Love and Parapsychology

Parapsychology is grounded in the attempt to examine what we call psychic phenomena. It aims at demonstrating the existence of these phenomena, and perhaps more importantly, at establishing when and how these phenomena come into being. It is this latter goal, it is hoped, which will allow us to make the appearance of these phenomena and our experiments more reliable.

What is this order of human phenomena? Perhaps, it is best possible to illustrate by example. 'I can will knowledge, but not wisdom; going to bed, but not sleeping; eating but not hunger; meekness but not humility; lust but not love; commiseration but not sympathy; religiosity but not faith; congratulations, but not admiration; reading but not understanding.' (Farber, 1967, p. 7.)

Parapsychologists, of course, are aware of this distinction. Numerous papers, involving work with both ESP and PK have stated that will or concentration are psi-inhibitory acts. What am I suggesting that is not already present in such statements?

What is lacking in this conception is an acknowledgement of that which the church calls 'grace.' Wisdom, humility, love and understanding can all be subsumed under this heading. I hope to make clear what happens in any practice which does not acknowledge grace by now speaking of what happens when 'sex' is brought into the laboratory.

It is only recently that sex has been involved in this move. Masters and Johnson decided that they wanted to 'separate a few basic anatomic and physiological truths' about 'the human female's sexual response' to 'effective sexual stimulation.' Before their arrival on the scene, they felt that this area of human experience was full of 'pseudo scientific essays and pronouncements' and an 'unbelievable hodgepodge of conjecture and falsehood.' (Masters 1960, p. 57, as quoted by Farber.)

How did Masters and Johnson hope to improve this lamentable situation? By bringing that which they called 'sex' into the laboratory, a place where they could control the environment, manipulate one variable at a time, and record and observe the results of this manipulation. Through this process, they hoped to increase our knowledge of the 'human sexual response.'

Because of their desire to document and discover the basic or essential response, they thought it necessary to strip from subjects the context in which their previous sexual experience had occurred and been meaningful. In their early studies of female orgasm, from which the above quotes are taken, subjects were chosen from among the medical students and their wives. What was wanted and found were people who had previously experienced orgasm and who could reliably bring themselves to orgasm in the laboratory setting, one in which their every action was illuminated by bright lights, observed by doctors and technicians, and recorded by cameras and numerous other bits of electrical equipment. Needless to say, the number of people able and willing to 'perform' under these conditions was very limited. To be at all successful, a subject would have to be capable of detaching her sexuality from the ordinary world, indeed from all human context apart from that ideal of the purely scientific observing attitude.

Such a subject, and indeed any experimenter who could design such an experiment, would have to regard sexuality as a pure standing-reserve. Only by regarding it in this way could she, and they, feel it was on tap, at any hour for which the experiment was scheduled (in advance) and under whatever conditions might prevail in her life outside and inside the laboratory.

It is this ruthless stripping of context from the act, context which might remind the subject or the experimenters of any other sense the act might have, any other way it might be seen, that is characteristic of such an experiment. Through this stripping of context and meaning, the experimenter hopes to monitor an act which is truly and only 'sexual.'

Unlike 'sex', love cannot be evoked by making all the right moves. It does not depend on any skills one might have or develop. Love is open-ended-it arises from a fabric of concern and our openness to being-with another. Indeed, any attempt to control or manipulate is the death of intimacy. Love is not the result of a technique which aims at a certain definable goal. We cannot turn it on. Instead, it comes upon us.

At the risk of being seen to prescribe a new experimental technique, I would like to say that I believe successful experimenters show an awareness of all this in their practice. They have a strong sense that it is mistaken to try to command or will these phenomena and instead act in the capacity of what we might call attendants to psi. They are ministers to psi, rather than administers of it. Like the attendants to the ancient Greek gods, they have a respect for that which they serve, and a feeling for the right way to ask questions and receive answers.

In my view, parapsychological experimentation is an ancient mystery rite uneasily clothed in the garments of technological science. The experimenter aims at not creating barriers to the manifestation of psi. He tries to prevent his own being, and that of his experimental team, from getting in the way of that which he wishes to witness and record. Even when he has done his best in this respect, he is aware that his best may not be good enough. Very little of what he knows is important to the manifestation of psi is within his control, and he is aware that his knowledge is extremely limited.

It is impossible for us to question deeply man's nature and that of psi within this language, because it insists in a powerful and pre-conceived understanding.

Psi, like love, and so much other human experience will not fit comfortably into this vision, as it is not at our command. Like love, psi resists attempts to make it serve our other purposes, and becomes perverse if we demand that it do so.

 -----------------------------------------------------------

Farber, L. Lying, Despair, Jealousy, Envy, Sex, Suicide, Drugs and the Good Life. New York: Harper and Row, 1976.

Masters, W. The Sexual Response Cycle of the Human Female: Western journal of Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Jan.-Feb, 1960.

Jeff Mishlove's Blog Index