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ESP in Life and Lab: Tracing Hidden Channels
This clear and reasonable account of all aspects of extrasensory perception and related abilities gives a vivid picture of the research that established them in terms of both life experiences and laboratory experiments. For more than thirty years, Louisa E. Rhine and her husband, J. B. Rhine, have been the world's leading authorities on extrasensory perception, and the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University has been the center of research and the headquarters for co-workers from all over the world. Mrs. Rhine has written her book in the hope of reaching "that more general audience which is made up of intelligent, thoughtful, open-minded persons who want to be informed on all topics and who realize something of the seriousness of current cultural trends."
Basically, ESP means the reception in the mind of information that is not obtained through the senses. Its main types are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. The forms of ESP fall into four major intuitions, realistic dreams, unrealistic dreams, and, more rarely, hallucinations. Mrs. Rhine illustrates each of these forms with dramatic case histories described in letters from and interviews with private individuals--cases that are typical in import but different in specific detail (10,066 of these four forms of cases were classified in her collection at the last count, in 1963). Along with these personal accounts, she shows the development of the research in typical laboratory experiments under controlled conditions, emphasizing the complications, difficulties, and rare triumphs that accompany research in such a pioneer area. Her book also deals with a separate but related extrasensory phenomenon, psychokinesis (known as PK)--the ability of the mind to influence matter directly--and gives specific examples.
The Rhines' research initially was extremely controversial, but acceptance has increased over the years as ESP has been proved to exist, probably in all of us, and indubitably in some of us. The human potential to which it points is practically boundless. As Mrs. Rhine says in "Parapsychological abilities may someday be put to work, and if they are, the result can benefit mankind very greatly. But whether or not they are, the very fact that they exist opens up a new window for man's outlook. It tells him he need not consider himself relegated to the confines of mechanism. He will remain not the computer, but the man who made it, with values and aspirations his machines can never know."
Basically, ESP means the reception in the mind of information that is not obtained through the senses. Its main types are telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. The forms of ESP fall into four major intuitions, realistic dreams, unrealistic dreams, and, more rarely, hallucinations. Mrs. Rhine illustrates each of these forms with dramatic case histories described in letters from and interviews with private individuals--cases that are typical in import but different in specific detail (10,066 of these four forms of cases were classified in her collection at the last count, in 1963). Along with these personal accounts, she shows the development of the research in typical laboratory experiments under controlled conditions, emphasizing the complications, difficulties, and rare triumphs that accompany research in such a pioneer area. Her book also deals with a separate but related extrasensory phenomenon, psychokinesis (known as PK)--the ability of the mind to influence matter directly--and gives specific examples.
The Rhines' research initially was extremely controversial, but acceptance has increased over the years as ESP has been proved to exist, probably in all of us, and indubitably in some of us. The human potential to which it points is practically boundless. As Mrs. Rhine says in "Parapsychological abilities may someday be put to work, and if they are, the result can benefit mankind very greatly. But whether or not they are, the very fact that they exist opens up a new window for man's outlook. It tells him he need not consider himself relegated to the confines of mechanism. He will remain not the computer, but the man who made it, with values and aspirations his machines can never know."
- GenresOccult
275 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1967
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July 12, 2015
Reading this book was like watching paint dry. I just happen to enjoy the color of its paint.
Mostly an account of other peoples experiences with ESP this work creates a framework for seeing a vast array of individuals from the mid-twenty first century in America explain their everyday experiences with precognitive dreams, psychokinetics, telepathy, and the myriad of unclassified psi-occurences within our everyday spheres.
Dr. Louisa E. Rhine continues the thread between these first-hand accounts by laying the cognitive soil where we can find a common expression amidst the many voices that called out and who wrote letters to the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory during the 1930's, 40's and 50's.
The main dimension she asserts is that "...information secured by ESP is processed or conveyed to conscious attention by the psychological constructs; intuitions, dreams, and hallucinations." pg. 161
She found since we spend the majority of our lives awake, that the primary duct, which carts this capacity is intuitive, then we have a lesser but still significant amount through dreams, and a marginal amount experienced as hallucinations (not counting affects that lead to them i.e. drugs, lack of eating, no sleep etc.), and that these hallucinations occurred in auditory, olfactory, and perceptive ways.
Another aspect of PSI that was wiped clear for me her no frills definition distinguishing telepathy from clairvoyance: "To make a telepathy test there should be no object, only the thought of one; to make a clairvoyance test, no thought but only an object." pg. 78
She focuses the majority of her creative energy on where these experiences come from and finds it less significant (at least within the preliminary realm of determining ESP affects upon individuals psychologically, emotionally and physically), to elucidate upon what type of ESP is occurring.
