A Mother dreamt that in two hours a violent storm would loosen ‘a heavy chandelier which would fall on her baby’s crib, she awoke her husband, “A silly dream,” he said, “The weather is clear. Go to sleep!” But she brought the baby. to her bed, In two hours a storm: came up, and the light fixture fell on the crib, + Bating lunch at school, a 13yearold girl “heard” her little sister screaming, She ran home to find the child had cut her hand almost in half. She summoned the doctor, who arrived in time to save her sister from bleeding to death.
This is the world of Psi (psychic phenomena) or ESP (extrasensory perception), as it is often popularly known. It has been blocked off from us by our conditioning. For decades we’ve been taught that what is “real” ‘is only what our five senses perceive. Today some Scientists tell us that Psi is our new frontier, they see a future world where we can be in instant touch with others around the globe, hurdle time and space with a leap of the mind, know the future and past as well as the present, and cure our own ills through the power of the mind. Yet Psi is controversial. It is an ‘open invitation to charlatans who prey on confused and eager sackers. For many, it opens a closet they’d rather keep shut: “My dreams keep coming true. Am I going crazy? There has been small place for the psychic in the standard scientific world. Paul Kurtz, Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Buffalo, speaks for many skeptical scientists when he says: “We are disturbed that only so called positive results are published. The public rarely hears about negative findings, which are considerable.
Stanley Krippner, a distinguished Psi professional, joins issue with Kurtz, saying, “In the ten years of our work in ESP and dreams at Maimonides Medical Center in New York, we published all our results, negative or positive. For many years parapsychologists have been the outcasts of science, “he goes on to admit. “Fortunately, this is changing because of recent improvements in experimentation.”
Pinning down psychic phenomena is a slow, exacting process. Because the whole field is on trial, serious Psi researchers are Super strict in their methods, and conservative in their professional reporting, Nonetheless from their experiments here’s what we do know:
People can and do communicate by means other than the five senses: telepathy.
Telepathy comes through in every day incidents and serious warnings. A waitress “gets the message” and hands a man his order before he gives it. A teacher breaks a rule and leaves her students to be near the telephone. It rings:*Come at once, your sister is dying.” Sometimes, in the lab, telepathy works 100 well. Krippner cites a Jab subject who sensed his experimenter’s need for money to pay a bill.
People can and do pick up information on remote or hidden objects, persons or events: clairvoyance.
Under laboratory controls at Stanford Research Institute, scientists Harold Put-off and Russell ‘Targ studied the clairvoyant abilities of controversial Israeli Uri Geller. Seven times in a row, Geller accurately drew a picture hidden in two sealed opaque envelopes. Ten times without error, he identified which of 10 identical sealed tins contained an object. The odds: one in a thousand million!
The Stanford Research Institute also verified clairvoyant abilities in six subjects with no previous psychic experience, All of them were able to describe in detail distant “target areas” picked by the scientists.
People can and do sense what is going to happen before it takes place: precognition.
In one of the 15,000 validated cases compiled by Louisa Rhine, of the Institute of Parapsychology in Durham, USA, a 19yearold girl cancelled plans to go to a funeral. She “had “to get to her mother. When she got home her parents were calmly sitting in the living room. She “had” to get them be hungry and talked to them into a snack in the kitchen. No sooner had they left the living room than a car crashed in to the house, destroying the chairs in which the parents had been sitting. So accurate have “hunches” of major events proved to be that premonitions registries have been set up in New York and California. A few of the “hits” in registry files; space program failures and Martin Luther King’s assassination.
People can and do move or affect objects, even distant ones, without touching them: psychokinetic. After watching a film of the Great Russian sensitive Nina Kulagina moving objects by gestures only or with her eyes, Felicia Praise of the staff of the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in New York performed some of the same feats under controlled conditions.
