Throughout human history, people have believed that beyond their real world of the five senses – sight, hearing, taste, smell and feeling – there is a realm not governed by ordinary rules of nature. It goes against our scientific thinking. As we have no solid proof of another realm, we are rather sceptical about unexplained phenomena.
Nothing remains static and everything is in a flux. Today, modern scientific methods have been adopted to analyse and understand such strange phenomena in the world. Scientists are probing the reality of telepathy, clairvoyance and other feats performed using psychic powers. Sir Cyril Burt, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at London University said, “It would be easy to compile a long list of eminent physicists, biologists and neurophysicists who take an active interest in parapsychology. In the universities of many countries, there are now departments regularly engaged in psychical research.”
Fuzzy world of the occult
Parapsychology has been defined as a designation of hypotheses and concepts pertaining to psychic events whose explanation lacks strictly scientific grounding and to which psychologists primarily assign so-called extrasensory perception, i.e. reception of information otherwise than by the sense organs known to science, for instance through telepathy or clairvoyance.
Scientists seem to have taken a new interest in the fuzzy world of the occult. This is not surprising because higher mathematics and particle physics are sliding into the fantastic world of phenomena.
They include “antimatter, five dimensional universe and electrons which move backward in time.” Although scientists do not fully endorse clairvoyance and telepathy, they have to agree that there can be something out there still unexplained scientifically. This new study is called parapsychology.
The existence of another reality was first acknowledged by Hans Bender, a German physician and psychologist. He did his experiments at his Institute for border areas of Psychology and Mental Hygiene at the University of Freiburg.
According to him, the other reality is not something supernatural although we cannot explain it fully. The psychokinesis or ‘PK’ is the study of abnormal motion of objects.
The strange case of Karl Bauer, 16, is a classic example of PK. In 1967, he was employed at a glassware store in Hamburg. When he assumed duties, glasses and dishes crashed to the floor without any reason. As the police could not find the cause, the management asked Bauer to leave the establishment.
When he left, the glass breakage stopped. Bender sent Bauer as an apprentice to a carpenter. There again strange things began to happen. Solid hooks supporting electric cables started loosening. Then Bender and his team fixed two strong hooks in the concrete walls and put Bauer at a distance. Again the hooks became loose. Bender could not explain how the screws got loose. It was called another instance of PK activity.
In another interesting case, light bulbs popped inexplicably in the office of Siegfried Adam, a lawyer in Rosenheim. The event also took place in 1967. In addition to the electric bulbs, the office telephone system began to malfunction. At times, all the four office phones started ringing simultaneously.
Electricians and telephone repairmen could not explain what had happened. As a last resort, Bender was summoned.
He discovered that the strange phenomenon occurred only when a particular employee was present. The employee – Annemarie Schaberl – was found to be the cause. Bender found her to be a girl oppressed by her father and her work. He said, “Unhappy youngsters can somehow liberate their pent-up energy to relieve inner tension.”
Another strange phenomenon is poltergeist which means “noisy and mischievous spirit.” The activities include wanton destruction of objects, shifting and hiding them elsewhere. Sometimes, objects are made to hang in the midair.
The centre of such activities is thought to be troubled adolescence. When Brigitte attained puberty, stones began to penetrate her parents’ house. However, doors and windows remained intact. Toys began to fly around her room and her clothes appeared in different places.
While Bender’s team was observing all the strange phenomena, Brigitte said she heard her kitten mewing. Bender’s coat was found outside the front door.
Nobody knew how it happened. Bender always wondered how such strange phenomena took place. He wanted to know who or what produced the energy to move objects from one place to another.
Physicist Helmut Schmidt of the Institute for Parapsychology in Durham, North Carolina, also tried to solve the mystery using the laws of physics.
His curiosity in parapsychology was aroused by Dr J.B. Rhine’s psychokinesis experiments. Rhine found that some people could actually control things at their will. According to the laws of probability, this could not be due to chance. He concluded that the test subjects were mentally affecting the flow of electrons. However, such conclusions go against the laws of physics.
Science fiction
All the experiments and conclusions have no effect on those who do not believe in parapsychological phenomena. They say they read such events only in science fiction. Whatever that may be, scientific experiments suggest that human mind can affect the flow of electrons.
According to research done in Russia, certain people have the ability to make objects slide around on a table top. Matches, match-boxes, pieces of plastic responded to Nina Kulagina’s will power. There is a movie of Nina at work showing how she does such strange acts.
Another area of parapsychology is Extra Sensory Perception, popularly known as ESP. It is not only the most misunderstood faculty of man, but also the most neglected.
There are some people who are not bothered to develop their psychic gifts. Psychic perception is a natural ability not confined to a handful of people.
We all have it because psychic ability is of the psyche or soul. According to Jaime T. Licauco, an authority on the subject, psychic ability is an awareness that does not pass through the intellect which has often become the stumbling block in reaching our higher self.
There are many examples of ESP application. In 1985, a man reported that his wife lost her diamond from her wedding ring. In desperation he tried using his ESP in willing a colony of red ants to find it. After nine days of intense communication, he recovered the diamond.
The ants had placed it on top of a sand pile. In “Ripley’s Believe it or Not,” a popular television series, showed a man who could talk to animals via telepathy. Pet owners brought their animals to him and they told the psychic how they felt.
According to Bender, more experiments need to be done in parapsychology. He hopes that its challenges for science will lead to a better understanding of man and his relationship with the universe.