Consensual Reality and Psychokinetic Safeguards

The notion of consensual reality is popular in some metaphysical and philosophical circles. The basic idea is that reality is the product of the consensus of the minds experiencing it. Inertia and gravity are things that most people will agree about the existence of. If you put something down it will stay there until something moves it. Gravity constantly pulls things down. These are pretty basic truths. The question that consensual reality brings up is "Do gravity and inertia work because we believe they do?" An even deeper question is "Are gravity and inertia so inescapable simply because we believe they are?"

I'm not trying to touch too deeply on consensual reality but it brings me around to psychokinesis and other paranormal events that could be the product of psychokinetic processes. Are psychokinetic feats so difficult because we've been conditioned all our lives to believe that they should be? Does the consensus have anything to do with this? I bring all of this up because in my own PK experiments with moving objects I've noticed that once I make a little progress in making something move it suddenly gains a mind of its own and fights me. Pinwheels that will rotate one way suddenly decide to do the opposite of what I will them to do when I decide I want them to spin clockwise instead of counterclockwise. They will just stop dead or wobble or move in little half-rotations back and forth like they can't decide what to do.

Psychokinesis is no easy feat but manifesting small effects is not as difficult as one would think. I feel that this may be because one eventually thinks it's not that difficult. You come up with a neat visualization or get really psyched up and you make it budge a little. That little budge makes you believe enough until you're making the pinwheel do rotations. Eventually you can make it move under glass and that erases all the doubts that it could just be a draft or the heat of your hands. Then the question becomes "Where do I go from here?" and it usually leads to trying to move bigger stuff that has more inertia and more friction acting on it. This is where I usually hit my roadblock and get bored.

Back to consensual reality. Is the shared believe that heavy things should be hard to move what stops us from being able to do it? Can we overcome this sort of passive shared belief with an active personal one? That seems to be the mechanism at work with PK acting on a pinwheel. It is an act of sheer will in the face of everything we've been taught to believe about reality that takes us over that first hurdle. Perhaps that pinwheel enters our personal sphere of reality enough for us to be able to manipulate it free of the constraints of the consensus. Maybe our continued attention, intention, and interest pulls that pinwheel into our sway and away from the collective sway of other minds saying it should sit still no matter how hard we stare at it. Could we overcome bigger obstacles with more time and effort? If you kept pushing this notion of personal reality could you eventually do more?

Maybe impressive psychokinesis is hard on purpose. Maybe consensual reality is a safeguard for all reality. I mentioned earlier that even after I succeed in making the pinwheel move, at a certain point it rebels against me. It moves but with a seeming mind of its own. Maybe it's trying to get back into that consensual equilibrium. If our minds are so powerful that they contribute to the rules of reality then maybe reality needs a safeguard. If everyone could manipulate matter however they wanted with just their thoughts then imagine what kind of chaos there would be. Or what if just thinking something caused it to happen with no intent on your part? You have a fleeting image of someone being pushed down the stairs and then they go tumbling. What if you didn't want that to happen but it did anyway just because you thought it? Do you see how distressing that could be? We would have to have supreme control of our thoughts and impulses.

Maybe this is why it's so hard to use psychokinesis. Perhaps this is why it's necessary to build extreme intent to perform PK. If just thinking something caused it to happen we would all be in a lot of trouble. Consensual reality could be helping keep us all safe in this way by building and enforcing the rule that things just don't happen because you think them. This is a good thing.

It seems the key to psychokinetic ability is riding that line between personal intent and consensual safeguard. We can only push on that barrier for so long until it seems to push back. Maybe this is how uncontrolled psychokinetic activity happens, things that are often blamed on poltergeists? It's just a thought. All of this is just conjecture. I've been thinking on it deeply enough lately that I thought I would share it. Hopefully I've been clear enough that this makes some amount of sense.

The ESP debate rages on.

ESP Report Sets Off Debate on Data Analysis

I think that this is just another example of finding any possible way to mitigate the impact of a study that suggests that ESP exists.  If the protocols can't be attacked then attack the data analysis.  When attacks on the data analysis fail, the critics will inevitably cry fraud.  This is not the first time this has happened and most likely won't be the last.  This said, it kind of makes you wonder about all the statistics thrown around in more accepted scientific fields.

