via Intellect and Direct Experience

"The pathway to a future where psi phenomena and applications (e.g., precognition, telepathy, and other psychic phenomenon not currently accepted by society) are taken for granted within our society is clouded from view.  Two general approaches are providing guidance on this journey:

• Intellectual Approach: Scientific descriptions of reality - the scientific method is an integral and powerful part of our society.
• Applications Approach: providing data about psi, through direct experience, that the intellectual approach has yet to describe.

In what follows, we provide examples of important areas where progress is being made toward a societal acceptance of psi.  First we discuss some applications, and then summarize the status of the intellectual approach.

psi Applications: Capabilities of Personal Consciousness

Laura Day

The $10,000-a-Month Psychic: When business people need a crystal ball, they turn to consultant Laura Day, the 'intuitionist' is the headline in the Newsweek article in the Society section of the June 30, 2008 issue.  The early portion of the business pathway is evident from a quote from this article".

"When Seagate Technology, the $11 billion-a-year maker of hard drives for the Playstation 3 and Microsoft Xbox, went searching for a consultant to run one of its management workshops in the fall of 2006, it bypassed the usual list of Silicon Valley gurus. Instead, Seagate's executive director of software engineering, Gabriel Lawson, invited Laura Day—a stylish New Yorker with no tech experience—to train his Colorado-based team. "She was amazing," Lawson tells NEWSWEEK, recalling Day's quick insights into the poor coordination between the company's research and marketing teams. "Anybody who can afford her will get 100 times their money's worth." What exactly is Day's expertise? While she likes to downplay it as mere "intuition," her clients prefer another explanation: she's a psychic.

Day's feel for the unknown has become a hot commodity among certain high-profile business people, bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the 49-year-old mother in the process. The William Morris talent agency has used Day to help it decide whom to represent and how to help the company grow. "It's like looking over at your opponent's cards in a poker game," says Jennifer Walsh, executive vice president of William Morris's literary department, which reps Day.  A big Hollywood producer says Day advised him in 2006 to pass on a can't-miss animated film, predicting it would bomb at the box office.  It did. (The producer didn't want to be named for fear of public ridicule.)"

Public or customer ridicule, sometimes called "the giggle factor", is an important.  Most companies and law enforcement agencies worry about their images.  However, as it becomes more and more evident that psi has real value to the 'bottom line', the demand for intuitionists-psychics will increase.

The popularity of television programs, like the Medium and Psychic Detectives, is a sign that many people are resonating with the reality and value of psi in criminal work.  The psychic detectives are usually given the most difficult cases when all 'normal' leads have dried up.  This too may change as some law enforcement agencies openly and proudly acknowledge their use of psi as part of the process of collecting evidence and finding missing and hiding individuals.  Here are some quotes from people and agencies who have been assisted by psychics.

Pam Coronado

"Pam is resplendently focused and has established, with this author-criminologist, that her intuitive responses have a prevailing accuracy. I have witnessed Pam convert even the toughest of skeptics. While doing research and testing on many psychics for our book, I quickly ascertained that Pam is "special" and we deem her one of the best psychic detectives in North America. Adding to her notable talent is the fact that she is a licensed private investigator, which affords her considerable insight into the elements of solving a crime. In this regard, Pamela Coronado is unrivaled."

Richard Brennan, Consulting Criminologist
and co-author "Psychic Criminology: A
Guide For Using Psychics In Investigations"
(Charles C. Thomas Publishers, Ltd.)

Gary Pierce, Philo, CA
(More info here.)

There are many other legitimate psychic detectives working with police departments and other agencies, some have been featured on the Psychic Detectives TV series.

This is a complex study, but it is important because several RV groups are involved and because the results are potentially applicable to our society as a whole.  Applications with this sort of obvious application will become more common as we move along the pathway to psi acceptance.  We believe that the commercial applications will lead the way and then ongoing government supported applications for our society will follow after the government publicly acknowledges the reality of psi.

