By Anthony North
Psychokinesis, or PK, is the supposed ability of the mind to directly affect, or change, matter. Best known as Uri Geller?s supposed ability to bend spoons, much research has been done into the subject.
Rex Stanford applied his Psi-Mediated Instrumental Response model to PK in action. By this he meant that things can happen which are not obviously PK, but could be, with us involuntarily having an effect in the world at large.
TYPES OF PK
Typical was the case of the woman who was in debt and was thinking of getting a loan. Going to the telephone to ring the bank, it wouldn?t work, and continued not to work until she managed to think out an alternative strategy.
Then there was the man who?s invalid carriage broke down at a busy crossroads. It?s a good job it did. If he?d carried on the out of control lorry that sped past would have killed him.
Were these cases of the person exerting mind over matter? 0r are we dealing with simple coincidence? Much research has been done to try and find out if PK exists. Experiments fall into two categories.
These are searching for Micro PK and Macro PK. The former involves repetitive tests to identify a statistical bias above chance suggestive of PK, whilst the latter concerns organised attempts to produce observable PK in action.
THE MICRO MODEL
It was JB Rhine who began formal tests on the subject when he met a gambler who claimed to exert mind power to influence the fall of dice. For many years in the 1930s he tested many people, gaining a slight, but regular, statistical bias above chance. However, there was a problem in that the tests could not take out the natural weight differences of various sides of dice.
In the 1960s American physicist Helmut Schmidt tackled this problem by developing an electronic coin flipper controlled by the random decay of radioactive particles. This method was truly random and he used subjects to attempt to influence whether the coin would fall heads or tails. Again, a slight, but regular, bias above chance was achieved.
The latest PK tests, ongoing for two decades are those of rocket-propulsion scientist Robert Jahn, working from Princeton University. Working with a small team - the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, or PEAR - he has developed dozens of PK tests, including an electrical diode which produces truly random bursts of white noise with a positive or negative value. Can people affect which value will be emitted? Again, Jahn has shown a consistent bias above chance.
To the sceptic, such persistent bias above chance must have another, as yet unknown, but more rational explanation. And anyway, they say, the effect, if actually existing, is so slight that it has little worth in a scientific sense.
Hence, with such a negative attitude, the continued attempts to show bias suggestive of PK is pointless. But has research into Macro PK been more successful?
THE MACRO MODEL
In 1961 the Society for Research into Rapport and Telekinesis, or SORRAT, was set up in Rollo, Missouri. Some dozen people would simply meet in a room, chat happily and attempt to produce PK. One member, Joseph Mangini, perfected the trance and soon rapping phenomena occured. By 1965, the group claimed to levitate a small table.
Eventually, researcher William Cox devised a large glass box, hermetically sealed, with objects inside, and coffee grounds covering the bottom. Known as the ?mini lab?, SORRAT began to place all their attention on the box. On a regular basis, objects moved, the coffee grounds actually disturbed. On one occasion, a stylus made impressions on a piece of carbon paper under it. To this day, various groups are having various amounts of success with mini labs.
A further rather sensational test became known as the Philip Experiment. In the early 1970s a Dr Owen and his wife, Iris, gathered together a small group from the Toronto Society of Psychical Research to produce an entity. Devising the fictitious character of a 17th century English aristocrat, including a history, a picture and the name, Philip, they began to meet in light hearted fashion to conjure him up. Eventually they produced raps and developed a code for yes and no.
As the experiment continued, the raps confirmed the group was talking to Philip. And as time passed, the small table they sat around manifested the ?character? of Philip, jumping up and down as they sang songs and at one point the table chased Dr Owen out of the room.
WHAT?S IT ALL ABOUT?
The sceptic?s answer to Table-Philip, and the mini-lab, is simple. Fraud or delusion. Yet this is understandable. Science does not just deal with data, but also theory to rationalise the data. And it is this - theory - which seems to be lacking in the subject. Basically, how CAN psychokinesis exist? A hint to a possible ?mechanism? behind psychokinesis is given by quantum theory.
Fundamental to quantum theory is the fact that the particle exists in a state of uncertainty and probability. In its natural state a particle is undefined. Somewhere along the line, some magic occurs which turns this undefined existence into a real, observable reality. This ?magic? is theoretically believed to be the act of observation. It seems that the act of observation defines the universe.
An extension of this is to theorise that it is the act of observation which plays the superior role. Only by observing - only by an interplay between the particle and a consciousness capable of observing it - can the universe come into being. As such, consciousness plays a role defining the world.
WHAT IS CONSCIOUSNESS?
A further avenue of theorising is to discuss what is mind? To the reductionist, mind is all down to chemical processes in the brain. However, if the act of observation is essential to defining what the universe is, then who was observing before brains were around?
To me, and many other theorists, ?mind? is not in the brain. Rather the brain is simply a receptor to co-ordinate mind with the body. The thing we actually call mind is fundamental to the universe. What we call our personal mind is simply a lower level of this universal consciousness.
Such a view answers the ?observer? problem prior to there being brains. But in placing mind as one with the universe, then we must ask just what is being observed? For it allows for the possibility that our observation of the universe is a concensual mind-construct in itself. Basically, it is because as a species we have created it as it is.
THE REAL MATRIX?
Lovers of ?The Matrix? will feel at home with such a possibility. Basically, the universe we observe becomes a holographic delusion. And as such, can bend to our changing view of what the universe is. Hence, PK could well be a simple matter of short-circuiting the delusion.
Of course, this is all very speculative, and there is no way, at the moment, to prove it. But maybe this is because we live in a scientific world, where the scientific concensus of a hard, material world holds sway.
And in a way, maybe this is just as it must be. For if the idea holds any degree of credibility, then a changing concensus could make the universe pliable to our whims. And then, we would not be humans, but gods.
http://beyondtheblog.wordpress.com/2008 ... oft-world/
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