How spiritual reality can affect physical reality and stays undetected?

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The existence of spiritual, non-physical, reality is part of all religious belief. Moreover, it is a part of religious belief that spiritual beings can affect physical reality, revelations, visions, etc. The question then is how spiritual thing can affect physical reality and stays undetected?
 
Quite a few saints were able to detect spiritual interference with our physical world of course. If you read about the life of St Pio for example, and I cite his life because it was a relatively recent thing, you will find numerous occasions when he intereacted with the spiritual world around us.

Such people seem to be allowed or chosen by God to be aware of this otherwise invisible world. St Pio saw us as surrounded by this other dimension. Perhaps one day it will be explained through quantum physics, that’s my guess, though I can’t help thinking that it’s better if we are left ignorant on that score, prone to tinkering and mischief as we seem to be.
 
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Lee1 said:
Quite a few saints were able to detect spiritual interference with our physical world of course. If you read about the life of St Pio for example, and I cite his life because it was a relatively recent thing, you will find numerous occasions when he intereacted with the spiritual world around us.

Such people seem to be allowed or chosen by God to be aware of this otherwise invisible world. St Pio saw us as surrounded by this other dimension. Perhaps one day it will be explained through quantum physics, that’s my guess, though I can’t help thinking that it’s better if we are left ignorant on that score, prone to tinkering and mischief as we seem to be.
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Yes, I am trying to have an explanation on how something could be visible to some and not to other?
 
I understand you. The truth is we don’t know, you ask hard questions!

Sometimes as you say something is seen or heard that another close by cannot see or hear. Now, logically we could infer that since we share very similar physiology if the vision or sound existed before two people say, then both should see it. At Fatima I seem to remember that the boy Francesco couldn’t hear Our Lady but could see Her. I also seem to remember that one or two people could hear a high pitched noise of sorts but not words clearly spoken as Lucia could.

Somehow it appears that an individual can be privy to a supernatural spectacle as if targeted in some way, I don’t get the feeling that some are more sensitive than others but that may be the case. I think it’s more likely that we are ‘tuned in’ selectively. How? I don’t know. This could be telepathy I imagine.

(There was an example yesterday, Adele Brise witnessed the Holy Mother but two companions did not.)
 
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Hierognosis is the word for someone who’s able to detect a spiritual reality, when most people are limited by their senses. This usually results in the ability to recognize a blessed object vs an unblessed object (ie, a fake relic vs a real relic, or a consecrated Eucharist vs an unconsecrated Eucharist, a blessed rosary vs an unblessed rosary); being able to detect a curse or a cursed object; being able to detect a priest. There’s the anecdote of the saint who was brought a basket of apples, but some of the apples had been gathered from trees that belonged to the donor, and others were apples that had been taken from other people’s trees. The saint was able to tell the difference between whether the apples were stolen or were able to be freely given, and rejected the stolen apples, but accepted the ones that were genuinely the donor’s to give.

Cardiognosis is another one-- the ability to read hearts, the ability to know whether someone’s in a state of grace or a state of sin. If you have a cardiognostic, sometimes they’re able to give you extra information about how you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, and it makes your path clearer. Like, “You should have done X, but you ignored that person and didn’t act, and so God wasn’t able to work through you.” And you say, “Ahhhh, I had no idea” and you modify your behavior with that extra perspective in mind, and you grow more into the person God wants you to be.

Most of us don’t have those sorts of gifts constantly. But everybody gets their moment where God picks up just a little corner of the curtain and lets us experience something beyond our senses, even if it’s just for the briefest instant— and that’s enough to make us say, “Ahhhh,” and use the experience to try and be more like the people he intended us to be, and not worry about all the times when we continue to be limited by our senses. 💙💙💙
 
STT said:
Even in case of Fatima some saw things and many didn’t see anything.
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Maybe it is just me, but that seems more clearly a spiritual interference in the world. There wasn’t anything clearly physical for people to misinterpret, and anything physically capable of causing such mass hallucination would seem to affect everyone and/or cause wildly different hallucinations so that no consistent story could emerge.
 
It is also part of all superstition and magic and even some forms of “science” (eg new age, Victorian Spiritualism) which wise Christians reject. The trick is to correctly perceive the difference.

In short the wise person infers the existence ( “detects”) of spiritual substances with their mind/reason/philosophy not the senses or instruments of science.

You will never find an answer and by definition.
It is the very fact that we cannot find a material causality that we infer the presence of a spiritual substance causing the material effects.

The primary example for Christian thinkers is the soul. How can a body have such unity, growth and cohesion for so many years if it is just separate chemical elements. How can a human reason and think about non material things.

Do not confuse force or energy with such spiritual substances.
They are still material substances at heart though “rarified forms”. That is why scientific instruments can still detect even invisible things like gravity, radio waves etc. Ghostbusters is just a money making movie full of rubbish facts.

Do angels exist also? We believe so but they have never been objectively discovered and never will be.

No alleged physical miracle I have ever heard of has been convincingly proven. I have never witnessed one nor have any of my friends. If God wanted to scientifically demonstrate to unbelievers the existence of the spiritual realm it seems he respects human freedom by never doing so but only to individuals. I know of no miracle where somebody with an amputated leg or even a finger ever grew back again.
There is always an alternative explanation if you werent there…divine influence on the imagination, psychsomatic, extremely rare coincidence.
Atheists tend to say that there may even be forces of nature at work we have not yet grasped when inexplicable things happen they cannot explain (eg levitation).
In short the spiritual realm is “detected” by reason/philosophy not by the senses and the tools of scientists in my experience.

Anythin else need not be accepted and arises often from possibly divine influence on the imagination…or neurosis/delusion. These clearly cannot be proven either way…or often distinguished.
 
