The interdimensional hypothesis is a theory that paranormal phenomenon and related events involve visitations from other realities or dimensions that coexist separately alongside our own. The theory holds that UFOs are a modern manifestation of a phenomenon that has occurred throughout recorded human history, which in prior ages were ascribed to mythological or supernatural creatures.

Proponents believe it possible that a technology already exists which encompasses both the physical and the psychic. It is thought that there may be a civilization that is millions of years more advanced than ours, and that it is possible that a million-year-old civilization may show us something that we don’t know how to perceive.

It is argued that if the other dimension is more advanced than ours, or is our own future, this would explain how paranormal phenomenon have a tendency to appear and disappear from sight and fail all testing and experimentation.

Some consider the interdimensional hypothesis as a belief system rather than a scientific hypothesis. Others believe a technology encompassing the mental and material realms is not entirely out of the question. The psychic realms, so mysterious to us today, could be an ordinary part of an advanced technology we are unable to comprehend.

A dakini is a tantric deity described as a female embodiment of enlightened energy. In the Tibetan language, dakini means she who traverses the sky or she who moves in space. Sometimes the term is translated poetically as sky dancer or sky walker.

Although dakini figures also appear in Hinduism, they are particularly prevalent in Vajrayana Buddhism where the dakini, usually of volatile or wrathful temperament, act as an inspirational thoughtform for spiritual practice. Dakinis are energetic beings in female form, evocative of the movement of energy in space. In this context, the sky or space indicates the insubstantiality of all phenomena, which is at the same time the pure potentiality for all possible manifestations.

In Hinduism, the dakini Chinnamasta is one of the ten Tantric goddesses and is associated with the concept of self sacrifice as well as the awakening of the kundalini or spiritual energy. She is considered both as a symbol of self control as well as an embodiment of sexual energy. She symbolizes both aspects of the Hindu Divine Mother, as a life giver and a life taker.

Due to her ferocious nature and her reputation of being dangerous to approach and worship, her individual worship is restricted to heroic, Tantric worship by Tantrikas, yogis and world renouncers. Chhinnamasta can be easily identified by her fearsome iconography. The self decapitated goddess is usually depicted standing on a copulating couple. She holds her own severed head in one hand and a scimitar in the other. Three jets of blood spurt out of her bleeding neck and are drunk by her severed head and two attendants.

Towering cumulus clouds, also known as cumulus congestus, are characteristic of unstable areas of the atmosphere which are undergoing thermal convection, or the movement of molecules within gases and fluids. They are often characterized by sharp outlines and significant vertical development.

Because cumulus congestus is produced by strong updrafts, it is typically taller than it is wide, and cloud tops can reach 20,000 feet or higher in the tropics. The cloud consists mainly of water droplets. At its top, the water droplets are transformed into ice crystals, but for cumulus congestus the content of ice crystals is small and freezing is in early stages, so cloud top still looks round and puffy.

A pillar of cloud was one of the manifestations of God of the Israelites in the Old Testament. According to Exodus, the pillar of cloud guided the Israelites by day during the Exodus from Egypt. The pillar of cloud is traditionally paired with the the manifestation of God by night as the pillar of fire, which provided light. With these two forms of God leading the way, the Israelites “could travel by day or night”.

A thoughtform is a manifestation of mental energy, also known as a tulpa in Tibetan mysticism. The thoughtform is also one of the expressed or visualized means of Samyama, a particular system of teaching or doctrines, often embodied as a set of vows or commitments. Recited mantras are essentially thoughtforms representing divinities or cosmic powers, which exert their influence by means of sound vibrations.

Definitions have been suggested for thoughtforms, such as that of an image held in the mind of a practitioner which aids in the manifestation of intention. It has also been proposed as an agency of psychic effect which exists and takes form in the pre-physical realms of existence, which acts in accord with the intent of its creator.

It connates a homunculus or foundation of awareness, or an instantaneous observer and observed duality. Homunculi appear in various theories of cognitive philosophy and psychology to account for different facets of conscious self. They are created by every individual at every moment, and in some formulations they are a constant manifestation of everyone at every moment, possessing a will of its own.

Thoughtforms are said to have two effects, a radiating vibration and a floating form. They are divided into three classes – those which take the image of the thinker, those which take the image of a material object, and those which take a form entirely of its own, expressing the inherent qualities in the matter which it draws around it.

It has been theorized that the effects of music, emotion and color strongly influence thoughtforms.

The endless knot or eternal knot is a symbolic knot found in Tibet and Mongolia. The motif is used in Tibetan Buddhism, and may also be found in Chinese art as one of the Eight Auspicious Symbols.

The endless knot has been described as an ancient symbol representing the interweaving of the spiritual path and the flowing of time and movement within that which is eternal. All existence, it says, is bound by time and change, yet ultimately rests serenely within the divine and the eternal.

Various interpretations of the symbol are the inter-twining of wisdom and compassion, and the interplay and interaction of the opposing forces in the dualistic world of manifestation, leading to their union, and ultimately to harmony in the universe. The Endless knot iconography also symbolises Samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering or birth, death and rebirth within Tibetan Buddhism.

Endless knots as mystic and mythological symbols have developed independently in various cultures. A well-known example is the various Celtic knots. Since the knot has no beginning or end it symbolizes infinite wisdom.

Type physicalism is a theory in philosophy of mind which asserts that mental events are type-identical to the physical events in the brain with which they are correlated. The thesis of type physicalism is that mental event types such as pain are identical with specific physical event types in the brain.

