Extrasensory Perception

ESP

You meet someone for the first time, and a vibe rings out from deep within you, and suddenly you know without images or words, what kind of person they are. The phone rings and before you answer, or even see the caller ID, you know who it is. You are walking along a dark road when you come to a crossroads, when you look both ways, something ominous warns you from taking the left path over the right, something you can't see, only feel, and you might not understand why.

What is Extra-Sensory Perception (ESP)? What is this part of you that everyone experiences from time to time, in varying degrees, that can gleam information from future events or situations. What informs you of the nature of someone you just met? Or, allows you to know who's calling before one of your five senses can confirm it for you. What sometimes warns you of impending danger before it occurs so you can avoid it? What about ourselves do we not know or fully understand?

ESP is a widely experienced and heavily debated phenomena. We don't understand where it comes from, or what purpose it serves, or how accurate information about the future can be acquired prior to the event itself. Yet at the same time, it occurs enough to not be wholly overlooked either. Another problem that is present, is whether or not this phenomena can even be attributed to something physical within the body.

ESP was often tested using a series of cards called Zener Cards, or now appropriately named, ESP cards. Each card would have 1 of 5 possible symbols on them in a deck of 25 cards. The deck was shuffled, and the experimenter would draw a card, making sure the participant testing for ESP didn't see the card, while they psychically tried to predict the correct symbol on the card. Afterward, the score would be tallied up based on how many of the cards the participant predicted correctly, against how many they got incorrectly.

This test for ESP was developed by J. B. Rhine, who was interesting in psychical research, believing it to be a branch of abnormal psychology, eventually dubbing the phenomena as Parapsychology. He moved to Duke University in the late 1920's and opened a lab dedicated to it's research and hoping to turn ESP into an acceptable field of science. Many students and volunteers were tested for ESP during Rhine's years at Duke university, and in 1940 he co-authored a review of ESP research from over 60 years.

The review included 50 studies, most of which belonged to independent research groups and other universities. The majority of the studies showed significant results regarding ESP, with participants scoring far above chance alone. Interestingly enough, it's not just high scores that generate attention, it is also incredibly low scores that do as well. Scores so low, they are far below chance.

Rhine, among others, began testing to see why some participants would score highly above chance, while others scored far below chance. They found one indicator that produced low scoring was due to boredom. If the participant was tested for too long, the scores would eventually decline. This was believed to be due to a loss of interest. From there the researchers wanted to know just how much of the participants personality played a part in the test results.

Much of the research showed that the subjects attitude played a large role in whether they had a high or low success rate. For instance, those who were shown to believe in ESP, had a greater tendency to produce higher scores then those who did not. Besides belief being a major contributor, other things have shown to aid the effectiveness of ESP, such as creativity, artistic ability, mental and emotional stability, and meditation.

Besides Rhine's Zener card experiments, and others like it, there was also the Ganzfeld Experiment, conducted by Charles Honorton. The ganzfeld experiment is again aimed at testing ESP, but this time more controls are put in place to try and eliminate any flaws in the process. The experiment itself puts a person in a sound proof room that is electromagnetically shielded, the person sits in a chair, with eyes covered, and headphones on that play static for a half an hour. This forces the persons awareness inward.

After a half an hour has passed, a sender outside of the room, observes a randomly chosen target image, who then tries to mentally send this information to the receiver sitting in the shielded room. The receiver verbalizes everything they might see, which is then recorded on tape. Over 350 experiments were conducted between the years 1982 and 1989, where significantly positive results were produced again and again. They also found that belief and attitude affects ESP results just as Rhine did.

Research into ESP is still ongoing, but the field continues to hold promise, despite skeptics appeals. Each day we draw closer and closer to an answer, and thereby closer to the truth, as science is forced to expand to fit the evidence.

ESP has since broadened its definition to fit just about all kinds of psychic abilities and activities. Such as telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance and even telekinesis, but I'll try to cover those later. In the end, if you believe in ESP, it seems the science is on your side!

Hope you enjoyed.

Later!

Psychic Abilities

Psychic Powers

This is mostly a continuation of my previous post on Psychic Phenomena. But I figured I would try to add a more extensive list of psychic abilities, with a brief description.  When it comes to human potential, the possibilities could very well be endless, and the list below may only be the beginning.

ESP

As mentioned in my previous post, ESP (Extrasensory Perception) is an umbrella term describing how one with this ability is able to pick up on additional information beyond the average reach of the traditional five human senses. There are many abilities under this category that I at least attribute to ESP.

