Seventeen
Senses! Do I hear Seventeen Senses? Anyone?
Buehler?
From biomindsuperpowers.com:
ON-GOING SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY OF
SENSORY RECEPTORS WHICH
ACCOUNT FOR MANY SUBTLE PERCEPTIONS
Ingo Swann (12 September 1996)
[NOTE: The following is a reworked version of a paper I was
invited to present on 21 March 1994 at the United Nations
on behalf of the Society for Enlightenment and
Transformation (SEAT).] SEAT is a reformulation and
enlargement of the former unofficial UN Parapsychology
Association. SEAT, however, has been granted
Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) status and now occupies
a meaningful place within the greater U. N. system. For
further information regarding SEAT and its purposes, please
be in touch with Mr. Mohammad A. Ramadan, Room S-1755, GCPO
Box 20, NY, NY, 10017 (fax (212) 963-4879).
[The original title of the paper was YOUR SEVENTEEN SENSES
- THE CRUMBLING MAINSTREAM RESISTANCE OF THE PARANORMAL AND
NEW SCIENTIFIC CONFIRMATION REGARDING THE EXISTENCE OF
CERTAIN PSI FACULTIES. This original paper consisted of two
major topics: (1) the major characteristics of 20th century
mainstream resistance to psi faculties; and (2) recent
scientific advances which now substantiate the existence of
those faculties. For the purpose of this document I have
separated the two topics and will integrate the substance
of the first one in a forthcoming essay regarding the
anti-psychic mindsets of the twentieth century. This
present document focuses on new scientific confirmation
regarding the existence of certain psi faculties. The
elements presented in the 1994 paper are germane in today's
larger picture of human consciousness development and have
increased in meaning regarding the near future.]
NEW SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES REGARDING
THE EXISTENCE OF CERTAIN PSI FACULTIES
Synopsis of a paper presented on 21 March 1994 at the
United Nations
to members of the Society for Enlightenment and
Transformation
Ingo Swann
How many of you here today would like to know you have at
least SEVENTEEN senses rather than just five of them? How
many think that seventeen would be better than just five?
How many of you here already know that you have more than
five senses?
When Mohammed Ramadan and Clarence Robins asked me to come
here and talk about something, we had a little difficulty
deciding upon a topic worthy of your interest. Finally it
dawned on me that there exists what we might call a
Particular Situation regarding psychic or metaphysical
perceptions and it was decided that the nature of this
Situation should be presented.
This Particular Situation consists of three aspects or
parts.
FIRST: During the modern past, the real existence of psi
faculties was rejected within science, psychology and
psychiatry. The rejection was based in a number of factors
which seemed rational and logical in the scientific past
and thus achieved wide acceptance in scientific, academic
and media mainstreams of the twentieth century.
SECOND: Those factors which seemed rational and logical in
the past have now been superseded by significant scientific
discoveries and advances which substantiate the real
existence of at least certain psi faculties. Some of these
discoveries are now fifty years old. These new discoveries
absolutely require a swift and large-scale reevaluation not
only regarding psi faculties in particular, but with regard
to the larger scope and subtle functions and transformation
of human consciousness.
THIRD: However, in spite of the notable scientific advances
which affirm the real existence of psi faculties, this
necessary and advisable reevaluation is NOT underway in the
three important mainstreams - and which mainstreams
continue to support, adhere to, and proliferate the now
out-dated concepts which, in a broad cultural sense,
permitted the past, absolute rejection of psi faculties.
*
There is one outcome of this Particular Situation, and
which can be described by a term frequently used within
United Nations parlance, a term familiar to me as a past
employee of the Secretariat. It is used in many United
Nations documents.
The outcome referred to is that if the past rationales
which permitted the rejection of psi continue to be
proliferated by mainstream pressures, then the scientific
advances which substantiate the real existence of certain
psi faculties must be ignored or pushed into the shadow of
unawareness.
Thus, the discoveries CANNOT and WILL NOT be integrated
into advancing scientific thought, academic tutoring and
fair media representation. And in this suppressed or hidden
state, the discoveries cannot be integrated into the
overall goals of the Society for Enlightenment and
Transformation which I have the honor of addressing today.
The well-used, sometimes over-used United Nations term for
this kind of situation is "deplorable" - and so the
Particular Situation I have outlined above is, well,
deplorable. After all, advances in scientific discovery are
supposed to vitalize enlightenment and transformation if
they are made openly accessible. But when such discoveries
are ignored, they cannot contribute to much of anything.
*
Because of the Particular Situation I've outlined above,
most people are not aware that significant scientific
advances HAVE been made regarding substantive support for
the real existence of a number of psi faculties.
Many scientific papers have been published regarding the
discoveries. But because of the Particular Situation these
remain ignominiously dispersed through the various
literatures and their implications are not enthusiastically
reviewed or endorsed in formal scientific, academic or
media forums.
*
Messieurs Mohammad Ramadan and Clarence Robins, both
indefatigable workers on behalf of enlightenment and
transformation, agreed that I should attempt to present at
least a nut-shell overview of the developments which have
not at all yet been socially permitted to reach down into
transformative social consciousness.
*
To enter into this overview, it is first necessary to set
the stage as to why psi faculties were rejected in the
scientific past.
A historical review of the phenomena of rejection of psi
shows that there were multiple reasons for it. In their
modern sense, some of these reasons reach back at least
three centuries.
Some of the reasons had to do with simple matters of
tolerance and intolerance both at the individual and social
levels. But others had to do with what was to be
established as acceptable or unacceptable knowledge at
politico-social levels. Others had to do with what was to
be accepted as normal or abnormal social and mental
behavior, especially as regards the first six decades of
the twentieth century.
*
The larger historical overview of the rejection thus
presents a fairly complicated picture, one which is
difficult to negotiate.
In modern scientific terms, however, the major thrust of
the rejection was early consolidated within the concepts of
philosophical materialism which came to govern early modern
scientific overviews and expectations.
As a philosophical commitment, then, the early modern
sciences held that whatever constituted scientific reality
had to have a physical basis in matter, in the material.
And so the consolidation of the rejection of psi was
straightforward and simple: That psi could not be accepted
until a quantifiable, material-physical basis for it, or
any part of it, was identified.
*
What this meant in simple terms was that the human could
ONLY access information for which physical receptors could
be shown to exist. The five physical senses were based in
the physical tactile mechanisms which resulted in the
sensations of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touch.
But psychic information could not be attributed to any of
these, since all of them functioned only within the local
environments of the physical body.
As a general result, the existence of additional senses was
denied, both scientifically and philosophically, and it was
this denial which resulted in the Five-Senses-ONLY theory
which was pervasively proliferated throughout modernist
societies.
This scientific principle, for it indeed functioned as one,
thus served as the rationale and logic for the rejection of
psi faculties. I.e., no physical receptors for those
faculties were expected to be scientifically discovered. So
the on-going rejection of psi faculties was considered
justified.
*
It is worth pointing up something here which has dropped
out of modernist thinking. Anthropologists have established
that in general pre-modern societies did not think in terms
of having SENSES. As we might put it in today's computer
lingo, they thought more in terms of accessing information
or knowledge and achieving perception appropriate to them.
The conversion of the concept of accessing information to
the concept of having senses appears to have occurred only
AFTER the European Renaissance period. Indeed, it can quite
easily be shown that most of the major thinkers of the
Renaissance were profoundly preoccupied regarding HOW to
increase and stimulate the accessing of information.
*
Thus, the concept that we are dependent on our physical
senses rather than dependent on accessing information dates
from AFTER the seventeenth century - while the concept of
accessing information is at least 6,000 years old.
In this light, the idea that we access information only via
our five physical senses IS modern. The concept that we are
completely limited to what we perceive by the physical five
dates from only about 1845, and was from the outset solely
a scientific hypothesis which has never been demonstrated
by conclusive scientific fact.
