Does anyone take Super Psi seriously?

[Ninshub]

Mishlove seemed to intimate that Braude went back and forth over the issue.

I was just curious if anyone here feels Super Psi is a serious explanation?

I can't seem to grasp how this is anything more than something someone thought up to be clever, or to escape the implications of an afterlife after being convinced the evidence for something "supernatural" happening was sound.

Hi Sci, hope you're keeping well buddy! 

I saw this thread a while ago and wanted to play devil's advocate for super-psi, but I decided against it for 3 reasons; 1) it's a truly vast and mindbogglingly complex subject and likewise I feel it would take too long to type out a semi-coherent "defence" of the concept,  2) I note how emotionally invested some can become with a particular interpretation of reality/facts/phenomena, such as a traditional religious afterlife narrative for eg., and take any alternative thought, speculation or interpretation of the phenomena as an almost existential threat, and 3) I may be mistaken for someone who actually believes my own speculation, and I wouldn't want that now 

But I have quite a bit of spare time today, so as I'm here I thought I'd type out a brief notional defence of "super-psi".

First of all, I read through all the criticisms of the idea on this thread, and I have to say I was personally struck by how unpersuasive they were based primarily on how many appear to me to be arguments against inaccurate "straw-man" representations of "super-psi" as a model of understanding certain phenomena. Much worse than this imo, however, are the few negative and judgemental ad hominem accusations, motivations and intentions levelled at anybody who dare consider that any other interpretation of the phenomena outside of traditional religious or pseudo-religious, linear "afterlife" narratives, may be more helpful or accurate models of reality. I find all that rather distasteful, as well as somewhat fanatical, myself, but to each their own.

I won't upset all the contributors here by going one by one through the few comments that make unquestioned assumptions about super-psi and then proceed to argue against them, but just highlight this one quote:

None of this, Hodgson et al. would say, is what we would expect from super-psi, or any kind of psi among the living. We would expect (super) psi to generate all messages with approximately equal clarity, since all are originating from the same source. Even if mediums and sitters differ in their native psychic abilities, we would at least expect the same medium in conference with the same sitter to produce roughly the same quality of results from one week to the next, rather than a dramatic improvement consistent with the discarnate's period of R&R and orientation."

I would say to Hodgson et al., how do you know "what we would expect from super-psi"? Nobody even knows what "super-psi" is, at best it is a linguistic placeholder for "fuck knows what's going on" that changes how we observe and interpret a phenomena and thereby potentially allowing us to gain different or perhaps greater insight into the phenomena than simply believing the prima facie evidence of "afterlife communications" or whatever. This is called opening your mind, being curious, having the humility to at least consider you may be wrong, missing something, that there is value in looking at a mystery or problem from multiple perspectives etc. It doesn't always have to be an ideological battle with lines drawn in the metaphysical sand.

And, that isn't even the point, for me.....whilst there is general consensus between some people that certain phenomena is parsimoniously suggestive of a simple, literal and linear "afterlife" narrative, I personally find it to be an incredibly narrow and short-sighted reality tunnel that has to scrupulously avoid a vast body of similar anecdotal evidence for which we are forced to dismiss simplistic afterlife narratives as an explanation for the phenomena. That is what leads one into looking for alternative models of explanation, experiencing or being open to divergent but overlapping phenomena without putting one's hands over one's eyes. I simply do not have the time or inclination to go through the huge and vast body of experiences and phenomena that people can and do experience - and I have personally experienced a great deal myself, personally - which cannot be reduced to a linear, individualised, afterlife soul narrative.

More to the point - every single aspect of the phenomena that proponents of the afterlife model use to support their belief - and it is a belief, let's remember - such as NDEs, mediumship communication, reincarnation experiences etc - also occurs in other experiences and phenomena where an "afterlife of a soul" does not fit the narrative; that would so called "veridical proof", meetings with entities, deities or even the "Absolute Divine" or "Oneness", telepathy, gaining knowledge or info from a distance or "non-locally", experiences of past lives, multiple lives or entire groups of lives simultaneously etc etc

The only difference with more well known or traditional linear "afterlife" type experiences and other experiences  that don't fit with that, is the visual or visionary form in which the phenomena manifests and the narrative form they take. The actual mechanics behind them appear to be far more universal than the actual content or narrative itself. I think there may be two types of people here - those who take and accept without question the narrative as presented by the phenomena without question (especially when it appears to reinforce highly emotionally charged subjects such as death, grief, religion etc), and those who question everything, but notice the underlying similarities beneath conflicting and contradictory "paranormal" or mystical phenomena and narratives. They have a different hermeneutic approach to those who simply believe what is presented to them, because it gives them emotional comfort or whatever. I think it revealing and mean spirited to force intentions and motivations into their minds, just because you may disagree with them.

