Adam Blatner

I have a panel in front of me, figuratively speaking, a panel with a hundred more-or-less tightened screws, although 34% have been loosened 1/8 to ½. I am loosening them a little at a time. It’s not that I have a screw loose, which implies that there is one screw holding my mind in place, but rather that there are many, a panel-full, a hundred screws. Some still tight, others at various levels of looseness.

To say I have screw loose is thus ambiguous. My screws are tight where they need to be tight; really loose where I can allow them to be loose. I loosen them where it makes sense for them to be loose because of age, weakening, and also because these particular screws—some of them— would do well to be “hinged” a little loosely. Give this one quarter turn tighter and explain: Some loosening of paradigms, beliefs, hypotheses, is good: They are nowhere near adequate for really explaining our anomalies.

For example, there are reports of mystical experiences that have been experienced by a substantial minority of people. As these experiences become acceptable as reflecting of some truth, more and more people will reflect and realize that what they had experienced and kept quiet about was normal—insofar as there’s a normal “edge” to parapsychological experience.

Correspondingly, it helps to recognize that some loosening is part of many people’s gateway to insight. So you don’t have to worry about how to classify people. We’re all in transition. We are just visitors. We don’t redecorate at a motel.