Begin Archive #006 January 1998
From: "PJ Gaenir"
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 11:22:27 +0000
Subject: [Psi] Parapsychology FAQ
Below is a useful tidbit I thought I'd copy to the VWR and Psi lists.
Many people have asked about "acronyms" commonly employed in
discussions, or the meaning of terms.
This is an excerpt from the Parapsychology FAQ. It was compiled by
the leading scientists in the field of parapsychology to clarify and
explain, for the layman, some basics about the subject.
Right now it can be found on the web site of Dr. Dean Radin, at
http://www.psiresearch.org/
Please note how clairvoyance (RV) is not OBE, just to beat THAT
issue firmly to death.
Also please be aware that CRV and other formal methods are just that
-- methods. One may practice clairvoyance while using CRV methods,
but CRV involves "more than/other than" clairvoyance, so the terms
are not interchangeable. Just to make sure that's clear.
PJ
[begin excerpts]
What "Parapsychology" IS:
Telepathy : Direct mind-to-mind communication.
Precognition: Also called premonition. Obtaining information about
future events, where the information could not be inferred through
normal means. Many people report dreams that appear to be
precognitive.
Clairvoyance : Sometimes called remote viewing; obtaining information
about events at remote locations, beyond the reach of the normal
senses.
ESP: Extra-sensory perception; a general term for obtaining
information about events beyond the reach of the normal senses. This
term subsumes telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition.
Psychokinesis : Also called PK; direct mental interaction with
physical objects, animate or inanimate.
Bio-PK : Direct mental interactions with living systems.
NDE : Near death experience; an experience reported by those who were
revived from nearly dying. Often refers to a core experience that
includes feelings of peace, OBE, seeing lights and other phenomena.
OBE : Out-of-body experience; the experience of feeling separated from
the body, often accompanied by visual perceptions as though from above
the body.
Reincarnation: The belief that we live successive lives, with
primarily evidence coming from the apparent recollections of previous
lives by very small children.
Haunting : Recurrent phenomena reported to occur in particular
locations that include apparitions, sounds, movement of objects, and
other effects.
Poltergeist: Large-scale PK phenomena often attributed to spirits, but
which are now thought to be due to a living person, frequently an
adolescent.
Psi : A neutral term for parapsychological phenomena. Psi, psychic,
and psychical are synonyms.
What "Parapsychology" is NOT:
In spite of what the media often imply, parapsychology is not the
study of "anything paranormal" or bizarre. Nor is parapsychology
concerned with astrology, UFOs, searching for Bigfoot, paganism,
vampires, alchemy, or witchcraft.
[end of excerpts]
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 11:43:58 GMT
From: Brian Oldham
Subject: Re: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
At 05:44 PM 1/18/98 -0800, you wrote:
>>I think that his disturbed mental state over the death of his mother did
>>sensitise him to something, but to what I do not know. If it was a warning
>>from his mother in "spirit," how did she know?
Alan raises a very interesting question here. One which I think is worthy of
some deeper discussion.
For starters, I'm not convinced by Joan's dismissive:
>Because Time is travelable - before, after, during.
Joan cannot know this - unless she is different to us mere mortals.
Even Stephen Hawking, in his book "A Brief History of Time"
didn't speculate on the nature of time with that kind of certainty.
If we are to accept that psi is real then we have to recognise that
time is not quite as we perceive it, i.e. it is probably not linear and
it would therefore be a mistake to think in terms of before, during
and after. Let me pose a scenario:
Suppose that Bill has a dream in which he "sees" himself involved
in a bombing in Manchester. He travels to manchester only once
a month and fears that his next visit will be the one so he acts on
the suspicion and cancels his visit. Subsequently he learns that his
life may have been saved.
On this basis it is reasonable to assume that his dream was
precognitive, but suppose that he had gone further and informed
the police of his fears and (stretching credibility a bit) they had acted
and caught the bombers thus preventing the bombing.
Is it still reasonable to assume that the dream was precognitive?
No, because the dreamed of event never happened. Sure you
could still have the dream but then it would have been just a
dream and not precognitive. It's a paradox, but only if you think
in terms of linear time.
If, instead, you think of time as being all at once and everywhen
(as is possible with light in relativistic terms) then there is no
paradox (Bell's theorem).
Unfortunately this still doesn't answer Alan's question: How does
the information get passed? Ho-hum!
