Harnessing the Paranormal Community

Harnessing the "Paranormal Community" by Loyd Auerbach is an article the current issue of Edge Science, the on-line magazine published by The Society for Scientific Exploration. In the article, Auerbach asks people who are knowledgeable about parapsychology to read internet forums on paranormal phenomena and post information on parapsychology. Auerbach explains that most people have a very poor understanding of what is known about paranormal phenomena because they get most of their information from television programs that are not reliable sources of information. Auerbach hopes that a better awareness of parapsychology in the paranormal community will result in more useful data being reported and greater support for parapsychology.

I think Loyd Auberach is correct. I have been reading and posting to the reddit paranormal subreddits and occasionally to the Above Top Secret paranormal forum. I have seen many people who don't know where to go for reliable information and who have been misinformed by the television shows. My main interest on these forums is to help people cope with psychic experiences , and help people who have ghosts in their homes to help those spirits to complete their transition to the spirit world. But I have also been posting information on parapsychology, such as Evidence for the Afterlife, Proof of ESP, how materialist pseudo-skeptics spread misleading information, and after it was posted recently, Dean Radin's list of Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles on Psi.

But, there are two sides to this divide between parapsychologists and the paranormal community. It is a good idea to educate ordinary people about what parapsychologists are doing. But parapsychologists should also recognize that ordinary people have played a genuine role in this field and it is equally important for parapsychologists to gain a better understanding of what ordinary people are doing. Ghost hunter TV shows mislead ordinary people about paranormal phenomena but they also mislead parapsychologists about what ordinary people know about paranormal phenomena. Botanists recognize the value of knowledge about the uses of plants gained through first hand experience by shamans. Parapsychologist should not dismiss the value of the knowledge ordinary people may have about paranormal phenomena.

Some ghost hunters are just teenagers with EVP recorders out for a lark, but others are psychic or involve psychics and do serious work. Parapsychologists might benefit from identifying the more serious investigators among the ghost hunters and opening a dialog with them, not just to teach them about parapsychology, but to learn from them about the phenomena they study.

I have had many paranormal experiences at Spiritualist churches taking classes in medumship and spiritual healing, and observing mediumship demonstrations that occur during the Sunday service. It is not just the experiences of doing mediumship but also the teaching methods, and stages of development that should be of interest to parapsychologists. Parapsychologists should learn about these aspects of psychic phenomena which ordinary people are involved in. They could do this by attending Spiritualist services, which welcome anyone regardless of their beliefs, or even by taking classes. Parapsychologists may learn as much from trying to develop their own psychic abilities as they can by studying the psychic abilities of other people. Anyone who has undertaken any large project will know that when you get involved in the details of doing something, when you get your hands dirty, you find out things you never imagined when you were only thinking about the subject in an abstract sense. Also, the most qualified person to identify conditions that are conducive to psychic perception is someone who is psychic, particularly if they developed their abilities through a systematic learning process. If parapsychologists want to obtain positive results, personal knowledge of what it is like to develop and use psychic abilities would be valuable.

Furthermore, there are many psychics to be found at Spiritualist church services. They represent a potential pool of subjects who have developed psychic abilities and might be willing to participate in parapsychological experiments if they were personally familiar with the investigator. A lot of high quality evidence on mediumship could be collected (using appropriate blind protocols) if someone earned the trust and cooperation of an advanced class in mediumship at a Spiritualist church. Those students and the spirits of the relatives of their classmates have years of experience communicating. They are trained mediums and trained spirits who are all practiced at communicating with each other. As Richard Hodgson discovered many years ago when he studied Mrs. Piper, spirits improve their ability to communicate through mediums with practice. However, I am not aware of any studies on mediumship that tried to take advantage of this phenomenon.

There are many independent Spiritualist churches as well as those that belong to these organizations:

• National Spiritualist Association of Churches
  

• American Federation of Spiritualist Churches
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications on Psi Research at deanradin.com

Parapsychologist Dean Radin author of The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds has created a list of Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications on Psi Research. He explains why in his latest blog post.

Critics are fond of saying that's there is no scientific evidence for psi. They wave their fist in the air and shout, "Show me the evidence!" Then they turn red and have a coughing fit. In less dramatic cases a student might be genuinely curious and open-minded, but unsure where to begin to find reliable evidence about psi. Google knows all and sees all, but it doesn't know how to interpret or evaluate what it knows (at least not yet).
...

So I've created a SHOW ME page with downloadable articles on psi and psi-related topics, all published in peer-reviewed journals.

The list of journal publications can be found at deanradin.com:

Selected Peer-Reviewed Journal Publications on Psi Research

Subjects include:

• Healing at a Distance
  
• Physiological correlations at a distance
  
• Telepathy & ESP
  
• General Overviews & Critiques
  
• Mediumship & Survival of Consciousness
  
• Precognition & Presentiment
  
• Theory
  
• Mind-Matter Interaction
  
• Potential Applications
  
• Recommended books
  
• Other websites with access to articles
  

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Sir J. J. Thomson, Nobel prize winning physicist, believed in psychic phenomena. He was a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Psychical Research for 34 years.

I have updated my web page on Eminent Researchers to include J. J. Thomson. Thomson was awarded the Nobel prize in physics for discovering the electron. He believed in psychic phenomena and was a member of the Governing Council for the Society for Psychical Research for 34 years.

The update to my web page includes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_J_Thomson

Sir Joseph John "J. J." Thomson, OM, FRS (18 December 1856 – 30 August 1940) was a British physicist. He is credited with discovering electrons and isotopes, and inventing the mass spectrometer. Thomson was awarded the 1906 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the electron and for his work on the conduction of electricity in gases.

J. J. Thomson believed in psychic phenomena and was a member of the Governing Council of the Society for Psychical Research for 34 years. (Source: Entangled Minds by Dean Radin)

Thomson is the eleventh Nobelist I know of who believed in paranormal phenomena or that consciousness was non-physical based on their own research, their own experiences, or after studying the research of others. The other Nobelists are:

• Max Planck - Believed consciousness is not physical based on his own research.
  

