A History of Parapsychology
Part 1 of the Psychic Exploration series
Although the word parapsychology suggests a field of research that exists "beside psychology," its studies are not only related to psychology but to religion, anthropology, physics, and other areas as well. Parapsychology's history may be divided into three periods: from prehistory to the latter part of the nineteenth century; the last three decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth; and the present period. This essay, chapter 1 from Psychic Exploration, details the history of parapsychology.
Famous Western Sensitives
Part 2 of the Psychic Exploration series
Since the advent of Spiritualism over a century ago in America, certain individuals with unusual psychic abilities have dominated the scene of psychic research. This essay, chapter 2 from Psychic Exploration, describes famous Western "sensitives," or those who can sense various paranormal activity.
The Psychic Personality
Part 3 of the Psychic Exploration series
Descriptions of the lives of some great psychics show that they share no single obvious common factor like sex, intellectual brilliance, asceticism, or spiritual devotion. This raises the problem of whether there are psychological concomitants of the psychic personality. This essay, chapter 3 from Psychic Exploration, discusses the psychic personality.
Telepathy
Part 4 of the Psychic Exploration series
Telepathy is one manifestation of the collective phenomena that parapsychologists refer to as ESP. It involves information received by a subject (percipient, recipient, or receiver) from an agent (transmitter or sender), apparently through some type of "mind-to-mind" contact. The role of telepathy in affecting human behavior needs further exploration, as it may be more influential than is commonly suspected. This essay, chapter 4 from Psychic Exploration, is devoted to telepathy.
Clairvoyance
Part 5 of the Psychic Exploration series
Clairvoyance is regarded as having occurred when an organism behaves as though it has extrasensory knowledge of some object or physical event unknown to any other organism. The historical significance of clairvoyance for parapsychology is that it has simplified and made more efficient the study of extrasensory response. This essay, chapter 5 from Psychic Exploration, is devoted to clairvoyance.
Precognition and Retrocognition
Part 6 of the Psychic Exploration series
Precognition is the hardest aspect of parapsychology for us to understand yet the easiest to experience and to test scientifically in the laboratory. Retrocognition occurs but is reported much more rarely. Hundreds of studies have been made of spontaneous precognition experiences and of controlled experiments in the laboratory. The use of modern electronic instruments has confirmed this. Even dreams have been shown to come true in the laboratory. This essay, chapter 6 from Psychic Exploration, studies precognition and retrocognition.
Psychokinesis
Part 7 of the Psychic Exploration series
During the last four decades, careful laboratory work has shown that man can, to a certain degree, influence the outside world by pure thought. This process is called psychokinesis (PK). This essay, chapter 7 from Psychic Exploration, delves into this very subject.
Parapsychology Today
Part 8 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 8 of Psychic Exploration, surveys the area of research and resources in parapsychology today.
The Psychobiology of Psi
Part 9 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 9 of Psychic Exploration, concerns itself with the processing of psi information once it is within the organism, from a psychobiological perspective.
Psi and Psychiatry
Part 10 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 10 of Psychic Exploration, traces the close connection that has always existed between medical psychology and psychic research.
Anthropology and Psychic Research
by Robert L. Van de Castle
Part 11 of the Psychic Exploration series
Very little cross-fertilization of ideas, concepts, or techniques has developed between the fields of anthropology and psychic research. This essay, chapter 11 of Psychic Exploration, reviews several firsthand reports of field observations that offer encouraging anecdotal support for the existence of psi. Also reviewed are the statistically-significant card testing experiments by Foster with American Indians, by the Roses with Australian aborigines, and by the author with Panamanian Indians.
Man-Plant Communcation
Part 12 of the Psychic Exploration series
Modern research demonstrates that plants react to human thoughts and feelings. This essay, chapter 12 of Psychic Exploration, gives the first simple steps in showing that thoughts and emotions are energetic and that this energy can be measured by the biosystem of a plant coupled to a Wheatstone bridge amplifier.
Psychic Photography and Thoughtography
Part 13 of the Psychic Exploration series
Since 1861, more than two dozen persons in several countries have claimed to obtain on photographic plates and film a variety of types of images that could only have been produced paranormally. This essay, chapter 13 of Psychic Exploration, delves into psychic photography and thoughtography.
Psychic Research and the Healing Process
Part 14 of the Psychic Exploration series
The healing process is usually described within the framework of physics, chemistry, and cellular physiology. Just as the role of the observer is generally ignored in the formulations of science, so the role of the healer and the healed is ignored in modern medicine. This essay, chapter 14 of Psychic Exploration, examines the role of the healer-healed in 10 basic processes in healing: diagnosis, manual healing, self-healing, chemical agents, anesthesia, surgery, bacteriostasis, action-at-a-distance, the guide, and regeneration.