*
Nevertheless, the hypothesis that human awareness is
limited to the five physical senses has been a very
powerful one within modernist philosophical and scientific
contexts. So powerful, indeed, that early modern scientists
never expected to discover the existence of bio-physical
receptors additional to the famous five.
Information derived from other than the physical five
senses was thought to be impossible, at least in theory.
And it was upon this theory that psychic information,
so-called, was scientifically rejected.
Indeed, many leading scientists between 1845 and about 1960
let it be known that there was "one scientific demand"
which would never be fulfilled: the discovery of
bio-physical receptors which would account for psychic
information. So, scientific brotherhoods united around the
conviction that until physical receptors for psychic
information were discovered, then the information should be
considered as illusory or psychopathological in origin.
*
Early psychical researchers and later parapsychologists of
course protested this rejection based solely on this "one
demand" of science. They indicated that if psi faculties
were purely psychological in origin and nature, then no
bio-physical receptors would ever be found.
However, by the same turn-around of the scientific argument
against the real existence of psi, should physical
receptors for accessing so-called psychic "information" be
discovered, then science proper would be obliged to accept
that its one demand was fulfilled.
*
What has just been presented has long been characterized as
the "conflict" between science and parapsychology. This
conflict has often been distorted to include other factors.
But the basic factor clearly and unambiguously hinged on
the absence of bio-physical receptors which would account
for the subtle kinds of information so-called "psychics"
deal with.
In parapsychological parlance, this kind of information
came to be called "extra-sensory" or "non-sensory." These
two terms unambiguously demonstrate that psychical
researchers and parapsychologists themselves did not
consider that bio-physical receptors for psychic
information would ever be discovered.
*
And it is from this context that the basic definition of
"psychic" is derived: i.e., lying outside of matter,
physicality, the physical sciences or knowledge of the
physical universe.
*
There is now a very interesting aspect to this conflict
which should be pointed out because it has great bearing on
later developments.
If the conflict is dissected carefully, it reveals that
scientists, psychical researchers, or parapsychologists
expected that any bio-physical basis for psi faculties
would be discovered.
Indeed, early psychical researchers looked for supernatural
explanations outside of any materialistic basis. By their
own name, paraPSYCHOLOGISTS clearly opted for a
psychological explanation, not a bio-physical one. And
there is no evidence at all in the parapsychological
literature that parapsychologists invested any time either
theorizing or researching for a bio-physical explanation.
*
This is to say, that any possible bio-physical explanation
was, and is, just as alien to parapsychology as it was to
the material sciences proper.
*
Here matters rested - until the first electron-microscope
was developed in Germany in 1932, and later evolved in the
United States and Canada. After World WAR II, cellular
biology underwent a great jump in importance because of the
electron-microscope and even more penetrating and precise
later technical advances.
Now began the slow process of comprehending that biological
cells were not the simplistic things once thought. Rather,
they were composed of ultra-minute factors which functioned
in very remarkable ways.
*
Also, during the 1930s another development occurred which
was to have enormous importance and impact, an impact which
is yet in progress today.
The fact that biological organisms have some kind of
electromagnetic substrate was discovered about 300 years
ago. But this substrate was considered weak and unimportant
in the face of the chemical substrate which was thought to
be very strong.
During the 1930s, however, researchers in various parts of
the world, and especially in the former Soviet Union, began
to realize that although the electromagnetic substrate was
"weak" it nonetheless played very important roles within
the bio-chemical whole of ALL biological organisms.
*
Advances in bio-electromagnetism were somewhat delayed,
however, until appropriate technology could be invented to
deal more adequately with subtle bio-energy forms. The
technology began to be available during the 1960s, and by
the late 1970s the extraordinary importance of the
bio-electromagnetic substrate could begin to be seen.
*
A meaningful factor, somewhat amusing, now needs to be
introduced, one with which most people are probably not
familiar.
Science and technology are often thought of going hand in
hand. But this is often not the case. The nearly invisible
reason is that the technically-minded and the
scientifically-minded don't appear to be the same kind of
thinkers.
*
Largely speaking, scientists are more likely to be
theoreticians. But technicians are more likely to be
engineers.
Scientists theorize and try to test their theories. But
technicians build things, often just to see what the things
can do. Indeed, technical advances can often be several
generations AHEAD of scientific thinking. This is certainly
the case with the computer industry evolved largely by
technician-types, not by scientists. Indeed, many
technological advances have been achieved by technologists
who possessed little in the way of legitimate or
conventional scientific backgrounds.
*
The bottom line of all these developments is that during
the last forty years a very large series of new research
disciplines have come into existence. These new disciplines
constitute an intermixing of science, technology,
microscopy, subtle chemical exchanging, and electromagnetic
and bio-electromagnetic expertise.
Ahead I give a partial list of these new disciplines. But
the punch line here is that it was left to these NEW
disciplines to increasingly discover (much to their
surprise!) the expanding bio-organic basis for many
faculties once merely thought questionably "psychic."
*
There is only one impediment regarding an integration of
these new disciplines with psychical and parapsychological
research. This involves the new nomenclature being evolved
with these new disciplines.
The new nomenclature is as alien to science as it is to
parapsychology, and at present both these venerable
institutions are having difficulty integrating it both
conceptually and contextually. I will show many examples of
this ahead.
*
But beyond this little difficulty, there is no doubt that
many of the advances being made in those new disciplines
can be "married" to many otherwise well-known psychic
faculties - as I will demonstrate at the end of this paper.
*
At this point, I can't resist making one sardonic comment.
Earlier in this paper I have complained about the lack of
scientific and popular integration of the implications of
these new discoveries.
But there is one group that has taken adequate and accurate
interest in these astonishing discoveries and which seems
to be more or less up to date regarding them. This group
consists of the producers and scriptwriters of the TV
series STAR TREK and similar offshoots.
*
The new and now on-going discoveries of biological bases
for many psi faculties is now best expressed, perhaps, as
PARABIOLOGY, meaning "beyond" past conventional concepts of
biology.
Or, perhaps, the term PARAPSYCHOBIOLOGY is convenient -
which, if translated into Russian, would become the term
translated back into English as bio-communications or
bio-information transfer.
*
So far, the new discoveries regarding the biological bases
for psi faculties roughly fall into five categories. I have
to get a little technical here, but I'll simplify just
ahead.
These five general categories are:
Minute chemical receptors and sensors
Minute chemico-electro receptors and sensors
Neural-network exchanges of information in the bio-internal
body substrates
Bio-electromagnetic information receptors and sensors
Bio-information transfer networks at the atomic, molecular,
and neurological levels
*
If these new terms are somewhat confusing, well don't worry
too much.
They simply mean that we are FAR BEYOND the
five-senses-only fallacy and that our bio-mind bodies have
multitudes of exceptional senses by way of delicate systems
of receptors and sensors at the cellular, nervous, chemical
and bio-electromagnetic levels and their interfaces.
A nice way to conceive the whole of this is to comprehend
that every cell, possibly every atom, in our
bio-physicality is a receptor or sensor of some kind.
In other words, we are walking, talking, eating, defecating
ARRAYS of exquisitely elegant and sophisticated receptors
and sensors. ALL of these receptors and sensors are busy
ACCESSING information - and knowledge, IF what is accessed
can be organized into recognizable thinking patterns.
*
By extended meaning, these delicate systems of receptors
can also integrate with our normal five - and, given
adaptive learning regarding them, can also integrate with
our mental cognitive powers - to result in, yes, what have
otherwise generally been called "psi faculties."