• Wolfgang Pauli - Believed that his own unconscious PK wrecked experimental equipment.
  

• Erwin Schrödinger - Believed consciousness is not physical based on his own research.
  

• Brian D. Josephson - Believed in the results of ESP research.
  

• Charles Robert Richet - From his own research believed in macro PK, precognition, anomalous cognition, and ectoplasm.
  

• John William Strutt - Believed physical mediumship was a serious field of study based on his personal observations.
  

• Marie Curie - Observed physical mediums hoping the phenomena might lead to an understanding of radioactivity.
  

• Pierre Curie - Same as Marie Curie, attested to genuineness of physical mediumship.
  

• Eugene Wigner - Believed consciousness is fundamental.
  

• John Eccles - Neurophysiologist who believed the brain did not produce consciousness and that promissory materialism is superstition.
  

Other Eminent Researchers:

• Charles Darwin - Believed natural laws were designed, this is a form of intelligent design.
  

• Alan Turing - Believed in the results of ESP research.
  

• Wernher von Braun - Believed consciousness survives death.
  

• David Bohm - Believed in the results of parapsychology.
  

• Karl Popper - Believed in dualism (which falsifies materialism).
  

• Sir William Crookes - Invented cathode-ray tube, believed in survival after death and proved macro PK in 1871.
  

• Sir Robert Boyle - Discoverer of Boyle's law, studied laying on of hands healing healing, attested to the results.
  

More information and references are on my web site at Eminent Researchers.

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Proof of ESP: 1871 - 1997. Beating the Odds at Ten Million Billion Billion to One.

This post reviews the history of ESP research from 1871 to 1997. It is based on information in The Conscious Universe by Dean Radin unless otherwise noted. (Many prominent pseudoskeptics, including Richard Wiseman, Chris French, Ray Hyman, Donald Hebb, and George Price, admit evidence for ESP meets the scientific standard of proof but they refuse to believe ESP is real because ... they don't want to.)

Clairvoyance

• In 1889, Charles Richet, winner of the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine, conducted experiments where hypnotized subjects were able to identify the contents of sealed envelopes with the odds against chance explaining the result of 25,000 to 1 (Reference: Entangled Minds by Dean Radin).
  

Telepathy

• In 1927 George Estabrooks at Harvard University conducted tests of telepathy between students in adjoining rooms. He obtained positive results that were highly significant. The odds against these results occurring by chance was greater than a million to one.
  

• 1930: Mental Radio was published. In this book, Upton Sinclair described his wife's ability to duplicate a sketch that someone else had drawn without her having to see it. After the book was published, Dr. Walter Franklyn Prince did an independent analysis of the data and concluded the results could not be explained by chance or by any other natural means.
  

• 1920s - 1965: Professor Joseph Banks Rhine and colleagues at Duke University conducted ESP tests using a deck of 25 cards with one of five possible symbols on each card. They found that subjects were able to guess the symbol on a card more frequently than could be explained by chance. One study of all similar card tests from various experimenters from 1882 to 1939 found the odds against chance were more than a billion trillion to one.
  

• 1966 - 1972: Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner conducted dream telepathy experiments at Maimonides Medical Center. In these experiments, one person looked at a picture while another person was dreaming. The dreamer was then awakened and described her dreams. The descriptions were judged and it was found that the picture was included in the dreams often enough so that the odds against chance explaining the results were 75 million to one.
  

• Mid 1970s: Charles Honorton began the Ganzfeld experiments. In these experiments a subject was put into a relaxed state for a period of time while listening to white noise with translucent plastic covering her eyes to help reduce mental "noise". While this was happening, a second person looked at a picture. Afterward, the subject was shown four different pictures, one of which was the picture the second person had looked at. The subject was able to identify which picture had been looked at a frequency greater than could be explained by chance. When the results of several experiments were combined they obtained odds of ten billion to one against chance.
  

Remote Viewing

Remote viewing is a type of experiment where a subject attempts to mentally view a remote location.

• 1973 - 1988: Edwin May reviewed all remote viewing experiments conducted at Stanford Research Institute (SRI). The experiments were successful overall, with combined odds against chance of more than a billion billion to one.
  

• 1989 - 1993: Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) obtained positive results that could not be explained by chance.
  

• 1978 - 1987: Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) remote viewing experiments produced positive results with odds against chance of 100 billion to one.
  

Precognition

• 1989: Charles Honorton and Diane Ferrari analyzed all "forced-choice" precognition experiments conducted by sixty two different investigators that were conducted from 1935 to 1987. In a these experiments, a test subject tried to predict which of a fixed number of objects would be selected at a later time. For these experiments, Honorton and Ferrari calculated odds against getting the same results by chance was 10²⁵ or ten million billion billion to one.
  

• Early 1980s: Holger Klintman conducted experiments where he showed a subject a color patch and asked the subject to name the color. Then the subject was shown a word for a color and asked to read the word. Klintman found that when the patch and the word were the same color, the reaction time for saying the color of the patch was faster even though the word for the color had not yet been displayed. He calculated the odds against chance for these results were 500,000 to 1.
  

• Before the publication of The Conscious Universe was published in 1997, Dean Radin explored a similar phenomenon by measuring the skin conductivity of a person (which is an indicator of sweat gland activity) as a series of images were shown. Sweat gland activity always increased just before an image was shown to the subject as the subject was waiting to see the next image. However, Radin found that if the image was one that would produce an emotional reaction, sweat gland activity increased more than for other images. He called this phenomenon "presentiment". Professor Dick Bierman reported replicating this phenomenon in 1996.
  

Psychokinesis

• William Crookes tested the psychic Daniel Dunglas Home in 1871 and proved telekinesis is real. Crookes tested Home under laboratory conditions that prevented fraud. Crookes described these experiments in his book: Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism.
  

