PSI Annual Journal 1998

Parapsychology is fun. In spite of all the mythology which people try to scare themselves with – such as the terror movies I see advertised – the real effect of ESP and metaphysics is on the positive side of human nature. Almost everyone has had some experiences which could be called outside of the ordinary sense phenomena. However, there are many misleading ideas prevalent.

Most of the terror movies are as phony as the mythical brandy keg the St. Bernard dogs are supposed to carry. I think that such movies show either that we are more childish than we usually like to consider or that we do not understand ourselves very well, or both. In fact, when some people hear about the course of study call Silva Mind Control, they erroneously assume that one learns to control another’s mind. The real truth is that any human being has difficulty in trying to control his own mind. If you don’t believe me, try making your mind blank. It is impossible, except momentarily, unless you use special techniques, and it is not desirable without guidance.

Tom Clifton says that I should define some terms so that we will all know what I am talking about. PSI – capital letters PSI – I am going to use to cover all the following terms, such as ESP, meaning “extrasensory perception”, which is Dr. Rhine’s usage, or it can mean “enhanced sensory projection”. Telepathy means communication at a distance by what is thought to be unknown means. Clairvoyance – literally, “clear seeing” - means the ability to perceive things out of the usual range of human senses. Precognition is knowing about an event before it happens. Psychokinesis refers to moving something by means of psychic mental power. Psychometry is reading something about a person from touching one of his or her possessions, such as ring or a watch. Parapsychology is a term meaning “beyond psychology” and is used to designate those human events which are not explainable by means of our present scientific knowledge.

People are afraid of the unknown, and they tend to see things in terms of familiar cultural phenomena. When someone speaks of unfamiliar subjects such as ESP, hypnotism, I Ching, astrology, Yoga, Zen, Sufis, the speaker is considered a little weird – not having both oars in the water – or one whose elevator does not go all the way to the top.

The only view of the universe which could explain so many diverse phenomena is a universe in which everything is related to everything else closely enough so that each object gives clues to the rest of the universe. Then what we construct as our view of reality is a map of what we sense or are aware of in the world. PSI is a way of perceiving another dimension on such a map.

One of the recent theories about our view of reality sees the mind and the universe as being holographic. There is not time to describe a hologram except to say that it is a three-dimensional light-picture which is described as an ancient Hindu sutra as follows:

“In the heaven of Indra there is said to be a network of pearls arranged so that if you look at one you see all the others reflected in it. In the same way, each object in the world is not merely itself but involves every other object, and in fact is in every other object.”

If you are skeptical about humankind’s being related, try figuring how many ancestors you have, going back about a thousand years or so, and you will find that you have more ancestors than there were people in that part of the world. For instance, at 20 generations, figuring 30 years per generation, you would have had 1,048,564 ancestors in the year 1382. In the year 1082, going back 30 generations, your ancestors would number 1,073,824. This would be your ancestors. Mine would also number the same. Therefore, if we had different ancestors, there would have to be 2,147,482,648 of them, and there were not that many people in Europe, or perhaps not even in the entire world. So, many of your ancestors and mine were the same people. The resulting conclusion must be that we are all more closely related than one might imagine and we all carry some of the same genes. I think that this sort of realization may have led Carl Jung to reach his concept of the collective unconscious.
Given our relationship, it may not seem so strange that people can read others’ thoughts if they try to do it. This close relationship also leads us into the idea of brotherhood, or siblinghood if you wish, which is one of the important tenets of Unitarian Universalism.

I am going to try to explain why PSI has been judged to be an appropriate study for Unitarian Universalists. It is of little moment whether you believe in PSI. If it is true, neither belief nor disbelief will greatly affect a truth. In general, though, a positive, supportive attitude is much more likely to produce the best results in PSI experiments.

Just in case you have not heard of Olga Worrall’s experiments in England, you should know that under carefully controlled conditions she generated wave patterns in an atomic cloud chamber and altered the surface tension of water samples in a laboratory located some distance from where she was. Indeed, she has performed such experiments a number of times and always with success.

Almost every one of us has had some experience which is not explainable by our usual ways of thinking. Those people who are called “psychics” say that everyone can be a psychic – or be sensitive to impressions beyond the orthodox senses. I believe this myself. Years ago I was very skeptical about telepathy, clairvoyance, and so forth. I was certain that these matters could be explained by a more-developed scientific analysis. Yet, try as I could, there were some happenings for which I could find no rational explanation. One example was someone called an idiot-savant. The man I saw was in an asylum and seemed to have little comprehension of current affairs. My cousin was a psychiatrist at that asylum. He asked me to tell the man a date. I gave him my birth date, and he immediately told me that it had been on a Wednesday, which was correct. My cousin told me that this person could name the day for any date accurately, but could do only the simplest of mathematical problems otherwise.

Since that time, I have had much enlightenment in the direction of PSI experiences. Since studying Eastern thought, I know that it is possible to recall past happenings, even back to the birth experience. To give you a notion of what can be done with a simple experiment: suppose you have mislaid your automobile keys. If quiet meditation will not give you the answer to the question of their location, make a pendulum and decide on a direction of the pendulum’s swing that means “yes” and decide on a direction that means “no”. Then concentrate on the keys. Ask yourself, “Did I leave them in the car?” Let an answer happen. There is no guarantee that one’s keys will be found, but realize that this method is one way of getting to a memory that is hidden from your conscious mind.

