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Unusual Powers of Mind
Over Matter
Among the most marvelous, most frightening
and certainly most unbelievable possibilities suggested by psychic folklore
is that human beings may be able to exert an observable influence upon
the physical world -- simply through the power of conscious intention;
or unconscious intention, or; by some accounts, through the assistance
of spiritual intelligences; or as a result of a mysterious principle known
as synchronicity. Some scholars -- such as Stephen Braude,
professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland -- take such reports
very seriously, claiming that no honest person can examine the case study
reports and easily dismiss them.
Professor Stephen Braude
I have spent more than five years
carefully studying the non-experimental evidence of parapsychology -- in
fact, just that portion of it which is most contemptuously and adamantly
dismissed by those academics....I started with the expectation that the
received wisdom would be supported, and that my belief in the relative
worthlessness of the material would merely be better-informed. But
the evidence bowled me over. The more I learned about it, the weaker
the traditional skeptical counter-hypotheses seemed, and the more clearly
I realized to which extent skepticism may be fueled by ignorance.
I was forced to confront the fact that I could find no decent reasons for
doubting a great deal of strange testimony. It became clear to me
that the primary source of my reluctance to embrace the evidence was my
discomfort with it. I knew that I had to accept the evidence, or
else admit that my avowed philosophical commitment to the truth was a sham.
I am hardly comfortable about announcing
to my academic colleagues that I believe, for example, that accordians
can float in mid-air playing melodies, or that hands may materialize, move
objects, and then dissolve or disappear....But I have reached my recent
conclusions only after satisfying myself that no reasonsable options remain.
Skeptics (as well as most psi researchers)
adamantly insist that it is absurd to give any credence to such reports
until they meet the highest scientific standards. (Ironically, why
would anyone bother to expend the large amounts of time and money required
for meticulous scientific testing of such claims unless they were to give
some credence to the non-scientific accounts?)
An interesting insight into the psychological
dynamics of such events is provided by the great Swiss psychiatrist Carl
G. Jung -- who developed the concept of synchronicity as an acausal
explanatory principle. In 1909, Jung visited his mentor Sigmund Freud
in Vienna, and at one point asked him his opinion of psychic phenomena.
Although Freud later changed his mind on the subject, at that time he dismissed
the likelihood that such events could occur. Jung narrates an uncanny
incident that occurred in the course of this conversation.
While Freud was going on in this
way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm was made
of iron and becoming red-hot -- a glowing vault. And at that moment
there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to
us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple
over us. I said to Freud: "There, that is an example of a so-called
catalytic exteriorisation phenomenon."
"Oh come," he explained. "That is
sheer bosh."
"It is not," I replied. "You are
mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that
in a moment there will be another loud report!" Sure enough, no sooner
had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase.
To this day I do not know what gave me
this certainty. But I knew beyond a doubt that the report would come
again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was
in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused
his mistrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against
him. I never afterwards discussed the incident with him.
The theme of mistrust characterizes the entire
history of macro-psychokinetic claims. It is probably fair to state
that no one, since Jesus Christ, has ever made such claims and been trusted
(and there are many who distrust the supposed miracles of Christ).
Furthermore, although mistrust may well blind us against considering vital
possibilities, it is clearly warrantged by the simple fact that numerous
cases of fraud have been exposed in this area.
Perhaps, at a deeper level, both the fraud
and the mistrust which it justifiably produces are part of an underlying
protective mechanism developed within the collective unconscious (to
use a Jungian term) of humanity. For, given our present level of
ethical development, what awesome horrors might be wreak upon ourselves
if we were able to harness psychokinesis in a disciplined manner?
There are reasons to think that, if psychokinesis is real, it is a Pandora's
box that is best left unopened by humankind -- even if the price for this
is our ignorance.
I personally feel comfortable with our
lack of progress in this area. As a result of personal experiences
that I shall recount, I accept the possibility of large-scale psychokinesis.
I am also convinced that our planetary culture must demonstrate a willingness
to solve the obvious problems of hunger, pollution, political inequality
and war before we will be capable of responsibly wielding the full power
of our own minds. The following examples provide some hints as to
what that full power might possibly entail.
D. D. Home -- The Greatest Medium Who Ever
Lived
D. D. Home
Perhaps the greatest ostensible physical
medium who has ever lived was Daniel Dunglas Home. He was born in
1833 near Edinburgh, Scotland. However, at an early age he went to
New England to live with his aunt who adopted him. At the age of
seventeen he had a vision of the death of his mother, which was soon verified.
