Seriously Strange

Sudhir Kakar

Description

Despite being sullied by frauds and dismissed by sceptics, the paranormal has exerted a strange fascination over humankind for centuries. In Seriously strange, a group of nine intellectuals come together to shed light on some of the most baffling experiences on record - psychical experiences. Through these illuminating essays, they tell us how such extraordinary events can be decoded nad interpreted to become the object of rigorous scientific study. the range is wide, from essays that reveal how Freud and Jung engaged with the notion of the paranormal to a provacative and humorous memoir of a physicist who spent over a decade running a secret psychic spying programme for the US government druing the Cold Wa; from hearfelt accounts by practising psychiatrists of the anomalies in their healing practice to a learned call for the renewal of professional parapsychology in the light of Patanjali''s Yoga Sutras. By telling their own stories and exploring some of the implications of their work, these men and women map the mind-bending geography of the human psyche and the spectum of experiences - love and death, desire and sex, hurt and healing, myth and magic - that influence it.

Sujets

• Mind
• Body
• Spirit

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Date de parution: 17 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184757002
• Langue: English

Extrait

Seriously Strange
Thinking Anew about Psychial Experiences
Edited by SUDHIR KAKAR JEFFREY J. KRIPAL
Contents
About the Editors
Foreword to the Series Boundaries of Consciousness
Introduction: Thinking Anew about Psychical Experiences
Anomalous Phenomena, Synchronicity and the Re-sacralization of the Modern World Roderick Main
Psychoanalysis, Resistance and Telepathy: The Case of Ted Serios Mikita Brottman
From Physicalism to Realist Idealism: My Engagement with Psychical Research Edward F. Kelly
PsiSpy: Recollections from a Psychic Spying Programme Edwin C. May
Psi and Psychiatry: The Quest for a New Scientific Paradigm Diane Hennacy Powell
Anomalous Moments in Psychotherapy: Three Clinical Stories James W. Lomax
Parapsychology and Yoga, Theory and Practice K. Ramakrishna Rao
Seeing and Not Seeing Eternity Dean Radin
The Paranormality of Everyday Life: Childhood, Mysticism, Madness Jeremy Biles
Notes
Notes on the Contributors
Copyright Page
About the Editors
Sudhir Kakar is a distinguished psychoanalyst and novelist. His celebrated books of non-fiction include Inner World, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors and Colours of Violence . His most recent novel on warring Mughal princes, The Crimson Throne , was published to critical acclaim. In 2011, Sudhir Kakar was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz, Germany s highest civilian honour.
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of six books, including Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal and Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred .
Foreword to the Series Boundaries of Consciousness
After Dreams and Dreaming , Seriously Strange is the second volume of a series on Boundaries of Consciousness , which explores the uncharted territory at the edge of our current psychological knowledge. Some of this territory extends into what has been called the sacred, and scholars of religious studies and philosophers are as much part of these conversations as are psychologists, psychoanalysts and neuroscientists. The present volume is the fruit of a symposium held at Wasan Island on Lake Muskoka in Ontario, Canada, in August 2010. It will be followed by further volumes on death and dying in 2012 and and creativity and imagination in 2013. Wasan Island is for me a special place where people who want to interact without distractions can meet and learn from each other. A heart-shaped island covered with trees, in the middle of the Lake Muskoka in Canada, it lends itself to being a retreat for groups who want to venture into new experiences as well as into an exciting group process.
Wasan Island protects and inspires such learning processes which take place between creative opening and concentrated cooperation; between an ambitious orientation on results and a group dynamic which is typical of the island. For ten years now, the Breuninger Foundation has invited personalities from science, industry, culture and international organizations to Wasan Island during the summer months.
In 2008, we began, with Sudhir Kakar and Almuth Sellschopp, a series of meetings bringing together individuals with high academic reputations in the fields of theology, philosophy, medicine, history and psychotherapy. The intention was to give them the opportunity to present their latest findings from their areas of expertise, to discuss them critically in a protected space, and to locate the findings within a wider, public context.
This concern goes back to my father, the founder of the foundation, Heinz Breuninger, a man who was a model of openness in dialogue and a readiness to get involved, without prejudice, in contradictions.
His main focus was universal history, and under the direction of Rolf-Peter Sieferle the Breuninger Foundation has made a name for itself with the Europ ischen Sonderweg -European Special Way.
I try to connect my personal scientific upbringing and studies as an economist and psychologist, my socialization within a business family and my situation as a European, to my many years of spiritual experience-the practice of yoga and meditation, and an intense intellectual engagement with Eastern philosophies-without getting stuck in esotericism.
