Indeed, if these phenomena are real, regardless of how rare or how difficult to classify they may be, then they can change our entire concept of human nature. If these are realities which have been overlooked or omitted simply because they do not fit into the picture which modern science has painted, then we had better take another look at that picture. Maybe the picture’s frame has been so dazzling as to have blurred our vision.
At any rate, I decided to stop being a blind skeptic. True science, after all, tests hypotheses; it is not supposed to cast aside any ideas which do not, at first glance, appear to fit our modern scheme of things.
Besides, it was clear that science, while solving the mystery of everything from the shape of our planet to the splitting of the atom, is still confounded by one of the most baffling of all puzzles: What is the human mind?
And so the bell rang for round number two. First had been hypnosis. Now came extrasensory perception, a term which refers to the ability to perceive things without using the senses.
I started with two questions: Were there any investigators seriously examining this problem? If so, what had they found?
At this point I recalled that one of my college instructors, back in the days when I was a freshman, had told us briefly about a fellow at Duke University who was performing experiments with a number of students in order to determine whether there was any scientific evidence in favor of telepathy. According to my instructor, this man was using specially designed cards and, in strict accordance with scientific method, was testing the ability of students to identify these cards without actually seeing them in any way. “The results seem to indicate,” continued the instructor, “that we ordinary human beings actually have telepathic powers. Interesting.”
Now, about fourteen years later, I was beginning to agree with my old teacher. It was interesting, all right. But I figured that this man at Duke had probably made a one-shot test merely to satisfy his curiosity, or to gather material for a magazine article. The odds were heavily against the possibility, it seemed to me, that this investigator would still be concerned with the same problem.
Just the same, I started inquiring about the “man with the cards” who had done telepathic experiments back in the thirties. I drew blanks until I came to my young medical friend.
“Oh! You must mean Dr. J. B. Rhine,” he answered.
That was the first time that I had ever heard the name. But from that moment Dr. Joseph Banks Rhine became one of the most important names in my personal file.
“He’s still at Duke University,” added the doctor.
“But I suppose that, after all these years, he’s no longer concerned with extrasensory perception,” I said.
“Your guess is 100 percent wrong,” corrected the doctor. “Rhine has devoted his whole life to those studies; he’s probably recognized as the world’s number one authority ou the subject, and his last book, Reach of the Mind, is generally regarded as a classic in this field. And Rhine is not the only one; there are scientists all over the world dedicating themselves exclusively to research in extrasensory perception.”
And so I learned that there were indeed, both here and abroad, scientists keenly interested in these matters. As early as 1882, in a lonely protest against general indifference, a group of scholars in England had formed the English Society for Psychical Research for the purpose of investigating telepathy, telesthesia (clairvoyance), hypnotism, spiritualism—odd and unexpected phenomena which they felt it their duty to explain or to abandon as inane absurdities. This organization, fostering scholarly methods, is more active today than ever before, and has piled up an imposing record of experimental studies.
Following the lead of the British society, other scientists and explorers decided to tackle the same problem. And in 1930, together with three other members of the Duke University Psychology Department, the man who now appears to be the undisputed leader in this arena, J. B. Rhine, launched a full-scale attack. It was the first time in history that a group of university staff members had given so much attention to this subject.
Meanwhile literature in this field was beginning to build up. Books and reports were being contributed by the researchers of several nations. So off I went on another book binge, reading everything I could find on extrasensory perception.
It was interesting to note that in expanding my interest from hypnotism to extrasensory perception I had plenty of company. Indeed, there is a definite historical relationship between the two phenomena.1 So close, in fact, was their relationship that for many years extrasensory perception was considered a by-product of hypnosis. Dr. Mesmer himself, the grandfather of modern hypnosis, once wrote that deeply hypnotized subjects can sometimes distinctly see the past and the future.
And so, historically at least, it is clear that hypnosis has been closely related to telepathy and clairvoyance. But since those early days, when hypnotists encountered extrasensory phenomena quite by chance, the investigation has come a long way, and some sort of digest is in order, because this is a matter with which we are all vitally concerned—and about which we shall be hearing more and more in the days to come.
In my own case I first became familiar with the terms that appear frequently in this work:
ESP: merely the abbreviation for extrasensory perception, which refers to the perception of an external event without the use of any known senses.
TELEPATHY: the transference of a thought from one mind to another without the use of the senses.
CLAIRVOYANCE: the awareness of objects or events without the use of the senses—any direct apprehension of external objects, (In short, telepathy involves communication between mind and mind; clairvoyance involves communication between mind and object.)
This is a good point at which to distinguish, by means of examples, between telepathy and clairvoyance, and to become acquainted at the same time with still other terms and principles which we shall encounter later.
If one person thinks of a number between one and five, and another person correctly perceives that number—and if this test is repeated without failure (and without trickery) for, say, one hundred trials—then we would certainly have a clear-cut example of telepathy.