• 1935: J. B. Rhine, Lousia Rhine, and colleagues at Duke University began experiments to see if mental intention could influence dice rolling. In 1989 Dianne Ferrari and Dean Radin analyzed the combined results of fifty two investigators from 1935 to 1987. They found mental intention could influence dice rolling, and they calculated the odds against obtaining the result by chance was more than a billion to one.
  

• 1959 - 1987: In 1987 Roger Nelson and Dean Radin combined the results of experiments in which a test subject tried to alter the results of a random number generator. They considered 832 studies (597 of which were conducted at PEAR) and found a positive result. They calculated the odds against obtaining this result by chance were more than a trillion to one.
  

Psychic Healing

In The End of Materialism Dr. Charles Tart writes:

For many years, when talking about parapsychological findings, I referred to the "big four," the four psi phenomena for which there was so much accumulated evidence that we could take them as the foundational findings of the field: three forms of ESP (telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition), plus PK. Each had hundreds of well-controlled experiments supporting its existence. In the last two decades, though, enough positive studies of psychic healing have been published (see www. stephanaschwartz.com for an extensive, current bibliography, with abstracts) that I now speak of the "big five."

The bibliography Dr. Tart mentions is Therapeutic Intent/Healing Bibliography of Research Compiled by Larry Dossey, M.D., and Stephan A. Schwartz

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Astronauts Say UFO's are Real

This excerpt from The Enduring Enigma of the UFO by Dean Radin quotes astronauts saying UFOs are real:

Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell repeatedly has said that high-ranking military officers have privately admitted that for many decades factions of the U.S. government have been aware that UFOs and alien technology are real. Many other astronauts have provided corroborating statements. Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter photographed a UFO while in orbit on May 24, 1962, later saying, “At no time when the astronauts were in space were they alone. There was a constant surveillance by UFOs.” In 1985, Mercury and Gemini astronaut Gordon Cooper, in an address to the United Nations, said: “I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets . . . For many years, I have lived with a secret, in a secrecy imposed on all specialists and astronauts. I can now reveal that every day, in the United States, our radar instruments capture objects of form and composition unknown to us. And there are thousands of witness reports and a quantity of documents to prove this, but nobody wants to make them public.” Such statements are not limited to U.S. astronauts. In 1979, Russian cosmonaut Victor Afanasyev commented on a UFO he saw while en route to the Solyut 6 space station: “It followed us during half of our orbit . . . It was an engineered structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls.” —DR

Astronaut Deke Slaton described an encounter with a UFO while he was flying a military plane.

As I closed on this thing, it looked like a weather balloon and that's what I presumed it was. I had plenty of gas and time so I decided I'd just come back around and make make a pass on it. I got around where I should have been coming back on this thing all of a sudden it didn't look like a balloon anymore. It looked like a saucer sitting on edge about a 45 degree angle. I didn't have any gun camera film on board unfortunately or I'd a shot some pictures of it. About that time I guess, whatever it was, for whatever reason, it took off climbing at about a 45 degree angle and and just accelerated and disappeared. I obviously couldn't follow it with an old piston engine fighter so I turned around went home.

---

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Why are Most Scientists Skeptics?

Someone in an internet discussion forum asked why most scientists are physicalists. A physicalist is someone who believes that all things can be explained in terms known to physics such as matter and forces of nature. Physicalists do not believe in psychic phenomena or the afterlife or that consciousness is not produced by the brain. None of these things can be explained by modern physics. I replied to that question with five reasons that most scientists are physicalists:

1. Habitual reductionist thinking prevents scientists from accepting anything that they can't explain in terms of simpler phenomena, such as non-physical consciousness, qualia, and psychic phenomena.
   
2. Indoctrination into philosophical naturalism during science education.
   
3. Psychological attachment to the status quo scientific world view because it is the source of their status and livelihood.
   
4. Fear of alternative means of obtaining knowledge about the universe that might supplant science as the most important source of knowledge. If you can ask a psychic or a spirit, why would you need scientists?
   
5. Persecution of heretics. If Nobel prize winning physicist Brian Josephson is ostracized because of his interest in psi, what chance does an ordinary scientist have?
   

References:

1. Habitual reductionist thinking prevents scientists from accepting anything that they can't explain in terms of simpler phenomena, such as non-physical consciousness, qualia, and psychic phenomena.
   

   Causes of skepticism
   

   Research has shown that people who think analytically rather than intuitively tend to be atheists. People who analyze problems using logic, because of their education, career, or innate characteristics, may become habituated to reductionist analysis. Reductionism is the belief that something complex can be understood by the interaction of simpler components. This way of thinking works well in many branches of science. Psychology can be explained in terms of biology, which can be explained in terms of chemistry, which can be explained in terms of physics. However, some scientists, engineers, philosophers, and other intellectuals, may become so habituated to reductionist thinking that they are unable to conceive that some phenomena cannot be explained in terms of simpler phenomena. For example, the subjective experience of consciousness, what pain feels like, or what red looks like, cannot be understood through reductionism. Psychic phenomena that cannot be explained by current scientific theories such as telepathy, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, and precognition cannot be understood through reductionism. This is why some people who are habituated to reductionist thinking simply cannot conceive that psychic phenomena could be real or consciousness might be nonphysical and survive bodily death. Reductionists suggest consciousness is an epiphenomenon even though that is a poor explanation of consciousness, because it is the best they can conceive of within their reductionist prison.
   

2. Indoctrination into philosophical naturalism during science education.
   

   T. H. Huxley: Accidental Founder of Modern Pseudo-skepticism
   

   Why are so many scientist skeptics? Because naturalism is an implicit part of the culture of science and science students are indoctrinated in that philosophy during their education. Naturalism is the belief that science should only study natural processes and consider natural explanations for phenomena. This is a mistake. Science should be the search for the truth where ever it leads. This flaw in the culture of science is due to a large extent to T. H. Huxley and the X club. The X Club was founded by T. H. Huxley and played an important role in making naturalism a fundamental tenet of modern science.

