Dear Rosemary,

Your experience in the Croatan woods appears to me to have been an hallucination,
brought on by fatigue, excitement & the strange surroundings.

I remember some years ago, I was alone in a friend's apartment late at
might...and I saw clearly with my own eyes; a small midget, running across
the room and disappearing behind a sofa. He looked very much like this
picture:



I should mention that I had been smoking some very potent weed...which
could have had something to do with the hallucination.

Regarding ghosts, they certainly exist, if we believe that they do...
similarly, if we don't believe that they exist, then they won't exist for us.
Personally, I don't believe in their existence, outside of human imagination.

Smokey photos could be from various causes...however, I don't know anything
about photography.

The author of the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, Mahendranath Gupta ("M") said
the following about ghosts:

"A certain person was perfected in pishacha (ghoul). He used to get everything
done through a ghost. The ghost would finish all work ordered by him in no time.
Then he had nothing in hand. The agreement with the ghost was that if he did not
give work to him, he would break his neck and eat him up. The man seeing no way
out took refuge in his guru. The guru said, 'well, go home and fix a bamboo in
the courtyard. Then say to the ghost – climb it up and down.' The ghost went on
doing so day and night. The man was thus saved."

The English are great believers in ghosts. But, happily I have not inherited
that trait from my father's people. The practical side of my nature, comes
from my Franco-American, Massachusetts-born and bred mother..who is still in
great shape, mentally and physically at age 95.

When Sri Ramakrishna mentions 'ghosts' in that quote you so kindly provided,
it is probably for want of a more modern term, like for instance:

"Dissociative identity disorder" is a psychiatric diagnosis that describes
a condition in which a person displays multiple distinct identities or personalities
(known as alter egos or alters), each with its own pattern of perceiving and
interacting with the environment."

Mental health has come a heck of a long way in a hundred years.

RE: "Maya"

My son & his new wife are expecting a baby.
If it's a girl, they plan to name her "Maya"

Sri Ramakrishna also had this to say about "Maya"

"Remember that dayA, compassion, and mAyA, attachment,
are two different things. Attachment means the feeling of
'my-ness' towards one's relatives.
Compassion is the love one feels
for all beings of the world.
It is an attitude of equality. MAyA also comes from God.
Through mAyA, God makes one serve one's relatives.
But one thing should be remembered:
mAyA keeps us in ignorance and entangles
us in the world, whereas dayA
makes our hearts pure and gradually unties our bonds."

Om Shanthi Om

PS1: Methinks it is time to start a new thread again.
this one is also getting 'long in the tooth'. :)

PS2: My kid brother went to visit your blog and he liked it very much.