IN TWELVE PARTS
Ingo Swann (21Jan97)
The materials in the following twelve essays will help introduce
a category of topics that need to be considered as preventing
or defeating understanding that would lead toward the activation
of at least some of the superpower faculties.
*
All of the topics discussed in this category
were discovered to be structurally important within the psychoenergetics
project at Stanford Research Institute which endured from 1972
through 1985 -- and I have worked toward fleshing them out since
then.
Most of the topics were brought together as early as 1979 in a
rather extensive paper requested by the principal leadership of
one of the agencies that funded the project.
*
The identification of the topics that resulted in the extensive report was provided to answer a two-part question posed by the funding agencies, but which never before had been addressed.
These questions had come about because of earlier efforts at various
institutions to test advertised developmental (or enhancing) methodologies,
but which efforts had ended up with insignificant results.
*
The urge to enhance or learn or discover
is always very strong, especially within the cultures of the modern
West, since these are learning cultures whose basic premises regarding
progress are based in organized educational methodologies. This
is the "you can do it if you learn how" kind of thing.
*
However, various areas of potential learning
don't respond very well to this positivistic approach. And in
general, learning how to "become psychic" constitutes
one of these non-responsive areas.
This statement needs quickly to be quickly qualified, however.
*
The existence of "natural psychics,"
as it were, can be documented quite easily, as can occasional
Psi experiencing among the broad populations in general.
However, how and why, and what internal factors result in natural
Psi capabilities within given individuals have not been isolated
or comprehended, even though a tremendous effort to do so has
been attempted several times in at least five major nations, and
several minor ones.
Thus, the general idea circulated in the public that such attempts
have never taken place is not true -- and in fact never will be
true, since it is acknowledged behind the scenes that such "powers"
exist in our species, although latently so.
*
Thus, the existence of natural psychics,
some of them very good at what they do, is not an issue in these
database documents, and nothing in this database should be misconstrued
as prejudicial to them.
*
However, social issues that arise because
of their existence can be an issue, at least in terms of social
tolerance or intolerance toward them and what they are representative
of because of their natural abilities.
*
In any event, if a positivistic approach
toward "learning how to" yields little in the way of
progress, then it is quite justifiable to begin considering the
possibility that unidentified deterrents may be present, and be
stronger than expected.
The theory here is that once the preventing factors are identified
and, well, "removed," it should become possible to better
isolate and work with the key structural elements of the superpowers
themselves.
To be clear here, the idea is this: OK, if we can't get it to
work, let's shift focus to what's keeping it from working.
*
It was found that a very large portion
of the preventing factors were social or sociological in origin.
And as such, the preventing factors were embedded in the consensus
realities that characterized the social or sociological environments
to which individuals had adapted.
Most of the preventing factors could be equated with information
processing viruses that became cloned in members of a given society
or social sub-grouping, and which thereafter distort or negate
mental information processing grids at the individual level.
*
It can be thought, then, that natural
psychics somehow escape such negating factors, whatever they may
consist of, and so presumably early in life -- or perhaps undergo
a Metanoia shift later on (Metanoia being a topic of one of the
essays ahead.)
*
As the preventing factors were isolated
and took on visibility and understanding, a number of unexpected
developmental fall-outs resulted.
Major among these fall-outs was that the superpower faculties
apparently, and automatically, commence better functioning to
the degree that the preventing factors are identified and understood.
*
The evidence regarding this more than
suggested that once the mental information processing viruses,
and their origins, are understood as such, they cease their deterrent
functioning within the entire sensorium systems.
It would appear, then, that the entire sensorium systems undergo
MICRO-CHANGES OF STATE once the information viruses are deactivated.
*
The change-of-state phenomena are consistent
with the ancient Greek concept of METANOIA -- translated into
English as when the brain-mind suddenly shifts from a lower to
a higher condition of functioning.