In the constant effort to hunt down bias in results, critics might consider the obvious bias against ESP in the first place.  I don't think that ESP research has a fair shot under the best of circumstances, so it really won't surprise me when Daryl Bem's research is torn apart and kicked aside like so many papers before it.

Bem's results have allegedly failed replication so far which is, again, not surprising.  This happens whenever positive ESP results receive a lot of public attention.  There is usually very little discussion of these failed replications though.  One of the attempts to replicate this particular study wasn't even a true replication attempt as it did not follow Bem's protocol.  This, again, is common when it comes to ESP studies under scrutiny.

Keeping all of this in mind, if we ever hope to have any scientific recognition of psychic abilities then we need to stop relying on statistics that can be made to say whatever each particular side wants them to say.  All this gets us is endless battles over statistical analysis and proper interpretation of results.  If we really want recognition and acceptance then parapsychology needs to focus on more observable effects.  The best that I can think of would be macro-psychokinesis.  That is, the movement of objects by mental means.

Most, if not all, demonstrations of psychokinesis on a larger-than-statistical level have been decried as hoaxes with various conjurers stepping forward to demonstrate how they can do the same thing through parlor tricks.  Some performers, demonstrating what is ostensibly a psychokinetic effect, have been later exposed as frauds.  A small number, however, have not.  One such case would be that of D.D. Home, whom I have written about before.

The thing about psychokinesis is that most psychokinetic feats can indeed be duplicated by parlor tricks.  That is just the nature of the beast.  However, I think it would be foolish to proclaim that the PK feats are tricks when there's no evidence to support that claim in a particular case.  Just because something can be duplicated by trickery does not mean that it is impossible by less-deceptive means.  When one cries fraud the burden of proof is theirs.  All of this in mind, I still think that demonstrating psychokinesis will be the thing that silences the detractors.  It may take many years of laboratory study, but I think it's the best bet.

My message then is that anyone that wants psychic abilities to be taken seriously should set about developing their abilities to the highest level possible.  It is going to take direct observation of psychic functioning to get it viewed as a real phenomenon.  Even then you should expect fire from all sides.  There are people that won't be convinced no matter what.  Many psychics and researchers alike have been permanently disgraced because there was too much doubt cast on them, too much ambiguity in the results they produced.  Some just weren't vigilant enough in examining what they had to offer before offering it, or they tried to augment it with parlor tricks.  My advice, then, is try to prove it at your own risk.

Parapsychology going mainstream? - My previous post about this very topic.
Journal’s Paper on ESP Expected to Prompt Outrage - More on the debate and "outrage."

Poltergeists: Spirits of the Dead or Uncontrolled Psychokinesis?

Of all ghostly phenomena, poltergeists are the most startling.  Objects move, appear and disappear, and the poltergeist may even lash out at people violently.  The popular notion of the poltergeist is reflected in the meaning of its name:  "noisy spirit."  There are some that believe that poltergeist activity may actually come from a living human being.  How is that possible?  Spontaneous recurrent psychokinesis (RSPK).

The trend in parapsychology in recent years has been to lean toward the RSPK explanation for poltergeist activity.  This makes some sense as poltergeist activity is commonly focused on one person, the activity only present in their vicinity.  This explanation proposes that some individuals, when under emotional distress, will release that tension through psychokinesis.  These people are usually completely unaware that they are causing these strange events and many are terrified of what's happening.  This leads to the belief in a noisy spirit haunting the person or place.

This implies that people are capable of amazing feats of psychokinesis when under stress, but they are not in conscious control of what happens.  This explanation also requires no idea of an afterlife to explain poltergeist activity.  Poltergeist activity, however, is only one small part of the greater realm of ghosts and hauntings.

Then again, maybe both the spirits-of-the-dead and the RSPK theories are accurate.  If a deceased person is able to perform the seemingly impossible feats of a poltergeist then why wouldn't a living person be able to do the same?  I have no preference, myself.  I think that one is just as likely as the other and that they are not mutually exclusive.  I am convinced of the human capacity for psychokinesis and I also find it likely that we continue on in some form after death.  I hope that future research will shed light on both of these subjects.

