The Intuitive Review: LeShan's "Paranormal"

Lawrence LeShan’s A New Science of the Paranormal is a very readable and excellent tome, which seeks to address the way forward for research into the paranormal and fringe areas of consciousness research. Lawrence LeShan is a veteran researcher in the field, and at just 125 pages, this book makes for a quick, enjoyable and thought-provoking read.

As with my other intuitive reviews, I will take a look at not only the explicit knowledge detailed in the book, but I will also add my intuitive insights into the writer, and the way his psyche has helped shape the book. I am a spiritual counselor, so in this process I apply a similar process to that which I apply when counseling people: I intuitively glean information from the psyche – in this case that of the writer. It shouldn’t surprise you then, that I am a “proponent” in the so-called “psi-wars.”

In A New Science LeShan argues passionately for the argument that the paranormal is crucial to understanding our place in the cosmos.  Contemporary science and philosophy have created an extreme distortion of experience which alienates us from our spiritual roots, and psi experience can help redress that imbalance. I am reminded of Susan Blackmore’s 1996 paper “What can psi teach us about consciousness?” Blackmore concluded that it can teach us nothing, basically because it doesn’t exist, and especially in lieu of her belief that consciousness does not have agency. LeShan’s and Blackmore’s perspectives are diametrically opposite, yet the question is crucial. Let me then be clear. My long experience in working with the intuitive mind leads me to conclude that LeShan is correct. Blackmore’s position, although supported by mainstream establishment thinking in science, is simply wrong. As LeShan states, this is a question of monumental importance, and I believe that A New Science is a little step in the right direction. LeShan calls the quest to understand psi “a terribly important adventure” and “the wild card in our seemingly hopeless attempt to get the human race off the endangered species list.” (p. 18)

LeShan lists four definitive ways “psychical research” can help move us forward. The following outcomes might occur if “the existence of large-scale psi events becomes part of the background assumptions in our culture.” (100)

1.       The idea that we are separate, isolated entities will change.

2.      We will see ourselves both as individuals and as part of something much greater. This is in line with the teachings of many spiritual traditions.

3.      As a result of the first two points, the way we behave towards each other and the planet will change.

4.      These changes will be of a significant scale, such that they will help the human race survive its current critical evolutionary impasse. (p. 101)

These are all positive outcomes which I concur can happen. However... (click below to read more)

Is There Life After Death, & Other Questions Answered (1)

So I’m not Jesus Christ, but I have spent a couple of decades in often intense intuitive practice. As I outline in my book Discover Your Soul Template, I learned an enormous amount from the processes taught to me by a spiritual group in New Zealand, going back over a decade now. What I can do that many intuitives cannot is feel and read consciousness fields at a profound level. I am also a natural clairvoyant, and from the moment I began to mediate about twenty years ago I found I had dreams and visions which often emerged from spiritual sources. I had little religious upbringing, and I had no knowledge or awareness of my intuitive abilities, nor any belief in psychic phenomena till I was about 26 years old. So I had very little spiritual baggage to jettison. I was not a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Muslim or a New Ager. I was just me. In fact I was an avowed atheist and empiricist before I began to meditate. But circumstances soon forced me to change my mind.

So, from my humble first person perspective, what metaphysical and spiritual claims are true, and what are hocus pocus? Here I am going to share a few things I have seen first hand over the years. My stance is that any spiritual concept that is shown to be wrong or limited has to be described as just that. I have come to reject quite a few concepts over the years, even ones that I once “believed” in.

What I share here is not based on reading or research, but on direct perception. I have done a lot of reading and research, but direct perception is the best form of knowledge when it comes to these things. I’ll share some things in this post, and some in the next post. The post will be too long if I put them all together.

I’m not saying I have the final word on any of these things. This is just what I have seen, and the conclusions I have drawn from what I have seen.

Needless to say, any or all of the following truth claims has the potential to offend, and to contradict your belief structures. If you find yourself getting angry at what I write, that’s not necessarily bad. Feel free to add your own insights in the comments section, or ask questions or challenge anything.

Basically, I will qualify each statement according to degrees of certainty.

True/False = there is no question that this is correct/incorrect, and I have perceived it too many times for there to be any doubt.

True/False Beyond Reasonable Doubt = the direct evidence is so overwhelming that you can pretty much clock it up as true.

Probably true/false = this appears to be the case/not the case, but it is not quite in the realm of definite

Maybe true = I have had some experiences which suggest this, but I am uncertain

So here we go... 