3. Psychological attachment to the status quo scientific world view because it is the source of their status and livelihood.
   

   Suppressed Parapsychology
   

   Dean Radin, in his book "The Conscious Universe" in the chapter "Seeing Psi" proposes that some scientists may have too much self interest in preserving the materialist status quo to be objective about psychic phenomena.
   

   ...
   

   It should be understood that Radin is not saying NAS members are deliberately dishonest about the existence of psychic phenomena. He is saying they are so caught up in the scientific world view, (for example, because they get a lot of personal status from it, or because they spend their careers defining that world view) that they are unconsciously unable to accept that the scientific world view might be so seriously flawed, that it could have such big gaps in it, that psychic phenomena could be real.
   

4. Fear of alternative means of obtaining knowledge about the universe that might supplant science as the most important source of knowledge. If you can ask a psychic or a spirit, why would you need scientists?
   

   Causes of skepticism
   

   Genuine psychic phenomena have been produced by ordinary people throughout the history of humankind. However, these phenomena were rejected by science for "political" reasons, not empirical reasons, when the scientific revolution deposed religion as the ultimate source of knowledge. Besides being seen as allied with religion, psychic phenomena are a competitor to science as a means of obtaining information about the universe. Therefore, some modern scientists have a lot of cultural baggage that prevent them from seeing the otherwise obvious evidence that some paranormal phenomena are real.
   

5. Persecution of heretics. If Nobel prize winning physicist Brian Josephson is ostracized for interest in psi, what chance does an ordinary scientist have?
   

   How to Run a Conference
   

   Certain invitees to a workshop on the Foundations of Physics received from the organisers letters withdrawing their invitations. The letter to Brian Josephson asserted:
   

   It has come to my attention that one of your principal research interests is the paranormal ... in my view, it would not be appropriate for someone with such research interests to attend a scientific conference.
   

   while a similar letter to David Peat asserted:
   

   "It has come to my attention that you are the author of books on Jungian synchronicity and quantum physics, and on connections between Native American Indian thought and modern physics ... in my view, it is not appropriate for an author of such books to attend a scientific conference."

   These letters illustrate well the defensive, paranoid attitudes of members of the scientific community such as those who pressed for this action to be taken; for such people, science equates to 'closed minded enquiry', in the light of which their action is in no way surprising.
   

Copyright © 2013 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

How to Cope with Being Psychic

Overview

Many people imagine that psychic abilities such as being able to talk to spirits or knowing the future can have a lot of advantages. However being psychic can also cause problems too. It can cause someone to feel different, isolated, confused, and at times it can be frightening.

The remedy for these difficulties is knowledge. If being psychic is causing problems for you, learn as much as you can about being psychic and what other people have experienced. When you know more about the kinds of phenomena that can occur, that there are other people who have the same experiences, how to control them where possible, and how to use them, you will begin to feel more comfortable with psychic experiences.

In particular, learning about the following subjects can make it easier to cope with being psychic:

• How to control the phenomena.
  
• Understanding, accepting and finding purpose in having psychic abilities.
  
• How it is possible for people to have psychic abilities.
  

However, there are limits to what can be accomplished by an article like this. If you are having problems caused by having psychic experiences and want to seek help from a mental health professional who has experience dealing with psychic and spiritual problems, there is a list of such professionals here.

Introduction

There are a wide variety of psychic abilities. If you are psychic, you might see and hear spirits, or sense them in other ways. You might have intuitions about future events. You might know what other people are going to say before they say it. Objects around you might move for no apparent reason, or electrical equipment may malfunction. You might have dreams of future events that come to pass, or dreams of events at distant locations that you can confirm. You might feel the emotions other people are feeling, or have other types of paranormal experiences.

If psychic phenomenon is not something you have studied before, you may feel alone, confused and frightened by this. If you don't know anyone else who is psychic and you have not read anything about being psychic you might not understand why or how you experience what you do. If you find yourself developing psychic abilities suddenly and unexpectedly, it can be confusing and frightening. Some people may wonder if being psychic is demonic, sinful, or a symptom of mental illness. Friends and family may be wondering the same thing. Peers, friends and family members may not believe psychic phenomena are possible, or they may have negative reactions to psychic phenomena. These things may cause someone who is psychic to feel confused, frightened, isolated, or abnormal.

This article is intended to help you learn to cope with psychic experiences and it is based on my knowledge of the difficulties experienced by people with psychic abilities. I have met many people who developed psychic abilities because I have been a member of several different Spiritualist churches. Spiritualist church services usually include a demonstration of mediumship and many of the people who attend the services are psychic too. Spiritualist churches usually offer classes in mediumship and healing and I have attended those types of classes so I have some experience with psychic abilities myself. I have also communicated over the internet with many people who have developed psychic abilities and I am currently a moderator of the Psychic Support Forum. This article discusses subjects you can learn about that will help you cope with being psychic and includes links to other articles with more information on many of these subjects.

If you are the parent of a child who has psychic abilities, you should also become familiar with this information and try to explain it to your child in a way he can understand. You should also understand that there is nothing evil about being psychic, many people have these kinds of experiences. If your child reports psychic experiences, react to them as if they were ordinary. You should not discourage your child or punish him for being psychic, but don't treat his psychic experiences as something very special either because you don't want to encourage your child to make up stories. You should also try to explain to your child that other people might not understand about his being psychic so he should be careful about who he talks to about his abilities.

If having psychic abilities is causing problems for you, there are several areas that you should learn more about:

• How to control the phenomena.
  
• Understanding, accepting and finding purpose in having psychic abilities.
  
• How it is possible for people to have psychic abilities.
  

How to Control the Phenomena.

Section Contents

• General Techniques
  
  • Meditation
    
  • Listen to Music
    
  • Practice Your Abilities
    
  • Prayer
    
  • Medication
    
• Sensing Spirits
  
• Psychokinesis
  
• Empathy: Sensing the Feelings and Emotions of Others
  
• Psychic Self-defense
  
• Phenomena that Might not be Psychic
  

Unfortunately, many psychics never develop the ability to completely shut down the phenomena or to turn them on at will. However there are things you can do to develop some control over them.

