Past, Present and Future

[Jester]

I'm talking about shared phenomena, 1) The mind-body connection (placebo effect) where the body heals itself as if the cure were effective

Nothing about the placebo effect requires a paranormal explanation. Mostly, it impacts subjective symptoms - pain, nausea, mood. These things are already under your brain's jurisdiction, and so it is unsurprising that your state of mind influences them. Beyond that, it is neither paranormal nor particularly surprising that the mind (which is, of course, simply another part of the body) has a role in healing - it has a role in almost everything we do.

2) wide spread belief in intuition (what you describe)

A widespread belief is not a truth. It could just indicate a very common, very convincing type of bias. That is almost certainly the case here, given the abject failure of all tests to demonstrate any precognition whatsoever. (Intuition, in the sense of a subconsious "thought", is a different matter, and is not paranormal, just part of the normal functioning of the brain.)

3) similarity of near death experiences

Why would this require a paranormal explanation of any kind? Surely, dying (or nearly dying) is a biological process like any other. Humans all respond similarly to almost everything, from heart attacks to poisoning to morphine - why would near-death experiences be any different? Surely, people undergoing the same process would be expected to have roughly similar experiences?

4) Deja-vu or glimpses of the future

It is unknown precisely what is involved with Deja Vu, but I don't think there is any reason to suppose it is anything but a perceptual effect, created by some anomaly in our system of recall. Perhaps it is a matter of perceptions being sent to the wrong part of the brain, or a memory of some similar, but not identical, situation. I myself find myself more overwhelmed by the feeling of deja vu than by any actual memory, suggesting to me that it is an anomalous state of perception or emotion, rather than an actual memory manifesting itself.

"Glimpses of the future", as best I can tell, do not happen. We are always *imagining* the future, because that is a powerful survival tool. (It may be our most powerful, and unique as humans.) When we imagine something happening a certain way, and it turns out that way, it is natural to feel prescient. But actually seeing the future? There is no evidence for this but anectodes, and those are plagued by the biases already discussed.

5) shared experiences of spirits.

Folie a deux is well known, as is mass hysteria. People experience all sorts of unreal things in ways which are convincing at the time. We are social creatures, and crowd mentality is very tough to overcome. People are primed, sometimes just by culture, other times by charlatans, to perceive spirits. With that being the case, convincing groups that they saw spirits is not so very difficult. Mediums have been running this gag for millennia.

I like to think outside the box, and I detest being bound by "what is known" (actuality). The problem of our age is that too often our higher education consists of being told what to think, rather than being taught how to think.

If you were taught that "how" to think was to hypothesize fancifully, unfettered by the evidence, then all I can say is, I'm glad that higher education runs in a rather different direction.

-Jester