Here's my recommendation of a new brand image for the People's Republic of China. Update Mao with Tao.

Here's my recommendation for architectural augmentation, and branding, for the world's tallest building (not including tower above roof), the Shanghai World Financial Centre, to be completed in 2008. This could be quite awesome with the animated version of the rainbow yinyang.

I actually proposed this concept to Sheldon Adelson, president of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, who is developing the new "Cotai Strip" in Macao. It is anticipated that, eventually, gaming revenues from Macao will exceed those of Las Vegas. That is because Chinese are bigger gamblers than Americans.

However, Adelson's designers had already chosen a different thematic concept (based upon the eight immortals of Taoism) and did not accept my pitch. I guess that Fate has other plans for the rainbow yinyang. Still, I think the animated version of the rainbow yinyang would have been very attractive in such a setting.

The book cover is from the 1987 Ballantine paperback (i.e., second) edition of my book, Psi Development Systems. The book was based upon my 1980 doctoral dissertation and is now out of print. But, I have decided to post portions of it here on the blog.

Preface to the First Edition (1981)

Psi Development Systems is a revised version of the dissertation for which I received my doctorate in parapsychology in June 1980 from the University of California at Berkeley. The degree was awarded through an individual, interdisciplinary program that was supervised by the following scholars of widely varying backgrounds: Michael Scriven, parapsychology, philosophy and educational evaluation; C. West Churchman, systems theory; Charles T. Tart, psychology and parapsychology; Diane S. Clemens, history and historical methodology; and James Harder-UFO field investigation.

The greatest strength of an interdisciplinary approach is that it permits, and even encourages, the development of new syntheses. Indeed, it has been my personal goal as a student of parapsychology, to foster a new synthesis through my work that would integrate both subjective and objective approaches to the understanding of psi phenomena.

As the present work admittedly concludes, such a synthesis is still premature. The efforts toward genuine synthesis of scientific and mystical disciplines remain in the stage of courtship which precedes consummation. In the jargon of Pitirim A. Sorokin, we are still in the cultural stage of "chaotic syncretism" from which the eventual synthesis may emerge.

Preface to the Second Edition (1987)

As a culture, we are faced with the most awesome technologies for destruction that humanity has ever known; torn by religious and political differences; searching for a deeper synthesis of knowledge than that attained by earlier generations. As a culture, we are looking for a balance, a unity and harmony of spiritual and material values. I feel-even more strongly than when I wrote the original version of this book in 1979 - that we are very close to a higher equilibrium and that, perhaps, we stand at the brink of a new era. It is within this context that I wish to place psi research and the questions surrounding the training of psi abilities.

Almost inevitably, when I or other parapsychologists speak in public, people want to know about the personal experiences we have had that led us to pursue a career in this most intriguing Of disciplines. This, to me, is a very relevant question, and one that invariably leads to interesting, answers.

My own Midwestern upbringing was conventional enough. Naturally, as a college student in the 1960s the crust of conventionality was blown apart by the well-publicized experiences of my generation in the areas of social protest and experimentation with altered states of consciousness.

In 1972, 1 had two very profound psi experiences that changed the direction of my life. These have led me to hypothesize that psi, by its very nature, is a manifestation of our pure free will and thus appears in our lives at "seed moments" when we are exercising our free will to the limit.

The first of these experiences is what parapsychologists call a "crisis apparition." (in fact, surveys conducted during the nineteenth century by the Society for Psychical Research in London indicate that this was the most common of all reported psychic experiences.)

I had a dream in which my great Uncle Harry appeared to me. It was a very powerful dream in which he questioned me about some of the deeper attitudes in my life. I awoke in tears, singing an old Jewish melody, Avinu Malkehnu. I was also struck with the inexplicable memory that Uncle Harry's communication with me had involved Chinese I Ching trigram symbols.

That day I wrote home and asked my parents for any news of Uncle Harry, with whom I had had no contact for many years. I mentioned that I had had a dream involving him. Several days later, upon receiving my letter, my parents phoned me in astonishment, telling me that Uncle Harry had just died.

I asked if my mother could arrange for some objects belonging to Uncle Harry to be sent to me. Several weeks later, I received a small volume in Hebrew, along with the message that it had been Uncle Harry's favorite book. It was about the deeds of Rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov, the "master of the holy name," a great mystic with renowned psychic powers who was the founder of the Hassidic Jewish movement in Eastern Europe.

Ironically, like most American Jews, I was raised without any understanding of the Hassidic tradition, the kabala, the prophetic tradition, or any part of Jewish mysticism whatsoever. And yet, my Uncle Harry had been born in the small Russian village of Lubovitch, considered the holiest of the Jewish Hassidic communities. All I ever understood during his lifetime was that he was a pious, orthodox Jewish man.

As a teenager, conventional Judaism had been very unsatisfying to me, and I became an agnostic, with no interest in Uncle Harry's piety. Yet, in accordance with the Chinese philosophy of the yin-yang, everything contains within it the seed of its own opposite. Shortly after the Uncle Harry experience, another event led me to further decisive action.

That same year, 1972, 1 was a conscientious objector seeking alternative service work, which I believed I needed to satisfy the requirements of my draft board back in Wisconsin. I was also a graduate student in the School of Criminology at the University of California at Berkeley. My interest in criminology at the time reflected my fascination with human deviance, as does the present book. However, I was feeling very uncomfortable studying negative forms of deviance. In fact, I was feeling very unhappy with my life. I felt like garbage floating on the water without direction or purpose, without a place for myself in the universe.

I also knew that I wanted to study psychic phenomena and consciousness. I tried to discuss the Uncle Harry dream, and other psychic dreams, with my professors at Berkeley. They made it clear, within moments, that they had nothing intelligent to say about the matter. I had no idea of how or where to begin. There were no obvious opportunities. I was becoming very frustrated with the apparent futility of ever being able to inquire seriously into these experiences.

One evening in the fall of 1972, out of desperation, I told myself that I would have a dream and that, like Joseph in the Bible, I would find an answer to my career dilemma in my dream. I was possessed with a certainty that this would happen.

I dreamt that evening that I went across town to the apartment of some close friends in Berkeley. They were not at home. However, I knew where they hid their key. In my dream, I took the key and let myself into their living room. Lying in the middle of the living room floor was a magazine called Eye (a popular magazine at that time), and I picked it up and began paging through it. While I was dreaming, I had a distinct "Aha" or "Eureka" feeling. I knew that somehow the answer I was seeking existed in that magazine.

I awoke early in the morning, put on my tennis shoes, and ran four miles across Berkeley to the home of these friends. They were not in, but I did, in fact, know where they kept the key. So, breaking the bounds of conventionality, I let myself into their living room. To my delight, there was a single magazine in the middle of their living room floor. It was not called Eye (which was a dream distortion); it was called Focus. And this magazine literally brought focus to my entire life. It was the magazine of the listener-sponsored KQED television and FM radio station in San Francisco.

As I sat there paging through Focus magazine, I was struck with the idea that I could find alternative service work for myself in non-profit, listener-sponsored media. Since I lived in Berkeley, I applied to become a volunteer at KPFA-FM radio, the oldest listener-sponsored station in the United States. I was accepted as a receptionist and began to receive training in production. Within three weeks, I was asked to produce and host a program called "The Mind's Ear," every Tuesday and Thursday over the lunch hour.

Suddenly, I found that my life was transformed. Twice a week I had the opportunity to hold intimate, hour-long, uninterrupted conversations with leaders of the human potential movement, yogis, scientists, psychics, psychologists, visionaries, humorists, etc., with an estimated listening audience of over ten thousand people. I felt as though I had found my home in the universe. Fifteen years later, a major part of my life is devoted to a continuation of this work in the production of Thinking Allowed, an interview series for public television.

It was this experience that gave me the confidence to create a unique, interdisciplinary, individual doctoral major in parapsychology at the University of California, Berkeley, to write my first book, The Roots of Consciousness: Psychic Liberation Through History, Science and Experience (1975), and to write my doctoral dissertation on the topic of training psychic abilities-which is the basis for the present book.

It would be misleading, however, to leave the impression that my work in parapsychology has been a smooth path. To the contrary, as I moved closer to completing my doctoral work, the obstacles placed in my path became more challenging.

One severe test I faced was dealing with an obstinate academic committee member who insisted that my experimental use of statistics was hopelessly and irredeemably incompetent. So incompetent, in fact, that this person felt that there was no need to point out a single error in my work. So incompetent, that when other members of my academic committee with experimental and statistical backgrounds suggested that my work was quite adequate, it merely proved to this person that they themselves were incompetent.

This oppressive situation continued for several years-with the apparent support of the university administration- in spite of the fact that I was an "A" student in my graduate statistics classes. For some time it actually appeared as if this individual would be successful in blocking my doctoral degree.

Under this pressure, I also developed seizure-like symptoms, which proved inexplainable even after extensive medical and neurological testing. ‘Me experiences were actually extremely pleasant to me, much along the lines of the "near-death" experiences that have been studied extensively in recent years. However, they sometimes occurred involuntarily and were quite frightening to my wife.

The Dean of the Graduate Division at Berkeley eventually removed this obstinate faculty member from my academic committee when he absolutely refused to comply with the Graduate Division's requirement that he put his specific criticisms of my work into writing.

However, after my receipt in June 1980 of the first doctoral diploma in "parapsychology" ever awarded by an accredited, American university, documents written by this same individual were leaked to the press repeating his original, unsubstantiated allegations of my incompetence. Pressure against the university mounted to such an extent that the Dean of the Graduate Division looked into the possibility of revoking my degree because, as he stated to one faculty member, "major universities do not award degrees in parapsychology."

Fortunately, this type of reasoning led nowhere and, of course, I still have my degree. However, several publications (particularly Psychology Today, October 1980) wrote stories about my academic work from the perspective of this dissident former committee member. They all conveniently failed to mention that this individual had been removed from my committee for his refusal to document a single example of my alleged incompetency. My reputation as a scholar was damaged; and my seizure-like episodes (now called "syncopes," a meaningless label, by the medical profession) continued.

I filed a libel suit. But I also found myself succumbing to real and imagined social pressures. My self-esteem was at a low Point, but a self-healing process was also beginning. Determined not to be forced to rely on drugs, such as dilantin, to control my syncope experiences, I taught myself, through introspection, to gain conscious mastery over this process. While I am still vulnerable, and can induce such an experience almost at will, I have chosen not to have one for over six years now. Then, in 1985, after a legal paper war that lasted many years, I received a favorable settlement in my libel suit against the 1980 publisher of Psychology Today.

During this five-year period of self-healing and fighting to preserve my reputation, I tended to withdraw from public activities and focus on my own personal development. The State of California Board of Medical Quality Control's Psychology Examining Committee reviewed my doctoral program and ruled that my degree was actually equivalent to a Ph.D. in psychology. I then entered a program of supervision and training in psychotherapy and in 1987 became fully licensed as a clinical psychologist.

As a psychotherapist, I tend to deal with clients who are having experiences they believe to be psychic. Some of these clients are individuals who might easily be labeled psychotic by conventional psychiatric diagnosis. They seem to take great comfort in the fact that I refrain, at all times, from using labels related to mental illness, insanity, craziness, psychosis, or neurosis.

While I often refrain from endorsing their occult or psychic suppositions, I treat such ideas with dignity. Most importantly, I encourage my clients-as I wish to encourage the readers of this book-to develop a tolerance for a great deal of ambiguity and complexity, rather than rush to judge or interpret their own experiences.

In most cases, I encourage my clients -- as I also wish to encourage readers of this book -- to adopt a perspective in which they view their particular life situations, with all their symptoms, complaints, anxieties, and existential burdens, as opportunities to initiate psychic growth and healing and to break beyond the boundaries of previously self-imposed limitations.

I envision all this inner work leading to a time when psi abilities will be well integrated in our culture, a time when they will even serve as a recognized link between Western society and the other peoples of this planet.

The Fox Sisters Who Inaugurated the Spiritualist Movement in the U.S.

Spiritualism [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

Beginning with the Fox Sisters in 1848, the spiritualist movement spread rapidly throughout Europe and America. Even in China, spiritualist movements such as the Society of the Way (Tao Yuan) were formed that regularly incorporated both the use of planchettes for automatic writing and spirit photography (de Bary et al, 1960). The wide variety of psi phenomena associated with this movement led to the foundation of numerous scientific investigations of alleged psi manifestations, including, most importantly, the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in Britain in 1882. Undoubtedly certain social conditions contributed to the rise and decline of spiritualism during the century following the spectacular appearance of the Fox sisters. How these conditions may have interacted with the actual training of psi abilities is uncertain. It is certainly true today that psi phenomena of the classic spiritualistic variety -- as exhibited by such talents as D. D. Home, Florence Cook, Eusapia Palladino, Leonora Piper or Gladys Osborne Leonard -- are rare in the accounts of parapsychology journals. Perhaps this is the result of the new interests of parapsychologists, and not necessarily a lack of talent among today's spiritualists. In any case, one might consider the hypothesis that the spiritualist training techniques are most effective under certain social conditions not yet explicitly understood.

In 1920, Hereward Carrington, a psychical researcher, published a book entitled Your Psychic Powers and How to Develop Them. The book was written from a spiritualistic point of view for private circulation among a number of societies in the New York area. Carrington maintained that the book did not represent his own personal views in all respects but rather the teachings regarded as factual by those committed to spiritualism. The book started out by assuring the reader that everybody is more or less mediumistic or psychic and that we "need only to cultivate our powers in order to develop them, and bring them to maturity." However, each particular psychic skill is to be developed differently. For all students, the basic advice consisted of maintaining good health and avoiding stimulants and "unhealthy introspection."

Carrington then continued for 41 chapters on topics relating not to psychic development directly but to the concepts and symbols of spiritualism. This part of the text emphasized orienting oneself in terms of "astral currents," "auras," "chakras," "voices,'‘ "vibrations," "guardian spirits," and "reincarnation." Many of these concepts are derived from the theosophical movement.



For the specific development of clairvoyance, Carrington recommended the following exercise: "Seat yourself in a comfortable chair in a semi-darkened room. Mentally construct (i.e., imagine) before you a tube, open at both ends. One end of this tube fits over your eyes, and the other end extends indefinitely outward into space. Imagine that this tube is hollow and that you can see through it perfectly. Turn this tube in the direction of the house of a friend of yours; mentally go into a room and see if you can discover in it any one present - and if so, who he is and what he looks like. Note what you see carefully You will be able to verify the next day how far your vision is correct."

In continuing this exercise, one imagines the face of a friend at the end of the tube about a hundred yards away. Gradually one imagines the tube growing shorter until the face is only three feet distant and can be visualized clearly with every feature distinguishable. Once this was accomplished and practiced persistently, Carrington guaranteed that one could successfully influence the other person. Concentration was the key to this exercise since "it polarizes a channel through the astral atmosphere toward the desired point, and this channel facilitates psychic communication in both directions.... There are a great many currents, playing to and fro, which tend to disintegrate your own currents." Therefore as a backup exercise it was essential to train the mind to think of a particular object for several minutes without relaxing or allowing any other thought to enter consciousness. This could be done in conjunction with breathing exercises. Another backup exercise was simply visualizing images until they came clearly and in detail. This could be accomplished by asking oneself simple questions like, "What was the color of Mother Hubbard's dog?" or "Was Helen of Troy tall, or small and slender?" In terms of distinguishing true, clairvoyant images from memory pictures and hallucinations,

Carrington had no simple advice other than to practice in situations providing immediate feedback.

Another source of spiritualistic teachings on psychic development was J. Hewatt McKenzie's book, Spirit Intercourse: Its Theory and Practice. McKenzie was the founder of the British College of Psychic Science and was responsible for the training of many mediums including Eileen Garrett (a charismatic figure who founded the Parapsychology Foundation in New York). McKenzie emphasized leading a quiet and harmonious life, free from the excesses of alcohol and elaborate food: "The student, while developing, should keep only the company of the noble and good. His reading should consist largely of literature which has stood the test of time, keeping at a distance all printed matter of a poor or ephemeral nature. He should not sit in crowded assemblies amongst all kinds and conditions of peoples, but resort as far as possible to contact with nature. These strict instructions may seem unnatural, selfish and unsociable, and so they would be if ended in themselves and made permanent, but some are only temporary and necessary during the student's apprenticeship for the first year or two, until he has developed sensitiveness to the subtle forces of life."

McKenzie particularly emphasized the dangers of associating with unharmonious individuals during the phase when one's psychic abilities first open up and are not yet under full control: "At first the student may find himself particularly sensitive to the influence of those with whom he comes daily in contact, and this indicates that care should be taken, until such time as he has learned fully to control his being by the development of his mental and spiritual powers, otherwise he is likely to be overborne by opposing influences. Students should therefore treat themselves very much as a young and growing plant is treated, sheltered from the frosts and blasts of the violent wind for a time, but which, once it is firmly rooted and has begun to grow, expand and flourish, may be transplanted or allowed to stand the full blasts of the outer atmosphere."

In addition to the moral guidelines, McKenzie prescribed a regimen of diet and exercise in order to maintain health, self-control, prayer, concentration, meditation, and breathing exercises. A sanctum of soft lighting and spiritually inspiring music Was thought to be useful. One aspect of psi training, somewhat unique to the spiritualistic movement, was the "developing circle" which is described by McKenzie as follows: "in the developing circle, men and women will be found speaking in ‘unknown tongues,' some prophesying, some by the spirit working miracles of healing, others demonstrating clairvoyance or describing visions, all more or less showing signs of agitation or twitching, muttering, and groaning, and generally ‘acting the fool' (according to the judgment of the uninitiated).'

McKenzie described such a scene as comparable to the manure from which good vegetables were grown. As the sensitives develop, the quaking and shivering subsides. Eventually these individuals learn how to be controlled by a spirit, who will then be able to provide information of a psychic nature. McKenzie described the spirit control as "the sweetest of influences and under the entire sway of the medium's own personality."

During her training with McKenzie, Eileen Garrett sat in trance sessions once a week for five years-although she her self was not committed to McKenzie's spiritualistic views. She described her training as being aimed toward the development of the spirit who controlled her during trance, rather than training of her own psychic abilities. McKenzie felt that Garrett's own clairvoyant abilities needed no training in order to be used. Specifically how the spirit control was trained is quite vague. A few hints are given in the following passage: "First he explained the danger of blurring or interfering with my own clear functioning, if I sat for experiments with other mediums he said that this was equally true if I sat with development groups or opened up any other aspects of mediumship than trance, at this time. In order to keep my subconscious free from other people's ideas and influence, he insisted that I avoid all reading on psychic and occult subjects. He gave special attention to the methods by which the control must give his evidence, asking him to bring through types of information that might be as far removed as possible from the conscious knowledge of the investigator" (Garrett 1939/1975).

Gladys Osborne Leonard was perhaps the most successful trance medium in the history of psychical research. Her integrity was never called into question. For over forty years her mediumship was the subject of exhaustive study by members of the Society for Psychical Research. During that time she provided a great deal of evidence supporting the survival hypothesis and, even more strongly, the ESP hypothesis. In her own mediumistic training, she showed enormous persistence. sitting for 26 seance sessions before she obtained any results or any contact with her spirit control. In her book My Life in Two Worlds, she provided some basic advice for those wishing to develop their own "mediumistic" abilities.



Her first point was that general prescriptions cannot be given that cover all people under all circumstances. Rather, all exercises for development depend upon the particular individuals, "their health, mentality and general conditions and surroundings." She suggested that individuals who wished to develop their psychic abilities should visit a reliable and experienced psychic in order to determine the direction in which their particular abilities might best be developed-for example, healing, clairvoyance, clairaudience, etc. She also added that it was better to work in a developing circle than alone.

Nevertheless, one item Leonard did recommend for everyone was thought control: "I mean the deliberate shutting out of pessimistic, jealous, envious, cruel, or any other undesirable kind of thought that is apt to fly into our minds. We must not hold these thoughts. It may be difficult at first to prevent them from entering, but directly we realize them, we must literally throw them out again at once.... One must not shut out all thoughts of caution or discretion, or try to become impervious to a sense of danger. Catching a thought ray of danger, and holding it gently at the back of one's mind, being careful not to let it unduly shadow any of one's actions with which it obviously has nothing to do, until such time as we have bridged the difficult span which it was given to warn us of, is a very different thing from being victims and slaves to any chance thought that we allow to enter our minds and have never learned to turn out again."

Leonard added that it was possible to develop psychic Powers without this particular training, but that it would eventually be needed, and that it was safest to develop it fight away.

References

Carrington, H. Your psychic powers and how to develop them. New York: Astrol Company, 1949. (Originally published, 1920.)

de Bary, WT., Chan, W., and Watson, B. (Eds.). Sources of Chinese Tradition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.

Garrett, E.J. My life as a search for the meaning of mediumship. New York: Arno Press, 1975. (Originally published, 1939.)

Leonard, G.O. My life in two worlds. London: Cassell, 1931.

McKenzie, J.H. Spirit intercourse: Its theory and practice. New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1917.

Yoga [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

The "eight limbs" of yoga, the classical path, is described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, a fundamental document compiled from earlier oral traditions either in the third century B.C. or in the A.D. 400s according to various scholars (Eliade 1962/1975). It contains the following steps for achieving spiritual liberation: (1) yama, the restraint of bad habits; (2) niyama, the cultivation of good habits in one's daily life; (3) asana, the adoption of steady and comfortable postures with specific physiological effects; (4) pranayama, special breathing exercises; (5) pratyahara, withdrawing the mind from objects of sensory perception, as in meditation; (6) dharana, concentration on selected objects; (7) dhyana, steady contemplation in which the sense of separateness of the self from the object of concentration disappears; and (8) samadhi, the absolute, ecstatic experience of mystical unity with all of creation.

The last three steps of the eight-limbed yoga, known collectively as samyama, can only be learned under the direction of a guru and are associated with psychic abilities. Eliade quotes the ninth century yogin, Vacaspatimisra, who states: "Whatever the yogin desires to know, he should perform samyama with respect to that object" (Eliade 1954/1971). For example, by exercising samyama on a "notion" (pratyaya) the yogi comes to know the mental states of other men.



During the process of attaining samadhi, which may take many years, different centers of psychic perception in the body, called chakras, are thought to be awakened through the activating force of kundalini, which is often symbolized as a snake rising slowly from the lower spine to the top of the head. When all of the chakras are activated, then samadhi is thought to be attained.

Embodied in the conceptualization of the chakras is a very complex cosmological scheme. With each chakra is associated one of the deities of the Hindu pantheon with attendant symbolism, a Sanskrit syllable or mantra, a color, an animal, a geometric symbol, and a lotus flower with varied numbers of petals. Each chakra represents a level of mental functioning. The yogis believed that various psychic powers or sidhis became manifest through concentration on particular chakras. In the classical yoga system of Patanjali, there are seven chakras. Other systems of yoga list the chakras differently. Each chakra is associated with a part of the human body and the attendant emotional and glandular activity, e.g. the heart, solar plexus, genitals. Some modem writers tend to equate the chakras with the various endocrine glands. While this was clearly not the intention of the ancient yoga texts, the correspondence in location and function between the chakras and the endocrine glands is rather remarkable and suggests that the concept of the chakras evolved through introspection of the mind-body relationship.

The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali enumerate a number of sidhis or supernatural powers that have been observed by yogis in their practice. These sidhis include knowledge of the past and future; understanding the sounds of animals; recalling the experiences of one's previous incarnations; knowing the thoughts of another mind; making oneself invisible; an intuitive understanding of psychological, spiritual and physical phenomena; physical strength comparable to that of an elephant; the ability to live without eating or drinking; extrasensory perception of sound, touch, sight, taste and smell; entering consciously into the body of another person; levitation of the body in space; the ability to heal physical and spiritual wounds or disease; the ability to become as minute as an atom or to expand oneself into a space and become as large as any entity; the power of fulfilling all wishes and desires; the power to change destiny; the ability to overcome attachment to idiosyncrasies, prejudices, anger, and narrow-mindedness toward others.

Staal (1975) notes that the various powers, called either sidhi or vibhuti, are said, in the Yoga Sutras, to accompany a high State of concentration known as samprajnata samadhi. However, this is not considered the highest state of yogic attainment, Which is called asamprajnata samadhi. The 37th verse of the third book of the Yoga Sutras contains the following verse, translated by Woods (1914/1972), which has been interpreted by many practitioners as an injunction against the use of psychic powers by yogis: "In concentration these [supernal activities] are obstacles; in the emergent state they are perfection (sidhi)." Staal notes that oftentimes scholars of yoga or leaders of various contemporary mystical cults and movements take a puritanical attitude against the development of psychic abilities. He states that "religious and moral prejudices, Indian as well as Western, have obscured the fact that these powers are an integral part of Yoga."

In a letter to this author, Staal points out that it is incorrect to assume that psi powers are accepted without further discussion in Indian culture in general. Staal states, "Such powers have been discussed by various authors, some accepting and some rejecting them, with respect to the relevance or validity. Some philosophers in discussing problems of perception incorporate them, others ignore them."

