Friday 28 October 2022

Toward a Phenomenology of the Etheric World: Investigations into the Life of Nature and Man– June 1, 1985








For more than three centuries, scientists have studied the world as detached observers. In doing so, science has achieved marvelous results, but it has also lost the sense of the whole that earlier cultures possessed. By concentrating on the "text" of the physical world, science has lost the context--the etheric world of life forces.

Goethean phenomenology (so named for Goethe's observations) is a scientific method capable of bringing the clarity of natural science to this context of phenomena. Unconsciously, scientific observers have always been using the context to read the text. The phenomenological method involves training observers to look at the activity of thinking itself as it perceives intentionally. It then uses this activity itself as a means of perception. The observer thus becomes conscious that physical nature is indeed a text, and that its meaning derives from the etheric context.

Unlike the more common hypothetical and deductive methods--which presupose a detached observer--the phenomenological method is based on active participation by the observer. This eliminates the need to construct speculative hypotheses; the observer's awareness of his or her own intentionality ensures the veracity of the observations. The etheric world is not a new hypothesis; it is, however, a new domain of observation.

The authors--Jochen Bockem�hl, Christof Lindenau, Georg Maier, Ernst-August M�ller, Hermann Poppelbaum, Dietrich Rapp, and Wolfgang Schad--have all written extensively on "participatory" science and related matters. In this ground-breaking collection, they each explore an aspect of the etheric world and its relationship to human thinking. They systematically lead the reader into the "formative movements" of nature and offer genuine insight into the far-reaching mystery of life. 


The above book draws its inspiration from the work of Rudolf Steiner

              





















Physical vs. Non-Physical Reality

 

September 6, 2008

If you can clearly and vividly imagine what you want, why does it take so long for that vision to show up in physical reality? I’ve addressed this question once before in the article “Why Do Intentions Take So Long to Manifest?” In this article I’ll answer this question from a different angle.

The first step to change your reality — your experience of reality, that is — is to intend precisely what you want to experience. You do this by imagining it as already real and by getting excited about it. The excitement will draw it into your world. Your excitement can be rooted in fear or love. It will work either way. It’s best to favor one polarity or the other — whichever you feel is more powerful for you — but in truth you can use either frequency.

Aligning your physical self with your new non-physical reality

Once you put out your intention, you must then become a vibrational match for it. First, realize that when you’re excited, your intention has already been received and acknowledged. You don’t even need an alpha reflection because this part is instantaneous. Just know that it works. But the part that seems to take time — and time is part of the illusion you call physical reality — is your becoming a match for your intention. This requires adjusting your frequency (of your lower self or your manifested self) to fit the new reflections you’re creating.

In practice the way you do this varies. My recommendation is for you to sit in quiet meditation for about 20 minutes each day, and imagine yourself already where you want to be. But imagine yourself changing into the kind of person who already has your desires manifested. Feel what he feels. Think what he thinks. Vibrate as he does. Alter the vibrational energy of your lower self to match.

This practice allows your lower self — your physical, manifested being — to enter into the new reality you’ve created with your thoughts. If you don’t align your lower self with your new reality, then you can only access your new reality in your imagination, but you can’t bring your physical body with you. If you want to bring your physical body, you must change its frequency/vibration, so your body becomes compatible with your new reality.

Note that you are not your lower self. Your physical being is just one of your many manifested creations. But it has its own frequency, and that frequency limits its range of experience. Your true self is unlimited, and you’re free to imagine anything you desire. When you imagine something, it becomes real instantaneously. But initially you can only access it non-physically through your non-physical senses. You can feel its presence in your thoughts, but you won’t yet “see” it in your physically perceived reality with your physical senses. The reason is that you haven’t yet taken your body with you, and your body includes your physical senses. Your physical senses remain at their old frequency (the last frequency you adjusted them to), so they can only continue feeding you sensory information that falls within their frequency range.

In practice this means you may detect some change in your physical reality, which you might refer to as an alpha reflection. A more accurate term would be an alpha projection. What you are experiencing is the projection of the new, non-physical reality you just created onto the frequency range of your physically perceived reality. Depending on the current sensory range of your physical being (based on its vibrational frequency), you may perceive virtually no physical change at all, or you may perceive a great deal of change very quickly.

The role of time

Time is one of the perceptual factors of your physical self. You may cast out a new intention, and it immediately manifests in the non-physical frequency range. However, your physical self perceives the manifestation as occurring hours, days, or weeks later — or perhaps never. This is because time itself is part of the projection of input that your physical self perceives. What makes time appear real is trying to filter reality through your physical being’s sense perceptions. You aren’t perceiving reality itself; you’re perceiving a projection of reality into a time-bound perceptual matrix.

Imagine a human baby. The baby has no sense of time. It is fully in the present moment. It has no patience. When it’s hungry it cries for food. It has no sense that food is coming later. It only perceives the now. But as that baby adjusts the frequency range of its senses to match the physical reality of the earth plane, its senses align themselves with being able to perceive reality through the lens — the projection — of linear time. Time, therefore, is an artifact of your physical senses. Disconnect yourself from your physical senses, and time no longer has meaning. There is no way to measure time without access to your physical senses. Even if you count numbers in your mind, all you have is the current count, your present-moment memories of the “past,” and your present-moment projection of the “future.” Both past and future are present-moment projections, but they are not real in the sense of having a position in space-time.

The notion of using numbers (i.e. time units) as a measure of temporal distance is strictly rooted to your physical sense perceptions — outside of those physical senses, time is strictly an imaginary concept. Time is irrelevant in a universe of pure consciousness devoid of physicality.

