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This page is an 'archive' and hence, "ancient."
For more (current) info about Remote Viewing, see:
Science: Cognitive Sciences Laboratories http://www.lfr.org
Info: Firedocs Remote Viewing Collection http://www.firedocs.com/remoteviewing/
Discussion: The TKR Remote Viewing Forum http://www.tenthousandroads.com/wbbs/
Hands-on Viewing: TKR's RV & Dowsing Project http://www.dojopsi.com/tkr/
Social: or visit PJ's blog at http://blog.firedocs.com
Begin Archive #003 January 1998
From: "PJ Gaenir" Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 11:46:57 +0000 Subject: Re: [Psi] Developing Psi
Howdy Brian,
>but it brings a further question to mind: If a psychic impression is >received which the percipient is aware of and which he intuitively >"knows" is of psychic origin, what quality does that impression have >that makes it different from ordinary sensory input?
OK, so let's assume Person XYZ got a psychic impression, AND they were aware of it.
You ask, >what quality does that impression have that makes it different from >ordinary sensory input?
It depends. (Love these answers eh.) I mean it's like saying, "When someone talks to you, what voice inflection or meaning do they have?" Well gods, who knows, it depends on a zillion factors inherent in the situation, only some of which may be fully understood.
In my own experience -- and other people may be different -- the chief way I tell a "psychic impression" -- I am referring to spontaneous things here, not formal psi work -- is by the fact that it is NOT part of the physical environment. So it's not really a matter of differentiating.
In other words, if I'm talking to somebody via email, phone or in person, and I get a certain... "intuitive impression" about them (happens all the time)... I usually just assume that some part of their quite non-psychic communication (whether choice of words, voice frequencies, pheremones, visual cues, etc.) is responsible for "cueing" my impression. I don't assume it's psi. It MAY be.
Times in my car that I've stopped short of an intersection for no apparent reason, and then a car comes through the red light in the other direction, I tell myself this is simply because peripherally I picked up the motion, speed, my brain calculated the probabilities, decided I didn't want that event in my reality, and so handed me the information. That information was "intuitive" information. It might not have been PSYCHIC though. I don't generally attribute that sort of thing to psi, though many people I know do.
(I guess part of this explains why my approach to psi is via RV. The protocol of RV requires as an absolute that a person control for all potentials means of getting that data through *any other way than psi.* If you work in RV protocol and you get correct data, it HAS to be psychic data. There is no other choice. That's one of the main reasons for working in protocol, is to differentiate between what is 'really' psychic and what is not. I don't say this makes RV better than any other way to approach psi. It's just my preference because I have that annoying left-brain tendency to analyze and doubt.)
Now, there have been times when I've gotten what you might call "psi data" except it was (hold onto your boots) from another reality. I watched my reality change, and then realized I was having an "overlay vision" as I call them, it's kind of like two projectors shining on the same screen, and when the second one starts, for a second that's what gets your attention. After about 2 or 3 seconds I realize that it's "not my eyes" seeing this, but some "other" visual faculty, and I can ignore it. The other likely potential is that I was simply hallucinating. Scientifically this is far more probable than the alternate reality theory. :-) But personally I've had enough experience to provide me a dramatically different belief system about 'reality' than many people have.
And there have been times when I've gotten psi data but didn't get confirmation until later. For instance, once while driving around a corner in my smallish town of the time, I slammed on my brakes and darn near had a heart attack. I thought I had hit a small child. It scared the CRUD out of me! It was so incredibly personal, my emotions and adrenalin et al. were reacting just as if I had. I was shaken. Fortunately nobody was behind me. An hour later I was at the gas station just across the street. I heard people shouting and turned around, to see that a woman had hit a small child while beginning to go around that corner in her car. Exactly where I was when that had hit me. I believe this was a form of psi data. It could be chance -- anything could be chance -- but internally I felt it was not.
I also once had a minor psi-experience while in my home, where I was about to be in a car accident, and the vision ended abruptly -- never knew whether or not it happened. I assumed at the time that somewhere, maybe nearby, somebody had had that experience and I had "tuned into them" somehow. As it turns out, the experience in every detail happened to ME a year or two later. Had I not written it down in my journal when I had the psi-experience, I would never have believed, after the later experience, that I hadn't just altered my memory or something like that. Journalising helps a lot when you tend to have unusual impressions and experiences.
