THERE NEVER WAS AN IDEA STARTED
THAT WOKE MEN OUT OF THEIR
STUPID INDIFFERENCE BUT ITS ORIGINATOR
WAS SPOKEN OF AS A CRANK.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Throughout history and up to the present day people have been slow and even reluctant to accept new ideas, beliefs, and truths.
This will undoubtedly always be the case.
From Fulton’s Folly (the steamboat) to Seward’s Icebox (Alaska), from Kitty Hawk (if man were meant to fly, God would have given him wings), to traveling to and back from the moon, there have always been those who think new ideas are of no worth.
We continue to cling so tightly to the security of what is known that we often close our eyes and minds to the values to be found in exploring the unknown.
The steamboat certainly proved to be of value; Alaska is not only a beautiful state but also rich in both oil and minerals. We were not born with clothing, but we wear it, and we may not have wings but we do have the imagination that led us from Kitty Hawk to outer space in the span of 58 years.
(First powered flight, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, December 17, 1903. Major Yuri Gargarin, first manned space flight, April 12, 1961. Alan B. Shepard, Jr., first American to enter space, May 15, 1961.
A mere 8 years later Apollo 11 made it possible for Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin to leave their footprints on the surface of the moon.
Man has brought back from excursions into outer space a far better understanding of our planet, plus new ideas, experiments and discoveries in the field of medicine and other sciences.
The unknown holds tremendous potential.
Concentrating on solving aspects of the unknown has led us from the discovery of fire and the development of the first wheel, to the microscopes powerful enough to allow us to observe DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). To telescopes powerful enough to bring distant planets into such sharp focus that we can gaze upon minute details. In Mauna Kea, Hawaii, the word’s most powerful telescope, Keck I, can bring into focus galaxies 72 billion trillion miles away.
Try visualizing that number!
Mankind had traveled from the invention of the first crude tintype cameras to the technology that enables us to launch super-sensitive cameras into space that can instigate computer enhanced images of other planets in our solar system, and send the astounding results back to earth.
All of the many, many discoveries, developments and solutions to mysteries have been introduced and achieved by those who sought answers to questions most felt were unanswerable.
Mysteries remain mysteries only until someone finds a way to explain them.
The unknown has always had the potential to cause fear.
Our remote ancestors were thrown into fits of terror during solar eclipses, in some instances indulging in human sacrifices in attempts to appease whatever god was responsible for the sudden daytime darkness.
They must have believed they had found favor with the responsible god, for after such sacrifices
-- daylight did eventually re-appear.
There are people today who react to psychic phenomena in similar ways: It is a mystery, ergo it is something to fear, ergo it becomes easier to say it either doesn’t exist, or it is the work of evil forces or the Devil, himself.
Fortunately people were eventually able to figure out the cause of solar eclipses.
Fortunately there are those today who continue to search for answers to other mysteries.
The scientists who have their curiosities sharpened by the enigmatic nature of parapsychology have been capable of setting aside all testimony that says such things can’t exist in order to at least seek answers.
When the field of the paranormal first caught my interest, I went about my reading, research and experiments with taciturnity; I was very selective when it came to discussing my latest interest with anyone. I had voiced too many negative reactions to such things to suddenly start talking about my growing conviction that some of the facts might be valid.
Many people applaud at least mentally, when a fake psychic is unmasked.
Those who honestly and earnestly delve into such studies, searching for substantiation of the wonders of the human mind are often hampered by a public which, apprised of clever charlatans, jumps to the conclusion that all psychics fall into that category.
An expose of a quack doctor doesn’t automatically carry a like reaction to doctors in general. A bumbling teacher or lawyer or architect, plumber or electrician, et al, may be put out of business and ostracized by their peers. But those peers don’t necessarily assume the stigma.
If an unethical scientific researcher in any other field were to "help" his or her experiments toward a desired conclusion — and this chicanery was discovered, all other experiments in that particular field by other scientists wouldn’t be cast aside as obviously fake.
Galileo Galilee (1564-1642), considered the founder of modern scientific methods, wrote about his experiments that were so difficult to reproduce that many doubted he actually conducted them.
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) adjusted his calculations so they would support his theory of gravity.
The "Piltdown Man" was considered one of the greatest scientific hoaxes of all time. Hailed as proof of the missing link between apes and humans, it was later revealed the skull was actually an ape jaw with part of a human skull attached — and stained to look old.
It strikes me as an unfair set of double standards. There are many that find manufactured psychic ability an easy way to dupe the public and profit in the process. We should not, however, allow their presence to dim the importance of the field.
