The guardian at the border between everyday reality and the Other Side was called Hermes by the Greeks. He was the God of the Alchemists, a notorious trickster god, whose handiwork shows up in many paranormal encounters. Why should trickery be part of the paranormal? Because doubt and suspicion hinder the production of psychic phenomena, and sometimes we have to be tricked into accepting them. Parapsychologists recognize two other factors working against these events. One is Witness Inhibition, the reaction of fear, shock and denial when one actually sees a paranormal event. Deep inside few of us really want to confront a ghost, UFO, levitating objects, or some kind of other spooky poltergeist effect. The other hindrance to spontaneous paranormal activity is called Ownership Resistance. Thats the fear that we might ourselves in some way actually be responsible for the phenomena. We just cant take that pressure. Our egos collapse entirely or balloon up and we start thinking were the Chosen Ones. On the other hand, expectation, the firm belief that somethings about to happen, facilitates the production of paranormal events. Thats why seances work, because everyone gathers in expectation and are able to avoid any responsibility by directing their requests to the table or some discarnate entity. That’s why the rumor of UFOs can cause a whole flap of genuine sightings. In fact, if we have this sense of expectation and have set up things so we lack direct responsibility, its not even necessary to have an outside presence at work. The Russians actually incorporated trickery into their efforts to train psychokinetic mediums in the 1980s, after the discovery of Nina Kulagina. The common housewife could move all kinds of objects by concentrating on them - from match boxes and cigar tubes to laser beams. But it was a tremendous physical exertion. Her heart rate climbed to 240 beats per minute and her blood sugar rose dangerously high. Eventually, she was forced by ill health to stop her demonstrations. In any case, the Russians got to study her for twenty years. They filmed her, poked her, probed her, x-rayed her, and exposed her to powerful electromagnetic fields, and were totally convinced she was genuine. Before long, the Russians were envisioning a whole army of Kulaginas. One program that produced many successes was under the direction of physicist Victor Adamenko. He began by teaching volunteers to move Styrofoam cups and packing peanuts on top of a Plexiglas table using common electrostatic effects. Theyd rub their hands on wool sweaters then as they brought their hands near the Styrofoam objects, the objects would dance across the table. This went on regularly over many, many sessions. Then, one day, Adamenko would ground the subjects so that there would be no chance of electrostatic discharge. But some of the volunteers still moved the objects and advanced to even heavier targets. Physical phenomena have also been deliberately created in more traditional seances. In fact, in 1974, a group of eight people at the New Horizons Research Center in Toronto were able to manifest a completely made-up entity during a series of seances. Their initial attempts to produce effects by meditating had failed, but they found success by directing their efforts toward an imaginary spirit they named Philip. That relieved any of the individuals of direct responsibility. The fictitious spirit began by communicating through table rapping, and within months the table itself was levitating as well as objects placed on it. Clinical psychologist Kenneth Batcheldor had gotten similar results with a group in Britain. Other groups found that having a designated cheater, someone to get the ball rolling by making knocking sounds or hitting the table leg, sped up the process. Using stress gauges and other instrumentation, scientists were able to differentiate fake movements and document genuine paranormal activity. But in all these cases, within a few sessions of a dramatic event such as levitation, the phenomena lessened as the participants started suffering from anxiety over what was going on. For this reason, modern research into psychokinesis concentrates on smaller phenomena that can be tightly controlled and monitored without this Witness Inhibition or Ownership Resistance being factors. Our own psychokinetic medium, the controversial spoonbender Uri Geller, sometimes resorted to tricks to get people to suspend their beliefs so his powers would work. But his abilities have been proven genuine in scores of tightly controlled scientific studies that involve metal bending, telepathy, and even dematerialization. Today, Geller lives in Britain and is rich from using his psychic powers to locate resources for oil and mining companies. But when he was in his twenties, he was not above cheating if his powers failed him. I’ve seen this in other cases too. Tina Resch, the Columbus, Ohio, teenager who was the center of poltergeist activity in 1984, was once caught tugging on a lamp cord, but she produced an amazing array of genuine PK effects in front of dozens of reporters and under tightly controlled conditions at the Psychical Research Institute.
Posted on: Sat, 13 Sep 2014 22:08:47 +0000
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