All Flesh Is Crutch - Notes On Psychic Powers

I rewatched Akira today for the umpteenth time, and this time around it helped give me a lot of thoughts to go for in regards of psychic abilities and people that wield them. Enough for a story, perhaps. I'll jot down some of my thoughts here.



In order to survive and propagate, all life needs to work with the world around it - to perceive and observe it, to touch and interact with it, and to have feelings and urges about it. So evolution hands us our senses and limbs and more or less the same prime directive, regardless of who or what we are. Seems pretty obvious so far, unless you just want a piece of motionless meat. Or grass.

Problem is, there's only so far you can go with flesh. Our vision and hearing are weak and fallible, and age and injury will further degrade them. Our muscles can only do so much, and then weaken and atrophy as time passes. Our memories are just a bunch of data on a strip of wet bacon that can be tampered with or that can fade away on its own accord. All those hormones and chemicals are a weak substitute to true emotion. And so on and so forth.

Nothing in you or me functions anywhere near the ideal universal perfection. They never can, not even in theory. Crutches, that you can at best hobble forward with, never walk comfortably and without pain, let alone run. But it's the best we've got.

Psychic powers are the soul's means to address this.



Clairvoyance is the true sight - see the real cosmos, colours and dimensions you could not have even dreamed of. Telekinesis, to effortlessly lift and move heavy objects without the need of these grotesque meat-sticks we call fingers. Telepathy gets your words and meaning across without your flabby lips and stutter and nasally voice getting in the way. With the power of Empathy you can truly feel the universe without your uncooperative brain kicking itself in the frontal lobe.

And you can finally throw your crutches away. That is why most of the seers are blind: what do they need eyes for anymore?

Better still, this is growth of your immortal soul, not the earthly, temporal, hideous flesh. What you learn here will last beyond death, to every future life, every reincarnation you ever live through. Although you can get into trouble as well: just imagine a baby with powerful telekinetic abilities and absolutely no idea how to use any of it. Perhaps it'd be best to start by developing your memory, so that you do actually remember your past lives. But... then you'll have to go through the indignity of infancy, with the mind of a grown-up, and that can't be fun either.

Well, the sooner you master your soul and can shed away flesh altogether, the sooner you can put to past such indignities. Become the luminous being we can all be, without the crude matter holding you back.

Many sages suggest that ghosts and other spectral haunts, occasionally seen especially in the more primitive worlds, are really just a very stubborn soul temporarily manifesting some psychic abilities. It's unlikely to stick: just the trauma of a death that left them things unfinished in life, and such. It will fade away until they learn the stuff properly. No one knows if there's any kind of an afterlife awaiting any of us, save for the cycle of reincarnation.

Speculative fiction occasionally submits that said ghosts and souls should not be able to feel pain or joy or anger, but in reality it's the opposite. They feel things so much more and better than us petty mortals ever could.



So transcend your mortality. Become a ghost today!

Wait, no, don't do that.