Tuning in to your non-physical senses

How limited is the sensory range of your physical being? Can you train your eyes and ears to perceive a broader range of frequencies? To some degree the answer is yes, but those frequencies must be in some way compatible with physicality. There must be a way to project the non-physical frequencies you wish to perceive onto the physical plane. That isn’t always possible. You can use devices like radios to turn non-physical frequencies into physically perceivable projections. Electromagnetic frequencies can be translated into sound waves. But you cannot use a radio to listen to the frequency of love, which is also a non-physical frequency. If you try to project love into a sound, it’s like trying to squeeze a whale through the eye of a needle. What comes out the other side won’t remotely resemble a whale, although it will still consist of whale parts. The projection matrix of physicality is simply inadequate to the task of representing the full range of non-physical frequencies as physical sense perceptions. Only some non-physical frequencies can be projected onto physicality without excessive loss of information.

Fortunately you are much more than a physical being. Your physical self and your physical sense projections are merely equipment that you have access to. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they are you. That would be like listening to the radio and thinking that the device is equal to your ear. Your physical senses are merely frequency translators with a limited operating range. There is a great deal they cannot accurately detect. If the only input you consider is that which can be projected through your physical senses, you are practically senseless. 🙂

In order to detect a broader range of frequencies, you must tune out from your physical senses and tune into your non-physical senses. The best way to do this is to physically relax your body and eliminate as much physical sensory input as you can. Close your eyes, quiet the environment, go to a place where the smell is neutral and the temperature comfortable. Breathe deeply for a while until your sense of touch becomes numb. This will happen automatically if you remain still and allow the repetitive, non-changing input to saturate your physical nerves. With practice you should be able to enter this state very quickly, within minutes. Again, the sense of time passing is merely part of the physical sensory projection matrix. Once you disconnect from your physical senses completely, you will no longer perceive the passage of time (except to the degree that you continue to associate with your physical senses and translate your non-physical experience into a physical sensory equivalent).

Once you’ve turned your attention away from your physical senses, you can begin listening to your non-physical senses. Try not to sense anything at all in your physical body. Remember that you’re a conscious being and that your body is merely a tool, much like a radio. If you want to perceive frequencies the radio cannot detect, you must turn the radio off and put it down for a while. If you try to watch TV and listen to the radio at the same time, it will be very difficult to hear the TV. Similarly, if you want to perceive reality through your non-physical senses clearly, it’s easiest if you tune out from your physical senses.

How do you “listen” to your non-physical senses? First, realize that this form of listening is an activity. If you tune out from your physical senses but don’t subsequently open your non-physical senses, you may remain tuned out from all sensory input and perceive nothing at all. You may perceive this to be a pleasant state for a while, but you’ll eventually want to move past it and start listening to other frequencies that are available to you.

Let’s explore some of your non-physical senses.

Intuition

One of your most basic, primitive non-physical senses is your intuition. This is the easiest to access even while you’re still associating with your physical senses because it’s essentially the “loudest” non-physical frequency. Even so, it is far more subtle than the grosser physical frequencies. To access your intuition, simply intend to perceive your intuition channel once you’ve turned off your physical senses. Since you’re already so accustomed to physical sensory forms, it’s a virtual certainty that you’ll project your intuitive channel into mental imagery, sounds, and emotions. With practice, however, you can overcome this limitation and learn to perceive a broader range of intuitive information. You will eventually learn to distinguish your intuition channel from your imagination and your emotions, just as an infant learns to distinguish the separate input channels of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell.

Think of your intuition as a broad-range antenna that you’re holding out into the non-physical universe. It picks up the strongest signals that broadcast loudly. Through your intuition you can perceive the strongest non-physical energy patterns. Many of these will already be in physical form and will be familiar to you. For example, you can perceive strong energies from other people in your life, strong energies in the world at large such as war and violence and love and joy, and strong energies within your own non-physical self like a sense of compassion or a feeling of power.

Your intuition can sense and interpret a broad range of frequencies. It is very flexible. You can mentally request information on any subject, and if there are strong frequencies present, your intuitive antenna will pick them up and translate them into some kind of inner sensory experience. Usually this will be projected into dream-like imagery, sounds, and feelings, but again, with practice your inner perceptions needn’t be limited to their physical equivalents.

The best way to develop your intuition is practice, practice, practice. Keep tuning in and listening to this channel. The more you do this, the more your intuition will self-calibrate for greater clarity and accuracy. Of course the less you use your intuition, the more its calibration will drift. Don’t expect your intuition to be accurate and reliable if you hardly ever pay attention to it.

Telepathy

Another non-physical sense you can tune into is telepathy. By listening and broadcasting thoughts on the right frequency (controlled by your intentions), you can communicate with non-physical beings. This includes communicating with the non-physical parts of any human beings you perceive with your physical senses.

One caution is that telepathic information is most accurate when it remains in non-physical form. Once you start mixing non-physical telepathic communication with physical sensory communication, don’t expect the two to convey the same information. That would be like expecting your radio and your television to broadcast the same information. Sometimes different devices will pick up information that sounds similar, but it’s never exactly the same.

More often than not, your non-physical telepathic perceptions will be very different from your physical sensory communication (with your eyes, ears, and mouth). Physical communication is limited to a very narrow band of frequencies and loses tremendous accuracy when you try to communicate non-physical ideas. Non-physical communication, however, has much more bandwidth.

For example, suppose you telepathically channel information from a non-physical entity, and then you put it in written form to share with other people. The information may have seemed crystal clear to you when you perceived it non-physically. But when you share that text in physical form, and other people read it through their physical senses, much of the meaning will be “lost in translation.” However, if the text serves as a “station identifier” that allows other people to telepathically connect with the same non-physical communication channel that you used, they’ll be able to pick up the information much more accurately through their non-physical senses than they will by trying to analyze the text itself.