Telepathy - The ability to pick up on and/or attune oneself to another persons mind and have access to ‘varying degrees’ of another persons thoughts. I stress varying degrees because it’s not like in the movies where you can hear someone else’s thoughts as if they where verbally speaking them. Some are able to perform this ability to a greater extent then others. My own experience of this is more like very strong impressions on what they are thinking, including sometimes pictures and ideas. Telepathy is not something I’m strong with though.

Empathy - The ability to pick up on and/or attune oneself to another persons emotional state, having access to, again ‘varying degrees’ of another persons emotions. Many people experience empathy on a daily basis. One such example would be, if you’ve ever come home to a loved one, who showed no signs of being in an ill mood, but you could feel it, as if you just knew.  An Empath picks up on another’s emotions. It often impacts their own subconsciously, changing their emotional state to more of the one their picking up on.

Precognition - Known for it’s premonitions, is the ability to see into the future. Precognition is the name of the ability, and Premonitions are the associated name for when one gets a vision of the future. In other words, if one has the ability of precognition, then a vision of the future would be the premonition. Most often coming in the form of dreams, they are often depictions of a coming, future event. Though one can have them when awake, it is less often though.

Retrocognition - Also know as Postcognition, is a lesser known ability related to Precognition, but with a twist, it sees visions of the past.

Clairvoyance - Able to see beyond that which is the normal range of sight. Related to Remote Viewing, has the ability to see and pick up on information about a specific location, person or object. Clairvoyance, like Remote Viewing is something most often done while one is awake, and actively tries to direct ones mind and sight, to a specific location, person or object. But, is not strictly so. Some are able to perform this psychic feat without conscious intent to do so, and will gain information from sight spontaneously.

Clairaudience - Like Clairvoyance, but in this way gain information through sound and hearing. Able to hear outside or beyond that which is the normal range of hearing.

Clairsentience - Like Clairaudience, but in this way gains information through touch and feeling. This psychic ability is featured in the show “The Dead Zone”.  Clairsentience also goes by the name of Psychometry.

Psychic Reading - There are many types of psychic reading, a popular method would be the Tarot Card readings. But, a psychic readings main purpose is to try and divine the future of the individual who is interested in the reading. The Psychic will use one of many different methods in which to obtain the information in question. As mentioned above, Tarot Card Readings are very common, Horoscopes are probably the most common, Astrology, Numerology and even Aura readings are widely used as well.

Psychic Medium - Also known as Mediumship and Channeling, is the ability to communicate with the dead. Often acting as a conduit of sort, or a “middle-man” for the dead and the living. In other words, Psychic Mediums take to the living on behalf of the dead. Often for those interested in contacting a loved-one who has passed on.

If you’ve noticed, the above deal with ESP, and the abilities seem to revolve around receiving information. Those with ESP (which I believe us all to have) are more sensitive to the hidden world around us. Psychic abilities seem to be about “Taking in” this otherwise unobtainable information. When you compare it to five senses, which are Seeing, Hearing, Tasting, Touching and Smelling, they all deal with taking in. But, there are other Psychic Abilities that do the opposite…

Psychokinesis

Psychokinesis, related to Telekinesis by scientific terms, has become an umbrella term in the Psionic Community. Since there are so many of these for smaller, individual aspects of psychokinesis, I will keep the description short.

Telekinesis - The ability to move objects at a distance. There is Micro-Telekinesis, the ability to affect change on a small scale undetectable by the human eye, often on Random Number Generators.  And then there is Macro-Telekinesis, which is the ability to affect change in larger scale like objects which are noticeable by the human eye.

Aerokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Air.

Atmokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Atmosphere.

Biokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Biological Systems.

Chronokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Time.

Cryokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Ice.

Electrokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Electricity.

Geokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Earth.

Hydrokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Water.

Lumokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Light.

Pyrokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Fire.

Telekinesis - The psychic ability to affect and move Objects.

Thermokinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Temperature.

Umbrakinesis - The psychic ability to affect and control Darkness.

Vitakinesis - The psychic ability to promote Healing.

Phew, what a list. I won’t endorse all of these, because, seriously, some sound ridiculous. I think that’s sort of why psionics adopted Psychokinesis as a umbrella term for all these. I also want to state, that these aren’t individual disciplines, but more like titles for aspects of the same ability. So in each one of these you would be performing Psychokinesis, but if you where using it to play with fire, it would be Pyrokinesis, so others would understand in which manner you are using it.

Sorry for using the same words over and over, I’m kind of getting a headache, so I wanted to just quickly write it down (Quick! Get me some Vitakinesis! Sounds almost like a medicine).

