Alien abduction, 16th century style.
From Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus
by Olaus Magnus, 1555.
By Leonard George
Op/Ed Piece, Vancouver Sun, February 10, 1995
Hauntings and lake monsters. Auras and UFOs. Out-of-body and mystical experiences. Premonitions and telepathy. Odds are, if you're a TV channel surfer or a bookstore browser, you have encountered most of these repeatedly in recent years.
Although there's no clear place for such things in the modern, science-based view of the world, interest in uncanny experiences seems as high as ever. And yet individuals who report them are often the target of ridicule, which is why too many people are afraid to share their experiences. They express three concerns commonly: "People will think I'm crazy." "They'll think I'm making it up." "They'll think I'm a fool." Let's look into these.
Recent surveys show that many types of strange experience are much more common than the frequencies of psychiatric and medical problems would predict. Almost one adult in five has had an out-of-body experience. Up to one in three report having seen an apparition. Four in 10 have had a mystical experience. Often, more than half of a survey sample admits to having the occasional ESP experience, such as a dream that comes true. It appears, then, that most people who have extraordinary experiences are neither mentally nor physically ill.
There have always been those who will lie for a payoff. Some people find attention of any kind, even mockery, to be rewarding. The annals of research into mysterious matters bulge with revelations of fraud, from photos of plastic "monsters" bobbing in Loch Ness to fudged research data from parapsychology labs. But the high percentages of uncanny events endorsed in anonymous surveys, in which respondents receive no reward or recognition for their answers, suggest that a lot of honest people are encountering some peculiar things.
If you have an unusual experience, have you merely fallen prey to an illusion, a misperception of an ordinary event? Probably yes, in many cases. UFO sightings, for example often turn out to be aircraft, meteors, planets, even flocks of birds. One of the taks of the brain is to assemble the light and sound of the world into recognizable objects. When the sensory input is fuzzy - in a darkened bedroom, for instance - the brain can trick itself into believing, for example, that a flapping curtain is a spirit's shroud. Adding to the potential confusion is the fact that forest, sea and air are home to natural phenomena that only specialists can identify, and the frailties of memory, which is at least as error-fraught as perception. We could probably explain a lot of strange reports in conventional terms.
Some extraordinary reports are the result of illness, some are hoaxes and some arise from mistakes of perception or memory. But in most cases, we don't know enough to conclude which, if any of these, is the correct explanation. Although you wouldn't know it from either the sensational claims of some paranormal believers or the arrogant dismissals of some skeptics, in fact not much is known about this intriguing class of human experience. Research is truly in its infancy.
If we know so little about these things, why does Western society, unlike most others, have such ambivalence - fascination mixed with derision - toward them? The answer is nearly 2,000 years old.
During its first centuries, Christianity was not the orthodoxy it would become. Christian teachers held a broad range of opinions about their Saviour's instructions. One group claimed that they alone preserved the right interpretation of Jesus' words - salvation required membership in their church and obedience to their hierarchy. Others, the Gnostics, believed that they culd reach the Divine directly, through meditative practices that brought visions and voices. These spiritual entrepreneurs felt no need to obey priests or to found an institutional religion. By the late fourth century, the better organized non-Gnostic camp had gained political power in the Roman Empire. Asserting their monopoly on truth, they vanquished all rivals.
Ever since, mainstream Christian culture has mistrusted "visions and voices" for their heretical taint, labelling them devilish snares and symptoms of sin or - in cases of saintly miracles and holy omens - editing their content to fit the moulds of doctrine. With the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, responsibility for judging strange experiences shifted to medicine from religion. But the mistrust endures.
Despite this ancient scorn, something weird and poorly understood continues to intersect the lives of many today. Whatever this "something" may turn out to be, it's clearly an important part of being human. I wonder if we can set aside our ridicule and fear, our cynicism and credulity, humbly to investigate. In the words of Sir Francis Bacon, one of modern science's founding thinkers: "Let the mind be enlarged, according to its capacity, to the grandeur of the mysteries, and not the mysteries contracted to the narrowness of the mind."