引言

AN INTRODUCTION

引言

Probably the most aggravating thing—to both authors and readers—in any published work, is that an introduction should turn out to be a review. A preface is where the authors can sound off on any rankling questions brought on by their editors; and an epilogue is where they can take a final pot-shot at their readers. Reviewers should keep out of the whole mess and go publish some place else.

对于任何出版作品的作者和读者来说，最令人懊恼的事情，也许就是引言竟然变成了一篇评论。序言是作者可以对编辑引起的任何令人不快的问题发表意见的地方；而尾声则是他们向读者发出最后一击的地方。评论家应该远离这一切混乱，去其他地方发表评论。

An introduction, especially if written by some person other than the author or authors should, at least in my opinion, offer only some attempt at augmentation of the book’s general theme; perhaps bringing to it some corollary and pertinent observations, since a lot of things can be said in an introduction that the authors have not been able to say—or have not been allowed to say—in the body of their text. So, I shall now proceed to offer some such complementary and perhaps impertinent observations for your possible edification.

特别是如果引言是由作者之外的人撰写的，至少在我看来，它应该只是对书籍整体主题的一些尝试性补充；也许会加入一些相关的观察，因为在引言中可以说出一些作者在正文中未能或未被允许说出的东西。因此，我现在将继续为您提供一些这样的补充，可能会有些轻率的观察，以供您参考。

First, let it be most clearly understood that this book has nothing whatsoever to do with any “psychic” anything. The employment of this word in the title should, rather, be read to mean “Matters that we have been taught to call psychic”. The choice of this title is, nonetheless, quite legitimate, on two counts. First, it will attract a great number of people who would otherwise not even so much as glance at the opus; and second, because it may render a very real service in clearing up this whole preposterous semantic confusion.

首先，让我们明确一点，这本书与任何“心灵”相关的东西毫无关系。标题中使用这个词应该被理解为“我们被教导称为心灵的事物”。这个标题的选择在两个方面都是合理的。首先，它会吸引许多可能不会注意这本著作的人；其次，它可能在消除这种荒谬的语义混淆方面发挥真正的作用。

Let us start out by taking a look in the dictionaries, always the best place to begin when there is anything involved about which there might be semantic doubts; and, as this is an American book, we will tackle good old Webster first. Herein we find the word psychic defined as:

让我们首先从词典中寻找线索，这总是有疑义的事情最好的起点。作为一本美国书籍，我们先来看看《韦氏词典》。在这里，我们找到了心灵这个词的定义如下：

“1. Of or relating to the psyche”. (Referring back a few lines, we find this in turn defined as “(a) A beautiful princess of classical mythology loved by Cupid. (b) Soul, Self; also Mind”.) Webster then goes on about psychic as follows:

“1. 关于心灵的。"（回头查找几行，我们发现心灵的定义是“（a）古典神话中被丘比特所爱的美丽公主。(b) 灵魂，自我；也包括思想。”）然后韦氏继续解释心灵：

“2. Lying outside the sphere of physical science or knowledge; immaterial, moral, or spiritual in origin or force. 3. Sensitive to nonphysical or supernatural forces and influences”. (Italics mine.)

“2. 超出物质科学或知识范围；起源或力量是非物质的，道德的或精神的。3. 对非物质或超自然的力量和影响敏感。”（斜体为我加的。）

The Oxford dictionary gets to the point more simply and directly, and is much more succinct. It states simply: “Non-physical force assumed to explain spiritualistic phenomena”.

牛津词典更加简洁明了。它直接而简单地表述：“非物质力量，用以解释心灵现象。”

Let us first try to unravel the semantics. You will notice that the mind, morals, the supernatural, the spiritual and even the spiritualistic (which is something quite else as most dictionaries make clear) get dragged into the business. However, nary a mention of the two headings under which such matters are most commonly and popularly classed in our language—namely, Mysticism or the Occult.* So, okay: the “psychic” concerns itself with the mind, the soul, morals, the supernatural (whatever that may be), matters spiritual and religious, and the spiritualistic—meaning, one must presume, spiritualism. Spiritism and Animism seem to have been overlooked.

