1 - Exploring Inner Space

There are among us those who do not believe that the Age of Adventure has passed simply because all of the continents have been charted, Mt. Everest has been scaled, and the planet Earth has been orbited by manned space flight.

These new adventurers believe that an examination of the other side of man is more important than a photograph of the other side of the moon and that it is more vital to explore the "inner space" within each of us than to expend our energies and finances charting an outer space which will belong to a select few.

These scientific heretics contend that man and mind are something other than physical things. They explore matters that often contradict known physical laws, examine phenomena which do not fit into recognized bodies of knowledge, and stoutly insist that these now unexplainable events will someday be found to fit into the total scheme of nature.

These men and women devote their lives and energies to the "orphan science" called parapsychology.

The parapsychologist deals with a world that lies beyond the five senses and the reach of the physical sciences. It is a strange world where effect often precedes cause, where mind often influences matter, where individuals communicate over great distances without physical aids.

The parapsychologist makes a contribution to man's unquenchable need to know himself and the tree nature of the life and the universe of which he is a part. If such parascientific phenomena as the projection of the astral self, the ability to glimpse the future, the talent to restore the past, or the facility to convey telepathic impressions are established, the boundaries of Man's universe become limitless. It will be seen - as the mystic has forever maintained - that imprisoned within each of us is all that is necessary to unlock all of life's mysteries.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the conscious minds of the great majority of men seem unable to draw upon such knowledge even though it may be implanted within them. That for many individuals the ability to utilize this deeper knowledge can become more than a latent power has been proven through exhaustive laboratory experiments, which have amassed enough statistics to allow extrasensory perception (ESP) to become the phenomena of parapsychology which come the nearest to being accepted by the more conventional scientist.

ESP is defined by parapsychologists as the acquisition by a human or animal mind of information which it could not have received by normal, sensory means. There are some researchers, however, who take issue with the term "extrasensory perception." They protest that the phenomena may not be "perception" at all, as the receiver of this information does not know if the knowledge is right or wrong when he first perceives it. It takes a corroborating incident to convince anyone that he has perceived anything via extrasensory means.

Some parapsychologists prefer to say "paranormal cognition," but this term is subject to the same sort of criticism if the receiver is not instantly certain of the validity of the information. Besides, the researchers insist that the material in their field will eventually merge with present day physics, so the very adjective "paranormal" may be considered a misnomer.

To avoid such criticism, the current trend in para-scientific research seems to be to include all of the individual classifications (i.e. precognition, poltergeists, clairvoyance, telepathy) and all related phenomena under the non-committal term "psi." Because of the wide usage of the term ESP, however, and as long as we do not make any philosophical commitment to any theory of its nature, we shall use both terms interchangeably in this book.

According to current laboratory work with such phenomena, nearly everyone has ESP. Perhaps, as children, many of us utilize extrasensory perception to a considerable degree, but, as we mature, we tend to inhibit these subconscious faculties or allow them to atrophy.

Eric J. Dingwall and John Landon-Davies, in their book, The Unknown - Is It Nearer?, write that their accumulated evidence indicates "everybody has ESP, but in most people it has been completely repressed in favor of normal means of perception."

Many parapsychologists, psychologists, and anthropologists, including Sigmund Freud, have theorized that telepathy may have been "the original archaic method by which individuals understood one another." As a better means of communication, which could be readily intelligible to the sensory organs, evolved, Freud conjectured, the original archaic methods were pushed into the background of man's subconscious where they may still persist, waiting to manifest themselves under certain conditions. It is obvious to all "psi" researchers that some individuals, functioning largely according to their moods and psychic needs, are able to draw upon their latent ESP abilities. Some gifted individuals are even able to make regular and practical use of the seemingly rare powers of "psi."

On June 30, 1958, Mr. Gerard Croiset, the clairvoyant whose fame has spread far beyond the borders of his native Holland, received a long-distance telephone call from a Mr. Jansen, skipper of the Maria Judith.

Skipper Jansen complained to Croiset that he had lost patience with a team of specialists who had been trying for weeks to pin-point the trouble spot in his diesel engine.

"I'm in the harbor here at Awijndrecht," Jansen told Croiset. "I have to sail to earn my living. I have just bought this new engine, but it does not function effectively, and the engineers can't find the trouble. What I want to know is this: must I buy a new engine? I can't sit here any longer."

Across long-distance wire and speaking to a man he had never met, Croiset was able to describe to the seaman exactly where the trouble lay. Because Croiset has very little knowledge of things mechanical, he was forced to use figurative language and comparisons in his diagnosis of the engine's trouble spot. As if he were actually on board the Maria Judith, Croiset told Jansen: "I go to the engine room downstairs. There I see the engine. At the back there is a small fitted pipe which makes me think of the siphon of a water-closet. That pipe has a hole in it. The reason why the engineers have not been able to find it is that you can only find this hole when the engine is hot."

