Lawrence LeShan - A New Science of the Paranormal: The Promise of Psychical Research

A
NEW SCIENCE OF
THE PARANORMAL

Other Books

by Lawrence LeShan

The Psychosomatic Aspects of Neoplastic Disease (coedited with David Kissen)

Counseling the Dying (with Margaretta K. Bowers, Edgar N. Jackson, and James A. Knight)

Towards a General Theory of the Paranormal (mongraph)

The Medium, the Mystic, and the Physicist

How to Meditate

Alternate Realities

You Can Fight for Your Life: Emotional Factors in the Development of Cancer

Einsteins Space and Van Goghs Sky (with Henry Margenau)

The Mechanic and the Gardener: Understanding the Wholistic Revolution in Medicine

The World of the Paranormal: The Next Frontier

Cancer as a Turning Point

The Dilemma of Psychology

The Psychology of War

Meditating to Attain a Healthy Body Weight

Beyond Technique: Bringing Psychotherapy into the Twenty-First Century

An Ethic for the Age of Space: A Touchstone for Conduct among the Stars

Patriotism for Grownups: How to Be a Citizen in the Twenty-First Century (with Eda LeShan)

The Pattern of Evil: Myth, Social Perception, and the Holocaust

The Mallorca Conference on Human Potentialities (with Arthur Twitchell)

A
NEW SCIENCE OF
THE PARANORMAL

THE PROMISE OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH

Lawrence LeShan, Ph.D.

Learn more about Lawrence LeShan and his work at http://www.cancerasaturningpoint.org/

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Copyright 2009 by Lawrence LeShan

First Quest Edition 2009

Quest Books

Theosophical Publishing House

PO Box 270

Wheaton, IL 60187-0270

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Cover image 2009 German Ariel Berra, from BigStockPhoto.com

Cover design by Kirsten Hansen Pott

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A new science of the paranormal: the promise of psychical research / Lawrence LeShan.1st Quest ed.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8356-0877-0

1. Parapsychology. I. Title.

BF1031.L435 2009

ISBN for electronic edition, e-pub format: 978-0-8356-2074-1

5 4 3 2 1 * 09 10 11 12 13 14

To Gertrude Schmeidler, Ph.D.,
who taught so many of us so much about psychical research

What if you slept?

And what if,

In your sleep,

You dreamed?

And what if,

In your dream,

You went to heaven

And there plucked a strange and beautiful flower?

And what if,

When you awoke,

You had that flower in your hand?

Ah, what then?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Humanity has dreamed and has awakened with a strange and beautiful flower in its hands. The flower is the solid and impossible data that psychical research has produced. Now we must face the question. Ah! What then?

Lawrence LeShan

Psychic Research and the Consistency of the Universe

O ne morning in the late 1960s, three of us were sitting and talking in the New York City headquarters of the Parapsychology Foundation (an organization devoted to the study of paranormal phenomena). There were Martin Ebon, executive director of the foundation; Betha Pontorno, its secretary; and I, who was there under a research grant. Eileen J. Garrett, the foundations president, came in. She was the premier psychic of the period, a woman of unquestionable integrity who had spent the last fifty years trying to understand the meaning of her mediumship. (She had been analyzed by C. G. Jung in this search and been examined by a wide variety of scientists.) In the 1920s and 30s she had worked extensively in London with a psychic researcher named Hereward Carrington.

Mrs. Garrett greeted us, and we went into her office to discuss the days work. She told us about a curious dream she had had during the night. She said, I dreamed Carrington came into my room and told me to take care of his wife, who needed me. He also said that while I was doing this, I should look for a box of very important research papers under the bed that was being ruined by a wallaby sleeping on them.

We then speculated briefly about the meaning of this dream (Carrington had been dead for over twenty years) and then moved on to other matters.

The next morning Mrs. Garrett came in early, called us into her office, and said, We are in trouble. I know myself. Last night I dreamed Carrington came again into my bedroom, very angry. He said he had told me his wife needed me and I had done nothing about it. He then kicked me out of bed, and I woke up on the floor.

None of us had the faintest idea where Carringtons widow would now be. Our only clue was that she was English; if she was still alive, the best place to start looking for her was in England. We made a list of the leading older psychic researchers in England who might have an inkling where we could find her. Then we each took a part of the list and started telephoning. We reached six or seven of them, and none had the slightest notion where she might be or even if she were still alive. When we came up dry, Mrs. Garrett called someone she knew high up in the tax department of Great Britain. After a good deal of cajoling (to which we all listened on the extensions), we located the last known address. It was (as readers of Agatha Christie have already guessed) a cottage out on the moors in Devon. Mrs. Garrett then called the local police station and said that she had been talking to someone in the area who told her that they had just passed the cottage and that something seemed very wrong there.

A local constable went to the cottage and found Mrs. Carrington. She was in her late eighties. She had fallen three days before and broken a hip, and had been unable to get up. She was on the floor, had soiled herself, had had nothing to eat but an apple, and was in very bad shape. No one was expected to come to the cottage for the next three days. She would probably have been dead by then. They had taken her to a local hospital by ambulance.

When Mrs. Carrington was stabilized, Mrs. Garrett arranged to have her taken to a large hospital in London to be put under the care of a leading physician there whom Eileen had known for many years. We called the Society of Psychical Research in London, and they sent someone out to the cottage. There was a box of papers under the bed, but it consisted only of things that should have been thrown out thirty years before, shopping lists, paid gas bills, and so forth. Of a wallaby there was no sign.