*
In any event, it is quite logical and
rational to assume that when information viruses are deactivated
within given information processing systems, then something IS
going to happen along the lines of enhancing those systems. In
this sense, "enhancing" would imply restoration of processes
which had been depressed or distorted by the viruses.
*
The human biomind almost certainly IS
an information processing system -- rather, is an interlocking,
interdependent series of them.
*
The most expedient and direct way to
deactivate information processing viruses is simply to beat them
to death.
*
This seems to be the case for two basic reasons:
*
One very expeditious way to beat an information
processing virus to death is to cease processing information through
it, or to construct new pathways around it.
*
Now, to move expeditiously on and to
begin the beating-to-death process, in this database the phrase
"How can I learn to become more psychic," is permanently
replaced by the more effective concept of "ACTIVATING the
superpower FACULTIES of the human biomind."
*
The term PSYCHIC will be utilized only
with regard to dipping back into those consensus realities which
have adapted to that term.
*
Gradually, all other psychic or parapsychological
nomenclature that has any viral-like nature will be ejected --
and replaced with concept-nomenclature more appropriate to the
superpower processes themselves.
In all cases, evidence and rationales
will be fully and openly presented and discussed, even though
there is the possibility of putting some readers to sleep.
Some of the evidence and rationales opened up in the essays ahead
are complex. I'll do my best to make it generally accessible,
but will not simplify or over-simplify it -- because over-simplification
can easily act as an information processing virus.
*
As has been noted in other essays, the
superpowers can be thought of as existing not because of psychics
per se, but because a variety of the faculties spontaneously function
in a very large number of people who don't believe they are "psychic."
The manifestations might be temporary, as they usually are within
the species populations in general.
*
Statistically speaking, the information
processing grids of only an extremely small percentage of the
human population are structured and organized in such a way as
to permit more or less continuous performance of this or that
superpower faculty. And even in the case of most natural psychics,
they are limited regarding the larger spectrum that the sum of
the superpower faculties seem to represent -- while many faculties
along this spectrum have not been conceptualized or discovered.
*
Naturally psychic people are called psychics,
seers, shamans, clairvoyants, and etc., and they are treated according
to the social environments in which they dwell.
*
But about 90 per cent of all human populations
occasionally experience a superpower manifestation of some kind,
and then usually within some kind of emergency necessity or as
a result of deep, concerted thinking about something that has
taken on extraordinary meaning or importance for them.
*
Theoretically speaking, then, it can
be assumed that the superpower faculties exist within our species
since their spontaneous manifestations occur far and wide, in
all cultures, and throughout our species history.
*
It is because of the continuous historical
presence of the manifesting faculties that we can conclude justifiably
that the superpowers are as old as is our species.
*
Their existence, then, pre-dates any
subsequent social treatment of them, and pre-dates as well the
very many conceptual treatments of them that have come and gone
through the centuries and the many social enclaves that also have
come and gone.
*
This may explain one consistent phenomenon
regarding the appearance of superpower functioning among children
before they have become fully adapted to their social environment
programming and the transmission of information processing viruses
within that programming.
*
Accordingly, and if only for purposes
of theoretical speculating, it can be postulated that the most
effective way of activating one's own faculties is to study the
actual nature of the faculties at the species level, not at the
individual or within the socio-cultural levels.
*
The functional reason for this SHIFT
OF FOCUS is that the superpowers are treated and thought of in
different ways with regard to individuals, social groups and sub-groups,
cultures, nations, educational adaptations, and so forth.
Few of these ways are consistent with another.
In any event, the different ways are constituted more of sociological
parameters, most of which divert (or can destroy) direct cognitive
approach to the faculties.
*
At this point, it is somewhat mandatory
to introduce the conundrum of social tolerance versus intolerance
toward the superpowers.
*
Archaeological, historical and anthropological
evidence is very strong regarding the high tolerance of the superpowers
among ancient cultures.
This tolerance must have been based on knowledge of the superpowers,
a knowledge via which the superpowers were EXPECTED to emerge
at least within a certain percentage of people.