The Yoga Sutras recognize that yoga is only one of several methods for the development of sidhis. The first sutra in book IV specifies, "Perfections proceed from birth or from drugs or from spells or from self-castigation or from concentration" (Woods 1914/1972).

Another classic text of yoga training is the Hatha Yoga Pradipika of Svatmarama Svamin, written in the 15th century, and according to tradition, based on an older, no longer extant, treatise entitled Hatha Yoga written before the 12th century by Gorakhnath, founder of the order of Kanphata yogis (Eliade 1969). This text, in the tantric tradition, quite specifically states that the goal of yoga is to become a sidha, or a person in possession of supernatural powers. Like the Yoga Sutras the text is divided into terse statements of the teaching. In the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, these are referred to as slokas.

One of the most important postures, or asanas, for attaining sidhis is appropriately named sidhasana. This is a cross-legged sitting position in which one of the heels is pressed into the sex organs, rather like what is commonly known as the "full lotus' posture. The eyes are pointed upward toward the "third eye' point between the eyebrows. The posture appears to be intended to stimulate several specific chakras and to have a greater effect on purifying the "72,000 nadis" or channels of subtle energy in the body. The 40th sloka in the first section of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika states, "The yogi who meditates on the atman and eats moderately achieves the yoga sidhis after he has practiced sidhasana for 12 years" (Reiker 1974). Atman is the sanskrit term referring to the ultimate essence of a person (and is also equated with the ultimate essence of the entire universe, or brahman, in some philosophical systems, but not the yoga system).
Another technique specified in the text is that of bramacharya, or celibacy. The 57th sloka in the first section states, "‘The brahmacharin who, observing moderate diet, renouncing the fruits of his actions, practices yoga will become a sidha in the span of one year." The phrase "renouncing the fruits of his actions" appears to be a reference to the Hindu philosophy of nonattachment as embodied in the Bhagavat Gita. The text goes on to list a variety of foods not considered salutary, including mustard, alcohol, fish, meat, and garlic.

Additionally the text assures us in slokas 64-66 of the first section that anybody can become a sidha regardless of age or physical condition. However, this can only be accomplished through tireless practice and not through reading of text books, wearing yoga garments, or engaging in conversations about yoga. Furthermore the text specifies, in the 11th sloka of the first section, the need to keep one's practice secret, without indiscriminately revealing one's attainments. The ninth sloka of the third section states that the sidhis should be kept secret like a box full of diamonds or that it "like an illicit relation with a married woman of noble birth, should not be mentioned to anyone."

Tantra is a form of yoga in which sacred practices for the attainment of enlightenment involve the ritualized violation of cultural taboos: eating meat, drinking wine, and engaging in sexual intercourse. Among the spiritual traditions, tantric yoga, both Hindu and Tibetan, may be unique in the stress which is said to be placed on psychic powers. Goleman (1977) states, "Tantric yoga alone among traditional meditational systems sees the yogi's attainment of sidhis, or supernormal psychic powers, as marking the end of his path. Says one Tantric scripture, or all sadhana [spiritual discipline] ceases when it has born its fruit in sidhi.' Certain Tantric practices are devised to produce certain sidhis such as mind-reading.. One reason sidhis may signify liberation for some is the high states that the possession of powers betokens. But meditation is central to all Tantric practices; the raising of kundalini, the means; samadhi, the goal." This view is contradicted by Prasad (1974) who maintains that "the final aim of Tantra and of Yoga is to attain salvation." Prasad notes the strong emphasis that psi powers play in the tantric Sakt religion. He adds that the practice of tantra is said not only to lead to acquiring paranormal powers but enables a sidha to transfer his powers to others.

The tradition of yoga is particularly suited to contemporary academic study, both in a relatively traditional Hindu setting and in the industrialized Western nations. A number of worldwide organizations that promote various schools of yoga maintain ties between India, and the United States, Western Europe and Australia. These organizations include the Integral Yoga Institute, the Happy Healthy Holy Organization, the Siddha Yoga Foundation, the Divine Light Society, Self-Realization Fellowship, Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga, Kirpal Ruhani Mission, Ananda Marga Yoga Society, Bhagwan Rajneesh Yoga Centers, Shri Chinmoy Yoga Centers, Sai Baba Centers, Sri Aurobindo Society, and the Sivananda Yoga Society.

References

Eliade, M. Patanjali and yoga. New York: Schocken Books, 1975. (Originally published, 1962.)

Eliade, M. Yoga, immortality and freedom. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. (Originally published, 1954.)

Goleman, D. The varieties of meditative experience. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977.

Mishra, R.M. Yoga Sutras. New York: Doubleday, 1973.Reiker, H. [The yoga of light: Hatha Yoga Pradipika], E. Becherer, trans. Los Angeles: Dawn Horse Press, 1974.

Staal, F. Exploring mysticism. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975.

Woods, J.H. The yoga-system of Patanjali. Delhi, India: Motilal Banarsidass, 1972. (Originally published, 1914.)

Buddhism [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Tennisons and Lustig (1962) point our several Buddhist texts that discuss the role of psi in classical Buddhism. The Samannaphala-Sutta of the Digha Nikaya, part of the original Pali canon, a document attributed to the original teachings of the Buddha, describes psi as part of the adventure of joining a Buddhist Order. Then the Yogacharya-Bhumi-Shastra of the great guru Arya Asanga also contains a systematic catalogue of miracles that can be performed by a Bodhisattva-one who has attained the goal of Buddhist training. They further describe a specific technique in the Buddhist scriptures for engendering psi through hypnotic-like trances induced by gazing at a circle, a few inches in diameter, placed about three feet from the meditation seat.

Eliade (1954/1971) notes that in the early Buddhist scriptures, the Pali canon, the term for miraculous powers is iddhi, similar to the Sanskrit term sidhi. Eliade also adds that the enumeration of the powers in the Buddhist scriptures and the techniques whereby these powers are attained does not differ substantially from those available in the non-Buddhist yoga. "These lists of sidhis ( = iddhis) are for the most part stereotyped, and they occur in all the ascetic and mystical literature of India." The Buddha also apparently recognized that one could claim psi powers through various magical practices without undergoing any of the inner transformation essential to Buddhism.

One of the major documents of Buddhism is the Vissuddhimagga, or the "path to purification," written in the fifth century by Buddhaghosa as a summary of the encyclopediac Abhidhamma -- attributed to the disciples' rendition of more than forty years of Gautama Buddha's discourses. According to Goleman (1975), the Vissuddhimagga enumerates a number of supernormal powers which, in addition to the more commonly observed psi phenomena, "overleap the bounds of even the most advanced physical sciences." These include walking on water and flying through the air. Furthermore, Goleman claims that the Vissudhimagga describes in technical detail how these feats, which are regarded as unimportant in Buddhism, are accomplished: "The required degree of mind-mastery for their use is formidable. One must first have full proficiency in fourteen methods of mind control.... The Vissuddhimagga estimates that of those who try, only one person in 100,000 or one million will achieve the prerequisite level of mastery. It further marks as a blemish wanting it to be known that one can practice these things (little wonder that Western parapsychological researchers have yet to encounter a subject capable of the supernormal feats of mind -- such as telekinesis and supernormal hearing -- described)."

These powers raised similar problems for both the Buddhists and the yogis as Eliade points out: "On the one hand, the ‘powers' are inevitably acquired in the course of initiation, and, for that very reason, constitute valuable indications of the Monk's progress; on the other hand, they are doubly dangerous, since they tempt the monk with a vain ‘magical mastery of the World' and, in addition, are likely to cause confusion in the minds of unbelievers.... The possession of the iddhis is not equivalent to deliverance; but these ‘miraculous powers' prove that the monk is in the process of deconditioning himself, that be has suspended the laws of nature, in whose cogs he was being crushed, condemned to suffer karmic determinism forever. Consequently, the possession of iddhis is not harmful in itself, but the monk must be careful not to succumb to temptation and, above all, must avoid exhibiting such powers before noninitiates."

Eliade quotes the Buddhist Kevaddha-sutta, in which an unbeliever might respond to a display of Buddhist telepathy: "Sir! there is a charm called the Jewel Charm. It is by the efficacy thereof that he performs all this."

Buddhism in Tibet is imbued with shamanistic practices because it was grafted onto the local Bon religion, and as a result, seems to have placed greater emphasis on psi training. EvansWentz (1958) describes a number of exercises in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition which are said to develop psi abilities. These exercises, which are of a tantric nature, employ simultaneous visualizations, postures, breathings, contemplations, and physical exercises. Evans-Wentz presents teachings from the Kargyupta school that resulted from the reform movement initiated by Marpa and Milarepa in the 12th century. One exercise is described as follows: "In the Art of Directing Thought, one is to imagine, when the expiration is going out, that innumerable five-colored rays are issuing from each of the hair-pores of the body and radiating over the whole world and filling it with their five-colored radiances, and that when the inspiration is coming in they are re-entering the body through the hair-pores and filling the body."

Evans-Wentz (1958) also describes practices in which the Tibetan monks and lamas believed themselves to be in telepathic communication with deities and gurus who existed on the higher celestial planes and were not incarnate. Another Tibetan teaching included the production of visualizations that take on apparent objective substance and can be, for example, touched. Another teaching was the process of pho-wa or trongjug, whereby the initiate transferred his consciousness to another human body. These teachings are shrouded in mystery, and the texts are not explicit on the training procedures, which can be imparted only by a guru.

A wide variety of psychic and miraculous phenomena in Tibet are reported by the explorer and scholar, Madame Alexandra David-Neel (1932/1971). Among the most interesting of the claims she documents in detail is the ability of certain adepts to create forms of animals and men through intense visualization and concentration. These forms, or tulpas, are then reportedly capable of maintaining an autonomous existence within the consensus reality of the population. According to David-Neel, the adepts of Tibet attribute these powers to the intensity of the concentration they have developed.

Lama Govinda (1960) emphasizes that the purpose of psychic powers in the Tibetan mystical tradition "not only encourages us to proceed on the chosen way, but transforms us while proceeding until we ourselves have become the aim of our striving."

Blofeld (1970) maintains that the advanced degrees at Lhasa's universities, which often took twenty years or longer to attain (as in the case of the Geshe, or doctor of divinity), were devoted principally to methods of mind control resulting in ESP abilities.

References

Blofeld, J. The tantric mysticism of Tibet. New York: Causeway Books, 1974.

David-Neel, A. Magic and mystery in Tibet. New York: Dover, 1971. (Originally published, 1932.)

Eliade, M. Yoga, immortality and freedom. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971. (Originally published, 1954.)

Evans-Wentz, W.Y. Tibetan yoga and secret doctrines (second ed.). London: Oxford University Press, 1958.

Goleman, D. The Buddha on meditation and states of consciousness. In C.T. Tart (Ed.), Transpersonal Psychologies. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.

Govinda, A. Foundations of Tibetan mysticism. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1960.

Tennisons, K.A.M., and Lustig, F.V. Paranormal phenomena in classical Buddhist tradition. International Journal of Parapsychology, 1962, 4, 88-102.

Giotto, Adoration of the Magi

Divination [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]
A vast variety of methods were used in ancient Mesopotamia for divination. The future was viewed in the livers and intestines of slaughtered animals, from fire and smoke, from the reflection of precious stones, from the murmerings of springs, and the shape of plants, the movements of trees, and the activity of animals - particularly snakes. Monstrous births of animals and men were believed to be portents. Atmospheric signs, rain, clouds, wind and lightning were interpreted as forebodings; the cracking of furniture and wooden panels foretold future events. Flies and other insects, as well as dogs and cats were the carriers of occult messages (Seligman 1948).

Mesopotamia was noted throughout the ancient world for its magi -- men and woman for whom nothing was accidental. They perceived a harmony in nature binding together all objects and all events. Omens were often interpreted through linguistic relations (particularly puns) between the ominous portent and its presumed consequences. In times of crisis, kings and priests would engage in a ritual preparation in the inner room of a temple sanctuary. Then, during sleep, the deity of the temple would appear to the dreamer with a clear and literal message requiring no further interpretation (Callois 1966).

The art of divination received in Mesopotamia more intense and sustained interest than in any other known civilization. Reading omens was particularly important since every event was thought to have a personal meaning to the observer. This attitude was proto-scientific in that it stressed minute observation and description of phenomena. However, deterministic causality was not an important notion, as all events were seen as communications from the divine (Oppenheim 1966).

The Chinese I Ching or "book of changes" is one of the oldest books in the world. It consists of 64 sections, each headed by a figure made up of six lines, broken or unbroken, called a hexagram. Each of the 64 hexagrams represents a different stage of the eternal fluctuation of the cosmic forces of yin and yang basic to Chinese philosophy, which may be thought of as the archetypes of feminine and masculine. The hexagrams are described in poetic and often enigmatic terms that seem to echo the deeper levels of the human mind or subconscious; there have also been commentaries by Confucius and other sages relating the hexagrams to specific human situations. One consults the oracle by the apparently random process of flipping coins or shuffling yarrow stalks.

Two contemporary studies have noted clinically (Kahn, Kroeber & Kingsbury 1974) and experimentally (Rubin & Honorton 1971) that when the oracle is approached with an attitude of respect and belief, the hexagrams which are selected do seem more applicable than other hexagrams chosen as controls. Carl Jung (1949), the great Swiss Psychiatrist, described the I Ching divination method as an example of his principle of "synchronicity," in that the failing of the coins or yarrow stalks and th state of mind of the questioner were all a function of and unified by the moment in time of the divination process. (However, it is not clear that in this situation there is any testable method of distinguishing the conformance or synchronicity paradigm of psi from the extra-sensorimotor paradigm.)



Adrian Boshier (1974) reports on an ancient African method of divination by throwing bones. He described an encounter with an old female sangoma who was able to provide him with "64 revealing personal details concerning my life, which were absolutely accurate."

The Ifa system of divination used by the African Yoruba culture also involves throwing bones. It is similar to the I Ching in that the random tosses are related to a complex mythology although the African is more complicated than the Chinese, containing 256 basic patterns instead of 64. Many years are required simply to master the complicated mythological structure related to the divination (Bascom, 1969).

Divination played a major part in the oracles of the Greek culture. Female priestesses in a trance state, sometimes apparently induced through drugs, offered enigmatic statements highly prized by nobility and peasants. Herodotus reports one incident in which Croesus, King of Lydia, tried to test seven different popular oracles. He prepared a specific target: he had a tortoise and lamb cut into pieces and cooked together in a brass pan, upon which he placed a brass lid. The famous oracle at Delphi is said to have provided a lucid and accurate response to the target. The presents that Croesus sent to Delphi, which are detailed in Herodotus, were of incalculable value (de Vesme, 1931).

Another tradition of divination, or precognition, existed in Greek philosophy, beginning with Socrates and was inherited by the neoplatonic philosophers. According to Plato, Socrates had precognitive abilities that he attributed to the internal voice of a daemon or demigod (not a demon).

Divination was very prominent in ancient Rome. In 150 B.C., the Romans passed a law declaring that no important resolution could be adopted without consulting the augurs. The dreams and portents of Julius Ceasar's death are reported by Plutarch, much as they have been portrayed in William Shakespeare's famous tragedy. The Roman physician Galen, one of the fathers of modem medicine, wrote of the value of using dreams for diagnosing illness as well as for predicting the future.

References

Bascom, W. Ifa divination: Communication between the gods and men in West Africa. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969.

Boshier, A.K. African apprenticeship. Parapsychology Review, 1974, 5(4), 1-3,25-27.

Callois, R. Logical and philosophical problems of the dream. In G.E. Grunebaurn and R. Callois (Eds.), The dream and human societies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

de Vesme, C. A history of experimental spiritualism. Vol. I. London: Rider and Co., 1931.

Jung, C.G. Introduction. In Richard Wilhelm (trans.), The I Ching. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970. (Originally published, 1949.)

Kahn, M., Kroeber, T.C., and Kingsbury, S. The I Ching as a model for a personal growth workshop. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 1,974, 14(3), 39-51.

Oppenheim, A.L. Mantic dreams in the ancient near east. In G.E. Grunebaum and R. Callois (Eds.), The dream and human societies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966.

Rubin, L., and Honorton, C. Separating the yins from the yangs: An experiment with the I Ching. Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association, 1971, 8, 6-7.

Seligman, K. Magic, supernaturalism, and religion. New York: Random House: 1948.

The Prophet Elijah

Judaism [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]
The biblical Hebrew word for prophet is nabi (plural, nebiim). Max Weber (1921/1952) suggests that the word is derived from the Arabic naba, which means "to announce." Weber describes the training of the nebiim as follows: "Obviously the Israelite Nebiim did not essentially differ from the trained professional ecstatics found elsewhere. They were recruited according to personal charisma largely from among plebians as their pejorative treatment by the later tradition indicates. They apparently tattooed themselves on the forehead (I Kings, 20:41) like the Indian mendicants, and wore a costume including, above all, a special kind of coat. It seems that the leaders of the school (the ‘fathers') designated their disciples or successors by throwing their magically efficacious coats over them. They pursued their common exercises in special habitats, apparently at times on the mountains (as, for example, Carmel).... Permanent asceticism or bachelorhood is not reported of them (11 Kings, 4:1). Music and dance here, as elsewhere, were means of evoking ecstacy (11 Kings, 3:15).... The practices of the Yahwe Nebiim included besides self-punishment (I Kings, 20:35) and wounding of one another also the production of cataleptic states and nonsense speech.... The purpose was to acquire magical force."

Weber also provides other clues as to the nature of the Hebrew nebiim. They were often sought after as medicine men and rainmakers. However, the school originally existed, according to Weber, not for precognition but solely for the purpose of providing military inspiration and success for the troops. The later, unmilitary ecstatic phenomena were thus Somewhat more "tempered" in their manifestations. The Prophet Elisha is said by Weber to have been the "last master of the guild." In a later period, the prophet Amos, under King Jeroboam, protests that he is not a nabi; and the later scriptural Prophets repeatedly complain of the mendacity and corruption Of the nebiim or professional ecstatics. However, things were likely to have been different under the rule of Elisha, who severely punished one student for accepting payment from a man who had been cured of leprosy by the prophet. Weber mentions that the nebiim are also associated with the name of the Babylonian oracle god.

The Book of Kings (11, ii) related a story that describes how Elisha became the head of the school of prophets. The time had come for the death of the prophet Elijah. His disciple, the prophet Elisha, insisted on remaining with him at the time of his death and followed his master on a journey through Bethel and Jericho to the Jordan river. At each of these locations a "company of prophets" came up to Elisha and asked him if he realized that the Lord was going to take his master on that day. Elisha responded that he realized this and that they need say no more. By the time that Elijah and Elisha had reached the Jordan river, they were being followed by a company of fifty prophets. As a last request, Elisha asked Elijah if he might inherit a double share of his master's spirit. Elijah responded that this was a difficult request, but that it would come to pass if Elisha was able to see his master being taken away. Elisha had the vision of chariots and horses of fire taking his master up to heaven in a whirlwind. Elisha picked up the mantle which his master dropped (from which we get the expression "inherits his mantle"). After this event, the company of prophets formed a school around Elisha, as we learn several chapters later where the prophets complain to Elisha, "You can see that this place where our community is living, under you as its head, is too small for us (Kings, 11, A)."



The Book of Kings relates many stories of the prophet Elisha working wonders, which have probably become exaggerated in the telling far beyond the experiences and phenomena reported in the parapsychology literature of the last century. In one story - related in Kings, 11, vi - Elisha is depicted using his abilities to inform the king of Israel of the battle plans the king of Aram had formed against him. While there are no data supporting the authenticity of these particular stories, the milieu depicted is clearly suggestive of a psi training program within the company of prophets who were to have a decisive influence during the period of Israel's early history.

Another type of scriptural prophet, referred to as roeh, was often employed by ancient kings for the purpose of giving "magically efficacious promises of good fortune (Weber 1921/1952)." Unlike the nebiim, they refrained from the employment of orgiastic frenzy and mass ecstasy and had their visions in solitude. Weber mentions that the later Hebrew prophets of doom also lived in solitude. However, they were not popular and could not be employed (Micah 3:5, 3:11). One other characteristic differentiating the Hebrew prophets from their neighbors was that the Hebrews refrained from the use of divination techniques (Whitley 1969).

Several instances are reported in the first Book of Samuel (10:10-12 and 19:20-24) in which the ecstatic enthusiasm of the company of prophets is so infectious that bystanders were caught by it and began to prophesy as well. Paton (1921) notes, in this regard, the similarity between the Hebrew prophets and the Chinese wu or oracles who were powerful in the court of the Han dynasty.
The renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism, Gershom Scholem (1974), describes a form of visionary practice known as Merkabah mysticism which existed in Palestine as early as the third century. This ecstatic ascent to the world of the chariots which carried the holy prophets to the throne of god came after preparatory exercises of an "extremely ascetic nature.... The aspirant placed his head between his knees, a physical position which can induce altered states of consciousness and self-hypnosis. At the same time, he recited hymns of an ecstatic character, the texts of which are extant in several sources, particularly in the Heikhalot Rabbati." Scholem mentions possible Greek and Persian influences on these practices but stresses that the inner dynamism within Palestinian Judaism was capable of Producing its own unique mystical and esoteric movements Within the "very heart of established rabbinic Judaism."

Scholem distinguishes this movement from the earlier schools of prophecy, which he believes were less mystical in character. The visions attained are very precisely described in the Heikhalot Rabbati, "with details of all the technical and Magical means which assist the ascending spirit and save it from the dangers lying in wait for it." These practices were essentially visionary in nature. The magic, which was performed through internal purification plus the mental use of words and images, was thought to have an effect only in the spiritual realms and not on the physical plane.

Other, parallel schools of Jewish mysticism have presented a many-sided practical magic involving the use of sacred words and images for the purpose of conjuring tip spirits to serve the mundane bidding of the magician. Many of the formulas preserved by Jewish scholars were written in Babylonian Aramaic and, Scholem notes, were not always used on behalf of Jewish customers. "This," states Scholem, "may have something to do with the origin of the medieval stereotype of the Jew as a magician and sorcerer."

It is difficult to determine the extent to which these mystical and magical practices actually related to genuine psi training. It is clear, nonetheless, that the traditions of Merkabah mysticism continued and particularly flourished in Italy during the ninth century. "Italian Jewish tradition, particularly in the popular forms it assumed in the Megillat Ahima'az by Ahima'az of Oria, clearly shows that the rabbis were well versed in matters of the Merkabah," says Scholem, "It also tells of the miraculous activity of one of the Merkabah mystics who emigrated from Baghdad, namely Abu Aharon (Aaron of Baghdad), who performed wonders through the power of the Sacred Names during the few years that he lived in Italy."

The kabbalah (also cabala and kabala) was an esoteric system of Jewish mysticism based largely on an oral tradition and on the obscure biblical commentaries known as the Zohar. Much of the kabbalah involves a symbolic arithmetic in which the letters of the Hebrew alphabet are quantified - words in the Bible with the same numeric value are thought to have esoteric equivalence. The clearest indications of a relationship between Jewish mysticism and psi training stem from the writings of kabbalists during the 13th century in Spain. For the first time, in the particularly influential rabbinic circle of Gerona, books were written ‘in attempts to bring the major ideas of esoteric kabbalah to a wider public, whereas these teachings had previously been reserved for a select few. Scholem notes that it is doubtful that these kabbalists would have had any great influence were it not for the stature of one of their colleagues, Moses ben Nahman (Nahmanides) (c. 1194-1270), who was the highest legal and religious authority of his time in Spain.

The Gerona kabbalists advocated a new form of "prophetic kabbalah" in which visions of the future were obtained through a combination of techniques involving the use of sacred names, numerology, and "a powerful renewal of ecstatic tendencies."

The second exponent of a "prophetic kabbalah" in 13th century Spain was Abraham Abulafia, whose influence extends to the present day and who was himself influenced by German pietist Jews known as Hasidei Ashkanaz a well as Sufis whom he met during travels in the east. Scholem describes his system as follows: "This mystical discipline made use of the letters of the alphabet, and especially of the Tetragrammaton and the other Names of God, for the purpose of training in meditation. By immersing himself in various combinations of letters and names, the kabbalist emptied his mind of all natural forms that might prevent his concentrating on divine matters. In this way he freed his soul of its natural restraints and opened it to the divine influx, with whose aid he might even attain to prophecy.... Abulafia himself described quite explicitly and in a seemingly objective manner, just what were the obstacles and dangers, as well as the rewards, that such mystical experience could bring.... The techniques of ‘prophetic kabbalah' that were used to aid the ascent of the soul, such as breathing exercises, the repetition of the Divine Names, and meditation on colors, bear a marked resemblance to those of both Indian Yoga and Muslim Sufism."

Ginsburg (1864/1956) offers another description of Abulafia's teachings: "To have the prophetic faculty and to see visions ought to be the chief aim, and these are secured by leading an ascetic life, by banishing all worldly feelings, by retiring into a quiet closet, by dressing oneself in white apparel, by putting on the fringed garment and the phylacteries; by sanctifying the soul so as to be fit to hold converse with the Deity; by pronouncing the letters composing the divine names with certain modulations of the voice and divine pauses; by exhibiting the divine names in various diagrams under divers energetic movements, turnings and bendings of the body, till the voice gets confused and the heart is filled with fervor. When one has gone through these Practices and is in such a condition, the fullness of the Godhead is shed abroad in the human soul: the soul then unites itself with the divine soul in a kiss, and prophetic revelations follow as a Matter of course."

