The Quantum Hermetica Part 4: The Science of Psi

Written by Mark Pattini

Before continuing on to explore the science behind the other Hermetic principles, it would be good to take a detour to examine various subjects to see exactly what sort of world Mentalism and Correspondence give us. All of these and many more can be found in The Quantum Hermetica on Amazon here, so it is advisable to get the book if you have not already: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08BF2PNSM.

This week we are looking at the topic of psi phenomenon and the science behind it. Perhaps you are reading this and do not believe in the existence of such things as telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognition. By the end of this article, though, hopefully, you will become familiar both with some of the evidence of psi phenomenon documented in controlled experiments performed in careful laboratory conditions, as well as the underlying scientific explanation for these phenomena.

Phenomena such as telepathy may seem like magic to some people, and depending on one’s definition of the word, this may not be inaccurate. After all, the mechanism at work goes beyond what is possible within a materialistic account of the universe. This may make it appear “supernatural.”  

Nevertheless, this is not to say that it is magical in the pejorative sense of the word, as the phenomena have a very rational and indeed scientific explanation. It has an occult explanation as well within Hermeticism, but as we will see here, that explanation can be completely translated into a proper scientific explanation. The science used here deals with the physics discussed in the first two blogs in this series, wherein the Principles of Mentalism and Correspondence were explained with fundamental physics. If you would like to look at those go back and check these links:

1. Part 1
2. Part 2
   
3. Part 3

A.) Cumulative evidence from the Global Consciousness Project for mental influence on random number generators (red) vs. pure chance (black dotted). B.) An intense spike in psi-influenced random number generation due to global consciousness focus on Sept 11, 2001. (Credits: Global Consciousness Project, http://noosphere.princeton.edu/) 

Before we go into explaining these phenomena, it would first be good to see exactly what the evidence of psi is to first establish that there are indeed phenomena here worth explaining. We are often told that there is no scientific evidence for psi. However, this is patently false, as many pieces of evidence have been documented, reaching very high scientific standards over many decades. Let’s look at some of the examples The Quantum Hermetica (TQH) provides in Chapter IV1,2,3,4: 

1. One of the more significant experiments was conducted by the Dutch psychologist H.I.F.W. Brugmans in 1923. Here the experimenter determined one square at random from a 6 x 8 squared checkerboard, and the subject was asked to select the right square from behind a curtain. Furthermore, the subject’s Galvanic skin response was tested to see if there was a difference between when he was about to select the right or wrong square. The experimenter would then try to tell the subject through his thoughts, which square to select. 

The results of this experiment were highly significant. Out of 197 trials, just under a third of them, 60, were successful. The odds of this happening without the subject telepathically sensing the thoughts of the experimenter was calculated to be 121 trillion to 1.10 In science the concept of standard deviation, denoted by the Greek letter sigma, or σ, is used to mathematically determine the level of scientific proof of something. Five sigma, which is the accepted standard for scientific proof, denotes a probability of 1 in 1,744,278. The results of this experiment far exceed this standard by seven orders of magnitude.

2. The “ESP Card Test” conducted by the Rhine Institute is another experimental test of psi with highly significant results. Here a deck of 25 cards was used. Each card had a symbol stamped on it with a total of five symbols, with five cards of each type. The deck was shuffled each time, and a person would select a card in secret and try to mentally send the symbol to a recipient. The recipient would then try to determine what symbol was selected.

Over the span of 188 such experiments, the combined results were statistically highly significant.11 To illustrate how significant this is, it would take 428,000 more tests averaging at the chance probability to cancel out the effects of the studies, providing statistically significant effects in favor of psi.10

3. The Pearce-Pratt distance telepathy test is another experiment that produced highly significant evidence for psi. This was similar to the ESP Card Test done by the Rhine Institute with 25-card decks. This test sampled 1,850 individual trials out of 74 tests and recorded 558 successful attempts. The expected number of positive attempts based on pure probability was nearly 200 below this though, placing the odds of the results not being caused by psi to be 1 in many billions.12 This is again well above the five sigma standard and should already be sufficient scientific proof for the existence of psi.

As these examples clearly illustrate the phenomenon of psi is already well established on scientific grounds. The five sigma limit described is also the degree of certainty to which the Higgs Boson was experimentally established before being considered scientifically proven5. Thus, if one believes in the reality of the Higgs Boson, one should also believe in the existence of parapsychological phenomena for the same reason. In addition to these, Dean Radin, the head of the Institute Of Noetic Sciences or IONS has an entire book entitled Real Magic published in 2018, which goes over many other laboratory experiments like these to levels of proof, which are just as high if the reader is curious6: https://www.amazon.com/Real-Magic-Ancient-Science-Universe/dp/1524758825. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NpAJ6Zg9Xs

A talk by Dean Radin, of the Institute of Noetic Research, on high sigma experimental evidence for psi.

Having established their existence, however, is not the same thing as explaining how they are possible. The Kybalion gives us a very interesting clue here7:

“But the Hermetic Teachings go much further than do those of modern science. They teach that all manifestation of thought, emotion, reason, will or desire, or any mental state or condition, are accompanied by vibrations, a portion of which are thrown off and which tend to affect the minds of other persons by “induction.” This is the principle which produces the phenomena of “telepathy”; mental influence, and other forms of the action and power of mind over mind,”

In this passage, The Kybalion fingers “vibrations” as being responsible for telepathy. Clearly, it is not talking about just any classical mechanical vibrations, however. Sound dissipates quickly, and anyone who has driven across the country knows how quickly the signals from powerful radio stations die out. The waves our brains produce are far weaker than these, so telepathy cannot be caused by them.