Brian
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 09:17:37 -0800
From: Angela Thompson Smith
Subject: Re: [Psi] Boring ListBizness
Hi PJ, I, for one, love this list. It's great to have a place to share
experiences (although I haven't done much of that yet). I feel like I'm
testing the waters, providing references, information, etc. so that folks
can go and find further information on what interests them. I have a
lifetime of psi experiences and will be contributing more.
Kind regards
Angela Thompson Smith
The Inner Vision Institute
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 11:37:30 -0800 (PST)
From: Joan Branch
Subject: Re: [Psi] Boring ListBizness
PJ - Thank you - your's was a fine response to everyone's needs.
Outstanding! You REALLY should be writing books. You're a natural teacher,
it sees to me.
Fondly,
Joan
From: "Darryl Smith"
Subject: [Psi] PSI questions???
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 00:53:35 -0800
I have a few questions I would like to throw into the arena:
I have noticed that Rving has improved my sponateous |PSI abilities and
that they now kick in with more clarity and structure. They seem to unfold
following CRV procedures of stage 2, Auditory, Tactile, temp etc. Which is
much less random/Hazy than before. Has anyone else experienced this?
Has anyone noticed that Psi abilities have always been like a puzzle always
one step away from being understood, does anyone feel that this is an
important part of its functioning? Or have any other ideas?
Is there any evidence on genetics and psi. My mother and my immeadiate
famioly are aware of strong Psi in them. Is Psi passed genetically, or is
it developed because of the freedom of these kind of subjects throughout
our lives which was influenced by our mother?
Thankyou in advance...
Darryl
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 98 22:59 GMT0
From: (Daniel Wilson)
Subject: Re: [Psi] Genetics
In respect of the family thing, I don't like emphasising it when
talking to people because I don't think at root these things are open,
or should be, to only the selected few. But in the days when there was
a lot of fear and denial of psi faculties, certainly some families
didn't let that get in the way. My mother never talked about it but was
obviously psychic (always knew what sum we had in our pockets, could do
the Geller picture trick, ran a chicken farm on the basis of psychism
and healing - the birds produced over 300 eggs a year a sizeable
proportion of which were too big for standard marketing) and I only
learnt after her death from brothers, sister-in-law and brother's
ex-girlfriend not only that she and her brothers talked to each other
when miles apart in the early 1900s as though they had walkie-talkies
and only stopped when teachers expressed horror, but her own mother
could write down the guest list of any party she was made aware of. My
father never mentioned this to me either, but once after a jolly
bookshop opening in 1935 (he ran a chain in London) where everyone had
had sherry, she phoned him the following day and roundly denounced him,
she being teetotal. How did she know ? "I know everything !" she said
decisively - and read him out the big names of the London book trade
who had attended, of whom she knew nothing.
I do dowsing induction courses and, where 15 years ago tutors just
accepted that 30% couldn't dowse, the scene has changed and a tutor is
not up to it if there are more than about 3% failures. When we get on
to psychometry, clairvoyance and guided writing, currently we get a
fail figure of around 20% and the other day I tried (being wholly
ignorant of the protocols) getting a class to RV a sketch plan of some
buildings I put on the board and only one person in five got it right
(old people's flats in Sheffield). I think this stickiness again is
thanks to unconscious fear - and that's the same thing that's at the
root of family capabilities.
Dan Wilson
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 23:49:01 -0500
From: Thomas E Carey
Subject: Re: [Psi] Genetics
At 22:59 1/19/1998 GMT0, Dan Wilson wrote:
>My mother never talked about it but was obviously psychic [...]
>and I only learnt after her death [...] not only that she and her
>brothers talked to each other when miles apart in the early 1900s
>as though they had walkie-talkies and only stopped when teachers
>expressed horror, but her own mother could write down the guest
>list of any party she was made aware of.
\snip\
>I think this stickiness again is thanks to unconscious fear -
>and that's the same thing that's at the root of family capabilities.
Many issues back (in 1996?) the New Yorker carried a detailed article on the
DNA work which led to identification of the remains of the Romanov family,
executed in 1918. An interesting section of the article concerned
mitochondrial DNA, which was a key to the identification.