*
Now, to give you here some broad idea of the cutting-edge,
largely technical disciplines involved, I'll quickly read
through a list of twenty-one of them:
Electro-chemical physiology
Neurobiology
Neurobiology
Neuropsychology
Bio-radiation studies
Hormone and Hormonal transmission research
Chemical signal research
Bio-electric research
Brainwave research
Bio-sensitivity research
Bio-electric information transfer research
Sensory coding research
Bio-magnetic navigation research
Bio-electronic systems research
Bio-electric field detection research
Electrophysiological studies
Pheromone and pheromone transfer research
Multi-stability in perception research
Subliminal perception research
Neuro-magnetic response research
Bio-infrared and bio-ultraviolet perception research
*
At this point, I could adumbrate upon more than a thousand
scientific papers about these discoveries published in the
science literature, even in the esteemed leading science
periodicals such as NATURE, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and
DISCOVER.
The authors of those papers, though, never use the terms
psi, psychic, or parapsychology, etc., since the mere
introduction of them would cause their papers to be
rejected.
The editors and peer-review systems of such publications
apparently don't realize, for example, that "bioinformation
transfer over distance" means about the same thing as
"telepathy" and/or "clairvoyance," or "remote viewing." But
this is merely part of the Particular Situation I referred
to at the beginning of this talk.
*
I now hold up in my hand before you, so you can see that it
really exists, a book published in 1984 via Simon &
Schuster, by Robert Rivlan and Karen Gravelle. This book is
complete with bibliography of scientific sources, but is
easy to read. It's entitled, somewhat misleadingly, as
DECIPHERING THE SENSES: THE EXPANDING WORLD OF HUMAN
PERCEPTION.
Well, the world of human perception is NOT expanding.
Rather, ignorance of that world is shrinking a little.
The book might have been called something like THE
DISCOVERY OF THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR PSI AND OTHER
ANOMALOUS PERCEPTIONS.
*
The discoveries brought together and presented in this
book, although in popular style, are based on hard
scientific discoveries that have been achieved in other
disciplines outside and independent of parapsychology.
And, as such, the sum of them clearly fulfills - at least
regarding certain forms of psi - the earlier scientific
demand that a bio-organic basis for psi be discovered.
*
I'll quote from the book's fly-leaf; "For centuries we have
used an oversimplified and inaccurate model to explain the
human senses. Even now, high school biology classes still
teach the `five senses'. But recent scientific research has
discovered that there are many more than five senses, and
these discoveries have radically changed our understanding
of what the senses are and how they work. Rivlan and
Gravelle redefine for the general reader the spectrum of
human perceptions from the normal to the newly discovered
to the extra-sensory."
As chapter one indicates, the book discusses "The seventeen
senses" additional to our usual five ones, and then goes on
to place the newly-discovered senses in context with the
usual five. The authors consume eight chapters to prepare
the reader - before they reach chapter 9, entitled
"Extra-sensory perception." Probably because of this
chapter, the book was now well-received and is now out of
print. But it's well worth tracking down a copy of it.
*
Now, lest there be some misunderstanding here, the two
authors are NOT describing psychological or mental
functions.
They are discussing the actual existence within our biology
of minute physical-chemical-bioelectromagnetic "receptors"
and "sensors" that interact within networks of the
"information-processing resources of the organism."
It is quite easy to ascertain that five senses are
obviously NOT ENOUGH to account for the huge range of
sensory possibilities of which the human species is
capable, while seventeen senses is probably a more accurate
count, with more probably yet to be discovered.
No one can survive very well on just five senses. Just ask
any seafarer, mountain climber, football or basketball
player, explorer or inventor, martial arts exert, or even
someone seeking sex. The moment "automatic reflexes" or
"intuitive" stuff enters into their talk, know that you
have departed the realm of the physical five and entered
into the realms of additional senses.
*
As to what these seventeen new senses are. The seventeen
new senses interact with each other to provide a rather
extensive list, many of which have in the past been
referred to as "psychic." Since we don't have time here to
go through them, I've brought a few copies of that list to
hand out, along with some copies of this lecture, and all
of which you are free to duplicate.
But, for example, the bio-body is now known to have a
functioning vomeronasal system containing receptors
enabling, at the bio-subliminal level, the detection of
minute amounts of chemical signals that tell us about
anther's sexual receptivity, fear, anger, and other
emotions - an aptitude more commonly referred to as
"psychic vibe-sensing."
In another category, through the use of a newly invented
device called the SQUID, scientists can and have measured
and begun to classify the brain's electrical activity
outside of the scalp -
Which in turn has led to discoveries that bio-electric
activity extends to some distance beyond the skin -
Which in turn has led to the discovery of bio-electric
sensors not only in the skin, but in the neuropeptide
activity that transmits all kinds of subtle senses
information through the immune system and into the brain -
and back again into the body's extremities and all its
internal organs, including into its surrounding
bio-electromagnetic field.
*
Now, discovered bio-electromagnetic fields extending
outside the scalp and outside of the skin clearly equate to
the "auras" that many clairvoyants have specialized in
"seeing."
Drawing on authoritative scientific sources, Rivlan and
Gravelle even hypothesize that, and I quote, "thoughts may,
indeed, have wings, and some of us may have the ability to
sense what others are thinking" via these newly discovered
bio-electromagnetic receptor-sensing networks.
The two authors wonder: "Do some psychics and mystics have
this ability, vastly magnified, so they can sense the
electricity from considerable distances?" Well, there would
have been no question of this in antiquity - or even among
Arabian or Mongolian nomads today, as well as
"street-smart" New Yorkers.
*
Actually, this is the same question that those researching
electromagnetism and bio-electromagnetism have been
wondering about for over fifty years.
So it's worth pointing up here that the existence of
extensive bio-electromagnetism essentially was demonstrated
late during the last century, but its existence has not
figured very much either into scientific psychology or in
scientific parapsychology - both of these two field having
managed mutually to ignore it altogether.
*
Did you know that in addition to yourself being a bio-meat
body with eyes, livers, hearts, and appetites of various
kinds, you are also a bio-electronic one? Have you ever
thought of yourself as such? If you begin to, well,
something interesting might begin to happen.
Dr. Robert O. Becker is one of the leading researchers in
the United States regarding electromagnetism and
bio-electromagnetism. With Gary Selden, he published, in
1985, a book entitled THE BODY ELECTRIC: ELECTROMAGNETISM
AND THE FOUNDATION OF LIFE (William Morrow, New York), and
which "tells the story of our bioelectric selves."
A companion book is Harold Saxton Burr's BLUEPRINT FOR
IMMORTALITY: THE ELECTRIC PATTERNS OF LIFE (Neville
Spearman, London, 1973, republished 1988). Burr, by the
way, is an American researcher but could not find an
American publisher for this seminal book.
*
Bob Becker has made many unequivocal statements regarding
the psi implications of bio-electromagnetism.
For example, he published in PSYCHOENERGETIC SYSTEMS, 1977,
Vol. 2, pp. 189-196, an article entitled "An Application of
Direct Current Neural Systems to Psychic Phenomena." He
stated that "The concept of a primitive electronic
communication system in all living things can be a useful
tool in understanding both `normal' and `paranormal'
phenomena that have lacked a rational biological
explanation. Indeed, it appears that human beings are tied
to the universe in a web of electromagnetic energy."
*
At this point, I believe I've now presented for you
consideration the rudiments of the Particular Situation I
referred to at the beginning.
The Particular Situation consists of three factors:
(1) science demanded that a bio-organic explanation for psi
faculties be found before it could accept them as real;
(2) bio-organic explanations have been found for many kinds
of psi faculties; and
(3) everyone seems to be ignoring both the facts and the
implications of (2) as just stated.
*
As to more of what our additional senses are:
Did you know that the soles of your feet and the palms of
your hands contain minute magnetic receptors and sensors
that "recognize" minute and gross changes in local
magnetism?
Here are the rudiments of dowsing, healing, and various
rough forms of psychometry which means psyching-out what
something is by merely holding it.
