Shakespeare’s Ghosts Live! What Secret Messages do The Spirits Reveal about the Nature of Reality?

UPDATED 7 MAY, 2021 - 23:05 ANNEKATRIN AND ...

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The ghost in Hamlet is one of Shakespeare’s most famous ghosts. Source: Archivist /Adobe Stock

When one of us began studying psychology he was told that if the aim was to understand human relationships, it would be better served by studying literature—especially Shakespeare. Since then, at least as concerns clinical psychology , the subject has moved on to become an evidence-based humanistic alternative to psychiatry's rather mindless medical model. Yet some of Shakespeare's insights do still remain unrecognized. Despite all the innumerable treatises on Shakespeare, there is a near absence of any discussion of what can be inferred from his works concerning his view on the paranormal.

Hark! Consciousness and Entanglement

Most of us know the quotation from Shakespeare's " There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5) but very few scientists have actually taken this on-board. So let's use this axiom to look at a fascinating area: Consciousness.

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus, and the Ghost, on the platform before the Palace of Elsinor. 1796 

( Public Domain )

While there exists no accredited work integrating modern physics and psychology, there now is at least a "quantum biology" relating to biological molecules that show a dynamic form of "entanglement"— that is a resonance with each other across time and space that is not explicable by casual laws. If entanglement is found to have a pervasive role in nature, then given these forms of resonance occur in one brain then they may well occur between separate brains. Suddenly, the paranormal becomes normal science!

Indeed, should the author and physician Larry Dossey be right then these developments are not just academic; they would have implications that will revolutionize modern medicine.

Shakespeare’s Knowing Ghosts

What does Shakespeare, whose works contains 14 ghosts, have to say on the topic?

Macbeth seeing the ghost of Banquo. ( Public Domain )

In order to evaluate Shakespeare's writings, it is, of course, necessary to take into account the zeitgeist where a deviant idea could easily lead to the dungeon, if not decapitation. The Protestant Elizabethan period with its renaissance may well have offered greater freedom of expression for Shakespeare than the subsequent reign of James I. Although James was a Protestant, he was also James VI of Scotland where Calvinism and Catholicism were prevailing. Moreover, James took a very personal interest in witchcraft because spells were to have interfered with his marriage arrangements, causing heavy storms so that his fiancée’s ship from Copenhagen ended up at Oslo rather than Leith.

The North Berwick witches were accused and burnt for conspiracy involving the devil. James attended one of the trials, dismissing at first the involvement of the devil until one of the witches convinced him of her powers, unwittingly sealing her fate, by telling him the precise words his finance had whispered into his ear. The witches in Macbeth closely resemble the descriptions found in the records of the North Berwick witch trials.

This long article continues at:  https://www.ancient-origins.net/unexplained-phenomena/shakespeares-ghosts-021673

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