Anyway, I think I lost the point of this somewhere.......basically, that the more you look into NDEs, OBEs, mediumship, channelling, hauntings, poltergeists, psi, trance states, neurology and psychology (I love the early work of FWH Myers et al.!), UFOs and abductions, psychedelics, occult practices to manipulate physical reality, and the whole variety of spiritual or mystical experiences etc etc etc, that the only conceptual model that can even begin to explain ALL these phenomena and their unquestionable relationship to each other, is via some sort of informational model, where we basically live in an ocean of information and all that is happening with all this phenomena is we are reducing it to and filtering it through whichever conceptual and intellectual forms we are under the influence of (and not necessarily on an individual or conscious level...."influence" doesn't necessarily have to be either!). The exact precise mechanics of this are unknown, hence we speculate, ponder and show curiosity about placeholder concepts like "super-psi".....there is no "how can it", or "it should work like..."......we simply have no idea how it can or how it should.....we are like apes from 2 million years ago holding a time travelling smartphone that is somehow still data connected to the 21st century, watching a K-Pop youtube video......surely the only truly sane, rational and logical model those apes can hold is WTF? 

I know without going through the specifics of individual cases - even very often within cases that are used to promote the idea of linear, literal afterlife narratives, there are aspects that simply do not make sense within that model (hence the popularity and usefulness of the "Trickster" concept, I suppose), and overlap quite clearly with other "paranormal" or "mystic" phenomena (and concomitant "veridicality") that are not explicitly connected to the "afterlife" narrative - that this isn't a very well made argument. I content myself with the fact the sheer volume of such experiences across the entire field of paranormal experiences are so vast & common, and detailed in so many books, videos etc, that any unfamiliarity with such data is due to a lack of real interest.

On a final point of "defence" of the "super-psi" hypothesis in direct opposition to the "afterlife" hypothesis - one of the main objections (to even considering the idea) is that there is no known mechanism for it to work, and the argument against crippling complexity etc.

I have always found this amusing. The objection to the idea of super-psi based on the fact we don't know how it could work and how incredibly complex it must be. Well, surely the same argument applies to the afterlife theory, and indeed life, the universe and everything?

This to me proves objections to even speculating about super-psi are almost always grounded in an emotionally charged, biased ideological world view.

I simply do not understand how saying we don't how it works or that it must be incredibly complex can be considered even a semi-coherent rebuttal.......when the unspoken fact is, the entire afterlife narrative is deeply and fundamentally grounded in some variant or other of "super-psi", even if it were true!! 

For a simple but surely unarguable example - we can ignore all the other elements of "super-psi" during an NDE such as instant and complete telepathy, veridical perceptions of the environment etc - but what (in the West) is now considered one of the most well known aspects of the NDE, the "life review" is in itself an exceptionally perfect example of incredibly complex super-psi for which we have no known model for explaining the mechanics of. Not only are long forgotten life experiences replayed in perfect accuracy, often from many different perspectives......but they also experience what it was like to be the persons they interacted with, hurt, upset, made happy, loved etc....

What is this if not an example of exceptionally profound "super-psi"? And also a dangerously worrying tilt towards Oneness btw.......

Well I personally can accept Oblivion, but I still find Super-Psi to be an explanation in search of a context? It has the same "cool plot for a movie maybe" feel for me as the idea we are living in a mass computer simulation.

I mean if you're willing to get into at least some cases of overlap that you think are relevant, for me it just seems odd that to give one example - mediums are using telepathy but it takes the form of seeming communication from dead people.

If one wants to dig deep into conspiratorial thinking, I would even accept that somehow there are "mind parasites" or "Gnostic Archons" that pretend to be the voices of the dead for some unknown reason - to feed on our emotional comfort? - over the idea that psychic communication happens in such a way that it mimics the dead but belongs to the living.

However, you seem to be taking a much broader definition of Super-Psi than I am, for me it is simply the idea that living humans have such vast psychic reserves but it comes to them in the form of speaking to the dead.

