PsiRelated Experiences

1
Psi-Related Experiences
2

• Psi-related experiences or spontaneous psi is
  also known as (PREs). PREs include reports of
  apparent telepathy (direct mind-to-mind
  communication), clairvoyance (anomalous knowledge
  of distant events), precognition (knowledge of
  the future), or psychokinesis (mind over matter).
  When studied in a suitably controlled laboratory
  setting, the underlying ostensibly paranormal
  process, be it extrasensory or psychokinetic in
  nature, is termed psi. Thus, psi is a
  hypothetical construct relating to the presumed
  anomalous transfer of information or energy for
  which there is, arguably, objective evidential
  support.

3

• Reports of personal PREs such as apparent
  clairvoyance, telepathy, and precognition (in
  waking and in dream states) are common throughout
  the world. In the United States, for example, a
  1987 survey published by the University of
  Chicagos National Opinion Research Center
  canvassed nearly 1,500 adult Americans, of whom
  67 claimed to have had PREs. In most countries
  where surveys have been conducted, PREs have been
  reported by over half the population.

4

• The most common PREs entail apparent telepathy
  (acknowledged by about a third, and sometimes as
  much as half, of the population or clairvoyance
  (in about a fifth of the population). Reports of
  psychokinesis or mind-over-matter effects are
  much less frequent (between 5 and 10 in
  relative incidence Palmer, 1979).

5

• Extrasensory experiences vary in their temporal
  context. Although the experience may seem to the
  experient to be in the here and now while it is
  taking place, subsequently it can be construed to
  fall into one of three temporal categories. Most
  ESP experiences (about 60 of the case collection
  of L.E. Rhine, 1981) are contemporaneous, that
  is, they relate to an event taking place
  concurrently in another location. Almost all of
  the remainder seemingly relate to future events
  and are termed precognitive. Very rarely, the
  experience may be retrocognitive, or pertain to
  an event in the past of which the experient
  claims to have previously been ignorant.

6

• According to the analysis of cases by L.E. Rhine
  (1953), the ESP experience may take one of four
  subjective forms intuitive impressions,
  hallucinations, realistic visual images, or
  unrealistic visual images. An intuitive
  impression comprises a simple, imageless
  impression or hunch experients might say they
  just knew about some (spatially or temporally)
  distant event.

7

• In a hallucinatory ESP experience, the
  extrasensory message is represented as a
  sensory hallucination the experient might
  report, for example, seeing an apparition or
  hearing a voice. Realistic visual images in ESP
  experiences most commonly occur as dreams in
  which the imagery is a very detailed and
  relatively literal representation of the events
  to which they seem to refer. In unrealistic
  visual images, on the other hand, the imagery is
  of a fanciful, unreal sort. In this case, the
  information about the event may be dramatized or
  be depicted in a rather disguised, for instance
  symbolic, form.

8

• In terms of concurrent actions, 90 of Irwins
  (1999) experients had been engaged in minimal
  physical activity such as sleeping, sitting, or
  standing activity was substantial (e.g. jogging)
  in only 3 of cases. In the same study,
  experients described their mental activity at the
  time of the ESP experience either as minimally
  demanding (28) or as not really thinking about
  anything in particular (50).

9

• Although personal experience is often cited by
  the experients as their principal reason for
  their belief in the paranormal (Clarke, 1995),
  the issue of the causal direction of the
  relationship between belief and experience
  nevertheless looms as a chicken-and-egg
  problem. Personal experience might inspire and
  reinforce a belief in psi, or paranormal belief
  might prompt some people to construe their
  anomalous experiences in terms of the concept of
  psi.

10

• Another possible predisposition to PREs may be
  the experients dissociative tendencies. Surveys
  show that experients tend to score high on
  measures of dissociation and closely related
  constructs. According to Pekala, Kumar, and
  Marcano (1995), both dissociation (a mental state
  characterized by detachment from aspects of the
  self or the environment) and susceptibility to
  hypnosis are correlates of PREs. People who are
  highly hypnotizable and fantasy prone report a
  high frequency of such experiences.

11
Psychopathology

• Partial evidence for the involvement of
  psychopathology in some PREs has been found in
  efforts to establish a consistent biological or
  neurological marker of these events.

12

• Neppe (1983), for example, pointed out the
  similarity of many PREs to symptoms of
  temporal-lobe epilepsy. Furthermore, he
  identified a subgroup of individuals without
  epilepsy who experience at least three types of
  phenomena, including flowery olfactory
  hallucinations, déjà vu, and dissociation, that
  the experient may attribute to a paranormal
  process such as psi. Attributing all spontaneous
  PREs to subclinical temporal-lobe dysfunction,
  however, remains far from demonstrated.