Shimrod - "LH - can you explain to me how a thing or force, or even an experience (leaving aside hallucinations or other tricks of the mind/brain) can be something other than physical in nature? Surely, something that is not physical has little chance of interacting with physical phenomena such as you and I? Please give me an example (not just a personal, unverifiable anecdote - but something that I can experience myself) of a 'non-physical' phenomenon."


Sure thing. When I experience great respect for someone or something, that is an experience I have which is real, and it's important to me, but it's not physical. It's a perception of something not physical. It's a real experience.

When I experience joy or calmness or excitement or depression, those are all perceptions of something that are real experiences I'm having...but they're not physical. They can have effects ON the physical system to some extent, but they are not themselves physical events. They're mental/emotional/spiritual events or movements in consciousness.

When I experience love for a person, an ideal, or a concept, it's a real experience for me, but it's not physical.

When I experience the thrill of a new idea it's real, but it's not physical.

You can say if you wish that I am physical, and that without my physical self I would not have those experiences. You might be right about that. You might not be. In any case, I experience all kinds of things in consciousness that are not physical, and they are among the most important things in my life. Life would be pretty meaningless without them, seems to me.

Spirituality concerns consciousness. Consciousness is not based on the physical, it simply passes through the physical and uses it as a device the way a radio signal passes through a radio receiver and uses it to play music or to steer a radio control sailboat.

The radio signal is not physical either. It's a form of coherently organized and purposeful energy, as is consciousness.

Without consciousness, you wouldn't even be reading this. Without your eyes you wouldn't be either. We need both a physical body and a non-physical consciousness to do all the wonderful things we do here during our physical lives.

I think the non-physical consciousness continues after the body is dead and gone. I expect you think it doesn't. Well, we'll find out after we die, won't we? Or else we won't. If I turn out to be right about this I will have a chance to say to you, "Surprised?" if I run into you in the afterlife. ;-D If not, well, it won't matter anyway, will it? Cos we'll both be gone.

It's okay with me either way.