Abulafia's status as a mystical poet and influential kabbalistic teacher is recognized by historians. The status of his prophecies have yet to be evaluated, although he wrote 22 unpublished prophetic treatises. In 1296, he moved to Jerusalem where he had a revelation of the restoration of a Jewish state in Israel. On the other hand, earlier in 1281 he had had a call from God to convert the Pope, Martin IV, to Judaism.

Scholem notes a trend within the literature of kabbalah to avoid discussing "occult phenomena," that he associates with a general tendency of kabbalists to refrain from discussing their experiences in the autobiographical form, which was common in the mystical literature of both Christianity and Islam. However, he does mention a personal memoir written by one anonymous disciple of Abulafia. Scholem also mentions some of the forms which kabbalistic prophecy is said to take. He notes that in a number of places, "prophecy is defined as the experience wherein a man sees the form of his own self standing before him and relating the future to him." In other rare cases, initiates are said to perceive "invisible letters that spelled out the secret nature of each man's thoughts and deeds which hovered every head." These letters relate to the concept of the "aura," which was well-known to kabbalists as the ha-avir ha-sppiri or "saphiric ether." It was said to surround all men and provide a record of all their movements.

Scholem further notes various sources that refer to spiritualistic phenomena produced both spontaneously and deliberately: ". . . the ‘levitating table' . . . was particularly widespread in Germany from the 16th century on. According to one eyewitness report, the ceremony was accompanied by a recital of Divine Names taken from practical kabbalah and the singing of psalms and hymns (Wagenseil, Sota. 1674). An acquaintance of Wagenseil's told him (ibid., 1196) of how he had seen some yeshiva students from Wuerzburg who had studied in Fuerth lift such a table with the aid of Divine Names. Specific instructions for table levitation have been preserved in a number of kabbalistic manuscripts (e.g., Jerusalem 1080 8 ^o). The use of divining rods is also known in such literature, from the 15th century on at the latest."

Scholem points out that for a period of about three hundred years, roughly from 1500 to 1800, kabbalah was widely considered to be the basis of authentic Jewish theology. Other approaches were considered minor and during this time there were no open polemical attacks on the teachings of the kabbalah. It not clear that this influence included the area of psi training apart from prayer, customs, and ethics.

In the l9th century, Jewish mysticism was revived with the growth of the Hassidic movement, founded by Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer, more commonly known as the Baal Shem Tov or "master of the holy name." The Hassidic movement continued the kabbalistic practices of previous generations and added an element of emotional enthusiasm and intensity resulting in grassroots movement which challenged the leadership of the rabbinical scholars of the time. Many tales indicative of psi functioning are told of the Hassidic rabbis and their students.

The term Baal Shem, or Baal Shem Tov, had been used for centuries to refer to adepts of kabbalistic formulas and wonder workers. Often the term was associated with charlatans and adventurers who were treated with disapproval by kabbalistic scholars such as Abulafia. Some of these reputed wonder workers were clearly fictitious characters; at other times the title was accorded to liturgical poets; the term also referred to inscribers of amulets based on holy names. Scholem describes this class of individuals, known as ba'alei shem as follows: "In the 17th and 18th centuries the number of ba'alei shem who were not at all talmudic scholars increased. But they attracted a following by their real or imaginary powers of healing the sick. Such a ba'al shem was often a combination of practical kabbalist, who performed cures by means of prayers, amulets and incantations, and a popular healer familiar with segullot (‘remedies') concocted from animal, vegetable, and mineral matter. The literature from that period teems with stories and testimonies about ba'alei shem of this kind, some of which, however, were written in criticism of their characters and deeds. It was generally thought that the ba'alei shem were at their most efficacious in the treatment of mental disorders and in the exorcism of evil spirits."

It is clear from Scholem's description that the existence of such a class of people provides only the slightest suggestion of efficacious psi training programs within the kabbalistic tradition. Many were undoubtedly charlatans; and of those who may have had genuine powers, the available literature in English provides no indication regarding their training.

References

Ginsburg, C.D. The Essenes, the Kabbalah. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1956. (Originally published, 1864.)

Paton, L.B. Spiritism and the cult of the dead in antiquity. New York: Macmillan, 1921.

Scholem, G. Kabbalah. New York: Quadrangle, 1974.

Weber, M. Ancient Judaism. (H.H. Gerth and D. Martindale, Eds. and trans.). Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1952. (Originally published 1921.)

Whitley, C.F. The genius of Israel. Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1969.

Sufism [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Insights as to the practices of the Sufi orders that relate to psi training may be gleaned from Trimingham (1971), who states, "In the ordinary way the stress is on the allocation of prayer-tasks, the times and modes of recitation, participation in other forms of devotion, pursuance of a course of ascetic discipline, fulfilment of the order's material obligations, and acceptance of the spiritual experiences, supra-normal exploits, and continuing power of the saints."

Trimingham further notes that the Mursit (also Murshid), or teacher, measures the progress of the murid or student through some of the stages of attainment by interpreting the visions and dreams the murid experiences while carrying out his personal exercises and prayers (dikr) in secluded retreat (khalwa).

Von Grunebaum (1966) emphasizes the role of dikr in Islamic procedures associated with parapsychological phenomena. Dikr is found in almost all Islamic sects and involves varying procedures that have in common the chanting of a formula containing one or more of the names of God along with rhythmic movements accompanied by songs or other music.



Crapanzano (1973) has provided extensive documentation of one Moroccan Sufi sect, the Hamadsha, which traces its ancestry to two saints in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, Sidi ‘Ali ben Hamdush and Sidi Ahmed Dghugli. As distinguished from the more sophisticated Sufi orders "who consider their founding saint as a spiritual master who has provided them with a path to God," the Hamadsha sect is a more popular movement whose members "consider their saint as an object of devotion in his own right and the source of power for their miraculous feats."

The Hamadsha specialize in the dramatic healing of a variety of symptoms including paralysis, mutism, sudden blindness, severe depressions, nervous palpitations, paraesthesias, and "possession." Crapanzano notes that they are superb diagnosticians and always avoid organic ailments, preferring to deal with those of psychological origin. While Crapanzano ignores possible parapsychological interpretations of his data, he acknowledges that the Hamadsha healers attribute their abilities to baraka - the miraculous power of saints that is both transmissible and contagious. The most frequent explanation of a cure is the passing of baraka to the patient.

Generally the framework by which the Hamadsha diagnoses symptoms involves the conception of a spirit, or jinn, which has attached itself to the patient. The purpose of the seer is to identify the jinn and learn the demands the jinn wishes to make of the patient. It is then necessary to satisfy these demands if the patient is to be cured of his symptoms. Crapanzano states: "It appears that cure is effected by the establishment of a relationship between the patient and his named jinn. The patient becomes a follower of the jinn and remains always dependent on it. This relationship is ... by no means a negative one. The jinn is a support for the patient."

When an ill person seeks the aid of the Hamadsha, the first stage of the process is consulting a seer who diagnoses the disease and prescribes a traditional remedy. According to Crapanzano, the seers usually ask no questions. "They simply tell the patient what is wrong." Puzzled by this, Crapanzano comments as follows: "It is difficult to determine whether or not these seers believe completely in what they are doing. I...am only able to suggest that even the least sincere are, while performing a divination, convinced of its efficacy and its truth. They appear to put themselves into an extraordinary psychic state, perhaps one of partial dissociation, in which they give, not totally free reign to their associations, but limited reign."

Crapanzano does not dismiss self-interest as a motivating factor in Hamadsha behavior. In fact he speaks of "their well recognized greed." A typical healing treatment, for which the Hamadsha are paid, is known as a hadra. This is a ritual, lasting from four to twelve hours, consisting of singing, dancing, feasting, and self-mutilation under trance conditions. Crapanzano notes that while most Moroccans consider the Hamadsha to be charlatans, they "will not hesitate to use them in time of crisis." Crapanzano adds that their healing process is often highly successful and can hardly be dismissed as ineffective. He also emphasizes the importance to the Hamadsha of becoming, from the conceptual point of view, both male and female.

A more sophisticated Sufi order is the Bektashi, with an estimated membership of over seven million. This order was founded about 1250 by Haji Bektash Veli; manuscripts of the order date back to 1409. However, the actual practices of the Bektashi still remain somewhat of a mystery (Birge 1937/1965). There is no public service of worship; the rituals are kept secret; and the teachings of the order can only be learned from a living teacher or mursit. Complete obedience to the mursit is required. Birge notes that Bektashi practice involves a composite, eclectic system of faith and practice with associations ranging from Primitive shamanism to neoplatonism. Different types and intensities of practice are associated with different degrees of attainment. Furthermore, Birge notes, "Truths have to be imparted bit by bit.... Revealing a new truth before the novitiate is prepared to receive it is to the Bektashi a sin."

The Bektashi recognize "four gateways to knowledge." The fourth and highest way of knowledge, which appears to incorporate elements of psi, is called hakikat and means "the immediate experience of the essence of reality." The first, seriat, is Orthodox Sunni Moslem religious law. This is the starting point for Bektashi initiates and is generally regarded with an attitude Of witty criticism. The second way of knowledge is tarikat or the teachings and practices of the secret dervish order itself. The third way of knowledge is marifet or the "mystical knowledge of god."

A unique figure in the history of Sufi studies is Idries Shah who fills the dual role of scholar and Sufi teacher. Through numerous publications of "Sufi stories," he has brought the folklore and "teaching stories" of Sufi culture to a vast Western audience. His authoritative history The Sufis (1964) is a standard in the field-although it is undoubtedly colored by his own perspective on the nature of Sufism. In 1974, a symposium titled Sufi Studies: East and West (edited by L. F. Rushbrook Williams of All Soul's College, Oxford) was published "in honor of Idries Shah's service to Sufi studies." The 24 contributors, representing colleges and universities throughout Asia and Europe, praised both Shah's scholarship and his contribution to the contemporary live tradition of Sufism..

Idries Shah (1964) states that psi training does not exist in Sufism so much as psi phenomena form a part of Sufi training. Shah refers to a story in Rumi's Mathnawi somewhat parallel to Hans Christian Andersen's tale of the Ugly Duckling. "Rumi tells his hearers that they are ‘ducks, being brought up by hens.' They have to realize that their destiny is to swim, not to try and be chickens." Likewise, Shah suggests that most of us are ducklings, looking at psi phenomena from the standpoint chickens. The Sufi view of such powers, according to Shah, neither one of theological justification nor scientific skepticism. Rather, psi events are seen as part of a larger developmental process. Shah quotes the Sufi teacher Kamalluddin as "The miracle is a foretaste of the power of the group, which is developing organs capable of attaining miracles. Two things are developing simultaneously "the right attitude toward miracles and the harmonious yoking of the Seeker with the miracle factor." Shah suggests that the Sufis regard psi abilities as an evolutionary birthright of humanity. Furthermore, the Sufis maintain that all miraculous events have their own purpose and function, even if they are not apparent to us. Generally speaking, this purpose is to further the evolution of humankind.

Shah claims that the Sufis have developed psi training to proficient level. "The Sufi's task is to so organize himself as to make it possible for the meaningful operation of an organ of perception and action which will have a continuing effect. This, Shah distinguishes from other more visible systems which he states are deteriorated versions of the Sufi system "The magician who seeks to develop powers in order to profit by certain extraphysical forces is following a fragment of a system." If the psi training system fails to reconstitute the entire individual then, from the Sufi standpoint, it is a failure: "The seer and magician, like many of the Christian mystics, are not wholly regenerated or reconstituted by the process. The Yogi is altered but not made any more meaningful. The Buddhist contemplative may have attained what he was striving for; but this has no connotation of usefulness or dynamism in the sense of activity, particularly for the community."

For the Sufi, according to Shah, the development of psi abilities is meaningless in itself, and represents "merely the struggling on of a partial methodology which will simply reproduce its own pattern." This is in contrast to the Sufi ideal of "forward-reaching" or "the human movement toward, among other things, civilization, toward progress, toward more knowledge." Thus Shah reveals the futility of attempting to dissect Sufi training procedures into such components as ritual, use of hypnotic techniques, and beliefs. These things, Shah maintains, are bound to change with the circumstances of cultural conditions: "Magic and miracles, for the Sufi, have a similar, active function. They apply for the time and place and other conditions. Since they are both the product of the time and the means of a development, they have to be considered as limited in one respect and continuing in another. While people persist in trying to examine them by other criteria, they will continue to convey a bizarre and useless aspect."

Shah has published a number of "teaching stories" from the Sufi oral tradition that offer further insight into Sufi attitudes regarding psi training. One particularly insightful story is attributed to the Sufi Emir Hamza who died in 1710. In his early travels in the Hindu Kush, he encountered a hermit called Shah Firoz who was able to read his mind. Emir Hamza was amazed and also uneasy and ashamed that his secret thoughts could be understood. He asked Shah Firoz to teach him; however, Shah Firoz refused, saying: "You are uneasy because you have come so far and at the end of your journey have found someone who can read your thoughts. And you feel that perhaps you could learn this power, and then use it to your heart's content. I seem acceptable to you, as people sometimes think of doctrines as being acceptable to them. But are you acceptable to me?. .. You are still too raw for a teacher to develop" (Shah 1968, p. 100). Shah Firoz suggested that Emir Hamza first increase his desire to serve, in order to ripen himself for further teachings, which he eventually gained.

A tale entitled "The Glance of Power" tells of a dervish named Sheikh Abdurrazaq Lajawardi of Badakhshan, who had developed the psychic power to kill a bird with his thought. Before he could develop sufficiently as a Sufi teacher, even after this attainment, he was required to spend a period of time as a servant to a scavenger in order to learn the lessons of humility and duty (Shah 1971).

Another tale, "The Man with the Inexplicable Life," is derived from a 17th century manuscript of Lala Anwar called Hikayat-i-Abdalan ("Tales of the Transformed Ones"). Idries Shah maintains that this story was a favorite of the 11th century Sufi shiekh Ali Farmadhi because it illustrated the Sufi view of the "invisible world" interpenetrating ordinary reality at various places. The tale describes a man named Mojud who attained miraculous healing powers by following the teachings of Khidr, "the mysterious Guide of the Sufis." The instructions simply involved leaving his current occupation and following various professions through the years. The story states that Mojud's biographers simply could not believe that he had attained his miraculous powers in this way and therefore constructed an exciting, but false, hagiography of Mojud "because all saints must have their story, and the story must be in accordance with the appetite of the listener, not with the realities of life" (Shah 1970). In concluding the story, Shah states that it is not true because "nobody is allowed to speak of Khidr directly." However, he maintains that the story is actually a "representation" of the life of one of the greatest Sufis. The story embodies Shah's notion of the Sufi view of the futility of attempting to logically dissect psi development.

References

Birge, J.K. The Bektashi order of dervishes. London: Luzac and Co., 1965. (Originally published, 1937.)

Crapanzano, V. The Hamadsha: A study in Morrocan ethnopsychiatry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

Shah, I. Caravan of dreams. Baltimore: Penguin, 1974, (Originally published, 1968.)

Shah, I. Oriental magic. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957.

Shah, I. The Sufis. New York: Doubleday, 1964.

Shah, I. Tales of the dervishes. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1970.

Shah, I. Wisdom of idiots. New York: E. P, Dutton, 1971.

Trimingham, J.S. The Sufi orders of Islam. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.

von Grunebaum, G.E. von. The place of parapsychological phenomena in Islam. International Journal of Parapsychology, 1966, 8, 248-263.

Williams, L.F.R. (Ed.), Sufi studies: East and west. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1974.

Ceremonial Magic [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Magical rituals are an intrinsic part of shamanism, divination, yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, and Christianity. One of the four classic vedas, or earliest scriptures, of the Hindu religion, the Atharva Veda, is a collection of recipes for various rituals believed to have supernatural efficacy. The term "magic" is derived from the Magi or ancient Chaldean, Persian, and Zoroastrian astrologers and sages, whose religious ceremonies were regulated according to the movements of the stars and planets, and were thought to have supernatural effects. These practices continued in Arab countries long after the culture of the Magi. In the ninth century, the great Arab scholar Ya'kub ibn Sabbah al Kindi wrote that frequent experiments have proven the potency, in terms of effect upon external objects, of rituals in which words are uttered and figures inscribed with intention and due solemnity of time and place and other circumstances. However, the details of these "experiments" have been lost to history.

Philosophical thought during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance was steeped in the lore of astrology and its attendant magical influences. For example, Albertus Magnus, the leading figure of 13th century learning who was canonized as a Catholic saint in 1931, was an advocate of "natural magic."

Thorndike (1938) provides us with some sketchy notions of the techniques he advocated. Albertus was clearly interested in the use of psychic abilities to find metals within the earth. Toward this end he recommended employing potions to clog and stupefy the senses, thereby producing visions. He further advocated dream interpretation, the use of herbs and magical stones, animal potions and images engraved on gems. All of these activities were conducted during hours considered astologically auspicious. When these practices did not work, Albertus maintained that the defects were not to be found in the science of natural magic but in the souls who abused it.

One grimoire, The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abra-Melin the Mage pretends to be of Jewish, kabbalistic origin. However scholars have attributed it to an unknown Christian author undoubtedly influenced by the kabbalistic thread of ceremonial magic (Scholem 1974). A wide variety of psi abilities are promised to the individual who is willing to invoke his "Holy Guardian Angel" as well as all the demons of hell. This invocation cannot be accomplished without six months of preparatory purification and prayer, conducted in solitude in a specially prepared sanctum in a formal ritualistic manner.

A more explicit book on ceremonial magic, The Magus: A Complete System of Occult Philosophy, was written by Francis Barrett in 1801, over five hundred years after Albertus but clearly in the same tradition of natural magic. Barrett taught this art to a select circle of students in London. The various chapters of the book delve into the details of hermetic philosophy and alchemy, amulets, charms, hierarchies of spirits, numerology, astrology, conjuring, and dream interpretation. Only a small percentage of this material deals with what we would recognize as measurable psi. For example: "Therefore he who is desirous of receiving true oracles by dreams, let him abstain from supper, from drink, and be otherwise well disposed, so his brain will be free from turbulent vapors; let him also have his bed chamber fair and clean, exorcized and consecrated if he will; then let him perfume the same with some convenient fumigation, and let him anoint his temples with some unguent efficacious hereunto, and put a ring of dreams upon his finger; then let him take one of the images we have spoken of [astrological], or some holy table, or paper, and place the same under his head; then, having made a devout prayer, let him address himself to sleep, meditating upon that thing which he desires to know; so shall he receive a most certain and undoubted oracle by a dream, when the moon goes through that sign which was in the ninth house of his nativity, and also when she goes through the sign of the ninth of the revolution of his nativity, and when she is in the ninth sign from the sign of perfection." The astrological data in this description are derived from the occult compendium of Cornelius Agrippa who, although widely regarded as a Magician, wrote a later book recanting such "vanities" (Nauert 1965).

One of Barrett's students, Alphonse Louis Constant, tinder the pseudonym Eliphas Levi, wrote a book amplifying these teachings. Originally written in French in 1856, the book was translated into English by A. E. Waite in 1896 with the title, Transcendental Magic: Its Doctrine and Ritual. Constant specifies that the real purpose of ceremonial magic is "the emancipation of the will from servitude and its instruction in the art of domination." He further adds that there are dangers involved in the practice of his "science," and that it should be avoided by "nervous persons, and those who are naturally disposed to exaltation, women, young people and all who are not habituated in perfect self-control and command of fear." In the following passage, Constant elaborates on the proper lifestyle for one who wishes to practice the art of ceremonial magic:

The Magus should live in retirement and be approached with difficulty.... This notwithstanding, such retirement must not be one of isolation; attachments and friendships are necessary; but they must be chosen with care and preserved at all price. The Magus must have also another avocation than that of magician. Magic is not a trade.

In order to devote ourselves to Ceremonial Magic, we must be free from anxious preoccupations; we must be in a position to procure all instruments of the science and be able to make them when needed; we must possess, moreover, an inaccessible laboratory, in which there will be no danger of ever being surprised or disturbed. Then, and this is an indispensable condition, we must know how to equilibrate forces and restrain the zeal of our own initiative.

The man who dedicates himself to works of science must take moderate daily exercise, abstain from prolonged vigils, and follow a wholesome and regular rule of life. He must avoid the effluvia of putrefaction, the neighborhood of stagnant water and indigestible or impure food. Above all, he must seek daily relaxation from magical preoccupations, amongst material cares, or in ordinary work, whether artistic, industrial or commercial. The way to see well is not to be always looking; and he who spends his whole life upon one object will end without attaining it. Another precaution must be observed equally, and that is never to experiment when ill.

The crucial insight Constant makes in his book is that all of the ceremonies with their artifacts, symbolism and philosophy are "artificial methods for creating a habit of will." Once the will has become developed, the rituals become unnecessary. "But procedure must be simplified progressively before it is dispensed with altogether, in proportion to the experience we obtain in acquiring powers."

References

Barrett, F. The magus: A complete system of occult philosophy. New York: University Books, 1967. (Originally published, 1801.)

Levi, E. Transcendental magic: Its doctrine and ritual (A.E. Waite, trans.). New York: Samuel Weiser, 1970. (Originally published, 1896.)

Nauert, C.G. Agrippa and the crises of Renaissance thought. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1965.

Scholem, G. Kabbalah. New York: Quadrangle, 1974.

Thorndike, L. The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905.

Thorndike, L. The history of magic and experimental science, Vol. 5. New York: Columbia University Press, 1938.

Opening the Sacred Bundle, painting by Howard Terpning, 1994

Shamanism [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Perhaps the oldest traditions involving possible psychic training methods relate to the practices of tribal shamanism, or primitive spiritualism, which anthropologists have encountered and reported on throughout the world. The basic pattern is remarkably similar across cultures, with, of course, a number of local variations. Eliade (1951/1972) notes that elements of shamanism have survived in almost all of the major religions in the world today.



Eliade also reports that the shaman-or master of spirits, rituals, myths, drugs and trance techniques-was invariably regarded with great esteem by the community. Shamanistic training always included both instruction from an old master and instruction from "spirits" in dreams and trances. As opposed to cases of "possession," the shaman controlled himself in relation to the spirits and was only possessed by a spirit in certain rituals for specific purposes.

The chief methods of recruiting shamans were hereditary transmission and spontaneous vocation (i.e., obeying the "call" of gods and spirits). Individuals who became shamans of their own determination were considered less powerful than those who inherited the profession or received the "call." Experiencing and overcoming resistance to divine election seemed an essential aspect of the death and rebirth initiations of shamanistic training. Through this training, the shaman acquired not only new magical powers but also a radically new socioreligious status.

The young person who was called on to undergo shamanic training had generally attracted the notice of others through his or her habits of solitude, visions, and spontaneous songmaking Often an initiatory crisis occurred or was induced through the use of drugs, solitude, fasting, and other austerities. The hallucinations and symptoms in this early phase have been described as pathological by some anthropologists in the past. Eliade points out, however, that it is precisely because they succeed in curing themselves that these individuals became shamans. In fact, many older shamans are far more vigorous and resistant to disease and stress than others in their community, displaying "tireless energy." Eliade states, "the shamans, for all their apparent likeness to epileptics and hysterics, show proof of a more than normal nervous constitution; they achieve a degree of concentration beyond the capacity of the profane; they sustain exhausting efforts; they control their ecstatic movements.... This astonishing capacity to control even ecstatic movements testifies to an excellent nervous constitution. In general, the Siberian and North Asian shaman shows no sign of mental disintegration. His memory and his power of self-control are distinctly above the average."

Typically during the period of training, the candidate was led to experience a powerful series of waking dreams, symbolic of a death and rebirth pattern. These dreams seemed to lead the candidate away from common-sense assumptions of personal physical identity.

Imagine, for example, having one's body dismembered by demons or ancestral spirits; the bones cleaned, the flesh scraped off, the body fluids thrown away, and the eyes torn from the sockets and set aside in order to watch the whole procedure. Purgative visions such as these seemed to catalyze the healing powers and psychic perception that have been attributed to the shaman. Only after this initiation would the "spirits" and the old master instruct the individual in the psychic arts and lore of the tribe.

The shaman was considered able to "see" the spirits, to go Up into the sky and meet the gods, to descend into the underworld and fight the demons of sickness and death, to travel to the bottom of the sea. In addition, the shaman contributed to his community a certainty about life beyond death.

It is certainly possible to interpret these social and religious functions without any reference to parapsychology, and almost all ethnological researchers have been disposed in this direction (Lewis 1974). It is, even for those willing to do so, an enormously difficult task to tease out genuine parapsychological elements from the complex morass of religious, cultural, economic, political, and psychological threads that run through shamanistic traditions.