To go back to differentiating between psi and environmental cues, as far as scientific study goes, it's been made pretty clear that psychics have a very difficult time with where data is coming from. After all, if psychics KNEW exactly what was psi data and from the target, they would always be 100% accurate, right? That's just about never the case. Psi data, imagination, subconscious effects upon the data, and conscious effects upon the data, are all one big stew.
One thing that marks successful psychics is that they have learned to wade through this and recognize some degree of what is going on in their head along these lines. Certain training (such as RV methods) are designed to teach you to recognize the conscious effects. The routine of giving feedback to students for years of intense practice is partly so that on a subconscious level they can come to recognize the other factors that influence data.
Although RV can be done in any environment depending on the Viewer, the initially preferred one was what they called "a gray room." Where there was no color, everything was grey, non-reflective, the lights were gentle and dim, and so on. The point being to avoid having any environmental stimuli, or physiological stimuli that might be caused by environmental effects.
But, I think the bulk of your question was actually directed to something else, that being:
>what quality does that impression have
That varies as well, of course.
There are three things that psi data has that non-psi data -- in my experience -- has never had for me.
First, a sense of KNOWING. This is something that cannot be explained to anybody who has not "felt" it. The sense is not the same as when you "know all about" something intellectually. It is a "deep" or "filling" feeling that I once termed "a kinesthetic of the soul."
I'm truly sorry that I can't explain it. We really lack a vocabulary to talk about things in this area. Even if I had a word to describe it that was unique, you wouldn't really understand the word if you didn't have a shared experience for context.
Second, a sense of what I call GEOMETRY, however, the word is not correct and someone probably has a better one. For example, in a dowsing experience, I could clearly feel where I was, where the thing was, and the entire length of the physical separation, including an awareness of distance. It is extremely.... "internally kinesthetic." The only way to really describe it is to say that it was almost as if the entire thing was INSIDE ME.
Stand up, close your eyes, put your arms out in front of you, and move your hands/arms farther or closer away from each other. Try to sense both where they are and how far your hands are from each other. Despite that your eyes can't see, you know where they are, and how far apart they are. I realize this is a brain function, and it is not as complete as the feeling I'm describing, but this is the closest I can come to giving you an example.
Lastly, there are the CONCEPTUALS. Now this can happen in dreams, so you may be familiar with this. This is when you may SEE something, for example, however, you "know" that it is something else, and you "sense" that it is related to such-and-such, and you "are aware" that before it was standing in front of you it was doing such-and-such, and you "understand" that after this, in the future it goes off and does such-and-such, and that sort of thing.
It is when many kinds of information you are aware of, including concepts, context, history, future, etc. etc. all converge into one experience. In physical life, this kind of information does not pour into one simultaneously, just due to linear space, time, and the biological filter (not to mention that this conceptual process can include contradictions, and we have a hard time with that in normal consciousness). The impact of the multitude of awareness again creates what I call an "internal kinesthetics." That is usually recognizeable as psi simply because "normal" experience doesn't include that "depth and complexity."
In other words, psi often feels like a SENSE that is INSIDE one.
Because we relate to reality through our biology, and because we have developed language based on our biology, when we use words to describe this experience, we have to use body-words. Allegories.
Sometimes the senses, when translated by the brain, do graft onto a sensory input area, so for instance one may hear sounds, see things, smell or taste things, "feel" them with their fingers, etc. Sometimes the grafting doesn't work like we expect, and we "hear" a color or taste a sound or something like that. (Heh. You think explaining the other stuff is difficult....)
Many times the sense simply has no good word-equivalent. This is what I've called the knowing, and the geometry, and "internal kinesthetics." One senses it, but there is not an easy translation into physical senses.
>>It rather suggest that psi ability rises and falls all the time, >>perhaps in response to all kinds of daily input.