让我们首先尝试理清这些语义。您会注意到，思想、道德、超自然、精神甚至是心灵现象（大多数词典都很清楚这是一种不同的东西）都被卷入其中。然而，在我们的语言中，关于这些事物最常见和普遍的分类是—秘教学或神秘学。所以，好吧：心灵现象涉及思想、灵魂、道德、超自然现象（无论这是什么），与精神和宗教有关，以及心灵现象的意思，可以假设，是心灵现象。但似乎忽略了灵魂信仰和万物有灵的信仰。

Now, if we cannot trust our dictionaries, what can we trust in this modern, complex, technological age that is based primarily on communication and which, in turn, is based on semantics? The only means of precise communication that we have is based on speech, the written word, or the computer’s binomial interpretation of these. (By this, I mean factual communication, not such emotional means as sex, music, the dance, and other arts.) So, above all, we must get our facts straight, and to do this, we have just got to find out precisely what other people are talking about.

现在，如果我们不能信任我们的词典，那么在这个以沟通为主的现代复杂技术时代，我们还能信任什么呢？我们唯一准确传达信息的方法是基于言语、书面文字或计算机对其的二进制解释。（我指的是事实性的交流，不包括情感手段，如性、音乐、舞蹈和其他艺术形式。）所以，最重要的是，我们必须搞清楚事实，为此，我们必须确切地了解其他人在谈论什么。

It is most interesting to note that not even the biggest dictionary, even unto the vast multi-volume Oxford, so much as mentions a single one of the items in this book under any of their headings of psychic. And what are these items? To list some of them, we find the following:— Mental Telepathy; Hypnotism; Faith Healing; Precognition; Psychokinesis; Auras around plants and animals; Brain Control; Mind Patrol; Astrology; Levitation; Sightless—i.e. eyeless—Vision; Dowsing; Acupuncture; Witchcraft; Prophecy; Alchemy; Psychotronics; and what we naively call “ESP”.

有趣的是，甚至最大的词典，甚至是包含庞大多卷的《牛津词典》，在任何“心灵”类别下，都没有提及本书中任何一个条目。那么，这些条目是什么？让我们列举其中一些：心灵感应；催眠术；信仰疗法；预知；念力；植物和动物的光环；脑控制；心灵巡逻；占星术；飘浮；无眼视觉；探地；针灸；巫术；预言；炼金术；心灵电子学；以及我们幼稚地称之为“超感官知觉”。

Now please note something well. These are just the items that the average Westerner will positively avow constitute the hard core of what he calls “the psychic”. Moreover, while he may permit the inclusion of other items in this category, such as spiritualism, and possibly even mysticism—if he knows the difference between the two, or has ever learned what these words actually denote—if you try to ram religion down his throat within this bailiwick he will probably become insulted, insulting, and somewhat out-of-control mentally.

请注意这一点。这些仅仅是普通西方人绝对确认的构成他所称为“心灵”的硬核内容。而且，尽管他可能允许将其他项目纳入这一类别，例如心灵主义，甚至可能是神秘主义——如果他知道这两者之间的区别，或者对这些词的真实含义有所了解——但是，如果您试图在这个范围内向他灌输宗教，他可能会感到受到侮辱，进行侮辱，并且在心理上有些失控。

The reason? He has been taught for centuries that existence is clearly divided into three parts:—the Spiritual: namely, religion and such, plus, perhaps the arts, if he has even given them a thought. The Scientific: which to the average Westerner means primarily technology, or button-pushing and bottle-washing; and third, everything that is left over. This last used to be called metaphysics but is today called simply “psychic”. The result of this indoctrination is that we of the “West”—from scientists to imbeciles—seem not to have used our dictionaries and so have failed to realize that we are using this word to cover two quite different and almost diametrically opposed concepts.

