I wonder if we will be able to "see" the entire electromagnetic spectrum...
I think this question is really interesting, but (I speculate that) we have to distinguish between normal and extraordinary sources of experience.
Without a body, one's intellect has no sensory organs, or neurons, and thus no
normal means to obtain streams of experience from any material source.
Maybe there are "extraordinary" means? What would those be?
If alternative streams of experience exist that are available to disembodied minds, probably our only evidence comes from stories of near-death experiences. (And, I shouldn't have to say, that's
very anecdotal.)
But I think we DO have to query such sources, if we are unwilling to trust authority-claims of any religious sources, and yet still hope for some preparatory information about what life is
like without our bodies.
After all...
- unless one's disembodied mind has something like an ability to telepathically commune with other minds..., or,
- unless disembodied minds have a natural capacity to interact with matter other than the matter of their own (now decomposing) body...,
in short, unless there are extraordinary sources of experience to
replace the ordinary ones we use through our bodies...,
...the most-likely experience of a disembodied mind is a permanently-conscious, eventless nothingness.
Not fun.
Of course, the ability to telepathically commune with other minds would be a preferable alternative IF, and ONLY if, those minds were sane, happy, and loving ones.
I'd rather not think much about what it would be like, if all the minds within your telepathic reach had been driven screaming and psychopathic by endless ages of loneliness, devoid of sensory experience, punctuated every eon or so by the terror of encountering other insane minds, scrabbling and shrieking like two swimmers permanently trying to avoid drowning by climbing on top of one another....
Yeah, don't sign me up for
that. I'll pass.
What does that leave?
If there are such things as disembodied minds -- and I have my own reasons for thinking that there
are -- it seems likely they somehow
can perceive material realities. That, after all, is suggested to us by examples of temporarily-dead persons reporting (after their resuscitation) "floating above their bodies," observing the doctors working on them, and sometimes observing things in other rooms, or generating "crisis apparitions" in distant places. They didn't have the benefit of their own eyes and noses and ears, during the time they were dead; yet they "saw" things. (But, again: anecdotal!)
But what would be the benefit of hanging around under such circumstances? And how long would that last? I get the impression that such interactions are for a limited time only: A quick waltz with the material plane, before gliding out the door.
Probably the only real hope in this whole picture is the idea that, underlying all of reality, there is something like a Mind sustaining all other things in existence: Something out of which the material plane flows as a story flows from the mind of an author: Something "in which we live and move and have our being."
A mind like THAT would be well worth communing with, telepathically, presuming that such a thing was possible (and presuming that the All-Sustaining Mind wished to commune with
us). Through that communion, we could (potentially, in proportion to our finite capacity) perceive
all things, if that Mind shared those things with us. (After all,
it would have access to all reality, in all levels of detail, not by
passively observing each real thing, but rather by
actively sustaining each real thing in existence.)
Something like THAT, I think, is the only real hope we can foresee, in the notion of minds that survive physical death.
To return to the original question: Through communion with such a Mind, we might experience reality in ways that were broader than the narrow spectral range our physical eyes could absorb.
But not, I think, because we were seeing a "broader range of the electromagnetic spectrum." Our wider experience would instead come to us through vicariously "piggybacking" on the "active knowledge" of that All-Sustaining Mind. Sure, I suppose X-rays and Ultraviolet fall within that knowledge, but merely perceiving what blocks or absorbs X-Rays would be a tiny and not-especially-helpful
sliver of all the
other new information available!
Obviously, my speculations have drawn rather close to what most people call "God." But I was trying to answer in the spirit of the original question, not get sidetracked by theological disputes. So I've kept my answer as abstract as possible.
Hopefully, some of you will find it interesting! (If not, well, there are always plenty of stompbox reviews on YouTube.)