Maybe we need to distinguish between abstract and real-world examples of super-psi. Notwithstanding Manjit's examples, in practice I've only come across it as a debunking tool. That is to say, I'm not well-versed in the theory, only in observations of specimens to be found in their natural habitat.

Well I personally can accept Oblivion

Hi Sci, thanks for your response!

I'm a little concerned by this comment though......why must the possible absence of a linear and literal "afterlife" of our egoic personalities, as described in popular or traditional narratives, result therefore in "Oblivion"? Why can it not be a state of existence or being far greater, far more ecstatic, far more a-temporal, far more magical and mysterious etc than the simple, limited embodied existence we as human beings experience and project into the "afterlife"?

This reminds me a little of the similar feeling opposition to those who discuss either their experience or philosophical understanding of "Oneness". If there's only one thing I would repeat over and over and over again, it's the suggestion we do not conflate our woefully inadequate conceptual and intellectual understanding of things with reality itself, to confuse the map for the territory. Every single one of these people who criticise the concept of non-duality or oneness is not criticising on any level the reality of non-duality encountered by countless mystics, but their own inadequate and mistaken intellectual understanding of the concept of non-duality. They do not have the direct and immediate experience of not only "Oneness" in multiplicity but also multiplicity in "Oneness".....and the deep, profound, timeless joy, ecstasy, perfection, love etc it manifests seemingly "eternally". There is no question of "boredom" here as there is in narratives of the embodied state, where the influx of reality is profoundly limited.

We must not confuse intellectual and conceptual representations of reality with the reality itself!

I mean if you're willing to get into at least some cases of overlap that you think are relevant

Oh there are so many excellent cases I really wouldn't know where to begin, honestly! I've read multiple cases in the past few weeks alone, some of which probably in that Blithe Spirits poltergeist book (which in toto is supportive of what I'm saying here)......but I'm not one for going backwards, so what I'll do is next time I come across such a case in a book or video I'm watching, I will definitely post it here! But honestly though, these aspects if you're really paying attention are to be found everywhere. Even going back to all that SPR literature from 100 odd years ago, all that Myers research and all the rest, even back then they systematically go through so many different types of phenomena that overlap, and many of which clearly do not need recourse to an afterlife hypothesis, which clearly indicates to me the entire hypothesis is an unnecessary (to explain the mechanics, but clearly "necessary" on a human level) conceptual or narrative human add-on to the phenomena that is occurring as the same phenomena also occurs in other contexts but with a different narrative (for eg., "aliens" providing "abductees" "veridical information" about distant events, future life circumstances, global world changes and even mediating encounters with deceased loved ones etc).

it is simply the idea that living humans have such vast psychic reserves but it comes to them in the form of speaking to the dead.

Yes, but I too somewhat agree with that way of putting it ha!....except I would caution on having a limited definition of what it means to be "living humans".....

I don't think there is any aspect of, say, NDEs or afterlife mediumship that isn't also present in other "paranormal" modalities or contexts where there is no conceptual recourse or reference to "afterlife souls"? And with all due respect, I say that being entirely familiar for several decades with quite an extensive body of research and information on the subject, not a summary dismissal of the field. And this fact (and it is a fact, to me at least!) is highly suggestive - along with the, if you'll excuse me, too numerous to mention inconsistencies, contradictions and outright absurdities in many of these accepted NDEs, reincarnation and mediumship communications etc narratives - that there is more likely to be an alternative "explanation" for these than the prima facie narrative (as wildly variant and contradictory as they can be across all paranormal experiences) presented to us by them. To consider any of these narratives as cohesive and coherent, imo one must display intense and immense avoidance of contradictory and conflicting but overlapping data. 

The afterlifes narrative - as incohesive as they are - may well be true. But contrary to what many claim, I don't think it is the best parsimonious or Okkam's Razor compliant explanation myself - because it only explains a tiny slice of the phenomena and experiences people can encounter, all of which seem incredibly similar or related to the phenomena in afterlife communications and NDEs etc, but are apparently not connected. So, NDEs and mediumship explained! But inner visionary experiences with alternative narratives, channeling of aliens, tricksterish poltergeists, healers and psychics and telepaths who do not claim to communicate with souls in the afterlife for their influx of veridical data etc? Must be a completely different explanation.....ahh, perhaps we can have the temerity to postulate super-psi for THOSE experiences, then, if we leave the afterlife of souls alone?

Hi Sci, thanks for your response!

