These powers ranged from telepathy to telekinesis, teleportation, micro manipulation by tiny hands near the wrists of the person, pyrokinesis and other mental powers. The book ended with the hypothesis that life as a human is just the pupal stage of the conscious mind's metamorphosis into a higher level.
Unlike other people, the protagonist had many mental powers.
I think it was a juvenile novel since I probably read it in either the high school library or a small Indiana town library.
Not sure on this one but could it be "Sentinels from Space" by Eric Frank Russell?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinels_From_Space
From the Wikipedia page:
- True Telepaths (D+): Can read minds and, unlike sub-telepaths, can close their minds to any attempts to read them.
- Levitators (D): Called floaters, they can simply defy gravity.
- Pyrotics (D+): Can cause heat to appear at a distance and simply burn someone to death with a thought.
- Chameleons (I): Not described, but an incident in the book implies that they can simply blend into any background.
- Nocturnals (I): Never need to sleep.
- Malleables (D): Have faces backed by cartilage, rather than bone, and can thus change their appearance to resemble anybody.
- Hypnos (D+): With wide eyes that seem to glow, a hypno can compel anyone to believe or to do exactly what he commands.
- Supersonics (I): With floppy ears, they can hear ultrasound, even at a considerable distance from its source. They can also create ultrasound and use it for bat-like sonar.
- Mini-engineers (D+): With long, slender fingers and eyes so deformed that they can only see objects within four inches of their faces, they can build exquisitely tiny mechanisms, such as a cruise missile the size of a cigarette.
- Radiosensitives (D): Not described.
- Insectivocals (D+): Using high-pitched chirrups, they talk to insects, especially the toxic breeds found on Venus. Able to communicate with insects, they can also command them, with deadly results.
- Teleports (D+): Can levitate objects but not themselves (teleport means far-carry). This is not the instantaneous transport of objects that we normally associate with the word teleport.
The story follows a man who seems to be unique in having multiple powers. He draws the wrath and attention of a famous insectivocal villain. Eventually we learn that when we die, our souls go on to a new stage of life. They are described as looking like butterflies. They are actually keeping an eye on earth because there are evil warlike aliens on the search for Earth, and the butterfly-humans have begun to take over the bodies of the dead and dying (all those so-called "miraculous recoveries" are actually them swapping out) to act as agents to unite all the human peoples so that they can be ready when the outer system aliens arrive.
