“THE PARANORMAL”- AS SUPERNATURAL AS A LIGHT SWITCH.

There is usually some form of scam running about paranormal phenomena. Cults thrive on the inexplicable, the pseudo-spiritual, and the merely ridiculous. However bizarre, somebody knows all about it. It may be one of history’s great mysteries, but they, mainly for being such nice people, are fully informed. They are also variously chosen by God, aliens, publicists, and other deities to tell the world about it.

So mysterious kinetic powers are the result of nepotism. Telepathy is a result of doing Prometheus’ correspondence course. Astral predictions are obviously achieved by cosmic syndication. If this happens to involve a lot of money and sex, consensual or otherwise, “it is so ordained.” Séances also appear to require a lot of very attentive dead people prepared to communicate with total strangers on a commercial basis. The spirit world evidently can’t exist without massive promotions and special discount offers.

Drivel.

If anywhere near as much time and effort had ever been put into seriously researching the real abilities of the human mind and body as ripping off the gullible sheep every generation seems to feel obliged to produce, we’d be a lot better informed. A lot of people would definitely be financially in better shape, too.

Let’s try something easy, like telepathy. The human body operates on electromagnetic energies, down to the atomic level. Muscles are driven like turbines, using very well understood neural switches. This is done at an extraordinary speed, about 700 metres a second, fast enough to go around the average human several times in that period. Anything supernatural, so far? Nah, just efficient.

Now- another debunker, of sorts. Human brains operate basically pretty much the same way. They all use the same methods to do the same things. Everyone sneezes the same way, for the same reasons, using the same neural pathways. Sounds mystic, doesn’t it? Really makes you want to go join a monastery, to be where the action is.

Is it so far fetched to believe that people might pick up on the neural energies of other people? That a human brain, thousands of times more efficient than a computer, and able to use multi level analog logic, might register information from a very compatible source like another human brain?

As if, to use a totally off the wall analogy, one phone could actually communicate with another? Ah, these wild flights of speculation…

Remember, human beings are only hardwired to a point. From then on, it’s all mentality and perception. The human brain is designed to do just that. It is specifically designed to process information, in large amounts, every second, on a scale few mainframe computers would be able to handle. There is nothing remotely unlikely about picking up electromagnetic information from others, if you can interpret it correctly. Everyone looks for information from others every day, why not do it better? Psychologists, retailers, con men, teachers, police, politicians, janitors, and cooks all use vast amounts of information from other people, just to do their jobs. Every person at a party is a virtual miner for information. Singles bars are ongoing databases. Every human being on Earth is one large information processor, especially about other people. The better it’s done, the more likely you are not to have to waste time and energy. It’s good information economics.

Socially, it’s unavoidable. How much social interaction is unspoken? A lot. People are attracted to some, and repelled by others, without a word being exchanged. Is it so absurd to assume that we pick up signals from others, and react accordingly? How many people have you seen where the signal is “leave me alone”, or “you better leave me alone.” This isn’t telepathy, it’s direct perception, but on extremely important shared communication values. It’s a much lower level of communication than telepathy, not articulated beyond a very basic type of function, with a strong social component. That is how and why it’s understood. You don’t even need a language to communicate like that.

However- these are the communication values we all share. So, if the human body and brain, generating quite significant amounts of information and using identical methods to communicate on every level, happen to provide a higher form of communication, it is “supernatural”, or just an extension of many well known existing abilities?

Communication methods have changed a lot in the last hundred years. Language usage has changed, dramatically. New concepts have had to be welded to the languages. We persist in creating common references in spoken language, because it’s better practice, and because there’s an obvious need to communicate effectively.

It is not, therefore, unlikely, or even unusual, that a lot of forms of spoken communication are lacking what would now be redundancies. The brain doesn’t need to be told the obvious, literally or conceptually. Even at blog-like levels of saturation verbiage, the unnecessary expression is avoided. Some research listening to old scripts or reading older literature will show how severely the current editing process has reacted to excess.

Ancient cultures often included initiation rites which involved a period of solitude and silence. If you’ve ever tried either, you’ll know that it means your mind has free run, not slowed down by language and the need to explain things. Even the least used brain tends to sharpen up a lot. Interestingly, when Europeans encountered them, a lot of these cultures were considered to have weird, unnatural, abilities, to the extent that they were considered “unfair”. The natives were “accused” of telepathy.

Mysteries are much more mysterious if you make no attempt to explain them, or decide that they’re impossible. If you’re totally insular, so much the better.

In practice, no form of telepathy could be unnatural. The brain, which has to do the work, is a purely natural thing. Even the mind, of whatever capacity, is a natural thing. Nothing “supernatural” here, either. That people could train themselves to use their minds better, and communicate more effectively isn’t totally unknown, either. If you can teach languages, and non-verbal communication, why not improve the process?

I will leave out the innumerable communication experiences every single human being ever born has had, where the explanations just don’t match their version of mental events. My impression of people “knowing” something about a friend without direct contact is that it’s either good processing of known information, or some form of shared perception. That particular phenomenon is at literal flood level since the beginning of recorded history, and it won’t be going away any time soon.

A necessary word, at this point: This isn’t court standard argument. It’s too important a concept to simply agree with it. What I’m trying to show here is that there nothing even remotely “supernatural” or “unnatural” about human mentality and its abilities, by definition. This is yet another area of human potentials where hoaxes and other cretinous babblings are not required. Facts only, please.

Telepathy, as defined, is “mental communication”. Meaning minds, talking. Think how much more efficient it would be, and would need to be. Imagine every nuance of a book, at mental speeds. How would you answer something as simple as “How are you?” Would you want to retain a bit of privacy in your mental response? Or would you simply want to spare your friend a first hand version of how lousy your sinuses are feeling?

What about relationships? People in close relationships are normally in close contact. Some of the contacts can be explosive. The word “contact” is used advisedly, referring to the fact that the contact isn’t necessarily happening in physical space. Contact in mental space can be ongoing. Someone can really be “on your mind.” That can be either good or bad. What happens in mental space can affect what happens in physical space. A mental irritant can generate a physical response. They often do. Think of this in telepathic terms, and you can see this is merely an extension of existing human interactions. Nothing even vaguely unusual about it. All that’s happened is that the perceptions are now based on direct contact with the mind of another person.

All of this happens purely because the series of switches operating the brains of human beings are now perceptible to others, for no more demanding a reason than they share the same functions. It really is about as supernatural as a light switch, even in theory.

I used telepathy as the example because it took in both physiology and a range of identifiable experiences. The other “paranormal” stuff is of the same degree of difficulty. Psychokinetic phenomena, for example, seen as just using the sorts of electromagnetic fields the human body can generate, becomes about as mystical as a crowbar. “Spirituality” may well be no more than someone using the mind more effectively, not an excuse to create a gigantic bank account based on the credulity of idiots.

I would point out that none of this paranormal non-information is compulsory. You are perfectly entitled to believe what you consider to be trustworthy information, not whatever pabulum is spewed out of the tedious, predictable, brains of greedy little geeks. It is incredibly unkind to tell someone they’re in contact with a deceased loved one, if they’re not. Bogus treatments for horrible diseases are utterly unacceptable. The sordid deprogramming of people by religious/psych cults is nothing more or less than obscene. There’s plenty of case law, if you need it. The whole mercenary, repulsive schematic of “paranormal culture” is a crime of which you can simply choose not to be a victim. Rent A God isn’t an option either, unless you agree. Believe what you believe you can trust.

If you want a look at something interesting, try reality.