The latest research indicates that fluctuations in the geoelectromagnetic field, and some other big issues, may actually influence psi. Dr. S. James P. Spottiswoode has done some stunning analysis on decades of all kinds of psi work by researchers all over the world, and come to some startling conclusions. Nobody is sure it makes sense to us -- from the science we know, it shouldn't work this way -- but it does seem to be the case. His paper has diagrams, is fairly layman-friendly and is on the web, you can find it at: hell. His web site is.... um..... down, let's say. I'll send the direct link in another message when his site gets back to normal.
>>Ganzfeld research shows (I've read) that psi is more likely to >>happen if the senses are dampened.
This goes back to the earlier notes about psi "awareness," and also relates to the above discussion about how difficult it is to separate psi data from the senses. When you minimize the "noise" and distractions, and increase the focus upon one's "inner self," you generally do improve psi results. Again though, this probably has nothing to do with psi and everything to do with (a) communication, (b) psychology, (c) simply paying attention.
There is an excellent paper on ganzfeld research, published in Statistical Science Journal in 1991, by Dr. Jessica Utts. It's great because it's her paper, plus commentaries, plus a rejoinder. It's a good education about how the ganzfeld remote viewing was done, about how science measures this sort of thing, about how people respond (skeptics displayed themselves beautifully in commentaries), and more. Dr. Utts did a beautiful job on it, and she was one of the first non-parapsychologist academics who had the courage to stand up and say that the field has already proved itself dramatically better than many other accepted scientific fields, that there is no reason to keep duplicating the same experiments to keep proving the same thing, that skeptics are making arguments literally based on no data or even false data, and so on. To some degree the paper was a real ground breaker and is worth reading. You can find the documents on her home page; the direct link to the document menu is: http://www-stat.ucdavis.edu/users/utts/91a-menu.html
>>I wonder to what degree psi is inhibited (or induced) after say, >>running a mile or eating a Big Mac or taking a bath etc.?
Supposedly people score well shortly after some good exercise; enough to get them all wound up but not enough to exhaust them. But people are at a sort of peak then in every category, so that shouldn't be a surprise. I don't know about the others.
I do know that in tantric magick, sexual arousal and other means are used to alter one's focus, some of which is to increase forms of psi. Whether it works or not, I couldn't tell ya. Alas. My life is just not that exciting.
>>It depends on what you want. Surely the truth is more important?
Yes, but that doesn't mean that knowing that one would only get worse wouldn't be depressing. You can accept facts yet still find them depressing. A lot of today's world is like that for me. :-)
>>If, eventually, it transpires that psi can be discovered and >>harnessed like most other physical forces - but not by the methods >>which psychics currently expect - then who is going to be >>disappointed?
Well I personally have always felt that psi ability IS something that our science should, eventually, be able to explain in terms it is comfortable with. Right now we don't have the measuring equipment, let alone proper receptive state of mind, for certain realizations, but eventually we may. I look forward to it.
>>I'm reading his book "The Conscious Universe" right now. Excellent >>bedtime stuff - to my wife's annoyance :)
I'm about 4/5 of the way through it too.
>>How come more studies are not done on children?
Who knows. Kids are probably much harder as subjects, for the same reasons they're harder as actors or anything else. More researchers are beginning to use children, though.
Regards,
PJ
Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 12:41:07 +0000 From: MaryD Subject: Re: [Psi] Hey has anyone tried......
Joan wrote, >But I call it EXTENDED sensory perception because we all have sensory >perception.
I called it extra, as in using it _more_ than normally, looking harder, listening more acutely, actively paying attention and seeking information.
Take the quality of attention in a phonecall for instance.
If you are talking to a fellow psychic, or healer, or RVr, etc, you _really_ listen. You know that somewhere in that conversation, there is likely to be a word, a phrase, a message for you. Something you needed at that time, a problem to work out. Similarly, somewhere along the line you are likely to same something which opens a door or new line of thought to your colleague. Therefore, you become much more focussed, more aware... of what you hear, and what you say.
But take instead a phonecall, from a friend telling you what she did at a party last night, and the pretty dress she bought at the shop today, I bet no more than 10% of your attention is on that call. The rest is making a sandwich, or playing with the cat.
