39. PROVING WEIRD THINGS

For those who have experienced the paranormal, no further proof is needed. No argument ever defeats direct experience.
 
Nevertheless, self-doubt and fear of ridicule can arise in experiencers since the paranormal is contrary to popular religious, academic, and scientific beliefs. However, as shown in the preceding chapters, these beliefs do not represent truth or reality. Coming to understand that emboldens experiencers and opens the mind of anyone willing to explore the vistas that paranormal abilities and events reveal.
 
Also lending credibility is the fact that paranormal abilities are utilized by people and organizations with the goal of obtaining objective, tangible, and pragmatic results. This also lends credibility to the phenomena.
 
For example, governments have set up special intelligence-gathering branches using individuals gifted with paranormal abilities. For-profit companies also employ dowsers and psychics to help them find water, oil, mineral deposits, sunken ships, archeological sites, and to read the minds of competitors. Remote viewers even create profits for clients by predicting commodity futures markets and S&P 500 Index funds. Police departments have used psychics and remote viewers to solve crimes.
 
Such things would not be done and money spent on them if they did not create results.
 
Addressing the scientific pedigree of many studies on extrasensory perception and mediumship, Professor Eysenck of London University remarked: "Unless there is a gigantic conspiracy involving some thirty university departments all over the world and several hundred highly respected scientists in various fields, many of them originally skeptical of the claims of the psychical researchers, the only conclusion that the unbiased researcher can come to is that there does exist a small number of people who obtain knowledge existing in other people's mind, or in the outer world, by means as yet unknown to science."
 
Researchers at the Princeton University's Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Center tested the ability of people to will higher or lower numbers produced by an electronic random number generator. They also found that people could will the fall of cascading balls that can go either right or left into bins. A meta-analysis revealed that the odds that the positive results obtained were due to chance was one in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. That's equivalent to a virtual certainty that the machines were influenced by mind.

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​The Global Consciousness Project (GCP) is an international effort involving researchers from several countries conducting experiments since 1998. They conclude that human consciousness interacts with random event generators (REGs), apparently "causing" them to produce non-random patterns.
 
If we and the world around us are something different from what things on the surface appear to be, then we would expect this idea to emerge in human consciousness and persist in human experience. It does.
 
The belief that this world is but an illusion and that there are other realities is a thought thread throughout time. The witch doctors, seers, medicine men, death rituals, and meditative experiences of the most primitive of people around the world may not be just ignorance, manifestations of the fear of death, or wishful thinking. It is most likely enlightened knowledge from first-hand experience.
 
Many notable people, even hard-core skeptics and scientists, have been impressed with the scientific and experiential evidence. This would include Margaret Mead, Pierre and Marie Curie, Edgar Mitchell (astronaut), several Nobel laureates including the Curies, Richet, Townes, Crookes, and Josephson. There are countless others (see Resource Section). 

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It's Worth It
 
Why explore unusual phenomena and attempt to verify or deny their validity? Most importantly, because it's where searching inevitably leads. Searching and proving things to oneself is a basic human responsibility. It opens the mind, provides seed for the betterment of the human condition, and gives the satisfaction that we are doing what we should.
 
Contemplating a reality beyond the material sphere also creates a sense of wonder and awe. Realizing that we are something greater than a mound of atoms engenders a sense of purpose, respect, and even obligation. From there can emerge great human character and hope.
 
It's noteworthy that those with metaphysical skills or who do paranormal research (not to suggest that there aren't charlatans), simply encourage you to consider the evidence or learn the skills yourself. You're not asked to join, swear allegiance, honor leaders, or tithe. Instead, the underlying message is love, unity, openness, reason, and a better world.
 
This is in sharp contrast to the meaninglessness, hopelessness, and amorality that can logically spring from the belief that we are nothing more than a probability event, exploding stardust, repulsive gravitational field, and false cosmic vacuum. It's also ethically superior to following human-made holy books or religious doctrines that rob people of money, conscience, and open-minded truth-seeking.