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God chooses who sees what, I expect it’s what is called faith. Faith has two meanings, one where we work to accept a certain matter as true like a doctrine for instance. The other is a special grace which God confers on us by the Holy Spirit and has nothing to do with doctrinal matters and produces an effect beyond human capabilities which would be when we see (or do) these sorts of things. (This is from the second reading of the office of readings today incidentally). So the fact that some see or perhaps perceive things that others don’t is a special grace.
 
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There are rare atmospheric conditions that can cause the swirling colors and falling sun experienced at Fatima.
My wife and friends once experienced exactly the same thing when hiking on a mountain top in Asia as teenagers. She never forgot the experience as it was so scary and powerful.
For me the miracle at Fatima was how accurately the day was predicted by the Vision of the children.
 
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Sophie111 said:
There are rare atmospheric conditions that can cause the swirling colors and falling sun experienced at Fatima.
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I was speaking under the assumption that some saw nothing, which is what STT said. I’d imagine such atmospheric conditions would be seen by all.
 
“Swirling” over a wide area is the key I suggest. Like a squally day on a miniature scale. Some get rained on, some dont. Some get shine, some get wet.

Alernatively call it the “asparagus effect” ☺️.
 
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The nature of the human intellect which is of a spiritual nature is that it only knows the essences or natures of corporeal/physical things which is one reason the human soul is united to the body as its form. For all our knowledge in this life comes through the senses which is why we have the eye for seeing, the ear for hearing, and so forth. And our intellect in this life being united to the body knows nothing without turning to what is called in philosophy a ‘phantasm’ which phantasm is produced by the soul in a corporeal organ of the body such as the imagination. Accordingly, the human intellect in this life cannot know by its own nature the essences of spiritual substances which are outside or beyond the constraints of the corporeal/physical world which world also includes the micro-world of quantum mechanics.

The activity of the human spiritual soul which is the form of the body and which animates the body can obviously be detected just by considering whether some person is alive or dead. And we can come to some understanding of the immaterial and spiritual nature of the human soul and the intellect by an examination of the nature of our own thoughts such as what Plato and Aristotle did. But we cannot know naturally the very essence of our own souls or any spiritual substance such as the angels or God because as I said above our intellect in this life does not know anything without turning to a ‘phantasm’ which is of a corporeal nature while a spiritual substance is not.

Spiritual substances are very subtle as it were and able to penetrate and fill the parts of things and the parts of parts and they are not bound but rather outside the constraints of the material/physical world. Material light or electromagnetism which is of a quite subtle nature may be considered analogous to spiritual substances except that as I have said spirits are more subtle still and outside the constraints of the corporeal/physical world. As St Paul said, ‘God dwells in inaccessible light’, meaning not the material light of this world but spiritual light.

Many saints have had a palpable or tangible experience as it were of God’s activity in their souls through his supernatural grace. But this is supernatural as we believe sanctifying grace and actual transient graces are supernatural gifts from God.
 
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Just because we have a name for something doesnt mean its real or proveable or not superstitious.
not worry about all the times when we continue to be limited by our senses
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Interesting, I have always thought we are limited by our small hearts and small minds not by our senses.
everybody gets their moment where God picks up just a little corner of the curtain and lets us experience something beyond our senses
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This curtain/veil stuff separating us from the spirit world has, to me, always smacked of US Spiritualism and the vestiges of ancient pagan (Celtic I believe) myths.

e.g. See “Veil” as defined in the below New Age manual

 
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We are a composite of spirit and material. They are naturally integrated. We exist in a state that they are not integrated but divided by sin. Some more than others.
 
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Sophie111 said:
This curtain/veil stuff separating us from the spirit world has, to me, always smacked of US Spiritualism and the vestiges of ancient pagan (Celtic I believe) myths.
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The first example that comes to my mind is when you’re with someone who’s in the process of passing away. Sometimes, it smacks you like, “Woah, this feels like childbirth” and sometimes, it smacks you like, “Woah, this is a thin place.” But if you’ve felt a thin place, you know what I’m trying to describe. 💙

“Beyond the veil” is a phrase that originated in the Bible. Because it refers to-- the Veil that separates the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Temple, and eventually evolved into a phrase meaning to show the separation between the ordinary and material, and the holy and the unknown.
Having therefore, brethren, a confidence in the entering into the holies by the blood of Christ;
A new and living way which he hath dedicated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh,
And a high priest over the house of God:
Let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with clean water.
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A curtain or veil is a good word for it— it’s just a thin sheet of almost-nothing that keeps us from seeing beyond it. But there is no actual separation— the only separation is our inability to perceive every layer of Reality in front of us. But even though we’re not able to perceive every layer of Reality-- just like we’re not able to see atoms bouncing around, or molecules doing their stuff, or perceive the growing of a tree as it happens, or whatever-- doesn’t mean the Reality doesn’t exist. Those are material examples of how our senses fail us— the same thing holds true on the spiritual level.

Look at all the encounters with angels in the Bible. How many of them happened while the person was awake? You’ve got the Annunciation and Daniel and Zacharias— but most of them are in disguise (a la Raphael in the Book of Tobit) or in dreams (Joseph, the Three Wise Men, etc). But yeah, a lot of it is an effect of us separating ourselves from God through sin. We’ll always be very, very small, and there’s nothing we can do on our own to be able to acquire that capacity on our own---- but God’s very kind, and gives us a little taste of what we’re missing on occasion, to help us strive harder in the right direction. 💙
 
No explanation yet. Could this type of hallucination is due to disturbance of neural activity? This cannot be due to presence of a physical thing since everybody would agree on the experience.
 
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