Every so often, I catch a skirmish in the psi-wars – the often raucous, evidence-hurling debate between paranormal researchers and their sceptical debunkers. There was a bit of it yesterday, when Chris French, the gentleman amongst sceptics, wrote a piece claiming psychic Sally Morgan had been exposed with an earpiece through which she hears her messages from the other side.
Danny Penman, on the other hand, who writes broadly psi-favourable articles, or at least open-minded, had previously written an article on our Sal, which concluded she can produce ‘amazing insights’, whether by paranormal means being moot.
In this piece, at least, Chris hardly holds the high standards research in this area requires. His exposé is based upon a women called Sue who called into an Irish radio programme. It reads as if Chris hadn’t verified her testimony or even who Sue is, else I’m sure he would have said; he also didn’t speak to Morgan – who denies the accusations on her website. Danny, on the other hand, had a consultation with Sally Morgan, and sent three plants to do similarly, all of whom reported some positive findings. Who knows the truth of it.
I was left wondering why I can never, quite, get excited about the paranormal. I’ve read a few books, the last, Randi’s Prize by Robert McLuhan, struck me as balanced and thorough, and concluded the evidence is substantial and weighs in pro, and that sceptics routinely go into denial. No doubt the sceptics would claim the evidence is all dodgy and believers are inventive, usually honest, self-deluders.
But I suspect that the reason the paranormal so excites some is not that, if true, it threatens to overturn the whole of physics; you could hardly add to the weirdness of physics as it is. Nor that if science proved there were life after death or somesuch, western civilisation would rock on its axis; most people believe it already. Also, it seems a bit silly to me to be interested in the possibility of a telepathy that knows the colour of your sofa or what you ate for breakfast. Even if true, that would be just party tricks; mere spectacle.
Rather, the psi-wars appear to manifest a deep ambivalence about our way of life. It’s something like this. The sceptics seem to fear that the gains of the modern world, particularly its rational empiricism, risk being lost to human folly, and so they champion a science that would understand the whole of life to keep that risk, and its propagators, down.
The believers, or open-minded, sense that a reductionist mindset risks reducing our humanity. The constant noise, distractions and demands that modern materialism have created prevent us from noticing the subtler ways we belong to one another, experienced, say, as an embodied feeling, a sense or intuition. Paying attention to that not the spectacle, as I believe is attempted in practices such as meditation or therapy, is important and can be life-changing.