In speaking about things hidden from the conscious mind, I recall some instances which some people would derisively regard as spirit visitation in the 1950’s and 60’s: It was reported that apparently the spirits of departed citizens came back to vote for their candidates in both Chicago and Texas. These spirits, even though they had “shuffled off this mortal coil”, showed remarkable loyalty to the Democrats in their voting.

A well-documented study is that of animals or birds separated from their owner who then find their owners without any possibility of having known where they are located. There is a theory that in our evolution human beings lost their ability for psychic communication when they learned to communicate by talking, which is a much more certain method than psychic communication.

Now the question is no longer “Does it happen?” but “How do we explain it?” It is no longer a scientific heresy. Since 1969 the Unitarian Universalist Psi Symposium has been devoting time to the study of PSI phenomena and relating the results to a liberal religious view.

In this search for PSI’s relation to religion, there are several points made, especially by Richard M. Fewkes, President of the UU PSI Symposium:

First: It is a part of our search for truth. People have a right to know their full capabilities and to find worthy goals to pursue.

Second: We may understand differently the “miracles” of Jesus which have been dismissed by many as myths or legends. They may have been examples of psychokinesis or psychic healing by a highly evolved human being. In more recent times, the instances of healing by Edgar Cayce, Olga Worrall, and others, may fall into this category.

Third: The study of ESP gives a new basis for understanding the potential effectiveness of prayer and meditation. As Dr. J.B. Rhine, exponent of parapsychology studies at Duke University, has noted: “If prayer is effective and the thoughts of men do reach out to other personalities in the universe beyond the range of the senses, it much be through the medium of extrasensory perception.

Fourth: The study of ESP and PSI raises the question of the possibility of the survival of the soul or spirit after bodily death and event the possibility of its pre-existence before physical birth.

If during the lifetime the psyche or spirit can transcend time before death, why not before birth and after death? We do not really know much about time except our own concept of linear time.

These possibilities point toward the concept of reincarnation. Now, reincarnation is not possible from a scientific viewpoint; but then, thirty years ago every physician knew that it was impossible for an individual to control his own blood pressure, heartbeat, and other body autonomic systems – except that now we can learn to do it by biofeedback, and Yogis have been able to do it for many centuries. I might remind you that for many years in this country Yogis were thought to be faking the unusual control of the body until Swami Rama proved he could do these things in experiments at the Menninger Clinic.
It is the belief of those who study such matters that anyone can be psychic. About one fifth of the experimenters seem to produce results without effort. In order to attain a state of heightened consciousness or an altered state of awareness, it is best to learn how to relax properly, to be in good health -–avoiding drugs such as alcohol, caffeine and nicotine, also other excesses of food – and finally, to learn to meditate.

Meditation is basically a focusing inward. It is a way of discovering connections with the unconscious mind. It has been said humorously that “meditation is not what you think”. It took me a little time to understand the full meaning of that sentence, but it is true. Meditation does not belong to the logical, rational side of the brain, but provides a way of transcending space and time. This experience is in the area of enlightenment. It is how scientific hypotheses are conceived or intuited – not explained or verified.

I hope I have interested you in some of these PSI possibilities and perhaps discounted some doubts which you may have had. I invite you to join the PSI Symposium with the possibility that we can have a chapter in this locality. I hope also that when you say “Oh, that was probably just my imagination” you will consider just what your imagination really is and who it is who is imagining. Is it your body, your mind, your spirit or soul, or perhaps a Self that is more than all of these together, a higher Self?

Further, it is my dream that humankind will evolve toward a far better understanding of itself so that people will develop far enough so that they will be worthy of exploring the universe and know how to conduct themselves to advance a great future for all people. I think that we have a potential to be capable of accomplishments beyond our fondest dreams.

T.S. Eliot has written something which I should like to share with you:

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

There is a Sanskrit word which we use in Yoga practice which I think fits our denomination. It is Namaste, which means: “I salute the Divinity within you”.

1 Emma Hardinge, Modern American Spiritualism (New York, 1870) p. 222
2 Andrew Jackson Davis, “The New Motive Power”. Spiritual Telegraph, (June, 1854) p.191
3 Hardinge, p.229

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Breeden, Robert L., Those Inventive Americans. National Geographic Society, 1971.
Davis, Andrew Jackson Davis, “The New Motive Power”, The Spiritual Telegraph, June 1854, pp.182-192.

Fodor, Nandor. “John Murray Spear”, An Encyclopedia of Psychic Science, the Citadel Press, Secaucus, NJ, 1974, pp. 354-5.

Hardinge, Emma . Modern American Spiritualism. NY 1970.

Hewitt, S.C. Messages from the Superior State. Hobart and Robbins, Boston, 1852.

Martin, Walter R. The Kingdom of the Cults. Bethany Fellowship. Minneapolis. 1965.

Spear, John Murray. “Labors for the Prisoner”. No. 3. Boston, 1850.

Williams, George H. American Universalism. Beacon Press. Boston. 1976.

PSI Symposium Annual Journal 1998