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jeffrey mishlove
August 2009 
The "Strangeness Factor"
Jeff Mishlove
The "Strangeness Factor" (From Chapter Three of Psi Development Systems)
Some contemporary programs contain an element of the unusual or bizarre. Uri Geller and Ted Owens claim to have been trained through the auspices of UFOs. Annette Martin claims that her training program was designed by the spirit of the deceased Edgar Cayce. The teachings of the Course on Miracles are said to be derived from the spirit of Jesus Christ. Psychic teachings at the Foundation for Mind Research were received in trance purportedly from the ancient Egyptian goddess, Sekhmet. The AMORC (Rosicrucian Order) claims that its organization was founded in the mythical ancient Atlantis. "Spirit" also is said to perform uncanny acts of psychic surgery today in the Philippines. In spite of the strangeness factor, to attain scientific understanding we may be forced to reexamine our prejudices and carefully distinguish between that which is truly illogical, or physically impossible, and that which merely grates on a mind culturally conditioned through academic training. The mental constructs involved in these unusual programs need not be physically real, or even testable, in order to play a dynamic role in the interrelationship of subsystems within a psi development system. To treat such claims as metaphysical nonsense, unworthy of the dignity of serious scientific investigation, is to succumb to the vestiges of an outdated logical positivism. Metaphysical entities need not "exist" in a physical sense in order to have archetypal power within the individual mind and consensus reality. Such archetypal images may well have the effect of focusing consciousness and psi to the extent of actually producing physical effects (which are then mistakingly taken for "proof" of the more-than-metaphysical reality of the archetype by believers).
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Hello Jeff,
Just yesterday I was thinking about how archetypal images or individual gods (in religions like Hinduism) could just be a focus of concentration and psi. I was very drawn to Hinduism but found that it would be hard to fully believe the “line” of orthodox Hinduism that those gods are real beings with real identities (or even avatars of a single god that's real). In order to get around that I thought about how doing 'puja' on a deity's statue might be a way to simply focus the mind on a particular quality/power….and maybe then, with intention, cause and effect in the mundane world - like a form of magic.
But I wonder how much you have to believe the image is real in order for the focus to cause psi? I wonder if knowing it is just an object of focus cancels the effect. Does one have to believe the image is objectively real. Hmmm
Brian
My experience is that psi can be activated, when working with an archetypal image, even if you are aware that the image is archetypal in nature – rather than ontologically real at a superficial level.
Jeff