原因是什么？几个世纪以来，他们一直被教导认为存在明确划分为三个部分的存在：—精神：即宗教和其他类似的事物，以及也许是艺术，如果他曾经考虑过的话。科学：对于普通的西方人来说，这主要是技术或按按钮和洗瓶子。第三，剩下的一切。这个最后一部分曾经被称为形而上学，但今天被简称为“心灵”。这种灌输的结果是，从科学家到低能儿，我们似乎都没有使用我们的词典，因此没有意识到我们正在用这个词来涵盖两个完全不同且几乎截然相反的概念。

By the same token, we are in a similarly confused state with regard to both the words “science” and “scientist”. We use the first to cover both basic science, which the dictionaries define as the search for knowledge, and applied science or technology which concerns itself with research. Likewise we use the word “scientist” to cover the practitioners of both of these expertises. However, those involved in basic science are really philosophers, and it is very cheering to note that the term “Philosophical Scientists” is creeping into common usage. It is equally refreshing to encounter the heading “Science and Technology”.

同样，对于“科学”和“科学家”这两个词，我们也陷入了类似混乱的状态。我们使用第一个词来涵盖基础科学，词典定义为寻求知识的研究，以及应用科学或技术，其关注点在于研究。同样地，我们使用“科学家”这个词来包括这两个专业的从业者。然而，从事基础科学的人实际上是哲学家，非常高兴的是，“哲学科学家”这个术语已经开始在普遍使用。同样令人振奋的是，我们遇到了“科学和技术”这个标题。

“Applied Science” is a good term and says clearly what it means, but to speak of an “applied scientist” sounds as if the poor guy was some kind of screwdriver. As a matter of fact, this is just about what he is, so it is much more polite to dignify him with the somewhat grandiose-sounding title of Technologist. Besides, this links him with technicians, to which brotherhood he frankly belongs.

“应用科学”是一个好词，清楚地表达了它的意思，但是将一个“应用科学家”的说法听起来好像这可怜的家伙就像螺丝刀一样。实际上，这正是他是什么，因此用略带浮夸的“技术专家”这个称号来尊重他，将他与技术人员联系在一起，他实际上属于这个同胞会。

The average Westerner—and I shall continue to emphasize this qualifying term—lumps everything, other than that which he has been taught is either spiritual or scientific, into one great basket which he then chops up to suit his tastes. He has been told for a couple of centuries now that anything neither science (pragmatic) nor religion (spiritual) can explain must fall into this single encompassing category. And it is because of this that so many misconceptions have arisen. For instance, it would seem to be extremely unlikely that law will ever become wholly scientific, or art purely spiritual, while matters like politics defy any classification. Nonetheless, all these troublesome matters display technological aspects, and they may even be granted some scientific and spiritual qualities, so that the average person takes them in his stride. But when matters that don’t seem to be answerable to either pragmatic or spiritual explanation crop up, people simply deny that they exist even as problems. These were once lumped together as metaphysics and are those which today are called psychic.

“西方人”—我将继续强调这个限定词——将除了被认为是属于精神或科学的事物之外的一切东西都混为一谈，然后对其进行分类以适应他的口味。几个世纪以来，他们被告知，除了科学（实用主义）或宗教（精神）不能解释的任何东西，都必须归入这个统一的范畴。正是由于这一点，才产生了如此多的误解。例如，法律似乎极不可能成为完全科学化的，或者艺术纯粹成为精神化的，而像政治这样的问题则无法进行任何分类。尽管如此，所有这些令人困扰的问题都显示出技术方面的特点，甚至可能被授予一些科学和精神上的品质，使普通人在面对这些问题时感到自在。但是，当出现那些似乎不能回答科学或精神解释的问题时，人们只是否认它们甚至是问题。这些曾经被合并称为形而上学，今天称为心灵。

The old metaphysics—which, incidentally, meant only things left over from Aristotelian so-called physics—is also most clearly divided into two quite separate parts. These are, on the one hand, the Cryptophysical; and, on the other, the Cryptospiritual (“crypto” meaning simply “hidden”); in other words those items which are not as yet understood or explained to the satisfaction of our current logic. While nobody should deny the existence of the second category, such matters are not as yet the province of what we call science but rather of religion and mysticism. All of those of the first category, on the other hand, most definitely cannot be denied and do fall into that province.