Financial Investing with psi has many successful examples showing the potential for making money.  For example, Russell Targ was initially quite successful using Associative Remote Viewing (ARV) with objects in the silver's future market.  Here is summary of this work from an interview with Jeff Mishlove:

We did an experiment like this in 1982 with Keith Harary as the viewer.  Each Thursday he would make a forecast of what I would hand him the following Monday, and we made nine consecutive successful investments in the silver market, based on whether Keith saw an ice cream cone or a tuna fish sandwich; and it took a very courageous investor to be willing to put money into the silver market based on Keith's perception on a Thursday.  And in that I should mention that we were willing, as they say, to put our money where our mouth is. We made these investments and turned a profit of $120,000, which our investor shared with us.

October 2004 Intuitive Investment Club Account Values. Full Size Graph here

Targ was involved in starting an investment club in October of 2004 that has now been in operation using ARV for almost 4 years.  Most members now come from Intuitive Investing workshops and some participants choose to join the Intuitive Investment Club.  The club track record in terms of dollars from each workshop is show at the right.  Other psi investment clubs are being formed, each using their own style.  We like to call these PsiPods.  As time goes on, we expect some competition and some cooperation among various PsiPods.  For most participants, the inner satisfaction and growth/transformation that occurs as they discover, nurture and apply their personal psi capabilities is at least as important as the dollar profits.

The club results were obtained with the long-term success rate of 57%, where 50% would be expected by chance.  Other individuals and groups may be able to do better than that in the future...or maybe not.  We suggest forming your PsiPods and going for it!  As more and more results become public, the psi "giggle factor" will begin to disappear.

One critical factor that individuals and society must appreciate about psi is that it is probabilistic in nature, just as the psi wavefunction in quantum mechanics, and just as so many areas in our lives depend on probabilities.  For example, the medicines we take only have a certain probability of working successfully on each of us.  We expect the probability of psi success to increase along the psi pathway, however, we doubt it will ever approach 100%.

 

Intellectual Approach: Philosophy-Science-Math

On the pathway of psi becoming accepted, scientific and philosophical foundations will be established for treating the realities of "future" events having an influence on "earlier events".  Also, philosophy, science and math will develop improved methods of dealing with emotions and all other aspects of consciousness that are experienced in the here and now.  There are some models that are beginning to address these issues, but they are not even known to most scientists.  For example, see the Link Theory discussion and the My Big TOE video (TOE is Theory Of Everything).

Our society is currently moving along the pathway to the acceptance of psi as we explore and develop a science of consciousness:

 

 

27th Annual SSE Meeting (2008) June 25-28, 2008

Paul H. Smith, president of the International Remote Viewing Association (IRVA), was an invited speaker at the 2008 meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration.  The title of his presentation is provocative: "Why ESP is Consciousness’ only Hope"

The titles of other selected papers are listed below to show how science is working to address the fundamental nature of consciousness.  Click here for the complete list of titles and key abstracts.

Courtney Brown, "Quantum Mechanics, Remote Viewing, and Time: Wheeler’s Delayed-Choice Experiment in a Macro Environment"

Roger Nelson, "The Global Consciousness Project: Findings in the Event Experiment"

Joie Jones and Yury Kronn, "Receiving, Recording and Transmitting Remote Healing Intent Using a Technological Interface"

Todd Richards, "Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging and Electroencephalographic Evidence of Correlated Brain Signals Between Physically and Sensory Isolated Subjects"

Imants Barušs, "Toward a Post-Quantum Theory of Consciousness"

Larry Goldberg, "Self-Organization, Quantum Computation, and Conscious Choice"

"Remote Viewing and PK across Space and Time Panel"

 "UFOs and Consciousness" - Presenter Theme

Bernard Haisch, "Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness: A New Measurement"

Dr. Bernard Haisch is an astrophysicist and author of over 130 scientific publications.  His paper shows that some scientists view consciousness itself as being more fundamental than what we call 'reality'.  From the abstract of his paper, "Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness: A New Measurement," is the following:

Quantum mechanics is now telling us unambiguously that consciousness creates reality. And since quantum physics is at the root of everything, this has profound consequences for the interpretation of our own nature, the universe, and, yes, even why it may make more sense to trace everything back to a conscious intelligence rather than inanimate fields and forces.