General Techniques

• Meditation If you are not a regular meditator you might try meditation because it can be calming and relaxing and this may help you cope better with your experiences. However be aware that meditation can also make one more psychically receptive because it quiets the analytical mind allowing greater awareness of the intuitive mind. If you are a meditator and you want to reduce your psychic receptivity you might try doing less meditation or stopping it completely.
  

  
  

• Listen to music. Listening to music can distract you from psychic perceptions when you don't want to be aware of them. If necessary turn the volume up but use head phones so you don't disturb the people around you and don't play the music so loud that you damage your hearing.
  

  
  

• Practice using your abilities deliberately. If you can learn to use your abilities when you want to, you may also improve your ability to not use them when you don't want to. This may help reduce spontaneous occurrences.
  

  
  

• Pray for guidance, assistance and protection. If you are not comfortable praying, you should try it anyway. When you are dealing with spiritual phenomena you must use the tools of spirituality. Just tell God what is bothering you or what you want. If you want help from divine or spiritual forces, often you have to ask for it before it can be given. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Part of spiritual maturity is understanding your part in the hierarchy of advanced beings helping less advanced beings. This means you should help other people when you can, but it also means it is your responsibility to ask for help when you need it. Cooperation, working together to accomplish something that cannot be done by an individual, is one of the most important spiritual values. Cooperation includes asking for help when you need it. Obviously, not every prayer will be answered but it is still useful for keeping communication open, for maintaining spiritual contact with the higher planes.
  

  • The most powerful prayer is to ask to be shown how to do something. This is almost always more effective than asking to be given something.
    

  • A good prayer for protection is: "Oh God, please watch over me and protect me so that only the highest and best forces can influence me."
    

  When you ask a question in prayer, try to be open to receiving an answer when you pray, but also understand an answer may come later when you might be more receptive or when circumstances can provide a symbolic answer or some other type of sign.

• In extreme cases medication may be helpful in curbing psychic perceptions.
  

Sensing Spirits

• How to Get Rid of Spirits
  

• If you are hearing voices, talk back politely.
  

• If you are sensing the presence of spirits, understand that you can be an active participant in the communication. You don't have to be a passive, silent observer:
  

  • If you would prefer the spirits to leave you alone, politely but firmly tell the spirits to stay away from you. If it is just an inconvenient time and you wouldn't mind if the spirit came back later, say so. If you don't like a certain spirit and want him to stay away permanently, say so. When you speak to spirits you can do it mentally, like with prayer, you don't have to speak out loud.
    

  • If the spirits are doing something you don't like, you should tell them, they may not realize the effect they are having on you. One medium I knew was so sensitive that when the spirits tried to explain to her how they died, it could be very unpleasant. She felt what they felt causing their death too strongly. She had to learn to tell the spirits not to communicate so intensely. The spirits didn't realize how they were affecting her but they would be more sensitive when she explained what the problem was.
    

  • Don't do something just because you think a spirit told you to do it. It is your life and you are here to learn from experiencing the consequences of your actions. Spirits may remind you of factors to consider, but they should not be giving you too much advice about how to run your life. Not every spirit has your best intentions in mind, and sometimes it is possible to misunderstand a spirit or to mistake an ordinary phenomena for a psychic perception (see below).
    

• Suggestions on how to handle possession.
  

Psychokinesis

If you are experiencing objects moving unexpectedly, hearing raps, or electrical equipment is turning on or off or otherwise malfunctioning, this may be due to unconscious psychokinesis (PK). If these phenomena are restricted to one location, and or do not depend on the presence of any one person, they may be caused by a spirit. If the phenomena seem to occur in different locations and only occur when you are present it is more likely to be psychokinesis. Psychokinesis is often a consequence of emotional upsets and dealing with the issues that are upsetting you may reduce the occurrence of unconscious PK.

• You can also try to use a psi wheel to develop control over psychokinesis. The linked article describes how make a psi wheel and turn it by placing your hand near it. If you can turn the wheel without placing your hand near it, practice that way.
  

Empathy: Sensing the Feelings and Emotions of Others

• Try to continue your daily routine and keep busy as much as possible so that your mind will be filled with mundane thoughts.
  

• Try sending spiritual healing energy to the person you are sensing the feelings of. The way you can do that is explained here: Spiritual Healing: You Can Do It. Taking practical steps to help the situation may make you feel better about it.
  

• Visualize a shield of white light surrounding yourself that protects you from outside emotions and feelings.
  

• Pray for, or ask your spirit guides for, help shielding you, or to help you understand how to shield yourself. I have found that asking to be shown how to do something myself is one of the most effective forms of prayer. Try to listen for an answer immediately after asking, but also be aware the answer might come later at an odd moment when you might be particularly receptive to perceiving it. See the section on Prayer for more information.
  

Psychic Self-defense

My article on psychic-self defense has additional information and links that may be helpful.

Phenomena that Might not be Psychic

Learn to distinguish between genuine psychic phenomenon and ordinary phenomenon that may appear to be psychic. People who are psychic are more likely to confuse ordinary phenomenon with psychic phenomenon, Because they have so many psychic experiences, psychics have a low threshold for accepting that something is psychic. There are two phenomenon you should be aware of that are relatively common and while they may seem psychic they may not be. Just like sometimes dreams may be precognitive or be communications from spirits but many dreams are not psychic at all, the first two phenomenon below may or may not be psychic.

• Sleep paralysis
  

• Hypnopomic hallucinations - are hallucinations that occur when waking up from sleep. They may seem very real but you should be suspicious of any type of psychic perception that occurs immediately upon waking, it may not be a psychic perception at all but just a hallucination.
  