Two days later, after Jansen and the engineers had completed their inspection, the skipper called Croiset and told him that his long-distance diagnosis had been correct. It had been the siphon that leaked. There had been a crack in the cylinder head. The engineers had not found the crack before, because, as Croiset had said, the engine had needed to be heated to working temperature.

The practical Dutch have long made regular use of their sensitives in much the same manner as the technically minded American would not hesitate to call in a specialist with a more conventional talent.

On April 26, 1956, Mr. P. van Delzen, a sensitive who resides in Amsterdam, was handed a photograph by a distressed resident of the city.

"It is my brother-in-law," the man told him. "He has been missing since the morning of April 23rd. In his car he left a note saying that he was planning to drown himself. Where ... where may we find his body?"

The sensitive ran his hands lightly over the photograph of the missing man. "He is not dead," van Delzen said. "Your brother-in-law is incapable of committing suicide. He did not go into the water. He went north."

The next day, van Del/en received another call from the man. The brother-in-law had not yet been located. The family was more certain than before that the man had committed suicide.

The sensitive persisted: "Do not be alarmed. He will soon return. He is not dead."

On April 28th, the missing man called home and shame-facedly asked if the family would forgive his indiscretion. He had been depressed, had decided to run away from home, and had been working for a farmer in a village north of Amsterdam since his disappearance six days before.

While our own "psi" experiences may not be so dramatic as these, nearly all of us have had glimpses into the world of ESP. Feeling that we have been present at some previous time in a room we know we have never before entered ... Dreaming of a friend from whom we have not heard in months, then receiving a letter from that person in the next morning's mail ... Hearing a telephone ring and being so certain of the identity of the caller that we call him by name the instant we lift up the receiver ...

These incidents are so common that they receive little more than half-joking comment. It is only when a paranormal event of shocking or dramatic impact startles our emotions that we relate it to others and, perhaps, even record it.

"Psi" activity is sub-divided into many types, each with a name of its own.

Precognition is that strange function of mind whereby the percipient seems to receive a glimpse of the future and gams knowledge of events yet to take place.

Telepathy is the transference of thought from one mind to another. Distance and time seem unable to affect this "psi" phenomenon. Laboratory tests have been conducted with the subject at distances of over 500 miles from the experimenter with no drop in the subject's scoring rate. An extremely impressive series of tests was carried out with the agent in the United States and the percipient in Yugoslavia.

Clairvoyance is the awareness, without physical aids or normal sensory means, of what is going on elsewhere. We have already seen how effectively Croiset "found" the leak in the cylinder head when he was over one hundred miles from a troublesome engine he had never seen.

Telekinesis is the movement of objects, seemingly caused by some force unknown to physical science.

Psychokinesis, the direct action of mind on matter, is the parapsychologists' current nominee as the culprit involved in poltergeist cases - those bizarre occurrences when bottles and crockery float through the air, fires break out on living room tables, gasoline pours out of walls, or disembodied voices cackle threats and obscenities.

Astral Projection, or out-of-the-body experience, is the apparent projection of the mind from its fleshly domicile. Such experiences may be accomplished within a small range, such as the woman in London who arose to shut off the light in the hall and was shocked to discover, as she returned to bed, that her body had never left the comfort of the bedclothes; or quite limitless, such as the monk who was seen by witnesses both in his cell in the monastery and at the bedside of the dying Pope at precisely the same moment.

Psychometry is the determining of facts about an object's owner simply from contact with the object.

Even from these brief definitions, it becomes apparent that many attributes of "psi" phenomena overlap. It has long been a contention of the serious parapsychologist that each of these types of phenomena is but a single manifestation of the same energy, force or function of an unconscious personality.

For example, when the Holland sensitive, van Delzen, touched the photograph of the missing brother-in-law and told the anxious relative that the man was still alive, clairvoyance, psychometry, precognition, and telepathy were all being manifested.

It is interesting to note how many "psi" activities are experienced while the percipient is either asleep or in the sleep-like states of trance or hypnosis. This may indicate that each of us, in our subconscious, has the faculties necessary to focus on the consciously unperceived world of ESP. Everyone who remembers his dreams has first-hand proof that there are various levels of mind. There is the one level that authors the "script" for the night's performance; another level which directs the play and cloaks it in the symbolism which psychiatrists tell us is necessary to sustain sanity; and there is yet another level that acts as the surprised captive audience for the performance. Continued research with dreams, such as the experiments currently being conducted by Drs. Montague Ullman and Stanley Krippner at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, New York (which we shall examine in detail in Chapter Fourteen) may shed a new light on the powers that are man's very own.

In the literature of "psi" phenomena many clairvoyant experiences have been found to take place in dreams or while the percipient is in a relaxed state.