This knowledge, whatever it consisted of, has become lost, distorted,
degraded, mythologized, or over-simplified.
*
Lost also are the consensus reality structures
which encompassed the knowledge and must have in fact stimulated
it into existence.
It is highly improbably that the lost knowledge can be reconstructed
or reconstituted within the constraints of modern consensus realities.
We, therefore, are largely on our own -- with the exception of
discovering contemporary concepts which correspond to the ancient
ones. The difficulty here is that the nomenclature utilized will
probably be radically different.
*
In any event, in earlier cultures the
expected activation of the superpowers (at least in some form)
was accepted when it did occur, and the high frequency of the
occurring often needed institutional formats to manage it -- such
as the seer systems of ancient Egypt, Greece, India, Persia, China,
the Amerindian cultures, etc.
Thus, the ancient cultures of our species are particularly littered
with evidence that if tolerance for the superpower exists, then
they do manifest on a higher rate of frequency.
*
On the other hand, social parameters
that are intolerant of the superpowers would not only suppress
the frequency of superpower emergence, but would confuse the important
issues involved so that cognitive functioning of the faculties
would become difficult, or not possible.
*
But even so, such social parameters of
intolerance could not erase the faculties themselves, since these
appear to be a continuous endowment of the species rather than
of any given social or psychological parameters.
*
Thus, various of the superpowers continue
to emerge spontaneously even within social vectors that are intolerant
of them.
*
Persons who for some reason have acquired
various types of cognitive interaction with THEIR superpower faculties
can be called "a psychic," as they are in English. But
in other cultures they are, and have been called by a number of
other identifiers, meaning that they have been conceptualized
differently.
*
And it is here that we can meet with
a staggering problem most are unaware of, but which is one of
the most important problems regarding ever achieving any real
understanding not only of the species superpower faculties, but
of all our species faculties including those which produce "creativity."
*
In explaining the nature of this great
problem, the blunt fact of the matter is that different conceptualizations
lead to and yield different results -- while some conceptualizations
don't yield any results if they are off the mark regarding what
is being conceptualized.
*
Different conceptualizations also lead
to different expectations, and to different predictions not only
regarding results, but regarding what is or is not needed, or
required to obtain the results.
*
A conceptualization is a MODEL which
people utilize as a basis for their think-functioning, and also
use to interpret or judge the same regarding others.
*
It then must follow that a number of
different specimens of our species who are adapted to a variety
of different conceptualizations will comprehend, interpret or
judge a given superpower phenomenon in a variety of different
ways.
It will also be found that the different concepts extruding from
the different models will be exceedingly hard to correlate.
*
Thus, if we attempt to look at the superpower
faculties through our models and concepts, we will achieve only
what our concepts permit. And whatever THAT is probably will not
correlate with conceptualizations of others.
*
What is being emphasized via the above
is that individual and social conceptualizations govern the mental
lenses THROUGH WHICH the most visible of the superpower phenomena
are judged in turn.
*
It is very important here to emphasize
that hardly anyone ever "sees" the superphenomena directly
and purely, so to speak.
What IS actually seen are (1) the phenomena, PLUS (2) the concepts
through which they have been filtered, with the sum being 3, the
combined result of 1 + 2.
In this sense, then, 1 + 2 = 3 whatever that may be. And 3 is
more likely to be composed more of 2 than of 1.
*
It is almost certain that the phenomena
will be reduced or altered to fit the conceptual lenses through
which they are being viewed, judged or "understood."
And direct experimental evidence accumulated over a long period
of time shows that FUNCTIONING will correspond more with 2 than
1.
*
As will be discussed (rather endlessly)
in this series of essays, the English identifier "a psychic"
is a difficult and usually foggy conceptualization because those
utilizing it are usually doing so as a label or a stereotype --
without understanding that the label itself will not reveal much
about the functions behind it, save perhaps to say that THOSE
functions are "psychic" ones, too.