It is also called type identity in order to distinguish it from a similar but distinct theory called the token identity theory. The type-token distinction is easily illustrated by way of example. In the phrase “yellow is yellow is yellow is yellow”, there are only two types of words (“yellow” and “is”) but there are seven tokens (four “yellow” and three “is” tokens).

According to U.T. Place, one of the popularizers of the idea of type-identity in the 1950s and 1960s, the idea of type-identity physicalism originated in the 1930s with the psychologist E. G. Boring and took nearly a quarter of a century to gain acceptance from the philosophical community.

The barrier to the acceptance of any such vision of the mind was that philosophers and logicians had not yet taken a substantial interest in questions of identity and referential identification in general. The dominant epistemology of the logical positivists at that time was phenomenalism, in the guise of the theory of sense data. Indeed Boring himself subscribed to the phenomenalist creed, attempting to reconcile it with an identity theory and this resulted in a reductio ad absurdum of the identity theory, since brain states would have turned out, on this analysis, to be identical to colors, shapes, tones and other sensory experiences.

The revival of interest in the work of Gottlob Frege and his ideas, along with the discrediting of phenomenalism through the influence of Wittgenstein, led to a more tolerant climate toward physicalistic and realist ideas. Logical behaviorism emerged as a serious contender to take the place of the Cartesian “ghost in the machine” and, although not lasting very long as a dominant position on the mind/body problem, its elimination of the whole realm of internal mental events was strongly influential in the formation and acceptance of the thesis of type identity.

An unidentified flying object or UFO is a popular term for any aerial phenomenon whose cause cannot be easily or immediately determined. Popular culture frequently takes the term UFO as a synonym for alien spacecraft.

Unexplained aerial observations have been reported throughout history. Some were undoubtedly astronomical in nature such as comets, bright meteors, or atmospheric optical phenomena such as parhelia and lenticular clouds. Sightings throughout history were often treated as supernatural portents, angels, or other religious omens. Some objects in medieval paintings are strikingly similar to UFO reports. Art historians explain those objects as religious symbols, often represented in many other paintings during the Renaissance.

Carl Jung theorized that UFOs might have a primarily spiritual and psychological basis. He pointed out that the round shape of most saucers corresponds to a mandala, a type of archetypal shape seen in religious images. Thus the saucers might reflect a projection of the internal desires of viewers to see them. However, he did not label them as delusions or hallucinations outright, defining them as more in the nature of a shared spiritual experience.

However, Jung seemed conflicted as to possible origins. At other times he asserted that he wasn’t concerned with possible psychological origins and that at least some UFOs were physically real, based primarily on indirect physical evidence such as photographs and radar contact in addition to visual sightings. He also considered the extraterrestrial hypothesis to be viable. 

It has been speculated that UFOs might have their origins not in space and time as we know it, but outside of it. There has been noted an almost exact parallel between UFOs and  visitations from folklore of fairies and similar creatures. The significance of these parallels is disputed between mainstream scientists, who contend that they are fanciful demonstrations of a poorly understood phenomenon interacting with humans to cause the sightings.

Terence McKenna, in contrast, believed that UFOs are manifestations of the human soul, or collective spirit. He thought they appeared to individuals and groups in order to exert psychological influence over the course of history and might preside, in the year 2012, over history’s end.

A large part of the available UFO literature today is closely linked with mysticism and the metaphysical. It deals with subjects like mental telepathy, automatic writing and invisible entities as well as phenomena like poltergeist or ghost manifestations and possession. Many of the UFO reports now being published in the popular press recount alleged incidents that are strikingly similar to psychic phenomena.

Phasmophobia is an abnormal and persistent fear of ghosts, spectres or phantasms. It derives from the greek words phasma meaning apparition and phobos meaning fear. It is often bought about by experiences in early childhood and causes sufferers to experience panic attacks.

It is categorized by a series of symptoms that the sufferer experiences when they think they have seen a ghost, or apparition. The sufferer usually experiences intense feelings of terror or dread and are often prone to panic or have panic attacks, these symptoms in turn result in an increased or rapid heartbeat. Another common symptom, typical of a majority of specific phobia, is attempts by affected individuals to completely avoid a situation in which one may think they are prone to encountering what they perceive as a ghost.

Phasmophobia is similar to other specific phobia in that it is the result of the unconscious mind acting a defence mechanism to try and avoid a certain situation or object and is thus classified as a type of mental health disorder. It is often brought about by a person believing they have had an encounter with a ghost, most often at an early age, but can also be caused by television and films. When brought about by the latter it is often temporary.

Although the actual existence of ghosts is debated, the fear of ghosts only requires a person to believe they have had an encounter. For example, in an attempt to recall certain events pertaining to a possible encounter with a ghost, a hypnotist might use hypnosis to retrieve the lost memories of the event. Research studies have found that these hypnotically refreshed memories typically combine fact with fiction, but would convince a patient of the realness of their encounter.

There is also the psychological factor of entering a premises in which one already possess prior information that it is suspected as being haunted or is similar to other supposedly haunted places, the psychological impact of this alone can cause the anxiety brought about by phasmophobia.

Due to the nature of the condition, sufferers are not necessarily afraid of ghosts or other apparitions but rather what they perceive to be a ghost, or to enter into a situation in which they feel they are likely to encounter a ghost. For example, a sufferer of cynophobia an abnormal fear of dogs is afraid specifically of canines, rather than a situation in which they could encounter a canine.

The fear itself is also prone to inflame itself, in that due to the onset of panic caused by the phobia, a sufferer is severely impaired in terms of judgment, therefore when a sufferer sees or experiences what they think could be a ghost, their ability of rational thinking is eliminated and so the urge to find the true nature of the experience is lost and instead a fully fledged panic attack is often triggered.