In such a telepathic experiment the one who concentrates on the number is the “sender.” The person trying to perceive the number is known as the “receiver,” and the number is referred to as the “target.” The receiver’s response, in trying to name the target, is termed his “call,” whether it be graphically recorded or merely oral. His correct calls are labeled as “hits.”
In this instance, as with all cases of telepathy, the target is the thought or mental activity of another mind. But clairvoyance is the awareness, without use of the senses, of objects or objective events. A good example of clairvoyance is found in the book Phantasms of the Living, in which the experience of a ten-year-old girl is reported.
The girl was walking along a country lane when she suddenly had a “vision” of her mother lying on the floor at home. The perception was particularly clear and poignant—clear enough to include a lace-bordered handkerchief on the floor near her mother and sufficiently poignant to impel the girl to summon a doctor even before returning home.
It was not easy to convince the doctor that he should rush home with her, because her mother had apparently been in good health and was, furthermore, supposed to have been away from home that day. But the doctor followed the girl and, sure enough, there was the mother lying on the floor of the room the girl had described; and all the details, including the lace-bordered handkerchief, were just as the child had envisaged.
The doctor found that the mother was a victim of a heart attack and was of the opinion that she would not have survived if they had not arrived when they did.
This case would seem to be an especially good example of clairvoyance, rather than telepathy, because no one had witnessed, or even had reason to suspect, the event that took place. Yet the little girl had somehow “seen” the whole episode while she wa
s walking along a country lane.
PRECOGNITION: prophecy; it is awareness of a future event which could not be inferred through the power of reasoning. This strange human faculty has also been the subject of recent scientific investigation, the findings of which will be discussed shortly.
PSYCHOKINESIS: the imposing term for what is more popularly known as “mind over matter.” Taking the word apart, we have “psycho,” which refers to the mind, and “kinesis,” which is the Greek word for movement or motion. Can a man’s mind directly influence the motion of material objects? Is it really possible for a dice player to “influence” those rolling bones? Researchers have an answer.2
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: the science concerned with the study of those mental manifestations—such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis—which appear to transcend recognized principles. It is, in short, a division of psychology dealing with psychical research. The “para” standing in front of psychology (the study of the mind) means “beyond.” So the literal translation is “beyond psychology.”
Returning now to the matter of telepathy and clairvoyance, I was amazed to learn how much evidence there is for extrasensory perception—and that no other phenomenon in the history of science has had so little recognition for so much experimental research. Dr. Rhine and the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory, as a result of thousands of carefully controlled card experiments over a long period of time, had proved that telepathy and clairvoyance are realities.3,4
And I was even more surprised to note that these facts do not rest upon the Duke research alone. Corroborating experiments have been carefully carried out at numerous universities, including the University of Bonn in Germany; Cambridge, Oxford, and the University of London in England; and many American schools. More than ten years ago Professor Thouless of Cambridge had stated, “The reality of the phenomena must be regarded as proved as certainly as anything in scientific research can be proved.” Recently Dr. Raynor C. Johnson, a physicist, wrote, “It is… a matter of the most profound and far-reaching implications to be able now to claim that telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition are indubitable hard facts; that the evidence for them is as well-founded and reliable as for the basic facts of physics and chemistry.”5
For those who have difficulty, despite the evidence, in accepting the reality of extrasensory perception, it might be helpful to use an analogy with hypnosis. The elusiveness of both phenomena is their distinguishing trait, the characteristic which renders impossible the assurance that any specific test will turn out successfully. Even though hypnosis, for instance, is now a universally recognized science, still the most expert hypnotist cannot be positive that he will deliver a convincing demonstration during a given test. This factor, the elusiveness under test (or “show me”) conditions, long delayed the acceptance of hypnosis and is now having a similar effect on extrasensory perception.
There are other points of similarity within these two phenomena: Both have histories bursting with conflict. Both fell first into the hands of fringe groups and much later came under the scrutiny of science. The bitterest foes of medical hypnosis were the doctors themselves; and those who strike hardest against parapsychology are probably the psychologists.
Nevertheless, resistance to the acceptance of hypnosis was finally broken by the fact that convincing, irrefutable demonstrations sometimes do occur. In the same manner general acceptance of extrasensory perception is inevitable. Indeed, just as there was no alternative to the ultimate acceptance of hypnosis, so there is no alternative to the acceptance of extrasensory perception.
The next problem confronting the parapsychologists was to determine whether the functioning of telepathy and clairvoyance is physical or non-physical. If extrasensory perception is purely physical—if the mind is strictly mechanistic—then the factor of distance (space) should have some measurable lawful effect upon its occurrence. The next step, therefore, was to design experiments to ascertain whether the mind truly transcended space. The results of these experiments proved conclusively that distance shows no effect whatever on ESP performance.6
But if the human mind can transcend space, this logically leads to a conclusion that I had long regarded as an impossibility: The mind must also be capable of reaching through time, because time, as we know it, is a function of space. It requires time to move through space. And if the mind does transcend time, then it possesses a most incredible power—prophecy.