"Perhaps it will not be out of order here to emphasize that the form of an ESP experience is quite distinct from its type. In type it may be clairvoyant, telepathic or precognitive, but each of these types may occur in any of the four forms, as an intuition, realistic or unrealistic dream, or as a hallucination."
"It is the form, not the type of E.S.P., which gives the hints of the kind of process this is, by which the information makes its way to consciousness, for the type shows only the kind of target, thought, thing or future event, but the form shows the psychological manner in which the information got to consciousness." pg. 178
Dr. Louisa E. Rhine channels out the voices of many Americans who have been curious about our capacities since we've begun to realize (or remember) we have them. Her tone between these voices is patient, clever, and pioneering. Near the end of the book she reveals her awareness of the fact that the quasi-scientific field in which she operates is still a long way aways from being understood as the seminal moment in human consciousness that it is.
"The phenomena are still exceptional, even anomalous today, but not aberrant because now their lawful nature is obvious. And so a truly major adjustment of fact and theory is called for. New viewpoints are necessary, and they do not depend on discoveries in the objective world alone, but even more on changes that can come about only in the slow swing of habitual patterns of thought." pg. 266
Mostly an account of other peoples experiences with ESP this work creates a framework for seeing a vast array of individuals from the mid-twenty first century in America explain their everyday experiences with precognitive dreams, psychokinetics, telepathy, and the myriad of unclassified psi-occurences within our everyday spheres.
Dr. Louisa E. Rhine continues the thread between these first-hand accounts by laying the cognitive soil where we can find a common expression amidst the many voices that called out and who wrote letters to the Duke Parapsychology Laboratory during the 1930's, 40's and 50's.
The main dimension she asserts is that "...information secured by ESP is processed or conveyed to conscious attention by the psychological constructs; intuitions, dreams, and hallucinations." pg. 161
She found since we spend the majority of our lives awake, that the primary duct, which carts this capacity is intuitive, then we have a lesser but still significant amount through dreams, and a marginal amount experienced as hallucinations (not counting affects that lead to them i.e. drugs, lack of eating, no sleep etc.), and that these hallucinations occurred in auditory, olfactory, and perceptive ways.
Another aspect of PSI that was wiped clear for me her no frills definition distinguishing telepathy from clairvoyance: "To make a telepathy test there should be no object, only the thought of one; to make a clairvoyance test, no thought but only an object." pg. 78
She focuses the majority of her creative energy on where these experiences come from and finds it less significant (at least within the preliminary realm of determining ESP affects upon individuals psychologically, emotionally and physically), to elucidate upon what type of ESP is occurring.
"Perhaps it will not be out of order here to emphasize that the form of an ESP experience is quite distinct from its type. In type it may be clairvoyant, telepathic or precognitive, but each of these types may occur in any of the four forms, as an intuition, realistic or unrealistic dream, or as a hallucination."
"It is the form, not the type of E.S.P., which gives the hints of the kind of process this is, by which the information makes its way to consciousness, for the type shows only the kind of target, thought, thing or future event, but the form shows the psychological manner in which the information got to consciousness." pg. 178
Dr. Louisa E. Rhine channels out the voices of many Americans who have been curious about our capacities since we've begun to realize (or remember) we have them. Her tone between these voices is patient, clever, and pioneering. Near the end of the book she reveals her awareness of the fact that the quasi-scientific field in which she operates is still a long way aways from being understood as the seminal moment in human consciousness that it is.
"The phenomena are still exceptional, even anomalous today, but not aberrant because now their lawful nature is obvious. And so a truly major adjustment of fact and theory is called for. New viewpoints are necessary, and they do not depend on discoveries in the objective world alone, but even more on changes that can come about only in the slow swing of habitual patterns of thought." pg. 266
May 25, 2024
A SUMMARY (AS OF 1967) OF RESEARCH INTO ESP AND PSI
Louisa Ella Rhine (1891-1983) was a doctor of botany and is best known for her work in parapsychology. In 1920, she married J.B. Rhine, a fellow graduate student, and they worked together in the Parapsychology Lab at Duke University (now succeeded by the Rhine Research Center).
