If anybody requested me to write on the paranormal, I would be faced with something of a difficulty. If, like a story, it had to have a beginning, middle and an end, it would create a little confusion what this might,in fact, mean.
The word '"paranormal" might form various ideas in people's minds. Some will think of ghosts or extra sensory perception while others might ponder on superphysical antics such as psychokinesis.
Perhaps intuition is a reasonable way of making a start. This could be defined as forming conclusions with the absence of logic and the evaluation of cold, hard facts.
We cannot lgnore logic or try to treat it with any scorn. We would never survive without it, but lf all human experience depended on this alone, it would be a very dull world indeed.
There is a defintion of logic which is intuition on stilts. We can put some interpretations on this, but it seems to imply that intuition is the first thing to be considered.
Intuition is something, of course, apart from mere suspicion or prejudice. An old lady, for example, with mischevous thoughts, would probably be quite mistaken in believing that the man on the other side of the road was having an adulterous affair due to her observations. This would not be intuition at all.
There was a case of a lady who had a paranoid dislike of a boy and forbade her son to associate with him. She always made the accusation that they had been together and said she saw it written on her son's face. This was even when the boy concerned was miles away. This clearly was not intuition in any way.
In order to develop any sort of psychic quality, we must be in a relaxed state of mind This is the same situatlon when we wish to hypnotise. Our harmonious mental condition must predominate througout.
The opposite thing of being very intense and using a tremendous amount of will power is quite futile. This only creates a great deal of tension which only makes a handicapped state.
Somebody once said of will power that if you have the capability, you do not need it, and if you lack the capability, it only causes complications.
You might ask whether I have had much experience of intuition and I am bound to answer that I have not. At least, not to the extent that it has assisted me very much.
It might be intersting to give an account of a Labrador bitch I once had, named Sheba. I am convinced that she had a sixth sense. My parents always told me that they knew whether I had come off the train by the way she reacted. There were too many times when it occurcred for it to be called conincidence.
Animals do, I am sure, act largely on intuition.
We can, if we try hard enough, gain telepathic powers and can observe auras or vlbratlons around people.
Sometimes we can have such faculties without even making any great effort. There is an example of somebody who infiltrated a Roman Catholic church group and thought, that as he knew that creed so well, he could keep up an act of deception. He was wrong.
The people there asked him what his views were and thought that he was an atheist without any beliefs at all. This was not strictly true, but it showed that his vibrations betrayed him.
Therefore, we can, if we try to get into a very calm frame of mind, form the ability to read thoughts and gain knowledge without the ordinary process of evaluation.
Going back to my Labrador bitch, I remember the day very clearly when it was necessary to have her put down due to an incurable growth that she had. It was Friday the 28th, June 1974. I lived with my parents then in a house in another part of town.
Before departing my place of work, I intended to pay my last respects. She had been lying at the bottom of our very long garden lawn a few minutes before. I was surprised when I opened the back door and found her outside it. In spite of her weakness and the pain she had, she had made the effort walk the garden's distance.
I stroked her and said: "Goodbye, old friend, we've had some times together."
I always will believe that she had some sixth sense and knew what I was thinking and what the situation was.
My sceptical friends will tell me that I have no demonstrative proof of this, but they are just as bigoted as the religionists and they are not to be taken too seriously.
For those who are incapable of accepting the true evidence of the paranormal, I can only offer my sympathy and there is nothing more to be said.