The meetings are not only about a high-level, detailed imparting of knowledge but about embedding this knowledge in a dialogue within a small circle: a shared search for ways between difference of views (diversity) and commonness within a framework whose format differs markedly from most academic events. Whereas most academic seminars are concerned with approval or rejection, the differences between positions in the Wasan conversations are valued and controversial viewpoints and dissent are expected to have space to develop.
Wasan Island can, then, be understood as an experimental field in which-as in the following report on the dream seminar-timeless and contemporary, Western and Eastern views of the truth (a definite logic as against the acknowledgement of contradictions) meet.
Thanks to its unique spiritual strength, stemming from its indigenous American Indian past, Wasan Island is particularly suitable as a location for this project. To this is added a boundary situation which originates from the island itself: its spatial configuration, and a fixed time frame. Paradoxically perhaps, this allows an opening, a movement towards unity, a step beyond the borders of individuality and autonomy. The processes of the symposiums allow the participants to present their position authentically and without fear, to engage with the position of the other without prejudice and without evaluation, and without the feeling that dissent will be edged out. This results in a very fruitful learning climate.
Two important elements of the Wasan conversations should be mentioned: on the one hand, it regularly happens during the course of the symposium that world-famous scientists from widely different fields become people who display an interest in dialogue beyond their immediate presentation, and who use the island situation with its various opportunities-at the dock, at dinner and afterwards-to carry their discussions further. This experience makes the Wasan offer of free spaces outside the formal meetings, in groups and among individuals, so important.
Another element is the transfer which takes place, often of very complicated experiences, back into the world . This transfer should, in the understanding of the Foundation, be commensurate with the outcome of the event and its capacity to apprehend reality-always with the humanistic chance of returning to Wasan Island to assimilate the continually developing process of understanding experience, and to continue the dialogue.
The project Boundaries of Consciousness , with Sudhir Kakar as project leader, comprises four successive seminars. His personality embodies a style of leadership which has the courage, liveliness and spontaneity to look for new balances between psyche and spirituality, and thereby to protect boundaries and construct barriers in the face of potential abysses. Gently sensitive, I see him as an experienced mountain guide on the glaciers of new psycho-spiritual territory, focused on bringing into awareness the barriers of consciousness between subject and object, opposite and yet related, and always aware of the crevasses that lie in wait for the unwary.
My wish is for the reader to encounter the individual contributions with the same curiosity, openness and tolerance that are such a feature of the conference atmosphere on Wasan Island.
Helga Breuninger
Introduction: Thinking Anew about Psychical Experiences
Up to the time when I first became acquainted with the facts of Spiritualism I was a confirmed, philosophical skeptic I was so thorough and confirmed a Materialist that I could not at that time find a place in my mind for the conception of spiritual existence, or for any other agencies in the universe than matter and force. Facts, however, are stubborn things The fact beats me.
-Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of evolution with Charles Darwin
What, then, is the part played by telepathy in man s mental organization? Is it a power stretching forward to the angels, or is it going back to the amoeba ?
- Jan Ehrenwald, psychoanalyst
And so writing precedes life and determines it Perhaps this is the reason why so many people are afraid of writing.
-Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories 1980-1985
In the following pages, nine intellectuals engage in a most extraordinary conversation with one another and, through this book, with you, the reader. The theme is as focused as it is mind-bending: to take the strange seriously. The anomalous, we will argue in our different voices, is sometimes not simply random, not simply odd for odd s sake. Sometimes, the strange is seriously strange. That is to say, sometimes the anomalous, the extraordinary perception, is philosophically, psychologically and scientifically significant. These events, we want to say in so many words, can be decoded and interpreted, can become the object of rigorous scientific study. The strange is serious, and often the most serious is the most strange.
What an anomalous event means, of course, is another matter. But this ambiguity itself is significant. Indeed, this ambiguity may be the most striking and creative characteristic of these sorts of experiences: that they refuse categorization or closure, that they escape all of our attempts to pin them down. The present book certainly offers no certainty here. And that is a function of its own seriousness. The reader will find here no absolutist beliefs or equally absolutist denials. Rather, the reader will discover a most remarkable range of open minds and new perspectives. Among them: a rich discussion by a historian of psychoanalysis of the s