Out-of-the-Body Experiences
Part 15 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 15 of Psychic Exploration, studies out-of-the-body experiences (OOBE's), formerly called "astral projection" and "traveling clairvoyance," are a universal human phenomenon in the sense of having been experienced in every time and culture, although only a very small fraction of people ever experience it.
Hauntings, Apparitions and Poltergeists
Part 16 of the Psychic Exploration series
Apparitions represent a rich collection of phenomena. They have been seen personifying the forms of the living and of the dead, at the exact time of the agent's death and often a considerable time after. This essay, chapter 16 of Psychic Exploration, explores apparitions, haunting, and poltergeists.
Survival Research
Problems and Possibilites
Part 17 of the Psychic Exploration series
When we ask whether consciousness continues after death, we usually assume that a surviving self will exist in some kind of body and will include the personality familiar from waking experience. Since the consciousness that may continue after death presumably exists before, we may explore it in the living. This essay, chapter 17 of Psychic Exploration, studies the problems and possibilities of survival research.
The Emergence of Paraphysics: Research and Applications
Part 18 of the Psychic Exploration series
Paraphysics is a blending of physics, electronics, biology, biofeedback, and the new science of subjective awareness with the methodology already established in some areas of psychic research and systems engineering. This essay, chapter 18 of Psychic Exploration, outlines some of the areas in which outer-space research, in a synergistic blending of many disciplines, has produced benefits to inner-space research.
The Emergence of Paraphysics: Theoretical Foundations
Part 19 of the Psychic Exploration series
Success in the formal scientific investigation of phenomena has always required that man learn to speak formally about the phenomena under investigation. Psychic phenomena are considered in terms of the unresolved problem of the relation between mind and matter, with paraphysics being defined as the physics of paranormal processes. This essay, chapter 19 of Psychic Exploration, explores why modern science has been unable to deal with highly complex systems and has therefore been able to address only certain kinds of problems.
Psychic Research in the Soviet Union
Part 20 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 20 of Psychic Exploration, is an anecdotal account of a personal voyage to the Soviet Union (Moscow, Leningrad, Alma-Ata) to investigate Russian research in telepathy, skin vision, psychokinesis, acupuncture, Kirlian photography, and psychic healing.
Devices for Monitoring Nonphysical Energies
Part 21 of the Psychic Exploration series
Significant advances in the psychoenergetics field will be delayed until devices and techniques are developed for monitoring nonphysical energies. One general category of useful devices is that of a conventional electromagnetic nature that responds to such energies via interaction with an intermediary living transducer - human, animal, or plant. This paper, chapter 21 of Psychic Exploration, is largely devoted to a discussion of two such devices: a high-voltage (Kirlian) photography device and an acupuncture-point monitoring device.
Psychic Research and Modern Physics
Part 22 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 22 of Psychic Exploration, describes the application of concepts of modern physics to the study of psychic functioning. Included are a discussion of an example of a theoretical model of precognition that is testable and is compatible with contemporary physics, and descriptions of recent experiments using instruments that have exceptional sensitivity.
Consciousess and Quantum Theory
Part 23 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 23 of Psychic Exploration, presents a theory of consciousness. Also presented is a paradigm that provides a bridge between science and religion.
Psychic Phenomena and Mystical Experience
by Lawrence Leshan, Ph. D.
Part 24 of the Psychic Exploration series
Mysticism and the paranormal have long been associated in two ways: in the repeated reports of mystically trained individuals acquiring paranormal abilities and in the warnings given in all serious mystical training schools that students who become interested in these abilities will cease to make progress. This essay, chapter 24 of Psychic Exploration, discusses those associations.
Myth, Consciousness, and Psychic Research
Part 25 of the Psychic Exploration series
This essay, chapter 25 of Psychic Exploration, explores the crisis of consciousness and its historical analogies and suggests that the mythic persona emerging from the crisis points toward a new image of man and a new possibility for humanity.
Consciousness and Extraordinary Phenomena
Part 26 of the Psychic Exploration series
Two cases are described in which extraordinary phenomena appear to have been elicited within the context of altered states of consciousness (trance) in a laboratory setting. This essay, chapter 26 of Psychic Exploration, studies these two cases.
Psi-Conducive States of Awareness
Part 27 of the Psychic Exploration series
Until recently, little systematic research has been directed toward examining the role of subjective state of awareness factors in psychic functioning. In this essay, chapter 27 of Psychic Exploration, recent experimental studies are described involving the elicitation of ESP through dreams, hypnosis, and meditation-type procedures.
The Social Implications of Psychic Research
Part 28 of the Psychic Exploration series
Psychic research, both as a formal discipline within the activity of science and as an informal fascination and exploration in the larger culture, is profoundly affecting habitual modes of thinking and perceiving, and thence social institutions and the culture itself. The characteristics of this paradigm shift are examined in terms of the Perennial Philosophy and the New Freemasonry, and the significance of this view of man in the universe if it were to become dominant is suggested in this final chapter of Psychic Exploration.