After that time the household was frequently disturbed with loud raps and
moving furniture. Declaring that he had introduced the devil to the
household, his aunt threw him out. He began living with his friends
and giving seances for them.
Among those who were convinced of his abilities
in this early period were Judge John Edmunds of the New York State Supreme
Court and Robert Hare, an ameritus professor of chemistry at the University
of Pennsylvania.
Home never accepted any payments for his
seances. He exhibited religious reverence for the powers and knowledge
that manifested through him along with a scientific curiosity to seek rational
explanations. He did, however, accept presents from his wealthy patrons.
Napoleon III of France provided for his only sister. Czar Alexander
of Russia sponsored his marriage. He conducted seances with the kings
of Bavaria and Wurtemburg as well as William I of Germany and assorted
nobility throughout Europe. Noted literati also consulted with him.
To Lord Bulwer Lytton's satisfaction, Home
called up the spirit that influenced him to write his famous occult novel,
Zanoni.
He
conducted a seance for the poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her husband
Robert. Although his wife protested, Robert Browning insisted that
Home was a fraud and wrote a long poem called "Mr. Sludge, the Medium,"
describing an exposure that never took place. In fact, throughout
his long career, Home was never caught in any verifiable deceptions --
although there were some apparant close calls.
In 1868, Home conducted experiments with
Cromwell Varley, chief engineer of the Atlantic Cable Company and afterwards
before members of the London Dialectical Society, who held fifty seances
with him at which thirty persons were present. Their report, published
in 1871, attested to the observation of sounds and vibrations, the movements
of heavy objects not touched by any person, and well-executed pieces of
music coming from instruments not manipulated by any visible agency, as
well as the appearance of hands and faces that did not belong to any tangible
human being, but that nevertheless seemed alive and mobile. This
report inspired Sir William Crookes to investigate Home for himself.
Crookes conducted two very ingenious experiments
with Home in which he tested alterations in the weight of objects and the
playing of tunes upon musical instruments under conditions rendering human
contact with the keys impossible. For the first experiment, Crookes
developed a simple apparatus measuring the changes in weight of a mahogany
board.
One end of the board rested on
a firm table, whilst the other end was supported by a spring balance hanging
from a substantial tripod stand. The balance was fitted with a self-registering
index, in such a manner that it would record the maximum weight indicated
by the pointer. The apparatus was adjusted so that the mahogany board
was horizontal, its foot resting flat on the support. In this position
its weight was three pounds, as marked by the pointed of the balance.
Crookes and eight other observers including
Sir WIlliam Huggins, a physicist and member of the Royal Society, observed
Home lightly place his fingertips on the end of the board and watched the
register desccend as low as nine pounds. Crookes noted that, since
Home's fingers did not cross the fulcrum, any tactile pressure he might
have exerted would have been in opposition to the force that caused the
other end of the board to move down. This experiment was conducted
many times. On some occasions, Home never even touched the board:
he merely placed his hands three inches over it. In other experiments,
Crookes used a recording device to make a permanent record of the fluctuations
in the weight. This was done to confute the argument that he himself
was a victim of hallucinations.
In order to test the stories about music
being played on the instrument, Crookes designed a cage in which to place
an accordion he purchased specifically for these experiments (see illustration).
The cage would just slip under a table, allowing Home to grasp the instrument
on the end opposite the keys, between the thumb and the middle finger.
Again many witnesses were present:
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Mr. Home, still holding the accordion
in the usual manner in the cage, his feet being held by those next to him,
and his other hand resting on the table, we heard distinct and separate
notes sounded in succession, and then a simple air was played. As
such a result could only have been produced by the various keys of the
instrument being acted upon in harmonious succession, this was considered
by those present to be a crucial experiment. But the sequel was still
more striking, for Mr. Home then removed his hand altogether from the accordion,
taking it quite out of the cage, and placed it in the hand of the person
next to him. The instrument then continued to play, no person touching
it and no hand being near it.
Crookes submitted his experimental papers
to the Royal Society in order to encourage a large-scale investigation
of the phenomena, which he felt were caused by a psychic force. However,
the secretary of the society rejected his papers and refused to witness
his experiments.
Crookes also testified to having seen many
other phenomena with Home, including levitation of Home's body, levitation
of objects, handling of hot coals, luminous lights, and apparitions.