Imagine that you see Niagara Falls, and you want to share it with a friend. If you simply show her a photograph you took, the ineffable quality of your experience will not be shared. To get close to your experience, you would have to physically take her to Niagara Falls, so she could experience the same frequencies you did. When you compress those frequencies to a photograph, you lose too many channels of sensory input.

Desire

The third and final non-physical communication frequency we’ll cover here is desire. Intuition is similar to looking around with your eyes. Telepathy is like using your mouth and ears to communicate. Desire is the non-physical equivalent to physical movement and action. Desire is a creative channel.

When you create something non-physically by desiring it, it manifests immediately in non-physical form. If you wish to imagine an apple, you need only hold the desire, and the non-physical apple is immediately created. You can non-physically perceive its presence by sensing its energy through your intuitive channel. You may even visualize it, but visualization isn’t necessary. All it takes to create a non-physical apple is to desire to create it, and it is done.

If you are in the presence of other non-physical beings, they can share in your creations instantly. If you create an apple in your imagination right now, I can perceive it with you. If I create something non-physical and you are listening with your intuition and/or telepathy to the frequency output of my desire, you will perceive what I create as well. In this manner I can share ideas or experiences with you instantly and immediately.

However, it is much more difficult for the desire channel to be perceived through your physical senses in the physical universe. Your desires manifest instantly in non-physical form, but your physical senses will rarely be able to perceive those changes immediately. For starters your physical senses are limited by the projection of time, so even though your non-physical desire manifests immediately, your physical senses will at best only pick up a slight energetic shift in the direction of your desire as your senses adjust themselves to perceive the new frequencies you’ve created. It’s as if your desires have immediately manifested behind you, but in order for you to see them in physical form, you must turn your head.

In truth whenever you physically perceive a manifestation of your desires, you’re perceiving the projection of the non-physical desire.

Focus on creating non-physical manifestations. Don’t try to manifest physical projections. This is a key distinction. What you truly want is never physical in nature. Your truest, deepest desires are always in the non-physical frequency range. For example, wanting money, sex, or a stronger physical body are false desires because they’re merely projections of the non-physical. You never actually desire a projection, so when you try to manifest physical forms directly, your intention will always be weak. It’s like trying to satisfy your appetite with a photo of a banana instead of a real banana. You may be able to do it, but the banana photo cannot satisfy you in any meaningful sense, no matter how delicious it may look. The whole attempt will probably frustrate you, and in the end you’ll only be hungrier.

Instead of money what you really want to experience is abundance, gratitude, and variety. Instead of sex you want to experience love, connection, pleasure, and communion with other conscious beings. Instead of a strong body, you want to experience radiance, confidence, and power. You can manifest all of those desires in non-physical form right now.

Whatever you think you desire in physical form, look to the real non-physical desire behind it. Then put all your energy into creating and manifesting your non-physical desires since that’s what you truly want. Eventually your physical senses will catch up, and you’ll soon see those desires projected into physical form. But it won’t be the physical form that satisfies you. The deeper meaning is always carried by the non-physical frequencies.

Never intend anything physical. Always intend the non-physical, and allow the physical projection to take care of itself.

There are other non-physical perceptual channels such as dreams, but intuition, telepathy, and desire are the easiest to access consciously.

Why does reality work this way? What’s the point?

The reason you chose to experience life as a physical being is so you can have the experience of growth. You wanted to experience reality as a progressive continuum, so you could explore the gaps between your thoughts. These gaps cannot be visited in non-physical reality, so you have to come into the physical frequency range to delve into them. You need the concept of linear time to help you explore these gaps.

In strictly non-physical frequencies, there is no growth, no sense of change occurring over time. Every thought projects itself instantly. Reality doesn’t glide smoothly from one moment to the next; it frequently jumps around. Simply hold a thought and it becomes real. There is no sense of progression from one reality to the next. Since your thoughts can jump around randomly, your reality jumps as well.

Enforcing a sense of continuity in purely non-physical frequencies is effectively impossible. Can you hold your thoughts in a continuous stream of logical progression, where there are no discontinuities, no jumps out of sequence? You probably can’t even do this for five minutes.

In truth there are multiple frequency ranges where continuity can be enforced. The physical universe is just one of them.

The reason you find yourself projected into the physical frequency range is specifically to experience time. Time allows you to witness a progressive unfolding from one physical reality to the next. Physical reality is always playing catch-up with your strongest thoughts. If you hold strong, consistent thoughts, your physical reality will soon reflect those thoughts. If, however, your thoughts jump around wildly and inconsistently, your physical reality will keep changing directions too.

Leading your reality

Imagine that physical reality is your pet dog. Suppose that the dog has a position on some kind of virtual map, where every spot on the map represents a present-moment physical reality you could be experiencing. So the dog’s position corresponds to your present-moment experience of physical reality. When the dog moves, your physical reality changes. For example, if your dog moves from a position labeled scarcity to a position labeled abundance, in your physical reality you’ll see yourself becoming wealthier as the dog moves.

Whenever you hold a strong thought, you call your dog to you: “Here, boy!” Your dog then starts running toward you. But if you jump to a different thought before your dog reaches you, it’s like teleporting to a new location and calling, “Here, boy!” again. Now your dog switches directions and starts running toward you once again. If you keep jumping around wildly, calling your dog from different spots, your dog’s trajectory will appear chaotic and random. However, if you stand in one spot and keep calling your dog from the same location, he’ll run straight to you.

