Everyone’s A Little Psychic, They Just Don’t Know It

“After studying these phenomena as a scientist for about 30 years, I’ve concluded that some psychic abilities are genuine, and as such, there are important aspects of the prevailing scientific worldview that are seriously incomplete.”[1] –Dean Radin PhD.

Over the past two years I’ve written many blog posts on many topics, but among the masses there are a few that run together in a sort of series.  These posts deal with what I believe are true psychic abilities, in contrast to what I believe are completely fake psychic abilities.  Each of the posts that I will refer to herein describes scientific efforts to quantify and measure certain phenomena that are colloquially referred to as PSI.  They are my attempt to bring some of this scientific advancement to the fore, but I’ll admit that I have had an ulterior motive.  To me, these posts are like strings of thought, and using them I’d like to braid a cohesive idea, a monologue that resembles the tiny inkling of a thesis that simmers in the back of my mind.

It has been my idea for some time now, that psychic abilities are real and measurable, that they are a vestigial feature of our prehistoric brains.  To put it bluntly, I believe that we all have intrinsic psychic abilities, and I believe that those abilities are an inheritance from our early ancestors; though I think that this potentially advantageous birthright is going the way of the vestigial tail in most of our population.

As I discussed in my previous article titled PSI…Where Does It All Come From, French scientific researcher and biologist Rene Peoc’h used baby chickens imprinted on a tychoscope (sic) to prove that a certain incidence of said chickens had psychokinetic abilities.[2]  By inference, Peoc’h’s experiment was successful in demonstrating that such ability seems to be rooted in areas of the brain that are responsible for instinctual behaviour.  Peoc’h showed that his chicks were able, somehow, to cause his tychoscope to remain proximal to group of chicks when imprinted as a parental figure.  He claimed that this effect was acting over great distances, though after reading the details of his experiment, I’ve come to think that the chicks were acting directly upon the tychoscope, rather than on the computer randomly controlling the tychoscope (23 kilometres away).

I have previously argued that this psychokinetic ability is rooted in the hypothalamus, an area of the hindbrain that is responsible for instinctual behaviour in all vertebrate animals.  Mind you, this is my assertion, not that of Rene Peoc’h.

Among other things, the hypothalamus is responsive to olfactory stimulation; it is connected to the olfactory bulbs, and plays a role in connecting our sense of smell to areas of the brain believed to be responsible for long term memory storage, namely the cerebral cortex.  In this way, I believe that the hypothalamus is partly responsible for some psychokinetic abilities, I’ll explain as I go along.

In my recent post titled Synesthesia, Can You Hear The Colours, I discussed the rare and interesting neurological condition called Synesthesia, wherein those afflicted had their senses jumbled up in the brain, causing them to see sounds, taste colours and feel odours (among many other combinations).  Neurologist V.S. Ramachandran has done much work identifying the cause and function of this affliction, and has narrowed the search for a culprit down to the angular gyrus (a small area of the parietal lobe that is responsible for, among other things, decoding sensory information and allowing us to conceptualise our external reality).[3]  The angular gyrus is a choke point for sensory information, as the neuro-electrical signals generated by all five senses passes through the angular gyrus on their way to the cerebral cortex.  Ramachandran believes that Synesthesia is the result of “cross talk” between different sensory pathways within the angular gyrus.

What’s interesting about this, as noted by Dr. Diane Hennacy Powell, is that there is known to be a connection between the angular gyrus and a number of psychic phenomena,[4] specifically, out of body experiences (OBE’s), near death experiences (NDE’s) and psychokinesis, as well as the ability to see auras.  This connection doesn’t necessarily confirm the existence of such phenomena; it simply states that, where a person claims to have such experiences, there is usually found to be a problem with the angular gyrus.  I personally find it to be more than coincidence that both the angular gyrus and the hypothalamus regulate sensory information being fed to the cerebral cortex, and that both of them seem to be prime suspects for the origin of psychic phenomenon.

One of the biggest roadblocks for researchers trying to prove the existence of psychic phenomenon is the notion that the human brain (or any brain for that matter) does not have the ability to transmit signals outside of the body (except through conventional means of communication).  But the lack of evidence for this, does not necessarily rule out the idea.

In other recent posts, namely those titled Presentiment Effect, An Emotional Roller Coaster, and Consciousness and the Zero Point Field: Are Akashic Records Real, I discussed the idea that there is a mechanism by which our brains can access information that would otherwise be out of reach.  Philosopher of Science, Erwin Laszlo contends that Zero Point Field research will eventually discover that there is a field or wave which permeates the universe, and which is a repository for all the knowledge of the universe.  That might sound a bit grandiose, but there may be some merit to the idea.  As Laszlo points out, in zero point fields, where there rightfully should be nothing, and I mean literally nothing, no particles or energies of any kind, physicists find a field of energy that cannot be explained or even accurately defined.  It is this field that Laszlo points to as evidence for his claims.  But the story doesn’t end there; some have made a connection between Laszlo’s claim and the fabled Akashic Records. Akashic Records were made famous by none other than Edgar Cayce, whereby he claimed that he had the ability to access all the information of the universe, and moreover, that everyone has this ability.  This doesn’t speak to an explanation of such phenomena, but it does provide a starting point for identifying such a mechanism, a starting point that may be furthered by a closer look at Presentiment Effect.

Evidence for the presence of an Akashic field of sorts, can be found by looking at the research of Dr. Dean Radin PhD, of The Institute for Noetic Sciences.  His experiments have shown, quite clearly, that ordinary people have premonitory abilities.

In his experiments, test subjects were shown long series of random photographs via a video screen.  Each subject was monitored for galvanic skin response and blood volume levels in their extremities.  Astonishingly enough, his conclusions were such that a significant number of test subjects were able to react to the content of the pictures before the picture was shown.  In most cases, the responses, which were involuntary, were stronger when the content of the image was of a graphic or emotional nature, and to me, suggests a link to the hypothalamus, and to the angular gyrus.  Is it perhaps possible that these two distinctly separate parts of the human brain are cooperating, the result of which is psychic phenomenon?

To be so bold, I am willing to make such an assertion…and so much more.  I assert that certain psychic abilities are very real, and have manifested themselves in some surprising ways.  I believe fully that science will eventually prove and accept that our minds are more than the sum of their parts, and that we have the ability to transcend into a higher plane of consciousness.  And while I know that this kind of talk is unusual for me, what with my penchant for misanthropy etc., I too am sometimes prone to certain flights of fancy.  Though lest I be thought of as going soft, I will still assert that the level of ability that any one person may have is not enough to make a career out of, and I’ll say again what I’ve said many times before…I believe in psychic ability, but I do not believe in psychics.

Where does this leave us then? We know that some forms of psychic phenomenon are real, with the caveat that mainstream science does not yet agree.  We know that there are at least two viable sources for such abilities in the human brain.  And we know that this process is governed by natural selection just as any other physiological aspect of human life.  But is the presence of psychic abilities an emergence of new genetic characteristics?  Or is it a remnant of our distant past?

My hypothesis is that psychic abilities were much more prevalent in prehistory, that certain forms of psychic phenomenon were a great advantage to our ancestors, but that we are losing this ability by way of evolution.