Beyond Ghosts: The Science of Extraordinary Experiences
Santa Barbara, California – 24 July 2023
Across the world, millions claim to have felt the unseen — a chill in an empty room, a presence during sleep, or the sense of leaving one’s body entirely. While mainstream science has often dismissed such accounts as imagination or illusion, a team of researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) has taken a different approach: rather than asking if these events are “real,” they are asking how they manifest in human experience.
Their project, published by UCSB News in July 2023, introduces the Inventory of Non-ordinary Experiences (INOE) — a research tool designed to catalogue, compare, and understand what many would call paranormal phenomena across cultures.
From feelings of divine presence to moments of time distortion, the INOE seeks to map the invisible.
A New Language for the Unseen
Lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Schooler and his interdisciplinary team propose that so-called “extraordinary experiences” might share universal psychological components.
Whether a mystic in India, a shaman in the Amazon, or a commuter in London sensing a lost loved one’s nearness — each may be participating in the same deep human capacity for non-ordinary perception.
Instead of classifying these moments as delusion or divine, the INOE treats them as data points — phenomena that can be studied, documented, and perhaps one day explained.
As the UCSB article notes, the researchers’ intent is not to prove ghosts, spirits, or cosmic energies, but to understand why such experiences arise and how culture shapes their meaning.
Science Meets the Supernatural
The project acknowledges that “paranormal” encounters are found in every society.
In some, they are sacred; in others, taboo.
By compiling global testimonies, the INOE reveals recurring patterns — sensations of presence, energy shifts, voices without bodies, light anomalies, and spontaneous intuition.
For the scientific community, this provides a neutral framework to study the mystical and metaphysical without ridicule.
For those who walk the esoteric path, it may feel like long-overdue recognition: the unseen is finally being measured — carefully, respectfully, and without mockery.
The Occult Perspective
To the readers of Occult World, this study resonates with ancient teachings.
Mystics have long spoken of the astral body, the subtle senses, and the vibrations that bridge matter and spirit.
What science now calls “non-ordinary experiences,” occultists have known for centuries as moments of alignment between the seen and the unseen worlds.
The INOE’s work invites a dialogue between sceptic and seer, researcher and mystic.
Perhaps the language of statistics and the language of the soul are not so far apart after all.
Reflection of Occult World
Whether labelled as hallucination, spiritual awakening, or interdimensional contact, the human yearning to understand these mysteries endures.
In quantifying the unquantifiable, the UCSB team has opened a door that both academia and the occult have been circling for decades.
Behind that door lies the same question that has haunted humankind since the beginning:
What if the paranormal is simply another expression of being alive?
Sources
- University of California, Santa Barbara News (UCSB News) – “Paranormal experiences, among other extraordinary feelings, provide tools for cross-cultural study”, 24 July 2023.
https://news.ucsb.edu/2023/021134/paranormal-experiences- among-other-extraordinary- feelings-provide-tools-cross- cultural
