I think it might be an appropriate time for the OP to explain what they actually mean by the term 'supernatural' - it seems to be a moving target here.

There's a notion that love is supernatural, that poetry is supernatural, that inspiration is supernatural.

The thread title highlights the problem: the most supernatural thing... implying there are gradients of sort-of supernatural, a bit supernatural, fairly supernatural, and totally supernatural. It's an either/or binary.

If it can't even be agreed on what the term supernatural means, then how is it possible to say anything about the topic? Fen's keys are a perfect example - do some people think finding their keys is a sign of divine intervention? Indeed, they do. Is that supposed to be an example of universes colliding and laws sneaking over the cosmic borders smuggling in their supernatural forces to steal jobs from this universe's laws?

Rachel Bronwyn wrote:I'm pretty sure there was a ghost in my bedroom for several seconds after I woke up from a dream once.

Was it tap-dancing? Because if so, it wasn't a ghost. But if it was quothing poetry about lost love, you might be onto something. You should've asked to see its architectural plans for the Taj Mahal.

Spearthrower wrote:I think it might be an appropriate time for the OP to explain what they actually mean by the term 'supernatural' - it seems to be a moving target here.

There's a notion that love is supernatural, that poetry is supernatural, that inspiration is supernatural.

The thread title highlights the problem: the most supernatural thing... implying there are gradients of sort-of supernatural, a bit supernatural, fairly supernatural, and totally supernatural. It's an either/or binary.

If it can't even be agreed on what the term supernatural means, then how is it possible to say anything about the topic? Fen's keys are a perfect example - do some people think finding their keys is a sign of divine intervention? Indeed, they do. Is that supposed to be an example of universes colliding and laws sneaking over the cosmic borders smuggling in their supernatural forces to steal jobs from this universe's laws?

It's the sad and hackneyed condition that we (most of us) can't really put our fee-fees into words. What a fucking tragedy. I want my money back. The more I read people trying to put their feelings into words, the more I conclude they should just fucking give up. Either write some decent poetry or just fucking say "Good night". The better you are at putting anything into words, the better you'll be at putting your feelings into words. If you're shit with words, you know what to do.

Look at the music videos aufbahrung links to. No wonder he can't put his feelings into words. He likes what he likes, but it's not helping getting anything into words that is not sad and hackneyed.

Ode to a Ghost

Thought I, lost are my keys
But whence came about such fee-fees?
Asleep I awoke, and there were you
Floating in non-mundane goo
Ghost you sprang, I must confide
From universes that did collide
Sneaky foreign laws stole through
Serving Russellian high-tea for two
Surprised yet, there was no fear
Perhaps because you quothed Shakespeare
To be or more likely not to be
All supernatural humbuggery
Truth, lies and mental states
Taj Mahals on roller skates
The ghost frowned and berated me
Cito said good poetry!

Spearthrower wrote:I think it might be an appropriate time for the OP to explain what they actually mean by the term 'supernatural' - it seems to be a moving target here.

There's a notion that love is supernatural, that poetry is supernatural, that inspiration is supernatural.

The thread title highlights the problem: the most supernatural thing... implying there are gradients of sort-of supernatural, a bit supernatural, fairly supernatural, and totally supernatural. It's an either/or binary.

If it can't even be agreed on what the term supernatural means, then how is it possible to say anything about the topic? Fen's keys are a perfect example - do some people think finding their keys is a sign of divine intervention? Indeed, they do. Is that supposed to be an example of universes colliding and laws sneaking over the cosmic borders smuggling in their supernatural forces to steal jobs from this universe's laws?

