Ledwith, Miceal & Heinemann, Klaus: THE ORB PHENOMENON
In the past decade, photographers all over the world have been witnesses to a curious phenomenon. As digital cameras began to replace conventional film cameras, circular-shaped optical anomalies were reported to appear in photographs taken all over the world, in all sorts of conditions.
Energy fields beyond the range of human sight
Even more unusual, these anomalies had not been visible to the naked eye at the time the pictures were taken, and no physical objects or matter could be identified that might have caused them. People wondered: Could these features be energy fields beyond the range of human sight, connected with realities that are outside of normal human perception? The phenomenon aroused considerable interest, and the types of explanations put forward to explain them were legion.
The initial reaction was – predictably – to classify them as spirits, or discarnate entities of some type, so that the orbs were grouped with ghosts and became the focus of much attention from groups that called themselves ‘ghost hunters’.
Others scoffed at the idea and put considerable effort into proving that orb images can be explained away by various forms of pollution in the atmosphere or by certain anomalies in camera mechanisms.
For us, discovering the nature and significance of orbs clearly surpasses the sum of the orb’s components. Orbs cast a new light on the philosophical/spiritual/scientific realization that ‘All is One’.
Anyone can do it
Like many a new arrival on any scene, orb entities are unpredictable and irreverent and don’t always oblige by obeying our traditionally accepted rules. In fact, they often seem to behave like the adolescents of the paranormal world, bringing chaos to the tidy, stuffy structures we knew in the past. Or maybe they seem to behave this way simply because it’s the first time that we have encountered the paranormal in a readily accessible form, easily available for observation by anyone on a regular basis, almost at will.
Unlike many other ‘paranormal’ experiences, the orb phenomenon is fortunately not the preserve of experts or gurus, or of those who believe they are specially favoured in some way by God. The orb realities can be experienced and evaluated repeatedly by anyone. Every person who has a simple digital or even a film camera, and some time and patience, can do the same. They can then evaluate their own pictures, without having to take any ‘expert’s’ word for anything.
Fortunately we live in a sceptical age when delusions and illusions are not welcomed as avidly as they once were. That may help to put a brake on our instinctive tendency to lump any new phenomenon into the nearest category with which we are familiar. But to regard orbs superficially as just ghosts, evil spirits, or spirits of the dead would be unfortunate; for assuredly, whatever we may come to know of them, they are far more than that. Realities of a kind that we never believed existed are probably what we are looking at in the orb phenomenon.
Proof of dimensions beyond the material ones?
The orb phenomenon poses an entirely new question for us, and this we believe to be the main area of interest. Do dimensions exist altogether beyond the material ones we know, and what would the implications of that be for how we understand ourselves? Just four hundred years ago Giordano Bruno was burned to death in Rome by the Inquisition for suggesting there might be intelligent life outside this earth. In terms of affront to diehard orthodoxy, religious or secular, the emergence of this new question may well turn Giordano Bruno’s offence into a peccadillo. For indeed it does seem that we have never yet fully realized the import of Shakespeare’s famous dictum, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth... than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’ The orb phenomenon may turn out to be one of the most remarkable things we have met so far, not just for what it may be in itself, but more important, for what light it might shed on the human race’s attempts to understand itself and where it fits into the cosmos. It may have devastating implications for the traditional ways in which we picture many central religious beliefs, including our understanding of the ‘beyond’. But it can teach us an enormous amount about the nature of reality beyond what we call ‘this world’ and what we need to realize about ourselves and our world to fit into that new framework of understanding.
Inspirational features 