The same was and is also true of the labels of seer, shaman, soothsayer,
oracle, clairvoyant and so forth.
*
In other words, the way we refer to an
individual who has achieved some kind of cognitive contact with
THEIR arrangement of the superpower faculties, well, the referent
itself tells us nothing about the functioning processes involved.
*
Throughout my years, it has been my good
fortune to have met a fairly large number of "natural psychics,"
and I developed long-term associations with some of them. I was
very impressed with their "products," and I tend to
hold "natural psychic talent" in high esteem.
*
But, and as in my own case, all but three
of them resented being called "a psychic," and usually
for one or both of two reasons.
It denied them their individuality, i.e., depersonalized them
by lumping them together with all "psychics" -- whether
real, questionable, idiotic, stupid, money-grubbing or ego-mongering.
The other general reason was that everyone has their own idea
of what "a psychic" is, must or should be -- and so
each person has different expectations, values, and judgments
about "a psychic."
*
There is nothing worse than being caused,
as a discrete individual, to disappear behind a stereotyping label
-- and for no other reason than its widespread social usage as
a pidgin-hole identifier.
*
Now, there is always a real person behind
such a label, and so I can tell you that all of the "psychics"
I had the good fortune to meet were exceedingly different from
one another.
*
The individuals I've met and who did
claim the identity of "a psychic" did so because they
gave "readings" to public clients who paid for the readings.
Generally speaking, the public expect psychics to be, well, PSYCHIC,
and will not pay anyone for a reading who is not identified as
one. But this involves entrepreneurial economics, a topic which
is not relevant to this database. However, I HAVE encountered
some rather good "psychic readers," for example, a tea-cup
reader in a sleazy club but who blew me away.
*
Now, a CONCEPT which has achieved broad
stereotype usage usually acts as a pidgin-hole identifier, even
though it applies to something other than a person. What's behind
the label-concept can disappear, even if we know what we think
we have identified by utilizing the label-concept.
"Ah, yes," I've often heard it said, "that [phenomenon
or experience] MUST be psychic."
People do say this, you know. But if you ask them the details
of what they are talking about, things usually drift off into
a cloying ambiguity.
*
The fact that different people, cultural
groupings, nations, etc., assign an identifier to individuals
who demonstrate this or that type of superpower functioning, well
this is a reductionist SOCIAL function, not an investigative one.
But the actual process-functions of the superpower faculties can
ALSO disappear behind concepts that have merely become social
stereotype concepts.
*
One of the more informative things about
the superpower faculties being a species thing is that people
who spontaneously experience and report them tend, in their "raw"
narratives, to describe them in nearly identical ways, no matter
what their cultural or environmental backgrounds might be.
However, WHAT they say they have experienced is then subjected
to social conceptualizing patterns. The concepts and nomenclature
used by the social process are assigned to the raw reports of
the experiencers.
*
I like to use the term "digested"
here -- in that the raw narratives of the experiencers are digested
by social processes. In this digesting, identifiers typically
used in those processes are assigned, and thus everyone who uses
the identifiers think they know what happened to the original
experiencer.
Accounts or interpretations of the raw experience are then based
on the digested outputs, written up for others to read -- meaning
that readers read the pre-digested forms.
And since the readers, too, utilize the concept-identifiers, they
end up thinking they understand what the original experiencer
experienced.
*
Then, some few readers think they would
like to "develop" the same experiential capacities,
and so they utilize the pre-digested versions as their guidelines
-- and tend to be a little disappointed when the "guidelines"
don't produce much of anything.
And which is to say, more or less, that nothing or little gets
ACTIVATED in the way of superpower faculties which people nonetheless
experience species-wide.
*
In Part Four ahead, under the topic of
Information Theory, we will encounter an observation of one of
the principal founders of the theory first published in 1948.
This observation establishes that NONE OF US are free from entrapment
in consensus realities of one kind or another.
Although probably shocking at first take, this conclusion is firmly
supported by semantic studies, linguistics and nomenclature analysis.