Dictionaries tend to define "supernatural" as outside the scientific laws of nature (for example, dictionary.com here: "of, relating to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal"), but it seems to me that in the way the word's used, it generally implies that there's some human-like agency involved with no sign of human-like brains? If some distant galaxy was found to have features which were unexplained in terms of current science, these would merely be unexplained phenomena rather than supernatural ones, but if the stars in that galaxy were found to be neatly arranged so as to spell out the first verse of the Bhagavad Gita, the word "supernatural" would probably come into play? We still use Theory of Mind, not science, to understand and predict each other and non-human animals, and it can feel all too simple and obvious to attempt to extend that kind of understanding and prediction to other things (some invisible joker must have hidden Fenrir's keys and then put them back!), at which point we are treating those things as supernatural? So far, all phenomena which are best predicted by Theory of Mind have turned out to have human or animal brains behind them, and there's no reason to suppose that will change. There is also every reason to suppose that brains, while complex, do follow the laws of science.

Now that we track those Russell's teapots
We know of reason's haves and have-nots

Keys, why are they always in the last place you look for them? Can't explain that.

zoon wrote:...(some invisible joker must have hidden Fenrir's keys and then put them back!)...

With a dad like mine it's kinda expected, gets a bit tedious at times though.

laklak wrote:Keys, why are they always in the last place you look for them? Can't explain that.

Because you stop looking when you find them?

aufbahrung wrote:A break in the physical laws of the universe such might as happen when a parallel universe with different rules collides for a moment or longer with this one. This is my defintion

That's nice.

I'm playing around with in the clutter of my mind.

Most honest thing you've said all day.

Since it is by definition 'supernatural' the laws of this universe do not apply. But that of other parallel universes we don't know - anymore than if we are embedded in a 'simulation or matrix' we don't know for sure pi isn't 3. Now you'll think.

That's a nice what-if. I've got another one, though it has the advantage of no unnecessarily multiplied entities: there is no supernatural, the perception of supernatural is people misunderstanding the natural, either through ignorance or preferred fantasy. I've got reams of evidence that what I'm suggesting happens, everywhere all the time, where's the evidence that what you're suggesting has happened?

It was just standing there.

A couple months ago, I was driving on a sloping road, with a car before me, and a bike lane on my right, with a guy on a bike on it. The driver before me turns his right blinker on, rather early, to go to a gas station on the right. I looked at the car, the station, the biker, and started visionning an accident, the biker hitting the car while it was crossing the bike lane. And it's exactly what happened, and I saw it happening like it was on slow-motion. Very weird sensation.
So I had 2 choices;
1- Believe that I have (or had) magical, supernatural powers because I incidentally stepped in a different universe at the exact time an insignificant accident was happening.
2- Believe that it was a simple coincidence that I imagined it the same way it indeed happened (which is probably not exactly true anyway, there might have been differences I didn't remember) .

I'll give you one guess to find out which one I chose aufbahrung.

aufbahrung wrote:A break in the physical laws of the universe such might as happen when a parallel universe with different rules collides for a moment or longer with this one. This is my defintion I'm playing around with in the clutter of my mind. Since it is by definition 'supernatural' the laws of this universe do not apply. But that of other parallel universes we don't know - anymore than if we are embedded in a 'simulation or matrix' we don't know for sure pi isn't 3. Now you'll think.

This reminds me of a video I posted in another thread.
The paranormal has succeeded where physics has thusfar floundered. Here it is...

The Unified Theory of Woo...

(6 min, 20 s)

aban57 wrote:A couple months ago, I was driving on a sloping road, with a car before me, and a bike lane on my right, with a guy on a bike on it. The driver before me turns his right blinker on, rather early, to go to a gas station on the right. I looked at the car, the station, the biker, and started visionning an accident, the biker hitting the car while it was crossing the bike lane. And it's exactly what happened, and I saw it happening like it was on slow-motion. Very weird sensation.
So I had 2 choices;
1- Believe that I have (or had) magical, supernatural powers because I incidentally stepped in a different universe at the exact time an insignificant accident was happening.
2- Believe that it was a simple coincidence that I imagined it the same way it indeed happened (which is probably not exactly true anyway, there might have been differences I didn't remember) .