Alas, though. If you haven't built neural pathways linking
these sensors to your cognitive faculties, you probably
won't be able to sense what the receptors in the soles of
your feet picking up.
*
In bringing this talk to a conclusion, recall that earlier
I mentioned the problem of the nomenclature which is acting
as a barrier between the new discoveries and more
recognizable concepts of psychical and parapsychological
research. This same nomenclature is also acting as a
barrier between the new research and the problems of
enlightenment and transformation which are the objectives
of this Society for Enlightenment and Transformation.
To help begin the nomenclature bridge, I'd now like to give
some examples by which the two nomenclatures can be
compared.
Recently Discovered Bioorganic Basis
for the Following Additional Senses
1. Receptors in the nose sensing systems that "smell"
emotions, and that can identify motives, sexual
receptivity, antagonism, benevolence, etc. (All these are
formats of what are commonly referred to as psychic
vibe-sensing.)
2. Receptors in the ear sensing systems that detect and
identify differences in pressure and electromagnetic
frequencies (formats of ESP.)
3. Skin receptors that detect balance and imbalance
regarding what is external to the bio-body, even external
at some astonishing distances (formats of remote-sensing, a
mixed form of ESP and clairvoyance.)
4. Skin receptors that detect motion outside of the body,
even when the body is asleep (a format of subliminal ESP.)
5. Directional finding and locating receptors in the
endocrine and neuropeptide systems (formats of dowsing,
intermixed with formats of cognitive ESP or intuition.)
6. Whole-body receptors, including hair, that identify
fluidic motions of horizontal, vertical, diagonal, even if
not visually perceived (as, for example, in the "psychic"
portion of the martial art of Akhido.)
7. Skin receptors that "recognize" the temperament of other
biological organisms (a format of psi "reading".)
8. Subliminal sensory systems which locate and identify
pitch of sound, a sense of heat across great distances, a
sense of frequencies and waves, either mechanical or
energetic (all being formats of ESP and vibe-sensing,
sometimes also referred to as "shaman perceiving.")
9. Receptors that identify positive and negative charged
particles at the atomic level. (The term utilized for this
in psychical research is "micro-psi" but which is rare.
However, it has been convincingly demonstrated, especially
in the case of C. W. Leadbeater who published Occult
Chemistry (1908). Thirty years before the invention of the
electron-microscope he correctly described sub-atomic
particles, many undiscovered at the time, but discovered
since. Micro-psi faculties are mentioned as one of the
ancient Sidhis of ancient India (see, for example, Yoga
Sutras of Patanjali).)
10. Microsystem transducing of various forms of mechanical,
chemical, and electromagnetic energy into meaningful nerve
impulses (all commonly thought of as FORMS OF ESP.)
11. Receptors that sense gravitational changes (a form of
PSYCHIC DOWSING.)
12. Neurological senses for interpreting modulated
electronic information by converting it into analog signals
for mental storage, interpretation, and cognition (one of
the bio-mind bases for TELEPATHY.)
13. Bio-electronic receptors for sensing radiation,
including X-rays, cosmic rays, infrared radiation, and
ultraviolet light, all of these receptors being found in
the retina of the eye (part of the basis for various forms
of CLAIRVOYANCE.)
14. Receptors that respond to exterior electrical fields
and systems (producing forms of CLAIRVOYANCE and AURA
"READING.")
Today, the following highly specialized sensing systems are
referred to in the new sciences as HUMAN SEMAPHORE
CAPACITIES.
15. Skin receptors for sensing perceptions of bonding or
antagonism (thought of as forms of INTUITION.)
16. Senses for non-verbal "language" communicating (thought
as a form of TELEPATHY or VIBE-SENSING.)
17. Combined sensing systems (neural networks) for making
meaning out of at least 130 identified nonverbal physical
gestures and twenty basic kinds of nonverbal messages
(thought of as INTUITIONAL CHARACTER ASSESSMENT or a
particular form of CLAIRVOYANCE.)
18. Receptors that trigger alarm and apprehension before
their sources are directly perceived (a particularly
valuable type of PSYCHIC FORESIGHT, FORESEEING, INTUITION.)
19. Sensing systems for registering and identifying
nonverbal emotional waves (a form of INTUITION and/or
TELEPATHY or CLAIRVOYANCE.)
The following are now known to be associated with the
PINEAL GLAND if it is healthy and in good working order.
20. Senses and memory-stores cycles of light and darkness,
anticipating them with accuracy as the daily motions of the
sun and moon change (a kind of PSYCHIC FORECASTING or
FUTURE SEEING.)
21. Senses and responds to solar and lunar rhythms, solar
disruptions (flares, sunspots) and moon-caused tidal
changes (water or geophysical ones), and can sense "coming"
earthquakes and storms (a form of PREDICTIVE ESP especially
noted in sailors, farmers, but also in cows, dogs, cats,
and snakes.)
22. If the pineal gland is fully functional, it acts as a
nonvisual photo-receptor (the psychic equivalent being
"X-RAY VISION.")
*
The following senses or sensing systems are similar to some
already mentioned, but they appear to function upon a
completely different basis and are additional those senses
already mentioned.
It is now thought that this basis is almost certainly the
WATER contained in the bio-body, in the physical components
of the nerve systems, and the physical part of the brain.
It is not yet understood how WATER is used this way to
create a fluidic but elaborate series of interconnected
sensing systems.
One of the best guesses, yet to be established, is that the
vibrations of the water molecules link together throughout
the entire bio-body and form the equivalent of radar or
sonar antennae.
These liquid antenna sensing systems appear to detect the
following categories. Divided by categories, they can be
thought of as individualized and highly refined sensing
systems. All of these categories have been thought of as
PSYCHIC, ESP, CLAIRVOYANT, or INTUITIVE - which is to say,
been thought of as unexplainable and hence impossible.
23. Sense of non-visual wave motions.
24. Sense of non-visual oscillating patterns.
25. Sense of magnetic fields.
26. Sense of infrared radiation.
27. Sense of electrical energy.
28. Sense receptors for local AND distant sources of heat.
(This is an unnamed PSI faculty, but one familiar to
Amerindians.)
29. Sense of geo-electromagnetic pulses, magnetic fields,
especially biological ones (psychic equivalents
unidentified and unnamed.)
30. Although the mechanisms are not at all understood, the
liquidic sensing detectors apparently are somehow involved
in the remote sensing of anything at a distance, however
great. The results, of course, are remote viewing, remote
hearing, remote tasting, and so forth.
*
Finally (although there is no "finally" here), we come to
sensory systems' receptors spread throughout the entire
bio-body, and which apparently feed information into the
mind-body interface (if "interface" would be the correct
concept.)
31. Whole-body receptors (millions of them) to detect
pheromones, sexual receptivity, fear, love, admiration,
danger, pain in others, intentions in others, etc., (all
formerly thought of as inexplicable forms of ESP or
so-called VIBE-SENSING and/or PSYCHIC `READING".)
Please note that the list above
is not complete and is presently in process
of being extended.
*
With the invention of the electron microscope in the early
1930s, large amounts of data had accumulated by the 1950s
which irrevocably substantiated that the human being
possessed very many more senses than only the infamous
physical five.
*
As of the late 1950s, then, there was no longer any
justifiable reason to continue teaching and emphasizing the
five physical senses.
And, as well, there was no longer any justifiable reason to
continue the mainstream debunking of so-called psychic
perceptions - because bio-mind receptors have been located
and confirmed for a lot of them.
*
During the 1960s and 1970s, the scientific information pool
of this kind of discovery had increased enormously - the
sum of which brought a complete end to the concept of the
five physical senses only.
A "complete end" at least in a scientific sense. But not in
a cultural sense - because the meaning of these sensory
discoveries is still being completely ignored in the
cultural and ideological milieus, even though technical and
popular books became available.
*
One of the better, more easy-to-read technical books was
SENSATION AND PERCEPTION: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH, by H.R.