Eliade has enumerated a number of shamanistic functions that do suggest the possibility of psychic ability. The most dominant is trance healing, during which the shaman is said to search for the patient's fugitive soul, capture it, and make it return to animate the body it has left. In some cultures the shaman used clairvoyance to find game or locate lost people or animals. Among the Inuit, the shamans are said to actually end storms through the use of a complicated ritual. The Paviotso, of North America, still tell of old shamans who put burning coals into their mouths and touched red-hot iron unharmed.

The shaman was not considered the only individual in the tribe who was capable of acquiring supernatural abilities. Other individuals, through their own efforts, could acquire such skills to use in their personal affairs, but it was by virtue of his or her special initiation that the shaman became a tribal representative in the world of the unseen. The psi abilities of the shamans were generally considered greater than those of other individuals.

To induce their trance-like states, shamans were known to use a number of techniques including solitude, concentration, fasting, physical austerities, drugs, rhythmic drumming, chanting and dancing. In some decadent phases of shamanism, Eliade points out, the shaman covered himself with a blanket and faked the trance entirely. In each particular case, the techniques involved were framed within the context of an elaborate mythological and cosmological structure.

Adrian Boshier (1974) describes the training of the South African sangoma who serves as "priest, prophet, physician, herbalist, psychiatrist, diviner and historian of the tribe." This training follows the classic pattern described by Eliade in that it begins with an illness, said to be an example of spirit possession. The apprentice is known as the twasa and the teacher is reterred to as Baba. Most sangomas are females. "Samgoma training involves the learning of songs, special dances, drumming, the ingestion of emetics for purification, and the continual instruction of the Baba as she watches her twasa carefully, noting her particular spirit manifestation. They are encouraged daily to strengthen and use the spirit that is possessing them. They are called any time, day or night, to find things that the Baba has ‘hidden' somewhere in the village. At first the teacher will tell the twasa that something is hidden is hidden for her, but as the training progresses the Baba will no longer inform the initiate verbally, but will call her employing telepathic methods. Mild drugs may be used when signs of the spirit slack off, or in clarifying the meaning of dreams and hallucinatory experiences."

Boshier states that Sangoma training may last up to two or three years, and that none of the individuals in his study have had less than six months' initial training. The end of the instruction period is said to be determined by the spirits of the initiate, however no twasa may leave without her teacher's permission. In all, there are twelve stages of training. Most sangomas do not reach the highest and most powerful levels.

Boshier states that the initiation ceremony of the newly qualified sangoma involves a sacrificial ritual in which the apprentice must discover the exact location of a hidden sacrificial animal sometimes far from the village. He strongly implies that as a result of his own experiences and tests he has conducted that the sangomas do, indeed, cultivate a high degree of genuine ESP.

Idries Shah (1957) describes some procedures in the training of Nyam-Nyam sorcerers in the Sudan. Amongst tourists to Africa, Shah maintains there exists a flourishing market in spells and magical charms. They are reputed to be highly successful, yet these spells are seldom used by laymen. Shah explains:

"Aspirants to the respected rank of magician persevere in the observance of tabus and diet for at least forty to sixty days before casting a spell.

No magic-worker during the period of this study may look upon a member of the opposite sex for more than a few seconds - except after about seven in the evening. He eats certain things believed to bestow magical powers: especially green leaf vegetables, peanut paste and, sometimes, small birds. He wears a straw hat at night and sometimes two silver ornaments, such as pierced coins - Egyptian half-piastre pieces.

"With these badges on the right side of the head or body, he enters a building or crosses paths with one long and one short step. During all this time, he devotes half and hour after sundown to softly beating a small drum. Just before sunset he spends at least five minutes gazing in the sky. In company he closes his eyes and bites his lower lip frequently. He is expected to talk little, except to those whom he sees acting in the same way.

". . . I am convinced that there is often an element of autohypnosis in these magical arts. Sitting with his eyes unwinkingly fixed upon the surface of a pot of water, the operator's gaze nearly always seems to become vacant, as though in a trance. Then, while muttering spells repeatedly to the throb of the drum, and walking around and swinging his body from side to side, there is an atmosphere of vacancy and yet persistence very compatible with the hypnoidal state.

Finally, after a period of observing all of these rites, the aspirant becomes aware that he is "ready for action."

More recently, a number of anthropologists have written about the use of hallucinogenic drugs in shamanism. Some researchers have actually partaken of these substances under the tutelage of an older shaman. There are several cases in the anthropological literature of researchers who have reported very distinct clairvoyant experiences among South American Indians using the psychedelic herb Banisteriopsis for ritual trances. This substance is also known as yage, ayahuasca, caapi, or natema and contains the active indole alkaloids harmine, harmaline, d-tetrahydroharmine and also N, N-dimethyltryptamine. The biochemists who first isolated harmaline originally labelled it "telepathene" (Freedman 1966).

The clairvoyant experiences with yage are thought to provide information necessary to the immediate life needs of the Indians, such as the habits of game animals, the whereabouts of distant relatives and friends, and the activities of enemy tribes. Distant clairvoyance is suggested in the following incident described by Kenneth M. Kensinger (1973): "Several informants who have never been to or seen pictures of Pucallpa, the large town at the Ucayali River terminus of the Central Highway, have described their visits under the influence of ayahuasca to the town with sufficient detail for me to be able to recognize specific shops and sights. On the day following one ayahuasca party, six of nine men informed me of seeing the death of my chai, my ‘mother's father.' This occurred two days before I was informed by radio of his death."

F. Bruce Lamb's (1971) study of the shaman Manuel Cordova-Rios suggests the possibility that the Indian shamans were in possession of sophisticated techniques involving precise mixtures of drugs combined with specific dietary control and the use of specific chants and sounds during the drug-induced state to create particular, possibly clairvoyant, hallucinogenic visions. Naturally, there are many uncontrolled variables here, such as the possible role of suggestion.

Reichbart (1978) maintains that "almost universally shamans are trained in and skilled at the use of magic: sleight of hand and the use of normally acquired information which they pretend they have obtained psychically." The anthropological literature surveyed by Reichbart suggests many reasons for these fraudulent methods-in order to maintain political power and professional status among the gullible and for purposes of psychosomatic healing. Reichbart suggests several other alternatives compatible with the hypothesis that shamanism does provide a viable system for psi development. Reichbart maintains that the shaman deliberately manipulates the belief systems and faith of the tribal community for the purposes of creating conditions conducive to the manifestation of actual psi. Reichbart states, "Magic served to convince the participants that psi was taking place, thus dissipating any vestiges of resistance among them, and in the shaman himself, to the emergence of genuine psi phenomena." Reichbart supports this view with the argument that shamans themselves believe in the efficacy of psi or magic and will often consult other shamans, knowing full well that fraud or sleight of hand may be a factor in their own treatment.

References

Boshier, A.K. African apprenticeship. Parapsychology Review, 1974, 5(4), 1-3,25-27.

Eliade, M. Shamanism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1972. (Originally published, 1951.)

Freedman, DX Aspects of biochemical pharmacology of psychotropic drugs. Psychedelic Review, 1966, No. 8, 33-58.

Kensinger, K.M. Banisteriopsis usage among the Peruvian Cashinahua. In MT Harner (Ed.), Hallucinogens and shamanism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

Lamb, F. B. Wizard of the Upper Amazon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1975.

Lewis, I.M. The anthropologist's encounter with the supernatural. In A. Angoff and D. Barth (Eds.), Parapsychology and anthropology. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1974.

Reichbart, R. Magic and psi: Some speculations on their relationship. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1978, 72(2), 153-175.

Shah, I. Oriental magic. New York: Philosophical Library, 1957.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky as painted by Manly P. Hall

Theosophy [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]
The Theosophical Society was founded in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, who declared herself to be a chela or disciple of a brotherhood of spiritual adepts in Tibet whose members had acquired psychic powers beyond the reach of ordinary men. The early history of the society was based largely on miracles allegedly produced by Blavatsky with the aid of her Tibetan mahatmas. Blavatsky's wonderworking, teaching and charisma attracted such notable students as Thomas Edison, Sir William Crookes, Alfred Russell Wallace (co-developer, with Darwin, of the theory of evolution), Alfred Tennyson, and later the U.S. vice president Henry Wallace.

Leaders of the Society for Psychical Research in England considered the movement important enough to send a young investigator, Richard Hodgson, to India in 1884 to personally investigate the claims of the Theosophists. He concluded that Madame Blavatsky was a charlatan. His 200-page report attempted to reconstruct in detail all of the mechanisms by which she effected every sort of phenomena (Hodgson 1885). More recently, another investigator, Victor Endersby, has written a book challenging the Hodgeson report point for point (Endersby 1969). Today, all of the many claims for and against the Theosophists still remain controversial. Nevertheless, Hodgson's report has been discredited within the Society for Psychical Research.

What is not doubted is the influence of the movement, wh can be detected in a very large proportion of subsequent occult movements throughout the world. Theosophical teachings involve a complicated conglomeration of notions derived from many ancient mythologies. Particularly prominent are teachings regarding such concepts as the astral body, the etheric body, thought forms, the aura and the chakras (Leadbeater 1902/1971, Powell 1925/1969, Leadbeater 1927/1969).

The Inner Life (1910/1978), a book by the major early Theosophical writer C. W. Leadbeater, touches directly on the issue of psi training. Leadbeater states that there are two general ways in which psychic faculties may be developed-which he calls the temporary and the permanent: "The temporary method is to deaden the physical senses in some way - actively by drugs, by self-hypnotization, or by inducing giddiness, for example, or passively by being mesmerized - so that the astral may come to the surface. The permanent way is to work at the development of the ego, so that he may be able to control the lower vehicles and use them as he wishes." Other temporary methods he lists include the repetition of invocations, the use of charms and certain ceremonies.

The Theosophists clearly distinguish themselves from the spiritualist movement in that they stand against the use of unconscious trance conditions for psychic work. Mediumship is described not as a power, but as an unhealthy condition. By "permanent," Leadbeater is referring to the sort of development that will continue beyond death and rebirth into another physical body.

The permanent type of psychic abilities are developed, first of all, by careful attention to one's character and then by careful observation of spontaneous psi events. Leadbeater states, "...let him patiently endeavor to disentangle the core of truth in them from the various accretions and exaggerations which are sure at first to be almost inextricably confused with them; let him in every way possible test and check them and endeavor to ascertain which of them are reliable, and in what way these reliable ones differ from others which have proved less trustworthy." Leadbeater maintains that if such a patient and watchful attitude is maintained, the aspirant will eventually come to the attention of "those who are ever watching for instruments Which can be employed in the great work of evolution, and that when the right time comes he will receive the training which he so earnestly desires."

Leadbeater also urges that children with psychic talent be given special training. This, he states, cannot be accomplished within the normal educational or family structures, which tend to Suppress all psychic faculties. Therefore, he argues that the best way to prevent the loss to the world of a young psychic talent is to enlist the child in a monastery. One such child prodigy, discovered by Leadbeater, was the philosopher J. Krishnatmurti.

More advanced teachings involve opening the psychic centers , or chakras, reading auras, reading past lives, and communicating with nature spirits.

References

Endersby, V. The hall of magic mirrors. New York: Carlton Press, 1969.

Hodgson, R. Report to the committee appointed to investigate phenomena connected with the Theosophical Society. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, Part IX, December 1885.

Leadbeater, C.W. The chakras. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1969. (Originally published, 1927.)

Leadbeater, C.W. Clairvoyance. Adyar, Madras, India: Theosophical Publishing House, 1971. (Originally published, 1899.)

Leadbeater, C.W. The inner life. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House, 1978. (Originally published, 1910.)

Leadbeater, C.W. Man visible and invisible. Wheaton, Ill.: Illeosophical Publishing House, 1978. (Originally published, 1910.)

Powell, A.E. The etheric double. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Publishing House. 1969. (Originally published, 1925.)

The Goetheanum, Headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society, Dornach, Switzerland

Anthroposophy [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]
The Anthroposophical Society (from the Greek words anthropos and sophia, "man" and "wisdom") was founded in the early part of the 20th century by Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian scholar.

At the age of 23, Steiner edited Goethe's scientific works for an edition of Deutsche National-Literatur. His early scholarship also embraced the works of Schopenhauer, Schiller, Kant, and Nietzsche. Steiner's own philosophy was published in Trust and Science (1891) (for which he received a Ph.D. from the University of Rostock) and The Philosophy of Freedom. In the latter book he argued that thought itself could become an organ of spiritual perception. During the course of his life, Steiner was to deliver over 6,000 different lectures, in addition to writing over sixty books and numerous articles and essays.

Before founding the Anthroposophical Society, Steiner served as the General Secretary to the German branch of the Theosophical Society. During this period he formed a small "Esoteric School" that remained in existence for ten years from 1904 until 1914. From his lectures at that time, the Rudolf Steiner Press in London has published a short volume titled Guidance in Esoteric Training (1972) in which Steiner outlines some basic exercises for psychic development.

Steiner states that as the first condition for psychic development "a man must rid himself of the will-o'-the-wisps of thought, even if only for a very short time during the day - about five minutes (the longer, the better)." This is accomplished by holding to a single, preferably uninteresting, thought for a period of time every day, for a month. Each particular thought can be changed daily or after several days.

In the second month, the student is asked to determine for himself an action, that is not normally performed in the course of daily life. The action can be insignificant, such as watering a particular plant at a specific time each day. While continuing the first exercise, this simple action must now additionally performed each day during the second month of training.

While maintaining the first two exercises, an additional exercise is added, in the third month, for the purpose of maintaining "equanimity towards the fluctuations of joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain; ‘heights of jubilation' and ‘depths of despair' should quite consciously be replaced by an equable mood."

Another exercise is added, in the fourth month, in which the student cultivates a "positive attitude" to all situations, abstaining from all criticism. Steiner notes that a great deal of concentration is necessary for this exercise and adds that it helps to awaken psychic awareness. "He ... will gradually notice a feeling creeping into him as if his skin were becoming porous on all sides, and as if his soul were opening wide to all kinds of secret and delicate processes in his environment which hitherto entirely escaped his notice."

In the fifth month, the student is asked to develop an attitude of "open-mindedness" to all experiences. At every moment, regardless of previous conceptions, he must be ready to encounter and accept new experiences. Further bodily sensations and psychic awareness are said to be triggered by this exercise.

All of the foregoing exercises are repeated in the sixth month. Further, more intense exercises are given individually to students.

Another book of Steiner's relevant to psychic training is Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment (1918/ 1947). This text is one of the fundamental documents of the Anthroposophical movement. The major focus of the training is the attainment to a spiritual vision of which measurable psi abilities are only one aspect. In this book, Steiner states that the first prerequisite to the attainment of higher knowledge is the Cultivation of an attitude of "veneration" or "devotion to truth and knowledge." This attitude of veneration should also be accompanied with a lessening of adverse criticisms and harsh Judgments. Steiner acknowledges that the greatness of our civilization is based on the attitude of "test all things and hold fast to what is best." He maintains, however, that we have had to Pay for our external gains with a corresponding loss in our inner life. Steiner states that it is difficult for people to believe that "feelings like reverence and respect have anything to do with cognition." He points out that "it is the soul which exercises the faculty of cognition; and feelings are for the soul what food is for the body." Feelings of veneration, homage and devotion are nutriments for the soul; whereas "disrespect, antipathy, underestimation of what deserves recognition, all exert a paralyzing and withering effect on this faculty of cognition". The power obtained through devotion can be further enhanced by a general turning inward of attention to the inner life of thought and feeling, as opposed to external impressions of the world. This is not accomplished by blunting oneself to the external world, for the "outer world with all its phenomena is filled with divine splendor, but we must have experienced the divine within ourselves before we can hope to discover it in our environment." Steiner adds that the habitual emotions of an individual can be detected, by a clairvoyant, in the aura.

The student is asked to set aside special moments during the day in which to withdraw into himself quietly and alone. The process is subtle, as Steiner explains it: "He is not to occupy himself with the affairs of his own ego. This would result in the contrary of what is intended. He should rather let his experiences and the messages from the outer world re-echo within his own completely silent self. At such silent moments every flower, every animal, every action will unveil to him secrets undreamt of. And thus he will prepare himself to receive quite new impressions of the outer world through quite different eyes. The desire to enjoy impression after impression merely blunts the faculty of cognition; the latter, however, is nurtured and cultivated if the enjoyment once experienced is allowed to reveal its message. Thus the student must accustom himself not merely to let the enjoyment reverberate as it were, but rather to renounce any further enjoyment, and work upon the past experience. "

Steiner points out that there are a number of pitfalls and possibilities of error in this exercise. There are many temptations that would "harden the ego and imprison it within itself.' A fundamental principle is that psychic powers and knowledge must not be pursued merely for personal enrichment and gain but rather "for growth to ripeness within the process of human ennoblement."

Once the student has attained some mastery of the preceding exercise, he is ready to embark on the path of initiation. In the preparatory stages this involves maintaining a state of stillness as one goes about the workday. This is particularly important with regard to listening to others when they speak

Steiner urges that one suppress inner feelings of superiority to others, and suggests practicing this exercise while listening to children. By listening without criticism, even when the most hopeless mistake is committed, the candidate "learns, little by little, to blend himself with the being of another and become identified with it.... Then-he hears through the words into the soul of the other." This exercise, Steiner states, requires the strictest self-discipline.

In the next stage toward initiation, which Steiner refers to as "enlightenment," the student is given the exercise of contemplating a stone and an animal and noticing the different feelings aroused by these contemplations. "The organs of clairvoyance are formed" out of the feelings and accompanying thoughts of this exercise. The exercise is refined by including a plant in the contemplation. One learns to associate different mental colors with the inner qualities of every stone, plant or animal. At this point the student is likely also to encounter spiritual beings, some higher than man some lower. The student must take care to enlarge his moral strength and sympathy. Otherwise the exercises could blunt moral sensitivity, "and that could only lead to perilous results."

Progress in these exercises may not be immediately apparent, according to Steiner. However, the student is urged to realize that progress is occurring even if it is not obvious. Otherwise he can easily lose heart and abandon all attempts in a short time. Steiner writes, "No one will ever travel far who cannot bring himself to repeat, over and over again, an exercise Which has failed, apparently, for a countless number of times."

Further exercises concern intense contemplation both on One's own thoughts and on nature, particularly on the process of a Plant growing from a seed. At the Goetheanum, the world headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland, agricultural research is conducted. The purpose of this research is as much to train the inner vision of the researchers as it is to gather factual data about the plants. Other contemplations involve visualizing individuals in a state of desire-in one case where it is uncertain whether the desire will be realized, and in another case where the desire has been fulfilled. In proceeding through these exercises, Steiner warns, " Above all, strict care must be taken not to drift at random into vague reveries, or to experiment with all kinds of exercises. The trains of thought here indicated have been tested and practiced in esoteric training since the earliest times, and only such are given in these pages. Anyone attempting others devised by himself, or of which he may have heard or read at one place or another, will inevitably go astray and find himself on the path of boundless chimera."

The higher stages of initiation involve purification processes, which are only understandable to an individual according to his degree of maturity. In one of these processes, the individual must be able to "distinguish illusion, superstition, and everything fantastic, from true reality.... This is, at first, more difficult to accomplish in the higher stages of existence than in the lower. . . . There must be perfect readiness to abandon at once any idea, opinion, or inclination when logical thought demands it."

In addition to his esoteric training, Rudolf Steiner founded the Waldorf School system, which is now the second largest nonsectarian private educational system in the world, with over 100 schools. These schools do not attempt to serve as vehicles for indoctrinating the ideologies of anthroposophy. They do serve to enhance the natural unfolding of the genius within each child. The curriculum shows a sensitivity to the physiological rhythms of childhood development, as well as nonverbal forms of education. For instance, the alphabet is learned through body-movement and dance as well as recitation. The anthroposophists have their own college in England, Emerson College, where Waldorf School teachers are trained. Educational programs also exist at Adelphi University in New York and Wayne State University in Michigan.

Steiner's thought has had an important influence on agriculture and has resulted in the bio-dynamic movement in farming that stresses the organic relationship between the soil, the plant and the animal. Also of interest are Steiner's techniques of curative education, which are embodied in a rural community near Copake, New York, called Camphill Village, as well as several other small communities where the anthroposophists live communally with the mentally retarded.

In the area of medicine, hundreds of physicians are now practicing the models of treatment outlined by Steiner. These are essentially homeopathic and herbal. There are several organizations of anthroposophical physicians and therapists throughout the world.

All of these activities-as well as work in architecture, geometry, metallurgy, drama, and dance-are said to stem from the concrete application of clairvoyant perceptions to the needs of everyday personal and community life. Yet the purpose of anthroposophy, as opposed to parapsychology, is not to measure or demonstrate phenomena, but rather the inner development and training of a conscious approach to the spiritual realities which are believed to penetrate all of life.

References

Steiner, R. Guidance in esoteric training. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1972.

Steiner, R. Knowledge of the higher worlds and its attainment. New York: Anthroposophic Press, 1947. (Originally published, 1918.)

The Prescientific Traditions [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Ancient humankind accepted implicitly the mind's desire to interact magically with the environment. According to Frazer (1935), "Whatever doubts science may entertain as to the possibility of action at a distance, magic has none; faith in telepathy is one of its first principles. A modem advocate of the influence of mind upon mind at a distance would have no difficulty in convincing a savage; the savage believed in it long ago, and what is more he acted on his belief with a logical consistency such as his civilized brother in the faith has not yet, so far as I am aware, exhibited in his conduct. For the savage is concerned not only that magical ceremonies affect persons and things afar off, but that the simplest acts of daily life may do so too."

Thorndike (1905) goes so far as to maintain that in early prescientific times, everybody was a magician, trying to put magical philosophy, which was universally accepted, into practice. Thus, all the prescientific traditions involving psi development systems originated in a milieu that implicitly accepted the existence of psi, or the supernatural, or divine intervention, with only a minimum of controversy. This world view was so pervasive that in many cases, such as in Tibetan Buddhism, there was no clear discrimination in the language between the normal and the paranormal, the sacred and the mundane. This religious world view is common to all the prescientific traditions with psi development systems.

The thread of psi training runs through hundreds of traditions, each with its cults, variations, offshoots, interpretations, tensions, and critics. Thus, the potential areas for investigation include all priesthoods, all mystical fraternities, all spiritual lineages, and all systems of divination. Given the magnitude of this field, a detailed examination of the original artifacts and documents of all these traditions is beyond the scope of this chapter. Instead, I will refer to secondary scholarly sources, except where original material is available in English. This does, however, place considerable limitations on presenting complete descriptions of psi training methods in these cultures, as reliable investigations of prescientific traditions have rarely focused on techniques alleged to train psi abilities.

Furthermore, in these traditions, psi was not perceived in a way that allows us to distinguish it easily from visionary and mystical experiences or mythological folklore. Nor do we have any reliable measure of the efficacy of possible prescientific psi training programs. Much of the actual psi training is said to have been passed on orally from teacher to student and never recorded. And, few scholars have desired or attained the intimate relationship with an individual who might transmit psi training lore. Fragmentary information does exist for the following traditions discussed in this chapter: shamanism, divination, yoga, Buddhism, Sufism, Judaism, and ceremonial magic.

The fragments reported in this chapter often raise more questions than they answer. The data largely paint an impressionistic historical portrait that speaks for itself. Further background material, of a more general nature, relating to prescientific traditions of consciousness exploration can be found in my first book, The Roots of Consciousness: Psychic Liberation Through History, Science and Experience (1975, 1993).

References

Frazer, J.G. The golden bough, 3d ed. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1932.

Mishlove, J. The Roots of Consciousness. Tulsa, Oklahoma: Council Oaks, 1993. (Originally published, 1975.)

Thorndike, L. The place of magic in the intellectual history of Europe. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905.

Logic and Poetry [From Chapter Two of Psi Development Systems]

Prescientific psi training processes have involved a wide variety of social contexts and techniques, from shamanistic and prophetic indulgences through yogic asceticism. Among the diversity of approaches to prescientific psi training there appear to be several common elements.

All of the prescientific systems involve a cognitive framework that explains psychic phenomena. These are either metaphysical (as in the case of yoga and Buddhism), spiritualistic (as in the case of shamanism, or ritual magic) or theistic (as in Judaism). In more sophisticated instances, as Sufism, the levels of explanation overlap and intertwine with an added element of psychological interpretation. In yoga we find a highly systematic, logical and philosophical cognitive framework. The method prescribes a recipe which, if carefully followed, should yield the same result for all aspirants- although the length of time required may vary. At another extreme, the Sufic framework tends toward the spontaneous, poetic and illogical. In Shah's interpretation, different techniques will work for different people in a manner not amenable to scientific analysis. Elements of both logic and poetry are intertwined in most of these systems-in ways not generally tolerable within a contemporary scientific context.

It is beyond the scope of this book to pay more than passing attention to systems of belief within which the prescientific psi training techniques are embedded and which give meaning to psi phenomena. It is undeniable that the manifestation of psi training in each culture is affected by the dominant beliefs of the culture as well as by other political, economic, and historical factors.

