Are ghosts found within religion?

Peek-A-Boo wrote: Sheol ( /ˈʃiːoʊl/ SHEE-ohl or /ˈʃiːəl/ SHEE-əl; Hebrew שְׁאוֹל Šʾôl), translated as "grave", "pit", or "abode of the dead", is the Old Testament/Hebrew bible's underworld, a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from God.[1]

Without going to my notes/studies, if memory serves correctly , the underworld explanation comes from the oral torah. There are multiple OT references where the creator tells the Jewish people that if they obey him/his torah, they will be blessed. Heading to the underworld after you’ve spent your entire life being obedient is not only a contradiction, but man would that suck. Oral torah was just that, a bunch of traditions “orally” transcribed on paper.

Wikipedia: The inhabitants of Sheol were the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength, cut off from God.[2] Under some circumstances they could be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are discouraged (Deuteronomy 18:10).[3] While the Old Testament writings describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BCE-70 CE) a more diverse set of ideas evolved: in some texts, Sheol is the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone.[4] When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC the word "Hades" (underworld) was substituted for Sheol, and this is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.[5]

Unfortunately, Wikipedia is one of the worst sources available; but the above example shows that different ideas formed over time; proving that they couldn’t make up their mind as to what the meaning was. Anyone can write their opinions in Wiki to change the meaning [don’t know why they allow that] of the last definition. It’s like the example of the teacher who tells one student a secret and tells them to pass the secret on to the next student and on and on. By the time the last student hears the secret, the story is so far out of proportion. Translations equate to even more confusion.

Sheol ( /ˈʃiːoʊl/ SHEE-ohl or /ˈʃiːəl/ SHEE-əl; Hebrew שְׁאוֹל Šʾôl), translated as "grave", "pit", or "abode of the dead", is the Old Testament/Hebrew bible's underworld, a place of darkness to which all the dead go, both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of the moral choices made in life, a place of stillness and darkness cut off from God.[1]

Wikipedia: The inhabitants of Sheol were the "shades" (rephaim), entities without personality or strength, cut off from God.[2] Under some circumstances they could be contacted by the living, as the Witch of Endor contacts the shade of Samuel for Saul, but such practices are discouraged (Deuteronomy 18:10).[3] While the Old Testament writings describe Sheol as the permanent place of the dead, in the Second Temple period (roughly 500 BCE-70 CE) a more diverse set of ideas evolved: in some texts, Sheol is the home of both the righteous and the wicked, separated into respective compartments; in others, it was a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone.[4] When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria around 200 BC the word "Hades" (underworld) was substituted for Sheol, and this is reflected in the New Testament where Hades is both the underworld of the dead and the personification of the evil it represents.[5]

Peek-A-Boo wrote:
Some Christianity, such as Catholicism, allows for purgatory, which just may metaphorically line up with earthbound ghosts suffering for a period of time until they are spiritually cleansed and able to move beyond the natural realm. In contrast, fundamental Christianity does not allow for ghosts, as followers believe the existence of ghosts to be an impossibility, due to a doctrine telling them a person must be either in heaven or hell. Perhaps, the teachers of such beliefs have not considered that hell may be the state of mind that ghosts find themselves in, and not some eternal place of the lost.

Why would Jesus say, "The gates of hell shall not prevail," if it were not true? If one looks at the teachings credited to Jesus, and is open to understanding them from a spiritual, parabolic perspective, then it becomes abundantly clear that the teachings of the Jewish Rabbi called, Jesus, line up perfectly with some ritualistic Kabbalah of Judaism, along with some of the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism!

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This is an interesting thread Peek. I would like to throw something else into the soup mix; religion, for my family and I, actually hides and suppresses the reality of those people who have left the body/immediate earthly plane and moved to a different existence.

A little history: me and my family were in the church for 20 years [wife even longer]. After catching the pastor lying about a particular verse in the bible so that it would coincide with money, we began our journey of study which years later has brought us to this point. I now no longer believe in those writings called the scriptures because it falls on itself if one studies it to search for the truth [in my opinion].