She wrote in the first chapter of this 1967 book, “What is man? Is he a creature of ‘sense and mechanics’ only, or something more? The objective of this book is to call attention to the still almost unknown researches in the field of parapsychology because they bear on this ancient and important question… in the following chapters, the objective is to show as much as possible of the nature of ESP by tracing the process that produces it from its beginning to its end and … to indicate something of the kind of pioneer research that has been involved. To do so it is necessary to piece together the results of various experiments, each of which contributed its bit to understanding… The total effort is to show that the process by which ESP is produced does make sense; that it is part of the mind’s equipment, and therefore bears its testimony to the nature of man, just as much as his sense perception, his memory, reasoning ability, or any other of his mental characteristics do.” (Pg. 1, 6)
She states, “Once the occurrence of ESP was established, research in parapsychology can be said to have entered a new stage. Even though no sharp division can be traced, still it then became no longer necessary to perform experiments which would simply show that ESP occurred.” (Pg. 22)
She explains, “in parapsychology statisticians examine the results ... such that they are ‘mathematically significant.’ And because one can rely on the statisticians, it is possible in this presentation to minimize the statistical aspect. Interested mathematicians can always go to the original reports to find out what the exact values were.” (Pg. 49)
She cites the early Duke University tests of Linzmayer and Pearce, and comments, “However, these are only the results of two unusual early subjects at the Parapsychology Laboratory. Proof of clairvoyance only begins---not ends---with them.” (Pg. 79)
She explains, “[in the late 1930s] the problem of negative deviations was only beginning to be taken with seriousness… to an experimenter trying to get positive results, it was a frustrating outcome to get negative ones instead. However, if the negative trend was anticipated, it would be a different thing. Then it was a desired result and an experiment yielding it would be a successful one… [J.B.] Rhine had a fairly strong impression that negative scoring tended to occur when something in the situation bothered or upset the subject. He thought the reason the subjects had scored negatively in the precognition tests might be related to their attitudes toward those tests. Therefore, he planned the new test with them, expecting the negative scores.” (Pg. 88)
She recounts, “In order to avoid the monotony of card symbols [G.N.M. Tyrell] chose to go back to the old practice of using drawings for targets… he would have all of the target drawings different. Of course this was stepping backward into the use of ‘free material,’ but he thought he could overcome the drawback of not having any mathematical basis on which ‘chance’ could be reckoned. He decided to do it by an elaborate system of judging the results against a control set of drawings.” (Pg. 126)
She acknowledges, “Reports from individuals show personal variations ... over the complete range. The general suggestion is that each individual has his own range and that he probably remains true to type, but the difficulty is in knowing just what his type may be… This lack of unity in people’s reports of the forms of experiences they have had shows that in some cases at least the unconscious is not limited to using just one kind. This may be one reason experimental procedures can succeed; at the same time, the restriction of the form in experiments may be one reason they sometimes fail.” (Pg. 160)
She notes, “when PK seems to be related to human situations, the nature of the situation is not revealed by the occurrence. As message bearers, PK effects are the worst. Being so ineffective, they practically advertise the fact that they were not built for this job. The evidence suggests that, like hallucinations, these effects have a secondary origin, which quite possibly also is in connection with the origin of intuitions.” (Pg. 225)
She quotes an article by J.B. Rhine, in which he refers to ‘psi missing’ [e.g., guessing the card AFTER the ‘target’ card], and comments, “Over the years experimenters had been bothered by it, and often the successful repetition of many kinds of tests had been prevented when scoring would unexpectedly turn negative, for reasons too obscure to be identified. Now in this article the problem was dissected plainly even though its implications were not widely appreciated even then.” (Pg. 246)
She says, “Something of the stylized process of ESP in the laboratory is revealed by these effects; psi missing, differential selection of targets, reversals. They appear only in the laboratory, not in life experiences. No hint of them was given in the imperfect intuitive cases discussed in Chapter 11. Upon reflection, however, one can see it has to be this way, because actually a stage of the psi process is represented in the imperfections that show up in the laboratory, different from that which causes incompleteness in life experiences.” (Pg. 258-259)
She concludes, “This much the still incomplete discoveries of parapsychology show about man and his ‘destiny in the scheme of things.’ The fact that the psi process proves to be a real and lawful one guarantees the promise. It justifies the scientific method as applied to the age-old question, What is man with respect to the solid world of sense and mechanics? It enlivens the labor of discoveries still ahead, because the goal, to find out man’s full potential and his destiny, is the greatest man can have.” (Pg. 272)
This book will be of interest to those studying development of parapsychological research.
Louisa Ella Rhine (1891-1983) was a doctor of botany and is best known for her work in parapsychology. In 1920, she married J.B. Rhine, a fellow graduate student, and they worked together in the Parapsychology Lab at Duke University (now succeeded by the Rhine Research Center).