In the non-physical frequency ranges, when you call your dog, he appears at your side instantly. Your desires manifest instantly. This may seem like a nice experience to have, and it surely is, but the downside is that you can never explore the gaps between your desires. If you want to experience a particular reality, you must intend it precisely. You cannot explore the potential realities that lie within the gaps between your thoughts. So your own imagination actually limits what experiences you can have. If you can’t imagine it, you can’t experience it.

The wonderful benefit of physical reality is that you can get your dog to run through areas you’ve never visited, places you couldn’t even imagine. This means you can experience realities you cannot even imagine. This is an enormously powerful, consciousness-raising, imagination-expanding experience for any non-physical being to have. Consequently, the physical universe is an immensely popular frequency range to visit.

What you may have forgotten is that your dog is always responding to your calls. If you forget this, you may start chasing your dog instead of calling your dog to you. You may even blame your dog for leading you to an undesirable location (such as poverty, loneliness, an unfulfilling job, poor health, etc). But you can’t blame your dog for this. Even so, this is actually a perfectly valid way to live. Some beings who come here will decide, “I’m fine letting the dog run wild for a while.” You can still learn a lot this way because the dog will visit places you’ve never been to.

Your physical senses may tell you, “This is an unpleasant reality to experience.” But at the same time, your non-physical self is sensing, “This is a reality I’ve never experienced before. I am learning so much from it. I couldn’t even imagine something like this if I tried.”

If you want to change your experience of physical reality, you must lead your dog. It will faithfully follow you. But you must consistently intend a new position and allow your dog to come to you. Hold your intentions clearly, and allow your physical reality to gradually catch up. If you keep revisiting your dog’s location to check on it (i.e. by reacting to reality instead of consciously creating it), you are meeting your dog and tell him, “Stop!” Whenever you do this, your reality will stagnate. This is fine if you want to soak up a certain experience for a while, but if you wish to continue growing, you must take charge and lead your dog where you want to go.

* * *

There is no “wrong” way to experience physical reality. You will learn a lot whether you actively take charge of the experience or passively allow it to unfold. But if you find your current physical reality unpleasant or if you’ve been stuck in a certain location longer than you’d like, realize that this is happening because you’re holding your physical body and physical senses there with your own thoughts. You are calling your dog to this spot again and again. Your dog is very obedient, so he will not leave you. If you want to experience something new, then you must first create it in your imagination and hold those thoughts long enough for your dog to catch up.

As you do this, allow yourself to fully experience the unfolding pathway from one physical reality to the next. After all, this is why you’re here.

Thursday 27 October 2022

Clairvoyance

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Diagram by the French esotericist Paul Sédir to explain clairvoyance[1]

Clairvoyance (/klɛərˈvɔɪ.əns/; from French clair 'clear', and voyance 'vision') is the magical ability to gain information about an object, person, location, or physical event through extrasensory perception.[2][3] Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant (/klɛərˈvɔɪ.ənt/)[4] ("one who sees clearly").

Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence.[5] Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community.[6] The scientific community widely considers parapsychology, including the study of clairvoyance, a pseudoscience.[7][8][9][10][11][12]

Usage[edit]

Pertaining to the ability of clear-sightedness, clairvoyance refers to the paranormal ability to see persons and events that are distant in time or space. It can be divided into roughly three classes: precognition, the ability to perceive or predict future events, retrocognition, the ability to see past events, and remote viewing, the perception of contemporary events happening outside the range of normal perception.[13]

In history and religion[edit]

Throughout history, there have been numerous places and times in which people have claimed themselves or others to be clairvoyant.

In several religions, stories of certain individuals being able to see things far removed from their immediate sensory perception are commonplace, especially within pagan religions where oracles were used. Prophecy often involved some degree of clairvoyance, especially when future events were predicted. This ability has sometimes been attributed to a higher power rather than to the person performing it.

Christianity[edit]

A number of Christian saints were said to be able to see or know things that were far removed from their immediate sensory perception as a kind of gift from God, including Columba of IonaPadre Pio and Anne Catherine EmmerichJesus Christ in the Gospels is also recorded as being able to know things that were far removed from his immediate human perception. Some Christians today also share the same claim.

Jainism[edit]

In Jainism, clairvoyance is regarded as one of the five kinds of knowledge. The beings of hell and heaven (devas) are said to possess clairvoyance by birth. According to Jain text Sarvārthasiddhi, "this kind of knowledge has been called avadhi as it ascertains matter in downward range or knows objects within limits".[14]

Anthroposophy[edit]

Rudolf Steiner, famous as a clairvoyant himself,[15][16] claimed that for a clairvoyant, it is easy to confuse his own emotional and spiritual being with the objective spiritual world.[17][18]

Parapsychology[edit]

Early research[edit]

The earliest record of somnambulist clairvoyance is credited to the Marquis de Puységur, a follower of Franz Mesmer, who in 1784 was treating a local dull-witted peasant named Victor Race. During treatment, Race reportedly would go into trance and undergo a personality change, becoming fluent and articulate, and giving diagnosis and prescription for his own disease as well as those of others.[19] Clairvoyance was a reported ability of some mediums during the spiritualist period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and psychics of many descriptions have claimed clairvoyant ability up to the present day.[20]

Character reader and clairvoyant in a British travelling show of the 1940s, collected by Arthur James Fenwick (1878–1957)

Early researchers of clairvoyance included William Gregory, Gustav Pagenstecher, and Rudolf Tischner.[21] Clairvoyance experiments were reported in 1884 by Charles Richet. Playing cards were enclosed in envelopes and a subject put under hypnosis attempted to identify them. The subject was reported to have been successful in a series of 133 trials but the results dropped to chance level when performed before a group of scientists in Cambridge. J. M. Peirce and E. C. Pickering reported a similar experiment in which they tested 36 subjects over 23,384 trials which did not obtain above chance scores.[22]

