It has been a few weeks since I decided to write on paranormality. Yesterday, an unsuccessful attempt to watch movie Ragini MMS reminded me about that thought. I am a believer of factual and rather tangible things and though I don’t believe in god I do believe in supernatural powers. Above all I am a strong admirer of ghosts; this may be because ghosts scare me more than so called god’s powers avoid that. This supernatural power, I believe, can turn up positively or negatively for one depending upon how one thinks.
Coming back to paranormality, Wikipedia says “Paranormal is a general term that designates experiences that lie outside "the range of normal experience or scientific explanation" or that indicates phenomena that are understood to be outside of science's current ability to explain or measure”. Paranormality, thus doesn’t necessarily be limited to god or ghosts. Uri Geller, a millionaire shot to fame when he demonstrated spoon bending, of course without any instruments. Later he became famous as an entertainer after he initially self-proclaimed himself as psychic. Many magicians say that his tricks could be done using magic, no such demonstration has been shown till date. I got to know about him for the first time in television program ‘Europe’s richest people’ on TLC.
The night when I decided to write on paranormality, I was having random thoughts about various ‘baba’ in India. I think it may be because of Satya sai baba’s death. I recalled once my friend, whose, family happen to be the guards and permanent residents of Sajjangad said that ‘Ramdas swami’ had such paranormal powers. Same was said about Gajanan maharaj and Shankar maharaj. These people were said to have powers to light a tube w/o turning button ‘ON’. Or I have also heard that one of them urinated at a place in some barren land and then there was plenty of water for agriculture and all other purposes. There is not any published evidence all are just tales. May be Dnyaneshwar maharaj making a wall move, baking ‘mande’ on his back or tukaram maharaj riding plane all are just tales. If we accept these things to be true then these are also paranormal behaviours but none of these got famous may be because they never wanted to be so.
Now I wonder why people like Uri Geller become or are called as entertainer and ‘baba’ in our country is visualized as either god or fraud? One of the reasons I thought is that sometimes in India, these people are made and not born! And due to this those who actually may possess such powers are also looked upon as sham. I think of it as either these people aren’t able to market themselves correctly or they or their deeds portray themselves as fraudster. Satya sai baba is only one of all these who I know existed. Now even after his death news of his undeclared assets keep coming and also allegations regarding accounts of his trust. I think if people like him portray and market themselves correctly keeping commercial approach then it would be more useful to them and to people around who blindly believe in superstitions rather than keeping spiritual approach and portray oneself as god!