Schiffman, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1976. This book
is still invaluable today, and provides an extensive
bibliography of sources.
As already noted, perhaps the best popular book, certainly
very easy to read, was DECIPHERING THE SENSES: THE
EXPANDING WORLD OF HUMAN PERCEPTION, by Robert Rivlan and
Karen Gravelle, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984. The
first chapter of this book identifies and discusses
SEVENTEEN SENSES, and also has a competent bibliography
updating the one found in the Schiffman book.
*
Both of these books, as well as others, were almost
completely ignored, and the conviction that we possess only
five physical senses continues to hold sway today.
You see, it is possible to conclude that these books were
ignored because they tended toward encouraging people to
take justified interest in their extended sensory systems,
and perhaps to begin unfolding them.
*
Today there is no justification at all for the continuation
of anti-psychic belief systems. There is no justification
to teach that we have ONLY five physical senses, and there
is every justification to teach that we have very many
others.
There is also no justification to continue suggesting that
there is a difference between sensory and extra-sensory
perceptions and information. The discoveries regarding our
numerous senses and sensing systems obliterated the
boundaries which, in the uninformed past, tended to
artificially separate them.
Instead, we need to think more basically in terms of
INFORMATION. It is information that is important,
regardless of the manner in which it is acquired, or via
which sensory systems are utilized to do so.
*
To help more fully integrate the information presented in
this paper, I'm obliged to point up something which, to my
knowledge, has not been considered elsewhere.
If we think only in terms of senses and/or sensing systems,
then in very subtle ways we may be distinguishing between
them and ourselves. It is true that we do "have" or
"possess" senses and sensing systems. But something else is
also true, and it is very important that it should be
grasped.
*
We ARE our sensing systems. And what we call "WE" or "US"
or "SELF" is in some full part neither no more nor no less
than our sensing systems are acknowledged, developed, and
utilized. Since we ARE our sensing systems, the full nature
and realization of them must in some direct sense be
completely meaningful to the overall goals of this
important Society for Enlightenment and Transformation.
In closing here, please note that all of the books I have
mentioned contain extensive and excellent bibliographies of
published scientific papers. Please refer to them if you
are interested in such sources.
*
Because of the Particular Situation I've outlined above,
most people are not aware that significant scientific
advances HAVE been made regarding substantive support for
the real existence of a number of psi faculties.
Many scientific papers have been published regarding the
discoveries. But because of the Particular Situation these
remain ignominiously dispersed through the various
literatures and their implications are not enthusiastically
reviewed or endorsed in formal scientific, academic or
media forums.
*
Messieurs Mohammad Ramadan and Clarence Robins, both
indefatigable workers on behalf of enlightenment and
transformation, agreed that I should attempt to present at
least a nut-shell overview of the developments which have
not at all yet been socially permitted to reach down into
transformative social consciousness.
*
To enter into this overview, it is first necessary to set
the stage as to why psi faculties were rejected in the
scientific past.
A historical review of the phenomena of rejection of psi
shows that there were multiple reasons for it. In their
modern sense, some of these reasons reach back at least
three centuries.
Some of the reasons had to do with simple matters of
tolerance and intolerance both at the individual and social
levels. But others had to do with what was to be
established as acceptable or unacceptable knowledge at
politico-social levels. Others had to do with what was to
be accepted as normal or abnormal social and mental
behavior, especially as regards the first six decades of
the twentieth century.
*
The larger historical overview of the rejection thus
presents a fairly complicated picture, one which is
difficult to negotiate.
In modern scientific terms, however, the major thrust of
the rejection was early consolidated within the concepts of
philosophical materialism which came to govern early modern
scientific overviews and expectations.
As a philosophical commitment, then, the early modern
sciences held that whatever constituted scientific reality
had to have a physical basis in matter, in the material.
And so the consolidation of the rejection of psi was
straightforward and simple: That psi could not be accepted
until a quantifiable, material-physical basis for it, or
any part of it, was identified.
*
What this meant in simple terms was that the human could
ONLY access information for which physical receptors could
be shown to exist. The five physical senses were based in
the physical tactile mechanisms which resulted in the
sensations of sight, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touch.
But psychic information could not be attributed to any of
these, since all of them functioned only within the local
environments of the physical body.
As a general result, the existence of additional senses was
denied, both scientifically and philosophically, and it was
this denial which resulted in the Five-Senses-ONLY theory
which was pervasively proliferated throughout modernist
societies.
This scientific principle, for it indeed functioned as one,
thus served as the rationale and logic for the rejection of
psi faculties. I.e., no physical receptors for those
faculties were expected to be scientifically discovered. So
the on-going rejection of psi faculties was considered
justified.
*
It is worth pointing up something here which has dropped
out of modernist thinking. Anthropologists have established
that in general pre-modern societies did not think in terms
of having SENSES. As we might put it in today's computer
lingo, they thought more in terms of accessing information
or knowledge and achieving perception appropriate to them.
The conversion of the concept of accessing information to
the concept of having senses appears to have occurred only
AFTER the European Renaissance period. Indeed, it can quite
easily be shown that most of the major thinkers of the
Renaissance were profoundly preoccupied regarding HOW to
increase and stimulate the accessing of information.
*
Thus, the concept that we are dependent on our physical
senses rather than dependent on accessing information dates
from AFTER the seventeenth century - while the concept of
accessing information is at least 6,000 years old.
In this light, the idea that we access information only via
our five physical senses IS modern. The concept that we are
completely limited to what we perceive by the physical five
dates from only about 1845, and was from the outset solely
a scientific hypothesis which has never been demonstrated
by conclusive scientific fact.
*
Nevertheless, the hypothesis that human awareness is
limited to the five physical senses has been a very
powerful one within modernist philosophical and scientific
contexts. So powerful, indeed, that early modern scientists
never expected to discover the existence of bio-physical
receptors additional to the famous five.
Information derived from other than the physical five
senses was thought to be impossible, at least in theory.
And it was upon this theory that psychic information,
so-called, was scientifically rejected.
Indeed, many leading scientists between 1845 and about 1960
let it be known that there was "one scientific demand"
which would never be fulfilled: the discovery of
bio-physical receptors which would account for psychic
information. So, scientific brotherhoods united around the
conviction that until physical receptors for psychic
information were discovered, then the information should be
considered as illusory or psychopathological in origin.
*
Early psychical researchers and later parapsychologists of
course protested this rejection based solely on this "one
demand" of science. They indicated that if psi faculties
were purely psychological in origin and nature, then no
bio-physical receptors would ever be found.
However, by the same turn-around of the scientific argument
against the real existence of psi, should physical
receptors for accessing so-called psychic "information" be
discovered, then science proper would be obliged to accept
that its one demand was fulfilled.
*
What has just been presented has long been characterized as
the "conflict" between science and parapsychology. This
conflict has often been distorted to include other factors.
But the basic factor clearly and unambiguously hinged on
the absence of bio-physical receptors which would account
for the subtle kinds of information so-called "psychics"
deal with.
In parapsychological parlance, this kind of information
came to be called "extra-sensory" or "non-sensory." These
two terms unambiguously demonstrate that psychical
researchers and parapsychologists themselves did not
consider that bio-physical receptors for psychic
information would ever be discovered.
*
And it is from this context that the basic definition of
"psychic" is derived: i.e., lying outside of matter,
physicality, the physical sciences or knowledge of the
physical universe.
*
There is now a very interesting aspect to this conflict
which should be pointed out because it has great bearing on
later developments.
If the conflict is dissected carefully, it reveals that
scientists, psychical researchers, or parapsychologists
expected that any bio-physical basis for psi faculties
would be discovered.