In 1949, Dorcie Calhoun who lived on a worn-out farm near Renovo, Pennsylvania, kept experiencing a persistent dream that told him there was natural gas underlying the nearby hills on his farm. Moreover, the dream kept showing him where to dig and urged him to take immediate action. At last the farmer managed to convince a number of local people to organize a small company and to begin drilling. Skeptics were stunned when the resulting well blew its top and required four days before experts could control the pillar of fire.

By 1951, there were nearly a hundred wells in the Renovo area, comprising the largest gas field in Pennsylvania. Original investors have seen their shares increase by 3,000 per cent, the little town of 3,000 citizens has doubled in size, and Dorcie Calhoun has become a wealthy man - all because of a dream.

Dr. Jan Ehrenwald has expressed his theory that telepathy is another "psi" phenomenon that works best when either the agent or the percipient is in what he labels a "state of psychological inadequacy." According to Dr. Ehrenwald, telepathy functions most effectively when the conscious mind is groggy with sleep, befogged by hypnosis, trance, fever, or physical exhaustion. In many cases, a brain defect or a glandular imbalance of some kind may increase telepathic prowess and accelerate other "psi" activity.

It should perhaps be clarified, before going much further into the world of ESP, that parapsychology is in no way synonymous with Spiritualism. To the uninformed layman, the psychical researcher is often thought of as some gullible man or woman who goes to seances to converse with the spirit of his late Uncle Henry. To be certain, mediums and their paranormal abilities are studied in all earnestness and seriousness in the laboratory. But these investigations are conducted under the most rigid scientific specifications, and there is no blind acceptance made of the allegedly spiritistic evidence produced by the mediums. Most often, quite the opposite is true.

A number of mediums, however, have successfully passed the rigorous tests of parapsychological laboratories and have proved to the satisfaction of the skeptical researcher that they were able to produce mental effects and materializations that lie beyond the ken of contemporary science. There can be little doubt that some of these men and women are marvelously gifted sensitives possessed of extraordinary powers of ESP. The lives of some of these individuals are dealt with in the chapter on mediumship along with the problem of survival evidence, which, if established, would definitely prove that non-physical man does survive after death.

Most parapsychologists believe that the difference between the genuine medium and the great majority of mankind lies in the fact that the sensitive's threshold of consciousness is set lower than that of others. In other words, the psychic sensitive has access to levels of awareness that lie beyond normal reach in the subconscious.

The spirit medium usually works in trance. While in this state of unconsciousness, the medium claims to be under the direction of a spirit guide or control. Spiritists believe in the reality of the guide as a spiritual entity apart from the medium. Parapsychologists hold that the control personality is but a secondary personality of the medium, that is able to dip into the powers of "psi" residing in the subconscious.

The physical phenomena of mediumship are among the most weird and dramatic of all occurrences studied by parapsychologists. Under laboratory conditions, mediums have produced materializations of human heads, hands, and even complete bodies from ectoplasm, a cloudy substance that seems to emanate from the medium's body. They have levitated themselves into the air, manifested stigmata on their bodies, caused mysterious apports (arrivals) of flowers, medallions, and items of clothing.

Some of the world's best minds have been vitally concerned with "psi" research. The British statesman William E. Gladstone, who, most of his life, was an avowed skeptic of paranormal occurrences, finally concluded that "psychical research is the most important work in the world today - by far the most important."

The famous statesman was not alone in his outspoken acclamation of the importance of "psi" research. Pierre Curie, who with his wife, Marie, discovered radium, stated shortly before his death that in his opinion psychical research had more importance than any other. Freud belonged to both the English and the American societies for psychical research and said that he wished he had devoted more time to such study when he was younger. Carl Jung remained actively interested in "psi" experiments until his death.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, became so obsessed with psychical research that he "killed off" his famous fictional character in order to devote full time to the Society for Psychical Research. The poet Yeats was out-spoken in discussing his own paranormal experiences. Aldous Huxley wrote a number of books dealing with psychic phenomena and, late in his life, began to concentrate on ESP and the drug experience.

Sir William Crookes, the great physicist, conducted an exhaustive study of "psi" phenomena. The German philosopher, Schopenhauer, insisted that such phenomena were the most important aspects of human experience and that it was the obligation of every scientist to know more about them. Julian Huxley, the biologist; Sir James Jeans, the astronomer; Arnold Toynbee, the historian; Alfred North Whitehead, the philosopher - all concerned themselves with ESP research.

In spite of the attention of such commanding intellects and the painstaking research of such men as J.B. Rhine, G.N.M. Tyrrell and S.G. Soal, parapsychologists are still regarded by an uncomfortable section of the scientific community as being "spook chasers," "crackpots," and as outright rebels and heretics to the bodies of established knowledge.