I'm a little concerned by this comment though......why must the possible absence of a linear and literal "afterlife" of our egoic personalities, as described in popular or traditional narratives, result therefore in "Oblivion"? Why can it not be a state of existence or being far greater, far more ecstatic, far more a-temporal, far more magical and mysterious etc than the simple, limited embodied existence we as human beings experience and project into the "afterlife"?

This reminds me a little of the similar feeling opposition to those who discuss either their experience or philosophical understanding of "Oneness". If there's only one thing I would repeat over and over and over again, it's the suggestion we do not conflate our woefully inadequate conceptual and intellectual understanding of things with reality itself, to confuse the map for the territory. Every single one of these people who criticise the concept of non-duality or oneness is not criticising on any level the reality of non-duality encountered by countless mystics, but their own inadequate and mistaken intellectual understanding of the concept of non-duality. They do not have the direct and immediate experience of not only "Oneness" in multiplicity but also multiplicity in "Oneness".....and the deep, profound, timeless joy, ecstasy, perfection, love etc it manifests seemingly "eternally". There is no question of "boredom" here as there is in narratives of the embodied state, where the influx of reality is profoundly limited.

We must not confuse intellectual and conceptual representations of reality with the reality itself!

Oh there are so many excellent cases I really wouldn't know where to begin, honestly! I've read multiple cases in the past few weeks alone, some of which probably in that Blithe Spirits poltergeist book (which in toto is supportive of what I'm saying here)......but I'm not one for going backwards, so what I'll do is next time I come across such a case in a book or video I'm watching, I will definitely post it here! But honestly though, these aspects if you're really paying attention are to be found everywhere. Even going back to all that SPR literature from 100 odd years ago, all that Myers research and all the rest, even back then they systematically go through so many different types of phenomena that overlap, and many of which clearly do not need recourse to an afterlife hypothesis, which clearly indicates to me the entire hypothesis is an unnecessary (to explain the mechanics, but clearly "necessary" on a human level) conceptual or narrative human add-on to the phenomena that is occurring as the same phenomena also occurs in other contexts but with a different narrative (for eg., "aliens" providing "abductees" "veridical information" about distant events, future life circumstances, global world changes and even mediating encounters with deceased loved ones etc).





Yes, but I too somewhat agree with that way of putting it ha!....except I would caution on having a limited definition of what it means to be "living humans".....

I don't think there is any aspect of, say, NDEs or afterlife mediumship that isn't also present in other "paranormal" modalities or contexts where there is no conceptual recourse or reference to "afterlife souls"? And with all due respect, I say that being entirely familiar for several decades with quite an extensive body of research and information on the subject, not a summary dismissal of the field. And this fact (and it is a fact, to me at least!) is highly suggestive - along with the, if you'll excuse me, too numerous to mention inconsistencies, contradictions and outright absurdities in many of these accepted NDEs, reincarnation and mediumship communications etc narratives - that there is more likely to be an alternative "explanation" for these than the prima facie narrative (as wildly variant and contradictory as they can be across all paranormal experiences) presented to us by them. To consider any of these narratives as cohesive and coherent, imo one must display intense and immense avoidance of contradictory and conflicting but overlapping data. 

The afterlifes narrative - as incohesive as they are - may well be true. But contrary to what many claim, I don't think it is the best parsimonious or Okkam's Razor compliant explanation myself - because it only explains a tiny slice of the phenomena and experiences people can encounter, all of which seem incredibly similar or related to the phenomena in afterlife communications and NDEs etc, but are apparently not connected. So, NDEs and mediumship explained! But inner visionary experiences with alternative narratives, channeling of aliens, tricksterish poltergeists, healers and psychics and telepaths who do not claim to communicate with souls in the afterlife for their influx of veridical data etc? Must be a completely different explanation.....ahh, perhaps we can have the temerity to postulate super-psi for THOSE experiences, then, if we leave the afterlife of souls alone?

Ah I just mention Oblivion as a hypothesis I am happy to entertain, as I like to remind people the failure of Physicalism to make sense of physics let alone Mind does not immediately mean survival is true. My issue with Super-Psi, when placed in opposition to Survival, is that it seems like an explanation in search of a proper context.

You mention the Occam's Razor, but we should be wary of giving too close a shave. That there are a variety of phenomena does not mean we should fold some of it into the rest. And, of course, I could make a credible Super Spirit Hypothesis given that in an Animist or Panpsychic reality Psi would have to work by engaging the consciousness of the environment. And if our spirit motivates the consciousness of our cells (who in turn motivate the atoms that make them) this also folds in not just Psi but our mundane existences as well.