Science will eventually find a way to include non-physical realities, such as subjective emotions, beliefs and memories into their models.  Consciousness is fundamentally subjective involving here and now moments.  Events, such as eating dinner, are basically a convenient grouping of here and now conscious moments.  These events are "things" as real as the particles and fields in the current reality paradigm.  Any approach to the entire Universe must include everything...and we mean every thing that consciousness can touch.  For example, UFO experiences are quite real within the consciousness of those directly involved...as real as the words on this page.  Quantum mechanics, or some other model, may eventually describe these and all experiences as "events" in a consciousness realm rather than events/motion in space-time.  This type of advanced model is probably where psi will become better characterized.

"Things" of the Universe all have Entangled Fuzzy Boundaries

A Circle without a Boundary as a metaphor for the Universe

All "things" that consciousness touches can be visualized as being in the blue circular area without a boundary - this circle without a boundary is a useful metaphor for the Universe.  This Universe of consciousness cannot have a boundary, since if any thing that consciousness touches was outside the boundary, that thing would have to be included as being inside.  Thus, there can be no "outside" and therefore no boundary to our circle or our Universe.

All events - past, present, future - are things.  Things can be combined in multiple ways to form other things.  For example, precognition connects the event of making a prediction about the future with that future event.  The accuracy of precognition, well beyond chance, is an example of how the concept of non-local (instantaneous) connections of quantum particles extends to conscious events.  Thus the two red event-things at the right can be any place and any time and still influence each other - they are entangled.

Things all have fuzzy boundaries.  For example, the boundaries of physical things cannot be precisely measured, plus they all radiate energy which complicates what you even mean by a physical boundary.  Or, events involving people do not have precise starting times since there is always a history preceding the event.  The fuzzy boundaries appear to entangle all things using principles analogous to non-locality in quantum mechanics.

You are a complex thing and your consciousness includes complex things such as your 5 usual physical senses, emotions, intuition, and sub-personalities (some of your complex conscious things are shown as in the figure to the right).  Your physical life can be defined as all of the conscious events in your life, from the moment of your physical conception to the moment of your physical death.  Your physical life is a complex thing in this Universe and is illustrated at the right with the thick fuzzy boundary.

Complex Systems theory is a relatively new science which looks at the organization of complex "things".  These things can be in biology, computer science, management, or society itself.  The key is the study of how relationships between parts give rise to the collective behaviors of a larger system and how the system interacts and forms relationships with its environment.  The relationships are generally non-linear and often give rise to "surprises" as the complexity increases. 

Perhaps psi needs a contribution from complexity theory...time will tell.  In any case, science is facing a serious challenge for developing an integrated theory of consciousness.  What seems to be missing in all the theories is the ability to predict existing psi data and suggest new approaches to psi that can be tested.
 

You, Consciousness and the Universe

A Theory Of Everything (TOE) must explain the relationships between you, consciousness and the Universe.  Here is our TOE diagram with complexity and fuzzy boundaries.  Note that there is no fuzzy boundary on the Universe, since the Universe has no boundary.  Science will gradually quantify these mysterious complexities along the fuzzy psi pathway.

The key to expanding psi awareness within our society may be people taking action to teach the reality of psi.  There are more and more people in our society who know it to be true from direct experience and who are not only talking about psi, but openly applying it to teach others of psi's reality.  Acknowledging and teaching the reality of a fuzzy/probabilistic psi will, we believe, lead to psi applications that will be more valuable than oil for some purposes and nearly worthless for other purposes.  When this reality is recognized by society, psi will again become silent for more and more people, but this time the silence will include a personal knowledge that psi skills can be used just like walking and talking.  That's ho hum.