If you would like to read more about ghosts, poltergeists, and the quest for answers then please see this article.

Spoon (and Fork) Bending

Anyone that's interested in psychokinesis is aware of the idea of bending a spoon with your mind.  This has become a stereotype of ESP and PK research/ability.  When I was starting out with psi I tried my hand at bending cutlery using the instructions at forkbend.com, back when it was called fork-you.com.  I'll let you peruse the site and decide whether you want to try it or not.  I just want to leave some pictures of my results; maybe you'll find them motivating.  The three pictures below are of my first successful fork-bending.

The following three pictures are of my first successful spoon-bending.

These two are by far my best attempts.  I've had limited success since but I don't really play with this anymore.  Once I accomplished it a couple of times, I got bored.  In case you want to skip right to the chase, here is the beginning of the how-to at forkbend.com.  Note that I did not do any of this in a group setting.  While it may be easier (as the site suggests), it is not necessary to be in a group the first time.  Good luck!

The Plethora of Kinetic Abilities

If you hang around in psionics-oriented forums and communities for very long you will eventually see such fancy terms as "pyrokinesis" or "electrokinesis" or even "geokinesis."  I can understand the desire to want to differentiate between things that you may be affecting with terms specific to the substance.  However, I think that there comes a certain point when it becomes cumbersome and unnecessary.  All of this is why I prefer the umbrella term of psychokinesis.

Thinking about it logically for a second, all of these abilities consist of you using your mind to control or move something.  This would qualify them all as psychokinesis.  I just don't see the reasoning behind giving a fancy name to every particular way you could possibly use psychokinesis.  In my opinion, if you can move one thing with psychokinesis you should have the same ability to move another substance unless there's some kind of psychological block in place.

Words like "pyrokinesis" are convenient for telling people that you're working on  manipulating fire through psychokinesis.  Terms like "atmokinesis" or "aerokinesis" seem to overlap, as I imagine there would be a lot of air manipulation going on if you were manipulating the atmosphere.  Because of this, I just think that sometimes it's superfluous to use these terms.  I have nothing against people that use these terms, but they probably shouldn't be surprised when others have to ask "What is that?" and the practitioner has to explain it anyway, perhaps defeating the purpose of the specialized term.

In summary, I don't really care much for it.  I prefer to just use the umbrella term of psychokinesis.  I recognize that these designations must be useful to someone though, so to each their own.  I sometimes substitute "telekinesis" for "psychokinesis" when around people that don't know what psychokinesis means.

SLIders and Electric/Magnetic People

A strange and somewhat recent phenomenon that I sometimes see come up is that of SLIders.  The SLI stands for "street lamp interference."  People that are SLIders report street lamps spontaneously going out when they pass near them.  This apparently happens so often that it leads them to believe it's something about them rather than just coincidence.  Some SLIders even report that watches stop and credit cards have their magnetic strips erased while in the SLIder's possession.

I can't help but wonder if perhaps this phenomenon isn't something that has existed since ancient times, going unnoticed because of the lack of electrical contraptions being literally everywhere.  Tales of electric or magnetic people are not uncommon and in my mind these phenomena are very similar to psychokinesis.  An example is that of Jennie Morgan of Sedalia, Missouri who in the 1890s was so highly charged with electricity that sparks would jump from her to nearby objects, animals would avoid her, and people that touched her were often knocked unconscious by her charge.  A similar case is that of Caroline Clare of London, Ontario.  She became charged after falling ill in 1877 and objects that came in contact with her became magnetized.  Clare was also capable of sticking cutlery to herself similar to some modern reports of "magnetic people" with the difference being that she needed another person to pull the objects off of her.

Over the years many people, both male and female, young and old, have been studied because of their extreme electromagnetic properties.  I find it peculiar how many of these cases at first resemble classic poltergeist activity and eventually develop into what would seem to be psychokinetic or telekinetic powers.  I think that this implies a connection between psychokinesis and electromagnetism.  Of course, looking into the data available on both psychokinesis and electromagnetism, one encounters a number of difficulties with this explanation.  The primary problem being that it seems impossible for people to emit, let alone control, that much electrical energy.