Also I'm not sure why "inner visionary experiences with alternative narratives, channeling of aliens, tricksterish poltergeists, healers and psychics and telepaths who do not claim to communicate with souls in the afterlife for their influx of veridical data etc" are explained by Super Psi. Aren't these distinct phenomena?

I think I am still unclear how you are using the term Super-Psi?

This reminds me a little of the similar feeling opposition to those who discuss either their experience or philosophical understanding of "Oneness". If there's only one thing I would repeat over and over and over again, it's the suggestion we do not conflate our woefully inadequate conceptual and intellectual understanding of things with reality itself, to confuse the map for the territory. Every single one of these people who criticise the concept of non-duality or oneness is not criticising on any level the reality of non-duality encountered by countless mystics, but their own inadequate and mistaken intellectual understanding of the concept of non-duality. They do not have the direct and immediate experience of not only "Oneness" in multiplicity but also multiplicity in "Oneness".....and the deep, profound, timeless joy, ecstasy, perfection, love etc it manifests seemingly "eternally". There is no question of "boredom" here as there is in narratives of the embodied state, where the influx of reality is profoundly limited.

We must not confuse intellectual and conceptual representations of reality with the reality itself!

I'm in sympathy with the ideas here. You've written more eloquently and clearly than I might have done. I get rather tired of hearing people object to ideas of 'oneness' based on an interpretation of what it means which is very different to my own. In a very similar way I hear people object to the existence of God, but then they usually spoil their bold stance by describing some rather trivial and poverty-stricken concept of a God.

I don't really claim any particular esoteric experiences of these things, but my intuitive understanding is often somehow far different to the descriptions put forward by those who then reject the thing just described. It always seems to me something is missing, at very least in the ability to describe something in words, and probably something else is omitted too.

If super psi is real, I am inclined to believe that it would take some degree of determinism to keep things “in check” and prevent the “spilling” of the phenomena from creating a chaotic setting. The traditional laws of physics just wouldn’t be enough to contain something capable of accessing “universal” scale information as some NDErs claim or create a being out of nothing (albeit a non corporeal one) as in one of the examples commonly quoted as super psi. Old school nerds would call such a thing a “cosmic level power” and it can be quite disruptive. So... In a way, it would require a deity or facsimile even more than some concepts of “survival”.

.........................
More to the point - every single aspect of the phenomena that proponents of the afterlife model use to support their belief - and it is a belief, let's remember - such as NDEs, mediumship communication, reincarnation experiences etc - also occurs in other experiences and phenomena where an "afterlife of a soul" does not fit the narrative; that would so called "veridical proof", meetings with entities, deities or even the "Absolute Divine" or "Oneness", telepathy, gaining knowledge or info from a distance or "non-locally", experiences of past lives, multiple lives or entire groups of lives simultaneously etc etc
.........................

I'm curious. Please detail what these "other experiences and phenomena" are. And are there any that form internally coherent life-changing narratives like deep NDEs? Any that are as ubiquitous in the population as NDEs? And is it likely that any deep NDEer will seriously consider that his experience was probably something fundamentally else than what it seemed to be? It's good to speculate and intellectualize, but personal intense experience can be extremely convincing at a deep level.

This reminds me a little of the similar feeling opposition to those who discuss either their experience or philosophical understanding of "Oneness". If there's only one thing I would repeat over and over and over again, it's the suggestion we do not conflate our woefully inadequate conceptual and intellectual understanding of things with reality itself, to confuse the map for the territory. Every single one of these people who criticise the concept of non-duality or oneness is not criticising on any level the reality of non-duality encountered by countless mystics, but their own inadequate and mistaken intellectual understanding of the concept of non-duality. They do not have the direct and immediate experience of not only "Oneness" in multiplicity but also multiplicity in "Oneness".....and the deep, profound, timeless joy, ecstasy, perfection, love etc it manifests seemingly "eternally". There is no question of "boredom" here as there is in narratives of the embodied state, where the influx of reality is profoundly limited.

Some of those mystics are probably liars and some of them may be either insane or drug users.

Hallucinogenic drugs may cause a person to loose sense of their identity and can mix up their thinking patterns so badly that they begin to have their senses mixed up.

Dangerous Hallucinogens Effects on the Psyche