Ivor Lloyd Tuckett (1911) and Joseph McCabe (1920) analyzed early cases of clairvoyance and came to the conclusion they were best explained by coincidence or fraud.[23][24] In 1919, the magician P. T. Selbit staged a séance at his own flat in Bloomsbury. The spiritualist Arthur Conan Doyle attended the séance and declared the clairvoyance manifestations to be genuine.[25][26]

A significant development in clairvoyance research came when J. B. Rhine, a parapsychologist at Duke University, introduced a standard methodology, with a standard statistical approach to analyzing data, as part of his research into extrasensory perception. A number of psychological departments attempted to repeat Rhine's experiments, with failure. W. S. Cox (1936) from Princeton University with 132 subjects produced 25,064 trials in a playing card ESP experiment. Cox concluded, "There is no evidence of extrasensory perception either in the 'average man' or of the group investigated or in any particular individual of that group. The discrepancy between these results and those obtained by Rhine is due either to uncontrollable factors in experimental procedure or to the difference in the subjects."[27] Four other psychological departments failed to replicate Rhine's results.[28][29] It was revealed that Rhine's experiments contained methodological flaws and procedural errors.[30][31][32]

Eileen Garrett was tested by Rhine at Duke University in 1933 with Zener cards. Certain symbols that were placed on the cards and sealed in an envelope, and she was asked to guess their contents. She performed poorly and later criticized the tests by claiming the cards lacked a psychic energy called "energy stimulus" and that she could not perform clairvoyance to order.[33] The parapsychologist Samuel Soal and his colleagues tested Garrett in May 1937. Most of the experiments were carried out in the Psychological Laboratory at the University College London. A total of over 12,000 guesses were recorded but Garrett failed to produce above chance level.[34] In his report Soal wrote "In the case of Mrs. Eileen Garrett we fail to find the slightest confirmation of Dr. J. B. Rhine's remarkable claims relating to her alleged powers of extra-sensory perception. Not only did she fail when I took charge of the experiments, but she failed equally when four other carefully trained experimenters took my place."[35]

Remote viewing[edit]

Remote viewing, also known as remote sensing, remote perception, telesthesia and travelling clairvoyance is the alleged paranormal ability to perceive a remote or hidden target without support of the senses.[36]

A well known study of remote viewing in recent times has been the US government-funded project at the Stanford Research Institute during the 1970s through the mid-1990s. In 1972, Harold Puthoff and Russell Targ initiated a series of human subject studies to determine whether participants (the viewers or percipients) could reliably identify and accurately describe salient features of remote locations or targets. In the early studies, a human sender was typically present at the remote location, as part of the experiment protocol. A three-step process was used, the first step being to randomly select the target conditions to be experienced by the senders. Secondly, in the viewing step, participants were asked to verbally express or sketch their impressions of the remote scene. Thirdly, in the judging step, these descriptions were matched by separate judges, as closely as possible, with the intended targets. The term remote viewing was coined to describe this overall process. The first paper by Puthoff and Targ on remote viewing was published in Nature in March 1974; in it, the team reported some degree of remote viewing success.[37] After the publication of these findings, other attempts to replicate the experiments were carried out [38][39] with remotely linked groups using computer conferencing.[40]

The psychologists David Marks and Richard Kammann attempted to replicate Targ and Puthoff's remote viewing experiments that were carried out in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute. In a series of 35 studies, they were unable to replicate the results so investigated the procedure of the original experiments. Marks and Kammann discovered that the notes given to the judges in Targ and Puthoff's experiments contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. They concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.[41][42] Marks was able to achieve 100 per cent accuracy without visiting any of the sites himself but by using cues.[43] James Randi has written controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.[44]

In 1980, Charles Tart claimed that a rejudging of the transcripts from one of Targ and Puthoff's experiments revealed an above-chance result.[45] Targ and Puthoff again refused to provide copies of the transcripts and it was not until July 1985 that they were made available for study when it was discovered they still contained sensory cues.[46] Marks and Christopher Scott (1986) wrote "considering the importance for the remote viewing hypothesis of adequate cue removal, Tart's failure to perform this basic task seems beyond comprehension. As previously concluded, remote viewing has not been demonstrated in the experiments conducted by Puthoff and Targ, only the repeated failure of the investigators to remove sensory cues."[47]

In 1982 Robert Jahn, then Dean of the School of Engineering at Princeton University wrote a comprehensive review of psychic phenomena from an engineering perspective. His paper included numerous references to remote viewing studies at the time.[48] Statistical flaws in his work have been proposed by others in the parapsychological community and within the general scientific community.[49][50]

Scientific reception[edit]

According to scientific research, clairvoyance is generally explained as the result of confirmation biasexpectancy bias, fraud, hallucination, self-delusionsensory leakagesubjective validationwishful thinking or failures to appreciate the base rate of chance occurrences and not as a paranormal power.[5][51][52][53] Parapsychology is generally regarded by the scientific community as a pseudoscience.[54][55] In 1988, the US National Research Council concluded "The committee finds no scientific justification from research conducted over a period of 130 years, for the existence of parapsychological phenomena."[56]

Skeptics say that if clairvoyance were a reality, it would have become abundantly clear. They also contend that those who believe in paranormal phenomena do so for merely psychological reasons.[57] According to David G. Myers (Psychology, 8th ed.):

The search for a valid and reliable test of clairvoyance has resulted in thousands of experiments. One controlled procedure has invited 'senders' to telepathically transmit one of four visual images to 'receivers' deprived of sensation in a nearby chamber (Bem & Honorton, 1994). The result? A reported 32 percent accurate response rate, surpassing the chance rate of 25 percent. But follow-up studies have (depending on who was summarizing the results) failed to replicate the phenomenon or produced mixed results (Bem & others, 2001; Milton & Wiseman, 2002; Storm, 2000, 2003).