What sticks out, however, are quantum waves, which encode the information in the Hilbert space, causing spacetime to emerge, as discussed in the last two blogs. Quantum waves are a much better match for the vibrations described here by The Kybalion. In the future, an entire blog will be devoted to this topic regarding the third principle of Hermeticism, the Principle of Vibration. 

However, for now, it should be noted that quantum waves possess the property of non-locality. As discussed in previous blogs, this property allows for the phenomenon of quantum entanglement whereby two particles can be linked instantly over vast distances, much like the telepathically linked minds described by The Kybalion. In fact, as described in TQH, this is exactly how phenomena such as telepathy are explained8: 

According to the synthesis, we have thus far derived thoughts that exist within the wave-function, which in turn exists outside of space-time behind the virtual reality. If systems in two people’s brains become entangled, then, their thoughts will share the same wave-function behind space-time, thereby forming an information channel between the two. Thus they could sense each other’s thoughts via this shared channel, and the means by which they would be linked would not be physical, meaning it would not be within space-time.

The wave-function, i.e., the quantum wave, exists outside of spacetime, and thus is able to link separate locations within spacetime. However, as explored in the blogs on Mentalism and Correspondence, the wave-function also encodes consciousness, as revealed by the new field of quantum cognition. As shown in previous blogs, our own biology exploits this fact to produce consciousness within our brains. 

Thus, telepathy is simply an entanglement of the mental states of two minds. These appear within spacetime to exist over vast distances of space simply because the intervening space is but an illusion. In reality, the two are connected directly beneath spacetime. 

Such phenomena as clairvoyance and precognition can be similarly easily explained. In precognition, the entanglement is across time as well as space. With clairvoyance, instead of the mind being entangled with another mind, it is entangled with the quantum states in the Hilbert space that cause some distant region to emerge. If one thinks of the image of the environment as being generated from some underlying computer code, the mind here merely intercepts that code, thereby seeing what would otherwise be produced in the “video game” that we erroneously call “physical reality.”

Could quantum non-locality underly psychic phenomena?

A pair of objections are sometimes raised to using quantum entanglement to explain psi. Both of these are easily refuted, however, and TQH tackles both of these deftly9. It turns out that both are based on fundamental misconceptions about what is actually going on.

The first is that information can not be sent by entanglement faster than light, and thus can not be used to explain telepathy. While it is true that relativity forbids information from going faster than light, by entanglement or any other means, the term “faster than light” implies a velocity traveling through some space. However, here the entanglement of the two mental states is not occurring “in space,” but rather behind it. Relativity applies to everything going on in spacetime, but as we can see here, the mental states linked are not in spacetime, to begin with. Thus relativity need not apply.

Secondly, an objection can be raised that quantum entanglement merely correlates particles and does not actually transmit information, and that was one to try to extract the quantum information from an entangled state one would collapse the wavefunction and thereby destroy it. Here a clarifier is necessary. Quantum entanglement does not transmit classical information. Furthermore, it is indeed the case that if one attempts to measure a quantum wave to get information out of it with some physical measuring system, such as a camera or eye extended in physical space, one will destroy the quantum wave and the information it contains.

However, that is not what is being done here. Both the “transmitter” and the “receiver” of the telepathy are not material objects within spacetime that need to measure a wavefunction as some external object. Rather as explained in the second blog, the mental states of both already exist behind spacetime in a collective inner space as quantum states. This information need not be “collapsed out of the wavefunction” to be transmitted to the other mind. Rather the communication is of quantum information occurring between the two minds both contained in the same quantum wave and without any external measurements occurring. Thus no transmission of classical information even occurs in phenomena like telepathy, and the objection is shown to be a non-starter based on a misconception.

What TQH does with psi phenomena is a good example of what it does with other so-called “paranormal” or “magical” phenomena. These things only appear to be magical, having no rational explanation, to those who simplistically assume that one lives in a material world with nothing outside of it. Once this naive tomfoolery is exposed, however, it becomes obvious that these phenomena have perfectly good explanations within a non-materialistic framework. This, in turn, reveals that they are not actually “magic,” and that there is no good reason to deny the existence of the mountains of experimental evidence for them.

References: 

1.) Palmer & Palmer, The Quantum Hermetica, Ch IV, Part C p.40 (April 4, 2018) 

2.) Dean Radin, Entangled Minds, pp. (82-3) (2006)

3.) J.B. Rhine, Extrasensory Perception After Sixty Years (1940)4.) J.B. Rhine and J. G. Pratt, A review of the Pearce-Pratt distance series of ESP tests Journal of Parapsychology, 18, 165—77. (1954)

5.) Evelyn Lamb, 5 Sigma What’s That?, Scientific American, (July 17, 2012)

6.) Dean Radin, Real Magic, (2018)

7.) Three Initiates, The Kybalion, Chapter IX, p.38 The Yogi Publication Society, Masonic Temple, Chicago Il. (1908) 

8.) Palmer & Palmer, The Quantum Hermetica, Ch IV, Part C p.41 (April 4, 2018)

9.) Palmer & Palmer, The Quantum Hermetica, Ch IV, Part C pp. (41-2) (April 4, 2018)