• Hallucinations
  

• Fears or wishful thinking. One common mistake beginners make is that they confuse their own fears or wishful thinking with psychic perceptions. It can take a bit of experience to tell the difference. Genuine psychic perceptions are usually a type of "knowing" without emotional content. You might react emotionally to the information but your sense of the information does not come from an emotional part of your mind.
  

Understanding, accepting and finding purpose in having psychic abilities.

• Understand that you are not alone and that many other people have had these experiences.
  

• Learn more about the evidence for the afterlife.
  

• Learn more about the evidence for ESP and some of the different types of psychic perception.
  

• Learn more about what it means to be psychic and what people like you experience.
  

  • Get to know other people who have had psychic experiences.
    

    • The Psychic Support Forum is an on-line forum where you can meet other psychics and people who are interested in psychic phenomena and discuss anything you want.
      

    • Spiritualist churches are a good place to meet other psychics. The services usually include a demonstration of mediumship and offer spiritual healing to those in attendance who desire it. Spiritualism is a very tolerant and undogmatic religion. You can be any other religion or even an atheist and still go to Spiritualist services. There is often a social hour after the services for people to meet and get to know each other. Spiritualist churches also usually offer classes in mediumship and spiritual healing.
      

    • IANDS The International Association for Near-Death Studies has local groups in many locations. People who have near-death experiences often have psychic experiences too.
      

    • You may be able to meet other psychic on-line through Internet discussion forums.
      

  • Read biographies of psychics so you can learn about what other psychics have experienced and how they coped with it.
    

  • Reading about scientific studies and other investigations of psychic phenomenon can also be helpful.
    

  • Here are some web sites and blogs with articles on psychic phenomena:
    

    • Psychic FAQ at the Psychic Support Forum.
      

    • Spiritual Development My web site.
      

    • Life in B Flat This blog.
      

    • The Frequently Asked Questions page from this blog.
      

    • Zerdini's World
      

    • Paranormalia Journalist Robert McLuhan's blog.
      

    • Entangled Minds Parapsychologist Dean Radin's blog.
      

    • Michael Tymn's blog.
      

• Find meaning in your abilities.
  

  • Some psychics learn to use their abilities to help other people by giving psychic readings, helping people to communicate with spirits, or giving spiritual healings. If you want to use your abilities to help other people, you should find a competent teacher who can help you develop your abilites and guide you on how to use them ethically and responsibly.
    

  • Some psychics find meaning in their abilities by studying them scientifically to contribute to humankind's understanding of the phenomena. If you become involved with scientists studying paranormal phenomena, make sure they have a set of guidelines on the ethical treatment of human subjects in scientific experiements. Read and understand those guidelines. Know if your privacy and anonymity will be respected. Also find out if the investigator will profit from your participation through books and lectures about his research on you. Avoid any type of public contest or challange designed to prove the reality of paranormal phenomena. The mass media and skeptical organizations are not interested in helping psychics. They are interested in promoting themselves.
    

    Further reading on participating in research:
    

    • Ingo Swann's on-line book Remote Viewing - The Real Story describes his experiences as an experimental subject and you would be wise to follow his guidelines for participating in research described in Chapter 20.
      

    • Is participating in Psi research a good idea? by Sandy
      

    • My First Time (participating in Psi research) by Sandy
      

How it is Possible for People to Have Psychic Abilities.

It is possible for you to have psychic experiences because a human being is a spirit incarnated in a physical body. Psychic abilities are abilities that come from our spiritual nature. They are the abilities we have before we are born into the physical world and that we will have again when we leave the physical world after the death of the body. People who have near-death experiences experience expanded consciousness while they are out of their bodies and experience many types of psychic phenomena such as precognition, clairvoyance, and spirit communication. For most people, the brain filters out these abilities while they are in the body but in some cases these abilities make it through and we have access to them while we are incarnated.

More Information

If you are interested in spirits and the afterlife, there is a lot more information on those subjects at my web site.

Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Dean Radin Interviews Julie Beischell: Can Mediums Really Talk to the Dead?

Dean Radin Interviews Julie Beischell: Can Mediums Really Talk to the Dead?

Radin: One of the things I think is unique about Windbridge is the large number of mediums that have passed through a variety of hoops to make sure that they are actually as good as they think they are. Would you describe this process of forming what you call the research medium?

Beischel: We have an eight-step process. First, I should point out that we’re not looking for any new mediums. We have a bunch going through the eight steps at this time—currently the six mediums on our website have passed all eight steps. I won’t go through them all now; there are a lot of tests, interviews, and blinded readings. Once a person passes step five, the blinded reading part, he or she goes on to be trained. We’ve found that about 25 percent of people who think they’re good enough to pass our stringent testing do no better than chance.

Objects That Contain Healing Power

This is the fourth post in my series on psi wheels.

In the first post, I discussed how everyone can measure the energy field surrounding their body with a psi wheel and how to use a psi wheel to measure this energy as you bring it into and through your body when you practice spiritual healing. In the second post, I discussed how the psi wheel shows that the energy in the field surrounding the body is the same as the energy that flows through you when you give spiritual healing to another person. In the third post I discussed using qi gong to increase the flow of healing energy (qi) through your body to help develop your abilities as a spiritual healer.

In this post I will discuss how to use an Egely wheel (a very sensitive psi wheel manufactured by the Egely Research Company) to demonstrate that healing energy can be stored in inanimate objects.

(The Videos shown below are only provided to illustrate the apparatus and phenomena that I have written about for those who are interested and who may want to try reproduce it themselves. The videos are too short in length and too close to the subject to be considered as proof of the phenomena. Since it is impossible to proving anything with a video, I have no plans to make more convincing videos. The proof of the phenomena will come when others reproduce them. One of the phenomena, turning a psi wheel covered by a jar by placing a hand on the jar, has been reported by many others. I am not aware of anyone else who has reported the second phenomenon: using the jar by itself to turn the wheel.)

