The Metaphysics and Logical Philosophy of Ghosts

With Socrates view on ghosts in the Phaedo

Copyright 8/2007 Ken wheeler
Completely disregarding the mythos and legends thru time immemorial regarding ghosts, the logical philosophical analysis thru the
lens of abductive reasoning as used and employed by Platonists, especially that of Plotinus, lends a lucid insight into the nature of the
disembodied will, or spirit (citta, nous, spiritus sanctum). The following is a concise philosophical analysis of spirits as examined thru
the most intelligent methodology of metaphysical examination that exists, that of Platonism; to understand how and for what reason
the noetic will, or spirit, in very limited instances, makes congress with the phenomenal world, this kosmos aisthetos of living beings.
Logically so hauntings are associated with places of mass casualties such as battlefields or mass-murder, far less so to the mere
resting places of bodies, i.e. graveyards as is contrary to countless legends. [Socrates-Phaedo 81d] “these souls wander about until at
last, through craving for the corporeal which has unceasingly pursued them, they are imprisoned once more in a body.” Supplementary
to this, due to modern investigations, the majority of phenomenal-interjections by the disembodied (i.e. hauntings) are related to the
ignorant single-person now deceased, who were extremely incapable of disobjectification, i.e. disassociation with empirical life while
alive, cleaving to the phenomenal body and its desires, regrets and unfinished tasks, to illustrate that, other than hospitals, battlefields,
and jails, single-residency homes wherein an extremely ignorant person has deceased have an extraordinary amount of phenomenal-
interjections occur. [Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “(the impure and contaminated soul by associating itself with the corporeal body) is
permeated by congregation and intercourse with the body will have for the longest time associated and practice (with the body).”
[Socrates-Phaedo 83d] “Because every pleasure or pain has with it a sort of rivet by which it fastens the soul to the body and pins it
down and makes it corporeal.” In line with the reasoning of Socrates in [Phaedo 83d], those souls who are fully engrossed in self-
identification (objective, empirical, false, temporal) with the unreal self (Pali anatta, i.e. not-soul, not-spirit), are therein chained by
reason of the impotence and incapacity of their will to have Subjective (spiritual, or true) identification. Of the wise or moderately
spiritual it is said: (anatmanas tu satrutve vartetatmaiva satruvat) “The Spirit is at war with whatever is not-Spirit (anatman)” [B.G.
VI.VI], but for those who have traumatically died ‘before their time’ or with much occupying their minds (spirit, nous, citta), and
especially for those grossly enthralled with and in identification with their empirical self, these are found to be the progenitors of the
lingering and phenomenally experienced ‘ghosts’ of which are encountered. These “ignorant manyfolk” (the common profane man)
are not “at war” with the empirical self (not-Spirit) but are so therein attached by measure of their ignorances they greatly desire the
endless perpetuation of same or activity associated with that self after disembodiment has occurred at either a timely or an untimely
demise. Whether that ‘undead’ (“he has died but not died to what is now dead that he was but is no longer”) was/is attached ignorantly
either to their former self, or to another, or to trauma, or place, or object or otherwise is irrelevant, all these are objective unrealities to
which these ‘restless spirits’ are impotent to remove themselves thereof. [Socrates-Phaedo 82e] “a (ignorant) soul is a helpless
prisoner, chained by hand and foot to the body, compelled to view reality not directly but only through its prison bars.”
[Socrates-Phaedo 81c] “the corporeal is course, heavy, oppressive, earthly, visible. So the soul which is tainted by its presence is
weighed down and dragged back into the visible world, through fear some say, and hovers about tombs and graveyards. These
shadowy apparitions which have actually been seen are the ghosts of those souls which have not gotten clear away (from
association/identity with the body), but still remain in some portion of what can be seen.” This noetic projection by the metaphysical
will, or spirit, is the continuing methexis, or recombination of the disembodied spirit, by means and artifice of its ignorance, its self-
intercession with and amongst the phenomenal world which it both cherishes and solely identifies, for to it, there is little or nothing
else. The mimetic body, or ghost, is a mirage of former being either partially or fully (full-body apparition) into this world and is the
artifice of spirit which is made seen to others by one or multiple datum. This eikonic being is the manifest delusion of the both
deceased and ignorant incapable of transcendence beyond either place, desire, of former life itself.
