Paranormal Series #4 PSYCHOKINESIS—Remote Control over Matter
The efficacy of the remote control is a given in the 21st Century. We use one for everything from starting our cars without leaving the house to sending nuclear missiles against targets on the other side of the planet. Its role in engendering the current crop of gigantic couch potatoes is debatable, but that’s a discussion for another day.
Old-fashioned remotes, many still around, required at least a finger muscle to flip the switch, but they are rapidly giving way to more sensitive gadgets that take only a tap, wave, or voice command to activate. And rumor has it that advanced electronics labs about to produce mind-activated remotes, which will allow us to control the world without ruffling a single physical particle. Modern science is drawing nigh to realizing what was once a mystical myth: mind over matter.
Parapsychology has long had a term for the power to move or transform physical objects solely through a mental process: psychokinesis (psycho=mind, kinesis=motion), abbreviated PK. Related to and often taken as synonymous, although there is a subtle difference (see Psychokinesis in Wikipedia, if you must), is the term telekinesis (tele=distance as in telephone) or TK. Psychokinesis will do for our non-technical discussion here.
When it was first observed by credentialed people and thus suspected to be more than a primitive hallucination, (telekinesis was coined way back in 1890 and psychokinesis in 1914), psychokinesis attracted considerable scientific attention and experimentation that predictably waned when the physical motive force behind it could not be isolated with traditional laboratory tools and experiments. Since reported events like levitation of objects or spoon-bending violated the known laws of physics (gravity and thermodynamics, in these cases) and no adequate physical explanation could be found, it followed that the observed event was either achieved by trickery (the sleight-of-hand of carnival magicians) or did not really happen at all (an illusion).
Tellingly though, experimentation with psychokinesis did continue under government auspices. Witness the strong Soviet interest as related in Sheila Ostrander’s 1970 classic, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. US efforts were centered in a CIA-sponsored project at Stanford Research Institute, which produced such psychic stars as Ingo Swann and Hal Puthoff and material for Jon Ronson’s book and the movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Psychokinesis evidently had some military and intelligence potential; nevertheless, leaks about such projects were dismissed with a hurried “Yea we checked it out, but nothing there,” leaving us to wonder what is in all those Top Secret files that are supposedly about nothing.
Academic scientists traditionally demand a higher standard of evidence for PK and other paranormal powers, following the rule of Marcello Truzzi (professor of sociology 1935-2003, nicknamed “the skeptic’s skeptic”): Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Since PK-like results can be produced by trickery, special effects, poor experimental design, or even chance, the burden of proof on the possibly genuine instance is so high as to be impossible. Like the many climate-change deniers who won’t believe that the earth is warming until it is too hot to live here, paranormal skeptics won’t believe their eyes until PK is available to anyone on demand without even a blink of the mind.
Let me point out an error in the method of evaluating here: physical laws do not apply to the non-physical realm and thus cannot be used to measure it. A simple example: if I share a physical pie with three other people, my share of pie is depleted by three-quarters. If I share a piece of non-physical information—how to bake a pie, for instance—with several others, my whole ability to bake a pie remains intact and is likely increased, as those others will improve on my method and provide feedback. Even simple arithmetic goes out the window in that “other” realm. Evidence for PK and other paranormal phenomena has to be evaluated in the realm in which they exist, and that, by definition, is the non-material universe.
Just as one cannot learn without concentration, one cannot achieve consistent paranormal results without meeting certain requirements. In BEYOND THE OCCULT, author Colin Wilson notes: “Since the use of such powers [like PK] involves relaxation it would seem to follow that the first step towards learning to use them would be to learn to relax.” Any wonder that paranormal ability is so rare in a society where relaxation is defined as sitting in front of a mind-numbing TV with a mind-numbing cocktail in hand?
Once a person can truly relax, as through basic meditation that quiets the mind, there is a further condition according to Wilson: “What seems clear is that these powers somehow involve the positive use of imagination.” He gives an example of having no luck moving an object with thought until he made a mental image of the object moving on its own. That, according to him, did the trick: the physical object began to rotate without physical intervention.
There’s quite the cosmic joke buried in this: one curious result observed in PK lab experiments is not that believers often get results above average, which does happen, but that skeptics often get lower than average results. The skeptic is visualizing it not happening, and so it doesn’t happen, thus proving that seemingly universal rule: you get what you visualize. You may have to play in the mind-over-matter sandbox for a bit before you enjoy the joke in this.
So no “how to move objects with your mind in one easy lesson” here, but some ideas, I hope, that might empower that quantum leap we all dream to take to that next level where the paranormal becomes the new normal.
NEXT TIME IN THE PARANORMAL SERIES: REMOTE VIEWING
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