THE PSI

PHENOMENON

SUBMITTED TO: RIDHURAJ DADHWADIA

SUBMITTED BY: DR. SHEETAL YADAV
SUBMITTED ON: 31 st MARCH, 2023

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SCHOOL: SLAS
ENROLLMENT NO: 200266

TABLE OF CONTENTS
PARAPSYCHOLOGY: A BRIEF..................................................................................................................3
SHORT HISTORY.................................................................................................................................3
PSI – WHAT IS IT?...................................................................................................................................4
PSI AND OTHER CONCEPTS....................................................................................................................4
CLAIRVOYANCE..................................................................................................................................4
TELEPATHY.........................................................................................................................................4
SYNCHRONICITY.................................................................................................................................5
INTUITION..........................................................................................................................................5
PSYCHOKENISIS..................................................................................................................................5
NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE.................................................................................................................5
PSI THEORIES.........................................................................................................................................5
SPACETIME THOERIES........................................................................................................................5
MULTIDIMENTIONAL TIME MODELS.............................................................................................5
BRANCHING TIME MODELS...........................................................................................................5
LINEAR TIME MODELS...................................................................................................................5
SIGNAL THEORIES..............................................................................................................................6
PARTICLE THEORIES.......................................................................................................................6
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION....................................................................................................6
BARRIER EXPERIMENTS.................................................................................................................6
“BACKWARD IN TIME” SIGNALS.........................................................................................................6
RETROCAUSAL SIGNALS.................................................................................................................6
OBSERVATIONAL THEORIES...............................................................................................................6
DIVERGENCE PROBLEM.................................................................................................................6
STANFORD’S CONFORMANCE BEHAVIOUR THEORY......................................................................6
COLLECTIVE MIND.............................................................................................................................7
JUNG’S COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS AND SYNCHRONICITY...........................................................7
JAMES’ COSMIC CONSCIOUS.........................................................................................................7
PRICE’S DREAM WORLD.................................................................................................................7
SHIN THEORY.....................................................................................................................................7
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PSI...........................................................................................................7

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PARAPSYCHOLOGY: A BRIEF
Parapsychology is a subfield and the systematic study of various alleged and actual psychological
events, experience and phenomenon encompassing the transfer of some energy or information
which is hard or impossible to describe using the present and normal known scientific laws and data.

There are two main subject area in parapsychology. The study of parapsychology is which focuses on
different types of extrasensory perception. Extrasensory perception refers to suspected awareness
of external experiences through other senses than the regular, normal five senses. The extrasensory
perception is often considered as partially true of has a disputed existence.

Various examples of extrasensory perception are as follows –

1. Telepathy
2. Clairvoyance
3. Precognition
4. Out of body experience
5. Near death experience

The second focus is on various phenomenon such as –

1. Ghosts
2. Mediums
3. Poltergeist
4. Lucid dreams

The field of parapsychology uses scientific and reliable methods in order to test, understand and
discover phenomenon. Regardless of the methods used and strict discipline maintained, various
psychologists all around the world still view this sub field as unscientific.

The reasons for an ever-growing and prevalent suspicion related to this field are as follows –

1. Acceptance of a paranormal experience or event will lead to contradictions and call for
various changes, amendments of the established and old scientific laws and rules or
principles.
2. There is a huge problem of replication of any kind of experience in this field.
3. There are various cases of charlatans who have made the witness body seem weak and non-
trustable.

SHORT HISTORY
Parapsychology is a field which exists way back. The founder of parapsychology is Joseph Banks
Rhine. Joseph Banks Rhine was an American botanist. He and his peers or colleagues were the first
one to carry out series of experiment surrounding extrasensory perception.

He founded the parapsychology lab at the Duke university. He also founded –

1. Journal of parapsychology
2. Foundation for research on nature of man

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 3. Parapsychological association

He also wrote books such as –

1. Extrasensory perception
2. Parapsychology: frontier science of the mind

PSI – WHAT IS IT?

