• precognition, a sense of things about to happen (major incidents such as earthquakes, or possible daily events such as the boss coming home early)

• direction finding (homing birds, but also e.g. cats finding their way back to former residences)

• telepathy, awareness of the thoughts of others (e.g. the boss has decided it is the day to go to the vet, so the cat promptly disappears)

Some experiments were set up but obviously it's difficult to simulate an earthquake so reliance was also made in part on available evidence. The conclusion was that there was sufficient evidence to suggest that there was enough going on here which could not be explained by rational causes e.g. earth's magnetism, visual clues.

I find this all mildly reassuring, especially when extrapolated to the human scene: the idea that we might all have possessed these paranormal powers but have allowed them to atrophy due to neglect and to our social conditioning which favours the intellectual, logical, egoistic, measurable over the mysterious, paranormal, mystical.

What i do feel is, once you admit the possibility of any sort of paranormal phenomenon (in the widest sense, i.e. anything not detectable and/or explicable by what we intuitively understand as the normal laws of science) then there is the danger that you open the door to all other strange and inexplicable phenomena, so that just about anything can happen and it is impossible to use these normal laws of science at all as a basis for prediction of what will happen. So some "happy medium" is needed, lest we abandon all attempts to lead an organized life in the world of physical reality.

Perhaps a useful distinction can be made between "pre-rational" and "trans-rational" paranormal beliefs, the first being a blind adherence to some sort of myth for which there is no evidence at all, and the second an admission of the possibility of a higher reality which we in our flatland existence are not capable of detecting.

Maybe the "pre" and the "trans" overlap in a significant area with the "rational" itself - the idea that there might be a Lord, or Lady, who is my shepherd and is going to look after things, can provide the sense of confidence and security which enable me to achieve a more efficient rational solution to life's problems. Or, in the sphere of health, some ideas such as spiritual healing, accompanied possibly by placebos or near-placebos, exercise rituals or whatever, may be an enormous aid to the maintenance of good health and overcoming or resisting disease.

My personal choice is to go for an open mind - accept the possibility of the existence of a higher reality, appeal to it even if this seems needed, but keep our feet close enough to the ground to maintain a common-sense approach to daily things, and avoid the twin evils of fanaticism and fundamentalism, which are just as bad when applied to a new-age as to a traditional culture!

14 October 1999

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