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Apr. 24, 2005 There is no world but the physical world. Ideas about supernatural, divine, mystical, psychic, paranormal, extrasensory or incorporeal powers or beings are just so many old wives’ tales and nursery rhymes. It would perhaps be difficult to prove this, but experience teaches an intelligent person that all this talk is mere charlatanry and nonsense. If you can’t see, hear, touch, taste or smell it, it’s simply not there. Kutsumitis says he’s interviewed dozens of people who claim they’ve had experiences that they can’t explain, but after 20 years of investigation he has no solid proof of the existence of the paranormal. The reason should be obvious. His informants don’t know what they’re talking about. Some people have a childish fascination with the otherworldly, and try to build a case for its reality by engaging in the art of make-believe. They see and hear things that aren’t there, or they explain real events in ultra-spooky ways because it sends shivers up their spinal columns. Did Kutsumitis run IQ tests on his interviewees. Were there any interviewees in the three-digit range? Here’s an example of a paranormal experience that is illustrative of the kind of thinking would-be supernaturalists indulge in: A former model, ageing and down on her luck, went into a store to buy some hamburger, which was all she could afford. But as she walked along in one of the aisles she noticed that a couple of unwrapped mushrooms were lying loose on the shelf between the packaged mushrooms, so she grabbed them and stuck them in her purse. Afterwards, though, she felt guilty about it. A week later her dog got sick and she had to take him to a veterinarian. To her way of thinking, that fact that she had to shell out money for her sick dog was divine retribution for her theft of the stray mushrooms. In another case, a young indigent married couple, both mystics, were invited to dinner at someone’s house. The wife took sick after dinner and said she felt she was going to leave her body. So the host invited her to lie down in his bedroom. An hour or so later, when she was feeling better, she rose and rejoined the dinner party, saying that she had indeed left her body momentarily. Later, after the couple left, the host found several things missing from the bedroom. Apparently, while the woman’s spirit was in outer space, her body was busy boosting a bunch of stuff. Psychic experiences are commonplace among drug addicts, alcoholics, and sufferers from paranoia and schizophrenia. Such people have altered their perceptions by the use of intoxicants or have defective minds altogether. I took drugs and drank to excess, years ago, and I’m quite familiar with hallucinations that pass as psychic experiences. In fact the experiences are so compelling, so overpowering, so imperative, that it takes you years to disabuse yourself of the notion that they are not only real but higher and more commanding than ordinary reality. I’ve heard lots of tales about supposedly inexplicable occurrences. I recall a lady on a bus in Chicago years ago whom I overheard telling someone that in her recent trip to the Vatican she had seen blood flowing from wounds in statues. She was so earnest and credulous that the memory has remained with me till this day. However, in my two trips to the Vatican, I never saw any blood flowing from any statues. Did I just miss it? Or was the lady just a little balmy? Wasn’t she just overdoing it, hoping to make a fine show of piety and faith? Then went I visited Hungary in 1991, in spite of myself, I kept looking out the train window, wondering whether I would see any of the vampires who were once reputed to inhabit Transylvania. I’m disappointed to report that I saw no such thing. As soon as I got to Budapest, I was confronted with the inescapable fact that ordinary physical reality with its mechanical laws is just as ineluctable there as anywhere else. Frankly, I wish it were otherwise. I’d love to live in world of magic and marvels, a world of transcendental drama, intergalactic wars and intercontinental clairvoyance. I’d love to chat with the long dead, and predict the future with sybilline intuition, to vaticinate with sooth and truth, reading minds and eavesdropping on distant conversations. Unfortunately, all that is for story tellers, epic poets and mountebanks. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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