The Paranormal (Where is it now?)

by dhw, Saturday, January 10, 2009, 16:20 (5583 days ago) @ George Jelliss

George writes: DHW has asked me to comment on BBella's descriptions of paranormal experiences. I had some difficulty in locating them.... - First of all, many apologies if my request was not clear. I was in fact asking specifically about four experiences listed in my response to John Clinch (9 January at 10.12), and rather lazily I had referred you to that post instead of again listing the four I was interested in. Two of these were BBella's (which you have commented on), and two were David Turell's, and the feature all four had in common was that they entailed obtaining information which could not have been known beforehand. - All the same, I'd like to thank you for responding ... as always ... with such thoroughness. Personally, I find most of your explanations convincing, and it would be interesting to know what BBella makes of them. I'd like to add further thanks to her and to David Turell. BBella has offered us these personal experiences without any prejudgements as to their provenance. David, in his response to John Clinch, has rightly stressed that the point of the website is to "poke into any and all areas that one of us brings up". The subject of the "paranormal" and, by extension, the nature of the human mind, seems to me to be well worth delving into. - I think most of us would agree that some people do have what David calls "extra mental powers, beyond what the average mind can accomplish". It should also go without saying that we discount the fraudulent and the gullible. I wanted to focus on cases where previously unknowable information is relayed, because I can't come up with any rational explanation myself. The subject has enormous ramifications in relation to time and place, and with OBEs/NDEs there is the additional dimension of the nature of perception. George has offered possible explanations of the two BBella experiences: (1) births and deaths are seldom unexpected, or perhaps déjà vu; 2) the vagueness of the message is typical of such episodes. We'd need BBella to tell us if the deaths were unexpected or not, but as regards 2) this doesn't explain where the message came from in the first place, or why it was "delivered", since the whole thing involved total strangers. BBella herself is not opting for a supernatural explanation. I don't think any of us are. But I don't think we've found a natural explanation either, for this or for David's examples. Perhaps John Clinch will come up with one.