Home himself bitterly resented any fraud
or deception. In his book, Lights and Shadows of Spiritualism,
written in 1878, he took an aggressive stance against phony mediums or
even those who were unwilling to cooperate with scientists. Unlike
most mediums, Home was always willing to be tested under well-lit and closely
supervised conditions.
Sir William Crookes' Researches
Sir William Crookes
Despite the rejection of his psychical
research by the scientific establishment, Crookes asserted the validity
of his work throughout his life. In 1913, he was elected president of the
Royal Society, but unfortunately he had by then long since abandoned his
experimental work with mediums and found it wise not to discuss his work
often in public. The phenomena that Crookes reported have been beyond
the experience of almost all researchers before or since his time.
Often his experimental reports were inadequate by contemporary standards
since he simply assumed that his own word was sufficient to establish general
acceptance of a phenomenon. We cannot hastily conclude that Crookes
was deluded or duped, for he was at the height of his intellectual creativity
at the time he conducted this research. In the words of his friend,
Sir Oliver Lodge, "It is almost as difficult to resist the testimony as
it is to accept the things testified." His most amazing experiments
were conducted with a medium named Florence Cook.
Florence Cook
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Ostensible Katie King
Materialization
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Cook's ostensible ability to materialize
the forms of various spirits had caused a stir among spiritualists.
The most notable spirit to appear identified herself as Katie King, the
daughter, in a former life, of the buccaneer Henry Morgan.
The phenomena of spirit materialization
had actually attracted public attention a few years earlier through a Mrs.
Samuel Guppy, the protegee of Alfred Russell Wallace, a prominent spiritualist
who was also noted as one of the discoverers with Charles Darwin of the
theory of evolution. Mrs. Guppy introduced into her work the use
of a tightly sealed cabinet in which she was placed in order to build up
sufficient "power" for the construction of a spirit form which could then
stand the scrutiny of the light outside the cabinet. The cabinet
also provided, of course, an ideal opportunity for subterfuge on the part
of the medium, which was undoubtedly taken advantage of on many occasions,
for rarely were any medium and her spirit seen together at the same time.
Crookes attended seances with Florence
Cook for a period of over three years and studied her intensively for several
months in a laboratory in his own home. He also made numerous observations
of Katie King and took more than forty photographs of her. On several
occasions he had the opportunity of seeing both Florence and her spirit,
Miss King, at the same time and even of photographing them together.
Katie appeared quite solidly before the guests at the seance, sometimes
staying and conversing with them for a s long as two hours. Crookes
even reports having embraced and kissed her. At other times she seems
to have vanished instantaneously and soundlessly. It is difficult
to believe that an accomplice could have continued such an intimate masquerade,
in Crookes own home, for several months without detection. He gives
several reasons why he feels Florence Cook could not have committed fraud:
During the last six months, Miss
Cook has been a frequent visitor at my house, remaining sometimes a week
at a time. She brings nothing with her but a little handbag, not
locked; during the day she is constantly in the presence of Mrs. Crookes,
myself, or some other member of my family, and, not sleeping by herself,
there is absolutely no opportunity for any preparation....I prepare and
arrange my library myself as the dark cabinet, and usually, after Miss
Cook has been dining and conversing with us, and scarcely out of our sight
for a minute, she walks direct into the cabinet, and I, at her request,
lock its second door, and keep possession of the key all through the seance.
Katie's height varies; in my house I have
seen her six inches taller than Miss Cook. Last night, with bare
feet and not "tip-toeing," she was four and a half inches taller than Miss
Cook. Katie's neck was bare last night; the skin was perfectly smooth
to touch and sight, whilst on Miss Cook's neck is a large blister, which
under similar circumstances is distinctly visible and rough to the touch.
Katie's complexion is very fair while that of Miss Cook is very dark.
Katie's fingers are much longer than Miss Cook's, and her face is also
larger.
Crookes also indicates that Miss Cook was
willing to submit to any test he wished to impose. Ironically enough,
on two occasions, in 1872 and in 1880, individuals claimed to have exposed
Florence Cook fraudulently masquerading as her spirit.
It is not unreasonable to suggest any of
several contradictory hypotheses: (1) that Crookes himself may have been
deluded or enchanted by Florence Cook, (2) that while Crookes himself did
observe genuine phenomena, Cook sometimes lost her abilities and resorted
to fraud, (3) that the alleged exposures were not genuine, or (4) that
Crooke's accounts were fraudulent. Psychical phenomena have always
had an ironic and paradoxical nature, and Crookes' experimental methodology
was certainly not sufficient to answer all of the questions one might like
to ask.
