Transliminality
I have been using the word 'gullibility' for the credulity of accepting any claim as true, whenever this leads to behavior. I have been speculating, that gullibility is either due to lacking the faculty for rational judgment and skeptical doubts, or that gullibility overrides rationality when there is a strong need to do so. With this I meant behavior leading to the reduction of fear, insecurity, anxiety. Examples are praying or buying quackeries.
But I have been omitting something, due to never having experienced it, something which is not part of my own life and not innate in my brain.
I omitted the power of being misled by distorted sensations and perceptions, which for some people can be strong enough to override rationality and skepticism. This power is called transliminality. People with high transliminality perceive and feel forces, connections, unifications with external beings as so strong and real, that they are unable to be aware, that these perceptions are only created in their own brain. Instead they believe to be really psychic and in contact with spirits, to have apparently extrasensory perceptions and such.
There is a 29-items questionnaire:
http://delawareparanormal.blogspot.com/2010/08/are-you-transliminal-personality.html
Transliminality is indicated by agreeing with the statements. Of those, only 8 could be answered with yes by a sensitive and creative, but nevertheless rational and skeptical person, maybe under extreme circumstances.
All of the 21 other items imply the conscious belief in some irrational claim like horoscopes. Out of those, the following eleven are of special interest, because each of them implies an irrational interpretation of a distorted perception of a true or imaginary sensory input.
I have been using the word 'gullibility' for the credulity of accepting any claim as true, whenever this leads to behavior. I have been speculating, that gullibility is either due to lacking the faculty for rational judgment and skeptical doubts, or that gullibility overrides rationality when there is a strong need to do so. With this I meant behavior leading to the reduction of fear, insecurity, anxiety. Examples are praying or buying quackeries.
But I have been omitting something, due to never having experienced it, something which is not part of my own life and not innate in my brain.
I omitted the power of being misled by distorted sensations and perceptions, which for some people can be strong enough to override rationality and skepticism. This power is called transliminality. People with high transliminality perceive and feel forces, connections, unifications with external beings as so strong and real, that they are unable to be aware, that these perceptions are only created in their own brain. Instead they believe to be really psychic and in contact with spirits, to have apparently extrasensory perceptions and such.
There is a 29-items questionnaire:
http://delawareparanormal.blogspot.com/2010/08/are-you-transliminal-personality.html
Transliminality is indicated by agreeing with the statements. Of those, only 8 could be answered with yes by a sensitive and creative, but nevertheless rational and skeptical person, maybe under extreme circumstances.
All of the 21 other items imply the conscious belief in some irrational claim like horoscopes. Out of those, the following eleven are of special interest, because each of them implies an irrational interpretation of a distorted perception of a true or imaginary sensory input.
"3 I have experienced an altered state of consciousness in which I felt that I became cosmically enlightened"
"5 I have felt that I had received special wisdom, to be communicated to the rest of humanity"
"8 I have sometimes sensed an evil presence around me, although I could not see it"
"11 Sometimes I experience things as if they were doubly real"
"13 Often I have a day when indoor lights seem so bright that they bother my eyes"
"14 I am convinced that I have had at least one experience of telepathy between myself and another person"
"16 I have experienced an altered state of awareness which I believe utterly transformed (in a positive manner) the way I looked at myself"
"17 I am convinced that I have had a premonition about the future that came true and which (I believe) was not just a coincidence"
"18 I think I really know what some people mean when they talk about mystical experiences"
"23 At times, I somehow feel the presence of someone who is not physically there"
"26 I sometimes have a feeling of gaining or losing energy when certain people look at me or touch me"
I have never in my life felt or sensed anything not even remotely reminding me of any of these statements. Therefore I was oblivious of their subjective strong reality to some people. In entry 315, I was puzzled about how the emotions of the jehova's witness were making her appear as if drugged. But as much as transliminality is beyond my own scope of experience, it is obviously very real.
There has been research, that the difference between people scoring high or low on the transliminality scale are visible in their EEG.
"Individuals high in transliminality possess characteristics such as magical ideation, belief in the paranormal, and creative personality traits, and also report the occurrence of manic/mystic experiences."
"Individuals high in transliminality exhibited lower alpha, beta, and gamma power than individuals low in transliminality over left posterior association cortex and lower high alpha, low beta, and gamma power over the right superior temporal region. In contrast, when compared to individuals low in transliminality, individuals high in transliminality exhibited greater gamma power over the frontal-midline region."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2610283/
Transliminality will give me a lot more to ponder over.