I had long ridiculed those who had contended that it was possible for the human mind to perceive accurately a future event.7 To me it was simply inconceivable. Perhaps I should have reviewed more carefully the “history of impossibility.” Throughout every age men have brushed aside as impossible ideas which have later become commonplace realities. And it is important to note that the scoffers are frequently prominent scientists, not just laymen. Simon Newcomb, eminent American scientist at the turn of the century, declared that it was impossible for any machine to fly long distances through the air. And an editorial in an eastern newspaper sized up the telephone like this:
A man about 46 years of age has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people, by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires. He calls the instrument a telephone, which is obviously intended to imitate the word “telegraph” and win the confidence of those who know of the success of the latter instrument. Well-informed people know that it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.8
I should have remembered these things, but my hard core of conditioning had somehow never been penetrated by these considerations. Nor had I ever taken seriously any of the spontaneous instances of peering into the future. Such accounts—many by eminent and conservative observers—are abundant. Here is one sample from Some Cases of Prediction, a collection of a number of cases, together with verification reports, by Dame Edith Lyttelton, former president of the British Society for Psychical Research:
… A few weeks before the 1931 Schneider Trophy air race… I went to the cinema with my husband and a woman friend one evening; the news reel contained photographs of the British Schneider Trophy team…. We were first shown the team standing in a group and were then shown each member separately. I may say at this point that all the members were complete strangers to me. …I had no interest in the race whatever…. The team that year consisted of RAF men with the addition of one single Naval flying man, he stood out in the group by reason of his different uniform…. Then we were shown each man singly. As the photograph of this young man was thrown on the screen, I received a sudden terrific sensation of shock, the shock of violent physical impact. I started so violently in my seat that my friend sitting next to me whispered, “What’s the matter?” I answered in great distress, “He’s going to be killed, he’s going to crash.” That was all But either two, or three weeks later the newspapers came out with headlines “Schneider Trophy Fatality,” the only Naval member of the team had crashed into the sea and had been killed instantly while on a practice flight. Those are the facts. My friend… can confirm them.
For many people such examples are unnecessary; most readers can supply their own experiences. Frequently these premonitions are concerned with forthcoming disasters, collisions, or deaths. As for me, I had always dismissed such reports as “coincidences.”
For the parapsychologists, however, the matter was one neither for peremptory dismissal nor acceptance. It was for the laboratory. Again the famous ESP cards were employed, but this time the subjects were asked in advance to predict what the order of the entire deck of cards would be after they were shuffled a specified number of times; the shuffling would take place after a certain length of time. Later there were even more stringent conditions, including machine shuffling of the cards. The outcome: There is definite evidence for precognition, and it stands up against all alternative explanations.
“This man
Rhine keeps fooling around with cards all the time,” commented my father, who had been reading the Readers Digest condensation of Rhine’s book, “and I’ll bet he doesn’t even gamble!”
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I answered. “This man isn’t trying to break the bank at Monte Carlo. His card tests prove that the mind has a very real power that science has tended to overlook all these years. And don’t be fooled by the fact that it now registers to only a slight degree. In Ben Franklin’s time the big news about electricity was the fact that Franklin identified it with lightning by picking up a few sparks on the key at the end of his kite. But as more was learned about it electricity exploded into a force which revolutionized our way of life. And when the Wright brothers tried their new flying machine, the longest period of time they could keep a plane in the air was only fifty-nine seconds! Today the luxury Stratocruisers do a little better than that.”
“In the same way this mind stuff, as we learn more about it, could become the mightiest power yet.”
My father was quiet; he appeared to be reflecting upon my explanation. I was quite pleased with myself at having apparently impressed him with the significance of this pioneering work- pleased with him, too, for giving the matter thoughtful consideration.
Then suddenly looking over at me, he shook his head slowly and with obvious disgust. As he turned to walk away he left me with his final verdict: “That man will never make a dime out of it!”
It is true that there are no juicy financial rewards in store for the parapsychology pioneers. But this evidence that man is not, after all, merely a physical contraption is extremely significant. Our treatment of all things depends upon our understanding of their true nature. We can saw through a tree, cut it into pieces, and throw the pieces into a fire without the slightest compunction. We are convinced that the tree has absolutely no consciousness of the mutilation.9 We have no hesitation in gleefully maneuvering a sharp hook into the mouth of a fish because we are convinced that the wriggling creature somehow does not sense what is taking place. Our treatment of dogs is on still a different plane; we can see that the dog is an emotional being, capable of love and loyalty.
The Search for Bridey Murphy Page 6