Reality of the extrasensory
Opinions are divided in the population: about half of respondents believe that paranormal phenomena exist, and one that it is hallucinations, illusions, or charlatanry. Neutral or indifferent reviews are rare. The subject gives rise to significant tensions, without anyone being able to tell things apart. This situation shows that the popular intuition carries some reminiscence of the extrasensory, even in a society whose standards are trying to expel it.
Parapsychology has been seeking for generations to validate evidences of telepathic transmission, the reality of clairvoyance and other extrasensory perception or the reality of psychokinetic phenomena. She has most often, as with all isolated phenomena, had difficulties to reproduce or even observe it, leaving the way open to all disputes. It is possible that, by nature, paranormal isn’t amenable to statistical research, which are the only apt to convince reluctant minds.
The situation would be very different if a large proportion of the population had psychic abilities. This is also the multiplicity of people and phenomena in the context of Evolutionary Ecopsychology, which allowed more systematic observations. From the moment the same events occur with significant frequency among a large number of people and are genuine, it is no longer possible to invoke mere coincidences due to chance.
Some isolated phenomena support already seriously the reality of extrasensory perception. A vision indicating the accidental death of a friend or relative, having occurred very remotely and unpredictably, can in no way be explained by material processes. It would invoke a flow of information from the scene of the accident to the receiver by a channel obeying the laws of physics and its neuronal expression at the level of vision centers.
Freud relied on electromagnetic waves to explain telepathy. But nothing has ever helped to reveal any relation between a very localized event in time, as an accidental death, and changes in ambient magnetic fields, or other information vectors.
Reductionist trying to explain the numerous reports of this kind by claiming that there would be in each subject multiple views similar events flushing in consciousness. One would store those that found confirmation, hence the impression of verified forecasts.
Certainly the memory permanently operates a sorting and dropping of the irrelevant information. However, a vision, especially when it comes to the first, is a particularly significant event. You never forget such an image, any more than the death it announced. Critics have certainly never experienced such paranormal phenomena, and bear a completely shifted idea of their legitimate place in consciousness and memory.
A rough calculation can show that it is highly unlikely that chance is sufficient to explain such “coincidences”. Every detail checked divides the probability by a new factor: time, date, environment, words and facial expressions, etc. Ultimately, one would expect much less of a person over tens or hundreds of millions alive by accident a similar phenomenon.
Suffice to say that every such event is likely not to be due to chance. This is the idea that it is due to chance which must be considered a priori as an improbability, even as an impossibility. We settle, for instance in psychology, with much higher error probabilities of the order of 1 to 5%, to decide on the success of a trial.
Obviously it would be more convincing to see parapsychologists investigate these large-scale phenomena and identify in due form. Unfortunately, ESP requires a state of consciousness fairly inconsistent with scientific research.
An example that can represent this incompatibility is that of love and sexuality. It is extremely difficult to observe and scientifically codify romantic behavior. The mere fact of being present and show an analytical willingness is enough to block their natural course.
Quantum theory teaches us, for over a century, that the observer changes the observed phenomenon. The principle is true at the level of the particles, but also for psychological phenomena. Extrasensory perception may be even more sensitive to rationalistic pressure than love. Anyway, the two types of phenomena are deeply related.
Moreover, the archetypal nature of extrasensory messages is such that scientists lose their Latin. They automatically tend, from the symbols’ lability, to cast them aside as inconsistent data. It would be needed, to conduct these experiments, that scientists themselves had experienced paranormal phenomena before hand, and be able to extract the quintessence of perceived symbols.
A concept that can help to better understand the relationship between paranormal dimension and our ordinary space-time, that is to say how extrasensory messages relate to our ordinary experience, is that of “energy field” . For the physicist, the field is an invisible property of the space such that a particle experiences a force which depends on its position. But the particle is not necessarily moved, various factors able to inhibit the field‘s action.
Now it seems that the extrasensory messages announcing an event, for example, correspond to the same trend induced by the transcendent dimension in order for this event to occur. It could be for example a good time for an action to succeed and bear fruit, or if the event is undesirable, the right time to take precautions. An energy field is a field of probability: the relevant events are more probable, but not certain, however.
The existence of a transcendent dimension does not mean psychic phenomena should obey the same rules of material reality. The fact that they escape the laws of physics does not imply that they are not real. It remains to define reality: we say here, beyond all metaphysics, that phenomenon is real if it is subject to consistent observations. I see this chair regardless of the distance and the angle from which I look at it, you see it as a camera can film it: the consistency of observations lets you state to state about the factual… epistemiologist don’t define reality otherwies.
Extrasensory messages are also the subject of consistency, both in terms of observation than at the check so we are in position to declare their reality as well as any object or phenomenon. Anything less or more is speculation and what might be called the pride of knowledge…