The basic reason for such disdain on the part of orthodox scientists is essentially the understandable reluctance of the scientific establishment to grant a hearing to a body of knowledge which might very well reshape or antiquate many of the premises on which its entire structure is based.

Arthur Koestler, noted novelist and journalist, tells of his visit with a leading mathematical logician and philosopher. Koestler expressed his interest in recent statistical work in parapsychology. The logician loudly scoffed at such studies. Koestler, irritated by the man's closed mind, insisted that the statistics seemed sound.

"But who," the logician asked with a superior smile, "checked these statistics?"

Koestler named a world-famous statistician. Upon hearing the man's name, the logician seemed completely nonplussed. After a few moments he said: "If that is true, it is terrible, terrible. It would mean that I would have to scrap everything and start from the beginning."

Orthodox scientists are not about to "scrap everything," and many of them feel that the best method of avoiding the research statistics compiled by parapsychologists is to insist upon the requirements demanded of all conventional sciences: (1) that they produce controlled and repeatable experiments, (2) that they develop a hypothesis comprehensive enough to include all "psi" activity from telepathy to poltergeists, from water dowsing to materializations.

The enormous difficulty in fulfilling these requirements can be immediately grasped by anyone with the slightest knowledge of "psi" phenomena. It would be impossible, for example, to repeat the apparition of a man's father as it appeared to him at the moment of his father's death. This sort of crisis apparition occurs only at death, and the man's father is going to die only once. "Psi" phenomena is almost completely spontaneous in nature, and ungovernable elements of mood and emotion obviously play enormously important roles in any type of paranormal experience. As G. N. M. Tyrrell wrote, a percipient is never aware of a telepathic, clairvoyant, or precognitive process at work within him. He is only aware of the product of that process. In fact, it seems apparent from, laboratory work that conscious effort at determining any "psi" process at work within oneself will either completely destroy it or greatly diminish its effectiveness.

Therefore, laboratory experiments have sometimes established, by incredibly laborious tests and veritable mountains of statistics, only slightly better-than-chance evidence of the validity of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and telekinesis. No one has yet managed to reproduce an apparition in a laboratory, and it is remarkable that the most gifted telepathic sensitive can have enough psychic energy to survive an endless series of card-guessing experiments.

"Psi" phenomena depends upon emotion and spontaneity for its most effective functioning. What is more sterile and emotionless than a laboratory? And what would serve to kill spontaneity more than a series of exceedingly boring laboratory tests? One researcher, allowing his frustration to be vented, complained about the absurdity of inhibiting the spontaneous feature of "psi" in order to maintain the control. "It would make as much sense to shoot an animal in order to study its habits," he sighed.

Science cannot afford to become dogmatic. Each generation seems to forget that scientists have had to admit some seemingly impossible facts in the past. Electricity, for example, was unknown except through a few sporadic events completely devoid of explanation, such as lightning and the mysterious attraction of bits of paper to nibbed amber. As facts became gradually accumulated, the theory of an electromagnetic field pervading all space was evolved.

Dr. Philip M. Morse, writing in the July, 1950, issue of American Scientist, said: "Almost immediately difficulties arose in trying to fit electromagnetic theory into classical mechanics. It was as though the two conceptual approaches, the preoccupation with matter, with forces incidental, and the preoccupation with a field of force, with matter incidental, were incompatible. One or the other would have to give way. What gave way was classical mechanics."

What gives way when "psi" is eventually accepted is not known. Perhaps, as many researchers believe, ESP will gradually merge with present day physics. Although at the present time "psi" phenomena seem to often contradict known physical laws, parapsychologists believe that the so-called paranormal will some day be seen to fit into the total scheme of nature.

But "psi" researchers are weary of being treated like second-class scientists. They insist that science must no longer ignore that which is not directly perceivable. In the field of meson physics, still largely unexplored, effect has been noted to have been followed by its cause. Perhaps precognition will cease to be considered odd to the physicist as he learns more about meson physics. Continued experiments in atomic physics may greatly illumine the mechanics of phenomena judged too impossible to comprehend today.

The world of ESP is a world of many strange and seemingly bizarre turns. In his Psychic Science and Survival, Hereward Carrington, a lifelong "psi" investigator, listed the following requirements of an ideal researcher: (1) a thorough knowledge of the literature of the subject; (2) a good grounding in normal and abnormal psychology, in physics, chemistry, biology, and photography; (3) keen powers of observation and an ability to judge human nature and its motives; (4) training in magic and sleight of hand; (5) shrewdness, quickness of thought and action, patience, resourcefulness, sympathy, and a sense of humor; (6) freedom from superstition; (7) the strength to stand out against bigotry, scientific as well as theological.

Do not deny yourself the excitement of further exploration in the world of ESP if you should feel deficient in one or more of Carrington's seven qualities. If you have that rarest of treasures, an open and unprejudiced mind, it will more than compensate for any other presumed shortcoming.