It is so difficult to maintain that a man
of Crookes' scientific caliber could have been taken in by cheap tricks,
some of his critics have assumed that he himself was in on the fraud.
They have claimed that Crookes had been involved in a romantic affair with
Florence Cook, and that he testified to her phenomena in order to shield
her reputation and hide his own emotional entanglement with her.
However, even if it were so, other matters would remain quite unresolved.
If Crookes was involved with Miss Cook, who was only fifteen years old
at the time, this hypothesis cannot account for the phenomena he reported
with both Home and Miss Fox. Nor does it begin to explain the research
on the same phenomena reported by a number of other eminent scientists.
Nevertheless, the accusation of experimenter fraud still continues to haunt
psychical researchers, and will continue to do so as long as people are
reinforced in their expectation of fraud by periodic publicly exposed episodes.
Marthe Beraud
Another extraordinary physical medium whose
ectoplasmic materializations were observed and photographed by many investigators
was Marthe Beraud. Nobel laureate physiologist Charles Richet described
the production of a phantom, called Bien Boa, under experimental conditions
that he felt negated the possibility of theatrical props or accomplices:
Ostensible Ectoplasmic
Bien Boa Materialization
He seemed so much alive that,
as we could hear his breathing, I took a flask of baryta water to see if
his breath would show carbon dioxide. The experiment succeeded.
I did not lose sight of the flask from the moment I put it into the hands
of Bien Boa who seemed to float in the air on the left of the curtain at
a height greater than Marthe could have been even if standing up...
A comical incident occurred at this point.
When we saw the baryta show white (which incidentally shows that the light
was good), we cried "Bravo." Bien Boa then vanished, but reappeared
three times, opening and closing the curtain and bowing like an actor who
receives applause.
However striking this was, another experiment
seems to me even more evidential: Everything being arranged as usual....after
a long wait I saw close to me, in front of the curtain which had not been
moved, a white vapour, hardly sixteen inches distant. It was like
a white veil or handkerchief on the floor; it rose up still more, enlarged,
and grew into a human form, a short bearded man dressed in a turban and
while mantle, who moved, limping slightly, from right to left before the
curtain. On coming close to General Noel, he sank down abruptly to
the floor with a clicking noise like a falling skeleton, flattening out
in front of the curtain. Three or four minutes later...he reappeared
rising in a straight line from the floor, born from the floor, so to say,
and falling back on it with the same clicking noise.
The only un-metapsychic explanation possible
seemed to be a trap-door opening and shutting: but there was no trap door,
as I verified the next morning and as attested by the architect.
Several photographs were taken....The softness
and vaporous outline of the hands are curious; likewise the veil surrounding
the phantom has indeterminate outlines....A thick, black, artificial-looking
beard covers the mouth and chin....Bien Boa would seem to be a bust only
floating in space in front of Marthe, whose bodice can be seen. Low
down, between the curtain and Marthe's black skirt, there seem to be two
small whitish rod-like supports to the phantom form.
Paraffin Hands
The most impressive evidence for ectoplasmic
materializations comes from the molds of "spirit hands" made in paraffin.
Richet reports his careful studies:
[Gustav] Geley and I took the
precaution of introducing, unknown to any other person, a small quantity
of chelesterin in the bath of melted paraffin wax placed before the medium
during the seance. This substance is insoluble in paraffin without
discolouring it, but on adding sulphuric acid it takes a deep violet-red
tint; so that we could be absolutely certain that any moulds obtained should
be by the paraffin provided by ourselves....
During the seance the medium's hands were
firmly held by Geley and myself on the right and on the left, so that he
could not liberate either hand. A first mould was obtained of a child's
hand, then a second of both hands, right and left; a third came of a child's
foot. The creases in the skin and veins were visible on the plaster
casts made from the moulds.
By reason of the narrowness of the wrist
these moulds could not be obtained from living hands, for the whole hand
would have to be withdrawn through the narrow opening at the wrist.
Professional modellers secure their results by threads attached to the
hand, which are pulled through the plaster. In the moulds here considered
there was nothing of the sort; they were produced by a materialization
followed by dematerialization, for this latter was necessary to disengage
the hand from the paraffin "glove."
The plaster casts from these molds
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