That the kosmos noetos (noetic, or spiritual world) might intercede itself into the kosmos aisthetos (empirical or phenomenal
world) without which the corporeal body is not used, i.e. in the consubstantial being of life, should come as no surprise or shock to any
as pertains the investigation of ‘ghosts’. That this world alone is full with empirical life, from macrocosmic to microcosmic, which is
nothing more than a harmonia of spirit and matter; it would therefore, abductively and logically be consistent that just as lifeless
matter itself must and does exist in standalone, infinitely ever-the-more-so too must spirit exist in standalone without being in
consubstantial congress with any physical body which we, the living deem a like; another living creature or being. Only the ignorant
and atheistic have so deemed the greatest or complete measure of totality to mere matter, but metaphysicians and now too modern
physicists demonstrate that matter is most likely no more than a bundling of wavefronts of something else antecedent to the matter
itself, a mere attribute to a metaphysical Subject. Platonists, namely Plotinus have abducted that matter is nothing more than the
byproduct of emanation by the Absolute; a temporal manifestation of the Good.
Moving ahead with the subject, spirits, or noetic beings; logically that the noetic might find and make congress with matter in the
form of empirical, consubstantial, and temporal being, so too will be the case, albeit the rarer occurrence (or is it so?) that spirits make
mimetic intercession into and with ‘our’ (one must say ‘our’, since the phenomenal world is no more ‘ours’ than the Sun is ours by
illogical reasoning that by proxy, light from the Sun falls upon our very faces) world in many fashions, some of which are readily
apparent thru the profane and extremely limited spectrum senses of human beings. Logically and rightly so, by implementation of an
‘extension’ of our limited senses, near-infrared, and out-of-human-range audio, electrostatic, magnetic-field, and video electronics
have opened wide 100X fold, the interest and uncovering of these spirit-phenomena or intercessions, by resultant that thru usage of
this instrumentation, a far greater spectrum or bandwidth of data as pertains spirit/ghost-activity has been made readily available for
examination.
 In the ancient Pali language of India from 2600 years past, of which I am a translator, the philosophical term used to describe the
disembodied is a monomayakaya, or ‘mind-made-body’, also meaning ‘artifice-creation of-mind’, as speaking of the metaphysical
citta (nous, spirit) which is, by manner of its potential for intercession into ‘our’ phenomenal world, capable of manifestation that
he/she still either considers itself as physical being, or so strongly desires same, that the will/spirit is made manifest in one or several
modalities such that living beings make notice of same by visual, auditory, or other sensory, or trans-sensory datum.
[Socrates-Phaedo 79c] “because using the body implies using the senses…when it (the spirit) is drawn away by the body (at birth)
into the realm of the variable, and loses its way and becomes confused and dizzy, as though it were befuddled.” Highlighting this
problem as brought forward by Socrates, intercourse by the spirit with the temporal body further enthralls the will, or spirit, into
objectification (a-vijja, ignorance, nescience, spiritual amnesia) that, as it were, the puppet-master, or spirit, has only identity with the
mimesis or mirage of spirit, the puppet itself. Those many or few who are so enthralled with this “jointed and temporal puppet” as
echoed by an ancient philosopher, are still, by metaphysical means, projecting the spirit into the phenomenal world long after the
strings, or life, with that ‘puppet’, have been cut at the time of death. In league with this sentiment: [Dhm. 147] "Behold! That painted
puppet this body, riddled with oozing sores, an erected façade. Diseased heap that fools fancy and swoon over; Spirit has no part of
it.”
A further tangent of logical deduction as pertains animals (term meaning literally ‘has-a-soul’, or anim-al); it can be concluded that
since animals have little to no self-identification, i.e. neither/little grieve over themselves or fellow kind, that slaughterhouses wherein
countless hundreds of thousands have met brutal fates, has not been, to any record a place of noetic and spiritual intercession by the
disembodied deceased of those former living creatures who, with meager rational consciousnesses, lack the premise whereby they
grieve their own bodily fates. While true that beats fight with great ferocity for their lives with claw and fang, this impulsive reaction
is merely an ingrained effect of the being itself, rather than a love of self which makes one fight for life and its accessories as such as
is seen in the complex being of a human.
