Secret Superhumans

What if the "paranormal" is real?

This little essay is deeply personal. It thus depends on the reader knowing a bit about who I am. I am a professor and author who teaches and works in a School of Humanities, in a Department of Religion in particular, at a secular research university in the south: Rice University in Houston, Texas. I have published ten single-authored books and two double-authored books. 

Early on, in the 1990s and early millennium, I wrote about the nature of male sexual orientation and comparative mystical literature. Since about 2007, I have written about the anomalous or extraordinary experiences of human beings that most people would call "paranormal," but I prefer to call "impossible," not because they are, but because our present secular and scientistic frameworks have no place for them, and so claim (quite falsely) that they cannot happen or if they do, that they are not serious or meaningful (they are both). 

Some religions could have done better, too, by the way. Historically, some religions have demonized these universal and very common human experiences, and that's more than a metaphor, alas. 

I want to bring attention to a particular phenomenon that I suspect is fairly new for both digital and contemporary spiritual reasons: spontaneously sharing spiritual experiences of a most extraordinary nature via email with select individuals. I will honor and respect those stories (by not telling too much about them) but also say something about why this is happening and why these stories are secret in the first place, ending with a few comments on what they might point toward. 

I have many, too many, thoughts about this phenomenon. And I have written about them as well, most fully in a memoir-manifesto that begins with this very phenomenon and how it has guided and informed my thought and life over the years. That book was Secret Body: Erotic and Esoteric Currents in the History of Religions (Chicago, 2017). I want to say something more here, though, or something else. 

It is important to speak immediately about the frequency and length of these particular emails. They are not infrequent. And they are not short. About once a week now, I receive a very long email. I know pretty much instantly what it is about. It is about the "impossible" experiences of the correspondent. The fact that the person is writing a total stranger makes them more remarkable. 

I know why they write me, though. I am not really a total stranger. These souls have watched me on some podcast or read me in some book. They actually know as much, or sometimes more, about me than my closest friends and family members, who do not watch those podcasts or read those books. I am always a bit shocked, to be honest, but then I remember: Oh, I wrote that. I said that. 

I have heard the most extraordinary things in this manner: about phone calls from the dead; about near-death experiences and the "death flash" (a particular phenomenon that happens around death during which the body or room suddenly fills with light); about precognitive dreams that come about in every detail the next day; about out of body experiences and floating objects; and, perhaps most puzzling, about myself, or someone who looks and sounds just like me, showing up in dreams, even in a physical bedroom, at night. "That's kind of creepy," I joke. But they always laugh because, well, it is funny. And it also was not creepy at all. 

It is sometimes difficult for me to hear these stories, to accept them as they are told, mostly because I do not feel like some kind of space-time-traveling mage showing up in people's dreams and bedrooms. I feel very much like a spiritual dud, to be perfectly honest, as I have said too many times before. Maybe I say that too much. In any case, people keep telling me that that cannot possibly be so because I write about what I write. 

"I am not so sure," I think to myself. I recall my previous writings on psychedelics and the American counterculture in a book like Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007). Numerous figures in the psychedelic community assumed that I had taken psychedelics, and they told me so. "How else could you write like that? How else could you think like that?" 

But I do think like that. I got so weary of those exchanges that I finally traveled to another country, a long way away, just to encounter a psychedelic plant firsthand. Nothing transcendent happened. Oh, I definitely ingested the beings, and they definitely did their thing, but my dudness was confirmed. Again.  

Because of way too many experiences like the non-event on the psychedelic plant, I confess that there is one point some of my correspondents often make with which I definitely do not agree. They will often say things like, "Anyone can do this. Everyone possesses these powers." "No, they do not," I want to say back (and sometimes do). "

That is simply not true. Not everyone can play in the NBA or NFL Or be a quantum physicist. The same is true here. You are special. You are different. And you need to own that, accept it, and not be so damned democratic or egalitarian about it. It is not democratic. It is not egalitarian." 

I still think that. Actually, what I think is that individuals who have been traumatized, split open, as we say, are much more likely (by no means certain) to know these kinds of revelatory incursions than those of us who have not been so traumatized. This is also why I think anomalous events are so often negative or scary: they are processing human suffering and injustice, which is to say: trauma. Those who have been severely and repeatedly traumatized are the most open of all. I call this the traumatic secret. It is one of the strongest comparative patterns that I have noticed over the years. 

Generally speaking, my correspondents do not tell these impossible things to their families, their co-workers, and even sometimes their spouses. Why is that? Because such experiences do not fit into the narratives that our families, secular cultures, and religions give us. We are supposed to experience this, but we actually experience that. 

It is in these particular moments of not-fitting-in that I am the most interested since they suggest—or shout—that the human being cannot really be captured or defined by any family, society, or religion (and, no, science works no better—it is often much more censorious). 

There are not many things I believe since belief tends to finalize things. Belief tends to "land," as we say. I live "beyond belief" by necessity and honesty to shamelessly cite the present context. Still, I definitely believe this: that none of us really fit in. Our worldviews may work for a while, but only for a while. You'll likely grow out of it, whatever "it" is. And even when we do not grow out of it, even when we think we fit in, we are always more than our families, societies, religions, and sciences. Always. 

I suppose this is why I so appreciate these spontaneous digital contacts and confessions. Their mind-bending stories remind me, again and again, that the human is really the superhuman, that Superman always lurks in Clark Kent, even when he does not show up with his cape and red-and-blue spandex. 

"Superman" in these email essays is not about the "American way" or good-versus-evil. It is about all those hidden abilities and secret superpowers that human beings commonly know as such and then deny, whisk away, and moralize. They put glasses back on and pretend it's just Daily Planet stuff. But it's not. Never was. Never will be. Hence the letters. These people so want to speak. They so want to be heard. 

But they want to be heard in all their complexity and actual experience, not in the simple and predictable terms of the cultural and religious stories they are supposed to somehow confirm. I suppose this not-fitting-in is what most moves me when people ask about "authenticity" or finding their "real self." 

I don't think there is such a thing. Good luck finding either, then. You won't. I mean, "authenticity" happens when a socially constructed self conforms to an equally constructed social framework for a moment. But both are historical constructions and linguistic inventions. I suppose a temporary illusion can conform to a temporary illusion—for a while. 

Still, humans are constantly yearning for more for a simple reason: they are more. We would be much better off if we could recognize this and affirm it in our cultures and conversations. Mind you; we would not "solve" or "explain" anything. But we could finally accept who and what we are. We could still be this or that, but we would always know we are more. We would become what we already are: secret superhumans. 

Or so my digital friends tell me every week now. I believe them.