I had a friend who said she was walking at night in the australian outback. It was pitch dark, couldn't see your hand in front of your face. Suddenly she had a feeling, and she switched on her flashlight, which was about dead. There directly in front of her was an extremely poisonous spider hanging in its web.
Many people have had these intuitions, even if not about danger. They are thinking about a relative across the country, and suddenly Uncle Joe calls.
I have had a number of these experiences, and believe they are the rule, not the exception. I wonder if anyone here has had them.
The people in this newsgroup may be a bit less suggestible than most - after all, engineers have to deal with a slice of reality, no foolin'.
I was sleeping in one of the third word locations I've been to, and suddenly I woke up and turned on the light. Something woke me up. There was a large cockroach crawling across the ceiling, and he immediately dropped t the ground when the light came on. Cockroaches aren't dangerous, and in fact are pets in some countries. But somehow, my consciousness was entangled with the roach and I was warned. I am convinced this wasn't a coincidence.
I hike at night in Australia, and it's very seldom really dark. We have this thing called the Milky Way, and you can find your way in the bush by it - and much more easily with moonlight.
Most unlikely to have been seriously poisonous. Most dangerous spiders live on or in the ground. Probably an golden orb weaver or a St Andrews Cross spider, they're commonly encountered large spiders we find at night. Impressive, but not dangerous.
Cockroaches are quite noisy creatures. You probably just heard it and woke up. The ones around here are up to 50mm long, and you can sometimes hear them from the next room if it's quiet.
Geesh, why the twilight zone? Our brain has to heavily filter all the inpu ts it gets. So what reaches our consciousness is a small fraction of what is incoming. Bugs and spiders and other "scary" things reach right to the back "reptile" part of the brain... you respond without "thinking".
I'm "freaked out" by snakes. I was walking down a trail in Tennessee with a hand held weed whacker. I come around a bush and there's a huge black sna ke in the path. Wham! I cleave it's head from it's body without thinking. And then I feel like shit as the body writhes on the ground. I don't enjoy killing things, black snakes are not dangerous and they kill the rattle sn akes, as well as rats and other vermin.
puts it gets. So what reaches our consciousness is a small fraction of wha t is incoming. Bugs and spiders and other "scary" things reach right to t he back "reptile" part of the brain... you respond without "thinking".
a hand held weed whacker. I come around a bush and there's a huge black s nake in the path. Wham! I cleave it's head from it's body without thinking. And then I feel like shit as the body writhes on the ground. I don't enj oy killing things, black snakes are not dangerous and they kill the rattle snakes, as well as rats and other vermin.
On Thursday, May 1, 2014 8:54:42 AM UTC-4, Clifford Heath wrote: snip
Cockroaches are quite noisy creatures. You probably just heard it and woke up. The ones around here are up to 50mm long, and you can sometimes hear them from the next room if it's quiet.
Clifford Heath.
Unless your pet gecko scurries over and eats him first. Geckos are good at walking on the ceiling also, and enjoy the occasional cockroach. They bark with pleasure afterwards, or so I've been told - just heard them barking at night on the ceiling.
It is never quite that dark in the Australian outback unless there is very thick cloud. The skyglow, copious stars, milky way and Magellanic clouds provide enough light that when dark adapted you can always see your hand in front of your face when outdoors and clear sky. It is much harder in deep forest though or when it is cloudy.
Caving is another matter - after a few hours in a true photographic darkroom you start to hallucinate flicker noise on the retina in a pattern vaguely related to the blood vessels and optic nerve.
In Zion canyon once whilst observing I had a deer brush against my tripod because it really was that dark against the mountains and the near field forest. Impressively dark places 500m from the road despite the hotels.
Was it really or just some random tropical spider?
In most tropical countries if you switch the lights on at night even in
5* hotels you will see the odd cockroach scuttle for cover.
Both cases are completely explained by hearing what was there. Your friend 'heard' the web in front of her. Clothes make a lot of high pitched squeaking noises when they're flexed. She merely heard the echo off the web and realized that didn't sound right, didn't sound the same as 'free space'. You 'heard' the cockroach crawling on the ceiling. Yes, they are VERY noisy when they walk, believe me. You see, not that 'difficult' to explain your two examples.
However, your reference to thinking of ?? just before the call, is more difficult to explain. Some people claim that's 'mis-memory' where by the very aspect of your day-dreaming, your memory is faulty. The brain created a memory around the incident, after the fact. And, as with all memories, become indistinguishable from actual events. To avoid having people claim mis-memory, tell people instantly, BEFORE the call arrives.
You want to twist your brain for a second? Try a different attitude. Assume for a moment that there is NO time, pardon the pun. In a system with NO time even the phrase 'about to happen' changes meaning. As an engineer, it's a bit difficult to reconcile. Taking that 'twisted thinking' further, what if NO time, or time can go either direction? Now discover another 'explanation' framework wherein 'causality' is dropped. Opportunities really open up if you drop causality. However, experimentation is not possible, only observation, etc etc See what I mean about 'twist your brain'?
I'm never really in the dark. I have a continuous background of phosphenes, moving patterns, flashing things, geometric patterns. They don't bother me and don't seem to interfere with my ability to see weak light sources; maybe they give me a nonzero baseline for signal averaging.
I was surprised to find that mosr people, in the dark, don't see anything.