One skeptic, magician James Randi, had a longstanding offer of U.S. $1 million—"to anyone who proves a genuine psychic power under proper observing conditions" (Randi, 1999). French, Australian, and Indian groups have parallel offers of up to 200,000 euros to anyone with demonstrable paranormal abilities (CFI, 2003). Large as these sums are, the scientific seal of approval would be worth far more to anyone whose claims could be authenticated. To refute those who say there is no ESP, one need only produce a single person who can demonstrate a single, reproducible ESP phenomenon. So far, no such person has emerged. Randi's offer has been publicized for three decades and dozens of people have been tested, sometimes under the scrutiny of an independent panel of judges. Still, nothing. "People's desire to believe in the paranormal is stronger than all the evidence that it does not exist." Susan Blackmore, "Blackmore's first law", 2004.[58]

Clairvoyance is considered a hallucination by mainstream psychiatry.[59]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Paul Sédir (1907). Les Miroirs Magiques (PDF). Librairie Générale des Sciences Occultes (3rd ed.). Paris. p. 22.
  2. ^ "clairvoyance"Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Retrieved February 22, 2022. "Clairvoyance - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary". Archived from the original on February 27, 2012. Retrieved October 6, 2007.
  3. ^ "clairvoyance"Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on February 18, 2008. Retrieved October 7, 2007. The ESP entry includes clairvoyance.
  4. ^ "clairvoyant"Oxford Learners Dictionaries. Retrieved April 8,2017.
  5. Jump up to:a b Carroll, Robert Todd. (2003). "Clairvoyance". Retrieved 2014-04-30.
  6. ^
    • Bunge, Mario. (1983). Treatise on Basic Philosophy: Volume 6: Epistemology & Methodology II: Understanding the World. Springer. p. 226. ISBN 90-277-1635-8 "Despite being several thousand years old, and having attracted a large number of researchers over the past hundred years, we owe no single firm finding to parapsychology: no hard data on telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, or psychokinesis."
    • Stenger, Victor. (1990). Physics and Psychics: The Search for a World Beyond the Senses. Prometheus Books. p. 166. ISBN 0-87975-575-X "The bottom line is simple: science is based on consensus, and at present a scientific consensus that psychic phenomena exist is still not established."
    • Zechmeister, Eugene; Johnson, James. (1992). Critical Thinking: A Functional Approach. Brooks/Cole Pub. Co. p. 115. ISBN 0534165966 "There exists no good scientific evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena such as ESP. To be acceptable to the scientific community, evidence must be both valid and reliable."
    • Hines, Terence. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 144. ISBN 1-57392-979-4 "It is important to realize that, in one hundred years of parapsychological investigations, there has never been a single adequate demonstration of the reality of any psi phenomenon."
  7. ^ "Dictionary.com "Pseudoscience"". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  8. ^ "Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy "Science and Pseudo-Science"". Plato.stanford.edu. September 3, 2008. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  9. ^ "Science Needs to Combat Pseudoscience: A Statement by 32 Russian Scientists and Philosophers". Quackwatch.com. July 17, 1998. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  10. ^ "International Cultic Studies Association "Science Fiction in Pseudoscience"". Csj.org. Retrieved September 22, 2012.
  11. ^
    • Gross, Paul R; Levitt, Norman; Lewis, Martin W (1996), The Flight from Science and Reason, New York Academy of Sciences, p. 565ISBN 978-0801856761The overwhelming majority of scientists consider parapsychology, by whatever name, to be pseudoscience.
    • Friedlander, Michael W (1998), At the Fringes of Science, Westview Press, p. 119, ISBN 978-0-8133-2200-1Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time.
    • Pigliucci, Massimo; Boudry, Maarten (2013), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem, University Of Chicago Press, p. 158, hdl:1854/LU-3161824ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3Many observers refer to the field as a 'pseudoscience'. When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field's experiments cannot be consistently replicated.
  12. ^ Cordón, Luis A. (2005). Popular Psychology: An Encyclopedia. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press. p. 182ISBN 978-0-313-32457-4The essential problem is that a large portion of the scientific community, including most research psychologists, regards parapsychology as a pseudoscience, due largely to its failure to move beyond null results in the way science usually does. Ordinarily, when experimental evidence fails repeatedly to support a hypothesis, that hypothesis is abandoned. Within parapsychology, however, more than a century of experimentation has failed even to conclusively demonstrate the mere existence of paranormal phenomenon, yet parapsychologists continue to pursue that elusive goal.
  13. ^ Melton, John. (2001). The Encyclopedia of Occultism & Parapsychology. p. 297. Gale Group, Detroit. ISBN 978-0810385702.
  14. ^ S. A. Jain 1992, p. 16.
  15. ^ Steiner, Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925, 1988, p. 9. ISBN 0880102071
  16. ^ Ruse, Michael (2018). The Problem of War: Darwinism, Christianity, and Their Battle to Understand Human Conflict. Oxford University Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-19-086757-7.
  17. ^ Rudolf Steiner, Errors in Spiritual Investigation: Meeting the Guardian of the Threshold, A Lecture Berlin, March 6, 1913, Bn 62; GA 62; CW 62, Mercury Press, Spring Valley, New York, 1983, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/19130306p01.html Quote: "He therefore must learn above all else to know himself, so that when he is able to confront a spiritual outer world in the same way as he confronts an objective being he can distinguish himself from what is truth. If he does not learn to delimit himself in this way, he will always confuse that which is only within him, that which is only his subjective experience, with the spiritual world picture; he can never arrive at a real grasp of spiritual reality."
