Journal of the Society for Psychical Research Vol. 89 No. 3 (2025)

[Laird]

Vol. 89 No. 3 (2025): Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

Published on 2025-08-08.

You can discuss this issue of the journal in this thread.

Empirical Research Articles

• Precognition, Free Will, and the Impetus of Time
  Lyle Fuller (Author)
  129-147
  • pdf
    

Research Notes

• Did Brigadier Kenneth, H. Treseder, his wife Ena Mildred, and an American colleague meet and talk to an apparition of an early 19th C. Scottish lady in 1950?
  Robert Charman (Author)
  148-155
  • pdf
    

Book Reviews

• A New Approach to Psi: Re-envisioning Paranormal Experience as Meaningful Coincidence
  James Kennedy (Author)
  156-162
  • pdf
    
• Do we Survive our Biological Death? A Rational Examination
  Graham Kidd (Author)
  163-169
  • pdf
    
• Near-Death Experiences: Life Review, Out-Of-Body, Visions... What Science Says
  Charles Emmons (Author)
  170-173.
  • pdf
    
• Phantom Ladies: The New Edition
  Paul Cowdell (Author)
  174-176
  • pdf
    
• Doubting Ghosts: Paranormal Investigation and the Paradoxes of Belief
  Melvyn Willin (Author)
  177-179
  • pdf
    
• The Early Life of Irish Psychic and Trance Medium Eileen J. Garrett: Fact or Fabrication Behind the Medium's Mask: Eileen Garrett's Shadow Self
  Brian Wilson (Author)
  180-182
  • pdf
    
• Time Expansion Experiences: The Psychology of Time Perception and the Illusion of Linear Time
  James Houran (Author)
  183-185
  • pdf
    

Letters to the Editor

• The Sensory Mind/Psi Mind Hypothesis
  Robert Charman (Author)
  186-188
  • pdf
    
• A call for participants: Online study on Anomalous Experiences during the Covid-19 Pandemic.
  Aaron Lomas (Author)
  189-190
  • pdf
    
• Case report: A consciousness-related experience
  Nat Pagle (Author)
  191-192
  • pdf
    

Vol. 89 No. 3 (2025): Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

Published on 2025-08-08.

You can discuss this issue of the journal in this thread.

I was interested in the letter: "The sensory mind/psi mind hypothesis" by Robert A. Charman: https://jspr.spr.ac.uk/index.php/jspr/ar...view/10/29 .

It's nice that the pdf file of this recent article is available for all free of charge.

The author explains:

Strikingly, what most ESP experiencers seem to agree upon is that during the experience they feel in a different state of mind to their normal, everyday, state of mind. It seems that ESP is most likely to occur when at rest and mentally relaxed, or engaged in a rather monotonous activity, or dreaming before waking, circumstances in which conscious engagement with sensory information is low.

These observations suggest that ESP experiences may occur when in a different state of mind from the everyday—i.e., that there is a sensory mind, based upon sensory input only, and a psi mind receptive to non-sensory information only. From descriptions of the unexpected onset of an ESP experience it seems that ESP enters conscious awareness when the psi mind momentarily interrupts, or supervenes upon, the continuity of normal sensory mind experiencing.

This implies that an ESP experience only occurs when the psi mind overcomes, or replaces, the signal strength of sensory input. This is the sensory mind/psi mind hypothesis.

Vol. 89 No. 3 (2025): Journal of the Society for Psychical Research

Published on 2025-08-08.

You can discuss this issue of the journal in this thread.

That last article in the list:  Case report: A consciousness-related experience is lovely... that's the way it seems to be...

https://jspr.spr.ac.uk/index.php/jspr/ar...view/18/30

I was interested in the letter: "The sensory mind/psi mind hypothesis" by Robert A. Charman: https://jspr.spr.ac.uk/index.php/jspr/ar...view/10/29 .

I sent Charman an email about this. I think he writes as if psi ability is something that is turned on or off - I don't think that it works that way. However, it is an interesting question why most of us don't have a number of psychic experiences. I found Ernest Hartmann's thinking about boundaries rather interesting, I oversimplify, but people with thin boundaries have vivid dreams, experience hypnagogia, and can pick up others' moods. In contrast, people with thick boundaries just fall asleep then wake up and have no idea about whether they have dreamt or not. I found Hartmann's first book about boundaries interesting, his second is not as interesting. Michael Thalbourne incorporated this thinking about boundaries in his concept Transliminality. I tend to think of spontaneous psychic experiences as consequences - they occur due to something, not because the percipient wished to have an experience. I think the experiences come about due to a combination of personality and situation. The literature certainly suggest that altered states of consciousness help, but I have had a few precognitive experiences and I didn't experience myself as being in an altered state.