It's interesting to note that some SLIders report that their incidents occur during times of stress or emotional upset.  In the classic cases of electric people and magnetic people we find those that acquired these abilities after falling severely ill and then recovering.  These correlations, while interesting, do very little to reveal the secret of what's actually going on here.  This problem is made even more unassailable by the usual difficulty of these phenomena typically being beyond the conscious control of the person.  This obviously makes it very hard to study under laboratory conditions.

I like to think that I've had some SLIder experiences of my own, but they are sporadic and could very well be coincidences.  This doesn't deter me from trying to figure the whole thing out though.  If you've ever had a SLIder experience let me know in the comments.  Your input is welcome.

If you believe in telekinesis raise my hand.

Telekinesis (or psychokinesis, as I prefer to call it) is, in my opinion, the holy grail of psychic ability.  There has been a lot more scientific research into extra-sensory perception (ESP) than there has been into psychokinesis (PK).  Most "How To" books on psychic abilities don't even provide a definition of psychokinesis, let alone instructions on how to make progress toward acquiring the ability.  There has been recent work in studying micro-PK, or psychokinesis acting on microscopic (even quantum) systems such as random number generators.  While interesting, these test results are not particularly convincing.  Certainly they are not as convincing as the feats of Russian psychic Nina Kulagina (shown in the video above).  The story of Nina Kulagina is a very interesting one and PK was not her only feat.  It was the one she is most famous for, however.

Accusations of trickery aside, I find cases like Kulagina's to be very convincing and not just because objects are moving.  Physical tests were allegedly done on Kulagina throughout her stint of performing PK and they revealed some very interesting things were occurring with her body.  These things included, but were not limited to, exhaustion, shallow pulse, weight loss during her PK sessions, irregular heart beat, high blood sugar, and a disturbed endocrine system.  It's believed by some that the strain of performing PK so often contributed to her death.  At this point I would like to note that Nina Kulagina is not the only well-known telekinetic.  I mention her here because of her popularity which is perhaps rivaled by only Uri Geller (who's surrounding controversy is an entirely different subject).

Personally, out of all psychic phenomena, I find PK to be the most interesting and ostensibly the easiest to verify.  It seems to me that it should be a lot easier to determine if someone is moving something with their mind or using tricks than if they are reading someone's mind or just making some lucky guesses.  I also find it interesting because it's just damn cool.  To me it seems like telepathy or precognition are relatively benign when compared to the ability to move things around with your mind, even if they are just matchsticks and compasses.

There are many theories about how PK might be possible or how a person may perform it but as you might expect there is no published experimental evidence to support these theories.  None that I'm aware of, anyway.  Any correlations between physical phenomena and psychic activity seem to apply to ESP alone, probably because that seems to be the area of psi research that has the most data.  The only relevant correlation that I'm aware of is produced by Wilkinson and Gauld in their observation that there is a small tendency for the days of onset of poltergeist and haunting cases to coincide with days of higher-than-usual geomagnetic activity.  While incredibly interesting, it is not very enlightening as to what allows for psychokinesis to take place.

So this is the challenge with psychokinesis.  There is no accepted theory and no experimental evidence to back up any one theory.  Most, if not all, demonstrations of psychokinesis are either proven to be frauds or are accused of being frauds because of the distaste for psi in the first place.  Combine this with the lack of funding available for parapsychology research and we have a very complex (and difficult) puzzle.

I happen to believe that many cases of "poltergeist" activity actually emanate from a living human being.  The contemporary term for "poltergeist" activity is "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis" or RSPK.  I think this reflects the change in thinking toward poltergeist activity.  Many cases of alleged poltergeists seem to surround particular people and abate when the psychological issues of these people are resolved or the individuals reach the end of puberty.

Personally, I'm a believer in PK.  I've had enough personal experiences to be convinced of the reality of PK.  This doesn't mean that I'm any closer to solving the riddle of how it works or how to perform it though.  If you are interested in more information about Nina Kulagina or about learning psychic abilities then please see the links below.  Take care until next time, and if you happen to discover the secret to mastering telekinesis do be sure to share it with me in a comment.

More on Nina Kulagina.
A website with many articles related to learning psychic abilities.