I'll give you one guess to find out which one I chose aufbahrung.

What you describe is pretty standard in this blighted version of the universe. It's a sort of purgatory, a place where we pay for our prior misdeeds in the other universe. You think that you just "incidentally stepped in". But no. One way or another, you deserve to be here.



(Kidding).

Mike_L wrote:
(Kidding).

Thanks for specifying that, I thought you were serious at first.




(Kidding too).

I posted this in the 'Mediums' thread last year:
Years ago I had a couple of experiences with an older woman (no, not that sort ) where she 'read the cards' for us neighbours (she was not in the 'business' - it was her personal 'hobby').
She did this when I was 17 and said that "within a 6 (6 months) I would go to a large building with bright lights with a dark friend (brown eyes in her parlance). I went with him to the Royal Festival Hall for the first time within that period. Didn't think much of it then - pure coincidence.
But years later when I was married (to an Anglo-Indian girl) we were visiting my parents over the Christmas holiday and we invited this woman over (she was a family friend) where she met my wife for the first time.
After a bit we persuaded her to 'read the cards' - she used ordinary playing cards - and she said that my wife had just received a letter from 'across the seas' (which wasn't difficult to figure out) in which there was news of an illness from which they recovered, an engagement to be married and a death. We denied that we had received any such letter. She got quite upset and angry and almost accused us of lying.
When we returned home there was this airmail letter waiting for us on the doormat with precisely those three items of news...

This woman gave up 'reading the cards' for some years after that because she said she had a 'too true feeling' and it frightened her. She felt that she was the 'cause' or had 'influence' over of what she 'knew' was about to happen.

As far as I'm concerned, this 'attribute' has nothing to do with any mystic paranormal crap but is probably a 'normal' brain function that some rare individuals possess which as yet we cannot examine due to its transient nature. Whatever it is, I feel, it is uniquely of human origin - nothing else. There may be others with this 'genuine' attribute but the main problem is to separate them from the charlatans.

After my experience, I'm keeping an open mind.

Alan B wrote:
After my experience, I'm keeping an open mind.

I think what you find is that if your mind is 'open' to stuff like that, eventually you'll find a coincidence that stays with you. It's a chicken-egg problem. When somebody tells you there's a letter for you with news in it, sometimes she'll be right. As for the content of the news, that human talent you're talking about is knowing how specific to be after finding somebody whose mind is 'open' to the possibility of 'special abilities'. All the attributes are there, except, you know, for the supernatural bits.

One thing is for damn sure: If your mind isn't 'open' to that stuff, then you won't be waiting around for a time when you might think it's happened. As usual, the special ability lies much more in the capacity to be open-minded about it than in anyone else's ability to know stuff that supposedly isn't known yet.

Cito di Pense wrote:I think what you find is that if your mind is 'open' to stuff like that, eventually you'll find a coincidence that stays with you.

Indeed.

Suppose 1 in 100 readings is close enough to what happened to give you goosebumps. That's 99 other people thinking the 'clairvoyant' is a charlatan.

My weirdest experience was in a casino in Lanzarote. My other half and I bought 30 euros worth of chips as we went in, and played blackjack at 2 EUR per play. She wanted me to only twist on 16 or below, and pretty soon we were down to the last 2 euro chip.

So I decided to throw caution to the winds, and at that moment, something strange happened in my head, it was as if I went into a trance. It was almost as if I knew what was coming up - as each hand was dealt I either played or didn't, and if I played I was somehow completely confident, sometimes twisting on 18 or 19, often with gasps from around the table. I didn't lose a single hand until I had about 60 EUR, at which point the feeling abruptly left me so I stopped playing.

So we cashed in our chips, all except one 2 EUR chip which I still have, and had a nice meal out of the winnings.

I claim nothing about the experience. I expect it was just a run of bad luck, followed by a run of good luck, with some associated coincidental feelings. But it felt bloody weird at the time.