This is the most concise description I've found on the Web -- from
http://sciboard.louisville.edu/news/scinews/bioevo/eve.htm
"Mitochondrial DNA is like a family name. It is transferred by only one sex
- in this case, the woman. A father may have seven children, and all of them
are daughters. These daughters can marry and have children of their own.
Yet, under the traditional naming system, the father's name has been lost.
All of his children were daughters. In the stream of "family name"
inheritance, his is a dead branch; in the stream of genetic inheritance it
is not. Mitochondrial DNA will also be lost, not only by those who beget no
children, but by all women who have only sons. Those sons may pass their
mother's genes. But they cannot pass their mother's mitochondrial DNA."
and this clarifies it (somewhat), from
http://www.fbi.gov/kids/dna/dna.htm
"Mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from the mother. At conception all of a
new person's mitochondria come from the mother. Since mitochondrial DNA
(mtDNA) is passed directly from grandmother to mother to child it serves as
a perfect identity marker for maternal relatives."
It occurred to me that this mitochondrial DNA may be the "carrier" of
generic psychic ability. Its expression in any particular individual would
vary according to circumstance -- not least of which is the social stigma
some cultures attach to paranormal abilities. Which generates this
"unconscious fear."
But whether expressed or not in a given individual, such capability would be
passed on through the mothers. Sons may have it, sons may express it, but
their children could only acquire it from their own mother. Thus my
grandmother's mitochondrial DNA resides in me, but my children have none of
it, only that from my wife. (Don't read this as my claim to psychic talents
-- none are evident.)
Tom Carey
"We are far more imprisoned by cultural conventions than we are by physical
laws." (Terence McKenna)
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 98 22:59 GMT0
From: (Daniel Wilson)
Subject: Re: [Psi] Cancer Cures
Joan said:
> Dan, would you be able to ask a chemical - Hydrazine Sulphate - if it
> can really cure cancer, or some kinds of cancer, and if so, what
> kinds?
I've been in intuitive medicine for 20 years and my answer will seem
unsatisfactory, because I don't see symptoms as being connected to the
thing that needs healing. A person gets cancer because they're the
cancer type; cancer is a modality of system breakdown which stems from
every single last characteristic of the person's makeup.
What pushes them to it is something different (violent carcinogenic
agencies apart), which is psychic stress, which is not even recognised
in orthodox medicine. Psychic stress is caused by an internal
me-and-the-world recognition system which has got out of kilter. If you
"read" a person with serious illness, they have great bunches of
unconscious and unjustified fears about the world which render them
tense in more and more situations as they get older, since the fears
generate associative fears whenever they're stimulated together.
Conventional cures seem to work by counteracting sufficient of the
internal resulting systemic disorder to create a relaxed state in which
the patient's self-healing power can cease to be transfixed by the
enormity of the task and begin to erase the fears within. But if the
causative fear regime can be "read", it is better for remedies to be
chosen to suit this and not the type of mechanical breakdown of the
system.
The remedy may or may not have a chemical component, but when it does,
its power is often as much in unconscious mental associations the
remedy or chemical action may have as the action itself.
Hydrazine sulphate [to do a little "reading" for you] by assocation
with previous successful uses (where the success may not have been
thanks to the remedy at all) suits those people who are rendered tense
by the prospect of attack from behind, by danger of falling and by
threat from large canines (this perceived threat may also be
associative and even completely illusory). It is far better
administered in homoeopathic dose than in full strength.
Whether it could _cure_ cancer would depend on a lot of other things
that are going on, but in some cases I'm sure it could.
I realise that this reply drops you in at the deep end of a quite
different way of looking at illness, but I can't reply usefully in
orthodox terms.
Dan Wilson
Date sent: Mon, 19 Jan 1998 03:58:51 -0600
From: Alan Hughes
Subject: [Psi] What would you do?
On another list I posted the following question, which provoked more mail
than any other single topic I had seen on that list. I thought I would try
it here, in case anyone who did not see it on the other list would like to
comment. Apologies to anyone who did see it on the other list.
A person who developed fully workable psi powers - PK, RV, ESP, telepathy,
precognition, or perhaps something new - would have three options -
1) To go to parapsychology laboratory and share it with others who could
help to develop it further.
2) To conceal it and do nothing because of the possibility of misuse and
bad publicity.
3) To conceal it, develop it further and use it for personal ends,
constructive or destructive, good or bad.
What would you do? What would most people do?