Now, if I extend or use my extra sensors, I can reach out to feel if there is someone standing behind me. If I did hear someone creeping about outside. Sounds paranoid but you know what I mean. We focus on every sound, or nuance, or perception. This is the "survival skill" PJ was talking about. Then by taking that ultra alert state, and using it from a state of peace, a still centre, to journey or focus inwards, and allowing it to just be.... I find the channels of perception open.
Ooo. I love this list already. MaryD.
From: "PJ Gaenir" Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 11:52:38 +0000 Subject: Re: [Psi] RV and TK
I'm reminded of a story a CRV instructor once told.
He said that Ingo apparently believed that RV really wouldn't work if you had physical distractions, like you had to go to the bathroom, or were hungry, or whatever. So the military put this to the test, so to speak, as soldiers have a lot less leeway to whine. What they discovered was that perhaps Ingo couldn't RV during those conditions, but it was certainly not a rule for everyone. (At least not an absolute.) So it was true in one situation but not in another.
I think the same goes with TK. (Telekinesis, also called PK or psychokinesis.) As I pointed out in an earlier post, RV methodologies are designed for data collection. They are not designed for influencing anything, whether it be people or objects. I happen to believe those things are possible, probable and happening all the time. PK has been measured in the lab. Even fairly large scale effects, but it isn't consistent enough to work for a good study. But I have not seen this manifest as part of RV work itself. It is a separate intent, separate method, separate result, and apparently, a separate (though related) talent.
PJ
Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:12:04 -0600 From: Alan Hughes Subject: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
I would be interested to know if anyone can comment on or provide references relating to the following -
My brother-in-law, who is head of a secondary school mathematics department, was for years in the habit of visiting a large shopping centre in the middle of Manchester, UK, every Saturday morning. However, one Saturday afternoon about a year ago he rang me in a state of some agitation to say that when he woke up that morning he had an overwhelming feeling that he should not go to Manchester that day. He did not go.
The reason for his agitation was that the shopping centre was badly damaged by an IRA bomb that morning, some hours after his premonition, which had saved him from possible injury or death.
He was baffled and frightened by this, not only because of his escape but also because the whole event was outside his understanding. He told me about it because he knew of my interest in the paranormal, which he had thought to be rather odd up until the time this happened. He has told nobody else and refused to fill in a research questionnaire on precognition from the Koestler Centre in Edinburgh University.
In his attempts to explain this to himself, he came up with the idea that the event was a warning from his deceased mother, to whom he was very close and who had died in the previous year. This raised issues of survival of death which frightened him even more. The situation now is that he is very reluctant to talk or even think about it. He has had no similar experiences since, which is not surprising because he most definitely does not want to. He wants to forget it.
For me, this raises the question - how common is hidden and repressed psi in the general population? How many decisions are based upon some degree of psi input which is then not acknowledged or not known about in the first place? I believe that Arther Koestler had some interest in this subject.
Furthermore, the event happened when my brother-in-law was in a very disturbed state over the death of his mother. How far did this contribute to it? It could well be that "anomalous cognition," as psi is sometimes termed now, needs to be combined with a anomalous emotional state, very difficult to reproduce in a laboratory, if is to be effective.
Perhaps if we look around us with an informed eye, we will find more evidence of psi.
Alan Hughes
Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:53:32 -0800 (PST) From: Joan Branch Subject: Re: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
IMO your BIL's experience was his Higher Self keeping him safe. We all have that little Inner Voice inside us. It will never lie to us, nor lead us wrong. Since I also believe that Death is Life's last great adventure before going to the next level, his mother could very well have triggered the warning.
Joan
From: "PJ Gaenir" Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 14:39:50 +0000 Subject: Re: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
Hi Alan.
Yeah, experiences that happen to people who don't normally have those sorts -- and that effect life and death -- are really unsettling.
One of the primary ways to "invoke" psi in a person is a direct threat to their life. Being a survival skill, if it doesn't crop up for them at that point, it never will.
I've also had the intense feeling sometimes that I shouldn't do something -- and I didn't -- but never have any way to know if it was justified or not. Sometimes something as simple as driving a certain direction.
>>damaged by an IRA bomb that morning
(I realize that in Britain, the IRA is personally held responsible for all ills on the face of the earth.)
