Paranormal abilities

First, as psychology deals more and more with the phenomena of altered states of consciousness, it will more and more have to deal with phenomena that do not fit well in a conceptual scheme that says awareness is only a product of the brain. Experiences of apparently paranormal abilities like telepathy, of feeling that one s mind leaves one s body, of mystical union with aspects of the universe outside oneself, of supernormal knowledge directly given in altererd states, fit more comfortably into schemes that do not assume that awareness is only a function of the brain. I have nothing against competent attempts to fit such phenomena into our dominant western scientific framework, but the attempts I have seen so far have been most inadequate and seem to work mainly by ignoring major aspects of these altered states phenomena. Thus the assumption that awareness is only a function of the brain, especially as it becomes implicit, tends to distort our view of real phenomena that happen in altered states, we dismiss their possible... 

My personal experiences are behind my lifelong study of the paranormal. Like many children I had invisible playmates when I was very young, and I saw strange lights in the yard and woods that I instinctively knew were the nature spirits who lived there. Children seem to be very open to paranormal phenomena, but their ability to have these experiences often fades away as they become more involved in the outside world, or, perhaps, as adults tell them not to believe in what they experience, that it s only in their imagination. Even when I was very young, I was puzzled that other people would tell me with great authority that I did not experience what I knew I did. 

Those interests led me to other areas of the paranormal. Pretty soon I was engrossed in studying all kinds of topics. I learned different techniques for divination, including the Tarot. I learned how to meditate. I took courses to develop my own psychic skills, and I gave psychic readings to others. Everyone has at least some natural psychic ability and can improve it with attention and practice. 

More extravagant metaphysical claims made by paranormal sources are that the body has the ability to travel anywhere by just thinking. This translocation or astral travel is called the rapture. Other flamboyant claims are that a person can live eight hundred to one thousand years with a perfect body in the state of a teenager and communicate telepathically. 

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