*
The conclusion is this: ". . . about
half of the elements in writing or speaking are freely chosen,
and the rest are required by the structure of the language."
Those working in the discipline of semantic studies sometimes
opine that the required elements constitute more than 50 per cent.
*
In any event, a large portion of the
"required" elements, if not the whole of them, can be
found to correspond with concept-nomenclature itself utilized
as the basis for achieving consensus realities.
If this concept-nomenclature is NOT utilized, then one might just
as well be speaking the language of planet alpha-X in star system
NYKD40.
*
The implication here is quite clear.
If the concept-nomenclature of the "required elements"
contains misconceptions no one realizes are misconceived, then
these misconceptions will probably be cloned into all who utilize
the required elements.
And information mentally processed through or via those misconceptions
surely results in some form of distortion no one realizes is a
distortion.
*
The concept of ACTIVATING [something]
is a particular challenge, especially when it is known to exist,
but stubbornly refuses to get up and do its stuff -- because the
wrong concepts are being used in the attempt to bring about activation.
Expert problem solvers know there are two major routes to take:
to learn how to activate it on the one hand, and to find out what's
preventing it from activating on the other.
You see, problems can be solved by learning how to solve them.
This may or may not work. But problems can also be solved by finding
out what's preventing their solution.
*
For reasons never made entirely clear
to me, the majority put faith and trust in the learning-how-to
method -- and where the superpower faculties are concerned, they
have my best wishes.
*
On the other hand, spontaneous manifestations
of the faculties have been around for a about six millennia. And
very many ideas and concepts regarding how to "develop"
them by learning-how-to methods have been tried down through the
centuries.
The major result here is that our species, although possessed
of the faculties, is today not yet swarming with those faculties
in activated forms.
*
So, the better part of valor is: if Plan
A (learning-how-to-activate) doesn't seem to work all that well,
let's move to Plan B (learning-what-prevents-the-activation.)
*
Organized psychical research was first
established and undertaken in 1882, but was displaced during the
1930s by the emergence of parapsychology. While these two entities
are generally considered the same or similar, they are distinct
because their central theories and methodologies differed.
But both established concept-nomenclature that became utilized
in general, and which contributed what turned into the consensus-reality
nomenclature utilized almost worldwide. Thus, when anyone speaks
or writes about "paranormal phenomena," so-called, the
concept-nomenclature of the two fields falls into the category
of "required elements."
In other words, we are obliged to utilize the concept-nomenclature
of those two fields, or no one will know what we are talking about.
*
A full part of the resulting problems
is that both psychical research and parapsychology evolved as
rejected sciences, with the result that they were ghettoized within
the much larger scenarios of the other developing sciences.
Any collective that is ghettoized usually introverts into its
own ways and means, into its own concepts and understanding --
and this usually reinforces and solidifies the contours of the
ghettoization rather than ameliorating them.
*
Once the contours have become solidified,
a two-way exchange of information and concepts between the ghetto
and the larger scenarios is usually unlikely.
This is to say that conceptual information, developments and discoveries
in the ghetto and in the larger scenarios are not likely to be
exchanged or correlated.
*
The basic reason is that if the exchange,
if it took place, would tend to dissolve the ghetto contours resulting
in some kind of integration. This integration is usually desired
by the ghettoized populations, but is also usually rejected by
the larger scenarios which brought about the ghettoization.
The overall result ends up as some kind of a stand-off. But this
is not the end of the story.
*
All intrusions from the ghetto into the
larger scenarios are defensively repulsed by forces within the
latter, since those intrusions are seen within the larger scenarios
as virus-like in nature.
This is to say that the intrusions will be interpreted as undermining
the consensus realities of the larger scenarios that brought about
the ghettoizing in the first place.
*
Collective Psi research has produced
the concepts and nomenclature utilized by the public and media,
and various generalized consensus realities have been formatted
around them.