Back in January of 1994, I was living near Los Angeles California when there was a good sized earthquake. The ground my apartment building was on was very soft, so we had effects dramatically more severe than many places miles closer to the epicenter. I was sleeping extremely deeply when what I can only describe as "a voice inside me" *yelled,* "GET UPPPPPP!" with such profound "willing" that my body -- I was still asleep, my body did this without any conscious volition on my part -- literally flew out of bed. Just as my feet hit the floor and I went stumbling forward (still not awake, but getting there fast) there was the most terrific crash that began, and I was halfway down my hallway before I was awake enough to realize that the crash was of two extra-large-brick and wood bookshelves, that covered two entire walls of my bedroom floor to ceiling, hitting my bed and floor.
Many hours later when it was light and I could see (all power had been knocked out), I went back into the bedroom. On my bed alone were about 14 of these 30#+ bricks, half a dozen right on my pillow area. Coming down with such force, and considering their hardness, they likely would have killed me, or at least very seriously injured me. Not to mention hundreds of pounds of books and wood, of course.
I was kind of shaken by how close I had come to dying. And whatever saved me, which I assume was my subconscious, I'm grateful but it made me feel even more vulnerable, that something I couldn't explain had saved me from something I didn't know was coming.
That voice must have screamed inside me about one second BEFORE the quake hit -- it was the first massive jolt that took out the shelves (and threw half the people in L.A. literally out of their beds). And I remembered that I kept having this sense that I should anchor them to the wall, but the guys both at the brickyard and lumber store had laughed at me saying, "Those things are WAY heavy, they aren't going ANYWHERE, no matter what." So I thought I was just being neurotic or something and took their advice.
Sigh. I learn more about intuition from not taking my own advice, than anything.
>>In his attempts to explain this to himself, he came up with the >>idea that the event was a warning from his deceased mother, to whom >>he was very close and who had died in the previous year.
Two aspects of this... first, I've found that everybody who experiences psi puts it into their own belief systems. People who have not had a lifetime of esoteric experiences to help them develop a solid belief system related to this stuff are at a disadvantage. Most usually have to interpret it through the only doorway the culture allows, that being the ghost/angel theories.
However, I don't mean to be skeptical. Maybe it WAS the fellow's mother. I have no problem with that idea. Could have been.
>>This raised issues of survival of death which frightened him even >>more.
Geez, he can't win. ;-) Sounds like he crashed into a belief system in a big way and can't find his way out. There are many very different concerns related to survival of death, from fears of the ghoulies to whatever. It would help to nail down what his fear is truly related to, in order to help him through it.
>>The situation now is that he is very reluctant to talk or even >>think about it.
I understand that. I used to be quite a skeptic, and when I finally began some mind-blowing "anomalous experiences," it took me awhile before I realized that actually, I had had many odd experiences of that nature for years. I just ignored them. They were so far outside my belief system that I couldn't even interpret or process them. I have memories of times things happened and I literally "walked around them" and before I was 10 feet away had forgotten them. Total denial. When I began becoming more open minded to this kind of thing being possible, I began to remember pieces of my life, events I had blocked out. It really was unsettling to see how easy it is for a person to simply filter reality to suit them and then have the laughable idea that their "belief about reality" actually IS reality, even for other people.
>>For me, this raises the question - how common is hidden and >>repressed psi in the general population?
I believe everybody has some degree of psi ability. The average person usually only runs into it manifesting during great emotional upheaval, or threat to the life of themselves or a loved one. Once in awhile as a "mystical" religious experience.
>>How many decisions are based upon some degree of psi input which >>is then not acknowledged or not known about in the first place?
There was a book called "Executive Psi" or something like that which looked at some studies done on this, which demonstrated that the most successful executives tended to score the best in psi trials. They also tended to be the ones most open to admitting that they allowed and trusted their intuition, gut instincts, or whatever you want to call it.
>>It could well be that "anomalous cognition," as psi is >>sometimes termed now, needs to be combined with a anomalous >>emotional state, very difficult to reproduce in a laboratory, if is >>to be effective.
(Minor note: anomalous cognition only applies to the forms of psi related to receptive information, such as ESP and so on. "Psi" is a generic term which applies to everything including PK for example, which is not a form of anomalous cognition.)
