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By Root 2111 0

of feelings, emotions. Around a quarter of all Americans believe they’ve experienced something like telepathy. People who know each other very well, who live together, who are practised in one another’s feeling tones, associations and thinking styles can often anticipate what the partner will say. This is merely the usual five senses plus human empathy, sensitivity and intelligence in operation. It may feel extrasensory, but it’s not at all what’s intended by the word ‘telepathy’. If something like this were ever conclusively demonstrated, it would, I think, have discernible physical causes -perhaps electrical currents in the brain. Pseudoscience, rightly or wrongly labelled, is by no means the same thing as the supernatural, which is by definition something somehow outside of Nature.

It is barely possible that a few of these paranormal claims might one day be verified by solid scientific data. But it would be foolish to accept any of them without adequate evidence. In the spirit of garage dragons, it is much better, for those claims not already disproved or adequately explained, to contain our impatience, to nurture a tolerance for ambiguity, and to await - or, much better, to seek - supporting or disconfirming evidence.

In a far-off land in the South Seas, the word went out about a wise man, a healer, an embodied spirit. He could speak across time. He was an Ascended Master. He was coming, they said. He was coming...

In 1988, Australian newspapers, magazines and television stations began to receive the good news via press kits and videotape. One broadside read:

CARLOS

TO APPEAR IN AUSTRALIA

Those who have seen it will never forget. The brilliant young artist who has been talking to them suddenly seems to falter, his pulse slows dangerously and virtually stops at the point of death. The qualified medical attendant, who has been assigned to keep constant watch, is about to sound the alarm. But then, with a heart-stirring burst, the pulse is felt again -faster and stronger than ever before. The life force clearly has returned to the body - but the entity inside that body is no longer Jose Luis Alvarez, the 19-year-old whose unique painted ceramics are featured in some of the wealthiest homes in America. Instead, the body has been taken over by Carlos, an ancient soul, whose teachings will come as both a shock and an inspiration. One being going through a form of death to make way for another: that is the phenomenon that has made Carlos, as channelled through Jose Luis Alvarez, the dominant new figure in New Age consciousness. As even one sceptical New York critic puts it: ‘The first and only case of a channeller offering tangible, physical proof of some mysterious change within his human physiology.’

Now Jose, who has gone through more than 170 of these little deaths and transformations, has been told by Carlos to visit Australia - in the words of the Master, ‘the old new land’ which is to be the source of a special revelation. Carlos already has foretold that in 1988 catastrophes will sweep the earth, two major world leaders will die and, later in the year, Australians will be among the first to see the rising of a great star which will deeply influence future life on earth.

SUNDAY 21ST

—3PM—

OPERA HOUSE

DRAMA THEATRE

Following a 1986 motorcycle accident, the press kit explained, Jose Alvarez, then 17 years old, suffered a mild concussion. After he recovered, those who knew him could tell that he had changed. A very different voice sometimes emanated from him. Bewildered, Alvarez sought help from a psychotherapist, a specialist in multiple personality disorders. The psychiatrist ‘discovered that Jose was channelling a distinct entity who was known as Carlos. This entity takes over the body of Alvarez when the body’s life force is relaxed to the right degree.’ Carlos, it turns out, is a two-thousand-year-old spirit disincarnate, a ghost without bodily form, who last invaded a human body in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1900. Unfortunately, that body died at age 12 in a fall from a horse. This may be why,