--
John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
Precision electronic instrumentation
I don't think most people have ever been in the total dark (and by this I mean a proper photographic darkroom with a full light trap). After a few hours you defnitely see the noise floor and the brain does its best to make sense of it. Working by touch requires a lot of concentration so you don't pay a lot of attention to it after a while.
I'd have thought most people would be accidentally dark adapted if they wake up late at night when well away from cities though. It isn't quite the same since a sleepy brain sees much less detail.
It is a curious feature of our dark adapted vision that for maximum sensitivity you have to look to the side of the very faintest object to place it on the most densely populated region of rods. Amateur astronomers call it averted vision - it is worth almost a magnitude. It vanishes again if you try to look directly at it.
Basically from an evolutionary point of view seeing things in your wider field of vision has survival value if something is stalking you.
For example, if you've ever been deep hypnotized, you learn what it's like to explore that 'sleepy' region of the brain with more control than most people can muster. Once there, you'll find some amazing features, heightened senses, and pattern recognition. All these features probably not work so well when awake due to society stomping it out of you while growing up.
One of these 'features' that amazed me was the way everybody disappears! When you're awake, if someone is behind you, you're aware of them and continually aware of them. However, in that 'sleep state' these people disappear! Literally do NOT exist until, and if, they intrude upon you, make their presence known by vision or sound or heat or touch etc. Also, hearing increase, you'll actually hear [and understand] conversations between people in adjacent rooms, or at some distances you would NOT think possible. After exploring that near sleep state for a while, you can control it and gain some advantage from being in that near 'sleep state': once while staying in a hotel in europe I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, Being half asleep and in a completely unfamiliar set of rooms, I became disoriented. Then, I remembered [while still half asleep] that the brain hears well, so I turned my hand to face in front of me, rubbed my thunb back and forth across the finger tips to create 'skin squeaking' The cupped hand made a great reflector for the sound and upon hearing the echo completely envisioned the room as if you had turned on a light. In front of me at my feet was a displaced ottoman. Had I continued walking, would have been painful, or comic, depending on your proclivities.
My premise is people are capable of far more than they are allowed to believe they are capable of from birth.
I read a really good article on these "million to one", "freaky" occurrences. What happens is that you're _constantly_ going through the setups for them, and not noticing when they occur -- i.e., you think of someone and they don't call, so you forget, or you walk into a spider web in the dark without the initial pause, etc.
So those times when you _do_ get something like that happening isn't "freaky" -- it's just that we're hard-wired to notice patterns, to the point where if you give us random noise, we'll make patterns out of it.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
I have them all the time. I listen to my intuition and it works fairly well. A few months ago, I decided not to work that day. No reason, just a feeling that it would be a bad idea. There was nothing important pending and I could reschedule my appointments. So, I spent a dull and uninteresting day at home. On arrival to the office the next day, I found that the fire inspector had arrived unannounced, and had passed out violation notices and fines to everyone except my office, because nobody was there. Premonition or luck? I don't know, but it seems to work.
--
Jeff Liebermann jeffl@cruzio.com
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558
@@@ I can't comment because it is hearay - I asn't there. She was convinced it was an "intuitive" message. BUT...How much sound can a spider web reflect?
You 'heard' the cockroach crawling on the ceiling. Yes, they are
@@@ Well, it's a mechanistic explanation, but the bug was quiet on the concrete ceiling, and I suddenly woke and turned on the light, a complex willful action. I never do that. PLUS, when I woke and turned on the light, I did not have a startle reaction going on...I did it in a way that was calm, as if some power was guiding me - I only got startled when I saw the roach encroaching. Hard to explain and imposible to logically say you or I am right - I jut "know" something spooky happened...:)
snip
Okay.
&&& Well, compare what you are saying to the "I am" state - just being in the present - We must say here that words do not grasp the thing that you are talking about - words are an illusion, we must understand at first.
Taking that 'twisted
&&& You are talking to a person who has lived in India...There are many frameworks in eastern spirituality as well as the Bible to provide a framework for what you say...Of course it is a state of mind. This guy Tolle, I think his name is - writes books like the eternal now. (vague on details.) Eckart Tolle. But I am a scholar of various religions of the world...knowledge only an illusion...most are talking about that state I think you are describing...I pulled a Greek Bible and found these words in Mathew 6:32, which I'm going to translate from the Koine: (Jesus speaking) "Your mind moves in attraction to the trifles of the world, but rest your mind in the present, since the state I am describing to you makes you satisfied. Seek first the mind-kingdom of being, and all what others strive for will automatically be yours afterward."
(Note: The church translation is "kingdom of God" rather than "mind-kingdom of being," but "of God" is recognized as having been added later. IMO Jesus is talking about a way of being, rather than a worship of God. )
The Greek Bible, the original Bible as far as we have, is different from the standard church translation in many ways. It was inconceivable to monks copying the Bible that Jesus was talking about a state of mind, rather than a kingdom of God to be achieved. So they added 'ton theon' - of God. That's future-speak, but the original saying is now-speak. ymmv.
yeah, I buy that. Here's a reason why: Suppose you're running around in the bush and you *think* you see a tiger in the tree, even though it's very partial. It always pays to over-react, since being in error gets you eaten.
Yes, there's a line of spiritual thought that says we create our own world, so hatever happens is something that is put there deliberately for us. I don't know if I buy that, but I do buy that we have a lot of control over how we react to things. I have to remember that with tail-gators. :)
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