  18. ^ Rudolf Steiner An Esoteric Cosmology Eighteen Lectures delivered in Paris May 25 to June 14, 1906, Bn 94.1, GA 94, France. St. George Publications, Spring Valley, New York, 1978, IX. The Astral World, https://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA094/English/SGP1978/19060602p01.html Quote: "Another result of this inverse unraveling of things in the astral world is that it teaches man to know himself. Feelings and passions are expressed by plant and animal forms. When man begins to behold his passions in the astral world he sees them as animal forms. These forms proceed from himself, but he sees them as if they were assailing him. This is because his own being is objectivised—otherwise he could not behold himself. Thus it is only in the astral world that man learns true self knowledge in contemplating the images of his passions in the animal forms which hurl, themselves upon him. A feeling of hatred entertained against another being appears as an attacking demon."
  19. ^ Taves, Ann. (1999). Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. Princeton University Press. p. 126. ISBN 0-691-01024-2
  20. ^ Hyman, Ray. (1985). A Critical Historical Overview of Parapsychology. In Kurtz, PaulA Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. pp. 3–96. ISBN 0-87975-300-5
  21. ^ Roeckelein, Jon. (2006). Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories. Elsevier Science. p. 450. ISBN 0-444-51750-2
  22. ^ Hansel, C. E. MThe Search for a Demonstration of ESP. In Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. pp. 97–127. ISBN 0-87975-300-5
  23. ^ McCabe, Joseph. (1920). Is Spiritualism Based On Fraud? The Evidence Given By Sir A. C. Doyle and Others Drastically Examined. Chapter The Subtle Art of Clairvoyance. London: Watts & Co. pp. 93–108
  24. ^ Tuckett, Ivor Lloyd. (1911). The Evidence for the Supernatural: A Critical Study Made with "Uncommon Sense". Chapter Telepathy and Clairvoyance. K. Paul, Trench, Trübner. pp. 107–142
  25. ^ Baker, Robert A. (1996). Hidden Memories: Voices and Visions From Within. Prometheus Books. p. 234. ISBN 978-1-57392-094-0
  26. ^ Christopher, Milbourne. (1996). The Illustrated History of Magic. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 264. ISBN 978-0-435-07016-8
  27. ^ Cox, W. S. (1936). "An experiment in ESP". Journal of Experimental Psychology19 (4): 437. doi:10.1037/h0054630.
  28. ^ Jastrow, Joseph. (1938). ESP, House of Cards. The American Scholar. Vol. 8, No. 1. pp. 13–22. "Rhine's results fail to be confirmed. At Colgate University (40, 000 tests, 7 subjects), at Chicago (extensive series on 315 students), at Southern Methodist College (75, 000 tests), at Glasgow, Scotland (6, 650 tests), at London University (105, 000 tests), not a single individual was found who under rigidly conducted experiments could score above chance. At Stanford University it has been convincingly shown that the conditions favorable to the intrusion of subtle errors produce above-chance records which come down to chance when sources of error are eliminated."
  29. ^ Hansel, C. E. MThe Search for a Demonstration of ESP. In Paul Kurtz. (1985). A Skeptic's Handbook of Parapsychology. Prometheus Books. pp. 105–127. ISBN 0-87975-300-5
    • Adam, E. T. (1938). "A summary of some negative experiments". Journal of Parapsychology2: 232–236.
    • Crumbaugh, J. C. (1938). An experimental study of extra-sensory perception. Masters thesis. Southern Methodist University.
    • Heinlein, C. P; Heinlein, J. H. (1938). "Critique of the premises of statistical methodology of parapsychology". Journal of Parapsychology5: 135–148. doi:10.1080/00223980.1938.9917558.
    • Willoughby, R. R. (1938). Further card-guessing experimentsJournal of Psychology 18: 3–13.
  30. ^ Gulliksen, Harold. (1938). Extra-Sensory Perception: What Is It?American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 43, No. 4. pp. 623–634. "Investigating Rhine's methods, we find that his mathematical methods are wrong and that the effect of this error would in some cases be negligible and in others very marked. We find that many of his experiments were set up in a manner which would tend to increase, instead of to diminish, the possibility of systematic clerical errors; and lastly, that the ESP cards can be read from the back."
  31. ^ Wynn, Charles; Wiggins, Arthur. (2001). Quantum Leaps in the Wrong Direction: Where Real Science Ends...and Pseudoscience Begins. Joseph Henry Press. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-309-07309-7 "In 1940, Rhine coauthored a book, Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years in which he suggested that something more than mere guess work was involved in his experiments. He was right! It is now known that the experiments conducted in his laboratory contained serious methodological flaws. Tests often took place with minimal or no screening between the subject and the person administering the test. Subjects could see the backs of cards that were later discovered to be so cheaply printed that a faint outline of the symbol could be seen. Furthermore, in face-to-face tests, subjects could see card faces reflected in the tester's eyeglasses or cornea. They were even able to (consciously or unconsciously) pick up clues from the tester's facial expression and voice inflection. In addition, an observant subject could identify the cards by certain irregularities like warped edges, spots on the backs, or design imperfections."
  32. ^ Hines, Terence. (2003). Pseudoscience and the Paranormal. Prometheus Books. p. 122. ISBN 978-1573929790 "The procedural errors in the Rhine experiments have been extremely damaging to his claims to have demonstrated the existence of ESP. Equally damaging has been the fact that the results have not replicated when the experiments have been conducted in other laboratories."
