The unbearable strangeness of being

Anyone who spends much time laboring in the vineyards of psi, even an armchair investigator like myself, becomes aware of the vast number - the truly extraordinary number - of claims that have been made throughout history, and continue to be made today, of miraculous, bizarre, unexplainable phenomena. Every kind of strangeness has been reported by apparently sober witnesses. There is a whole field of study, Forteana, which involves collecting such reports, which easily run into the tens of thousands.

To me, the existence of this mass of material is a bit unsettling. It suggests three basic possibilities, none of which is very palatable. The first possibility is that these weird claims are true, in which case reality is bafflingly and perhaps frighteningly strange. The second possibility is that these claims are false, in which case there is a great horde of otherwise normal people who believe things that are, in fact, crazy. This, too, is rather bewildering and scary; it means the human race is largely insane; psychosis is rampant; we are surrounded by nuts, and may be nuts ourselves. Then there is the third possibility, the one I personally find most likely - namely, that some of these things are true, and some are not, and a great many occupy a wide swath of gray area, an ambiguous borderland where the labels "true" and "false" are not easily applied. And this is, in some ways, the most disturbing prospect of all, because it suggests that we can never be quite sure what is real and what isn't. We can make educated guesses, we can say that one case seems valid and another seems bogus, but we can't really know and we could be quite wrong.

For instance, I am personally convinced that ESP - telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition - is a real phenomenon, and that most people have modest ESP talents while a few prodigies have exceptional abilities. And I think that some mediums have conveyed messages that are most probably actual communications from the deceased. But I have a lot more trouble accepting the idea that some mediums can materialize walking, talking dead people in the séance room. And yet I have to admit that if the world is as strange as it sometimes appears to be, then the inherent strangeness of this claim is not necessarily a strike against it.

I remember a discussion on this blog some time ago, in which it was pointed out that some mediumistically materialized entities, when photographed, look like crude rubber and papier-mache dolls, the kind of props that could be smuggled into the séance room and assembled in the medium's curtained-off cabinet. This seems like strong evidence of fakery - but (someone pointed out) what if ectoplasm really does look like that when it materializes? What if the crudeness of the physical manifestations reflects the lack of control exercised by the spirits or by the medium? As I understand it, a recent book by a physicist named Jan W. Vandersande makes precisely this point. (I have ordered the book but haven't read it yet.)

But ... if this is true, then how can we ever judge any such phenomena to be phony? If even the crudest manifestations can be seen as legitimate, then it would seem impossible to debunk any materialization medium. So we are left in a gray area, not knowing what to believe or how far our "open-mindedness" should take us. We are in the territory so well charted by George Hansen in his classic book, The Trickster and the Paranormal.

Many of the more bizarre areas of paranormal investigation - areas shunned even by most parapsychologists - include cases that are well-documented and apparently legitimate, yet simply too hard for most of us to accept. Perhaps this should give those us who are sympathetic to psi some understanding of the position taken by skeptics. We all have our boggle threshold, the point at which almost no amount of evidence is going to be persuasive. The principal difference, possibly, is that the skeptics' boggle threshold is lower than ours. If so, it is a difference of degree only, not of kind. And I'm not sure we should judge either ourselves or the skeptics too harshly for having a limit to what we can believe. Our understanding is finite; it is good to stretch our boundaries, but it can be dangerously destabilizing to stretch them too far.

Increasingly the world looks to me like a place that our minds cannot hope to encompass, even in principle. That doesn't mean we should stop looking for answers, or even for some "theory of everything" that will explain it all. But while there is merit in looking, there may be reason to doubt we will ever find all that we seek. As the biologist J.B.S. Haldane memorably said, "Now my own suspicion is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."

Maybe so.

