Sometimes, metaphysics is described as the “physics of tomorrow”. Many of the phenomena studied by metaphysics resemble a fantasy movie script, but maybe in the future, they will become everyday and ordinary.

In an interview published on the otherside.gr, Nicholas Koumartzis, member of the Greek Community of Metaphysical Journalism and Ph.D. candidate at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, shares his thoughts on the matter.

According to him, here are the most well-known and mysterious metaphysical phenomena:

1. Telepathy, sixth sense, and extrasensory phenomena

All three terms refer to the ability to collect information from a remote environment, without using the five known senses. For some people, it means that there are additional senses that are in use but are not yet recognized: there might be the sixth, seventh, eighth, and so on senses.

To study these metaphysical phenomena, numerous experiments were conducted: from Zener cards and Ganzfeld experiments to the ones that use more advanced technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG). Most of them show that there is indeed something that can not be explained by the known laws of conventional science. However, the reality of these metaphysical phenomena remains questionable.

2. Poltergeist

The word poltergeist comes from the German words poltern, which means “to rumble” and geist, which means “spirit”, and is commonly used in many languages to describe a “noisy spirit”, i.e. a spirit or action that causes a number of unexplained events, such as loud and repetitive noises, moving objects, unbearable odors, flickering lights, opening/ closing doors, and windows, etc.

Mystics claim that this metaphysical phenomenon occurs suddenly and lasts for a few days to several years and then disappears as suddenly as it appeared.

3. Deja Vu

The phrase is French and roughly means “I have already seen this”. It is a strong feeling while experiencing an event or situation that you have already seen or experienced it before. It is often accompanied by a strong sense of deep understanding and an even stronger feeling of paradox saying that “something is wrong”.

That is, there must be a strong factor of “impossibility”, i.e. deja vu is associated with an event/situation that is practically impossible to have been experienced before, like the feeling of having been before to a place you are visiting for the first time.

4. Near-death experiences

The term near-death experience” (NDE) is used to describe an experience of people who are close to death and has much in common with out-of-body experiences, since both involve separation of the consciousness from the body, floating in space and collecting information from the environment while a person is in a coma or unconscious.

There are many documented testimonies of doctors and nurses reporting that when some comatose patients returned to life, they knew situations and circumstances that had taken place near them when they were in a coma.

PS. What are the differences between the paranormal, supernatural, and metaphysical?

Finally, as to the differences between the terms metaphysical, paranormal, and supernatural, things are a little fluid. Most people interested in metaphysical phenomena use all three terms in the same way.

However, the metaphysical is a shortcut of the term metaphysical philosophy, which is one of the main branches of philosophy that deals with the first principle, cause, destination, and the end of the world.

While natural sciences deal with reality based on the experience, metaphysical philosophy deals with a transcendental world that can not be investigated through experience, observation, and experiment.

On the other hand, the term metaphysics is mistakenly associated with mysticism and religion. While mysticism is based on experiences of a particular nature and religion – on faith, metaphysics is based on logic.


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