"Although the word parapsychology suggests a field of research that exists ‘beside psychology’, its studies are not only related to psychology but to religion, anthropology, physics, and other areas as well." (A HISTORY OF PARAPSYCHOLOGY by Martin Ebon) Edgar D. Mitchell, the 6th astronaut to walk on the moon, was afforded the rare opportunity to view the macrocosm and, in doing so, he discovered the microcosm. In his own words, he went "from outer space to inner space." Shortly after his return to this planet, Mitchell founded the Institute of Noetic Sciences. (Noetics refers to the study of mind and consciousness. From the Greek word, "nous", meaning mind.)
One of the first contemporary and highly respected scientists to consider extra-sensory perception as valid was Sigmund Freud (1856-1938). And such acceptance didn’t come easily to the genius pacesetter of psychoanalysis:
"I am ready to give up my opposition to the existence of thought-transference," he wrote, adding he was "prepared to lend the support of psychoanalysis to the matter of telepathy." (FREUD AND THE PARANORMAL, Martin Ebon)
This letter was addressed in 1924 to the man who represented the psychoanalytic movement in Great Britain, Ernest Jones, a biographer of Freud.
It is reported that Freud waged an inner battle about the pros and cons of parapsychology. But, in 1921, when Freud was invited to join the advisory council of the American Psychical Institute, he allegedly wrote, in response to the invitation:
"I am not one of those who, from the outset, disapprove of the study of so-called occult psychological phenomena as unscientific, as unworthy or even dangerous. If I were at the beginning of a scientific career, instead of, as now, at the end of it, I would perhaps choose no other field of work, in spite of its difficulties." (THE LIFE AND WORK OF SIGMUND FREUD, New York, 1961)
Freud later denied writing the letter, but Nador Fodor, a psychoanalyst and psychical researcher, had retained a copy of it, proving it authentic.
The dawn of the 70’s held forth the opportunity for students and researchers of the paranormal to gain acceptance into the heretofore tightly shut confines of "respectable" scientific endeavors.
The American Association accepted the Parapsychological Association, an international professional society for the study of parapsychology, as an affiliate organization for the Advancement of Science on December 30, 1969.
This prestigious affiliation did not, however, dissuade the debunkers of psychic abilities and/or investigations.
Further evidence of parapsychology’s overdue entry into respectability: "Not the least among the disciplines to which medical men have contributed is the science of parapsychology. In fact, the medical implications of parapsychology have increased to the point where the overlapping fields of medicine and parapsychology constitute the distinct entity of medical parapsychology—" (Medical Parapsychology, Carrol B. Nash, PARAPSYCHOLOGICAL REVIEW)
The attitudes most take when considering psychic phenomena can be called, at the very least, stubbornly shortsighted.
Such "respectable scientific endeavors" may be accepted into professional scientific associations -- but they unfortunately remain, in the minds of the masses, in the realm of nonsense.
There are, again unfortunately, many that consider themselves well educated and open-minded and yet refuse to give parapsychology the time, thought and eventual acceptance it deserves.
Not all countries share our self-inflicted myopic outlook. In the 1960’s when the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place:
" — something unusual actually was happening in Russia (at the time, still the U.S.S.R.) — we were reading how top-caliber Soviet scientists had already made significant breakthroughs in psychic research — " (PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES BEHIND THE RED CURTAIN, Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder)
It seems an odd twist of predestination to realize that one of most spectacular psychic scandals infused the paranormal with – if not total and unequivocal acceptance – resurgence in interest.
The scandal broke in 1995 when our government admitted that the Pentagon, for at least 20 years, had been involved in psi experiments. Such experiments went so far as to include the use of psychics as spies.
The former USSR had made such information about their countries available much earlier. It now seems there was no "psychic gap" between our former enemies and us.
Data on psi has been gathered and published since 1882. Interest in it is something else, it seems, that ebb and flow, yin and yang guide. The theory and study of psychic phenomena suffers setbacks and fades to a remote corner in mortal’s minds, only to eventually re-emerge.
In 1922 Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, gave a lecture on spiritualism. Seated in the audience were a husband and wife, Joseph and Louisa Rhine. They were so enthralled with Mr. Doyle’s speech that they promptly retired from their careers in botany and opened the Rhine Center. In their new roles of psychic investigators, they set up controlled experiments, and kept careful notes on statistics.
They decided to call themselves parapsychologists.
The title stuck and endures to this day.
"I don’t believe in psi," a parapsychologist at the Rhine Center is quoted as saying, "It’s not a matter of belief. It’s a matter of data."