She wrote in the first chapter of this 1967 book, “What is man? Is he a creature of ‘sense and mechanics’ only, or something more? The objective of this book is to call attention to the still almost unknown researches in the field of parapsychology because they bear on this ancient and important question… in the following chapters, the objective is to show as much as possible of the nature of ESP by tracing the process that produces it from its beginning to its end and … to indicate something of the kind of pioneer research that has been involved. To do so it is necessary to piece together the results of various experiments, each of which contributed its bit to understanding… The total effort is to show that the process by which ESP is produced does make sense; that it is part of the mind’s equipment, and therefore bears its testimony to the nature of man, just as much as his sense perception, his memory, reasoning ability, or any other of his mental characteristics do.” (Pg. 1, 6)
She states, “Once the occurrence of ESP was established, research in parapsychology can be said to have entered a new stage. Even though no sharp division can be traced, still it then became no longer necessary to perform experiments which would simply show that ESP occurred.” (Pg. 22)
She explains, “in parapsychology statisticians examine the results ... such that they are ‘mathematically significant.’ And because one can rely on the statisticians, it is possible in this presentation to minimize the statistical aspect. Interested mathematicians can always go to the original reports to find out what the exact values were.” (Pg. 49)
She cites the early Duke University tests of Linzmayer and Pearce, and comments, “However, these are only the results of two unusual early subjects at the Parapsychology Laboratory. Proof of clairvoyance only begins---not ends---with them.” (Pg. 79)
She explains, “[in the late 1930s] the problem of negative deviations was only beginning to be taken with seriousness… to an experimenter trying to get positive results, it was a frustrating outcome to get negative ones instead. However, if the negative trend was anticipated, it would be a different thing. Then it was a desired result and an experiment yielding it would be a successful one… [J.B.] Rhine had a fairly strong impression that negative scoring tended to occur when something in the situation bothered or upset the subject. He thought the reason the subjects had scored negatively in the precognition tests might be related to their attitudes toward those tests. Therefore, he planned the new test with them, expecting the negative scores.” (Pg. 88)
She recounts, “In order to avoid the monotony of card symbols [G.N.M. Tyrell] chose to go back to the old practice of using drawings for targets… he would have all of the target drawings different. Of course this was stepping backward into the use of ‘free material,’ but he thought he could overcome the drawback of not having any mathematical basis on which ‘chance’ could be reckoned. He decided to do it by an elaborate system of judging the results against a control set of drawings.” (Pg. 126)
She acknowledges, “Reports from individuals show personal variations ... over the complete range. The general suggestion is that each individual has his own range and that he probably remains true to type, but the difficulty is in knowing just what his type may be… This lack of unity in people’s reports of the forms of experiences they have had shows that in some cases at least the unconscious is not limited to using just one kind. This may be one reason experimental procedures can succeed; at the same time, the restriction of the form in experiments may be one reason they sometimes fail.” (Pg. 160)
She notes, “when PK seems to be related to human situations, the nature of the situation is not revealed by the occurrence. As message bearers, PK effects are the worst. Being so ineffective, they practically advertise the fact that they were not built for this job. The evidence suggests that, like hallucinations, these effects have a secondary origin, which quite possibly also is in connection with the origin of intuitions.” (Pg. 225)
She quotes an article by J.B. Rhine, in which he refers to ‘psi missing’ [e.g., guessing the card AFTER the ‘target’ card], and comments, “Over the years experimenters had been bothered by it, and often the successful repetition of many kinds of tests had been prevented when scoring would unexpectedly turn negative, for reasons too obscure to be identified. Now in this article the problem was dissected plainly even though its implications were not widely appreciated even then.” (Pg. 246)
She says, “Something of the stylized process of ESP in the laboratory is revealed by these effects; psi missing, differential selection of targets, reversals. They appear only in the laboratory, not in life experiences. No hint of them was given in the imperfect intuitive cases discussed in Chapter 11. Upon reflection, however, one can see it has to be this way, because actually a stage of the psi process is represented in the imperfections that show up in the laboratory, different from that which causes incompleteness in life experiences.” (Pg. 258-259)
She concludes, “This much the still incomplete discoveries of parapsychology show about man and his ‘destiny in the scheme of things.’ The fact that the psi process proves to be a real and lawful one guarantees the promise. It justifies the scientific method as applied to the age-old question, What is man with respect to the solid world of sense and mechanics? It enlivens the labor of discoveries still ahead, because the goal, to find out man’s full potential and his destiny, is the greatest man can have.” (Pg. 272)
This book will be of interest to those studying development of parapsychological research.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews