Wallace explains that the prophet generally “shows evidence of a radical inner change in personality soon after the vision experience: a remission of old and chronic physical complaints, a more active and purposeful way of life, greater confidence in interpersonal relations.”9 Such a person often develops charisma.

I know of no psychics more prominent than those listed in Table 3, and serious allegations of deception follow them all. There are few of comparable public visibility without such taint (e.g., Edgar Cayce, Jeane Dixon, Eileen Garrett, Ingo Swann). Even if one wishes to disregard the relatively weaker testimony, the overwhelming majority of the most

Mystics engage in extended periods of meditation and contemplation and can become detached from the everyday world. They seek to unite with God—obliterating the boundaries between self and divinity.1 Mysticism is ultimately about boundaries because it inherently challenges the clear separation of God and human, a major binary opposition for all cul

Parapsychology is a tiny field; in the U.S. fewer than 50 people could be said to be professionally conversant with the scientific findings. Only two laboratories in the U.S. employ more than two fulltime researchers, and there are probably no more than 10 full-time professional parapsychologists in the U.S. who conduct research and report it in re

In some ways, the skeptics are more astute than the average academic, and philosopher-businessman-debunker Paul Kurtz probably has a greater intuitive feeling for the problems posed by the supernatural than do the vast majority of religious scholars. Most of them no longer comprehend the numinous and the supernatural and the deep problems they pres

Some may be puzzled why I chose the trickster as a vehicle to explore psychic phenomena. I started this book as an effort to understand why the paranormal is so frequently associated with fraud and deception. Many trickster figures are linked with supernatural powers and with deception, so that is an obvious connection. But as I began reading the s

Our way of thinking is governed by Aristotelian logic. It too has a binary aspect; something is either A or not-A. In this system, the “law of the excluded middle” specifies that there is no middle ground. The betwixt and between is excluded from thought. Our culture is rationalized; it prefers sharp distinctions and clear boundaries. Even our mode

Weber’s concept of charisma was an integral part of this. In its pure form, charisma involves supernatural power, a fact that Weber clearly stated. Again amazingly, scholars almost universally ignore that. If they do acknowledge it, they seem puzzled. For Weber, charisma was central to understanding authority, power, and domination. Authority is re

Another useful, and superbly documented, book is The Future of the Body (1992) by Michael Murphy.