After having finished ‚Mutants and Mystics‘ and listening to the 'fanboy interview' with Jeffrey Kripal (on CropFM), which I had postponed for after I finished the book, I’d like to share one or two thoughts.
First, even though I always liked science fiction I never developed an interest in the superhero genre, so the book more or less introduced me to that world. Nevertheless I enjoyed reading it, not so much because I got to discover a world that I had missed out on, but more because of the context in which the author puts it. To be honest all of the authors and their experiences and idiosyncratic interpretations (even though at times interesting) became tiresome after a while and if it wasn’t for the expectation of getting the superstory worked all out by the author (plus his very skilled and fun writing) I would probably not have made it all the way through.
The ending however is somewhat anticlimactic as it goes to length with Whitley Strieber’s experiences, where it never became quite clear to me, in what context those experiences happened, as at least some of them apparently emerged through hypnotic regression (caveat!). Eventually the conclusion is that whatever is going on here can not be explained through a materialistic worldview and that culture informs our experiences, that includes paranormal experiences. Well nothing new here. However presented in a new, and for the most part interesting, context. Context both meaning (for the most part) the super hero genre and academic research and standards.
The superhero genre itself however seems on the one side like a perfect mirror for cultural reflections (that are necessary to understand human experience), but on the other side for the same reason a great source of distortion as far as a sober look at paranormal experiences goes. The authors are no scientists and even though Kripal describes many of them as ‘mystics’, many of them suffer from psychological issues which doesn’t help either. (There are a lot of fear based concept attached to the super hero mysticism and the concept of LOVE seems to be entirely missing).
Kripal himself works with that confusion and tries to aim at the meta-story of it.
In the interview being asked about the future images in which we will put our paranormal experiences he mentions science. And he’s spot on here! Only that we don’t have to look into the future here, but this new scientific context in which we can put the human experience into (paranormal or not) is already here. It is the simulation hypothesis, the concept of virtual reality. The concept of reality being information based, which is supported by 21st century physics. Reality as data stream received by individual consciousness (think of the matrix here but with consciousness being fundamental – i.e. no body strapped to a machine). Hence the rejection of objective physical reality (sorry Mr. Strieber no physical soul).
As in a multi-player game we receive in our reality a similar data stream for the most part, but the data can get easily mixed up with non-physical (physical defined as our shared 3D virtual reality) data and – very importantly – will be interpreted (appear to us) in our own metaphors, beliefs and fears! Therefore all kinds of weird and weirdest experiences can and do happen. Are they real? Well it’s just data, data is always real. Our interpretation of it may however be confused and distorted. In other words our experiences will sometimes reflect more of our own psyche than the actual data.
The virtual reality concept with consciousness at the root (consciousness as the computer) has for the first time in history the potential to merge physics with metaphysics, explain the normal and the paranormal in logical terms. And as we are talking science here, it can be tested!
It is these days that Tom Campbell, phycisist and author of the ground breaking My Big TOE trilogy (a real world ‘mutant and mystic’) published a science paper with a set of quantum experiments that, if they turn out as predicted, will prove the VR hypothesis! In other words will put the last nail into the coffin of materialism (logically that is, beliefs are much harder to kill).
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.00058.pdf
So we have the science of physics here. And we have laid out in Tom Campbell’s MBT a model of reality that includes over 40 years of research into the paranormal if you will – both from the outside and from the inside - again applying a scientific (and even statistical) approach to subjective experience.
And as a side note: I too believed for a long time that statistics is not suited to deal with the metaphysical, the world of paranormal, of meaning, the bigger picture, as Kripal says in the interview. But there went my 2nd worldview…
A calculated VR has to be a probabilistic VR if it is run with finite recourses. Hence statistics everywhere! But yes meaning is always a function of consciousness alone, but the rest is science plain and simple.
So the future is here already! Metaphorically speaking… since in a VR concept time must be linear. The confusion comes from experiencing past- and (probabilistic) future-databases that are interactive VRs and can be accessed and experienced.
Now this is a new model(!) of reality with the potential to explain more than ever before.
Evolution ('mutation') that is.
San
PS:
10 Reasons why our universe is (most likely) a virtual reality:
http://listverse.com/2014/11/26/10-reas ... l-reality/ 
(Dr. Brian Whitworth is a Senior Lecturer in the Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences at Massey University, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand. PhD (MSIS); MA (Hons)(Psych); BSc (Maths); BA (Psych)
Brian's web page is at:
http://www.brianwhitworth.com/)
.:unaRmed:.
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Bei mir hat's Jahre gedauert, bis sich solche Phänomene eingestellt haben. Aber es lohnt sich!