Invariably every movement involving possible psi training has also included the training of other forms of cognition such as the perception of spiritual, metaphysical, and mythological figures, forces, and energies. It is quite conceivable that archetypal perceptions, while not measurable in the sense we expect psi to be, may in fact be related to the development and production of psi. Even if such experiences are merely the product of imagination, they may serve to break down mental barriers that inhibit the use of psi.

All of the prescientific psi training systems in this chapter have emphasized the value of personal instruction from one who is already experienced. They have all used some combination of concentration exercises, breathing exercises, diet regulation, behavior regulation, solitude, secrecy, music, movement, altered states of consciousness, special clothing or jewelry, and particular mantras, prayers, or spells. The combinations are different in each case, and vary with the progress of the student, but the effect always seems to be to focus many mental functions on the task of psi production, in a culturally acceptable manner. The intensity and length of training varies with each culture and undoubtedly also with individual circumstances.

Some of the sophisticated, prescientific traditions that entail psi training also include an ethical code not permitting public demonstrations or scientific experiments of psi-except under rigorous conditions that would not violate the spirit of that tradition. For example, it is permissible within the Buddhist tradition to demonstrate psi phenomena to those who have also been initiated into the tradition. These early prohibitions, as well as the instability of psi itself, may have influenced the present dichotomy between the culture of contemporary psi training programs and modem academia.

Evidence for the efficacy of psi development systems within prescientific traditions is virtually nonexistent. However, it would be premature to draw any conclusions as to the ineffectiveness of these traditions merely because of lack of evidence. Ample opportunity currently exists for experimental and field studies within shamanistic, yogic, and Buddhist communities -as well as among practitioners of divination and ceremonial magic. It is equally clear that the folklore of these various traditions, and even the acknowledged literary masterpieces, contain superstitious embellishments.

Probably the fairest statement is that one can feel comfortable assuming that the prescientific traditions manifested at least as much psi as has been produced under contemporary laboratory conditions (see the discussion of this topic in Chapter Four). This estimate seems reason able for several reasons. The field conditions of prescientific training systems provide a supportive emotional environment. Laboratory tests using relaxation and meditation, originally advocated in prescientific systems, have obtained significant results. Logically, although experimental parapsychology research provides the most precise measurements of psi, it cannot be said to monopolize the occurrence of it. In fact, many experimental conditions, not to be found in prescientific traditions, such as a highly skeptical attitude, may actually be psi inhibiting.

It is also fair to assume that there has been at least as much fraud in prescientific traditions as has been observed in popular psi development systems (as described in Chapter Three).

It should be noted that many salient systems features, particularly the environment, of prescientific traditions simply cannot be, and certainly have not been, recreated or controlled in parapsychological laboratory settings. Many of these features (even including credulity of fraud) may be essential for effective psi development. A major premise of this book is that an appreciation of the holistic interrelationship of the various elements that make up these prescientific systems of psi development can lead to entirely new and potentially valuable academic perspectives on and approaches to psi training.

Laying the Groundwork [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

The intent of this book is to create a framework for the legitimate academic evaluation, design, and practice of programs for the cultivation of "psi," the generic term for uncanny or ostensibly paranormal phenomena. In this introductory chapter, I first map out the basic conceptual territory and briefly discuss the interdisciplinary approach and the nature of paradigm shifts in scientific work. Next, I offer an overview of psi research in terms of the schism within parapsychology itself, as well as the controversy surrounding the field-and its effects, and present several models for psi research. After a discussion of the "systems" approach and how psi systems have developed through human history, the chapter concludes with an outline of the evaluation procedures necessary to determine the worth of the analysis in this book.

The field of parapsychology contains the following elements:

(1) The historical - including ancient mystical theory and practice, medieval astrology and magic, metaphysical philosophy and occultism, spiritualism, psychical research, and early experimental parapsychology.

(2) The experimentally known -- including physiological, physical, and psychological variables.

(3) The social-psychological -- including psychopathology, folklore and literature, biographies, institutional and political responses to ostensible psi, and psi-related phenomena.

(4) The developmental and applied -- including yoga, meditation, hypnosis, and other potentially psi-enhancing training systems, and their practical use in education, medicine, science, the arts, business, and the humanities.

(5) The philosophical -- integration of all the above topics into an all-encompassing theoretical framework.

I have set myself the task of defining parapsychology in new terms, as a discipline in and of itself. Building on a century of parapsychological inquiry, I owe a great deal to two major contributions of previous generations: the case history methodology of early psychical research, and the experimental methodology of J. B. Rhine, who is widely regarded as the "father of modem parapsychology."

It has been my intention since 1973 to help create a third synthesis with three characteristics: extending the self-conscious history of parapsychology further into its historical traditions, critically evaluating contemporary or popular programs, and establishing a new and more balanced disciplinary framework that will allow parapsychology to fulfill its dual potential as a discipline for both scientific progress and individual self-actualization.

The Disciplinary Matrix [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

The term "paradigm," first popularized in Thomas Kuhn's classic 1962 study, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, has come to stand for the essential organization of any field of scientific endeavor. In his "Postscript - 1969," Kuhn (1970), stated that he had been using the term in both a global and a specific sense.

In the global sense, Kuhn defined paradigm as "the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community." He later suggested that the term had too often been implicitly accepted without conscious awareness of alternatives or critical examination and proposed that, in its global sense, "paradigm" be replaced by the term, "disciplinary matrix."

The main parts of this disciplinary matrix include:

(1) Formalized theories and laws, plus definitions of the symbols they employ.

(2) Metaphysical models, such as materialism or causality, which provide preferred analogies and metaphors; set limits to possible processes, events, and objects; and determine what types of explanation, problem, and solution can be accepted as legitimate.

(3) Values concerning the goals, aesthetics, and ethics of scientific research.

(4) Exemplars, which are problem solutions that provide concrete application of theories and laws in specific settings. "Exemplar" is Kuhn's new label for the specific sense in which he had previously been using the term, "paradigm."

It has often been said that parapsychology is essentially a body of data in search of a theory (Scriven 1962, Thouless 1969, Pratt 1974, Thakur 1977). Certainly no one would argue that parapsychologists have obtained general agreement on the mechanisms by which psi information moves through time (as in precognition) or space (as in clairvoyance). These remain fundamental problems yet to be solved, although some intriguing and important theories have been proposed. Only when these theoretical problems are solved can parapsychology truly become integrated into the scientific community.

Nevertheless, the disciplinary matrix of parapsychology exists by virtue of the metaphysics, values, definitions, and Principles laid down by J. B. Rhine at the Institute of Parapsychology and at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Until recently, Rhine's "extra-sensorimotor communications" Paradigm was so implicitly accepted by parapsychologists that it went virtually unrecognized- except as the obvious alternative to unscientific spiritualism. However, recent discussions of this paradigm and its limitations (Nilsson 1975, Stanford 1977, Palmer 1979), as well as other scholarly approaches I will discuss throughout the book, suggest that parapsychology is already in a state of transition to a new disciplinary matrix.

The dissatisfaction in parapsychology is partly the result of its failure to attract either funding for its research or recognition of its findings in mainstream scientific journals. However, the tension may be intrinsic to the situation and not a fault of the parapsychologists themselves. Molecular biologist Gunther Stent (1972) argues in Scientific American that, although the findings of parapsychology have been subjected to as thorough a scrutiny as any phenomena in psychology, scientists were nevertheless justified in ignoring the data because they were "premature" and not yet an integral part of theoretical science.

If and when parapsychology ever does become integrated into the mainstream of science, it will herald a revolution of major importance. However, the current search for a new disciplinary matrix within parapsychology is part of a smaller revolution, within a very small field. Although significant in its implications for parapsychology, education, and the psychology of human potential, such a shift of emphasis can do no more than pave the way for the larger revolution that is yet to come.

The arguments for paradigm shifts are not always explicit or easy to follow. Kuhn (1970) notes, "Like the choice between competing political institutions, that between competing paradigms proves to be a choice between incompatible modes of community life. Because it has that character, the choice is not and cannot be determined merely by the evaluative procedures characteristic of normal science, for these depend upon a particular paradigm, and that paradigm is at issue. When paradigms enter, as they must, into a debate about paradigm choice, their role is necessarily circular. Each group uses its own paradigm to argue in that paradigm's defense."

Kuhn goes on to point out that even these circular arguments can be very persuasive, although never logically compelling for those who "refuse to step into the circle." He emphasizes the need for investigators of scientific revolutions to examine "not only the impact of nature and of logic, but also the techniques of persuasive argumentation effective within the quite special groups that constitute the community of scientists." This advice is essential in evaluating the growing crisis within parapsychology

References

Kuhn, T. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Originally published, 1962.)

Nilsson, L. The paradigm of the Rhinean school. European Journal of Parapsychology, 1975, ](1), 45-59, 1(2), 45-56.

Palmer, J.A. Parapsychology as a probabilistic science: Facing the implications. Presidential address, 22nd Annual Convention, Parapsychological Associations, John F. Kennedy University, 1979.

Pratt, J.G. Comments on the Medhurst-Scott criticism of the Pratt-Woodruff experiment. Journal of Parapsychology, June 1974, 38(2), 185-201.

Scriven, M. The frontiers of science: Psychoanalysis and parapsychology. In R.G. Colodny (Ed.), Frontiers of science and philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962, 69- 130.

Stanford, R.G. Are parapsychologists paradigmless in psiland? In B. Shapin and L. Coly (Eds.), The philosophv of parapsychology. New York, Parapsychology Foundation, 1977.

Stent, G.S. Prematurity and uniqueness in science. Scientific American, December 1972, 227(6), 84-93.

Thakur, S.C. Parapsychology in search of a paradigm. In B. Shapin and L. Coly (Eds.), The Philosophy of Parapsychology. New York: Parapsychology Foundation, 1975, 198-208.

Thouless, R.H. Parapsychology during the last quarter of a century. Journal of Parapsychology, 1969, 33, 283-299.

Psi: The Extrasensorimotor Communication Paradigm [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

In the glossary of The Journal of Parapsychology (published by the Institute of Parapsychology), psi is defined as a "general term to identify a person's extrasensori- motor communication with the environment." Psi includes extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK).

Extrasensory perception is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "experience of, or response to, a target object, state, event, or influence without sensory contact." While in the popular mind, ESP or "being psychic" is often associated with mental awareness of auras, spirits, deities, or other archetypal figures, it is clear that Rhine intended to distinguish parapsychology from such popular, unscientific approaches since they are based on assumptions that cannot be proved true or false.

Using an information-flow diagram, Charles Tart (1977) developed graphic representations that mapped out the implicit assumptions that parapsychologists have about ESP.

As Tart explains it, "We begin with the target, a physical event or state of affairs from which information flows through some channel of transmission and reaches the percipient. After reaching the percipient, the information is transformed into mental and/or neural impulses by some sort of receptor and eventually results in knowledge and/or observable behavior, from which we infer that information about the target event has reached the percipient."

The traditional conceptualization of psi is described by Rex Stanford (1977, 1978) as the psycho-biological model or paradigm. Stanford has suggested that the habitual view of psi as a form of "extra-sensorimotor communication" is not entirely supported by the experimental evidence. He points out, for example, that the model assumes the existence of a biological organ of perception for ESP although none has yet been detected.

If the process of precognition were being diagrammed, one must imagine the target object or state as existing in the future and that information flows across the channel backward through time to the percipient. In the telepathic situation, the target object or state of affairs is another individual - although in this model, telepathic transmission actually bears more of a resemblance to psychokinesis.

Psychokinesis (PK) is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "the extramotor aspect of psi; a direct (i.e., mental but nonmuscular) influence exerted by the subject on an external physical process, condition, or object." Psychic healing is thought to be PK action on living material.

Tart (1977a) has diagrammed the principles of PK in a manner similar to that used for ESP, although instead of a hypothetical "receptor" we now have a hypothetical "convertor or power generator." The PK force is thought to be guided in a somewhat cybernetic fashion from feedback obtained through ESP (although normal sensory feedback can also operate in some situations):

Although the psychobiological model suggests that PK results should decline with targets of increasing complexity, Stanford (1977) noted that a review of the PK literature did not support this hypothesis.

Many events collected in the spontaneous case histories of parapsychologists and psychical researchers lacked some of the perceptual/cognitive components normally associated with Rhine's paradigm. These events include meaningful coincidences. For example, one case collected by Rex Stanford involved the fate of a man traveling by subway in Manhattan to visit friends. Accidentally, he forgot to change trains and ended up having to exit many blocks from his intended destination. However, upon leaving the subway station, he suddenly encountered the very friends he was intending to visit.

Stanford (1974) has developed a model consistent with Rhine's that explains these events, which he labels "psi-mediated instrumental responses (PMIR). He proposes the existence of an unconscious ESP mechanism that is constantly (or intermittently) scanning the environment, alert to favorable or unfavorable circumstances. Although this information never reaches conscious awareness, Stanford postulates that it is capable of influencing individual behavior instrumental in encountering favorable or avoiding unfavorable events. The reverse may be the case with masochistic individuals.

Similarly, the PMIR model proposes a PK mechanism that also operates unconsciously to affect favorable and unfavorable circumstances. It was because of his intense efforts to reconcile the PMIR model with the experimental data in psychokinesis that Stanford began to develop misgivings serious enough to cause him to question, for the first time, Rhine's entire extrasensorimotor communication paradigm.

References

Stanford, R.G. Concept and psi. In WG. Roll, R.L. Morris, and J.D. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Stanford, R.G. Are parapsychologists paradigmless in psiland? In B. Shapin and L. Coly (Eds.), The philosophv of parapsychology. New York, Parapsychology Foundation, 1977.

Stanford, R.G. Toward reinterpreting psi events. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1978, 72(3), 197-214.

Tart, C.T. Improving real time ESP by suppressing the future: trans-temporal inhibition. Paper, Electro 77 meeting of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, New York City, April 1977.

Psi: The Correspondence Paradigm [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

The "Correspondence Paradigm" is a term coined by John Palmer in his 1979 presidential address before the Parapsychological Association, although, as he pointed out at the time, "this paradigm is more difficult to define because it is less fully developed." Using the term "paradigm" in a broad sense, Palmer also noted that it need not be directly testable; rather, paradigms must be evaluated, in part, "by their capacity to spawn theories which are testable." If we think of the extra-sensorimotor communications model of psi as involving the transmission of energy, or information, from point A to point B, then the correspondence paradigm uses energy being transmitted from a deeper structural level, point C, to both A and B in a meaningful way that might be mistaken for an information transmission directly from A to B.

The difficulty with both of these models, or paradigms, of course, is that in the first instance we have only the rudiments of a theory as to how information may be transmitted from A to B, and an even less clear picture of the nature of C - although a mathematically based synchronicity theory (Gatlin 1977), and a semantically based theory (Honegger 1979) have been proposed.

Theoretical physics has also proposed speculative models to account for psi. Sarfatti's "superluminal communications" model (Mishlove 1975) is compatible with the extrasensorimotor paradigm. Another method of accounting for the paradoxes of quantum physics is the "implicate order" model of David Bohm (1980), which is more compatible with the correspondence paradigm of psi.

Rex Stanford (1977, 1978) has also challenged the extrasensorimotor view of psi, proposing instead his own correspondence model, which he calls the conformance behavior model. For conformance behavior to occur, three criteria are necessary: "(a) a disposed system (a conditioned response such as a conditioned fear or attraction); (b) a random-event generator (REG) ... ; and (c) a contingency such that this REG produces events which control the probability of occurrence of unequally attractive alternative futures relative to the disposed system."

The REG could be either a target-generating device such as the Schmidt machines commonly used in parapsychology research, or "the neural functions of the brain may sometimes act as an REG (Stanford 1978)." Unlike the traditional approach, Stanford's model does not rely upon the existence of "mind." As he said (1978), "When, and only when, all three circumstances are present, the outcome of the operation of the REG will automatically be the alternative future most favorable to (consonant with) the disposition in question." Presumably, this statement was intended in a probabilistic sense.

The conformance behavior model makes none of the distinctions between ESP and PK that Rhine does. Rather, the conformance behavior model is goal oriented and much more akin to Carl Jung's (1955) notion of synchronicity -- acausal but meaningfully related events. While Stanford doesn't see conformance behavior as acausal, he has suggested that it very likely moves through unspecified (and presumably paranormal, in the sense of being unrecognized by current scientific models) mechanisms, which are nevertheless different from the type of mechanisms presumed in the psychobiological model.

Stanford has suggested a variety of experiments to test his paradigm, including testing psi in primitive and even nonliving systems. The measurement of psi phenomena in nonliving systems is one of the experimental predictions of the synchronistic or correspondence paradigm that clearly distinguishes it from the psychobiological one. The correspondence model views psi as a property not necessarily restricted to either psychological or biological systems, but inherent in the physical structure of the universe. Therefore, Stanford also suggests physical boundary conditions for psi based on the characteristics of REGs. Stanford's model of psi promises to expand legitimate parapsychological inquiry to include meaningful coincidences previously relegated to such occult studies as numerology. Although Rhine's model is hard put to explain the original spiritualist and psychical research question of survival after death, the correspondence model does promise to explain both, as well as such non-parapsychological phenomena as creativity and cognitive insights.

It may well be the case that both paradigms can be extended to explain all of the same phenomena, just the way the Ptolemaic view of the earth was sufficient to explain planetary observations even after it had been superseded by the Copernican model. What is important here is that the correspondence paradigm seems to be motivating researchers to reconsider as legitimate areas of parapsychological investigation a range of "occult" phenomena that may very well be related to psi development. Until recently, such areas were not thought worthy of investigation.

The conformance behavior model of psi, although relatively undeveloped, is finding increasing acceptance in the scientific parapsychological community (Edge 1978, Palmer 1979), which is continually in the process of sifting through its empirical data in search of stronger theoretical and methodological foundations.

For the purposes of this book, recognizing the theoretical controversy within parapsychology, I will refer to both models of psi insofar as either of them can be appropriately brought to bear in particular discussions. Indeed, in a way analogous to the wave-particle duality in physics, each model has its strengths and weaknesses with regard to particular kinds of data. The controversy surrounding this clash of models within parapsychology is well ordered and mild (although other controversies within parapsychology, as shall be pointed out, are not). It may be considered "normal science" in Kuhn's (1962) sense. The differences between the two models, although they are indeed significant, are at present relatively unimportant compared to the controversy surrounding the entire field of parapsychology, which bears many characteristics Kuhn associates with scientific "revolution."

References

Bohm, David. Wholeness and the Implicate Order. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.

Edge, H. A philosophical justification for the conformance behavior model. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1978, 72(3), 215-231.

Gatlin, L. Meaningful information creation: An alternative interpretation of the psi phenomenon. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, January 1977, 71(1), 1-18.

Jung, C. G. Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. New York: Pantheon, 1955.

Honegger, B. Spontaneous waking-state psi as interhemispheric verbal communication. Is there another system? Full symposium papers of the Parapsychological Association 22nd annual convention, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California, August 1979.

Kuhn, T. The structure of scientific revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970. (Originally published, 1962.)

Mishlove, J. The roots of consciousness: Psychic liberation through history, science and experience. New York: Random House/Bookworks, 1975.

Palmer, J.A. Parapsychology as a probabilistic science: Facing the implications. Presidential address, 22nd Annual Convention, Parapsychological Associations, John F. Kennedy University, 1979.

Stanford, R.G. Are parapsychologists paradigmIess in psiland? In B. Shapin and L. Coly (Eds.), The philosophv of parapsychology. New York, Parapsychology Foundation, 1977.

Stanford, R.G. Toward reinterpreting psi events. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1978, 72(3), 197-214.

The Controversy Surrounding Parapsychology [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

Although psi has been the object of scientific investigation for over a hundred years, the existence of psi is still doubted, particularly by scientists who are unfamiliar with the body of research in parapsychology. To parapsychologists, the arguments over the existence of psi are only relevant insofar as they are based on the logic of the scientific method as applied to the data accumulated from experimental and case history research studies. Arguments to the contrary from otherwise reputable scientists who simply refuse to admit the existence of psi remind me of their earlier colleagues who refused to look through Galileo's telescope.

J. B. Rhine and his colleagues' (1940) response to that line of argument was:
 
"It is true that we depend greatly upon the plausibility and rational acceptability of a new hypothesis even in the evaluation of the experimental evidence for it. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that we have come, in the development of scientific method, to the point where the method itself rates higher than the rational picture of the universe which has grown up by the aid of the method. In other words, we have come to realize that although scientific method has itself occasional weaknesses and imperfections and although investigators do make mistakes, yet the experimental results have a higher Probability of being correct than the rational deductions of a given scientific philosophy of any particular period or school. The history of science has shown repeated adjustments in the Scientific philosophies of different periods of history under the impact of new experimental evidence. In practically every instance, it is the scientific philosophy that has given way and not the experimental evidence. It is by appeal to experiment that defects in reasoning are discovered."

There is really no need to chase one's tail discussing psi's existence - provided that both critics and proponents limit their arguments to the scientific method and the experimental evidence. If the debunkers of parapsychology still fail to come to terms with the arguments for psi's existence, then the reasons must lie not in the nature of the arguments but in the imagined or feared implications of psi.

The first experimental evidence for the existence of psi to receive the serious attention of the scientific community at large was the publication of Extra-Sensory Perception in 1934 by J. B. Rhine. During the five-year period following the announcement of Rhine's discovery, approximately 60 critical articles by 40 authors were published, primarily in the American psychological literature. Fifty experimental studies were. also reported during this period, and two-thirds of those represented independent efforts to repeat the Duke University work in other laboratories (Honorton 1976).

In 1940, J. B. Rhine and his colleagues published the classic parapsychology text, Extra-Sensory Perception after Sixty Years, which detailed the 35 different criticisms made of the ESP experiments. These criticisms dealt with the use of statistics, with the selection of subjects, with the guessing behavior of the subjects during experiments, with target randomization procedures, with experimental recording errors, with sensory leakage, and with experimenter incompetence. Rhine and his colleagues found that, for the most part, the experimental criticisms were valid. Of 145 experimental reports that had been published between 1880 and 1940, only six were so well controlled that they were not open to alternative explanations critical of the ESP interpretation. The parapsychology experimenters quickly modified their procedures to accommodate these criticisms. Thus, by 1940, there was general agreement within the scientific community as to what constituted a good ESP experiment (Honorton 1976).

References

Honorton, C. Has science developed the competence to confront the claims of the paranormal? In J.D. Morris, W. G. Roll, and R.L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1975, Metuchen, NT: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Rhine, J.B. Extrasensory perception. Boston: Boston Society for Psychical Research, 1934.

Rhine, J.B., Pratt, J.G., Stuart, C.E., Smith, B.M., and Greenwood, J.A. Extra-sensory perception after sixty years. New York: Henry Holt, 1940.

Repeatability, Fraud and A Priori Objections [From Chapter One of Psi Development Systems]

In 1971, Ransom surveyed criticisms of the parapsychology research published since 1940. The foremost of these criticisms was the non-repeatability of experimental results. Both critics and supporters of psi research have long been in agreement that parapsychology experiments are not 100 percent repeatable, and this is what continues to fuel the arguments about the very existence of psi. Parapsychologists are puzzled whether non-repeatability is due to the erratic nature of psi itself or to experimental factors, such as mood, which are not yet sufficiently understood. Since there are many other phenomena in nature, particularly within the behavioral sciences, that are not 100 percent repeatable under experimental circumstances, parapsychologists are not prone to consider non-repeatability as evidence for the nonexistence of psi. Parapsychologists maintain that there is sufficient conceptual repeatability in psi experiments to provide the foundations for a viable research field (see Chapter IV).

One extension of the non-repeatability argument is that many studies with negative outcomes may not be reported. In a review of parapsychology research in Science, Wade (1973) comments, "critics charge that the published work represents an artifact, in as far as it tends to be only the successful experiments that get reported, while the presumably more numerous null results go unremarked."

This criticism has been answered by Charles T. Tart (1973) in a letter to Science: "There are hundreds of published, successful parapsychological experiments with the main analysis significant at the .05 level, and of these many have significance levels exceeding 10-6. The selective publication hypothesis then predicts that there are trillions of unsuccessful, unpublished ESP experiments, an obviously ridiculous figure, unless one credits the handful of parapsychologists in the last half century with some phenomenal work abilities, paranormal in themselves."

Perhaps the greatest problem parapsychologists have with statistical repeatability is their difficulty in predicting whether their significant data will result from above-chance scoring ("psi-hitting") or below-chance scoring ("psi-missing").

Critics argue that until there is some lawfulness, or regularity of findings in the same direction, parapsychology will not be taken seriously as a science. While this argument does highlight a weakness in current state-of-the-art parapsychology, it is in itself a weak argument since both psi-hitting and psi-missing data reject the null hypothesis.

The second major criticism Ransom noted (1971) is the possibility of fraud on the part of the subject, the experimenter, or both. This criticism does not generally maintain that fraud actually occurred in any particular experiment. Even C. E. M. Hansel (1966), the main advocate of this line of attack, states, "It cannot be stated categorically that trickery was responsible for the results of these experiments, but so long as the possibility is present, the experiments cannot be regarded as satisfying the aims of their originators or as supplying conclusive evidence for ESP."