旧形而上学——顺便说一下，这只是指亚里士多德所谓的物理学中剩下的东西——也是最明显地分为两个截然不同的部分。一方面是隐形物理学，另一方面是隐形精神学（“隐形”意思就是“隐藏”）。换句话说，这些项目目前还没有被我们的现有逻辑满足的方式理解或解释。虽然没有人应该否认第二类存在，但是这些问题目前不属于我们所说的科学范畴，而更属于宗教和神秘主义。而属于第一类别的所有问题绝对不能被否认，而且确实属于该范畴。

And this is just what the book is about.

这本书正是讲述这些问题。

Unlike, and diametrically opposed to what the dictionaries classify as “psychic”, all the items discussed in this book are in every way not only susceptible to truly scientific contemplation but also to technological investigation. What is more, said items have, as this book now relates, been so investigated in the so-called Russian zone. But we of the West still just do not realize this fact.

与词典所定义的“心灵”截然不同，本书中讨论的所有内容在各个方面都不仅适合真正的科学思考，而且也适合技术调查。更重要的是，这些项目已经在所谓的俄罗斯区域进行了这样的调查，正如本书所述。但是，我们西方人仍然没有意识到这一事实。

Doubtless our government scientists and technologists have been aware of this for a long time, but the public is not generally aware of it, and the press and other publicists simply will not even believe in it and persist in reporting on it only with snide jocularity. Whether this is under instructions, as so many claim, or due to simple lack of education, who is to say; but the result has been a crystallization of this stupid attitude and the envelopment of our whole outlook in a sort of tortoise-like shell of protective disbelief. The worst aspect of this mass stupidity (or deliberate mendacity) is, moreover, the bracketing of these matters with what the dictionaries denote as the “psychic”.

毫无疑问，我们的政府科学家和技术专家很早就意识到了这一点，但公众通常并不知道，而新闻界和其他宣传者则坚持以轻蔑的玩笑来报道这一点。这是否是受到指示，正如许多人所说的，还是由于简单的教育不足，谁能说呢；但结果是这种愚蠢态度的凝结，并且我们整个观念似乎被包裹在一种类似乌龟般的保护性怀疑中。此群体智力的最糟糕的方面（或者是故意的虚伪）是，将这些问题与词典所指的“心灵”相提并论。

Of course, the major trouble is that, as I said at the outset, we don’t have any generally accepted word for these items as a class; though, as a matter of fact, we do have a perfectly good one which unfortunately has not yet gotten into any dictionary. The designation is, of course, “Forteana”, but I won’t go any further into this at the moment. Rather, we should try to straighten out another aspect of all this business that is equally pertinent; namely, just where the authors’ researches were prosecuted.

当然，主要问题在于，正如我一开始所说的，我们没有任何普遍接受的词来作为这一类别的代表；尽管事实上，我们有一个完全好的词，不幸的是它还没有出现在任何词典中。这个词是“Forteana”，但我暂时不会进一步介绍它。相反，我们应该尝试澄清另一个同样相关的方面；也就是说，作者的研究是在哪里进行的。

This is this new concept of “The West”, now so beloved of political writers. Despite its now almost universal use, this, too, has not yet gotten into the dictionaries; while even advanced students of international affairs appear not to have the foggiest notion as to how to define the term—geographically, that is. The world of humanity is today divided into eight major blocks. These are basically geographic, but the vast majority of the human inhabitants of each form a compact ethnic majority. These blocks are: (1) Western Eurasia plus North America, (2) Eastern Eurasia, namely the Slavic domain plus Siberia, (3) The Near East, being the Muhammadan world, from Morocco to West Pakistan, north to the south Slavic border, and south to the Ethiopian block, (4) The Middle East, or the subcontinent of India, (5) The Far East, being all that lies east of the great Mongolian Fold, which runs northeast from the Pamirs to Amuria; together with Indochina, Indonesia, and Micronesia, (6) Australia, with Papua and Polynesia, (7) Latin America, south of the Rio Grande, and (8) Ethiopian Africa. Of course, there are endless human minority groups in each block while the indigenous populations of two—North America and Australia—are now almost completely suppressed. It is interesting to note that the aboriginal Amerinds of Latin America have had a more than profound influence on the Europeans who went to their countries, and that the Australians are beginning to show a very noticeable distinction that would seem to have been in some mysterious way derived from their dying aborigines.