The public of course realizes there is an on-going fracas between
Psi research and science proper. But what is not generally visible
is how the on-going fracas is maintained and kept ongoing.
*
On the part of science proper, the fracas
is maintained by sanitizing proper science of all concepts and
nomenclature emanating from ghettoized Psi research.
That this sanitizing is possible, much less enforced, may seem
unreal to the public. But then the public usually does not consume
hundreds of scientific papers. And it is only by doing so that
one can realize the complete absence of Psi nomenclature in them.
Further, although some of those aspiring to find a place in proper
science might wish to consider the contents and implications of
Psi research, they can do so only privately and quietly. Any open
consideration will end up in some kind of career disaster for
them.
*
The dimensions of the fracas are maintained
on the part of ghettoized Psi research for reasons that are a
little more complicated. But the complexities can be summarized
as the tendency to introvert into one's own basic operating realities,
and which are maintained within the intra-ghettoized system because
they seem meaningful and appropriate to the core work of that
system.
The basic operating realities of the core work are rooted in concepts
and nomenclature appropriate to them, and thus constitute the
consensus realities within the ghetto.
*
Via these mutual defensive methods on
both sides, an information exchange barrier takes shape between
the two parties of the stand-off. Psi research will not "go
away," largely because aspects or elements of it are experienced
on a worldwide basis.
Yet Psi research cannot be admitted into science proper -- without
the cost of dis-establishing some of its own fundamental, conceptual
constructs.
And it is this "complaint" I, personally, have been
directly apprised of by a number of eminent scientists who have
dared to talk with me. The same complaint, however, has often
been seen in print.
*
Now, there has been a significant point
in reviewing these certain aspects of the stand-off, a point that
has required the format and contexts of the foregoing descriptions.
*
This important point has to do with the
information-exchange barrier between science proper and the bad-child
ghettoized in its scientifically isolated playpen.
The organized ghettoization of Psi research was in effect as early
as the 1890s, and has been maintained ever since, along with the
information-exchange barrier.
Psi research and science proper have thus evolved along their
own pathways, and have remained divided with respect to the information-exchange
barrier.
In other words, we are talking about a barrier that, if wobbly
at times, has endured for at least a hundred years.
And this, in my sardonic opinion, is one of the silliest things
ever, especially in Western democratic cultures where freedom
of information is considered a fundamental, inalienable right.
*
In any event, the maintenance of the
information-exchange barrier has worked to make it nearly impossible
to correlate advances in science proper with advances in Psi research
-- and which advances are applicable to each other.
And these advances remain divided because in the two sides of
the stand-off they have been arrived at via different theoretical
and conceptual approaches -- and which are identified by nomenclature
so radically different that it is extremely difficult to see any
relationship between them.
*
As but one example of many, information
theory and the basic concepts of information transfer (which ushered
in the overwhelmingly powerful Age of Information) became available
in 1948, nearly forty years ago.
*
Yet, the fact that so-called "clairvoyance,"
"telepathy," and "remote viewing" are, at
base, problems of information transfer seems to have dawned neither
on Psi researcher nor proper scientists.
And so Psi researchers in general have not adapted to information
theory precepts, while science proper never has adapted to precepts
of clairvoyance, etc., no matter the gargantuan, well-documented
evidence for it.
And the public in general is totally unaware of anything in this
regard.
*
In the essays now to follow, I will discuss
WHY activation of any of the superpowers is unlikely UNLESS they
are first and foremost conceptualized as INFORMATION TRANSFER
situations.
It will also be discussed that the superpowers are matters of
PERCEPTION only in some secondary or third sense -- in that in
proper science it is now understood without question or challenge
that perception itself is a matter of information flow and transfer.
*
It then must follow that any conceptualization
and nomenclature for it that is not based in the now-understood
nature of information and its transfer processes will act as mental
processing virus deterrents.
*
But there are numerous other deterrents as well, and it is the most notable, and most easily identifiable of these which now constitute the topics of all of the following essays.
(End of Introduction)