When I first learned spiritual healing at a Spiritualist church I was taught that a healer can put healing energy into an inanimate object and then if another person holds that object, the healing energy will be transferred to the other person. I was able to test and confirm part of this belief using an Egely wheel. I was doing a healing meditation and monitoring the flow of healing energy with an Egely Vitality Meter. This is a very sensitive psi wheel. To be totally certain that no air currents were influencing the wheel I used a jar turned upside down to cover the wheel. The jar was made out of plastic, recycle number 1, PETE. I put my hand on the jar to spin the wheel. This is a very inefficient way to turn a psi wheel and the wheel turns much slower when covered with a jar - which is why I use the more sensitive Egely wheel when doing this rather than my homemade psi wheels. While this was occurring, I took the following video of it:

After meditating this way for twenty minutes, ten minutes with each hand turning the Egely wheel under the jar, I tried an experiment to see if the jar had retained any healing energy. I took away the jar covering the Egely wheel and waited for it to stop turning. Then I placed the jar near the wheel and took my hand away from it. The Egely wheel began to turn. While I did this, I took the video of it shown below. After several rotations I moved the jar away from the wheel and it soon stopped turning. I put the jar near it again and it began to turn once more. Another time, I let the jar turn the wheel for ten minutes. This length of time would rule out the possibility that the motion was caused by air currents created when the jar was placed near the wheel. I then took the jar away and the wheel stopped turning after a few seconds. Since the wheel stopped turning when the jar was removed, it is unlikely that air currents could be the cause of the movement of the wheel when the jar was next to it. I put the jar back and the wheel resumed turning and continued to turn for several minutes until I stopped the experiment.

This phenomenon is consistent with another observation about psi wheels. Psi wheels seem to turn in the opposite direction when they are under a jar than when they are uncovered and exposed directly to a hand. Usually, a psi wheel will turn clockwise when the left hand is placed near it and counterclockwise when the right hand is placed near it. However, if a jar is placed over the wheel, the wheel will turn clockwise when the right hand is placed near it and counterclockwise when the left hand is placed near it. This phenomenon suggests that the wheel is not turning inside the jar because some force field from the hand penetrates the jar, but because the force field from the hand induces a field in the jar - like two gears that turn in opposite directions when their teeth mesh. Interestingly the Egely wheel (and a home psi wheel to a lesser extent) is shaped like a gear. If a field is induced in the jar, it seems possible that the jar might retain the field once the hand was taken away as if it was magnetized (a la Franz Mesmer). This would explain why the jar without a hand near it would also cause the psi wheel to turn, whereas if it was simply the energy from the hand penetrating the jar that turned a covered wheel, that would not explain why a jar could turn a wheel without a hand near it.

These observations seem to confirms the belief that healing energy can be stored in inanimate objects. There is some scientific evidence in this area. Dean Radin published an article, Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood in the Elsevier journal Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, Volume 3, Issue 5, Pages 433-546 (September 2007), which describes how chocolate which had been prayed over elevated the mood of the people who ate it.

Update 9/5/12: I tried a slightly different experiment today. First I placed the plastic jar near the Egely wheel to make sure it did not have any residual "magnetism". Then, I did the healing meditation for five minutes turning two homemade psi wheels, one with each hand. Next, I stopped using any psi wheel and continued meditating with my right hand on the plastic jar in the same position as if it had the Egely wheel under it but without the wheel. After ten minutes with my hand on the jar, I placed the jar next to a stationary Egely wheel and took my hand away. The wheel began to spin counterclockwise and continued to turn until I moved the jar away after five minutes, then the wheel stopped turning.

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Dean Radin: Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments

In the recent past, I have posted about the ability of consciousness to influence the physical world at the level of quantum mechanics and in the brain. This shows that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon, nor is it an illusion, and that conscisouness cannot be produced by matter or physical processes. Many of the founders of quantum mechanics such as Erwin Schrödinger, and Max Planck believed this to be true.

Now Dean Radin has published a research paper describing more evidence of this. His latest experiments show how meditators concentrating on an experimental apparatus can cause a photon to change from a wave to a particle. He used a double slit apparatus and found that when meditators concentrated on the apparatus, the interference pattern caused by light waves decreased and the pattern more closely resembled that which would be caused by particles rather than waves.

Consciousness and the double-slit interference pattern: Six experiments Dean Radin Leena Michel, Karla Galdamez, Paul Wendland, Robert Rickenbach, and Arnaud Delorme, PHYSICS ESSAYS 25, 2 (2012)

Abstract: A double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wavefunction. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double-slit spectral power to its single-slit spectral power was predicted to decrease when attention was focused toward the double slit as compared to away from it.


...

factors associated with consciousness, such as meditation experience, electrocortical markers of focused attention, and psychological factors including openness and absorption, significantly correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double-slit interference pattern. The results appear to be consistent with a consciousness-related interpretation of the quantum measurement problem.
© 2012 Physics Essays Publication. [DOI: 10.4006/0836-1398-25.2.157]

Copyright © 2012 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Mesmerism: How Science Adapts and Adopts Spiritual Phenomena

Over at Dean Radin's blog there is a post speculating that the study of quantum entanglement may lead mainstream science to the discovery of telepathy.

It will be nice if and when that happens, but I doubt one discovery will overthrow materialism.

The example of how mesmerism evolved into hypnotism shows how science corrupts a spiritual phenomena when it is adapted and adopted by mainstream science.

Mesmerism is a paranormal phenomena first demonstrated by Franz Mesmer a German physician who was born in the 18th century. The mesmerist "mesmerized" the subject merely by waving his hands around the person in a process called "making passes". This was believed to demonstrate "animal magnetism". The subject came under the influence of the mesmerist the way a steel needle may be magnetized by rubbing it with a magnet. Being mesmerized was a form of spiritual healing and in some cases could lead to psychic perceptions such as clairvoyance or obedience to the thoughts of the mesmerist.

