CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010072-6

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Declassified and Approved For Release 2014/01/09 :
CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010072-6 IIyIII .IRIS
sunday, August 11, 1974
PSYCHIC
Continued From Page G-2
legitimate discipline, and a number of
other factors have added to its credibility.
. The same ecological anxiety, the
same disaffection with materialistic world
views that thrust Edgar Mitchell into psy-
chic research occultized millions of Ameri-
cans throughout the 1960s - in a sense,
something happened to all of us on the way
back from the moon.
.. The dematerialization of contempo-
rary physics, a science filled with such bi-
zarre components as advance potential
(waves of electrons perceived before they
are generated), tunneling effects (elec-
trons penetrating barriers diagnosed as
impenetrable by laws of probability) and
tachyons (particles traveling faster than
light, which would imply the possibility of
a backward flow of time), has meant that
this branch of science no longer offers a se-
cure rationale for the denial of any para-
normal event.
. The focus of contemporary anthropol-
ogy has had an equally important impact. It
has emphasized cultural relativity, bearing
the message that our Western concepts of
space, time, causality, and mind-body rela-
tionships are cultural constructs of the most
diaphanous transiency.
· Finally, the vast new interest in alter-
ed states of consciousness - bred on the
drug experience and the Orientalization of
the West - and a new generation of young
scientists
whose
awareness
of
friendly environment for psychic research.
consciousness-altering hav
Heated a
"Altered states" is a concept absolutely
crucial to parapsychology, one in which
modern research converges with folklore
and religious tradition. Telepathy and
clairvoyance are more readily transmitted
in the twilight states of re.
, trance,
hypnosis, dream and meditation. The re-
duction of sensory input in such conditions
would create the same effect as the decline
of daylight with setting of the sun-only
then is the fainter light of stars visible.
The tools that have provided parapsy-
chology with methods of measuring alter-
ed states have also offered an interface be-
tween technology and mysticism that is
very relevant to psychic research. In re-
peated experiments at the Menninger
Clinic in Topeka, Kan., and at the Langley
Porter Institute in San Francisco, Zen
monks and yogis have been wired up for
measurement of brain waves, blood pres-
sure and other vital functions while in
deep meditation.
-
: When Swami Rama, a yogi being studied
at the Menninger Clinic, suspended his
heartbeat for 17 minutes under the full
monitoring of Western hardware, some an-
cient barrier between science and the
paranormal broke down.
TO REBUT THE CONTENTION that
contemporary scientific thought is com-
plete and absolute, parapsychologists
argue that there are many well-establish-
ed "facts" that remain as anomalous to
our present paradigma as extrasensory
perception. After decades of research,
there is still no satisfactory neurophysio-
logical explanation of memory. Nor do we
yet have an appropriate model for the
most elemental fact of life: the transfor-
mation of raw data impinging upon our
senses into conscious experience. The
causal functions of these totally accepted
phenomena remain as mysterious as those
of acupuncture, which, although defying
all known scientific laws, has gained much
vaster acceptance in the past three years
than parapsychology has in a decade of
laboratory work.
Dr. Charles Tart of the University of
California at Davis, whose work on altered
states of consciousness has been of great
influence, speaks for a majority of Ameri-
can parapsychologists when he says, "We
won't be able to understand the physics of
the paranormal until we understand infi-
nitely more than we do now about the psy-
chology of it." So some of the most es-
teemed work in the field has been contrib-
uted by psychologists like Tart and Dr. Rex
Stanford of St. John's University, Queens,
who has studied the complex relationship
between ESP and the brain's alpha wave
patterns; and by Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler
of the City University of New York, who
has done the most extensive study to date
on the personality traits of persons with
greater-than-average psychic talents. She
describes them as impulsive, yet sensitive
to internal processes, warmly open to
adventure and change, and gifted with very
good dream recall.
AFTER A DECADE of impressive re-
search on the subjective conditions of
ESP, parapsychologists' conjectures on its
physical characteristics have not de-
veloped beyond the theories of that promi-
nent rationalist Sigmund Freud, whose
fascination with the paranormal was much
suppressed by his biographer, Ernest
Jones. (Freud once wrote, i letter to
Hereward Carrington, that if he nad anoth-
er life to live he would dedicate it to psy-
chic research.)
He saw psychic phenomena as remain-
ders of an archaic communic?
is system
that had been gradually dispreed in the
course of evolution by the more precise,
hence efficacious, communication of lan-
guage, and which can recur again in times
of need and crisis - a theory that fits in
well with a large corpus of work currently
documenting the psychic faculties of lower
mammals.
THE ASPECT OF CURRENT parapsy-
chology that strikes me as the most fasci-
nating is this. The wonders of technology,
traditionally thought antithetical to all
spiritualism, are now enabling psychic re-
search to substantiate the conditions of
paranormal events.
Similarly, a yogi's suspended heartbeat,
when monitored at the Menninger Clinic
by the sophisticated hardware of modern
physiology, created some symbolic recon-
ciliation between science and mysticism;
and Edgar Mitchell, enabled by his space-
ship to knock at the reaches of the expect-
ed void, was led to see it as a divine
plenum.
The world of 1974 is full of equally rich
and strange conjunctions between ancient
opposites - mind and matter, East and
West, science and mysticism - which our
culture is desperately hungry to
synthesize. And the brave new world of
parapsychology, if it attracts many
harder-headed intellects into its ranks,
may make a contribution to that synthesis.
If so, it could help the rest of science by
checking one of the most unfortunate
trends of our times - the growing schism
between dehumanized technology and the
cheap black magic of pop occultism.
Declassified and Approved For Release 2014/01/09 :
CIA-RDP79-00999A000200010072-6