Well it’s already February and time continues to just fly by. With the new month comes the next issue of my Across the Great Divide paranormal column. This time around I bring up a topic worthy of discussion- why we need parapsychology.

So, without further adieu…

Do We Need Parapsychology?
By R. Wolf Baldassarro

The formal scientific study of paranormal phenomena began in 1882 with the foundation of the Society for Psychical Research in London, England. Early efforts attempted to dissociate psychical phenomena from the pop culture trend of Spiritualism and superstition, and to investigate mediums and their claims of evoking spirits or apparitions.

But 100 years later most people still think that paranormal research is either a group armed with night-vision tech stumbling around buildings in the dark in search of ghosts and fame, or simply the study of any subject that is weird or bizarre (i.e. Bigfoot and UFOs/aliens). Parapsychology is, and has always been, so much more than the former, and has nothing at all to do with the latter.

The old paradigm, which many have held since the days of Descartes, states that the subjective and objective worlds are completely distinct, with no overlap. Subjective is “here, in the head,” and objective is “there, out in the world.” The Cartesian paradigm presupposes that there are objective ways to define and measure the fixed external world, which the followers of this paradigm would say is the only world that matters.

Writer and philosopher Elbert Hubbard (1857-1915) eloquently quipped that “the supernatural is the natural, just not yet understood.”

Read the entire article at:
http://paganpages.org/content/2012/02/across-the-great-divide-26/