Indeed, early psychical researchers looked for supernatural
explanations outside of any materialistic basis. By their
own name, paraPSYCHOLOGISTS clearly opted for a
psychological explanation, not a bio-physical one. And
there is no evidence at all in the parapsychological
literature that parapsychologists invested any time either
theorizing or researching for a bio-physical explanation.
*
This is to say, that any possible bio-physical explanation
was, and is, just as alien to parapsychology as it was to
the material sciences proper.
*
Here matters rested - until the first electron-microscope
was developed in Germany in 1932, and later evolved in the
United States and Canada. After World WAR II, cellular
biology underwent a great jump in importance because of the
electron-microscope and even more penetrating and precise
later technical advances.
Now began the slow process of comprehending that biological
cells were not the simplistic things once thought. Rather,
they were composed of ultra-minute factors which functioned
in very remarkable ways.
*
Also, during the 1930s another development occurred which
was to have enormous importance and impact, an impact which
is yet in progress today.
The fact that biological organisms have some kind of
electromagnetic substrate was discovered about 300 years
ago. But this substrate was considered weak and unimportant
in the face of the chemical substrate which was thought to
be very strong.
During the 1930s, however, researchers in various parts of
the world, and especially in the former Soviet Union, began
to realize that although the electromagnetic substrate was
"weak" it nonetheless played very important roles within
the bio-chemical whole of ALL biological organisms.
*
Advances in bio-electromagnetism were somewhat delayed,
however, until appropriate technology could be invented to
deal more adequately with subtle bio-energy forms. The
technology began to be available during the 1960s, and by
the late 1970s the extraordinary importance of the
bio-electromagnetic substrate could begin to be seen.
*
A meaningful factor, somewhat amusing, now needs to be
introduced, one with which most people are probably not
familiar.
Science and technology are often thought of going hand in
hand. But this is often not the case. The nearly invisible
reason is that the technically-minded and the
scientifically-minded don't appear to be the same kind of
thinkers.
*
Largely speaking, scientists are more likely to be
theoreticians. But technicians are more likely to be
engineers.
Scientists theorize and try to test their theories. But
technicians build things, often just to see what the things
can do. Indeed, technical advances can often be several
generations AHEAD of scientific thinking. This is certainly
the case with the computer industry evolved largely by
technician-types, not by scientists. Indeed, many
technological advances have been achieved by technologists
who possessed little in the way of legitimate or
conventional scientific backgrounds.
*
The bottom line of all these developments is that during
the last forty years a very large series of new research
disciplines have come into existence. These new disciplines
constitute an intermixing of science, technology,
microscopy, subtle chemical exchanging, and electromagnetic
and bio-electromagnetic expertise.
Ahead I give a partial list of these new disciplines. But
the punch line here is that it was left to these NEW
disciplines to increasingly discover (much to their
surprise!) the expanding bio-organic basis for many
faculties once merely thought questionably "psychic."
*
There is only one impediment regarding an integration of
these new disciplines with psychical and parapsychological
research. This involves the new nomenclature being evolved
with these new disciplines.
The new nomenclature is as alien to science as it is to
parapsychology, and at present both these venerable
institutions are having difficulty integrating it both
conceptually and contextually. I will show many examples of
this ahead.
*
But beyond this little difficulty, there is no doubt that
many of the advances being made in those new disciplines
can be "married" to many otherwise well-known psychic
faculties - as I will demonstrate at the end of this paper.
*
At this point, I can't resist making one sardonic comment.
Earlier in this paper I have complained about the lack of
scientific and popular integration of the implications of
these new discoveries.
But there is one group that has taken adequate and accurate
interest in these astonishing discoveries and which seems
to be more or less up to date regarding them. This group
consists of the producers and scriptwriters of the TV
series STAR TREK and similar offshoots.
*
The new and now on-going discoveries of biological bases
for many psi faculties is now best expressed, perhaps, as
PARABIOLOGY, meaning "beyond" past conventional concepts of
biology.
Or, perhaps, the term PARAPSYCHOBIOLOGY is convenient -
which, if translated into Russian, would become the term
translated back into English as bio-communications or
bio-information transfer.
*
So far, the new discoveries regarding the biological bases
for psi faculties roughly fall into five categories. I have
to get a little technical here, but I'll simplify just
ahead.
These five general categories are:
Minute chemical receptors and sensors
Minute chemico-electro receptors and sensors
Neural-network exchanges of information in the bio-internal
body substrates
Bio-electromagnetic information receptors and sensors
Bio-information transfer networks at the atomic, molecular,
and neurological levels
*
If these new terms are somewhat confusing, well don't worry
too much.
They simply mean that we are FAR BEYOND the
five-senses-only fallacy and that our bio-mind bodies have
multitudes of exceptional senses by way of delicate systems
of receptors and sensors at the cellular, nervous, chemical
and bio-electromagnetic levels and their interfaces.
A nice way to conceive the whole of this is to comprehend
that every cell, possibly every atom, in our
bio-physicality is a receptor or sensor of some kind.
In other words, we are walking, talking, eating, defecating
ARRAYS of exquisitely elegant and sophisticated receptors
and sensors. ALL of these receptors and sensors are busy
ACCESSING information - and knowledge, IF what is accessed
can be organized into recognizable thinking patterns.
*
By extended meaning, these delicate systems of receptors
can also integrate with our normal five - and, given
adaptive learning regarding them, can also integrate with
our mental cognitive powers - to result in, yes, what have
otherwise generally been called "psi faculties."
*
Now, to give you here some broad idea of the cutting-edge,
largely technical disciplines involved, I'll quickly read
through a list of twenty-one of them:
Electro-chemical physiology
Neurobiology
Neurobiology
Neuropsychology
Bio-radiation studies
Hormone and Hormonal transmission research
Chemical signal research
Bio-electric research
Brainwave research
Bio-sensitivity research
Bio-electric information transfer research
Sensory coding research
Bio-magnetic navigation research
Bio-electronic systems research
Bio-electric field detection research
Electrophysiological studies
Pheromone and pheromone transfer research
Multi-stability in perception research
Subliminal perception research
Neuro-magnetic response research
Bio-infrared and bio-ultraviolet perception research
*
At this point, I could adumbrate upon more than a thousand
scientific papers about these discoveries published in the
science literature, even in the esteemed leading science
periodicals such as NATURE, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN and
DISCOVER.
The authors of those papers, though, never use the terms
psi, psychic, or parapsychology, etc., since the mere
introduction of them would cause their papers to be
rejected.
The editors and peer-review systems of such publications
apparently don't realize, for example, that "bioinformation
transfer over distance" means about the same thing as
"telepathy" and/or "clairvoyance," or "remote viewing." But
this is merely part of the Particular Situation I referred
to at the beginning of this talk.
*
I now hold up in my hand before you, so you can see that it
really exists, a book published in 1984 via Simon &
Schuster, by Robert Rivlan and Karen Gravelle. This book is
complete with bibliography of scientific sources, but is
easy to read. It's entitled, somewhat misleadingly, as
DECIPHERING THE SENSES: THE EXPANDING WORLD OF HUMAN
PERCEPTION.
Well, the world of human perception is NOT expanding.
Rather, ignorance of that world is shrinking a little.
The book might have been called something like THE
DISCOVERY OF THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR PSI AND OTHER
ANOMALOUS PERCEPTIONS.
*
The discoveries brought together and presented in this
book, although in popular style, are based on hard
scientific discoveries that have been achieved in other
disciplines outside and independent of parapsychology.
And, as such, the sum of them clearly fulfills - at least
regarding certain forms of psi - the earlier scientific
demand that a bio-organic basis for psi be discovered.
*
I'll quote from the book's fly-leaf; "For centuries we have
used an oversimplified and inaccurate model to explain the
human senses. Even now, high school biology classes still
teach the `five senses'. But recent scientific research has
discovered that there are many more than five senses, and
these discoveries have radically changed our understanding
of what the senses are and how they work. Rivlan and
Gravelle redefine for the general reader the spectrum of
human perceptions from the normal to the newly discovered
to the extra-sensory."