Bernard Grad, a biochemist at McGill University in Montreal, moistened seeds with water “treated “by a healer. Compared ‘with those in a control group using ordinary water,” treated” seedlings grew faster, and the plants weighed more at the end of the strictly monitored experiment. Impressed with Grad’s techniques and results, biophysicist M. Just a Smith, of the Human Dimensions Institute, Canandaigua, USA, demonstrated that an enzyme “treated” by the same healer showed significantly more activity than the “untreated.” With so much evidence now established concerning these four Psi or ESP phenomena, what about the scientific search for conditions under which they operate? Some discoveries so far.
1, Distance doesn’t seem to matter. ESP has been recorded in the same room, and from outer space.
- People who believe in ESP, or want it to work, usually do better at it.
- People who feel close to each other appear to communicate better.
- Shock events, such as accidents and disasters, come through or at least are reported much more often than neutral or happy ones,
5, ESP is more effective in altered states of consciousness such as deep relaxation, hypnosis and sleep. Most of the reported cases. Of precognition occur in dreams.
In some areas, there is less scientific consensus: Do psychic healers, really heal? What about rein carnation? Is there such a thing as an “out-of-body “experience? Psychologist Charles Tart, of the University of California at Davis, discovered a “Miss Z’”” for whom out-of-body experiences were so normal that when she was a child she thought everybody had them. In an elaborately prepared experiment, he arranged for her to sleep in a lab, with electrodes recording her brain waves, and “read” a randomly chosen five digit number put on a shelf high over her head. While confined to her bed by the medical paraphernalia, she “floated up” and correctly identified the number. ‘The major dilemma in all such experiments is how do you get scientific validation for Psi? The very tools and technology which would document psychic phenomena are based on the old premise that scientific fact is only what you can measure and observe. However, such metaphysical material by its nature resists capture, often going dead or turning off in a laboratory situation. Many people are instantly constrained) when hitched up to a machine in a) cubicle. A noted psychic healer, Olga Worrall recalls: “The first time 1 concentrated on a damaged leaf for a healing experiment, I burnt it up.” I had to ‘tone down’ for the laboratory.” Most of those who. Can work at all under laboratory conditions tend to taper off after a time — what scientists call the “decline effect.”
Psychic Ingo Swann is a striking example of this scientific dilemma. ‘Though he has been dramatically successful as a subject in rigidly controlled lab experiments for instance, making temperature readings on instruments in insulated containers hotter or colder by force of will indications are that such feats reveal only a portion of his psychic potential. In out-of-body experiments or remote viewing, as some researchers prefer to call it Swann can “go” to any spot on the globe, given its latitude and longitude, and sketch correctly the mountains, rivers, roads and buildings just as they are at that point. When asked in an experiment at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York to“go”‘to a hidden box and described its contents, Swann rejoined: “You forgot to turn on the light in the box. It’s dark.” He was correct!
But these are minor accomplish ments compared to what Swann and his colleagues seem able to do. On their own. Once, filled with ennui by months of lab work in California, Swann phoned his friend, psychic Harold Sherman, 2,400 kilometer away, and proposed they take a 1,000millionkilometer trip together “go” Simultaneously to Jupiter, which neither of them knew anything about, but by which Pioncer 10 was scheduled to pass. Sherman agreed. Their respective observations of colors, landscapes, atmosphere and other conditions were filed the next day with astrophysicists and showed remarkable convergence. Nor were they far off from Pioneer 10 data.
Challenged by a science editor, they turned their attention to Mercury, by which Mariner 10 was soon to pass and radio back data prevailing opinion was that Mercury had neither atmosphere nor magnetic field, yet each psychic reported a thin atmosphere and a magnetic field confirmed by Mariner 10 within the month.
On one thing numerous authorities agree: everyone has some degree of Psi. In not too many people, however, has the power begun to surface, and experts caution against trying to force it. California clinical psychologist Allan Cohen points out:
“There are at least 2,000 documented cases of individuals needing psychology call help, because of symptom: caused by prematurely and forcibly trying to develop psychic powers. * Earnest Peeei, whose psychiatric specialty Salvaging psychic casualties,” warns against pushing into the unknown Psi jungle without guides and help. We must avoid phoney gurus; drug induced “trips,” and takes our cues from serious scientists.
