A single fact, a single observation, can demolish a mountain of sophistry, and erase centuries of wrong-headed dogma, which in this case is known as reduction. The reductionists have worked very hard to make mind just the activity of the brain, and to define consciousness in terms of particular activities of the brain. Piles of lengthy and erudite bullshit have accumulated in the vain attempt to make this work. But all you have to do is look at a person using HSP to see that the Mind is completely different from the body. They interpenetrate one another, but their parts and substance and properties are totally different. The study of Higher Sense Perception (HSP) was the work of Shafica Karagulla, and upon this rock we should rebuild Psychical Research. It is because we can see that the Mind and body are totally different that we can define "Psychical Research" as "the rigorous scientific study of rare and spontaneous events or talents which provide clues to the nature of the Mind as opposed to the brain." It is the mind which perceives, and which acts, giving living things animacy.
There are many other discoveries in psychical research which also instantly refute the reductionist worldview. One is the so-called "Near Death Experience (NDE)." This is a misleading phrase. People who experience it do actually die. The heart stops, breathing stops, no brain activity registers on the EEG, they are pronounced dead, covered with a sheet, and rolled out to be sent to the morgue. Or in the case of Er, the body is thrown onto the funeral pyre. Or in the case of the Vietnam soldier, the embalmer makes his cut in the femoral artery, in preparation for embalming the corpse. Nonetheless, the mind is very much alive, having all sorts of adventures. The truly remarkable and so-far unexplained phenomenon is that of coming back to life, perhaps in a few minutes, 45 minutes in the case of Dannion Brinkley, all day for a Vietnam soldier (a case reported in Raymond Moody's classic Life After Life) or even 12 days later, as in the case of a soldier named Er, described in Plato's Republic. It is this miraculous and spontaneous coming back to life which really needs explaining. They should be called cases of death and resurrection. Does it mean that it is the mind which forms the body, rather than vice versa? I do not know. But I am sure that the experience of death, whenever it comes for each of us, will be just as described in these so-called NDE cases, because they have really died. They didn't just almost die.
There is also Professor Ian Stevenson's classic proof of the reality of reincarnation in his famous book, Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. This is a technical monograph, not easy reading, but if one carefully studies his final chapter, you will see that one feature or another in the 20 cases he presents serves to rule out every alternative but reincarnation for these young children who spontaneously talk about a previous lifetime as soon as they learn how to talk. As Sherlock Holmes says, "When you have ruled out the alternatives, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Sometimes I use "PR" or "Psi research" as shorthand for "Psychical Research." Psi is the phenomena; PR the science which studies it. I use "SPR" as shorthand for a "Society for Psychical Research," of which there are several around the world. The original is in the UK.
Psychical Research, as I have redefined it, is not the same as "whatever is published in Journals of Parapsychology and Psychical Research," since many professionals in the field and even the editors of the journals have never heard of Shafica Karagulla or HSP. It is also true that many of the most important discoveries were published in medical journals, instead of psi journals. In addition, the work done behind the Iron Curtain between 1930 and 1970 is unknown to most members of the various SPRs. Still, the work of the SPRs is the core of Psychical Research. The first SPR was established in London in 1882. Among its presidents have been three Nobel Prize winners and ten members of the Royal Society. We must distinguish between Psychical Research and Parapsychology.
I restrict the term "parapsychology" to the kind of thing J.B. Rhine was doing, i.e., the laboratory search for Psi abilities in ordinary students off the street, using Zener cards, and doing a lot of statistical analysis to fish a very weak and erratic signal out of the noise. Although many people use the terms "parapsychology" and "Psychical Research" indistinguishably, I do not, for one is a science and the other is not. As an undergraduate, Stephen Hawking, the famous physicist, took a look at parapsychology, and found that the more stringent the controls, the less the psi. So he concluded that parapsychology was not reproducible, and thus not a science. That is my conclusion as well. Thus, ordinary people off the street do not exhibit psi, especially when engaged in long boring sessions of guessing at cards which have no symbolic or emotional meaning. Psychical Research is mostly field investigation, very rarely laboratory investigation.
Not everything published in the Journals of Parapsychology or Psychical Research satisfy the scientific requirements of reproducibility or my definition of Psychical Research. Most of it does not. There are a few bright stars that shine out in the darkness: Ian Stevenson, Shafica Karagulla, Raymond Moody, G.N.M. Tyrell, Hans Bender to name a few. HSP is just one of the Seven Well-Established Facts About Psi discovered by Psychical Research, seven reproducible studies, seven things which can be demonstrated to anyone who understands scientific method. There is an eighth fact about the Mind, discovered by Arnold Toynbee, and that is Animacy.
Scientists never believe anything unless they can explain it, and unless it can be brought back into the fold and seen as a part of nature, with connections to things already known. Thus the importance of my Theory of the Mind as a Natural Object. Before reading that chapter, you might want to brush up on 20th Century Physics.
While we are on the topic of what scientists believe, why has Scientific American never had an issue on the discoveries of Psi research? Why is the rejection of Psi, mystical experience, and UFOs so total in academia, where belief in such things is practically grounds for dismissal?
It is all because we are at a turning point in history, a hinge point, a time and place where there must be a change of worldview. Galileo had the same problem. He couldn't even get his fellow academics to come look AT his telescope, much less THROUGH it. He pokes fun at them in a letter to his friend (and fellow revolutionary) Kepler, and refers to the "extraordinary stupidity of the multitude." "Extraordinary" does not mean "extremely." No, this is an unusual, out of the ordinary, kind of stupidity, induced by adherence to an outdated worldview. So, academia will have to change its worldview before it will ever be able to embrace the new sciences. History suggests this will eventually happen. In the meantime, research in the new sciences will have to go on outside Academia, in the SPRs, in MUFON, and other research organizations yet to be created. Between 1500 and 1800, physics also had to work outside Academia, in the Royal Society. Far from being the cutting edge, the academics always bring up the rear, and resist every new idea. For more on this subject, see Galileo Has the Last Laugh.
You may notice that I avoid certain commonly used expressions, such as "telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, paranormal, parapsychology, clairvoyance." I don't like the "tele" prefix because it suggests some similarity to television, telephones or telegraphs, where no such similarity exists.
"Para" means "related but different." However, psi events are perfectly normal, natural events. They happen to be events which provide clues to the nature of the Mind as opposed to the brain. As for clairvoyance, I don't believe there is such a thing. Or rather, it is one name for a lot of different things, such as OOBEs, HSP or psychometry. The terms selected for use in a science should illuminate real similarities. Thus, I speak of the apparitional sense, which incorporates telepathy and clairvoyance, and relates such phenomena to the apparition, something well studied by the SPR. We know from studying apparitions that an apparitional signal is not like the dah-dit of a telegraph; it is a complex entity, incorporating body self-image and intent. It is no way comparable to the linear and sequential data that go down a telephone wire.
For more on the nature of the mind, read another on-line book that I have on the web, The Evolution of Interstellar Travel. At first glance, it may not seem that the two topics could possibly be connected, but they are, via UFOs. I claim that if we are to do interstellar exploration, we must make use of the same modes of transportation used by the UFOs, namely levitation and apportation, which are powers of the mind, not of technology. Thus, UFOs provide the greatest piece of evidence for the incredible, untapped, and unknown powers of the mind, while at the same time, Psychical Research provides a way of interpreting the UFOs. The two topics are locked together, by more than being "outlaw" sciences, so far banned from the universities. The book mentioned may throw some light on why they are banned, why this is wrong, and why this is only a temporary state of affairs.
Copyright © Thales 2000
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