As chapter one indicates, the book discusses "The seventeen
senses" additional to our usual five ones, and then goes on
to place the newly-discovered senses in context with the
usual five. The authors consume eight chapters to prepare
the reader - before they reach chapter 9, entitled
"Extra-sensory perception." Probably because of this
chapter, the book was now well-received and is now out of
print. But it's well worth tracking down a copy of it.
*
Now, lest there be some misunderstanding here, the two
authors are NOT describing psychological or mental
functions.
They are discussing the actual existence within our biology
of minute physical-chemical-bioelectromagnetic "receptors"
and "sensors" that interact within networks of the
"information-processing resources of the organism."
It is quite easy to ascertain that five senses are
obviously NOT ENOUGH to account for the huge range of
sensory possibilities of which the human species is
capable, while seventeen senses is probably a more accurate
count, with more probably yet to be discovered.
No one can survive very well on just five senses. Just ask
any seafarer, mountain climber, football or basketball
player, explorer or inventor, martial arts exert, or even
someone seeking sex. The moment "automatic reflexes" or
"intuitive" stuff enters into their talk, know that you
have departed the realm of the physical five and entered
into the realms of additional senses.
*
As to what these seventeen new senses are. The seventeen
new senses interact with each other to provide a rather
extensive list, many of which have in the past been
referred to as "psychic." Since we don't have time here to
go through them, I've brought a few copies of that list to
hand out, along with some copies of this lecture, and all
of which you are free to duplicate.
But, for example, the bio-body is now known to have a
functioning vomeronasal system containing receptors
enabling, at the bio-subliminal level, the detection of
minute amounts of chemical signals that tell us about
anther's sexual receptivity, fear, anger, and other
emotions - an aptitude more commonly referred to as
"psychic vibe-sensing."
In another category, through the use of a newly invented
device called the SQUID, scientists can and have measured
and begun to classify the brain's electrical activity
outside of the scalp -
Which in turn has led to discoveries that bio-electric
activity extends to some distance beyond the skin -
Which in turn has led to the discovery of bio-electric
sensors not only in the skin, but in the neuropeptide
activity that transmits all kinds of subtle senses
information through the immune system and into the brain -
and back again into the body's extremities and all its
internal organs, including into its surrounding
bio-electromagnetic field.
*
Now, discovered bio-electromagnetic fields extending
outside the scalp and outside of the skin clearly equate to
the "auras" that many clairvoyants have specialized in
"seeing."
Drawing on authoritative scientific sources, Rivlan and
Gravelle even hypothesize that, and I quote, "thoughts may,
indeed, have wings, and some of us may have the ability to
sense what others are thinking" via these newly discovered
bio-electromagnetic receptor-sensing networks.
The two authors wonder: "Do some psychics and mystics have
this ability, vastly magnified, so they can sense the
electricity from considerable distances?" Well, there would
have been no question of this in antiquity - or even among
Arabian or Mongolian nomads today, as well as
"street-smart" New Yorkers.
*
Actually, this is the same question that those researching
electromagnetism and bio-electromagnetism have been
wondering about for over fifty years.
So it's worth pointing up here that the existence of
extensive bio-electromagnetism essentially was demonstrated
late during the last century, but its existence has not
figured very much either into scientific psychology or in
scientific parapsychology - both of these two field having
managed mutually to ignore it altogether.
*
Did you know that in addition to yourself being a bio-meat
body with eyes, livers, hearts, and appetites of various
kinds, you are also a bio-electronic one? Have you ever
thought of yourself as such? If you begin to, well,
something interesting might begin to happen.
Dr. Robert O. Becker is one of the leading researchers in
the United States regarding electromagnetism and
bio-electromagnetism. With Gary Selden, he published, in
1985, a book entitled THE BODY ELECTRIC: ELECTROMAGNETISM
AND THE FOUNDATION OF LIFE (William Morrow, New York), and
which "tells the story of our bioelectric selves."
A companion book is Harold Saxton Burr's BLUEPRINT FOR
IMMORTALITY: THE ELECTRIC PATTERNS OF LIFE (Neville
Spearman, London, 1973, republished 1988). Burr, by the
way, is an American researcher but could not find an
American publisher for this seminal book.
*
Bob Becker has made many unequivocal statements regarding
the psi implications of bio-electromagnetism.
For example, he published in PSYCHOENERGETIC SYSTEMS, 1977,
Vol. 2, pp. 189-196, an article entitled "An Application of
Direct Current Neural Systems to Psychic Phenomena." He
stated that "The concept of a primitive electronic
communication system in all living things can be a useful
tool in understanding both `normal' and `paranormal'
phenomena that have lacked a rational biological
explanation. Indeed, it appears that human beings are tied
to the universe in a web of electromagnetic energy."
*
At this point, I believe I've now presented for you
consideration the rudiments of the Particular Situation I
referred to at the beginning.
The Particular Situation consists of three factors:
(1) science demanded that a bio-organic explanation for psi
faculties be found before it could accept them as real;
(2) bio-organic explanations have been found for many kinds
of psi faculties; and
(3) everyone seems to be ignoring both the facts and the
implications of (2) as just stated.
*
As to more of what our additional senses are:
Did you know that the soles of your feet and the palms of
your hands contain minute magnetic receptors and sensors
that "recognize" minute and gross changes in local
magnetism?
Here are the rudiments of dowsing, healing, and various
rough forms of psychometry which means psyching-out what
something is by merely holding it.
Alas, though. If you haven't built neural pathways linking
these sensors to your cognitive faculties, you probably
won't be able to sense what the receptors in the soles of
your feet picking up.
*
In bringing this talk to a conclusion, recall that earlier
I mentioned the problem of the nomenclature which is acting
as a barrier between the new discoveries and more
recognizable concepts of psychical and parapsychological
research. This same nomenclature is also acting as a
barrier between the new research and the problems of
enlightenment and transformation which are the objectives
of this Society for Enlightenment and Transformation.
To help begin the nomenclature bridge, I'd now like to give
some examples by which the two nomenclatures can be
compared.
Recently Discovered Bioorganic Basis
for the Following Additional Senses
1. Receptors in the nose sensing systems that "smell"
emotions, and that can identify motives, sexual
receptivity, antagonism, benevolence, etc. (All these are
formats of what are commonly referred to as psychic
vibe-sensing.)
2. Receptors in the ear sensing systems that detect and
identify differences in pressure and electromagnetic
frequencies (formats of ESP.)
3. Skin receptors that detect balance and imbalance
regarding what is external to the bio-body, even external
at some astonishing distances (formats of remote-sensing, a
mixed form of ESP and clairvoyance.)
4. Skin receptors that detect motion outside of the body,
even when the body is asleep (a format of subliminal ESP.)
5. Directional finding and locating receptors in the
endocrine and neuropeptide systems (formats of dowsing,
intermixed with formats of cognitive ESP or intuition.)
6. Whole-body receptors, including hair, that identify
fluidic motions of horizontal, vertical, diagonal, even if
not visually perceived (as, for example, in the "psychic"
portion of the martial art of Akhido.)
7. Skin receptors that "recognize" the temperament of other
biological organisms (a format of psi "reading".)
8. Subliminal sensory systems which locate and identify
pitch of sound, a sense of heat across great distances, a
sense of frequencies and waves, either mechanical or
energetic (all being formats of ESP and vibe-sensing,
sometimes also referred to as "shaman perceiving.")
9. Receptors that identify positive and negative charged
particles at the atomic level. (The term utilized for this
in psychical research is "micro-psi" but which is rare.