1) Mind extends beyond the brain. True

I still find it almost incredible that this most obvious fact is still denied in mainstream science and education (I have to remind myself that science is still in its infancy). The mind exists in a sea of information, entangled with other minds and consciousness fields. The brain mediates consciousness, but does not generate it. I am not sure how consciousness expresses itself without the brain (see point 2), since the brain so clearly has an enormous effect on the way consciousness expresses itself. It seems likely to me that the etheric body (see point 7) has an etheric brain, and that this etheric brain survives death. But this may not be the full explanation.

2) There is life after death. True Beyond Reasonable Doubt

I have had numerous instances of communication with relatives who have passed on. Sometimes they come to me and say things. Other times I find my mind and theirs entangled, because of some unresolved issues between us. Or often I just see them in a dream or a vision, and this is usually because there is some relevance in the connection for me. For example, one time I simply witnessed a deceased male relative of mine in a state of extreme emotional distress. He was basically experiencing extreme guilt at having sexually molested two female relatives of mine. He told me their names. Later one of those female relatives made claims about sexual abuse – but she would not name the person. Other encounters are more casual. Much of the time the dead are attempting to seek power or control over the living, where the minds remain entangled with the living, which is true in almost every case. However keep in mind that this is precisely the same as when they were “alive.” Nothing changes in this respect. People still play games with each other at a psychic level. 

(These paragraphs added in light of Gary's comment, below). The reason I list life after death as "true beyond reasonable doubt" rather than "true" is that it might be that these energy fields which I experience are left over from the lives of the people involved, and now exist independently of those people. However I have to say this does not appear to be the case to me, especially where there are power plays involved - where they are attempting to manipulate and control me or others who are energetically connected to me.

I have also had many interactions with spiritual entities. It seems to me that the physical universe we experience everyday is just one small aspect of the universe, and one small aspect of who we are. It seems likely to me that upon death we gravitate to some other level of this "cosmos".

The final aspect that adds more weight to the idea of life after death, is my having seen and felt aspects of my past lives. Again, those perceptions and experiences might really be something else - like unconsciously "channeling" other people's consciousness fields, or collectives of consciousness. I'll write a bit more about that in part 2 of this topic, in about a week or so.

3) When you die you go to Heaven. False

The experiences I mentioned in the previous point lead me to conclude that when you die your mind is not transformed or elevated into a new level of consciousness. It may well be true that departed souls are greeted by “the light” and spiritual guides soon after death. However the dead retain their scars and psychological issues. These are recorded in the Soul Template. The essence of life after death is that your mind plays out dramas, and attracts to itself situations which reflect its belief structures, and the overall “vibration” of its resonance. So a mind full of fear and self-loathing will recreate an afterlife where it will experience persecution and denial. A more “enlightened” mind will attract more joyful experience. The idea of Heaven is a politically motivated concept put forward, mostly by mono-theistic religions. If you are good, you go to paradise. I prefer Leonard Jacobson's take on Heaven. Heaven is right here and now, when you mind exists in still presence, and is not cluttered up with past memories and projected futures. Gary Weber (see his comment below) would probably agree with this. Interestingly, Leonard believes in an afterlife and reincarnation, whereas Gary does not.

4) People can see the future. True

I have had too many premonitions over the years to see this as anything but certain. The only question for me is whether I am seeing the one set future, or a possible future which could be changed. For example, before the recent cricket world cup I had a vision that the Australian cricket team would be eliminated from the tournament at the quarter-final stage (Australia had won the previous three World Cups, and were undefeated for 12 years). A month later they were eliminated in the quarter-finals, as I’d seen.

The question then is, can we see into the future deliberately. I believe that in a general sense we can. This can be done through light trance state, and through strong intuitive feelings. Again, I write about these techniques in Discover Your Soul Template. However, the information gleaned is often general, fuzzy and cryptic. In other words it is not a simple case of "ask and you shall receive."

5) People can read each other’s minds. True

… with some qualification. It is possible for a person to read another’s emotional energy and attitudes, and the psychic projections of the ego can be read. I have seen many people do this, and just quietly I am pretty good at this myself. Jessica, who ran the spiritual group in New Zealand, was terrifyingly good at this. She could basically see straight through you. The first time I ever met her, I had had a disturbing vision while meditating that morning. In the vision I found myself looking down at my hands, and they were covered in blood. Later that day when I met Jessica, the first thing she said to me, before she even said hello was “I can see your hands covered in blood.” I am not making this up.

Mind reading can be learned. It is an innate human ability because the capacity for empathy is wired into our brains (mirror neurons), and our minds are not confined to our brains.I have seen many people develop this skill to a high level. 


Now call the boys in white coats and take me away :-)

6)  The "soul" can travel out of the body. True

… again, with some qualification. The mind is not localised to the body, so some apparent out of body experiences do not actually involve the etheric body leaving the physical body. They are actually the mind perceiving information at a distance (ESP). Other out of body experiences involve the etheric body detaching and moving out into the world, or alternatively, into another astral dimension. I have had both kinds of out of body experiences. One time I found myself traveling out of my body, and riding along some power lines above a road (for some reason the etheric body is attracted to electricity). But I have also traveled out of the body into black, empty voids.

