BLOG 20

BLOG 20/

     This is a summary of a talk I gave at Leeds in September 2016, to the 40^th Annual Conference of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR – London)

BRIGHT FUTURE FOR PSI? – THROUGH PHYSICS AND PHENOMENOLOGY

    That psi research hasn’t really succeeded very much can hardly be denied. (1)   And this also applies to parapsychology, where – as B Carr pointed out at the April Study Day – there are 99 Ph.Ds in Britain but with little to show for it all.

    So here I will show how much stronger progress can result from a symbiosis of physics and phenomenology, two topics highlighted at the recent April Study Day.  (2)  For when these are combined with the primary tools of science – clear observation, accurate description and language, parsimony, pragmatisn -– psi  readily clarifies into one easily understood, fairly reproducible, and potentially very useful phenomenon.

ONE LARGE CURRENT CRISIS IN PHYSICS

    Taking physics first, one large current problem there is the ‘real nature’ of time.  So much is evident from various recent books and special issues devoted to this topic.   Or, as Scientific American states:   “There’s a hole at the heart of physics, and it’s all to do with the nature of time” (3)

    Broadly this crisis in time understanding comes down to a tripartite rift - between Relativity Theory (RT), Quantum Theory (QT), and everyday notions of temporality.  For each assigns different and conflicting  properties to what is meant by time.

    The RT suggestion is therefore that people (somehow?) “pass by time~ - instead of their more egocentric notion that (somehow?) “time passes by” themselves. (4).  The great psycho-physical problem is then how to reconcile this latter subjective notion (which assumes an open future, free will etc.) with the objective RT world-picture. 

    This problem has prompted various eminent physicists to query:  “Why can’t we remember the future?” – because RT’S time symmetry seems to suggest that we ought to be able to. (5)

    But, since ‘re’ means ‘again’ and ‘future’  implies ‘not yet’, this common higher-physicist question is just a confused oxymoron.  It’s better rephrased with the neologism pre-call as first suggested by me long ago (6).  So that “Why can’t we pre-call the future? - much as we can re-call the past” is a more reasoned restatement of the same idea. 

    Considering this question, we can usefully contemplate Einstein’ advice to  “Sit down before reality, like a little child ”  Whereupon the simplest - and far from facile - answer could be “Perhaps because people have never really tried so far ?”   Due to their wholly unchecked Prime Assumption that such must be impossible!

PSI IS TIME-RELEVANT

    Whereupon psi grows potentially crucial to this higher physics scene.  For - as again I’ve shown long ago - common psi manifestations (‘precognition’, ‘telepathy’, ‘clairvoyance’, ‘remote-viewing’, ‘ESP’) – are all most simply construed as situational variants of a highly repressed pre-call capability.  All seem to afford knowledge of one’s personal future, and much as episodic memory functions towards the past. (7)

    Very careful observation of the human condition therefore suggests that psi may occur as a highly significant (but strongly censored)  future-oriented, anomaly of subjective time - - and with ca. 10^-8 relative frequency.  So affording partial time symmetry with the more frequent, past-oriented, ‘re-call’ process. 

DISCIPLINED PHENOMENOLOGY IS ESSENTIAL FOR PSI LEARNING

    At this point also phenomenology enters in.  For psi seems to manifest most during low-noise states of mental quietude.

    And conversely manifests less during opposite (and more frequent) high-noise episodes.

    Wherefore the route to deliberate psi learning then grows clear. This merely requires due appreciation of the pre-call process.   Followed by deliberate, disciplined, and repeated attempts at replicating that psi-conducive attitude of mental quietude.   Plus also an even more deliberate minimisation of its opposites.

    To Husserl’s original idea of phenomenology (‘the examination and description of internal states’) must therefore be added deliberate manipulation of the same.

    This process can also be tailored to any reasoned ‘guessing’ mode.  As again I’ve often reported elsewhere, it’s quite simple to learn pre-call (roughly correct ‘guessing’) with cards, roulette, 3-digit numbers, RNGs either electronic or quantum, etc.  (All fundamentally different processes)

    For beginners a reasonable target would be .75 scoring in a binary (red-or-black?) situation - after 10 weeks of effort involving 100 hours and 25,000 individual trials. (8)

    Throughout a regular schedule of many thousand such hours by me, pre-call has always served as a reliable operational guide. Advanced psi also yields many quite unexpected secondary findings, which further suggest that it really is a time-inverted version of episodic memory.

    Though well supported by some dozen others who’ve tried out such learning so far, these first reports of mine, on the new psychological territory of subjective time-future, can hardly be seen as wholly definitive.  They’re more akin to those early reports on the Americas, brought back by the first explorers after 1492. 

STRONG PROGRESS QUITE FEASIBLE

    What’s required next is more detailed and extensive measurement by others, before the full outline of this new mental skill – or the territory of subjective time-future - can grow more completely clear.  Though here I believe that my initial reports, on pre-call’s  overall topography, will prove at least 90% reliable.

    Three major features should also be highlighted at this point.  First is my finding that individual QT events are just as predictable as say a roulette ball. (10)

    Second is the rather startling manner in which RT seems to apply to everyday living, whereby it emerges as the prime arbitrer of all time.

    Thus sealing over that tripartite rift in current time comprehension I’ve outlined earlier.   There’s also the very real possibility of useful applications, of which perhaps more anon.

    Meantime it remains for suitable competents to follow through on the pre-call paradigm, so escalating the currently denied and derided psi faculty to much higher status in the greater science world…..

1/ D. West – JSPR – Oct 2012

2/ J. Poynton – On Phenomenology ; B.Carr – On Time ; SPR Study Day – April 2016

3/ Sean Carroll  - From Eternity to Here  - 2010 ; Lee Smolin – Time Reborn  - 2014;     

     New Scientist - October 4 2011;  Scientific American - Spring 2012 - A question of Time -           2012 

4/ Bradford Skow – Objective Becoming - 2015

5/ e.g.  Stephen Hawking - Brief History of Time – 1988, p144.

6/ Sean O’Donnell - Parascience Conf. - London 1974.

7/              “                Proc. SPR Conference - York 2014

9/             “                Future, Memory, and Time - Ebook 2013

10/ Helmudt Schmidt  - J.Parapsychology – 33- p199