How
does somebody with a Ph. D. in philosophy from Columbia University come to
believe in impossible things like flying friars? I’m often asked what got me interested in all the weird
stuff—events that seem to break the familiar laws of nature. Some folks might just be naturally curious. But what I’ve seen is that people open up
as a result of some mind-blowing experience. Example after example could be trotted out to illustrate.
I
won’t try to define the criteria for such experiences, except to say that
fundamental ideas about how reality works may be shattered. Let me describe an experience
of mine that had such an effect on me. It was April 23, 1971, about 11 PM, a
clear night in Greenwich Village, New York. I was in my apartment on the top
floor (6th) at 14 Bedford Street, listening to John Coltrane’s “The
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost” with my girlfriend. It was the week I had to
defend my dissertation at Columbia University, which was about the Myth of the
True Earth in Plato’s Phaedo.
Thinking
of nothing in particular, I go to the window and suddenly see before me a
cluster of dazzling lights in the sky, flying back and forth in apparent rhythm
with Coltrane. Jane comes to the
window, sees same; lights do their dance for us, then shoot straight to the
dome of our Lady of Pompei, about three blocks north. They stay motionless, pulsing light (at us, it seemed); then
bolt away north and vanish over the Empire State building. Stunned, we went up
the roof and ran into Louie, a young guy interested in Coltrane—he saw what we
saw, noted its noiseless character, and a pattern in the lights, which he
described as pyramidal.
Three
of us saw the thing. The way it
moved in space was more cartoonish and surreal than physically credible. I
would call it a close encounter of a telepathic kind. It seemed to know
we were listening to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (a very intense
jazz composition), and proved it by flying to the dome of Our Lady of Pompei,
where it pulsed and beamed at us, and then vanished.
I
don’t believe it was a vehicle from outer space, but more like a tearing open
of physical space and something bleeding into our reality. What it was to this day I’m unable to
say, and why it appeared that night, I don’t know. But something out there knew
what we were doing—listening to that music—and was signalling us.
Somehow Louie was involved whom I had just turned on to Coltrane. It was Jane’s birthday (Shakespeare’s
too, by the way). I was scheduled
to defend my dissertation, and get my Ph.D., which meant I could call myself
“wise,” i.e., “Doctor.”
I
wondered if somebody out there had a message for me: “Well, Grosso, now that
you’ve been officially declared doctor, EXPLAIN US!”
The
effect on me was lasting. It
intensified my desire to dig more deeply into the world of anomalous
experience. Actually, I’ve had
many encounters that contradict ingrained beliefs about reality, for example,
precognition and levitation. The one severely challenges our concept of time;
the other our idea of agency.
For
three reasons my recent focus has been on levitation. 1) The phenomenon corresponds to an archetypal yearning for
flight, space, freedom. 2) It is a
radical challenge to assumptions about the limits of mind, i.e.,
physicalism. And 3), the evidence
for the phenomenon, though seemingly rare, is abundant and compelling.
I
prefer concrete examples like Joseph of Copertino (1603-1663)--the best, single
case history I know of that illustrates a kind of archetype of supernormal
performance. Here we have a real story of an amazing “super hero.”
In
fact, extraordinary phenomena keep emerging in every period of history,
including the present. Objective
research suggests that startling powers are latent in all human beings, but to
see this we have to battle our way through the dogmas of science and religion. What these phenomena may imply for us
human beings is the question.
If
you are in or near New York City, I’ll be talking about all this on June 22 at
the New York Open Center. Join me.
New
York Open Center
22
East 30th Street
Phone
212 219 2527
Email registration@opencenter.org
No comments:
Post a Comment