Ransom points out that you simply cannot argue with this line of reasoning, "since the critic can always claim that everyone involved in the experiment in question was lying about any or all of the details.... Even if an experiment was repeated, it could be claimed that it is possible that all the experiments were fraudulent." This criticism could apply equally well to scientific experiments in every other field. Price (1955) argued in Science that fraud, even experimenter fraud, must be involved in parapsychology because it was easier to believe that men are liars than that "miracles" could occur. In 1972, Price retracted his accusations. The criticism of fraud is partially answered when the skeptic deigns to conduct his or her own experiments-as has happened frequently in parapsychology- which accounts for the growth of the field beyond Rhine's own laboratory.

Parapsychologists have generally guarded against the possibility of experimenter fraud by working in teams. Thus fraud could only result from collusion. That this method is effective is suggested by one instance of experimenter fraud discovered at the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man in Durham, North Carolina (Rhine 1974). More recently, painstaking investigation has uncovered evidence for fraudulent data manipulation in the telepathy experiments carried out by Dr. S. G. Soal, with the percipient Basil Shackleton, during the years 1941-1943 (Marwick 1978). Both of these cases were uncovered by parapsychologists themselves and published in the scholarly parapsychology literature.

Parapsychology experimenters today generally take stringent precautions against the possibility of subject fraud by maintaining conditions absolutely precluding the possibility of information leakage of any sort to the subject. Although on the popular media scene many magicians-such as the Amazing Randi have claimed that they can duplicate parapsychological effects using magic tricks, they have consistently been unable or unwilling to do so under controlled laboratory conditions (Eisenbud 1975).

Many critics and even parapsychologists take the position that once fraud has been seriously alleged or discovered, adequate grounds then exist for supposing that the phenomena in question have resulted from nothing but fraud. In this instance, the argument centers around the question of whether the phenomena simply deserve scientific investigation. Michael Scriven (1962), a philosopher of science, makes the following logical point about instances of fraud: "Any professional medium is under considerable pressure to produce phenomena on schedule. It is extremely unlikely that the kinds of phenomena we are concerned with here can be produced on demand, hence it is extremely likely that a medium if she did have significant ESP powers would be constantly failing unless she were to ‘help them out' somewhat on some occasions. Of course one likes to breathe a sigh of relief when one uncovers fraud in these cases, but honesty requires a perpetual willingness to return to the investigation of any possibility of genuine phenomena still exists. . . . "

The third kind of criticisms reported by Ransom (1971) are based on the a priori, or closed-minded, assumption that something must be at fault in any experiment reporting positive ESP findings. In 1937, the president of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics released a statement approving the validity of the statistical analysis of ESP research (Camp 1937), which is essentially based on the same statistics used in all scientific research. One critic (Brown 1957) has gone so far as to suggest that parapsychology results "comprise the most prominent empirical reason for beginning to doubt the universal applicability of classical frequency probability." This view, however, has no following among other statisticians."

Most a priori objections to parapsychology are based on the common-sense notion that psi phenomena must contradict the established laws of physics. The issue here seems to be more a question of cultural views than physical laws, which are not assumed to be final in any case. Henry Margenau (1979), a noted Yale University physicist, writes that, "a question can be raised as to exactly what scientific laws would he violated by the occurrence of ESP. We have assumed that they are of the stature of the law of conservation of energy and momentum, the second law of thermodynamics, the principle of causality, and the exclusion principle of quantum mechanics. When we examine scientific laws of this caliber, however, we find them unrelated to the existence or non-existence of ESP."

Other a priori objections to parapsychology are based on the implicit belief that the existence of psi phenomena could essentially undermine the entire scientific effort to provide a rational description of the universe. This type of opposition to parapsychology is analogous to Einstein's opposition to quantum uncertainty, as embodied in his famous statement, "I cannot believe that God would play dice with the world." Mackenzie and Mackenzie (1979) note that psi phenomena violate the a priori grand scientific view "of the world as a self-contained mathematico-physical system, in which irreducibly mental qualities had a physically indescribable position, tolerable only if they were confined within individual organisms." Such a view was required in order to make nature intelligible. If the ultimate goal of science is to describe nature in terms of a uniform set of causal regularities that apply without exception to all objects - including the human mind - then the claims of parapsychology do indeed strike a subversive note, one that is certain to arouse the irrational indignation and contempt of many critics and debunkers.

References

Brown, G.S. Probability and scientific inference. New York: Longmans, Green, 1957.

Camp, B.H. (Statement in Notes section.) Journal of Parapsychology, 1937, 19, 305.

Eisenbud, Jules. On Ted Serios' alleged "confession." The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1975, 69, 94-96.

Hansel, C.E.M. ESP: A scientific evaluation. New York: Scribner's, 1966.

MacKenzie, B., and Mackenzie, L. Whence the enchanted boundary? Cultural sources of intolerance for parapsychology. Full Symposium Papers of the Parapsychological Association 22nd Annual Convention, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California, August 1979.

Margenau, H., and LeShan, L. Letter to Science (unpublished). Full Symposium Papers of the Parapsychological Association 22nd Annual Convention, John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California, August 1979.

Marwick, B. The Soal-Goldney experiments with Basil Shackleton; new evidence of data manipulation. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, May 1978, 56(211), 250-277.

Price, G.R. Science and the supernatural. Science, 1955, 122, 359-367.

Price, G.R. Apology to Rhine and Soal. Science, 1972, 175, 359.

Ransom, C. Recent criticisms of parapsychology: A review. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1971, 65, 289 - 307.

Rhine, J.B. Comments: "A new case of experimenter unreliability. Journal of Parapsychology, June 1974, 38(2), 215 - 225.

Scriven, M. The frontiers of science: Psychoanalysis and parapsychology. In R.G. Colodny (Ed.), Frontiers of science and philosophy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1962, 69-130.

Tart, C.T. Parapsychology. Science, 1973, 182, 222.

Wade, N. Psychical research: The incredible in search of credibility. Science, 1973, 181, 138-143.

Transcendental Meditation [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

"TM" is a simple technique, practiced for twenty minutes twice a day, by over a million individuals throughout the world Over a hundred research studies have made use of practitioners of this technique, although many have not been published in reputable scientific journals. Benefits are reported in a broad spectrum of categories related to metabolic changes, biochemical changes, electrophysiological changes, electroencephalographic changes, physiological efficiency and stability, autonomic and emotional stability, health, athletic performance, perception and motor coordination, intelligence, learning, academic performance, personality development, creativity, productivity and job satisfaction, and social rehabilitation (Maharishi European Research University 1976).

In the summer of 1976, rumors spread within the movement that meditators were "spontaneously levitating" during advanced training courses in Switzerland. Spontaneous cases of levitation have been occasionally reported for centuries among devout monks in Christian monasteries, and also in the ancient Hindu and Tibetan literature. Such reports may have resulted from delusion.

The World Government for the Age of Enlightenment (the parliamentary arm of the TM movement) has publicized reports that students in the advanced courses have learned how to levitate. Photographs have been published in the TM magazine, World Government News, and have also been on display at most of the over 1,500 TM centers; public lectures have been presented on this subject, and large newspaper advertisements have been placed encouraging people to attend the expensive training programs. No published data indicate that these levitations have been documented in scientifically controlled situations.

I have had possession of reproductions of six color photographs that have been widely distributed to TM centers. The photographs apparently portray in sequence a single instance of alleged levitation. Two women are shown sitting cross-legged; one is in the "full-lotus" posture with both ankles propped above the thighs. In the sequence, the woman sitting in full lotus is shown rising off of the mat, about a foot, and coming forward toward the camera about four feet. The actual distances are difficult to assess without knowing more details regarding the position of the camera, lenses, etc. The photographs are extremely convincing in terms of showing expressions of great joy and excitement on the face of the alleged levitator. It is also very difficult to believe that an individual in the full-lotus posture could hop forward in such a manner, since the legs are tightly constrained. If this were possible, one would at least expect to see some evidence of strain on the face of the alleged levitator. Of course, it is a logical possibility that the photographs are misrepresentations or actual fakes. If so, this would represent a serious breach of ethics. The likeliest possibility involves a more subtle deception; that the photographs represent an unusual form of gymnastics which is being passed off as levitation -- even among the practitioners.

Accompanying these photographs, on a large poster produced by the TM World Government, is a scientific looking diagram which purports to show that brain wave coherence, across all frequencies, occurs during the practice of the "flying" sidhi. There is no scientific explanation of the experiment from which this diagram is apparently derived. What is of interest is the sequence of techniques practiced during the 55 minute period apparently being diagramed. Ie., timing is as follows: 0 minutes, eyes closed; at 3 minutes, practice of regular TM technique; at 13 minutes, practice of the "friendliness" sidhi; at 16 minutes, practice of the "strength" sidhi; at 19 minutes, practice of the "omniscience" sidhi; at 23 minutes, practice of the "invisibility" sidhi; at 30 minutes, practice of the "flying" sidhi; at 45 minutes, practice of the regular TM technique; at 52 minutes, eyes closed; at 55 minutes the experiment ends. I presume that this sequence of techniques is used during the actual sidhis training. Interviewees were unwilling to comment on this, saying that to do so would violate their promise of secrecy regarding the training, and that the graph would have to be taken as speaking for itself. The details of the specific sidhi practices are also not publicly known. I gather from my interviews that they involve maintaining a mental intention to perform the sidhi while in deep meditation.

Orme-Johnson et al. (1977) claim to have conducted an experiment that measured EEG coherence of a student during levitation. The article purports to demonstrate that bilateral frontal coherence and heartbeat both increase dramatically during the actual experience of "flying." The report is very vague concerning the actual details of levitation. The article states that "a gradual lift in the air by the subject [was] observed on the TV monitor (during the 10th second of the 9th epoch)." Unfortunately the article does not give the reader confidence that the researchers controlled for nonpsi explanations of the apparent levitation, such as muscular contractions. This seems a possible explanation as the lift only lasted for one second. Because of the lack of control in this study, which was sponsored and published -- without independent scientific review -- by the organizations that promote transcendental meditation, the TM claim for levitation cannot be regarded as a scientifically verified fact.

I have interviewed over a dozen individuals who have completed the TM sidhis training program. All but one of them claim to have attained a level of mastery whereby they regularly levitate twice a day in their meditation practice. The other individual claimed to have attained only a level of sporadic hopping, although he claims to have witnessed others actually levitating many times. Another interviewee reported that having regularly practiced the TM sidhis technique, two months after he completed the program he also began regularly levitating. Although I was asked not to watch the event, I was present when this individual performed the TM sidhis program in my home. Although nothing was witnessed, the entire apartment was shaking for ten minutes from the continued "hopping" of the individual who was purportedly levitating. All of these individuals I interviewed insist that the phenomenon is nonmuscular and that there is nothing in the TM sidhis instructions implying the use of muscular force.

Orme-Johnson et al. (1977) in a report based on their interviews of students in the TM "sidhis program," state that the ability to levitate takes place in stages. The first stage begins with a feeling of the body's being permeated by space and in some cases a mental and physical feeling of lightness. The next stage includes shaking of the body, fast breathing and a spontaneous hop of two to three feet. Then follows hopping with increased control over direction. In the more advanced stages, students report feeling suspended in the air for a few seconds, or even a second upward impulse while they are still in the air. Orme-Johnson et al. state that these stages are the same as those described in the Shiva Samhita, a Hindu text of some antiquity.

The TM sidhis program is open to all individuals who have been practicing TM for at least six months and have taken at least one weekend residence course. The program begins with a preparatory course lasting from four to eight weeks depending on one's prior meditation experience. The preparatory course is in residence and is taken in one-week blocks. Students who have been meditating for less than three years are required to take the preparatory course for eight weeks; from three to five years, six weeks; and for students with over five years TM practice, four weeks. The actual sidhis training course is taken in four blocks of two weeks' duration each. The actual exercises and techniques taught in the TM sidhis program are not publicly known. Students in the program are sworn to secrecy with regard to the instructions for levitation.

More recently courses have been instituted for meditators who are working and cannot afford to take the lengthy residence courses. This course meets only two evenings a week for six weeks, followed by two weeks in residence. The prerequisite has been reduced, so that one can enter the program six weeks after TM initiation. The fee for this course is $3,000 + payable in advance. Even with this reduced time of training, interviewees have reported that they can learn to levitate.

Some information has been made available to me. Two concepts derived from the Yoga Sutras are of prime importance. Ritambhara Pragya (Book 1, verse 48) is said to refer to the most subtle state of consciousness next to a state of cosmic transcendence. This state, called Ritam for short, is believed to be responsible for all psi phenomena. The Sanskrit meaning of the term is "filled with truth." The actual technique for attaining Ritam is known as Samyama (Book 111, verse 4) which involves the simultaneous practice of the last three steps of the eight-limbed yoga, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi. One "Governor" of the TM movement has described this process as follows:
"What the sidhis practices involve is transcending, and instead of just sitting in the absolute, we learn how to raise waves on the silent ocean of pure consciousness. We learn how to direct the transcendent, how to direct pure consciousness and make i perform. By having an intention or just having a thought o desire when the mind is immersed in pure consciousness, then that desire comes about-whether to have the body rise up off the ground, or to have world peace, or greater harmony in the community -- as long as these desires are in harmony with the basic laws of nature. In other words, you can't act in discord to the desires of nature."

One interviewee, Dimitri Kanellakos, Ph.D., is also a TM "Governor" and former visiting professor of psychobiology and electrical sciences at the Maharishi European Research University in Weggis, Switzerland. (I visited Kanellakos in Switzerland in September, 1976, shortly before the news of TM levitators was publicly released and before Kanellakos began is own sidhis training. A second interview was conducted in ugust 1978). He described his experiences as follows:

"I was with the first group that 'flew.' The group before me were people who started hopping; about five percent from this course began to shake, move and hop. Maharishi took twelve people out of our hotel, who were having the best experiences meditating, and sent them* with the people who were already hopping. When I first saw people hop and lift off the air, it was a fantastic experience. Right now it doesn't make any dents because I see it every day. Ninety-two percent of our group started hopping right away. I was one who didn't hop. In my case, I am still learning. There are times when my body will go through a little lightness and shaking, but I have a lot of stress to go through, to clean. I do my sidhis program every day and now I am experiencing a little hopping. My meditations have become deeper. There is, however, still activity going on in my mind which does not allow the condition of samyama. The mind should be holding in samadhi.

"I witness people levitating every day. It is so powerful that it is good to do it in a group. There is a supportive effect which has nothing to do with psychology or mood making. It's good to have at least four or five people. The effect is so powerful as if I'm being pushed down and held at this deeper level. I can open my eyes and do samyama. There is no problem now. Before it was always, eyes closed, or you would lose transcendental consciousness.

Barbara Barone, an Executive Governor in the TM World Government and a teacher of the sidhis preparatory courses has told the author that the TM sidhis course is based on information provided in the Yoga Sutras. She has described the training in the following general terms: "As we practice the TM sidhis program, what happens is that the field of pure creative intelligence is pushed through various channels from the absolute into the field of activity to produce more and more extreme mind-body coordination. The degree of success that one has is determined by how much purity there is in the nervous system and therefore how much wholeness can be channeled in a very specific direction or mood. The reason we do the TM sidhi program is not for the flash of it or the circus atmosphere. Performance of the sidhis stabilizes pure consciousness, or pure creative intelligence, in the nervous system. It is a sort of reciprocal effect. You have to have an amount of pure consciousness to do the sidhis; and by doing the sidhis, pure consciousness is stabilized and increased. The sidhis comes from Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. Yoga means unity and sutras means thread. So, literally, we're stitching together threads of unity-to produce a grand state of enlightenment and unity consciousness, a state of extreme wholeness."

This description of the process and philosophy of the sidhis program is vague and difficult to understand in any concrete sense. In describing her own experiences in the program Barone is more understandable and is clearly intending to communicate that she actually is levitating a bit, although not hovering: "I have graduated from the sidhis program and I am now levitating twice a day. It is incredible. It is total exhilaration, bliss, aliveness. It is the most incredible thing I've ever experienced. My eyes can be open or they can be closed. I don't hover. My own subjective impressions vary from a few inches up to a few feet, to maybe three feet up in the air. I move forward from a few inches to sometimes five feet. Sometimes I come down very hard, sometimes very light. It just depends. Every time I sit down to practice the sidhis, I start hopping at least a little bit. There is no muscular force involved,"

The most likely counter-hypothesis to explain the reports of levitation is that individuals who claim to be levitating are actually using muscular force and have either hypnotized or deluded themselves into believing otherwise. Parallel situations in the use of dowsing rods, ouija boards and automatic writing have been known to investigators for over a century as "motor automatisms."

In interviewing witnesses, I have been careful to probe the question of muscular force versus what might be thought of as levitation. Another interviewee, Harold Bloomfield, M.D., a psychiatrist who was formerly deeply involved with the TM movement and is the author of a best-selling book about TM (Bloomfield et al. 1975), has left the movement as an official spokesman-as he cannot endorse the policy that TM is the best method for everyone. This change of views is reflected in his newer book, The Wholistic Way to Health and Happiness (1978). Nevertheless, Bloomfield is a graduate of the sidhis program and has stated that he is now lifting off the ground twice a day. Bloomfield has not publicly acknowledged that he knows muscular forces to be involved, although he has stated so privately to me.

Only one other alleged levitator, out of more than a dozen interviewed, a research scientist, has admitted that any muscular force is involved in the alleged levitation. He states that it is difficult for him to be certain that he uses no muscular force, however he is positive that muscular force alone could not account for the hopping which he experiences.

Professor 0. Costa de Beauregard, director of research for the National Center for Scientific Research of the Henri Poincare Institute in Paris, has long had an interest in TM and was granted a special dispensation to examine levitators in the Sidhi Program. He stated in a letter to the author, "I have twice observed at MERU (Seelisberg, Switzerland) the training in the TM Sidhi Program, and what I have seen is a physiological quite unusual style for jumping by pushing the knees down while in the Buddha style position. Nothing like physical levitation. So, what I have seen raises a physiological and/or athletic problem, but definitely not a physical one."

An accelerometer study could make the distinction between hopping and levitation. One interviewee claimed that such a study was conducted several years ago by MERU physicist Geoffrey Clements, although it has never been published. An accelerometer is capable of measuring the rate of acceleration of a moving object and could readily determine if the alleged levitation was actually occurring contrary to the Newtonian laws of gravity. This would be the case, for example, if individuals slowed as they were falling to the ground or increased their acceleration as they were rising. One interviewee proudly announced that the results of Clements' study did not conform to Newtonian equations, by at least a "few microseconds." This finding is not impressive, because the human body is flexible, unlike a billiard ball, and muscle flexions might easily account for such an extremely small departure from the expected results of the classical equations.

In fact, TM researchers at the International Center for Scientific Research at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, say that there have been no significant accelerometer studies and that this line of research has been abandoned because "nobody is hovering" (contrary to rumors rampant within the organization). When I interviewed Professor David W. Orme-Johnson, a major scientific spokesman for the "World Government," he indicated that the research has now clearly confirmed that muscular activity is involved in the alleged levitation. In fact, he stated that there is no evidence to suggest actual levitation was going on at all and that no one is any longer even researching this question.

When confronted with the ethical implications of promoting a levitation course that was not really training levitation, Orme-Johnson hedged quite a bit. He stated that while he can not say it is levitation, he also can not say that it is not levitation (if other people wish to believe it is). No one in the movement is officially calling it levitation, he says-in contradiction to an explicit statement of the Collected Papers, Volume 1, which he edited. Orme-Johnson stated that the TM movement is very large and many people are entitled to the different beliefs they have about whether they are levitating or not; and furthermore, the Maharishi claims that eventually these "hoppers" will actually hover-which clearly will be levitation.

Whether the alleged levitation is muscular or genuinely parapsychological is "a matter of hair-splitting" from the TM perspective. After all, the participants claim to be having the most beautiful experience of their entire lives. Additionally, some very interesting physiological data are being obtained from the Sidhi program.

When asked whether any control groups of individuals merely "jumping" in a manner similar to the TM "hoppers" had been measured to see whether they too showed interesting physiological changes, Orme-Johnson said that control groups had not been used because it was ridiculous to think that jumping could produce such a variety of positive physiological changes as have been observed in the TM Sidhi Program. However, growing research on the effects of such physical exercise as running definitely make this a factor meriting consideration.

In spite of the widely accepted legitimacy of TM, the organization may be involved in deceptive and misleading promotion of its TM Sidhi Program, which has already grossed many millions of dollars. The situation potentially offers a clear cut opportunity to investigate the mechanisms of such a large-scale delusion. How are intelligent, healthy individuals seduced into believing that they or their friends are actually levitating?

Undoubtedly suggestion plays a role, combined with intensive social reinforcement for such a belief, and the deep (and susceptible) state of consciousness induced in the meditation practice. Also undoubtedly, many are captivated by the possibilities of the Maharishi's vision for integration of cultural knowledge and personal enlightenment -which is so starkly opposed to the modern tendency toward nihilism and political/ecological notions of apocalypse.

The theoretical framework of the Maharishi's teachings is said to involve an ecological interaction between the mediator and the environment. As more people meditate, the consciousness of the planet is thought to become purified. As world consciousness is purified, individual meditation becomes deeper and sidhis are possible. As more people practice the sidhis, the world consciousness becomes even more purified. This principle is illustrated in a TM claim known now as "the Maharishi effect", which predicts that geopolitical areas in which I percent of the population practice TM will show improvement of the environment in terms of crime rate, weather, automobile accidents, fires, agricultural yield and other indicators. Five research reports are now available, through the Maharishi International University in Fairfield, Iowa, purporting to confirm the "Maharishi effect."

Borland and Landrith (1975) compared 11 U.S. cities, in which at least one percent of the population had learned the TM technique with 11 control cities which were matched for population and location. The variable measured in this retrospective study was change in crime rate. The I I control cities showed an average increase of 8.3 percent in the rate of serious crimes, whereas the "TM" cities showed an average decrease of 8.2 percent. The difference in change in crime rate between the two cities was reported to be statistically significant (P less than .001). The validity of this study depends on the researchers' being blind as to the crime statistic information while they were choosing the TM and control cities for the study. The article does not provide sufficient information to insure that the selection of the control cities was blind, although we are informed that for the nation as a whole the average increase in city crime rate was six percent, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report.

It may also be that unidentified variables were responsible for producing both the lowered crime rate and the increased amount of meditators -- and that these two factors were not directly related to each other.

Dilbeck, Bauer, and Seferovich (1978) conducted a study in the suburban Kansas City area over a three year period. Twenty-three cities with populations greater than 4,000 and located within a twenty mile radius of downtown Kansas City were studied. During the period of the study, nine of these cities crossed the one percent TM meditators threshold. A drop in crime rate was reported to be significantly correlated with those communities with one percent or more of the population practicing TM. The researchers tested the data to determine whether this difference also correlated with other factors such as level of police coverage, changes in police coverage, and socioeconomic differences between cities. No significant correlations were found with these variables. This research was conducted at the Western Missouri Mental Health Center in Kansas City.

Giles (1978) compared the change in the FBI Crime Index for 1975/1976 with that in 1963-1972, normalized to the national average, for all 56 cities in the United States with a population exceeding 250,000. 17 of these cities were divided into those with more than .2 percent of the population practicing TM, and those with less than .2 percent practicing TM. The 18 cities with a higher percentage of TM meditators showed an average decrease in the crime index of 5.7 percent. Those cities with fewer TM practitioners showed an average increase of 1.4 percent. The reported probability that this difference was due to chance was less than .005. The two groups of cities showed no significant difference in demographic characteristics, viz., population size, population growth, and minority populations. Not was there any significant difference in a measure of crime trend in 1963- 1972 between these cities.

Hatchard (1978) conducted a study in the suburban Cleveland area similar to that of Dillbeck et al. in Kansas City. Ile sixty suburbs within the boundaries of Cuyahoga County were all studied. Their populations varied from 360 to over 100,000. Linear correlations were run between crime rate change and percentage of the population instructed in the TM technique during the years from 1973 to 1976. These, correlations proved to be negatively significant from 1974 to 1976. Correlations between crime rate change and police/population ratio failed to reach significance. The researchers note that the correlation between family income and crime rate change was also significant, but with the TM program variable partialed out, this correlation was not significant- because the correlation between family income and TM program participation remained very high. They do not state if the correlation between TM meditators is still significant with the family income variable partialed out.

Landrith (1978) examined all those cities in the United States with a population over 10,000, in which approximately I percent or more of the population had been instructed in TM. There were 30 cities in this group. Four cities were eliminated from the sample because they were part of larger metropolitan areas with less than I percent of the population initiated int TM. Control cities with much less than I percent of their population's having learned the TM technique were matched for resident population, college population, and geographic region Crime rates for each city were obtained from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, and fire and automobile accident rates were obtained from the local city fire and police departments. Two additional TM cities were eliminated because sufficient data were not available on one of the three variables being studied. Only the crime rate changes differed significantly between these two groups, although differences in accident and fire rates were in the predicted direction.

