Tuesday, September 26, 2006 Arinday: The Earth is not just for humans and animals By G.H. Arinday Jr. Sunfare
LET us take a break from the pestering political noises for a while. Do you recall the three dwarf-friends of the cashiered regional trial court judge? Well, the story has not yet been closed as the judge, a believer of “etheric worlds beyond the world we know”, has filed a disbarment case against some of the leading lights of the High Tribunal.
The action taken by dismissed Judge Florentino Floro of Malolos, Bulacan is unprecedented if we have to consider the significance of the true believers of the so-called New Age, where the three dwarves are considered as “channelers” who could relay “information from realms beyond”.
If we have to take the words of the New Age advocates, the channelers composed of diverse entities, among them the elementals purported to bring “transcendental wisdom”.
Well, of course the channelees are condemned as charlatans “flimflamming the gullible”. The preponderance of nonbelievers in the New Age theory that spiritualists and trance-inducers or channelers of varied types vastly outnumber and the latter dubs the phenomenon as a “shallow quasi-faith”. And yet sometime in the last quarter of the 20th century, a serious study of the New Age—considered as the “counterculture posts”—was conducted by the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center and the disquieting discovery was that almost one-third of the Americans believe in psychic phenomenon or experience.
Superstitious beliefs among our folks, either in the countryside or urban centers are prevalent. If we take into account the gods in Ancient Greece that they communed with mortals through oracles as time flowed with downstream, the conduits of channelers are no longer the séance rooms but conference halls and media facilities where some “foresights” are given or predicated drawn from trances of thoughts empirically-based.
The “transcendental philosophy” of Immanuel Kant could reach unchartered shores of ideas if we have to consider the vagueness of his “a priori principle”, which is abhorred by other legal perspectives notably among the adherents of the positivists who advocate the “pure” theory of law. Even the latter description could bring about an endless minding of the “purity” of the law, which through the needle’s eye could not yield the minute essence of lucidity.
The nuances of séances or psychic phenomena or the use of the medium are totally absent from all legal perspectives. But stories about the transcendental wisdom about performances under spirit guidance have been reported.
Two famous women considered as successful “trance lecturers” were Emma Hardinage Britten of England and Cora L. V. Richmond of United States, but were however criticized by famous novelist Henry James in his novel “The Bostonians”, discrediting spiritualism’s relation to feminism.
If ever the case of the former judge Florentino Floro, which has circulated around the globe through various blogs and print media reaching as far as South Africa, it would be an interesting discourse on the part of the magistrates assigned to assess the claim of said judge, even if it would debunk the existence of the dwarf-friends and the “psychical” elements.
Even imaginations were tabooed for centuries. Who would ever think that the imaginative minds of the cartoonists-creators of Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers exploring the space would come into reality? Who would also ever think that the lost continent of Atlantis was later discovered and photographic evidence were published?
In the case of the beleaguered judge and his three dwarf-friends, are there decisions he rendered that he was out of sync?
The great Harvard psychologist Henry James acknowledging that medium Leonora Piper was possessed with the power of telepathy and clairvoyance encouraged his colleagues into believing “trance phenomena” noting that some few individuals are media possessed of “supernatural powers”.
Scientists admit that there are “unexplored realms” within the human mind according to Henry James, and his interests in psychical research was frowned upon by his fellow intellectuals.
But legal science is a thick-walled fortress that only the “empirical” truth is given the ultimate badge of the “last resort”.
And Judge Floro’s “misadventure” in the legal realm has merited a long long way for all those who share the beliefs that the Earth is not just for humans and animals.
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