Alan Hughes
From: (Peter Mulacz)
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 11:47:23 +0100
Subject: OOB vs. RV -- was: Re: [Psi] Parapsychology FAQ
>Please note how clairvoyance (RV) is not OBE, just to beat THAT
>issue firmly to death.
This is for sure.
But how about the other way round?
There are some people arguing that OBE is just clairvoyance (RV), more
exactly that the information gathering process during what is
experienced as OBE can be reduced to ESP.
B/rgds
Peter Mulacz
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 10:52:52 GMT
From: Brian Oldham
Subject: Re: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
At 08:09 PM 1/19/98 -0600, you wrote:
>It was the fact that he rejected and wanted to repress the experience that
>interested me. I do not know how he did it and, since he will not talk
>about it, I am not likely to find out. This is frustrating because I
>have an ideal "subject" who does not want to know.
Hi Alan,
This reaction is not all that uncommon but very frustrating to anyone
who regards psi merely as a phenomenon to be studied. My first
(late) wife despised my interest in parapsychology. not understanding
and not even listening to my attempts to explain that it has nothing to
do with satanism, demonism etc. If I tried to talk about it she would
put her hands over her ears and scream at me to shut up.
Clearly she belied her own insistance that she did not believe in
"ghosts and spirits, or ESP or any other kind of paranormal activity"
else why did she react so intensely? In truth I am certain that she
did believe but was afraid to confront it. I think it takes a certain
kind of curiosity about life and its mysteries to face ones beliefs.
Not all of us are so motivated.
But then it is probably not all that simple. It could all depend on
what she believed. She, like anyone else, may have been totally
under the control of her own beliefs and unable to shake them off
for fear of the consequenses. Religion is like that. Except in very
exeptional cases, children indoctrinated from birth into a religious
faith will retain their beliefs for the rest of their lives. Try telling a
fundamental Muslim that Mohammad was a Whacko. It is virtually
impossible to persuade a committed Christian by logic that Christ
was not the son of God yet there is not the slightest evidence that
God is more than a human invention. As some wag said, "If God
had not already existed Man would have created him".
So you might ask, why do I keep writing God with a capital 'G'?
The fact is, I was raised as a Christian and I cannot stop this little
voice which still whispers at the back of my mind "maybe...".
Now, I refuse to go all sloppy about this. Logic tells me that my
little voice has something to do with early neural imprinting, but
then the little voice comes back and says, "so what? maybe that
is precisely how God works..."
Brian
From: "PJ Gaenir"
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 21:02:18 +0000
Subject: [Psi] Re: Perceptions about Psi
Hi Peter,
>But how about the other way round? There are some people arguing
>that OBE is just clairvoyance (RV), more exactly that the
>information gathering process during what is experienced
>as OBE can be reduced to ESP.
Well I think you could, if you wanted to get technical about it, call
any form of psi information gathering ESP. But to call OBE merely
ESP you would basically have to, as part of that baggage, discount
the entire notion that there may be anything whatever TO the OBE
idea, in short, that it is a psychological delusion on the part of
the psychic. Wouldn't you think?
If the psychic is so in tune with the site that they feel they (and
their body, that's a relevant point) are AT the target site, then
that may as well be called OBE, as in, their perception is outside
their body. (Perception merely "aware of" something outside the
body, even if extremely attuned to that and not paying attention to
anything else, is called disassociation. It is when you feel your
body leave your body (so to speak), this often accompanied by being
able to see your own body, that it is semantically OBE. The two
experientially are completely different. Though there may be
'degrees.')
There are various theories about psi perception. For instance, Ingo
Swann (who developed psychic methodologies that many use for working
within the remote viewing protocol) has this theory called "the
Signal Line." Basically it goes like this (to simplify more than is
fair): that there is a sender/receiver (one person who is the
psychic) and then there is "the matrix" (where everything is;
visualized as being outside the psychic, in any case). The psychic
sort of taps into the matrix as if he is doing a database query and
gets returned data relating to his inquiry.
There's a hypothesized "aperture" in the psychic which begins very
small, but as the stream of data increases, it gets larger and larger
and able to accept more. Theory goes that basic data (gestalts,
descriptives) are small band-width as far as information goes, and
larger data (conceptuals, full grokking of a site) are much
larger/heavier in information content (larger bandwidth). So you
tend to get the small stuff first, and build up to the larger stuff.