In a logical differentiation of the ‘types’ of hauntings as enumerated by investigation, one can and must abductively conclude that
those phenomena which have a mere repetition of intercession, akin to a record skipping over a same track, over and over, is due to
said noetic being which is either wholly or willfully ignorant of either living beings and also the flux in material surroundings (due to
the passage of time, renovation, or general change in the topos [place]) of the deceased who cleaves to that specific location either due
to traumatic death in that topos, ignorant attachment to said location, or otherwise. In contrasting this with the ‘social’ deceased to
interact in X fashion with living beings, or also respond to same thru whichever capacity; we can make no greater distinction between
these two varieties of hauntings than we make of the social and unsocial living who possess different ignorant attachments to and in
life, being it of material place or desire, or of the living, specific or unspecific.
It can be logically deduced, as is hearsay of paranormal investigators, that in many instances, the activity surrounding the ‘restless’
deceased is witnessed to increase and or worsen as result of those, or many who, successfully and or purposefully interact with these
spirits by means of either two-way communication thru instrumentation of question-answer devices such as video, audio-recorders,
speaking-boards (ouija). It follows without question that the ignorant dead, in many instances, suffer to interact with the living, like a
lonely and, in this case literally, invisible child is kept at length from interacting with others, suffering all the while. To extension that
we know the extremely ignorant are synonymous with evil, and therefore bestial, these paranormal investigators are instigators who
quite literally “feed the beast” in so extensively and repetitively desiring and making contact with these disembodied souls. By
elimination the wise or noble of spirit who have passed at time of death are not counted amongst those who linger and intercede into
the phenomenal world, those to whom we deem ghosts. As such, in most all cases, those investigators who make contact with or who
are disturbed by spirits, unless they be the spirits of children who are innocently ignorant, are in most instances dealing with highly
unsavory beings of profane and vile standing. One cannot and does not in any instance make contact with any of these dead and are
simultaneously dealing with and corresponding with any being of nobility, wisdom, intelligence, or who deserves respect. In like
conclusion it can be said without question that paranormal investigators are interacting with both the insane and criminally minded, to
either a greater or lesser degree.
It cannot be otherwise concluded that those deceased who are known to interject themselves in whichever fashion in X location are
temporalized to a great degree, though they be entirely noetic beings without actual/true congress with phenomenal matter as in the
case of living beings; these beings are not free or self-actualized to roam to any great extent from the place of their desire and or
demise. Abduction from this observation leads one to conclude that lacking any direct methexis, or participation in being, these noetic
entities are either greatly or fully participate in an eikonic artifice or mirage of temporalized existence wherein they repeat their desires
for a greater or lesser period, or actively participate with the living either to a detrimental/frightening extent, or to a mere
belonging/participatory degree all of which is encompassed by nescience as impetus for their so doing. It has been incorrectly
theorized by some parapsychologists that passive hauntings are the resultant of an event, rather than noetic being itself, akin to a
resonant after-image of an event or passing of a person, either traumatic or otherwise, thereby implying that there could possibly be
another medium of and for a haunting outside of the noetic itself, but this cannot be logically enjoined either thru what is logically
consistent or thru observation. This inconsistency would be subscribing to the possibility that noetic intercession could be occurring
by and or thru a means not immanently as resultant from a non-noetic principle.
Metaphysics and logic agrees that antecedent to any direct participation, the eikonic image or noetic conception exists within the
spiritual, the will/mind/nous/citta/spiritus sanctum, this eidos, the old truism and Platonic adage “as above, so below”. Deferring
therefore to what is logical and consistent with observation the deceased spirit most certainly can be temporalized sans a temporal co-
habitation with an empirical body, upturning the ignorant concept that only the living “suffer the slings and arrows of time, desire,
sorrow, etc.”. In this same line of reasoning is also consistent with observation that those places long long ago formerly known as
‘hot-spots’ for metaphysical activities by the deceased are no longer so in many if not most instances.
In closing, I differ to Socrates who concludes that noetic self-assimilation (complete empirical disobjectification) is the premise
and antinomy to all becoming and certainly to disembodied self-existence (‘ghost’): [Socrates-Phaedo 80e] “if at release the soul is
pure and carries with it no contamination of the body, because it has never willingly associated with the body in life”. All of which we
can therefore say of these souls who intercede with and amongst phenomenal life, “these (ghosts) are in no way pure”. These ‘undead’
beings carry the crime and penalty of harboring ignorances which death cannot erase, for that very nescience is not part nor parcel to
empirical being, but has its locus in the metaphysical spirit/nous/citta, as such the ‘wicked’ in life who did not transcend the desire or
attachment to empirical existence and its numberless trappings, dig themselves a second grave for their spirit to rest (rather unrest),
until its impetus is exhausted, either thru hard-gained insight, or exhausting the desire which established it.