by Aisha Ansari

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: August 20, 2008

People have an enormous capacity for avoiding things that they cannot explain. I have met several people who have told me of mysterious things that have happened to them or those they knew, but when asked about life beyond this planet, they simply don't believe it exists. Not an afterlife, not parallel worlds nor alien existence elsewhere in the universe.

Winston Churchill once said that men who stumble across the truth usually just pick themselves up, dust themselves off and walk away, and when I read that quote I often think of conspiracies but it also applies to that which we label paranormal' too.

I have just finished reading Derren Brown's book, Tricks Of The Mind, a manual of sorts on things like Neuro Linguistic Programming, memory and hypnosis. But it's much more than that, because it also gives us an insight into the mind of the UK's best known and, in my humble opinion, best period - mentalist. (I understand he doesn't like that term much but I am never quite sure how to describe him and what he does.)

He explains how as a young adult he was absorbed with religion, then became fascinated with magic and trickery and as time went on, abandoned his religious beliefs after coming to terms with the fact that maybe not everything was as it appeared. Fair enough.

Now I like Derren Brown, I think that apart from being excellent at what he does, he also comes across as very genuine and personable. Which was why I was so disillusioned that in his book, he appears to dismiss every facet of the paranormal.

And I know, that's partly my fault for having expectations of him but he just seemed to me like someone who would be into that type of thing. In retrospect it was rather arrogant for me to have made that assumption in the first place but there you go.

And it wasn't so much that he doesn't believe in the paranormal, but that he comes across as having a distinct aversion to those who do. Just so you're not imagining me as some petulant child sulking in the corner I'd like to point out that I still adore his work and have huge admiration for him.

He criticises Christians and others of faith for being so narrow minded that they cannot accept any view other than that of their own and that logic plays no part in the majority of their belief systems.

Again, fair enough. I feel the same way to some extent. But then to follow that up with statements that essentially shelve every aspect, every incident and every experience anyone has ever had with the paranormal under "things

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