N onsense! barked the man in the pin-striped suit. There isnt a shred of evidence for psychic phenomena! The clacking sound of the rails punctuated his blunt dismissal.
His companion, a young woman with luminous eyes and an immense halo of hair, was unimpressed. Harry, she said, glaring at him, the evidence is staring you in the face.
When I had boarded the commuter train a few minutes earlier, I was looking forward to an uneventful trip. But as the train started to move, two latecomers rushed in and took the seats next to me. Their argument had clearly been percolating for some time.
Harry was an advertisement for Brooks Brothers, complete with attach case and Wall Street Journal tucked under one arm. She was dressed in saffron and carried a well-worn book bag.
In my meditation last night, she said, pouting, I received a message from Zeron.
Harry rolled his eyes and, voice dripping with sarcasm, said, Would that be the Zeron from the planet Pluto or the Zeron from Atlantis?
Oh, the one from Atlantis, of course. You know the Plutonians arent telepathic! We communed mentally through his dolphin friends. He said my psychic abilities would improve if I got my aura cleaned.
Harrys smirk at lifes stupidity had permanently creased his forehead with an angry gash, but this last remark caused a vein to leap forward. Exasperated, he caught my eye, leaned over, and said in a stage whisper, Shirleys gone off the deep end with all that New Age crap. I uttered a noncommittal grunt, not wishing to get sucked into what appeared to be a long-standing disagreement.
But I did not have the luxury of remaining neutral, for Shirley overheard the remark and righteously replied, If you just listened to Zeron for once, you wouldnt be such a skeptic. His words are pure truth!
More like pure bull, he grumbled. There isnt a shred of evidence for ESP, telepathy, or any of that hokum. Not one shred.
She protested: If you feel it, thats proof enough. You just live in your head too much.
Sensing a concession, Harry bellowed, Your belief about ESP doesnt mean its true! It just says that you believe its true. If science hasnt proved it, then it isnt true! Its just superstitious, mythological, folkloric, mumbojumbo, mystical crap.
I couldnt stand this anymore, so I said, Excuse me, but I couldnt help but overhear your conversation. Actually there is quite a bit of scientific evidence for psychic phenomena. They really do exist.
Shirley smiled beatifically, pressed her palms together, and said Bless you with a bow. At the same time, Harrys expression snapped into such a stupendous grimace, with one eye squeezed tight and the other twitching like a guppy out of water, that I was a little concerned that his head might explode. I quickly added, On the other hand, regardless of how persuasive your personal psychic experiences may be, science has shown time and again that personal beliefs are often mistaken.
After my little speech, both of my new acquaintances adopted scowls for different reasons. Shirleys face wavered between awe and bewilderment, while Harry narrowed his one functioning eye and said suspiciously, What makes you think you know anything?
I sighed, realizing that I had just made a mistake. From past experience, I knew that it would take about six hours of discussion about science, history, psychology, and physics just to reach the starting ground of educated opinion.
I wanted to explain to Harry and Shirley that what many people think they know about psychic phenomena aint necessarily so. I wanted to de scribe how scientists have essentially proven that psi exists, using the same well-accepted experimental methods familiar to scientists in many disciplines. I also wanted to explain why hardly anyone knew this yet. But no one likes a lecture, so instead I wished I just had a book I could hand to them that would explain all this for me.
This is that book.
The psyches attachment to the brain, i.e., its space-time limitation, is no longer as self-evident and incontrovertible as we have hitherto been led to believe. It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts, even imperative to do so.
Carl Jung, Psychology and the Occult
I n science, the acceptance of new ideas follows a predictable, four-stage sequence. In Stage 1, skeptics confidently proclaim that the idea is impossible because it violates the Laws of Science. This stage can last for years or for centuries, depending on how much the idea challenges conventional wisdom. In Stage 2, skeptics reluctantly concede that the idea is possible but that it is not very interesting and the claimed effects are extremely weak. Stage 3 begins when the mainstream realizes not only that the idea is important but that its effects are much stronger and more pervasive than previously imagined. Stage 4 is achieved when the same critics who previously disavowed any interest in the idea begin to proclaim that they thought of it first. Eventually, no one remembers that the idea was once considered a dangerous heresy.
The idea discussed in this book is in the midst of the most important and the most difficult of the four transitionsfrom Stage 1 into Stage 2. While the idea itself is ancient, it has taken more than a century to demonstrate it conclusively in accordance with rigorous, scientific standards. This demonstration has accelerated Stage 2 acceptance, and Stage 3 can already be glimpsed on the horizon.
The Idea
The idea is that those compelling, perplexing, and sometimes profound human experiences known as psychic phenomena are real. This will come as no surprise to most of the worlds population, because the majority already believes in psychic phenomena. But over the past few years, something new has propelled us beyond old debates over personal beliefs. The reality of psychic phenomena is now no longer based solely upon faith, or wishful thinking, or absorbing anecdotes. It is not even based upon the results of a few scientific experiments. Instead, we know that these phenomena exist, because of new ways of evaluating massive amounts of scientific evidence collected over a century by scores of researchers.
Psychic, or psi, phenomena fall into two general categories. The first involves perceiving objects or events beyond the range of the ordinary senses. The second is mentally causing action at a distance. In both categories, it seems that intention, the minds will, can do things thataccording to prevailing scientific theoriesit isnt supposed to be able to do. We wish to know what is happening to loved ones, and somehow, sometimes, that information is available even over large distances. We wish to speed the recovery of a loved ones illness, and somehow that person gets better quicker, even at a distance. Mind willing, many interesting things appear to be possible.
Understanding such experiences requires an expanded view of human consciousness. Is the mind merely a mechanistic, information-processing bundle of neurons? Is it a computer made of meat as some cognitive scientists and neuroscientists believe? Or is it something more? The evidence suggests that while many aspects of mental functioning are undoubtedly related to brain structure and electrochemical activity, there is also something else happening, something very interesting.