Observations placeholder
Ramachandran, Dr V S - Mirabelle, templates and body image
Identifier
014977
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
Every form appears to have two types of template or blueprint:
- a type of blueprint – what the form should look like, how it was designed to look, this will be unique and particular to that soul or thing.
- the actual template – what the thing actually looks like at that point
Many healers and people with exceptional 'seeing' ability can 'see' both the actual and the type of template. Both are seen as patterns in the aura.
A phantom limb is a part of the human body that has been removed by surgery or traumatic accident, for example, but where the person suffering the amputation does not feel as though the limb has gone.
In some patients, all the feelings and movements of the limb remain, but they are aware the limb has gone. In other words they can 'see' it has gone, but they can still 'feel' it and also 'operate it' as though it was still there.
A description of the experience
Phantoms in the Brain – Dr V. S. Ramachandran [Professor and Director of the Centre for Brain and Cognition, University of California and visiting fellow All Souls College, Oxford]
it is as though the brain has a dual representation, one of the original body image laid down genetically and one ongoing, up to date image that can incorporate subsequent changes.............
As a physician I was aware that phantom limb pain poses a serious clinical problem. …...... As a scientist, I was also curious about why the phenomenon occurs …...... Why would an arm persist in the patient's mind long after it had been removed? Why doesn't the mind simply accept the loss and reshape the body image? To be sure, this does happen in a few patients, but it usually takes years or decades. Why decades, why not just a week or a day?
Mirabelle [for example] can generate voluntary movements in her phantom arms, and this is also true of patients who lose arms in adulthood. Like Mirabelle, most of these patients can 'reach out' and 'grab' objects, point, wave good-bye, shake hands, or perform elaborate skilled manoeuvres with the phantom. They know it sounds crazy since they realise the arm is gone, but to them the sensory experiences are real.............
As a medical student, I was just as baffled as the patients themselves, and the text books I consulted only deepened the mystery.
I read about a patient who experienced phantom erections after his penis had been amputated, a woman with phantom menstrual cramps following hysterectomy, and a gentleman who had a phantom nose and face after the trigeminal nerve innervating his face had been severed in an accident.