这是“西方”的新概念，现在深受政治作家喜爱。尽管它现在几乎普遍使用，但它也尚未出现在词典中；即使是国际事务的高级学生似乎对如何地理上定义这个术语没有任何概念。今天，人类世界被分为八个主要区块。这些基本上是地理分区，但每个区块的绝大多数人口都形成了紧密的族群多数派。这些区块分别是：（1）西欧亚加上北美，（2）东欧亚，即斯拉夫地区加上西伯利亚，（3）中东，即穆斯林世界，从摩洛哥到西巴基斯坦，南到南斯拉夫边境，北到埃塞俄比亚区域，（4）中东，或印度子大陆，（5）远东，指的是位于从帕米尔山脉东北延伸到阿穆尔的蒙古折叠带以东地区，以及印度支那、印度尼西亚和密克罗尼西亚，（6）澳大利亚，包括巴布亚和波利尼西亚，（7）拉丁美洲，位于里约格兰德河以南，（8）埃塞俄比亚非洲。当然，每个区块中有无数的人类少数族群，而两个地区的土著人口——北美和澳大利亚——现在几乎完全消失。有趣的是，拉丁美洲的土著美洲人对前往他们国家的欧洲人产生了非常深远的影响，而澳大利亚人现在正开始显示出非常明显的特点，似乎这种特点是以某种神秘的方式来源于他们垂死的土著人。

Each of these eight major blocks has an overall approach to life that is now quite distinct, and each appears to look at its world, the world generally, and life as a whole, in a noticeably different way. Then, there is another thing. This is that there is really a “West-West”, a “Middle-West”, and an “East-West”, in that North America is, apart from sharing basically the same language with a Middle-West country (i.e. the United Kingdom or Great Britain) just as different in outlook from the Middle-West as that block is from the East-West. Disregarding politics and religion, the three “Wests” (being North America, Western Europe, and Slavonic or Eastern Europe) form a composite cultural block despite their tripartite internal differences. In fact, we three are already in the same bed and we might as well make up our minds to lie in it.

这八个主要地区每个都有独特的生活方式，如今彼此间区别明显，似乎对待世界、整个世界和生活的看法也截然不同。然后，还有另外一点，就是确实存在一个“西方-西方”、“中西方”和“东西方”的区别。除了与中西部国家（例如英国或大不列颠）基本相同的语言之外，北美与中西部的观念也和中西部地区有着明显的不同。不考虑政治和宗教因素，这三个“西方”（即北美、西欧和斯拉夫或东欧）尽管内部有三方差异，但仍形成了一个综合的文化区块。实际上，我们这三个地区已经处于同一状况，我们最好也做好准备并继续如此。

If the authors of this book had visited any block other than the Slavic, they would possibly never have written any book for the simple reason that only in that sphere have scientists and technologists approached these matters in the way described in this book. Even the Australians, who are Caucasoids, take an entirely different approach, as do the Latin-Americans. Among the latter there are today many brilliant scholars working in this field, but they have, and perhaps naturally, been greatly influenced in their approach by the racial majority of their populations, which is still Amerindian; a race who, and quite apart from any language barriers left, are mentally almost incomprehensible to any Westerner. Ethiopian Africa takes still another approach to these questions and it also has an incredibly ancient culture that is for the most part a mystery to Westerners. The Indians and the Far Easterners likewise have for millennia attempted to tackle the same mysterious natural phenomena, each in their own individual ways which are truly incomprehensible to a culture based on technology. Only the Middle-Westerners (i.e. Western Europeans) form a hybrid, mongrel, bastardized intellectual bridge between all of the others—with the possible exception of the Far-Easterners.