Psi refers to the acclaimed combination of parapsychological traits and functions which includes
extrasensory perception, precognition, etc.

It is also used as a general term referred to frequently by psychologists in this field.

PSI

Extrasensory
Psychokenesis
Perception

Clairvoyance Telepathy

Premonition

Near Death
Intuition
Experience

Synchronicity Second lives

The diagram above shows basic structures and components related and included in psi
phenomenon. The structures are discussed below.

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PSI AND OTHER CONCEPTS
CLAIRVOYANCE
The supposed skill of an individual to be able to witness things far more greater than the usual range
of sight. This ability is organic in nature.

TELEPATHY
Telepathy occurs when there is transmission or communication of any information between two
minds without normal means of transmission present.

SYNCHRONICITY
The appearance of multiple events at once that seem to be meaningfully connected even though
there is no discernible cause and effect between them, such as in rare coincidences or alleged cases
of telepathy. According to Carl Jung, some simultaneous events have importance simply because of
their timing.

INTUITION
Immediate observation or insight, as opposed to deliberate thought or reflection. Alternative
descriptions for intuitions include "quasi-mystical experiences," "products of instinct, feeling,"
"minimal sense impressions," or "the products of unconscious forces."

PSYCHOKENISIS
The alleged capacity to move or transform objects and influence external occurrences using thought
alone. Examples include claims that some psychics have the power to sway random number
generators, control the outcome of a dice throw, or bend metal.

NEAR DEATH EXPERIENCE

Near death experience is a phenomenon that usually occur during the course of a life-threatening
event due to heavy injury, blunt trauma, asphyxia, shock and heart attack, etc.

PSI THEORIES
In this section we are going to ook into various theories related to psi in order to understand the
implications and applications psi phenomenon may have or has on the current scientific pool of
research and data.

SPACETIME THOERIES
To understand psi, many theorists have referred to "warps" in spacetime or even additional
dimensions of spacetime. For instance, it is challenging to account for instances of what appear to
be telepathy between two individuals who are thousands of miles apart on the premise of the
transmission of any known physical signal at such distances.

MULTIDIMENTIONAL TIME MODELS

J. W. Dunne (1938) suggested the existence of additional dimensions of time to explain such
instances of precognition followed by intervention to stop the precognized event from happening.
To "clock" a person's progress on the first, regular dimension of time, Dunne summoned a second
time dimension.

BRANCHING TIME MODELS

In branching time models, it is presupposed that there are numerous potential possibilities at the
"present" time. For instance, in the scenario involving the baby and the chandelier, the baby was

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killed by the collapsing chandelier in one possible future (the one that was foreseen), whereas the
baby was unharmed in a different possible future (the one that actually happened).

LINEAR TIME MODELS

Should one prefer such a pedestrian and colourless approach, it is also possible to account for such
situations with a model that postulates only one time dimension and one future. For instance, one
could merely say that the mother correctly predicted that the chandelier would collapse. Her
prediction that her baby would die was merely incorrect because the death never happened. The
infant was being dramatized to the mother by her unconscious mind as to what would happen if she
didn't remove the child from under the chandelier.

SIGNAL THEORIES
There have been numerous efforts to explain psi phenomena in terms of the exchange of a physical
signal of some kind. According to some hypotheses, common physical particles convey the psi
message. Typically, these electrons are thought of as "traveling forward in time." Some theorists
have turned to more exotic particles that move backward in time to explain instances of
precognition.

PARTICLE THEORIES
According to several theorists, the transmission of information in ESP instances occurs through the
exchange of a signal that is already well-known to modern physicists, such as electromagnetic
radiation and neutrinos.

ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
Newton's contemporary Joseph Glanville was one of the first to advocate for a "electromagnetic"
explanation of psi, suggesting that telepathic communications were brought on by the vibrations of
the “ether”.

BARRIER EXPERIMENTS
Faraday cages and other electromagnetic barriers have been used to successfully conduct telepathy
tests, which rule out the exchange of the majority of electromagnetic signals.