There has been, so far as I'm aware, no evaluation of this research from the mainstream sociological community. Undoubtedly, the research suffers from the double taint of being both agency sponsored and bordering on the paraconceptual. The major methodological weakness I could detect was the possibility that manipulations such as choice of experimental and control cities and statistical tests performed may not have been conducted in such a manner that the researchers were blind as to how they would affect the data with regard to the hypothesis. The second weakness is that the studies do not deal with the possibility that the same social conditions that result in an increase in TM meditators also result in a number of other phenomena including decreased crime rates (and probably increases in the enrollment of other human potential programs).

Further research studies, now in progress, testing the "Maharishi Effect" involve sending hundreds of "sidhas", or meditators who have completed the sidhis training, into select geopolitical regions, including the states of Rhode Island and Washington. TM investigators claim that they will monitor positive changes in these environments that correlate with the infusion of sidhas. The hazards of such a broad research program are enormous - and are particularly subject to the type of multiple outcomes for which Diaconis (1978) has severely (and inaccurately) criticized parapsychologists. Control populations are difficult to match for precise sociological parameters. Again we have the dual taint of agency sponsored paraconceptual research. The statistics to be monitored have not been specified and there is the problem of selective reporting of those statistics which tend to support the original hypothesis that the environment will improve. Finally, should the hypothesis of an improved environment be confirmed, a causal relationship between the practice of the TM sidhis and environmental changes would still not be established.

In the summer of 1976, while visiting MERU in Switzerland, I was casually informed of a major study that had failed confirm the original I percent hypothesis. A new interpretation then being developed, was that the "Maharishi Effect" seem to hold only in societies that had maintained their tradition values -- but not in more transitional cultures. This, of course was post hoc analysis. Some of the researchers I met were ver concerned that the TM World Government would withhold this new information from the public.

The arguments given in 1976 for withholding information on the failure to replicate the "Maharishi Effect" are very similar to other arguments regarding data that fail to support the levitation hypothesis. One researcher suggested that by the time the failure to replicate was reported to the public, it would no longer even be true. Another TM spokesman suggested that it did no matter if the one percent data did not look good, because an idea society would surely be created when two percent of the population practiced TM.

In 1978, I again contacted one of the TM researchers who was in Switzerland and asked about the replication issue. By then, this researcher flatly stated that all of the research studies continued to support the "Maharishi Effect."

The Maharishi claims that graduates of the Sidhi Program who are able to levitate can have an even greater impact on the environment than regular meditators. While the target figure of one percent is used in the research on the "Maharishi Effect,' there is a different target figure for levitators. The Maharishi intends to train 400,000 levitators. This figure is approximately one hundredth of one percent of the population of the planet (and a gross income for the World Government of at least $1.2 billion).

Observers have noted that TM enrollments have declined from their peak of 30,000 a month only a few years ago. In order to maintain itself financially, the organization has placed greater emphasis on advanced training for those who are already initiated. The seeming urgency of the present world situation is an argument used by the Maharishi to convince thousands of meditators to enroll immediately in the TM Sidhi Program. One special course was held in Israel, for the supposed purpose of bringing peace to that area. Prospective enrollees are explicitly encouraged to borrow money, if necessary.

References

Bloomfield, H.H., Cain, M.P. and Jaffe, D. TM: Discovering inner energy and overcoming stress. New York: Delacorte, 1975.

Bloomfield, H.H. The Wholistic Way to Health and Happiness. New York: Delacorte, 1978.

Borland, C., and Landrith, G. Improved quality of city life: Decreased crime rate. MERU Report 7502, Department of Sociology, Centre for the Study of Higher States of Consciousness, Maharishi European Research University, Weggis, Switzerland, 1975.

Diaconis, P. Statistical problems in ESP research. Science, July 14, 1978, 201(4351), 131-136.

Dillbeck, M.C., Bauer, T.W. and Seferovich, S.I. The transcendental meditation program as a predictor of crime rate changes in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Unpublished paper, 1978. Available from International Center for Scientific Research, Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa 52556.

Giles, S. Analysis of crime trend in 56 major U.S. cities. Scientific Research on the Transcendental Meditation Program: Collected Papers, Vol. 11, MERU Press, Rheinweiler, W. Germany, 1978 (in press).

Hatchard, G. Influence of the transcendental meditation program on crime rate in suburban Cleveland. Unpublished paper, 1978. Available from the International Center for Scientific Research, Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa 52556.

Landrith, G. The Maharishi effect and invincibility: The influence of the TM program on the variables of crime, automobile accidents and fires. Unpublished paper, 1978. Available from the International Center for Scientific Research, Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa 52556.

Orme-Johnson, D.W., Clements, G., Haynes, C.T., and Badaoui, K. Higher states of consciousness: EEG coherence, creativity, and experiences of the siddhis. Scientific research on the transcendental meditation program: Collected papers (Vol. 1). Weggis, Switzerland: Maharishi European Research University, 1978.

Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum, San Jose, California

The Rosicrucian Order (AMORC) [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]
"The Ancient, Mystical Order Rosae Crucis" is an institution offering correspondence course instruction. The Rosicrucian training course offers the mystique of a tradition which claims to date back to ancient Atlantis. Scholars trace the origins of the Rosicrucian movement back to the 17th-century (Yates 1972).

The Rosicrucians promise to open the vast untapped potentials of the human mind-seeing auras, premonitions, telepathy and the "mastery of life." The organization itself is huge, handling millions of pieces of mail each year. In addition the AMORC operates both an Egyptian Museum and a planetarium in San Jose, California.

The Rosicrucians claim that service and loyalty to the Order greatly aids in psychic development. The Rosicrucian Manual states that being "Always ready to render some service to the Order, through the Order, or because of the Order, is a form of devotion that pays each member the greatest dividends in development; for by such service he obligates the Order and the Cosmic to him, and from the Cosmic he can expect compensation. That is why the Keynote of the Rosicrucian Order is SERVICE." The manual goes on to state that the officers of the Order may, from time to time, ask a member to engage in a special project "without anything said as to why." These requests may be related to the philanthropical and humanitarian functions of the Rosicrucian Order. The fate of the psychic progress of the member is said to hang on the responses, made to such requests,

The Rosicrucians claim that their teachings are eclectic and constantly evolving. "To believe that some mystic of India, or Persia, or some other land, possesses secret knowledge known only to his cult, knowledge that is not to be found in the Rosicrucian teachings, yet which he has offered to students for years at a commercial price, is to believe that the Order is unmindful of its obligations to members, unacquainted with all sources of real wisdom, and inconsiderate of its own best interests. If any real knowledge of truly practical help to sincere students of occultism or mysticism is known to any group of students anywhere, it soon becomes a part of the Rosicrucian teachings, IF IT IS NOT ALREADY A PART OF THEM." The Order urges its members not to purchase books or private lessons from other teachers of occult techniques.

The Rosicrucian Manual lists a code of 30 rules for daily life, in its chapter on psychic development. Members are urged to adopt as many of these rules as possible. They include prayers upon awaking in the morning and retiring at night, before meals, and upon receiving gifts or material blessings. Other rules pertain to honesty, humility, charity, and support of the Rosicrucian Order.

The Rosicrucian Supply Bureau, affiliated with the AMORC, advertises books on healing, concentration and memorizing, ancient Egypt, herbalism, the lost continent of Lemuria, and the mystical life of Jesus. Other supplies available include ritual implements, candles, jewelry, herbs, incense, as well as phonograph records with prayers, mantras, and meditational music.

While the exercises in the lessons are not specified, the manual does give some indications as to their conceptual framework. The lessons provide instruction for rituals and ceremonies involving the use of symbolism, secret alphabets, numerology, metaphysical philosophy, and what seem to be basic scientific notions. The techniques for psychic training taught in the correspondence courses of the AMORC are kept secret. Neophytes in the order sign a pledge promising to keep this material confidential. Some information about Rosicrucian training is available in the Rosicrucian Manual written by the founder Of AMORC, Harvey Spencer Lewis, in 1918. The text states that the purpose of the Rosicrucian lessons is to prepare the student for communication with a "Cosmic Master" who will appear when the student is ready. The Cosmic Masters initiate the neophyte into the Great White Brotherhood, an invisible association on the "higher planes," and instruct the neophyte through "cosmic illumination." The Rosicrucian lessons themselves have two stated functions: first, to "Train the brain and augment the knowledge of the mind in regard to fundamental laws and principles leading up to a comprehension of the higher laws"; and second, to "Give and suggest certain experiments and tests which will consciously and unconsciously develop certain psychic centers in the member that will quicken his psychic powers and abilities for more complete Mastership and control of natural forces. "

The manual states that the exercises must be practiced each week, or even each day, and that mere reading will not suffice. The manual stresses that success in these experiments may not be immediately apparent to the objective mind of the student. Even if no success has been attained with a given exercise after a full week's trial, the student is urged to move on to the next lesson "as though success had been attained." Later on when the student reviews all of the lessons, there will be some success with the previously difficult earlier exercises. "Three different exercises in three successive weekly monographs may appear to be unrelated, yet each of them may pertain to the same end in view; and by going on to the second or third one, when the others did not show any success, one will aid in continuing the development started by the first."

The manual claims that once a particular principle is applied in an exercise, a process of psychic development is started that will continue for weeks and months.

The length of time required for psychic development, states the Rosicrucian Manual, will vary with each student according to the accomplishments of his or her previous incarnations. A specific admonition is given stating that it is not possible for the Officers of the Rosicrucian Order to determine how long it will take a candidate to begin to manifest any particular psychic abilities. However, once some abilities do begin to manifest, it is then possible to judge the level of development of the neophyte.

The manual also states that the "most rapid development is made by the student who is least concerned, during the first few Degrees of study, about his or her psychic status." Students who have engaged in training with other non-Rosicrucian programs are particularly difficult, since extra time is required to unlearn previous doctrines and beliefs.

Individuals who come to the Rosicrucians with spontaneously manifesting psi abilities may complain that their abilities have stopped after beginning the Rosicrucian lessons. The manual states that it is sometimes necessary, in order to gain conscious control over psi abilities, that the "spasmodic action of these faculties must cease for a time; and nature stops them until the time comes to use them UNDER CONTROL after the laws and principles have been learned."

The Rosicrucian Manual outlines 12 degrees of training. The lessons of the third degree contain exercises for developing psychic consciousness. The exercises of the fifth degree are primarily devoted to psychic experimentation. The exercises in the seventh degree include "methods of projecting the psychic body out into space at any point or place there to be made visible to others without affecting the continuous functioning of the physical body." This exercise is continued in the eighth degree with further exercises "to cause material things to move or respond as he directs, including the production of sounds from musical instruments, from his own voice, or from things he may psychically touch." The manual states that instructions and initiations into the higher degrees are given psychically to worthy members. The manual states that of every 1000 persons who respond to Rosicrucian public notices, 402 are admitted to the preliminary grades and 224 reach the ninth degree.

References

Lewis, H.S. Rosicrucian manual. San Jose, Calif. Supreme Grand Lodge of AMORC, 1959. (Originally published, 1918.)

Yates, F.A. The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.

Initiation Into Hermetics [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

A systematic approach to ESP training is presented in a volume by Franz Bardon titled Initiation into Hermetics: A Course of Instruction in Ten Stages; Theory and Practice. The original German title of this work is Der Weg zum wahren Adepten, which translates as "The Way to Become an Adept." The publishers provide no date for the original German edition; the English translation was published in 1962. The word "Hermetics" in the title is a reference to the mythical figure Hermes Trismegistus (thrice-great Hermes), a name given by the neoplatonists and later mystical writer-, to the Egyptian god Toth, who was to some extent identified with the Grecian god Hermes and to whom were attributed various works embodying mystical doctrines. These writings are known as Hermetic. The word "hermetic" is also used to refer to airtight fusion or sealing, and is a reference to the airtight secrecy alleged to be associated with the Hermetic traditions.

The brief theoretical introduction to the exercises draws on Hindu philosophy, the tarot, pseudoscientific notions of mental electricity and magnetism, classical Hermetic philosophy, Christian kabbalist thought, and Theosophical concepts.

Each of the ten stages of practice is divided into three sections, called "magic mental training," "magic psychic training," and "magic physical training." The candidate is advised to master the exercises outlined in each stage before moving on to those of the next. Bardon states that individuals of average aptitude will be able to complete the exercises for the first stage in two weeks to a month. The candidate is advised not to attempt to hasten his or her development, but rather to approach the training with "patience, perseverance and tenacity." It is urged that practicing the exercises become as habitual to the candidate as eating, drinking and sleeping. Also suggested is that the candidate keep a "magic note book" in which to record the successes, failures, and duration of every exercise.

In the first stage, magic mental training involves observing one's own train of thought for a five minute period. An additional minute is added each day up to ten minutes. A second exercise involves choosing a single idea or thought and concentrating on it for ten minutes without allowing other thoughts to Interrupt. The author states, "At first, you will probably succeed only for a few seconds, later on for minutes. You must manage to concentrate on one single thought and follow it for 10 minutes at least." A third exercise is to maintain an empty Mind, without any thought, for at least ten minutes.

The first stage of the magic psychic training is devoted to Introspection. The candidate is asked to record in the magic diary all character weaknesses, down to the finest nuances and variations. The candidate is required to assign each individual fault to one of the four alchemical elements – fire, air, water, and earth-according to which faults are most severe, which occur less frequently and which occur only rarely. The entire process is then repeated with one's good qualities. Bardon urges that the magical diary containing this information be shown to no one.



In the first stage of magic physical training, Bardon urges daily brushing of the body all over with a soft, dry brush until the skin turns reddish. In addition, he suggests morning gymnastic exercises of the candidate's choice. Breathing exercises are specified in this section, in which the student imagines that, with the inhaled air, health, tranquility and peace are passing into the body through the lungs and the blood. Bardon states, "You should not allow the slightest doubt about this fact." A similar exercise is prescribed for food intake. In both cases, the candidate is urged to concentrate on the fulfillment of only one desire at a time. Finally, similar exercises are done with water used for washing.

The second stage of the training includes in its introduction a discussion of the unconscious mind and further techniques for autosuggestion. Magic mental training in the second stage concerns the conscious production of sensory hallucinations, in all five senses, for a period of five minutes. The magic psychic training in the second stage specifies the use of autosuggestion and concentration to attain mastery over those faults outlined in the first stage and to balance the influence of those qualities associated with each of the four elements. Magic physical training in the second stage includes further breathing exercises in which one visualizes the cells of the body breathing along with the lungs. A second exercise has the trainee sitting totally motionless without any nervous jerking. At first this exercise is done only for five minutes, but is eventually extended to over an hour and provides the basis for much future work. The candidate is urged to practice will power by putting off immediate satisfaction for food, drink, and sleep.

Magic mental training in the third stage prescribes the production of sensory hallucinations using several senses simultaneously. The exercises begin by imagining simple objects and locations and progress to the movements and sounds of animals and eventually to people of different ages, sex, and races. The magic psychic training in the third stage involves imagining the body being completely filled, in turn, with each of the four elements. Concentrating individually on each organ of the body and imagining its breathing with the lungs is the third stage of magic physical training. Exercises distinguish between the inhale, exhale, and accumulation of vital power in the body during the breath. Further exercises have the trainee "impregnate" a room, a ring, a stone, any object, space or even a person with vital force, using the breathing and concentration exercises.

Magic mental training in stage four specifies creating a clear mental image that one has become something else, beginning with inanimate objects and moving on to living creatures. At first one begins with imagining the animal motionless and later on walking, running, creeping, flying, or swimming. Finally, one imagines oneself becoming other individual human beings. When this skill is attained, the author states that one can know the thoughts of another individual and also influence that person. Magic psychic training in the fourth stage involves "charging" any individual body organ (with the exception of the heart or brain) with the image of each of the four elements. Fourth state magical training uses mudras, or hand positions, for the use of attaining one's desires in autosuggestions: "Bind and fix your personal desire which you wish most eagerly to be realized to your own small ritual or gesticulations, best of all, gesticulations of the finger, and imagine that your desire is being realized by this gesture, or that it has been realized already" (p. 103).

In the fifth stage of magic mental training the trainee imagines his or her consciousness in the center of any form, beginning with small symmetrical objects, moving to asymmetrical objects, and eventually involving animals and human beings. Bardon states that after practice with this exercise the student will attain the capacity to look through any object, and will recognize the material as well as mental structure of such an object. Then follows an exercise whereby one's consciousness is transferred into the exact center of the body, at the solar Plexus, into the "fourth dimension" and "from there perceiving and influencing all that concerns his being." Magic psychic training in the fifth stage concerns projecting images of the four elements out into a room. Bardon states that by projecting the element of fire into a room, one can actually increase the temperature, or even actually light a fire.

Fifth stage magic physical training attempts to control the body directly through the will, without the mediation of the muscles. The exercise begins with efforts to control the hands and fingers. Bardon states in passing that by practicing this exercise on all parts of the body, one could eventually attain complete levitation of the body. However, the exercises continue in a different, more spiritualistic, vein. The student is asked to relinquish control of a hand and mentally contact one's higher spirit guide who answers questions by influencing a pendulum or planchette, or simply by moving the fingers. Further exercises follow for automatic writing and painting. Bardon instructs the student to remain silent regarding all such contacts. The purpose of this "passive communication" with spiritual beings is to convince the student of the reality of such a world before beginning more active communication. (The second, more advanced volume of Bardon's deals strictly with spirit conjuring.)

Exercises in the five advanced stages of Initiation Into Hermetics are not directly relevant to the present work, but rather utilize techniques for the application of the psi abilities which have been trained in the first five stages. These applications use talismans, amulets, crystal balls and other paraphernalia, which Bardon claims are effective only to a mind that has been trained in accordance with the previous stages.

References

Bardon, F. Initiation into hermetics. Kettig fiber Koblenz, West Germany: Osiris Verlag, 1962.

Scientology [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

Founded in the early 1950s by Lafayette Ronald Hubbard as an outgrowth of an earlier movement known as "dianetics" also founded by Hubbard, Scientology is a blending of science and mysticism replete with all of the theories and jargon of a science fiction story. In fact, dianetics was first introduced to the public in the pages of a science fiction magazine.

The essential notion behind Scientology is that human behavior is largely controlled by unconscious reactive patterns, developed during times of stress and trauma, known as "engrams." Through a process called "auditing," these engrams can become conscious and under the control of the individual. This process is similar to psychotherapy or counseling in that it is accomplished essentially by talking freely about one's life. An instrument known as an "E-meter" is utilized. The E-meter ideally measures galvanic skin response - a known physiological correlate of anxiety. During the auditing, the client works with an auditor who, by looking at the E-meter attempts to judge when certain topics of conversation are causing an emotional charge and "triggering engrams." The auditor will systematically focus on these topics until the E-meter indicates that all emotional charge is gone. Often the questions asked by the auditor in Scientology will deal with events considered to have been experienced in past lifetimes.

This process is similar to what is known in behavior therapy as "desensitization," in which one can be cured of irrational fears and phobias by being gradually exposed to the object of one's fear in a safe environment. For example, if a young child is afraid of dogs, this fear can be removed by showing the child dogs at a distance and then gradually bringing them closer until the child can pet the dog without feeling anxiety. In auditing, the objects of fear are the client's own thoughts.

After an amount of auditing, which will differ from one individual to the next, various levels are said to be attained. The first such level is known as "clear." At this point, according to Scientology, one can begin to operate as a free, spiritual being no longer constrained by engrams from the past. This is the level at which actual psychic training can begin; it is the basis for the seven levels above it, known as "OT" (Operating Thetan) I-VII. Eventually, when there are enough candidates, Hubbard has stated that he will introduce training for even higher grades. Scientologists claim that advanced OTs can communicate telepathically, perform psychokinesis, and also leave their bodies at will.

The various exercises leading to the level of OT VII require hundreds of hours of practice and the outlay of thousands of dollars. Thousands of pages have been written describing the Preliminary exercises alone. The exercises for the OT levels, Which presumably deal directly with psi training, are not publicly available. Scientology literature (Hubbard 1951/1969) and reports of former Scientologists (Kaufman 1972) state that the exercises have been regularly revised and updated by L. Ron Hubbard and his staff.

Scientology has been criticized in the popular literature on several grounds. The E-meters are actually poor measures of physiological anxiety, being subject to erratic fluctuations in battery voltage, electrode placement, and the grip of the hands on the electrodes. Individuals who have attained the higher grades in Scientology often continue to manifest the same human frailties of which they were supposed to have been cleared. Some individuals have claimed that Scientology processing has been detrimental to their mental health. Various government agencies have accused Scientology of engaging in a variety of unethical and illegal activities. According to one commentator, Scientology auditing often includes explicit and covert procedures designed to enhance the financial and power base of the organization (Kaufman 1972).

An early set of exercises, no longer in use, that seem to relate to psi training has been presented by Hubbard in a book, originally published in 1953, titled Scientology 8-8008. The theory behind this exercise, known as "Standard Operating Procedure, Issue 3," is that psychic abilities are the province of the spirit or "thetan" and are accessible when the student becomes cognizant of being a thetan separate from the body. The exercise to achieve this goal of "theta clearing" is described by Hubbard as "the backbone of processing in Scientology." Ile exercise consists of seven steps, the first being the most difficult. The auditor begins the process with the first step. Failing to accomplish the desired results, the second step is tried; failing that, the third step, etc., until the preclear is able to attain the desired results of a given step. From that point, the auditor works with the preclear back up to the first step. The steps are summarized as follows:

"Step I, Positive Exteriorizing: The preclear is asked to be a foot behind his head. When this is successful other points in space around the body are practiced. From this perspective, the preclear views and heals areas of the body in need of repair.

"Step II, By Orientation: The preclear locates himself against the forehead, he pushes his "self" out the back of the head. The preclear then follows exercises designed to achieve stability in different points outside of the body.

"Step III, Space Processing: Located inside his body, the preclear is asked to imagine the body taking on different sizes and shapes, reversing limbs, moving organs around, etc.

"Step IV, Ridge Running: The preclear is asked to give himself various mental commands and then to observe mental resistance to these commands.

"Step V, Black and White Control Processing: The preclear is asked to imagine black and white spots and also imagine them moving to various points around the room. Then various other geometric shapes are also used.

"Step VI, Arc Straight Wire: The preclear is asked to remember incidents which were real to him and then incidents which he believes were illusory.

"Step VII, Present Time Body Orientation: The preclear is asked to mentally locate and recognize parts of his body as well as objects in the room.

Some evidence circumstantially supports the claims of the Scientologists. Ingo Swann, a psychic who has been tested extensively in several laboratories- with almost consistently successful results (Puthoff & Targ 1974, Osis & Mitchell 1972, Schmeidler 1972) - is a product of Scientology training and is, in fact, an OT-VII, the highest level attainable in the organization. It is not necessarily correct to assume that Swann's psychic abilities were "trained" by his Scientology experience. In his autobiography, To Kiss Earth Goodbye, Swann (1975) indicates that he has been aware of his abilities since childhood. In the following vague passage, he credits Scientology with enabling him to control his natural abilities: "If certain experiences were possible for me as a child, it must be stated that no volitional control over the types of phenomena demonstrated during the last three years would have been possible had there been in me an absence of the transcendental structure of ideas presented by Hubbard. It is basic to Hubbard's thesis that the center of awareness, the T, is probabilistically determinant over matter, energy, space and time to the degree that the T removed the programmed blocks to his understanding of them."

Another Scientology figure of parapsychological interest is Harold E. Puthoff, a physicist formerly at SRI International and now with The Institute of Advanced Studies in Austin, Texas, who is noted for his experimental research in remote-viewing (Puthoff & Targ 1976, 1977, Targ & Puthoff 1977, Targ, Puthoff & May 1977). Puthoff has received Scientology auditing. (He has been accused by his critics [Gardner 1975] of being a biased and untrustworthy researcher by virtue of this experience. Such criticism is unfair insofar as it attacks the integrity of a highly trained scientist, on the basis of no actual evidence, and could equally apply to researchers of any religious background whatsoever, even ethical humanism.)

It is possible that Puthoff's unusual success as an experimenter may bear a relationship to his Scientology training. Other researchers have failed to replicate the consistent and high level of success that Puthoff and his partner, Russell Targ (who is not known to have received Scientology auditing), have attained in remote viewing experiments at SRI (Allen et al. 1976, Rauscher et al. 1976, Solfvin, Roll & Krieger 1977, Vallee, Hastings & Askevold 1976, Whitson et al. 1976). In their popular book Mind Reach (1977) Puthoff and Targ describe a recipe for successful remote-viewing experimentation. This recipe contains, as its most basic step, an exercise which, although probably not derived directly from Scientology, appears to be in the same tradition as Scientology auditing procedures. The percipient is asked to repeat the following questions until each can be answered positively: "Is it okay with me if the world should be constructed in such a way that psychic functioning does exist?" "Is it okay with me if I have psychic ability?" Then the percipient is asked to repeat the following statement until there is no feeling of resistance to the idea being suggested. "I can view a remote location."

References

Allen, S., Green, P., Rucker, K., Cohen, R., Goolsby, K., and Morris R.L. A remote viewing study using a modified version of the SRI procedure. In J.D. Morris, W.G. Roll, and R.L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology 1975, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Gardner, M. Mathematical games. Scientific American, October 1975.

