I thought for a while about what section to put this article in. The reason for my troubles was that assumption is responsible for so many of the problems that we have. Whenever we assume something, we take it for granted that a certain thing is this way or that. To assume something is really to believe something without question, without any logical thought at all.

I like to define reason as the act of making assumptions and for this reason I suppose I find assumption to be very reasonable. I define it this way because it is quite easy to see that any individual is considered reasonable when he or she is able to follow the status quo; that is when they believe what is generally believed by everyone around them and is reasonably acting in accordance to those beliefs. To be a person of reason is to be someone who is not insane and to not be insane you must believe, or at least act, like everyone else.

Interestingly, reasonable people tend to find that they are very logical but reason is actually quite far from logic. Reason seems logical when you assume that all the beliefs that you have are facts but facts are really assumptions. You might feel justified in assuming that your facts are correct because these facts (beliefs) were given to you by some type of authority figure/structure but really what you are doing is taking something for granted because doing so has been profitable in some way for you in the past. Logic in its purest form holds no facts, there are only possibilities and probabilities; there are theories and there are experiments that reap certain benefits but there are no facts because fact is based on the assumption that perception is infallible.

“Reason is a lie; for there is a factor infinite and unknown; and all their words are skew-wise.”

Aleister Crowley

Assumption can be wonderful at times; it can allow you to function much more quickly and as I said it can help you fit in. Generally speaking we all tend to assume a lot and doing so allows us to function much more effectively because we do not need to question every single thing that we do or are about to do. Assumptions in other words can be good; for example it is quite a good assumption to believe that you are in a safe place and will wake up in a safe place in the morning, or that certain things will work just like they have always worked; in a fine and reliable way.

This article though is interested in some of the negative aspects of assumption and the reason for the article is that we naturally tend to assume things but it is much harder for any of us to question; questioning takes effort while assumption takes no effort at all, it only takes repetition. The objective of the article is to have you consider doing something very clever (or insane); question your assumptions.

I finally settled on the idea of placing this article in the paranormal section of my website because one of the most disparaging aspects of assumption is its ability to control how we perceive and:

OUR PERCEPTION IS KEY TO EVERYTHING!

When we think of the paranormal, we think of ghosts, UFOs, Bigfoot, and perhaps magic or some kind of sorcery; these things are in essence the Occult.  But the occult is just that which is hidden and it is hidden from us because of our inability to perceive.

Assumptions = Perceptions

I am often asked how it is possible to extend our personal awareness, how is it possible to be able to see and experience more of the magic of life; how to experience the paranormal. I was asked so often that I actually wrote a book on the subject. And while the book might give you a very detailed way to identify and break the barriers of your personal perceptions, one could quite easily say that the heart of all our troubles, when it comes to our very limited sensual capabilities, is our insistence on making and maintaining assumptions.

If you have ever come across a hard-core skeptic in anything then you have run smack dab into someone who is very good at making and maintaining assumptions. They assume that what they believe is true and this assumption is so strong, it is so overpowering that it does not allow that person to see your personal views as anything more than delusion. Assumption is so powerful that it totally overrides logic and those that are passionately ruled by their assumptions tend to be so adamant that they will argue and sometimes even hurt you in order to try and prove to you that their logic, their reason, is correct.

Assumption in many ways can be referred to as a routine, a routine of thought. We are so used to believing that this is so, we have done this certain thing so many times before, that it is quite natural for us to assume that things will always be the same. These routines though can bind us, they can narrow our perception and make us believe that what we see out there is all there is;

A ghost could not possibly be real because in a consistent basis we have not seen them, those around us have not seen them, those that we trust (scientists/priests) to find answers to the riddles of life have not seen them either, therefore it is quite reasonable to assume that they do not exist and are but delusions of those that are highly unreasonable. Seems very logical doesn’t it?

But there is more to life and there is more to reality; all we have to do is break the barrier of our assumptions and doing this is as easy (sarcasm emoticon here) as breaking a routine.