“BACKWARD IN TIME” SIGNALS

RETROCAUSAL SIGNALS
Retrospective signals. Some theorists have suggested that phenomena like precognition and
retroactive psychokinesis, in which the present appears to influence the future (or, as in the case of
retroactive PK, the present appears to influence the past), may be explained on the basis of physical
signals that travel back in time.

According to some philosophers, the definition of the term "cause" makes it impossible for an effect
to precede its cause in time in a process known as backward causation.

Precognition and retroactive psychokinesis are the two main parapsychological phenomena that are
indicative of "backward causation."

OBSERVATIONAL THEORIES
All of the psi "signal" theories that have been explored thus far are predicated on the idea that the
psi message is carried by a relatively localised particle or wave.

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DIVERGENCE PROBLEM
Due to the assumption that psi is spacetime independent, one issue with observational theories is
that later observers might be able to affect the result of a quantum process that has "already" been
observed by earlier observers.

STANFORD’S CONFORMANCE BEHAVIOUR THEORY

A theoretical framework that is closely linked to the observational theories was put forth by Stanford
(1978). The "conformance behaviour" model of psi is how he refers to his hypothesis. The
"psychobiological" or "cybernetic" paradigm of psi, which holds that psi abilities are comparable to
other sensory-motor functions, is contested by Stanford. For instance, according to Stanford, the
cybernetic model posits that the application of the PK force is guided by ESP feedback about the
current velocity and position of the target object, making PK similar to other motor skills. (such as a
rolling die). Stanford cites data showing that the effectiveness of psi is unrelated to the difficulty of
the job as opposition to the "cybernetic model."

COLLECTIVE MIND
If individual people cannot be thought of as distinct and autonomous from one another, it may be
sensible to question the notion that each person's mind is entirely autonomous from every other
person and to consider the possibility that each person's psyches may be a part of a collective mind
or unconscious. Actually, a number of parapsychological theorists have proposed the existence of a
collective consciousness as a theory to account for telepathy and other psi phenomena.

JUNG’S COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS AND SYNCHRONICITY

Jung was compelled to postulate the existence of a "collective unconscious" in order to explain the
similarities in the hallucinations and delusions of his psychotic patients (as well as the presence of
apparent references to classical mythology in the delusional productions of apparently uneducated
schizophrenic patients). In contrast to the "personal unconscious" identified by Freud, Jung
suggested that this collective unconscious existed at a deeper level of the psyche. In order to explain
the many parallels between the mythological and religious practises of seemingly unrelated peoples,
he also referred to the collective consciousness.

JAMES’ COSMIC CONSCIOUS

William James, a pioneer of American psychology and psychical study, proposed the idea of a
"cosmic consciousness" that mystical experiences can cause people to merge into.

PRICE’S DREAM WORLD

The philosopher H. H. Price (1939, 1940, 1948, 1953, 1959, 1961) also supported the presence of a
collective unconscious, stating that it would be absurd to support complete mental separation in
light of the possibility of ongoing telepathic rapport between minds. He shared the same belief as
the philosopher Henri Bergson (1914) that a repressive system prevents biologically unrelated
telepathic information from entering awareness while a person is awake. He hypothesised that the
dream state and the dissociative states associated with mediumship may both have relaxed versions
of this suppressive mechanism, making them especially receptive to the occurrence of paranormal
phenomena.

SHIN THEORY
Robert Thouless and B. P. Wiesner, parapsychologists, suggested a "internal psi" model of mind-
body communication. (Thouless & Wiesner, 1948). They avoid the metaphysical connotations of the
term "soul" by referring to the intellect with the Hebrew letter "Shin". They contend that awareness
of brain states arises from "clairvoyantly" observing neuronal activity.

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FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PSI
Taylor (2003) responds to Levin's claim that psi abilities may not be susceptible to typical
evolutionary processes because they are weak. He points out that for there to be an evolutionary
account of psi, the following conditions must be true:

1. A certain level of psychic ability imparts biological fitness on an individual.

2. Psi has a genetic foundation.
3. Psi ability varies among the population.

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