We may not know exactly what Psi is, or exactly how it works, but we do know that it works. And as pragmatism is we are already employing it: In detective work: A major retail chain in Toronto engaged a man with precognitive abilities to spot people about to shoplift. He’s correctly tabbed thousands even predicting what they will take minutes before they do take it. Psychic Gerard Croiset of Utrecht, the Netherlands, is noted for UN raveling many crimes. He can pick up cues on the telephone. Once, called from a town several kilometers away to help locate a missing man, Croiset was able to. Say that the man had committed suicide by jumping off a bridge. His description of the locale was so accurate that the police found the body by that afternoon. In locating resources: Clairvoyance is now being used to find water, minerals and archaeological treasures.
On play-by-play instructions from psychic Aron Abrahamsen, for instance, geologist archaeologist Jeffrey Goodman dug up deeply buried artifacts in Flagstaff, USA, which were over 100,000 years old what could be the oldest clear-cut evidence of man in the Americas, Of Abrahamsen’s 58 specific predictions tested so far in this case, 51 have proved correct, “ESP is replacing the spade as archaeology’s primary tool,” says Goodman. In health work: Psychic healings may become commonplace someday. It is estimated that 70 percent of illnesses are brought on by stress and thinking oneself sick. “If you can think yourself sick, why not think yourself well?” asks osteopathic physician Irving Oyle. He is part of a growing network which practices “holistic” medicine, based on the power of consciousness to influence the body. “Treating disease through the mind is the coming thing in medicine,” he declares. “But don’t put me in the: spook section. I’m just a family doctor turned medical researcher, trying to find out what it is that gets people well.” “One can become aware of the flow of energy within oneself and use it,” says Jack Schwarz, He can control his bodily functions much as do some yogis in India. He can thrust an unsterilized knitting needle through his biceps, with no pain, bleeding or subsequent infection, the wound closing when the needle is withdrawn, and healing completely within a day or two. Schwarz’s ability has been observed in the research department of the Menninger Foundation and elsewhere. A number of researchers believe that his self-healing ability can be learnt. Schwarz devotes himself now to his own Aletheia Psychophysical Foundation and teaches doctors and others ‘energy flow’ techniques for preventing and healing disease. Beyond all this, Psi presents us with hints of universal unity. Individual consciousness, it would appear, is part of a consciousness we all share. Each of us is part of everyone and everything in the universe. “Thou cants not stir a flower without troubling of a star,” as visionary poet Francis Thompson put it.
The deeper the psychic scientist probes, the closer he comes to the Mystical religious vision, The Unity, the One, is the central concept and experience of all mysticism.
And the more the physicist, traditional defender of materialist science, dissects physical reality, the closer he edges towards that same view. Quantum physicist Max Planck noted that it is impossible to obtain an adequate version of the laws we are seeking unless the physical system is regarded as a whole. It was this oneness that struck astronaut Edgar Mitchell on his trip to the moon, “merging the foundries of the self with the cosmos.” Then and there, Mitchell pledged his life and career to the understanding of consciousness, and what that could mean to the human condition. “We can’t all go to the moon,” he admits, “but perhaps the deeper awareness of Psi processes can provide the same perspective.” People were aghast when Copernicus proclaimed that the earth circled the sun, but the new view won out. We may be at another such turning point today. In the words of Willis Harman of Stanford Research Institute: “Psychic research in the next few decades may be destined to have an impact comparable to the impact a few centuries ago of Galileo and Copernicus. I call it the Second Copernican Revolution.
” [Laile Bartlett, PhD, is a sociologist who has taught at the University of Washington and at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is now a visiting scholar.
Article extracted from this publication >> December 9, 1994