However, it has been convincingly demonstrated, especially
in the case of C. W. Leadbeater who published Occult
Chemistry (1908). Thirty years before the invention of the
electron-microscope he correctly described sub-atomic
particles, many undiscovered at the time, but discovered
since. Micro-psi faculties are mentioned as one of the
ancient Sidhis of ancient India (see, for example, Yoga
Sutras of Patanjali).)
10. Microsystem transducing of various forms of mechanical,
chemical, and electromagnetic energy into meaningful nerve
impulses (all commonly thought of as FORMS OF ESP.)
11. Receptors that sense gravitational changes (a form of
PSYCHIC DOWSING.)
12. Neurological senses for interpreting modulated
electronic information by converting it into analog signals
for mental storage, interpretation, and cognition (one of
the bio-mind bases for TELEPATHY.)
13. Bio-electronic receptors for sensing radiation,
including X-rays, cosmic rays, infrared radiation, and
ultraviolet light, all of these receptors being found in
the retina of the eye (part of the basis for various forms
of CLAIRVOYANCE.)
14. Receptors that respond to exterior electrical fields
and systems (producing forms of CLAIRVOYANCE and AURA
"READING.")
Today, the following highly specialized sensing systems are
referred to in the new sciences as HUMAN SEMAPHORE
CAPACITIES.
15. Skin receptors for sensing perceptions of bonding or
antagonism (thought of as forms of INTUITION.)
16. Senses for non-verbal "language" communicating (thought
as a form of TELEPATHY or VIBE-SENSING.)
17. Combined sensing systems (neural networks) for making
meaning out of at least 130 identified nonverbal physical
gestures and twenty basic kinds of nonverbal messages
(thought of as INTUITIONAL CHARACTER ASSESSMENT or a
particular form of CLAIRVOYANCE.)
18. Receptors that trigger alarm and apprehension before
their sources are directly perceived (a particularly
valuable type of PSYCHIC FORESIGHT, FORESEEING, INTUITION.)
19. Sensing systems for registering and identifying
nonverbal emotional waves (a form of INTUITION and/or
TELEPATHY or CLAIRVOYANCE.)
The following are now known to be associated with the
PINEAL GLAND if it is healthy and in good working order.
20. Senses and memory-stores cycles of light and darkness,
anticipating them with accuracy as the daily motions of the
sun and moon change (a kind of PSYCHIC FORECASTING or
FUTURE SEEING.)
21. Senses and responds to solar and lunar rhythms, solar
disruptions (flares, sunspots) and moon-caused tidal
changes (water or geophysical ones), and can sense "coming"
earthquakes and storms (a form of PREDICTIVE ESP especially
noted in sailors, farmers, but also in cows, dogs, cats,
and snakes.)
22. If the pineal gland is fully functional, it acts as a
nonvisual photo-receptor (the psychic equivalent being
"X-RAY VISION.")
*
The following senses or sensing systems are similar to some
already mentioned, but they appear to function upon a
completely different basis and are additional those senses
already mentioned.
It is now thought that this basis is almost certainly the
WATER contained in the bio-body, in the physical components
of the nerve systems, and the physical part of the brain.
It is not yet understood how WATER is used this way to
create a fluidic but elaborate series of interconnected
sensing systems.
One of the best guesses, yet to be established, is that the
vibrations of the water molecules link together throughout
the entire bio-body and form the equivalent of radar or
sonar antennae.
These liquid antenna sensing systems appear to detect the
following categories. Divided by categories, they can be
thought of as individualized and highly refined sensing
systems. All of these categories have been thought of as
PSYCHIC, ESP, CLAIRVOYANT, or INTUITIVE - which is to say,
been thought of as unexplainable and hence impossible.
23. Sense of non-visual wave motions.
24. Sense of non-visual oscillating patterns.
25. Sense of magnetic fields.
26. Sense of infrared radiation.
27. Sense of electrical energy.
28. Sense receptors for local AND distant sources of heat.
(This is an unnamed PSI faculty, but one familiar to
Amerindians.)
29. Sense of geo-electromagnetic pulses, magnetic fields,
especially biological ones (psychic equivalents
unidentified and unnamed.)
30. Although the mechanisms are not at all understood, the
liquidic sensing detectors apparently are somehow involved
in the remote sensing of anything at a distance, however
great. The results, of course, are remote viewing, remote
hearing, remote tasting, and so forth.
*
Finally (although there is no "finally" here), we come to
sensory systems' receptors spread throughout the entire
bio-body, and which apparently feed information into the
mind-body interface (if "interface" would be the correct
concept.)
31. Whole-body receptors (millions of them) to detect
pheromones, sexual receptivity, fear, love, admiration,
danger, pain in others, intentions in others, etc., (all
formerly thought of as inexplicable forms of ESP or
so-called VIBE-SENSING and/or PSYCHIC `READING".)
Please note that the list above
is not complete and is presently in process
of being extended.
*
With the invention of the electron microscope in the early
1930s, large amounts of data had accumulated by the 1950s
which irrevocably substantiated that the human being
possessed very many more senses than only the infamous
physical five.
*
As of the late 1950s, then, there was no longer any
justifiable reason to continue teaching and emphasizing the
five physical senses.
And, as well, there was no longer any justifiable reason to
continue the mainstream debunking of so-called psychic
perceptions - because bio-mind receptors have been located
and confirmed for a lot of them.
*
During the 1960s and 1970s, the scientific information pool
of this kind of discovery had increased enormously - the
sum of which brought a complete end to the concept of the
five physical senses only.
A "complete end" at least in a scientific sense. But not in
a cultural sense - because the meaning of these sensory
discoveries is still being completely ignored in the
cultural and ideological milieus, even though technical and
popular books became available.
*
One of the better, more easy-to-read technical books was
SENSATION AND PERCEPTION: AN INTEGRATED APPROACH, by H.R.
Schiffman, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1976. This book
is still invaluable today, and provides an extensive
bibliography of sources.
As already noted, perhaps the best popular book, certainly
very easy to read, was DECIPHERING THE SENSES: THE
EXPANDING WORLD OF HUMAN PERCEPTION, by Robert Rivlan and
Karen Gravelle, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1984. The
first chapter of this book identifies and discusses
SEVENTEEN SENSES, and also has a competent bibliography
updating the one found in the Schiffman book.
*
Both of these books, as well as others, were almost
completely ignored, and the conviction that we possess only
five physical senses continues to hold sway today.
You see, it is possible to conclude that these books were
ignored because they tended toward encouraging people to
take justified interest in their extended sensory systems,
and perhaps to begin unfolding them.
*
Today there is no justification at all for the continuation
of anti-psychic belief systems. There is no justification
to teach that we have ONLY five physical senses, and there
is every justification to teach that we have very many
others.
There is also no justification to continue suggesting that
there is a difference between sensory and extra-sensory
perceptions and information. The discoveries regarding our
numerous senses and sensing systems obliterated the
boundaries which, in the uninformed past, tended to
artificially separate them.
Instead, we need to think more basically in terms of
INFORMATION. It is information that is important,
regardless of the manner in which it is acquired, or via
which sensory systems are utilized to do so.
*
To help more fully integrate the information presented in
this paper, I'm obliged to point up something which, to my
knowledge, has not been considered elsewhere.
If we think only in terms of senses and/or sensing systems,
then in very subtle ways we may be distinguishing between
them and ourselves. It is true that we do "have" or
"possess" senses and sensing systems. But something else is
also true, and it is very important that it should be
grasped.
*
We ARE our sensing systems. And what we call "WE" or "US"
or "SELF" is in some full part neither no more nor no less
than our sensing systems are acknowledged, developed, and
utilized. Since we ARE our sensing systems, the full nature
and realization of them must in some direct sense be
completely meaningful to the overall goals of this
important Society for Enlightenment and Transformation.
In closing here, please note that all of the books I have
mentioned contain extensive and excellent bibliographies of
published scientific papers. Please refer to them if you
are interested in such sources.
(End)
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