weblink Alternative Realities - The Paranormal, the Mystic, & the Transcendent - A reveal
Are You Real, Or Just A Dream?
Alternative Realities - The Paranormal, the Mystic, & the Transcendent - A reveal
What is shadow, what is light? asks Dr. George, a Vancouver, B.C., psychologist, echoing Plato's parable. assuredly what we reconsider to be "real", "out there", is not as self-evident as at first appears.
"The framework of ordinary reality is made of our assumptions and expectations, our desires and fears. The angry dwell in a world of enemies; the ambitious, in a world of opportunities; the consumer, in a world of commodities. These are not just 'attitudes' -- they assuredly determine, to a large extent, our very perceptions," writes Dr. George.
Even our awareness of our own bodies is a reasoning construct, the author claims. As for memory, that, too, is not what it seems. "The image we summon from the vault of memory is more like an oil painting of the bygone event than like a photograph."
What most strongly colours our view of "reality" is our world view. This is our set of beliefs which infuse everything we do or think and which we inherit first from our parents and secondly, from the society nearby us.
Dr. George writes, "The foundations of trust about cosmos, society, body and self are laid even before we fully learn to speak. Throughout life, these primordial convictions will remain impossible to express -- and therefore impossible to question."
Of course, the irony is that, if Dr. George is correct, then his postulates are also part of one world view among many!
Whatever our world view may be, and wherever it may come from, it rapidly takes on an "aura of absolute reality."
And thus it is extraordinarily difficult to change someone's world view. The author draws upon the work of Jean Piaget to by comparison how we keep our world view intact. We whether assimilate or we accommodate challenges to our sets of beliefs. That is, we whether keep our world view unchanged by fitting the new facts into it, or we change the world view just adequate to adapt to the challenge.
Dr. George adds that we may do neither. We may simply ignore the new information. (Shades of bigots and zealots!) The third selection is strongly influenced by what others nearby us are saying.
This brings us to what the book is about. And that is, experiences which, though statistically common, do not fit the prevailing world view of the "modern West [which] is primarily defined by science."
As the author writes, science "does not have a place for encounters with spirits, for souls that leave the body or reincarnate or for reasoning powers that are not field to the limitations of the body's muscles and senses. The mainstream world view could accommodate visitors from other planets, in case,granted they got here via technology rather than magic; and even strange creatures living in lakes or forests would be acceptable, if they turned out to be biological entities of some sort. But even these possibilities are not currently accepted, for lack of convincing evidence."
Unusual events (i.e. Experiences which challenge one's world view) come whether from the face (weird happenings) or the inside (a mind that itself functions in an unusual manner).
Here is a overview of Dr. George's face and inside effects:
a) External influences
* public cues from other habitancy (who are also, e.g., looking a ghost);
* Impaired sensory input (e.g., dim light, drums, flashing lights);
* Electromagnetic conditions (e.g., thunderstorms or quartz deposits);
* Uncommon natural events (e.g., hordes of parachute spiders);
* Meeting "an actual discarnate spirit or Sasquatch or Ufo occupant, if assuredly there are such things."
b) Internal influences
"Most supranormal phenomena are experienced by habitancy who are neither mentally nor neurologically disordered in any sure way." They often stay silent, writes Dr. George, to avoid the risk of having their honesty or their sanity questioned.
Explanations for supranormal events fall into three categories:
* Conventionalist -- there's some prosaic reason;
* Extentionalist -- adds to the science world view with such propositions as great spirits or transcendent faculties.
* Anomalist -- this outlook says that paranormal theories are inadequate, but that the conventionalist perspective doesn't by comparison everything, either.
The dictionary-format of the book makes it easy to look up anyone paranormal, mystical or transcendental perceive interests the reader. I was disappointed there was no entry for "crop circles".
Let's look at two entries chosen at random.
Olfactory hallucinations
"A false perception of smell. Olfactory hallucinations can feature in epilepsy and schizophrenia, but are most often reported by sufferers of hysteria. Mysterious odors are sometimes sensed in the hypnagogic state. See also odors of sanctity, poltergeist."
Out-of-body experience
Four pages on Obes tell us that anywhere from 8 to 15% of the normal habitancy narrative such an experience. "Among subpopulations such as college students, it is much higher, up to 48%, in some samples." normal habitancy as well as the mentally disturbed have Obes, and reports date back thousands of years. Even St Paul seems to refer to an Obe [Corinthians 12:2].
Waves of interest in Obes have swept straight through society, such as during the time of the Gnostics [early A.D.] and the Middle Ages. Witches in the Renaissance and Reformation were ordinarily plan to assuredly be able to tour face their bodies. Such beliefs waned until revived in the middle 1800s when Spiritualism and Theosophy gained many followers.
Science began to take an interest and had to speedily drop the accusation that an Obe was an hallucination, a sign of reasoning illness. Explore during the last 25 years has examined Obes in a number of ways. Dr. George describes the typical perceive of habitancy who artlessly experience an Obe and notes that they appear "quite vivid and realistic, without the shifting, blurred nature of dreams."
About 15% of Obe experients claimed that they learned things about distant places which they "could not have obtained if their senses had been restricted to the immediate vicinity of the corporeal body." Experiments to Explore these claims have so far been inconclusive.
Are there differences in the middle of Obe experients and habitancy who have not had such an experience? Not in terms of age, sex, education, public class or religious convictions. Obes can happen to anyone. But Obe experients do tend to be more apt at absorption, to be more likely to have lucid dreams, to practice meditation and to score higher on tests of hypnotizability.
Brain waves of persons in an Obe suggested "the subjects were awake and paying concentration to something." None of the theories put forward to by comparison Obes in current terms of psychophysiological functioning has been satisfactorily proven.
Dr. George lists many other references within the text which provide added facts on the topic, plus he lists several articles for added reading.
This is a well-organized book. Each entry is richly cross-referenced. The book is rounded out with an Appendix (about correlations), a Bibliography and a accepted Index.
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