I do not consider out of body experiences to be desirable. They are typically caused by a dissociation between mind and body, and a subconscious desire to escape this world.

7)  There is an etheric body. True

I have not played around with this too much (I don’t see the point), but I have had several experiences where I have been able to manipulate the etheric body. This has occurred in the hypnogogic state between waking and sleeping, and independent of my will (or at least started out independent of my will). Basically, the etheric body is a subtle body double, and looks just like your actual body under normal circumstances. For example, sometimes I am able to move my etheric arms out in front of my chest, even though my physical arms are still by my side.  When I touch my etheric fingers together, I can feel them just like my real fingers. So they are connected to the nervous system somehow. I have also often had the bizarre experience of finding the etheric body of someone else lying beside me as I sleep. One time I awoke in the middle of the night to find my older brothers etheric hands resting on my chest. I grabbed them, got out of bed, threw them out the door and closed it. Another time an etheric baby attached itself to my back as I was sleeping on my stomach. I reached around with my etheric hands and touched it. It felt very real. I then told it that it could not stay, and it went away. To this day I don’t know if the baby was living or deceased.

In part 2 of this topic (which will be written about a week from now) I will comment about UFOs, alien life, demonic possession, past lives, ghosts and the end of the world. Not all of these iarequite as clear cut as the vitally important things that I have written about today, but each is significant in its own way.

Marcus

Will This Change Anything?

I have often written about the way that mainstream discourses tend to marginalise discussions about subjects related to intuitive perception and spiritual experience. Here's an extract about exactly this problem, from a journal paper entitled "Entanglement: The idea that changes everything?", which I recently wrote for Foresight. I know many journal articles are about as fascinating as observing rocks erode, but I do try to make my papers personal, interesting and readable. I hope I have succeeded with that goal here. If interested, you can find the rest of the paper here, including relevant citations. (BTW, Brockman's This Will Change Everything is actually a very readable volume, and chock full of fascinating ideas for anyone interested in science and the future).

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I recently received my copy of John Brockman’s This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future. No self-titled futurist could not be excited by the prospect of reading such a volume, which contains a collection of short essays by more than one hundred of the self-described brightest and most influential scientific and philosophical minds on the planet, including Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, Freeman Dyson, and Rupert Sheldrake. Contributions are taken from the Edge website (www.theedge.org). Edge was formed by Brockman in 1991, and each year a volume is produced outlining some of the most provocative and innovative ideas emergi

The Power of Intuition (talk)

Here's is a humble little talk I gave at the Hong Kong Holistic Fair just yesterday, 23.01.11. It may be of greatest interest to those wanting an introduction to the idea of Integrated Intelligence (INI). Here I outline the seven core areas of INI and give some examples from my life, or from other people's experiences. The video was taken with my own video camera, so, sorry, the sound isn't quite the best.

How close are we to seeing the end of science’s “psi taboo”?

How close are we to seeing the end of science’s “psi taboo”, and a more open attitude towards the so-called paranormal? Dean Radin has long argued that a breakthrough is about to occur in science, and that concepts such as ESP, clairvoyance, precognition and telekinesis will soon become accepted as legitimate and “real” objects of scientific investigation. I am not so sure, and the reacton to an academic article soon to be published this year in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, have circulated widely among psychological researchers in recent weeks and “has generated a mixture of amusement and scorn”, according to an article in the New York Times.

The paper is authored by Cornell University professor Daryl J. Bem, and entitled Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. It outlines results for experiments which attempt to gauge whether future events influence the mind before they actually happen. In one of the experiments. Bem gave 100 college students a memory test before they categoried a list of words (categorizing assist memory). The experiment found the students were significantly more likely to remember words that they practised later. The conclusion presented in the paper is as follows.

Can People Really Read Minds?

In some popular and science fiction movies there are people who can read minds. In What Women Want, for example, Mel Gibson is able to read the thoughts of those around him. In the movie this is an involuntary process. The thoughts just pop into his head. Personally, I think it would have been a far better movie if we could have just seen what Mel was thinking about. Judging by recent media stories, there’s some mighty interesting stuff in there.

In another version of mind reading, usually found in science fiction movies, we have “empaths’ who can get a sense of what people are thinking and feeling. They are a regular part of Star Trek narratives. Empaths can also sense the future, including danger. They may not read minds thought for thought, but they can pick up “the vibe”.

Is there any truth to these tales of mind reading? Can some people actually read minds? Will all people one day read minds, as part of human evolution?