You're right, it's hard to reproduce that in a laboratory. Combat soldiers get big doses of psi, especially when they are totally wired on maximum degrees of fear, anger, adrenalin, et al., but the only way to measure that is by who survives. People often experience psi when someone close to them has died, just due to their emotional state, and sometimes to them being so desolate for the person's loss that they are more willing to be open "to the other side" if it's that person. In his case it sounds like a general "premonition," with no ghosts, angels, or other input required. But if it helps him to believe that it was his mother, I would encourage that. If he's a scientific sort who has a problem with psi, maybe introducing him to some essays on non-local consciousness would be a better route.
PJ
Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 13:31:17 -0800 (PST) From: Joan Branch Subject: Re: [Psi] Decline Effects
regarding... >Are you really seeing an improvement in ability or merely an >improvement in delivery of what was there all the time?
The reason they improve is because of the energy that is generated when several are in one place doing the same work.
Joan
From: Curran2106 Subject: Re: [Psi] Decline Effects
In a message dated 98-01-17 16:31:36 EST, you write: >The reason they improve is because of the energy that is generated when >several are in one place doing the same work. Joan
Again..I would take you all back to the good old day when RV was done in labs with careful monitoring and record keeping and not out of someones living room with perfumed candles...in the military unit we saw no verifiable difference in overall results / successes if one viewer were working a target or if all ten or fifteen of us were working it...kinda blows holes in that secret "energy" thing supposedly being generated like so much static when two or more viewers get together...
Regards..Gene..
From: Dragnwng69 Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 19:57:38 EST Subject: Re: [Psi] Decline Effects
In a message dated 98-01-17 16:31:36 EST, info4u@earthlink.net writes: << The reason they improve is because of the energy that is generated when several are in one place doing the same work. Joan >>
An interesting theory.... any data to back it up, or is this speculation?
~Sarah
From: "PJ Gaenir" Date sent: Sat, 17 Jan 1998 15:01:04 +0000 Subject: Re: [Psi] Decline Effects
>>in the military unit we saw no verifiable difference in overall >>results / successes if one viewer were working a target or if all >>ten or fifteen of us were working it... kinda blows holes in that >>secret "energy" thing supposedly being generated like so much >>static when two or more viewers get together...
Hi Gene,
I think this is another case where it's a different situation. As far as remote viewing goes, in the lab they did find that under the right conditions, two viewers on a target could increase overall data obtained, however it did not increase *accuracy* of data nor did it in any way seem to relate to accuracy merely because more than one viewer "verified" the same data. They did not find that it made any real difference in quality of results.
However, in the case of measured micro-PK it seems to be a different story. According to the results compiled and surveyed in Dr. Dean Radin's current book, "The Conscious Universe," he explains that having two people of the same gender attempt to influence the random number generator not only didn't improve results, but often made them lower. (And bear in mind most of your intell unit was men, and there was not, from many accounts, the best morale there, nor did the members get to choose compatriots they felt bonded with, as would be done in "living room magic" in your example). However, two people of the opposite gender often got results TWICE as high as those working alone. And opposite gender teams who were "bonded." such as spouses and family got results FOUR TIMES as high as the individual average. Plenty of scientific test data went into demonstrating this.
(I think this demonstrates what magicians knew all along but that's a whole 'nuther story.)
The situation of intell RV certainly makes people experienced there experts in intell RV. But there are many other psi situations of different kinds that may have alternate conditions and alternate results.
Have a good time on your trip! I'm sorry I've been so out of touch, I kept thinking that "by now he's left already." Please get in touch when you come home.
Warmest regards, Palyne
Date sent: Sun, 18 Jan 1998 17:48:53 -0800 (PST) From: Joan Branch Subject: Re: [Psi] Decline Effects
>An interesting theory.... any data to back it up, or is this speculation?
The only data I can supply is that I was there and could feel it, and see it. At the end of a two-day seminar people who were novices, myself among them, could identify almost all the numbers on a $ bill and both letters. I was able to see the aura of others for the first time. Many of us could identify objects in detail that were sealed in boxes. The air around us almost crackled.
Joan
End Archive #003 January 1998
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