如果本书的作者访问的是斯拉夫地区以外的其他地区，他们可能永远不会写这本书，因为只有在斯拉夫地区，科学家和技术专家才以本书所描述的方式来探索这些问题。即使是高加索人的澳大利亚人也采取完全不同的方法，拉丁美洲人也是如此。在后者中，如今有许多杰出的学者在这一领域工作，但他们在方法上受到了其人口种族的影响，这或许是自然的，而这个种族仍然是美洲印第安人。这个种族即使不考虑语言障碍，对任何西方人来说也几乎是难以理解的。埃塞俄比亚的非洲则以另一种方式处理这些问题，它也有着令西方人大多数时间都无法理解的古老文化。印度人和远东人同样有着千年来各自尝试解决相同神秘自然现象的历史，他们的方法对基于技术的文化来说是真正无法理解的。除了中西部人（即西欧人）以外，其他所有地区在所有人之间形成了混合的、杂种的智力桥梁——或许远东人除外。

The matters that these authors describe and discuss in this book form the hard core of a wide range of investigations that we of the West-West, and to a considerable extent of the Middle-West, have always muddled up with some other matters, such as the true (by dictionary definition) psychic and the cryptospiritual, and which have thus been almost wholly ignored by us from a scientific point of view. These matters, as listed on page 6, have simply been dubbed “kooky”, and therefore unworthy of serious investigation or even contemplation. Further, anyone attempting to so investigate them scientifically has had his wings clipped, and as the Spanish say, “rapidamente”. But, there is still another and sorrier aspect to all this; namely, that those serious scientists who have persisted in doing some solid investigation, such as even that real scholar, Dr. J. B. Rhine, have fallen into the old trap by stating that there is a spiritual (i.e. mystical) factor involved in these utterly pragmatic matters, which he first named para (like) psycho (psychic, see dictionary) logy (meaning the study of). Could anything be more mischosen? “Paranormal” if you like, but why equate these discoveries with psychology which isn’t a science and may, in fact, not really exist per se, being nothing more than our gropings into ethology, behaviorism, and chemiphysical mental processes. What the inventors of this word actually meant was “Paraphysics”, and should this have been adopted at the outset, both the stigma of this damned word psycho would have been eliminated, and some true scientific investigation possibly initiated.

本书描述和讨论的问题构成了广泛研究的核心，而我们西方人（包括在很大程度上中西部人）总是将其与其他一些问题混淆在一起，比如真正的（根据词典定义）心灵和隐秘精神问题，因此我们从科学角度几乎完全忽视了它们。这些问题，如第6页上所列，简单地被称为“怪诞”，因此不值得认真调查或思考。而且，任何试图以科学方法对其进行调查的人都被削弱了翅膀，正如西班牙人所说的“rapidamente”（迅速地）。但是，还有另一个更令人悲哀的方面，那就是那些坚持进行一些实质性调查的认真科学家，比如真正的学者J. B.莱因博士，也陷入了陈旧的误区，声称在这些完全务实的问题中涉及到了一种精神（即神秘）因素，他最初将其称为“para”（相似）“psycho”（心灵，见词典）“logy”（意思是研究）。有什么比这更不合时宜的呢？也许可以称之为“超自然”，但为什么要将这些发现与心理学等非科学的领域联系起来，这些领域可能实际上并不存在，只不过是我们对动物行为学、行为主义和化学心理过程的摸索而已。这个词的发明者实际上想表达的是“超物理学”，如果最初采用这个词，就可以消除“psycho”这个该死的词的污名，并可能引发一些真正的科学调查。

The same may be said, and even more forcibly, regarding this expression “Extra Sensory Perception”. These cryptophysical matters are indeed extra, or outside the cryptospiritual—i.e. psychic or psycho—but they actually lie solidly within the physical. Even worse, however, is the rest of this silly term. Why only “perception”? It includes a lot more than perception; and apart from also “sending” or disseminating. Even SSP, or super-sensory perception would be better but this once again implies a necessary biological link, while all these things probably still exist even when there is no living thing—as we define life—around. But “ESP” has now become a catch-phrase for just about everything that neither religion nor science can explain; and both the cryptospiritual and the cryptophysical.