Anyways, there’s a bigger list for you. All of these you can learn if you wish to. There are other abilities out there, but I think this list is large enough as it is...

Psychic Phenomena

What are some forms of Psychic Phenomena?

There are many forms of psychic phenomena in the world, as there are many Psychic Abilities. These phenomena have intrigued us all since the very beginning. One of the reasons is as to why it is so popular is, because they keep happening. As well as, they happen to everyone, at least once. I wager though, that most people have a psychic experience everyday, but sometimes it goes unnoticed. People are genuinely intrigued by the mysterious powers of the mind and what potential psychic abilities they might hold, and not know. Some may even fear having a psychic ability that they will never know about or get to experience.

What intrigues me though, isn’t that the mind can do some of these things, but that it can do all of these things. How much of the mind, of our psychic potential, have we not unearthed yet, for our subconscious to keep throwing us these curveballs. If we look at all the mystical abilities the mind seems to hold, you would find the list runs on for a very long time. And yet, in the end, it can be chalked up to a 3 pound lump of wrinkly mass buried in bone. Yet for something that you can hold in your hand, it can do so many thing…

Extrasensory Perception

Extrasensory Perception is the ability to look past what is perceivable by the five normal senses to gather information about something that is often not readily available to you. This phenomena is has gained special attention over the years because of how common it is. A good example of what I’m talking about would be, if you could picture a guy holding a card in his hand of a picture, and a second guy trying to figure out what that picture is while sitting across from him, and the picture is out of view. It is a classic representation of psychic phenomena and is often used by magicians. But it does well to illustrate what I’m talking about. In the scenario above, the second guy is trying to use ESP to gain information about the card.

In the most simplest terms, it’s a prediction. But ESP is far from simple. In fact it can be used for a wider variety of psychic phenomena, such as telepathy.

Telepathy

Telepathy is the ability to read peoples minds. Though, I should note that telepathy in real life is not as clean as Hollywood suggests. You can just hear what people are thinking so clearly it would be no different then if they where talking. But, ESP plays a part here too. You would apply this Extrasensory Perception to the mind of another in order to pick up on what he/she is thinking. Or more accurately, pulling information to getting a better feel or idea of what their thinking.

Clairvoyance

Clairvoyance has many similarities with telepathy, except here you see pictures instead of thoughts. An example of clairvoyance would be if you had a vision of sort of your friend getting pulled over by the cops, only to find out later, that he did. With it you can see events happening that are likely further away then what your 5 senses can pick up. It could even by called remote viewing.

Precognition

Precognition is the ability to see into the future. Here you would use Extrasensory Perception to divine information of things to happen in the future. Many predictions have been made because of Precognition, and today we are looking to Nostradamus’s predictions for the end of the world of sorts described by his writings that we now associate with 2012. But, nevertheless, people use this one fairly often. Especially in business, they try and predict how their business will move and change in the future, among other things.

Psychic Medium

A Psychic Medium or Mediumship (According to Wikipedia) is the ability to communicate with spirits or ghosts. This is obviously not a very common phenomena, but is likely one of the most popular forms of psychic phenomena as many associate psychics with one of a few things, one being, talking with spirits. Many believe a medium is sensitive enough to pick up what a nearby ghost or spirit is saying, and in a session often acts as the middleman or “Medium” (hence the term) for the living and the dead.

Now that Psychic Medium has been brought up, I wanted to share a little story with you about a group of people in the 1970’s known as the Owen Group.

This group of 8 people set out to test if poltergeist phenomena was real or not. Believing that at least some of the phenomena reported was actually a product of victim’s mind. The first created a fictional character by the name of Philip Aylesford, and gave him a complete background and biography. They just about covered every detail including what he looked like.

For a solid year they got together and meditated on him, trying to hone his detail and refine him even more. They where hoping that with his character so complete, they could make contact with him and prove that not all ghost or poltergeist activity was purely spiritual. After that year, they had no luck, and tried something more direct, as they attempted a séance. Sure enough, they began to get a response. There where wrappings on the wall and the table they where at would slide across the room, and Philip would respond to the questions they asked. They even asked detailed questions about his life and he was answer correctly. And yes, he claimed to be Philip.

There is actually footage of it, but I couldn’t find it. But nevertheless, it is food for thought. Could we really dream up a ghost and make it so real that it can move tables and knock on walls? It makes you wonder what psychic powers the mind really holds, doesn’t it?

Anyways, I hope this was interesting for you.