Spiritist Knowledge

" Of mediumship there are many grades, one of the simplest forms being the capacity to receive an impression or automatic writing, under peaceful conditions, in an ordinary state; but the whole subject is too large to be treated here ." Sir Oliver Lodge. Read more about this case here (access to SKL repository).   I n simple terms, a communication process is a set of stages that transfers a message from emitter to receiver. This is a very popular image of communication and we can call it ‘information transfer’ model. It is, however, severely limited in spite of its success in a variety of cases, mainly electronic devices. Recently, research about communication has been carried out by modern linquistic theories although other research fields – such as semiotics – study communication of ‘non human’ content (e. g. plants, animals etc). Modern linguistic approaches attempt to explain communication not in terms of information transfer only. An efficient communication proces...

"The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer, as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn, in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. " David Hume ( An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding , 1772) Even though the scope of this page is not philosophical, it is interesting to realize that deep philosophical questions are behind the fact that most of our universe is invisible and that we are confined to a very limited sensorial realm. Such questions arise when one considers the existence of objects external to us, the objects of 'human enquiry' and how one can be certain about their existence. We know that science has developed its own procedures in order to explain natural phenomena. Today we known that there are many in...

Some examples of the 'empirical' classification presented in our past post are given below. Not all phenomena are observable as we see. Many of them are non-observable and cannot be sensed in any way. Observable and cyclic:  Conspicuous astronomical events: apparent movement of celestial bodies, eclipses of the sun, moon, tides - rise and fall of sea level;  Seasonal ocurrrences: change of color of leaves in the beginning of autumn, the menstrual cycle; Observable and noncyclic: A large category of natural ocurrences such as: Weather and climate: storms, lightning, hurricanes;  Life (biology): an interesting example are bat´s sounds at the threshold of what can be heard by humans (below 20KHz). Most of bat´s interaction with the environment is ultrasonic and, therefore (according to our nomenclature) 'invisible' (non-audible), almost all life occurrences are noncyclic and shows a strong cause and effect link;  Geology: vulcanic eruptions (...

For centuries, people were unaware of the invisible, that in Nature there are hidden things out of reach of our common senses. The progress of science has unveil a new Universe formed by phenomena that will never be disclosed by these senses alone.  However, they become tangible through a transducer or special media. The role of these media is to be   intermediaries  between the phenomena and our senses. Classification of natural phenomena The universe contains many strata of different phenomena. Some of them are cyclic occurrences while others are sporadic. Many phenomena were discovered with the progress of science, but quite a few of them are accessible to ordinary observation (the so called human senses).  Instead of categorizing natural occurences in broad areas (physics, biology etc), one can divide them  according to their accessibility to our senses. We suggest to classify nature´s event by the following definitions: Observable phenomena: oc...

“ [The universe] cannot be read until we have learnt the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is written. It is written in mathematical language, and the letters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to comprehend a single word." (Galileo Galilei, Opere Il Saggiatore p. 171.) The 'Book of Nature' is the last great book that we are still browsing. It was written since the beginning of time by a single Author. It is written in a peculiar language, grasped by no men but admitting a single interpretation. It is also a code of laws applicable to all objects of the world, governing the relation between causes and effects. It can not be copied, but it can be imitated, and men frequently gaze at hidden passages that reveal a remarkable structure, an enchanting if not scary regularity. The content of this Book is infinitely larger than anything that we had ever known, showing the existence of in...