同样可以说，甚至更强烈地说，关于“超感知”的表达也是如此。这些隐秘的物理问题的确是超出了隐秘精神——即心灵或心理——但它们实际上牢固地属于物理领域。然而，这个愚蠢术语的其余部分更糟糕。为什么仅限于“感知”？它包含的不仅仅是感知；除此之外还有“发送”或传播。即使使用“SSP”或超感知，也更好些，但这又暗示着必要的生物学联系，而所有这些东西可能在没有生物存在的情况下仍然存在——如我们定义的生命。但“ESP”现在已经成为一个几乎可以解释一切既不属于宗教也不属于科学的流行词，涵盖了隐秘精神和隐秘物理两者。

Separate these two fields and you will find that you have, on the one hand, matters purely of the mind like religious concepts, mathematics, ontology, and the other intangibles, and, on the other hand, a seething mass of tangibles such as are discussed in this book and which are most susceptible to scientific and technological enquiry if only we would initiate such. The only real mystery lies in that we have not yet pinned them down, and for the most part, we do not yet know how they work, or even on what principles, while in the biological field we have not yet found the “organs” in living bodies through which they do work. We ought by now, however, to have enough to convince even Western scientists that there is nothing mystical, spiritual, or above all, “psychic” about any of them.

将这两个领域分开，你会发现，一方面是纯粹涉及思想的问题，比如宗教概念、数学、本体论和其他抽象概念，而另一方面是一团糟的具体问题，就像本书中所讨论的那样，如果我们愿意，这些问题大多数都可以通过科学和技术探究。唯一的真正谜团在于，我们尚未将它们解决，大部分时间我们还不知道它们是如何运作的，甚至不知道它们的原理是什么，而在生物学领域，我们还没有找到这些问题在生物体内的“器官”。然而，现在我们应该有足够的证据来使西方科学家相信，这些问题与神秘、精神或最重要的是“心灵”没有任何关系。

Perhaps in the long run, and from the purely historical point of view, it is just as well that Marxist philosophy—as biologically inaccurate as it may originally have been—did arise. Please understand me! I do not equate this with Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, or any other political or religious matter. Not only “Western” but Eastern, African, Indian, and every other type of thought was getting bogged down at the end of the last century. It needed a good jolt. One does not wish to be impolite but, speaking as a biologist, increasing knowledge of our environment and of ourselves cried out for a disassembly of a lot of traditions. Right or wrong, necessary or not, “revolution” in intellect is just as necessary as it is biologically: and it hurts just as much. Without it, maybe we like so many millions of other species of living creatures, would have already just died away.

也许从纯粹历史的角度来看，马克思主义哲学的产生也是幸运的，尽管它在生物学上可能最初并不准确。请理解我！我并不把它与列宁主义、斯大林主义、毛主义或任何其他政治或宗教事务等同起来。在上个世纪末，不仅是“西方”，而且是东方、非洲、印度和其他各种思想都陷入了困境。它需要一次很好的震撼。不想显得不礼貌，但作为一名生物学家，我们对环境和我们自己的认识的增长呼吁解构许多传统观念。不论对错，不论是否必要，智力上的“革命”和生物上一样必要：而且同样痛苦。如果没有这样的“革命”，或许像成千上万其他物种一样，我们可能早就灭亡了。

Be all this philosophizing as it may, the point I am trying to make is that as a result of the intellectual climate in their block, the Slavs of the East-West have tackled “forteana” in a completely different way from us of the West-West; and the results, as described in this book, will probably be quite shocking to all “West-Western” readers, while they may shake up some of the Middle-Westerns a bit too! So please read on.

不管怎么说，我试图要表达的是，由于东西方的知识氛围不同，东西方的斯拉夫人对“神秘现象”采取了与我们西方人完全不同的方式。本书所描述的结果可能会令所有“西方人”读者感到震惊，同时也可能会让一些中西部人感到不安！因此请继续阅读。

Ivan T. Sanderson

伊凡·T·桑德森

Columbia, New Jersey

新泽西州哥伦比亚

January 1970

1970年1月