Opposing views on paranormal phenomena

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Opposing views on paranormal phenomena
November 8, 2011
sing views on paranormal phenomena
By: Jaime T. Licauco
Inquirer Lifestyle

My column entitled “Is Out-of-Body Experience Simply a Neurological Disorder?” which appeared on Jan. 25, 2005 in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, has been included in the recently published American hardcover book, “Paranormal Phenomena,” by Gale, Cengage Learning Corp.

“The book,” explains the Foreword, “consists of a collection of carefully selected opposing viewpoints concerning paranormal phenomena which captures the essence of this particular controversy. They are presented in a pro and con format to help the reader and student in critical thinking and debate.”

The authors (mostly Americans) whose opinions were selected for this book consists of “statesmen, pundits, academics, journalists, corporations, and ordinary people who have felt compelled to share their experiences and ideas in a public forum. Their words have been collected from newspapers, journals, books, speeches, interviews and the Internet.”

My article appears in Chapter II, “Do Paranormal Phenomena Exist?” and consists of contrasting viewpoints. The second chapter asks, “Why Do People Believe in Paranormal Phenomena?” and the third Chapter is, “Does Belief in Paranormal Phenomena Conflict with Religious Belief?”

In my article about astral projection, I argued against the prevailing opinion of western neuroscientists that out-of-body experiences (OOBE) are related to “interference with the temporoparietal junction of the brain.” This is the part of the brain that gives a person a sense of self-hood. According to them, a person may have a false sense of being out of his body because of an abnormality or interference in his sense of where he is in relation to his surroundings. In other words, he is simply hallucinating. It is not real.

Against this theory, I asked the question, “If this is true, how come there are people (clairvoyants and other sensitives) who are able to see and describe accurately the astral body or etheric double of a person far from where his physical body is?”

There is a lot of anecdotal evidence for this which, although not done under controlled laboratory conditions, are nevertheless still compelling! I pointed out that often neuroscientists propose the most outrageous or incredible theories just to maintain their rigid assumptions about the nature of physical reality. And I gave the example of fire walking.

Sweat glands

One scientific theory why natives of Fiji, Indonesia, Brazil, India, and the Philippines are able to walk on fire without getting burned, according to theory, is because “they have developed very powerful sweat glands in their feet, so that when they touch the burning coal or fire, these sweat glands are activated, thus cooling off the heat of the fire.” The tiny sweat glands on their feet are able to immediately cool the tremendous heat in seconds. This theory is accepted by scientists without battling an eyelash.

That’s why I said in that article that it would be nice to see proponents of this theory walk barefooted on fire to test its validity. But so far, I have not heard of any western scientist who has done this.

Meantime, scientists in Canada, working with experimental pilots, have a different explanation for feeling out-of-body in near death experiences. They concluded that this is simply lack of oxygen in the brain that gave this sensation.

When Canadian pilots were placed in a rotating machine, the centrifugal force temporarily deprives the brain of oxygen. The pilots lose consciousness and get a sensation of floating or being out of the body and seeing another being. They wake up remembering every detail of the incident, like in a typical near death experience (NDE).

However, I pointed one big difference between a real OOBE or NDE and the experience of the Canadian pilots. The pilots do not develop a sense of mission; neither do they acquire new insight into their life. They are not fundamentally transformed, like those who have had an actual near-death experience or NDE. Neither do they suddenly develop psychic powers. These facts are completely ignored by scientists.

If a theory contradicts a proven fact or experience, something is wrong with the theory.

However, directly opposing my views and placed before mine is an article by Valentine Low, a staff writer for the Times (UK) newspaper, who described an experiment she participated in, where the sensation of being out of her body was created through the use of virtual-reality goggles. Those goggles gave the sensation of not just being out of their body, but of inhabiting someone else’s body.

Do such experiments prove that OOBE is merely hallucination, just because the same sensation can be induced in a laboratory?

Other so-called scientific experiments can be devised where people are made to believe they are seeing a ghost, but it is only an illusion or trickery. Does this prove that ghosts or spirits of the dead are not real? Could the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world who have reported seeing ghosts been merely hallucinating then?