How PSI might work part one

PSI, which covers phenomena such as telepathy and telekinesis, has been with us for millennia and studied rigorously for over a hundred years. It is a fascinating field for study, both in itself and in the attitudes towards it.

On the one side are extreme skeptics, or PseudoSkeptics as Leiter calls them (Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 125–128, 2002) who seem to be reacting against a faith based belief system imposed on them at an early age by adopting materialist science as a substitute belief system. Such skeptics avoid any evidence that might threaten their belief system and seem to have adopted a 19^th century materialist attitude. Alastair Crowley a fascinating and flawed figure, conversely reacted against a heavily religious parent by viewing himself as the Beast of Revelations and behaving accordingly.

On the other side are extreme believers, many of whom receive information about how the universe works from hidden masters or ascended beings in remote galaxies. By a strange coincidence the belief systems such people adopt tend to look like Christianity in new clothes sometimes with an Indian flavour.

In between, groups like the SPR and SPR (Society for Psychical Research and the American Society for Psychical Research) and the Association for the Scientific Study of Anomalous Phenomena (ASSAP) do their best to eliminate poor quality evidence, and thousands of academics carry out laboratory investigations on PSI

There is a common idea that PSI and Physics are incompatible, that accepting PSI would mean having to rewrite Physics completely. While PSI has some bizarre features they are rather less bizarre than some of the things reported at the advanced level of mainstream Science and it is possible to explain much of the evidence on PSI within Physics. One of the main problems in accepting PSI however arises because it involves interaction of consciousness with the universe ( an unsolved problem of long standing) and the problem of reconciling free will with precognition

Einstein described two pictures of the universe, one, special relativity, good for “Flat” space and the other “General Relativity” that is good for “Curved” space, that is very strong gravitational fields. The two interesting points are that different observers experience time differently and that while points in space are distinct there is a whole set of points that are at zero distance in space time.

Rauscher and Targ (Journal of Scientific Exploration,Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 331–354, 2001) replaced the 4 dimensional space with an 8 dimensional space each of the normal (x,y,z,t) coordinates being replaced by a complex number. If you like you can think of this as two universes at right angles to each other. The interesting point about this is best given in their own worlds

“The complex eight-space described here can always provide a path, or world line in space and time, which connects the viewer to a remote target, so that his awareness experiences zero spatial and/or temporal distance in the metric. It appears that for consciousness there may, or may not be any separation, depending on one's intention.”

The authors note that their proposal not only accommodates precognitions but also shows a fundamental relationship between Maxwell's equations for electromagnetic waves, quantum theory and general relativity, that the equations of Newton, Maxwell, Einstein and Schrodinger are consistent with the eight dimensional complex space and that eight is the smallest number of dimensions needed to be consistent with relativity.

The original paper, on the Journal of Scientific Exploration website, is long and covers far more than this. It is interesting in that it goes some way towards reconciling Precognition and free will. The model they take is one where the future influences but does not completely determine the past. There seems to be some wiggle room. For example one person dreamed of being involved in a plane crash and cancelled their flight only to see “his” plane crash the next day or the woman who dreamed she stopped by a stream with her baby then left the baby by the water in order to fetch something and found on her return that the baby had drowned. A while later she found herself at the place she had dreamed of and needing to fetch something. She remembered the dream and took the baby with her.

This is not always conscious. W.F. Cox investigated twenty-eight documented train wrecks between 1950 and 1955. He found that in every case fewer people rode the trains that crashed or were wrecked, than rode similar trains which did not crash. At odds of greater than 100 to 1, it would seem hundreds of people awakened in the morning, and for some reason, decided not to take their usual train. More recently on 9/11 there were, I read, far fewer people than normal in the twin towers- Thus, it would seem that one does not have to experience a future that looks unattractive or hazardous, to have it appear in one's subconscious and affect your behaviour.

In summary PSI and physics are not incompatible and one model of space time accommodates not only PSI but also neatly ties together various areas of physics. There are however other models which will be described later