At first, mesmerism was considered complete hogwash by mainstream scientists. In the long run, the facts couldn't be ignored when patient after patient underwent painless surgery after being mesmerized in the days before anesthetics. However, mainstream scientists digested only what they could swallow and mesmerism evolved into modern hypnotism. Spiritual healing was jettisoned or replaced with suggestion. Psychic perceiving was relegated to a fringe anomaly and ignored by most scientists. Passes were replaced with a verbal induction into a deeply relaxed state.

(Therapeutic touch is a modern method of energy healing similar to mesmerism in that the healer moves their hands near the patient but without touching them in a manner that is similar to the passes of mesmerism. However the patient is not entranced. This is practiced in some hospitals by nurses in the US, but it is not generally accepted by mainstream science.)

From studying the example of mesmerism, one may speculate that if telepathy is demonstrated by physicists, it will not end science's materialist orientation. Scientists studying quantum entanglement and telepathy may discover the interface between the spirit and the brain at the quantum level, but scientists may not recognize the spirit's role in the process of telepathy. Instead, they may start searching for a physical link between brains. If this happens, it could take another century or more for science to take the next step towards full knowledge of our spiritual nature.

Will this happen? I hate to make predictions, especially about the future, but historically there is very little reason to be optimistic that one discovery will eliminate materialism. Science tends to evolve gradually rather than drastically.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Mind Machine Interface

A few days ago, The Daily Grail had a link to the Interchange Laboratories web site:

Interchange Laboratories, Inc. has developed a mind-machine interface technology that has the advantage of being non-contact and non-invasive. This technology operates without the need for detecting low fidelity brain waves or nerve signals.

The MMIP technology is based on interactions at the subatomic level where the distinction between mind and matter disappears and effects become instantaneous over any distance

Research conducted at Princeton University’s PEAR Laboratory (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research) has shown that non-contact mind-machine influence is a quantifiable phenomenon unconstrained by time and space, (non-local phenomenon).

I asked Dean Radin about this in the comments section on his blog. A brief conversation ensued.

There is a pdf file on the Interchange Laboratories web site describing some of their research. Their system consists of a computer connected to an electronic device that can be influenced by psi at the quantum level called a mind machine interface processor (MMIP). The computer displays the MMIP output on a graphical user interface. If a user mentally influences the MMIP, the changes appear on the user interface.

This connection between the psi detector and computer seems to me to be a first step towards another more advanced approach to a psi interface. It might be possible have a person try to mentally influence the MMIP and have the computer watch how that effects the MMIP. Then software could analyze what happens and the computer could learn how different intentions of the individual influence the MMIP. Instead of requiring a person to learn to control the MMIP, the computer learns to interpret how the person affects the MMIP. This might be a good application for a neural network architecture.

Once the computer is trained, each user would influence the MMIP in their own individual way and the computer, which has learned how to translate the changes in the MMIP to user intentions, would control a device according to its interpretation of the user's intentions. The computer might update its understanding of the users intentions periodically to accomodate changes in the user's influence on the MMIP that might occurr over time.

The computer might be able to recognize different users because of characteristic ways each would influence the MMIP. This could provide security and increased sensitivity. The computer could only allow recognized, authorized users to control devices. Fourier transform analysis might allow the computer to separate out one individual's intentions from psychic noise or from other user's who might be trying to influence the MMIP at the same time.

If the mental effects on one MMIP are not subtle enough to distinguish between different users, perhaps an array of MMIPs in one, two, or three dimensions would have enough resolution.

If this technology becomes widespread, the individual characterisits of each user might be stored in a portable form such as an magnetic strip on an ID card or data on an RIFD chip. That way the user would not have to train every device they used.

Spiritualism and Science

Dean Radin's blog has a new post: My faith was broken ...

It's about criticism published elsewhere on the internet of the NPR story I blogged about a few days ago. The criticism argued that parapsychology is an attempt to use science to support religion.

I thought that was amusing.

To a Spiritualist, the idea that parapsychology is a means of supporting religion is comical.

While parapsychologists are struggling with small effect sizes and decline effects in their labs, and at the same time debating the merits of the the super-psi hypothesis to explain the evidence for the afterlife, spirit communication and spiritual healing are facts of every day life for Spiritualists.

The ancient Egyptians built the pyramids without scientists, the Romans built roads across Europe without scientists, the Chinese developed gunpowder, and movable type without scientists. Ships sailed across the seas long before Bernoulli discovered the principle which explained their motion. In certain fields of endeavor, science is not necessary. As any shaman knows, psi is one of them. In fact, our understanding of psi would be further advanced without Science because mainstream science has only hindered research on psi.

For 150 years, while Science has been ignoring psi, Spiritualists have been demonstrating psi, educating people about psi, and training people in the use of psi. During that entire period, Science has been trying to deny the existence of psi. When it comes to psi, there is more intellectual honesty in Spiritualism than mainstream science.

Parapsychology and psychical research are interesting and I hope eventually they will increase our knowledge about psi. But, even though you can find support for Spiritualism in psychology, parapsychology, and quantum physics, right now, Spiritualists are years ahead of the scientists when it comes to using psi. Parapsychologists will find more support for their science in a Spiritualist church than a Spiritualist will find support in parapsychology labs for many years to come.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?

Npr.org has an interesting article on the healing power of thought.

Can Positive Thoughts Help Heal Another Person?
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

In the mid-1990s, when having HIV was akin to a death sentence, Ironson noticed that a number of patients like Kaplan never got sick. Ironson wanted to know why. And she found something surprising.

"If you ask people what's kept you going so long, what keeps you healthy, often people would say spirituality," she says. "It was something that just kept coming up in the interviews, and that's why I decided to look at it."

The article also describes research being done by Dean Radin:

After running 36 couples through this test, the researchers found that when one person focused his thoughts on his partner, the partner's blood flow and perspiration dramatically changed within two seconds. The odds of this happening by chance were 1 in 11,000. Three dozen double blind, randomized studies by such institutions as the University of Washington and the University of Edinburgh have reported similar results.

Copyright © 2009 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.