PARANORMAL RESEARCH - A PARADIGM FOR CHANGE?

Can you see the man to the right glass mirror?

The paranormal is without parallel in it`s ambiguity of understanding.
To see, feel, smell or hear something that at first seems weird and beyond reasonable comprehension soon combats against the `rational` in the mind of the participant.

After all, even to a believer it is often very difficult to saturate something to memory like a solid object appearing to pass through solid mass because the human brain measures everything it experiences upon previous events recorded to memory and attempts to filter or deny anything outside of that.

It sometimes happens to me and no doubt many others too if they could accept the open admissibility of their own experiences. How many times have we thought, "Did I really see that?"

To the serious observer it is something that boosts mental adrenalin, it fires the senses and inspires us in our belief that all we experience in life cannot always be easily understood or explained.

To the thrill seeker, the experience extracts a rush of energy in the fear it evokes as the brain attempts to shield itself against something it cannot grasp or comprehend. But unlike the positive effects of adrenalin to the serious observer, it instead heightens a terrible fear and a terror that causes them to run or scream.

To the `scientifically` minded sceptic, the paranormal is a blend of the former experiences, as it excites in the sheer wonderment of the event, but quickly pales to a misapprehension that it can be explained by scientific means and can therefore can be denied.

Sadly to some, denial to some is a cosy protective element that allows them perhaps to sleep more soundly in the dark, and the term `scientific` becomes merely a label to mask their own fears or prejudices.

Here is an image of a RAF ghostly serviceman that haunts a former RAF base.

In a literal translation of the word it means "a method of procedure that has characterised natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses".

A more less elevated modern definition relates to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge.

To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.

A skull like face in a cemetery

And here lies the real issue. By definition, a paranormal event is something beyond the range of normal experience or scientific explanation. Therefore anything beyond the range of `normality` cannot be explained by scientific means.

You cannot measure or quantify paranormal events to a scientific standard because the yardstick by which science can measure or evaluate these events  just simply isn`t there.

And so the `scientifically minded` sceptic has to resort to a number of argumentative ploys to suppress or deny any incident they experience, or better still for them events experienced by others. And so `scientific analysis` becomes opinion, and of course opinion becomes confused as `fact`.

I and many others know that the paranormal is not a wild imagination.
Much has been recorded which offers serious contention to what is currently accepted in the laws of physics.

Fortunately, the laws of physics are not a closed book. Each year a little more of our understanding of this world and the universe changes - albeit very slowly.

A misty figure of a man at a former WW2 base

And the real truth is that empirically, I can no more prove the paranormal and conversely neither can science disprove it.

The laws of physics could evolve much faster if humanity puts aside, bigotry, prejudice and a stubborn blindness to events that really do need further exploration and analysis.

There is so much within this world that seemingly is invisible to many, but the distance between us and new horizons of understanding is a million times less than the thickness of a cigarette paper, but for many it will always remain a million times further away.

My hope for 2012 will be a greater openness from many more of us to the new frontiers that are yet to be explored, and less emphasis on allowing stupidity and hidebound irrationality to muddy those crystal waters of knowledge and usher instead a new era of understanding.