Hubbard, L.R. Scientology 8-8008. Sussex, England: Department of Publications World Wide, 1967. (Originally published, 1953.)

Kaufman, R. Inside Scientology. New York: Olympia Press, 1972.

Solfvin, G., Roll, WG., and Krieger, J. Meditation and ESP: Remote Viewing. Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association, 1977.

Puthoff, H.E., and Targ, R. Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding. Nature, 1974, 252(5476), 602-607.

Puthoff, H.E., and Targ, R. A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspectives and recent research. Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1976, 64, 329-354.

Puthoff, H.E., and Targ, R. Direct perception of remote geographical locations. Proceedings of the IEEE Electro/77, New York, April 1977.

Rauscher, E.A., Weissman, G., Sarfatti, J., and Sirag, S. Remote perception of natural scenes shielded against ordinary perception. Research in Parapsychology 1975. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Swann, I. To kiss earth good-bye. New York: Hawthorn, 1975.

Targ R., and Puthoff, H.E. Mind-reach: Scientists took at psychic ability. New York: Delacorte Press, 1977.

Targ R., Puthoff, H.E., and May, E.C. State of the art in remote viewing studies at SRI. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Cybernetics and Society, Washington, D.C., September 1977.

Vallee, J., Hastings, A., and Askevold, G. Remote viewing experiments through computer conferencing. Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1976, 64, 1551-1552.

Whitson, T.W., Bogart, D.N., Palmer, J., and Tart, C.T. Preliminary experiments in group "remote viewing." Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1976, 64, 1550 - 1551.

Silva Mind Control [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

Perhaps no other large organization makes such a direct claim to ESP training as Silva Mind Control. The training generally takes 48 hours, culminating in a weekend intensive, and one "graduates" by ostensibly passing an ESP test which involves diagnosing the personality and medical condition of an unknown individual. Hundreds of thousands of individuals have taken this training and readily offer testimony as to its effectiveness.

The training involves basic exercises in concentration, relaxation and visualization. The experience, while intense, is said to be rather pleasant. The techniques begin with simple exercises in visual imagination. Students begin by imagining the details of their own homes. Students are asked to actually feel the objects in the house, and also to cause their colors to change. In the next session students mentally project themselves into cubes or cylinders of various metals. Then students project themselves into various plants. Then the projection of the mind is into a pet animal, examining each part of the body individually. From this follows the graduation exercise of doing a psychic diagnosis on a human being.

The philosophy of this training is couched in psychophysiological jargon relating to EEG brain waves. Students are told to enter into an "alpha level" where they can contact their inner mental resources. The use of this terminology has been highly criticized as inaccurate and even antiscientific (Stanford 1976).

No fewer than five experimental studies have been conducted with Silva graduates in order to test their claims of psychic diagnosis (Brier et al. 1974, Brier et al. 1975, Jacobson 1976, Vaughan 1974). In some cases these experiments were done with the full cooperation of the Silva instructors and their full approval of all experimental conditions. None of these studies yielded any significant ESP.

Jose Silva (1977) in his recently published book on the mind control course makes no reference to the scientific studies that failed to support his claim. He says that in 1953 he had contacted J. B. Rhine with the claim that he had discovered a method to train psi abilities. Rhine's response was that his method was invalid without testing subjects before the training. The book goes on to say that over the next ten years, Silva trained 39 schoolchildren from Laredo, Texas, in the use of ESP. The book states that Silva "had developed the first method in history that can train anyone to use ESP, and he had thirty-nine repeatable experiments to prove it." No details regarding these alleged experiments are offered.

In evaluating the apparent inconsistency between the experimental evidence and personal testimony regarding the Silva program, Rex Stanford (1976) makes the following comments:

"In such courses the student diagnostician is often given the first name and initial, sex, age, and geographic locale of the target person. Additionally, many graduates have told me that they had multiple opportunities to psychically read someone until a reading was felt to be a success, and then they were graduated from the course. Most students seem not to think of their failures which preceded the success and do not reflect on the implications of such failures for the reliability of the results of the training. Nor do they seem to ask themselves why they should be permitted to graduate after a single success instead of being asked to do more successful readings to prove they have been reliably trained. The typical student also does not seem bothered by the fact that in giving the reading he is usually face-to-face with someone who knows the condition of the target person. He does not realize that subtle or even not-so-subtle sensory cues cannot be ruled out. Nor does he realize that it is not always easy to know when one is being sensorially cued by another person. Similarly, the student does not stop to think that the examination process for such courses could not in principle permit a judgement of whether he or students in general have really been trained in ESP performance. They do not realize that such an inference would, at the very least, require pre-course testing for ESP ability but that students are not given the opportunity to see how well they can do before being ‘trained'. Most of them assume that ESP is impossible to do at will without special training.

"Students do not realize that the examination process simply gives them an opportunity to try to use ESP in an optimism-inducing, highly supportive setting which has shown, in the laboratory, to be psi-conducive even when the subjects have not been ‘trained. Thus they do not realize that even if they show some ESP ability in this setting, it proves nothing about their having been trained to use ESP reliably. Therefore any success they have is attributed to the efficacy of the training procedure.

"Granted the inability of the typical student to adequately evaluate the parapsychological outcome of his training, granted the high-powered salesmanship, the morale-boosting atmosphere, and that the student has paid a considerable sum for such a course, it is little wonder that many persons leave the course feeling it has been a success. They graduate believing themselves capable of using ESP and other psychic powers consciously and reliably.

Stanford adds, that in his experience, many individuals who have taken the mind control courses retain an objective perspective on what happened to them in the course and on what has been the long-term result. However, he maintains that a certain proportion of individuals "emerge with ideas which would normally be regarded as paranoid in character regarding their psychic ability to manipulate other people.

Elmer and Alyce Green (1974), biofeedback researchers at the Menninger Foundation, have gone further than Stanford in their criticisms of mind control courses. They claim that the notion of biofeedback or brain wave training utilized in such courses is completely inaccurate and that the teachers of such courses are actually using hypnotic training. Furthermore, they state that this hypnotic training bears a similarity to the training of trance mediums and that this can lead to cases described as possession by low grade spirits. They claim that dozens of cases Of paranoid neuroses and psychoses have been triggered by mind control type courses. They question the competency of mind control teachers to deal with this problem. The Greens suggest that parapsychologists involve themselves in evaluating the various mind control and psi training courses being offered to the public.

The general sense of the above criticisms by the Greens and Stanford may be appropriately applied to many other organizations that claim to develop ESP and hypercognitive skills.

References

Brier, R., Savits, B., and Schmeidler, G. Experimental tests of Silva Mind Control Graduates. In W.G. Roll, R.L. Morris, and J.D. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Brier, B., Schmeidler, G.S., and Savits, B. Three experiments in clairvoyant diagnosis with Silva Mind Control graduates. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1975, 69, 263 - 271.

Green, E. and Green, A. Mind Training, ESP, hypnosis, and voluntary control of internal states. In J. Regush and N. Regush (Eds.), Psi: The other world catalogue. New York: G. P. Putnam's, 1974.

Jacobson, N. Investigation of claims of diagnosing by means of ESP. In J.D. Morris, W.G. Roll, and R.L. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1975, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Silva, J., and Miele, P. The Silva mind control method. New York: Pocket Books, 1977.

Stanford, R.A. Scientific, ethical and clinical problems in the "training" of psi ability. Paper presented at the symposium on the Application and Misapplication of Findings in Parapsychology, American Academy for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, New York City, January, 1975. In R.A. White (Ed.), Surveys in Parapsychology. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1976.

Vaughan, A. Investigation of Silva Mind Control claims. In W.G. Roll, R.L. Morris, and J.D. Morris (Eds.), Research in parapsychology, 1973, Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1974.

Philippine Spiritualist Healing [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

Philippine healing practice, particularly the reported psychic surgery, is extremely controversial. In The Roots of Consciousness (Mishlove 1975), I presented the prima facie case for regarding the Philippine psychic healing as worthy of some systematic investigation. Such research has been slow in coming, although hundreds of documentary films have been made and numerous Americans have received various forms of training in the Philippines.

In The Roots of Consciousness I discuss the case of Doug Voeks, a young American who after several years of study in the Philippines seems to have "received the gift" of psychic surgery. Voeks described his experience as a healer, in an interview with this author, as follows:

"It is simply using the power of the source that you have prayed for and asked for, through your hands being a focal point. When the hands are applied and I begin to knead the skin, I can say that the skin opens because I see it through my own visual process. However, I lose feeling in my hands up to about my elbows. They call this over there about a ten percent trance. The hands do not actually go deeply into the body, but rather the afflicted area comes to the hand, as though the hand were a magnet. Individual cells are separated and not severed, so you have no cell damage. The healer's hand then acts as a maintaining force to hold the skin apart and bring it together. In my first operation I was as startled as the people who were watching. I cannot control this. It is something that happens."

Adding further superficial credibility to Voeks' claims, is the testimony of Voeks' grandmother who was actually operated on by Voeks; and believes in the genuineness and effectiveness of his claims.

The Christian Spiritualist Church in San Francisco, partially inspired by the experience of Doug Voeks, is a religious organization based on the practices of the spiritualist healers of the Philippines. One of the members of the Christian Spiritualist Church, who had also received training in psychic surgery it, the Philippines (although he had not attained the skill) described the training as follows:

"The training for psychic surgery is an advanced form of mediumship. The spirit takes over your hands during the surgery. One person in the group I was with learned psychic surgery immediately, but I didn't attain this. It is mote mediumistic than other kinds of healing. The surgeon himself is simply an instrument. He doesn't require any knowledge. He may or may not know what is going on. Some can lecture in technical terms while they are doing it. Most of them are very uneducated, simple people."

Further background on the training is provided by the testimony of other church members, given in interview to this author, who studied other forms of healing with the Philippine spiritualist healers. The basic training involved attending religious missions in the jungles of the Philippines in order to earn spiritual graces. Training also included careful study of the biblical verses in John XVII which was said to provide protection for the healers and for the sick.

The missions involved traveling for long hours under very harsh conditions to various spiritualist chapels where religious services were then conducted. Sleep patterns were broken as religious services were held every day at 6:00 p.m., 9:00 p.m., midnight, and 4:00 a.m. The services lasted from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. On each of these missions, the Westerners were accompanied by a host of Filipinos who performed various religious functions. At first there was no actual training in healing. One interviewee stated, "At first, we'd just go through the motions with them. They'd hold up their hands, so we would hold up our hands." In the following interview, one student describes how he was trained in the gift of opening the body for psychic surgery:

"Brother David Oligani was able to hold his finger about a foot above somebody's body. He would make a line in the air and a physical incision would appear on the body. Needless to say, this was very impressive. One time he took my hand and had me point, and he did the same thing through my hand, channeling energy through my hand. The incision appeared. I didn't feel anything earth shattering. There were a lot of feelings happening all at one time. I was very much awestruck by it all."
 
After attending various missions, ceremonies were conducted during which the Westerners believed themselves to have received various spiritual gifts of healing. During the training period, all of the Americans received various forms of healing, including psychic surgery from which they felt they had received benefits.

Throughout their training, the Americans were extremely impressed by the selflessness of the Filipinos who were helping them, and who asked for nothing in return. "They asked for nothing, but simply to be there so that they could heal us, serve us and fulfill our needs. We had never encountered this before. Everyone in this country puts a price tag on their services or passes the plate in church. There they don't do these things. They'll give you their beds. They'll give you their food. If you need help every three hours around the clock for two weeks, they don't give you a bill when you get ready to leave. They just cry that you are leaving. The parting is such a dramatic situation, it is hard to duplicate in this country. The love and devotion that is shared is awesome." Other reports would indicate that this degree of selflessness does not exist among all of the Filipino healers, but only certain ones.

A great deal of the Philippine training is dependent on the instructions coming from "spirit" during the missions, through the agency of trance mediums. The instructions from the spirit must be followed to the letter. In order to determine that these spirit messages were pure and correct, clairvoyants were employed to watch the medium while in trance. One of the American students described his training as a medium as follows:

"Mediumship practice was every night at midnight. They sat us down with pieces of paper in front of us and pencils in our hands. We just closed our eyes and they prayed over us. They prayed and prayed and prayed. After a while, my hands started to move. There were scratches all over the paper. They said this was spirit writing. The next level of development was to channel a message, the essence of which had already been written down in this spirit language. It wasn't until we were in Manila, ready to leave the Philippines altogether, that a message came through, very short and sweet. Basically it was a message commending the people of that center for how they had taken care of the Americans. It came through me in English. They made a big thing about it. They were very, very happy. I was kind of awestruck. That was the finale of our trip there. We were told that when we came back to this country we could not even practice mediumship until we had three clairvoyants, and our banner."
 
The banner, or the insignia of the individual church, was only attained through attending certain missions in the Philippine jungles. These missions are described as follows:

"We were given seven missions much more structured than before. We had to do everything to the letter. There had to be eleven people with us on each mission. Seven Filipinos plus the Americans. Each person had a function. There had to be two singers, one clairvoyant, one medium, one secretary to write down the spirit messages, etc. We had to continue all the prayers during all hours. If we were driving on the road during the time for prayer, we just stopped the car wherever we were. If we had missed, it would have erased all the work we had done up to that point."

Interestingly enough, when they began their healing practice in San Francisco-which did not include psychic surgery-the Americans found themselves getting into situations they were unable to handle. For example, "in one case, we had exorcised a spirit from a woman, but then, ten minutes later, the same spirit suddenly jumped back into her body and she nearly had a heart attack." Following such experiences, under the direction of the spirit speaking through the trance medium, church members were instructed to take the training in healing which was offered in Berkeley through the Church of Divine Man (described in a following section). After a six-month training program, the spirit speaking through the medium advised church members how this new information was to be used. In comparing the two forms of training, church members stated that the Philippine training was more powerful, but of a "lower spiritual level." The training of the Church of Divine Man provided greater conceptual refinement:

"The healers in the Philippines do not acknowledge chakras. They don't know anything about them. They understand the spirit and the soul, but they don't understand the different levels of the spirit body."

Following further instructions from the spirit, speaking through the trance medium, the members of the Christian Spiritualist Church have been on a diet, for several years, which consists only of raw fruits and vegetables.

Allegations of fraud in Philippine psychic surgery cases are common enough, particularly among hardcore skeptics of all psi Phenomena - but even among sympathetic observers as well. The pattern of fraud appears quite similar to that discussed in relationship to shamanism (Chapter II).

Such allegations are made articulately in W. A. Nolen's (1974) popular account titled, Healing: A Doctor in Search of a Miracle. While many individuals are predisposed to accept a skeptical account of the Philippine healing, rather than an account involving purported psi, there is no a priori reason to believe that the literature of skepticism is less contaminated with error and fraud than the literature supporting parapsychological claims. The Nolen book has been criticized in The Roots of Consciousness. At least one of Nolen's case histories seems clearly to have been doctored by Nolen to support his own preconceptions. Even discounting overeager skeptics such as Nolen, the reports of fraud are too common to be dismissed by researchers and must be taken into account in any investigation.

References

Mishlove, J. The roots of consciousness: psychic liberation through history, science and experience. New York: Random House, 1975.

Nolen, W.A. Healing: a doctor in search of a miracle. New York, 1974.

Milan Ryzl Training Program [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

This program deserves special attention since Dr. Ryzl is a member of the Parapsychological Association and has also published articles about psychic training in the International Journal of Parapsychology. (An evaluation of Ryzl's scientific work is included in Chapter IV.) In this original formulation, Ryzl's training was outlined in five stages:

(1) Psychological preparation of the subject prior to hypnosis.
(2) Induction of the hypnotic state.
(3) Utilization of the hypnotic state for the activation of ESP.
(4) Improvement and further cultivation of the subject's abilities.
(5) Bringing ESP under conscious control in the normal waking state" (Ryzl, 1972).

This above formulation which originally appeared in the International Journal of Parapsychology is intended as an outline for those who would like to develop ESP in others. It is not actually the basis of Ryzl's current training program, as the hypnotic state requires close personal interaction between trainer and subject.

Dr. Ryzl's current program offers an interesting contrast to the Rosicrucian program, since both are correspondence courses. Ryzl's course does not offer the attraction of ancient traditions, but offers instead detailed instructions on tape cassettes intended to train the student to enter into a psi-conducive, altered state of consciousness -a state of "alert relaxation" comparable perhaps to the "alpha level" of the Silva training. The course also includes a book authored and published by Ryzl entitled How to Develop ESP in Yourself and Others. The book is well written, is generally based on the experimental literature and offers no panaceas or immediate results. Ryzl personally does not claim to have developed his own psychic abilities and states that he is not a good trance subject himself.

After an introductory chapter on "the sixth sense," Ryzl assigns his students two exercises: "Make a list of situations in the recent past where ESP might have helped you in your personal life." "Make a list of possible uses of ESP in everyday life." Another of Ryzl's basic exercises for the effective and practical use of ESP is as follows:

(1) Send out an intensive question.
(2) Then make the mind blank, try to eliminate all influence of your thoughts, and wait until the answer emerges in your consciousness.

Ryzl states that these two conditions "seem to be the whole secret of the effective use of ESP." He adds that it is difficult to realize them in practice and they can only be attained through patience and persistence.

The tape cassettes are designed to produce a relaxed state of mind and provide the student an opportunity to practice ESP in a setting that does not require the personal presence of a teacher. With the course are ESP tests designed to be taken alone by the student and then sent in to Ryzl for analysis. Although over a thousand people have taken this course during the past several years, and some of these have sent test data in to Ryzl. Ryzl has not yet conducted an analysis of his data.

The content of this program is far more acceptable to the professional researcher than the other more popular ESP training packages but, perhaps as a consequence of this, the program itself is less charismatic and inspiring -- lacking, as it does, the elements of personal contact and a spiritual foundation.


References

Ryzl, M. How to develop ESP in yourself and others. San Jose, Calif.: author, 1977. (Originally published, 1972.) Ryzl, M. A method of training ESP. International Journal of Parapsychology, 1966, 8, 501-532.

Ryzl, M. Review of some ESP experiments with a hypnotically prepared subject. Journal of the American Society of Psychosomatic Dentistry and Medicine, 1976, 23, 40-53.

Ryzl, M. Training the psi faculty by hypnosis. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1962, 41, 232-252.

Ryzl, M., and Ryzlova, J. A case of high-scoring ESP performance in the hypnotic state. Journal of Parapsychology, 1962, 26, 153-171.

Alan Vaughan Training [From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems]

Alan Vaughan has one of the better test records among psi practitioners in the United States. His talents are described in Dream Telepathy (1973), which he coauthored with Montague Ullman, M.D., and Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., and also his own books, Patterns of Prophecy (1973), Incredible Coincidences (1979) and The Edge of Tomorrow (1982). Vaughan is, perhaps, most well known for his accurate, registered precognition describing the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968.

Prior to 1966, Vaughan considered himself an informed skeptic regarding psi. He had read the skeptics such as Martin Gardner and assumed that ESP experiments must be flawed in some way. He had always been interested in the unusual but just assumed there was nothing to it until, as he said, "it happened to me." In 1966, Vaughan had an experience that changed his life. He described it as follows when I interviewed him: "I had the feeling of getting possessed and spontaneously going into a meditation in which I could feel energy rising in my body. It frightened the hell out of me. I pushed this entity out of my head. For about two hours after this, I suddenly became psychic, and also elated, as if some part of me extended out beyond my skin. I was able to get feedback and discover that this was true ESP." As a result of this experience, Vaughan went to consult with Eileen Garrett, then the head of the Parapsychology Foundation in New York, who, rather unexpectedly, offered him a scholarship to study psychic phenomena in Europe.

Vaughan's actual psi training began in 1967 at the London College for Psychic Science, under the guidance of the well known spiritualist medium Douglas Johnson. Vaughan describes Johnson's teaching methods in his article, "Development of the Psychic," in Psychic magazine, August 1970:
"A group of from six to eight students meet for one hour each week. Seated informally about the room, which has been darkened, the students are asked to meditate for half an hour on an image proposed by Johnson, such as a beautiful sunset or a Chinese garden. Often, he asks the student to visualize light coming toward them. At the end of the meditation, he asks the students what other images intruded. Sometimes those images contain ESP about the others in the room.

"After this initial period of stilling the mind, the student is asked to pick up psychic impressions about some ‘mystery object' which Johnson passes around. The students attempt to give objective information about the owner of the object, in what is termed ‘psychometry'. Often a ‘mystery visitor' becomes the target for the students. The mystery visitor affirms or denies the students' impressions, thus giving them immediate feedback so that they can learn to distinguish between ESP and ordinary imagery.

Vaughan studied with Johnson for about a year. He states that it was difficult for him, at first, to succeed at the ESP tasks. With practice and feedback it became easier and easier. Another of Johnson's students was Malcolm Bessent, who was also later a very successful subject at the Maimonides Hospital dream telepathy experiments in Brooklyn.

After leaving England, Vaughan traveled to Freiburg University in Germany where he started teaching ESP classes using these same techniques with German students. Vaughan claims that these students were able to pick up accurate information.

Upon returning to the United States in 1969, Vaughan began working at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory as a parapsychological research subject. Based on his experiences as a subject there, he developed an ESP training technique using artistic pictures as targets. The basic method involved practice with targets and feedback plus meditation. The instructions given to students are published as follows in Vaughan's 1970 Psychic article: "Now I want you to relax completely. Close your eyes, rid your mind of mundane problems, and try to make your mind blank. You might concentrate on a circle of blankness, a circular fence to keep out thoughts that keep trying to come in like stray sheep. If a thought strays in, you must be very patient like a shepherd and shove the stray out, no matter how many times it strays back. When your mind is stilled and the circle is blank, then quietly await impressions of the target picture. Don't try to force it. Just relax and wait, and then the impressions will come. At the end of the meditation, when I turn the lights on, jot down notes on what you saw." Vaughan states that this technique served as the basis for ESP training techniques developed by William and Lendell Braud, which are discussed in Chapter IV.

Vaughan claims that a controlled experiment with his group was conducted by parapsychologists Charles Honorton and Rex Stanford. The experiment is described by Vaughan in his 1970 article in Psychic. The results are positive, with five out of six subjects scoring hits (probability of a hit = .5) and three of the six subjects scoring direct hits (probability of a direct hit = .166).

Another experiment involving Vaughan and his students was conducted by psychologist Gertrude Schmeidler at the American Society for Psychical Research in New York and reported in the 1973 volume of Research in Parapsychology, the annual proceedings of the Parapsychological Association. Seven subjects took part in the experiment: Alan Vaughan, three of his students, and three control subjects. The targets for the experiment were dreams that had been written down by individuals not present at the experiment. These dreams were placed in sealed, opaque envelopes. The subjects were allowed to hold the envelopes and then went into individual rooms to describe their ESP impressions of the dream or the dreamers.

Vaughan was the only subject in the experiment whose transcript showed a significant correlation with the targets. The experiment was designed to test the possibility that, through intergroup telepathy, one person's hits might facilitate or inhibit others' hits on the same target items. The results were quite interesting. For Vaughan's three students, the items on their transcripts similar to items that Vaughan had also reported on his transcript were significantly more correct than items not corresponding to Vaughan's impressions. In contrast, each of the control subjects showed an insignificant relation to Vaughan's reports. Schmeidler interprets this result as follows: "The data thus imply that Vaughan's friends showed a telepathic rapport with him when he was correct but not when he was Incorrect. Two possible interpretations of this finding are suggested. One is that when a psychic is correct, his impressions have a special quality which elicits a response from other (psychic) individuals who are in good rapport with him. The other is that in a group psychometry session, friends of a psychic are oriented both to the psychic and to the absent sitter, and that when the two orientations mesh they are more likely to result in a correct response than when they do not mesh. Either of these two implications has many theoretical implications for discovering the nature of psi."

Vaughan continues to teach psychic development classes in the Los Angeles area. He believes that the training works best with people who are highly motivated and have some way o integrating it into their lives.

References

Schmeidler, G. R., & Goldberg, J. Evidence for selective telepathy in group psychometry [Summary]. In W. G. Roll, R. L. Morris, & J. D. Morris (Eds.), Research in Parapsychology 1973 (pp. 103-106). Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1974.

Vaughan, A. Development of the psychic. Psychic, 2(1), August 1970.

Vaughan, A. Patterns of prophecy. New York: Hawthorne, 1973.

Vaughan, A. Incredible Coincidence: The Baffling World of Synchronicity. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1979. (Reprinted by Ballantine Books, New York, 1989.)

Vaughan, A. The Edge of Tomorrow: How to Foresee and Fulfill Your Future. New York: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1982.

Ullman, M., & Krippner, S., with Vaughan, A. Dream Telepathy: Experiments in Nocturnal ESP (2nd ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1989.

Vaughan, A. The Power of Positive Prophecy: How to Envision and Create Your Best Future. London: Harper Collins, 1991.

Vaughan, A., & Houck, J. Software for training anomalous cognition: A preliminary report. Subtle Energies, 2(2), 29-53, 1991.