When we left the church, we went into the Torah/Judaism for a few years.

To make a long story short, religion can and does suppress the reality of "the other side". BTW, there is no such thing as hell as recorded in the new testament. It is not in the old testament. When translated in the Hebrew, it means grave. So my point to all of this was that "hell" was created by fervent but religious nut jobs to scare the masses into religious submission. If Dr. Newton's books are right regarding the case studies he's done, he talks about how people have told him [while under hypnosis] that there are those souls who stay in the earthly realm without crossing over because they are afraid of hell. This is very sad [if true]. What we believe when alive is what we believe when we pass IMO.

If I'm right about what I've said, then I think that it is up to us to discover what is on the other side on our own. We won't find it through man created religion or the writings they [who wrote them] said were divinely inspired.

Jack wrote: Sure sounds like a "duck". lol

now the questions is: was the duck Kosher LOL

Sure sounds like a "duck". lol

Most belief systems do have some notion of a spirit guide or guardian angel, and they also recognize a malevolent spiritual force that can influence us. The Jewish concept of *dybbuk recognizes that our physical world and the spiritual world can intertwine for both positive and negative reasons. If those intersecting reasons are negative, Judaism has a healing process to mend the collision so both the possessor and the possessed can move on.

*A human being that is possessed by a spirit or some otherworldly creature is a phenomenon found in a myriad of cultures and religions. Jewish folklore calls the spirit that causes this rare but remarkable occurrence a "dybbuk."

In the Old Testament of the Bible, in the Book of Samuel (18:10), a bad spirit is briefly described as attaching itself to King Saul, the first king elected chieftain of the ancient tribes of Israel: "And it came to pass on the morrow, that the evil spirit from God came upon Saul..." Later in the Bible, in the Book of Kings, the prophet Elijah is possessed by the spirit of a dead man who is trying to get the prophet to trick the King into going to war when he wasn't supposed to.

There are so many stories like that, that just nonchalantly mention spirits of people who have left us coming down to effect some change, some phenomenon in this world. These stories go back thousands of years, so IMO if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, looks like a duck then 99.9% it is a duck

That's why I said it's presumed, mainly because the boats they had at the time wouldn't have been sea-worthy. Or at least nothing that has been found as of yet. But it's true--things like pyramids, myths of dragons or winged serpents, the idea that we came from "star people", how so many will point to the constellations Sirius and Orion's Belt as the place the gods came from, great flood myths, ideas of afterlife, rebirth, reincarnation, the soul--these are some of the things things that multiple ancient cultures like the Incans, Mayans, Babylonians, Egyptians, Hindus to indigenous peoples of the US have in common. And much of it started around the same time and was lost.

It is said that the bodily tissues of King Tutankhamun, when tested, contained THC, the chemical in marijuana. Marijuana is indigenous to southeast Asia. Yet the Egyptians had it.

But, how do we know their ancestors had no contact. We, also, find pyramid structures in many corners of the world. It has been said that old libraries were destroyed in the Middle East, Latin America, and possibly elsewhere. American Native folklore tells us of strangers from a different land or a "god". Humans have been on earth for many centuries. We really don't know how much comunication they may have had and religion would surely be part of that. The theory of ghost and afterlife may be as universal as the theory of UFOs. We must all be open to all possibilities so we might find the truth.

Tresses Of Nephthys wrote: Personally, I find it hard to dismiss when you have many ancient religions talking about the same things in very similar detail across the world at a time when we presume that these civilizations did not have contact with each other.

Exactly!!!! Artwork in cave drawings on the walls of Inca, Aztec, Pyramids and other dwellings, etc. The art of Michelangelo and other Masters reflect entities and the unknown in the paranormal realm

Personally, I find it hard to dismiss when you have many ancient religions talking about the same things in very similar detail across the world at a time when we presume that these civilizations did not have contact with each other.