Extrasensory Perception or Clairvoyance
ESP is defined as the ability to sense (feel) or see (in the mind ‘s eye) things (places and people) that are far away. It is also called the Sixth sense. It refers to an individual’s ability to receive information from beyond the ordinary five senses of sight, smell, hearing, taste, and touch.
This individual can be provided with information not only of the present but also from the past and the future. It seems that the information comes from a second or alternate reality.
History
ESP manifestations have been related since biblical times. The first person to use the term extrasensory perception (ESP) was Sir Richard Burton, in 1870. In 1892, another researcher, Dr. Paul Joire, used the term to describe the abilities of a person who had been hypnotized or was otherwise in a trance state to externally sense things without using the common senses.
The first systematic research on ESP was conducted by the Society for Psychical Research, in London. Similar research was soon carried out in other countries, including the USA. However, these first studies were rarely experimental.
They mostly examined spontaneous incidents in field (uncontrolled) conditions.
Only rarely were they examined under laboratory condition as we do today.
In 1930, at Duke University (U.S.A.), Dr. J. E. Rhine began conducting studies of psychic phenomena in the universityis psychology department. Rhine was the first experimenter to perform psychic testing using Zener cards (cards with the five symbols of circle, square, star, plus sign, and wavy lines, as shown in Fig. 1), which were developed for him by his colleague, Dr. Karl Zener.
The symbols were printed singly, in black ink, on cards resembling playing cards.
Rhine took his studies away from Duke University in 1962, founding the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man (FRNM). Rhine is often remembered as the man who “proved” that psychic powers exist.
In the classic Rhine experiment on ESP, the subject tries to guess or “call” the order of the live symbols when they are randomly placed in a table of 25 ESP cards.
The likelihood of calling a card correctly by chance is 1:5 (one in hve).
Knowing this, it is possible to determine how often a particular score can occur by chance in a given number of calls. The Rhine assumption was that, when a subject obtains higher scores than could be expected, he displayed extrachance results or ESP. (An abnormally low score also denotes a paranormal skill, as it can be implicit in the subjecfs mind that he doesn't want to guess the correct card and therefore selects the wrong card.)
Today, in some sites on the Internet, you can lind Zener card ESP tests
Where the cards are placed at random on your monitor and you make your choice while trying to sense which cards have been selected.
Lousia E. Rhine proposed the theory that ESP starts in the unconscious (a depository of memories, hopes, and fears). At this point, there exists a contact between the objective world and the center of the mind.
The person remains unaware of this contact until or unless the information is brought to the conscious level.
Carl G. Jung, in his time, proposed a similar theory to the effect that the conscious mind has subliminal psychic access to the collective unconscious, a vast repository of the cumulative wisdom and experiences of all humans.
Some criticisms exist today of the experiments made in the past. It is important for the reader to understand them, because they can be decisive in the experiments performed without projects.
The criticisms are as follows:
1. The “file drawer” efect. ln some cases, only favorable results have been published. When working with a large base of experimental data, the probability increases that some results will be omitted from the mean values. The experimenter is tempted to view some events as proof of ESP when they really are only the result of normal chance.
2. The results are inconsistent or can't be repeated. Another factor that the experimenter must watch for in ESP is preconceived or previously learned knowledge. This concerns any information that might influence the subject’s perception. For instance, if a mother says that she senses that her son may suffer a fall when playing soccer on a specific day and time, it could be because her son has already had such an experience. Her sensation must be suspect, as it may be based on knowledge of the son,s previous performance.
Other Terms
In the past century, ESP was called cryptesthesia and also relesthesia. Rhine was the first to use the term general extrasensory perception (GESP) to include other paranormal abilities such as telepathy and clairvoyance. So, as extensions of ESP, we can add other sensory paranormal abilities such as:
Clairvoyance
Clairaudience
far-touch
radiesthesia
psychometry
mind reading and telepathy
Clairaudience.
This is the ability to hear paranormal information. It can be considered to be a form of ESP.
Psychometry.
This is the gathering of information by touching physical things and objects. This also can be considered to be a form of ESP.
Precognition.
This refers to the ability to see into the future. Because ESP doesn,t limit the ability to sense images and sounds to any part of space-time, precognition is also considered to fit in that category.
Psychokinesis or Telekinesis (PK).
This refers to the ability to move objects by focusing the mind on them. It is also called far-touch. Psychokinesis is a form of PSI, and it can be extended to other abilities than only moving objects. Bending metals and determining the outcome of events are also included as PK.
The term psychokinesis comes from the Greek words psyche, meaning breath, life, or soul, and kinene, meaning to move.
History
As with ESP, occurrences of psychokinesis phenomena have been recorded since ancient times. Among these occurrences, found in biblical and many other texts, we can find miraculous healings, lurninosities, apports,* and other physical phenomena associated With holy persons and adepts of magic groups.
The “Book of Acts” in the Bible describes an example of PK phenomena in the section where St. Paul and Silas, imprisoned in Ephesus, prayed and sang hymns to open the prison doors.
In the 19th century, D. D. Holmes was known for his ability to levitate and to handle hot coals without being bumed. During that time, there were persons known as electric people who experienced a high-voltage syndrome. Those persons made knives and forks cling to their skin, and with a touch they could send furniture flying across a room.
Obs. An apport is an object that materializes during a séance. Believers see apports as gifts or signals from spirits. When a medium makes an apport disappear, it is referred to as a deport.