Comments

[TomC]

michael,
i shared the exact sentiment. everytime when i read about psi or paranormal i always think that it's just coincidence, hallucination or delusion, wish-fulfilling, deception, or simply, plain crazy. i do think that precognition is possible, but something like ghost, receiving message from the other side- i just think it's basically retro-fitting, or deduction, or just hearing what one wants to hear. since i had never seen or experience paranormal, it's very hard for me to just take other people's words for it- i just find it harder to take that leap of faith now.

incidently, there were news saying that precognition is possible because our preception is actually delayed in sending msg to our brain, hence, we had the notion of it happening before we see it- even though it already did happen when we see it.

also, another article i read also 'explain' levitation
mystery of levitation

i really wonder if something is intentionally making reality so vague and unknownable........just why?!

meanwhile, skeptics are content to say that all those people are delusional, and all the claims are nothing but products of imagination and hallucination.....

[Ross W]

I like that term “boggle threshold”. Certainly, we all boggle at “The Sun”’s claims.
Advocates of scientism say that’s why we have the scientific method –to rule out human misperceptions, imaginings and fantasies. But when Hope or William or Michael H say they have had an experience of ‘the other side’, I simply believe them. I don’t think that makes me too credulous. We all have to trust somebody, don’t we? I bet even Richard trusts Lalla.

[Marcel Cairo]

Wait a minute. Are you giving quarter in your mind to the possibility that a certain somebody in the land of Oz might be for real?

You definitely came back from your sabbatical too early. Go get some rest, poor man. You're hallucinating. :-)

Let those mediums who are so proud and vocal about their ectoplasmic abilities donate just a fingertip of the substance for proper scientific investigation.

It will never happen, so that's one fortean anomaly you can scratch off your list.

[Ross W]

I certainly "Hope" The Wizard exceeds even my low boggle threshold, Marcel ;-)

[Art]

There's a man that goes to our Church, Cecil, that said that one time he was standing outside in a rainstorm in a pasture under a large oak tree. Cecil said he heard a voice, clear as day, "Run Cecil Run!" Then he heard the voice again, more insistent this time, "Run Cecil Run!" He said by the third time he heard the voice he took off running. Right then he heard a loud explosion and a huge bolt of lightening hit that tree and it exploded. If he had continued to ignore that voice he would have been killed.

Another woman that sits behind me in Church, Geraldine, told me that one time she was going through a really rough patch in her life, and as she was lying there in bed one time, she had her hands folded together, and she felt God's hands slip right inbetween her hands. She said it felt just as real to her as if another human being did it. Geraldine also told me that when she was in high school her grandfather, who she loved very much, died. She said about two weeks after he passed over, one evening she saw him standing in the doorway just as clear as day.

One time I was in our kitchen doing the dishes. I was sort of staring out the window, not thinking of anything, just sort of zoning out, when I heard a "not me" voice inside my head say "Bonnie's going to come in here and say 'thanks for going with me.'" I heard it clear as day. About a minute later Bonnie, my wife, walked into the kitchen and said, "thanks for going with me." Earlier that evening I had gone to a meeting in town with her, which was about a 45 minute drive away. She could of thanked me anytime between when we had left the meeting and when we got home, but instead she said thanks about a minute after that voice inside my head told me she was fixing to.

And by the way, I have had many very specific precognitive dreams. I won't share them right now, but suffice it to say, it's changed the way I view the Universe.

[Michael H]

Just to clarify Ross – I’ve never personally interpreted what I’ve experienced as the ‘other side’. My understanding is that there is just one reality with billions of differing perspectives. It’s our perception that varies, not reality itself. The perspective that’s inherent to higher levels of consciousness reveals a much deeper reality, but not a different reality.

Anyway, accepting that there are thousands upon thousands of legitimate reports of ‘paranormal’ experiences won’t get anyone closer to truth, because truth goes infinitely beyond everyone’s ‘boggle threshold’, including those who have legitimately experienced and reported anomalous phenomena. Investigating the paranormal will lead someone to truth only if it causes them to deconstruct their existing beliefs to the point that they begin to become cognizant of the aspect of themselves that’s doing the investigating and believing. Those who do discover this may eventually discover that there's another aspect to the self that does encompass everything, though it is encompassment in the sense of ‘include’, rather than ‘take in’.

Michael writes that the vast gray areas of paranormal investigation “suggests that we can never be quite sure what is real and what isn't.” I think that we can all agree that what we can be certain of as real is our capacity of awareness. When Art, William, Hope, Marcel or myself (or anyone else) express things that we have experienced through our capacity of awareness, others can decide whether we are expressing a genuine experience of reality, or conclude that we’re either deluded or fraudulent charlatans. But no one can ever know for certain, because we can’t get inside someone else’s skin and experience life from their perspective.

