Psi Text Resources Thread

On her blog she says she's swinging away from scepticism and is now "slightly left of center – in sympathy with the paranormal crowd":
http://sharonahill.com/at-the-crossroads...aranormal/

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a further blog post by Sharon Hill discussing the "middle ground" between sceptics and proponents:
http://sharonahill.com/2017/12/29/the-pl...proponent/

On the whole, I get the impression that she finds the behaviour of sceptics offputting, but that her primary interest is still in why people believe paranormal explanations for non-paranormal phenomena.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's a list of contents for the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration, with links to online versions of the articles:
https://www.dailygrail.com/2018/02/journ...-and-more/

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's an article by Diane Peters entitled "Making Sense of the Paranormal", on a Canadian website called University Affairs (which sounds a bit like love among the test tubes again, but isn't): 
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/feature...aranormal/

It ploughs a familiar furrow, the implicit theme being that though the paranormal is nonsense, understanding why people believe nonsense is a legitimate subject of scientific enquiry.

What I found mind-boggling was this paragraph, following references to the founding of the ASPR in 1885 and some home-based experiments on seances starting in the 1920s:

At the time, south of the border, this was a university-approved line of inquiry. “Ivy League schools were very interested in this topic,” says Beth Robertson, an instructor in the department of history at Carleton University. In the 1930s, Joseph Banks Rhine of Duke University founded the field of parapsychology, the study of paranormal and psychic phenomenon, championing scientific methods and making it clear the humanities should focus elsewhere. “You can blame or credit Dr. Rhine for that break” between the disciplines, says Dr. Robertson.

And this one, following a digression about UFO research in the late 1960s:

But, by the mid-20th century, seeking proof of paranormal phenomena ran out of academic steam and lost credibility. Researchers were unable to replicate Dr. Rhine’s work on extrasensory perception, which many concluded was flawed. Today, both the U.S. and U.K. psychical societies are run as private organizations with no university affiliation. Parapsychology endures as a small, fringe field with a handful of mainly U.S.- and U.K.-based labs. Amateur sleuths took over tracking UFOs, sasquatches and ghosts.

As far as I know, neither the British nor the American SPR ever had a university affiliation (though obviously some of their members have always had university affiliations). And to suggest parapsychology was a more active area of university research in the 1920s (or even the 1880s) than it was in the second half of the 20th century seems bizarre to me.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's an article by Diane Peters entitled "Making Sense of the Paranormal", on a Canadian website called University Affairs (which sounds a bit like love among the test tubes again, but isn't): 
https://www.universityaffairs.ca/feature...aranormal/

It ploughs a familiar furrow, the implicit theme being that though the paranormal is nonsense, understanding why people believe nonsense is a legitimate subject of scientific enquiry.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here's a follow-up blog post by Sharon A. Hill, discussing an academic study of paranormal investigators which was mentioned in the article by Diane Peters. The study is by Paul Kingsbury of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and focusses on researchers into ghosts, bigfoot and UFOs:
http://sharonahill.com/2018/02/23/observ...ct-at-sfu/

One comment that Sharon Hill makes is about the questions asked by researchers after a presentation by Kingsbury, such as "why Dr. Kingsbury didn’t show more of their evidence of the paranormal, like EVPs". She found questions like this revealing, and felt they indicated that the researchers had missed the point of the study, which was about them rather than the phenomena. I suppose that's true, but to my mind the questions seem natural enough, given that the phenomena are what the researchers are interested in, and that they find it frustrating that mainstream academia doesn't share their interest. They probably feel that academics who are more interested in the psychology of paranormal research than in the research itself, are themselves missing the point.

Courtesy of the SPR Facebook page, here is a Facebook page entitled "Angelos Tanagras Memoirs". 
https://www.facebook.com/Tanagras.Memoirs/

It includes a series of articles by Fotini Pallikari based on the memoirs of the Greek parapsychologist Tanagras, as explained here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/angelos-t...337817520/

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's a short interview with Dean Radin about his book, "Real Magic", which will be published tomorrow (I expect there will be quite a few interviews about it):
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/...real-magic

I thought this was interesting about plans at the Institute of Noetic Sciences:
"We are in the process of selecting a single focus, where the seven senior scientists and three research assistants on the science staff will work together on a "moon shot" research program. We will all continue to work on our personal interests as well, but we think that combining our skills on one project will leverage our combined expertise in a unique way."

In case anyone else was wondering the seven senior scientists at IONS are listed here:
http://noetic.org/research/faculty-staff

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, here's a short interview with Dean Radin about his book, "Real Magic", which will be published tomorrow (I expect there will be quite a few interviews about it):

Here's another:
https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/theres-...serving-it

But this one has something that was new to me: "Radin tells me he is looking forward to his 21st birthday ..." 

Here's another:
https://swarajyamag.com/magazine/theres-...serving-it

And another, this time a two-hour podcast interview with Radio Misterioso:
http://radiomisterioso.com/2018/04/09/de...terioso%29

If anyone is interested and has the time to listen to all these promotional interviews, probably the best way to find them is through Dean Radin's Twitter feed, which already lists another five (!)
https://twitter.com/DeanRadin

I did listen to the Radin Misterioso one, and near the end (at about 1.45) he talks about his current research project, which is concerned with Twitter. The idea is to analyse the wording of Tweets to quantify "sentiment" around the time of the Las Vegas shooting, to see if there is a presentiment effect before the event. And if there is, to see if it conveys any geographical information. So that Radin will be able to warn the FBI about future terrorist events or mass murders.

It sounds as though this was partly inspired by a finding that Twitter sentiment hit an all-time low on the day of the last US presidential election. Though I wouldn't have thought we needed to look for a paranormal explanation for that.

F. W. H. Myers on the Subliminal Self

I have now given specimens of all the classes of evidence known to me which bear on the relation of supernormal phenomena to time, and have endeavoured to throw such light as was possible on each in turn. The result is to me at least in one way of much interest. For these phenomena of retrocognition and precognition, covering a wide range, and regarded now in a new light, are found to have a close connection with my whole group of previously accepted generalisations,—to lend confirmation to them, and to receive confirmation from them in turn.

I may be able to make all this clearer—I hope that I shall not seem to make it more dogmatic—by a diagrammatic scheme which
will at least offer to criticism definite points of attack. But if, instead of a plane surface and a few black lines, I could exhibit a transparent globe, varying in density, colour, and luminosity, we should still have an absurdly inadequate symbol of that n-dimensional infinitude of living faculty some few of whose properties we dimly discern. Nay, scant as it is, the diagram is itself misleading. The opposite direction of its lines implies no ultimate divergence; all alike must be assumed to meet at infinity.

...beyond the limits of the profounder organic personality, we meet the question whether any similar trace, or persistent record of past experiences, can inhere also and be discernible in inorganic things.

The luminescent pebble glows with the treasured light of long-set suns. And if this delicate and fugitive energy of light be thus persistent, who shall limit the influences which may have stored themselves within the labyrinth of vibrations which constitute the pebble?—influences evocable, perhaps, and recognisable when the summons and the perception come...

...And now between these two types of memory—the memory implicate in Matter, living or dead, and the memory implicate in Mind, embodied or disembodied,—I draw a rectangular ordinate MEE'E" to represent direct retrocognition, by our own or by higher minds; — such persistence of the Past as an object of thought as may inhere
neither in material traces nor in reminiscence of personal experience. What has been still may be; and not merely as trace recognisable in matter or as former impression revivable in mind. There may be a self-existent and imprescriptible Cosmorama; a conservation at once of all thought and of all phenomena; the World-Soul as the Past.