PK research has been a fast-growing area of interest since 1930. J. B. Rhine, working at Duke University (North Carolina) in 1934, was one of the first to conduct experiments in this field. He found that it was possible to influence the fall of dice, making them roll certain numbers or number combinations.
Rhine did not immediately publish his findings, for many reasons. One is that PK suffered a dubious reputation at that time, and the other was the experiments were very inadequately controlled. Later, Rhine divided PK in two categories: macro-PK, or observable events, and micro-PK, or weak or slight effects not observable by the naked eye.
In 1960, a new method of testing micro-PK was created by the American physicist Helmut Schmidt. He built an apparatus known as an “electronic coin flipper,” which operated on the random decay of radioactive particles.
As the decay rate is not affected by any physical quality such as temperature, pressure, magnetic field, etc., the rate of emission is completely unpredictable and cannot be manipulated by fraud. In the experiments, the subjects were invited to exert their mental energy to influence the Ripping of the coins. The number of heads and tails was indicated by lamps.
Schmidt also studied animal-PK, finding some interesting results. However, the interpretation of the results was difficult, as he theorized that the experimenter could influence the results by using his own PK on the experimental subjects.
One of the most notable macro-PK events was what is now called the Geller effect.
In the l960s, the psychic Israeli, Uri Geller, amazed television audiences with his metal-bending feats. But Geller was unable to duplicate the feats under laboratory conditions.
Today, many researchers work with PK using sophisticated methodology. The experiments are focused on psychics, mediums, and other people who can apparently influence objects and materials.
One present study is under way with Ingo Swann, a New York artist and psychic who can change the temperature of a nearby object by one degree and also can affect the magnetic Held detected by a magnetometer.
Other Types of PK
Other types of PK have been studied but are viewed with a fair amount of skepticism. One of these is the poltergeist activity. Such activity includes unexplained repeated sounds, breaking of china, Hying rocks, movement of heavy furniture, and other mysterious manifestations in a small area.
Another type is thought by those who experienced it to be associated with death, danger, or emotional crisis. These are cases in which people report clocks that stop, falling objects (pictures from the wall are most commonly reported), and shattering of glass objects.
Many people believe that these incidents indicate death or an accident involving relatives or loved ones. Experiments also are being conducted to determine the existence of a “retro-PK” where the subjects can influence an event in the future or in the past!
PK is not generally accepted by scientists, but many parapsychologists believe that well controlled experiments can establish its existence.
PSI.
In 1946, British psychologists Drs. Robert Thouless and W. P. Weisner proposed the word PSI to designate both extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). PSI is the twenty-third letter of the Greek alphabet- and is commonly used in parapsychology to include both phenomena of PK and ESP because they are closely related.
Theories concerning the functioning of PSI are very difficult to formulate, because it defies laboratory experiments. Researchers have not been successful in describing its activity in terms of physical sciences.
Experiments with PSI involve the measurement of the involuntary physiological processes in the autonomic nervous systems of test subjects. The most common measurements are galvanic skin response (GSR), which records the activity of the sweat glands; plethysmography, which measures the changes in blood volume in the fingers; and electroencephalography (EEG), which measures brain activity.
Psychography.
This refers to the ability to write messages from beyond. This paranormal ability of a subject can be considered to be a type of ESP. Without the use of the normal senses, the person can pick up messages from the beyond and transfer them directly to a piece of paper. The person writes messages “automatically,” normally in a trance, without any knowledge of their content.
Mind Reading and Telepathy.
If a subject is able to probe the mind of others and “read” their thoughts as if their minds were an open book, we have the phenomenon called mind reading. We consider this paranormal ability as a form of ESP, as it is a paranormal sense used to pick up information from someone’s brain.
Telepathy is different: if the subject can mentally send some kind of information to another person, the phenomenon is called telepathy.
Reaver
His refers to the power of an individual to excite or slow the molecular motion of atoms. A person with this paranormal ability is able to suddenly or slowly cool the immediate surroundings, set someone,s hair on fire, freeze someone’s body, or extinguish a candle flame. It is a form of telekinesis.
Radiesthesia.
This is someone’s ability to divine or dowse, through indicators such as rods and pendulums. This method embraces much more than just the discovery of water, treasures, and metals. Radiesthesia or radiesthesie (the French word) has been used in discovering missing persons and in performing medical diagnoses.
Radiesthesia starts from the idea that either a rod or a pendulum amplifies the personls sensitivity. Usually, the pendulums consist of small balls or cones attached to the end of a stick via a thin string.
The string can be (preferably) nylon. It is necessary that the person be experienced in using the pendulum. We want no movement of the “bob” except what is caused by the influence of the sought-after object. For further explanation about the use of the pendulum, we suggest that the reader consult related literature.
History. The term radiesthesie was coined in 1930 by Abbe Bouly in France, where the rod gave way to the small pendulum as an indicator. In 1933, the British Society of Dowsers was founded.
Transcendental Meditation (TM).
Transcendental meditation is a system by which a person can achieve or reach a fourth state of consciousness, also called transcendental consciousness.
History. TM is cited in the Vedas sacred writings going back to 1000 BC. Over the centuries, it has been transmitted by such men as the eighth-century Hindu philosopher Shankara, and in the twentieth century by Guru Dev (meaning divine teacher), who taught Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, after graduating in physics at Allahabad University, spent two years in a Himalayan retreat and then began teaching about TM in India. After that, he traveled throughout the East and West, training teachers to spread TM and the science of creative intelligence, whose end is to integrate all knowledge.
Physiological changes occur in TM practitioners. These changes include the lowering of respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and lactase (a chemical in the blood associated with strenuous activity and stress).