What so few understand is how completely our perception of reality is influenced by what we’ve come to accept as ‘true’. In this regard, the ‘skeptics’ are as credulous as the clientele of a Sylvia Brown or a David Thompson. Nearly everyone shares the conviction that the ‘truth’ will be uncovered through investigation of external phenomena – whether that phenomena involves electrons or ectoplasmic elephants. I’d venture to say that what is commonly described as ‘paranormal’ isn’t, but also that descriptions of the ‘other side’ aren’t. There’s one reality with billions of differing perspectives, and almost no understanding of that.

[Art]

What I've come to believe is that "belief" seems to help in the experiencing of the paranormal. I'm just not so sure it's possible to make oneself believe. It's not something you can command yourself to do. I'm not sure "belief" is a choice. I can't remember ever experiencing anything mystical or transcendental till after I started investigating it. I think it started with watching John Edward on TV, then going on the internet and reading about near death experiences, then I read the holographic universe and at that point it was like my whole world was turned upside down. It gave me a theory to base it all on. It opened up my universe. My old materialst paradigm melted away.

[william]

Ross w

“But when Hope or William or Michael H say they have had an experience of ‘the other side’, I simply believe them.”

I don’t know about Hope’s or Michael H’s experiences but I will tell you this; the last of this series of three dreams over a one week period redefined for me the profound qualities and attributes of acceptance, compassion, and the profound implications of having a life reading using telepathic communication.

This entity during this life reading not only knew what I had done in my life but the underlying reality (motivation) as to why I had done them. It was like perfect communication with absolute compassion and acceptance.

Look how we struggle on this blog to communicate and so often it is more about miscommunication. I never had a clue what these qualities and attributes were until I had that dream that some call a visitation.

Oh I thought I knew in my ignorance whoops unawareness about compassion and acceptance and telepathic communication but I did not have a clue. Not a clue not even a hint. Zero understanding.

Compassion is a rare phenomenon on earth as we confuse compassion with sympathy or empathy or kindness. I wonder if these attributes are prerequisites to compassion.

My experiences on earth have not even come close to these experiences I had during that series of three dreams. The difference between what I have experienced in this physical life and that “visitation” dream or whatever was like night and day. No comparison not even in the same reality. Cannot explain it wish I could. Frustrates my ego that I cannot.

The harder I try the more confusing my words. Enough said impossible to describe.

Oh one more thing that “vibrational” hug at the very end of that last dream was pure rapture, bliss, ecstasy or ?. Few I suspect will understand what I have just stated. To try and define it is to somehow massively understate it.

Some will say it was wishful thinking or hallucination or whatever. They say this because they have no other way to explain it, as they did not experience it.

[MarkL]

Words don't fully express what you experienced because words relate to stuff you can point to. Use words only as reminders; remember it as best you can, so you make it part of your conscious worldview. Understand that your conscious mind/ego is a partner with whatever is "beyond" and the more you experience the more you _can_ experience.

[Robin]

I too wonder about these things and yet have experienced what I cannot explain. Pulling into my driveway after running errands with my son and clearly seeing my mother-in-law standing across the street from my home. I was so sure she was there that I told my teenage son " There's your Grandma." We pulled in the driveway and jumped out of the car and she had vanished but I was struck with a sickening knowledge that something was horribly wrong. We ran inside and her voice was sobbing into my answering machine that her husband had died. It still boggles my mind.

[Michael H]

That's an interesting variation of the crisis apparition phenomenon, Robin. Most reports of a similar nature seem to involve the deceased person, but bi-location of the living has been reported by Eastern adepts for centuries. Yogananda details his experiences of this in Autobiography of a Yogi.

That you had a sense of foreboding following the sighting is also telling, in my opinion. There are levels of awareness and conscious experience that suggest a much deeper connection to the whole than is commonly accepted. The experience you describe is another of literally thousands of anecdotal reports that MP alludes to in the his main post, reports that the skeptics wish would just go away. Thanks for sharing.