up, it can soon slip away.

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Do we know what is going to happen tomorrow?

Mum: We can plan what we intend to do tomorrow, but whether it works out that way we want, we won’t know until tomorrow. Sometimes plans work out, but sometimes they don’t. this could be down to an illness, car breakdown, or even the weather. It does depend on what the plans are and how much has to fall into place for the plans to work. Other examples of maybe not knowing what will happen tomorrow if you are waiting for test results from hospital tests. We can only know that we should get the results but other than that it depends on the results to what happens next and if you are taking a driving test we wouldn’t know the outcome until the day. We can know some things with plans but we have no control over what we don’t know.

Antony: I agree. The future is a mystery. Anything can happen. Setting plans for what we want to do in the future, and how we believe it will affect our surroundings is known as Chronesthesia, or Mental Time Travel, where we imagine what might happen in the future based on events happening today.

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What do you think? We would like to hear your opinions below.