  33. ^ Hazelgrove, Jenny. (2000). Spiritualism and British Society Between the Wars. Manchester University Press. p. 204. ISBN 978-0719055591
  34. ^ Russell, A. S; Benn, John Andrews. (1938). Discovery the Popular Journal of Knowledge. Cambridge University Press. pp. 305–306
  35. ^ Soal, SamuelA Repetition of Dr. Rhine's work with Mrs. Eileen Garrett. Proc. S.P.R. Vol. XLII. pp. 84–85. Also quoted in Antony Flew. (1955). A New Approach To Psychical Research. Watts & Co. pp. 90–92.
  36. ^ Blom, Jan (2009). A dictionary of hallucinations. New York: Springer. p. 451. ISBN 978-1-4419-1222-0OCLC 618047801.
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  38. ^ Hastings, A.C.; Hurt, D.B. (October 1976). "A confirmatory remote viewing experiment in a group setting". Proceedings of the IEEE64 (10): 1544–1545. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10369S2CID 36582119.
  39. ^ Whitson, T.W.; Bogart, D.N.; Palmer, J.; Tart, C.T. (October 1976). "Preliminary experiments in group 'Remote viewing'". Proceedings of the IEEE64 (10): 1550–1551. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10371S2CID 27302086.
  40. ^ Vallee, J.; Hastings, A.C.; Askevold, G. (October 1976). "Remote viewing experiments through computer conferencing". Proceedings of the IEEE64 (10): 1551–1552. doi:10.1109/PROC.1976.10372S2CID 24096224.
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  42. ^ Marks, David (1981). "Sensory cues invalidate remote viewing experiments". Nature292 (5819): 177. Bibcode:1981Natur.292..177Mdoi:10.1038/292177a0PMID 7242682S2CID 4326382.
  43. ^ Bridgstock, Martin (2009). Beyond belief: skepticism, science and the paranormal. Cambridge Port Melbourne, Vic: Cambridge University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-521-75893-2OCLC 652432050The explanation used by Marks and Kammann clearly involves the use of Occam's razor. Marks and Kammann argued that the 'cues'—clues to the order in which sites had been visited—provided sufficient information for the results, without any recourse to extrasensory perception. Indeed Marks himself was able to achieve 100 percent accuracy in allocating some transcripts to sites without visiting any of the sites himself, purely on the ground basis of the cues. From Occam's razor, it follows that if a straightforward natural explanation exists, there is no need for the spectacular paranormal explanation: Targ and Puthoff's claims are not justified.
  44. ^ Randi, James (n.d.) [1995 (print)]. "Remote Viewing"An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural. Digital adaptation by Gilles-Maurice de Schryver. (Online ed.). James Randi Educational Foundation [St. Martin's Press (print)]. Retrieved January 26, 2022.
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  48. ^ Jahn, R.G. (February 1982). "The persistent paradox of psychic phenomena: An engineering perspective" (PDF)Proceedings of the IEEE70 (2): 136–170. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.15.8760doi:10.1109/PROC.1982.12260S2CID 31434794.
  49. ^ Stanley Jeffers (May–June 2006). "The PEAR proposition: Fact or fallacy?"Skeptical Inquirer30 (3). Retrieved January 24,2014.
  50. ^ George P. Hansen. "Princeton Remote-Viewing Experiments (PEAR) – A Critique". Tricksterbook.com. Retrieved April 6,2014.
  51. ^ Rawcliffe, Donovan. (1988). Occult and Supernatural Phenomena. Dover Publications. pp. 367–463. ISBN 0-486-20503-7
  52. ^ Reed, Graham. (1988). The Psychology of Anomalous Experience: A Cognitive Approach. Prometheus Books. ISBN 0-87975-435-4
  53. ^ Zusne, Leonard; Jones, Warren. (1989). Anomalistic Psychology: A Study of Magical Thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 152–168. ISBN 0-8058-0508-7
  54. ^ Friedlander, Michael W. (1998). At the Fringes of Science. Westview Press. p. 119. ISBN 0-8133-2200-6 "Parapsychology has failed to gain general scientific acceptance even for its improved methods and claimed successes, and it is still treated with a lopsided ambivalence among the scientific community. Most scientists write it off as pseudoscience unworthy of their time."
  55. ^ Pigliucci, MassimoBoudry, Maarten. (2013). Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press p. 158. ISBN 978-0-226-05196-3"Many observers refer to the field as a "pseudoscience". When mainstream scientists say that the field of parapsychology is not scientific, they mean that no satisfying naturalistic cause-and-effect explanation for these supposed effects has yet been proposed and that the field's experiments cannot be consistently replicated."
  56. ^ Gilovich, Thomas. (1993). How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life. Free Press. p. 160. ISBN 978-0-02-911706-4
  57. ^ French, Chis; Wilson, Krissy. (2007). Cognitive Factors Underlying Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences. In Sala, Sergio. Tall Tales About the Mind and Brain: Separating Fact From Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–22. ISBN 978-0198568773
  58. ^ Myers, David. (2006). Psychology. Worth Publishers; 8th edition. ISBN 978-0716764281
  59. ^ Blom, Jan Dirk (2010). A Dictionary of Hallucinations. New York, Dordrecht, Heidelberg, London: Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. p. 99. doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-1223-7ISBN 978-1-4419-1222-0. Retrieved January 11, 2012Clairvoyance

    Also known as lucidity, telesthesia, and cryptestesia. Clairvoyanceis French for seeing clearly. The term is used in the parapsychological literature to denote a * visual or * compound hallucination attributable to a metaphysical source. It is therefore interpreted as * telepathic, * veridical or at least * coincidental hallucination.

    Reference
    Guily, R.E. (1991) Harper's encyclopedia of mystical and paranormal experience. New York: Castle Books.

Bibliography[edit]

  • S. A. Jain (1992). Reality. Jwalamalini Trust. Not in Copyright. Alt URL

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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