This is how most psychics actually do get data (though it ALWAYS
varies to some degree of course) so this seemed to make sense.
This is a simply terrible description and doesn't do the theory
justice, I apologize. You can find Ingo's site and theories at:
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/
I don't actually feel comfortable with the theory, mainly because I
have one that's weirder that I like better, but his theory does do
really well for teaching people his methods. (Which some call remote
viewing. But remote viewing is when a certain controlled situation +
ESP happens; it is not a psychic methodology. That's a common
misconception. Again though... it's all about words.)
I was having an email conversation today about psi abilities and
magick. Some people believe (including me) that the energies,
elementals, entities, psychological dangers, and overall "how it
works" of magick (the occult) has not changed, just because somebody
decided to slice one little section of the process out of context and
call it RV or test it in a science lab. People are introduced to it
"free of the mystical overlay" -- which I think is great and have
always been a huge fan of -- but unfortunately, while avoiding the
overlay of belief systems, they also avoided the education those
systems may offer in general.
Seems to me we use a lot of words, and I agree it's important to
define things clearly. (I rave about that regularly.) But you're
right: maybe we should also make a point of looking at the
experiences, not the words, and seeing what they have in common.
PJ
Date sent: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 08:26:20 GMT
From: Brian Oldham
Subject: [Psi] Re: OOB vs. RV
>There are some people arguing that OBE is just clairvoyance (RV), more
>exactly that the information gathering process during what is
>experienced as OBE can be reduced to ESP.
That's true. Take that to its ultimate limit and you could argue that *all*
psi has a single unifying cause (or source). It wouldn't be the first time
that thought has been raised either.
Brian
From: "PJ Gaenir"
Date sent: Tue, 20 Jan 1998 21:12:19 +0000
Subject: Re: [Psi] Hidden and repressed psi
Hi Alan,
>>It was the fact that he rejected and wanted to repress the
>>experience that interested me. [...]
>>This made me wonder how many other experiences of psi are rejected
>>and repressed in this way. I was wondering if anyone knew of any
>>research into this, or of relevant literature from some source.
I don't know of any, but I am not that familiar with all the psi
studies done (let alone the psychological studies). Transpersonal
psychology hasn't been around very long (and special thanks to Arthur
Hastings and Charles Tart that it ever DID find its way into
psychology!) to do a lot of that kind of study.
I do know that in Nov '95 I compiled a case study for a therapist
friend of mine, with journal / letter excerpts spanning a few years
of my life, based on "anomalous experiences" and such. In doing so
I realized:
(a) how many times I'd documented having suddenly remembered events
from my life that I had tuned out the moment after they happened; as
if it wasn't until I was able to believe in them (or at least accept
that they could happen) that I even accepted them into my memory;
prior to then it's like they were just sitting in my memory with an
"ignore" tag on them;
(b) how many times I came up with simply ludicrous explanations for
anomalous experiences because the "logical" explanation, despite
actually being far more improbable, fit into my belief system better;
(c) how much problem I had, even at the time and recognizing the
problem, remembering, writing down, or taking seriously negative
experiences, because I wasn't willing to deal with that;
and lots more. All of which pretty clearly indicated that, despite
having an excellent (far above average) memory, despite being (at
least until then <g>) a very rational executive sort, despite being
(again, at least until then <g>) an extremely well adjusted
individual, none of these factors had any bearing on how I actually
interpreted reality. Reality as anybody believes it to be must be
pretty darn subjective... moreso than we realize.
>>The issue of whether there are "spirits" and how they perceive time
>>is very interesting, but it is not what I was getting at
>>originally.
Sorry Alan, I guess I knew that but found that more interesting so
went off on that tangent. ;-)
PJ
From: "MaryD"
Date: Wed, 21 Jan 1998 18:33:24 +0000
Subject: Re: [Psi] Perceptions about Psi
PJ said
> I don't actually feel comfortable with the theory, mainly because I
> have one that's weirder that I like better,
Well, don't leave us, like this, tell us do!!!
I too, am not comfortable with the theory. How can you be part of the
whole, and yet separate from it. If the unconscious is the whole,
presumably the conscious is the separator? Umm....
Perhaps its to stop you going mad.
Didn't work, Mary, did it!! Who said that...<G>
Eager to learn, willing to look stupid.
End Archive #006 January 1998
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