PARANORMAL POWER: INTERVIEW WITH A VOLUNTEER IN A LABORATORY STUDY
by Jon Rappoport
May 8, 2012
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derived from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness.” — Max Planck, Nobel Laureate, Physics, 1918.
A great chasm is being bridged. Hard-line scientists are admitting that matter and conventional energy are far from the whole story of the universe.
Indeed, as you can see from the Max Planck quote above, this counter-movement began a long time ago. It found its inspiration in the fact that, as the mysteries of the atom and the cosmos were coming under more intense scrutiny, as breakthroughs were being made, the expectations of scientists, vis-a-vis Life, were disappointed.
Here’s a statement attributed to another Nobel Laureate, Albert Szent-Gyorgyi (1937): “In my search for the secret of life, I have ended up with atoms and electrons which have no life at all. Somewhere along the line, life has run out through my fingers. So, in my old age, I am retracing my steps…”
Into the vacuum of disappointment came spokespeople offering myriad solutions, answers, and possible futures. As usual, the capability and power of the individual were not high on the list of clues to Life Itself.
For a long while, I’ve been looking at The Matrix as a kind of sea from which, from time to time, individuals emerge, from which many more individuals could emerge.
Fifteen years ago, I delved into laboratory paranormal experiments. I ended up interviewing a few people who had done very well, beyond expectations, in these controlled tests. Here is a 2002 interview with one such volunteer.
He participated in a “psychokinesis ball-drop” study, in which balls are dropped down from a funnel into a case with holes and pegs in it. Probability dictates that about half the balls will fall into holes to the right of vertical center, and half will fall into holes to the left of center.
Volunteers are tasked with trying to mentally influence the distribution of the balls, so that more of them settle into holes to the right or left of center.
This volunteer significantly exceeded statistical expectations. As you’ll see, the conversation moved into some very interesting areas. My comments come at the end of the interview.
Q: So did you have a method? Or is this “natural” for you?
A: I’ve experimented.
Q: For example?
A: I tried visualizing the end result I wanted. That didn’t work. I tried putting energy into the balls. That worked a little better. Then I found I could create a field around the balls. The field was very energetic.
Q: What do you mean by “energetic?”
A: The field has many, many particles in it. The particles are invested with consciousness.
Q: Are you saying you created consciousness?
A: As far as I’m concerned, we create new consciousness all the time. We may not be aware we’re doing it, but we are.
Q: And this field somehow moved the balls to the left side of the board?
A: That was the “motive” in the field. It was a dynamic motive.
Q: And it worked.
A: I’ve had it work a number of times.
Q: What conclusions do you draw from this experience?
A: Quite a few, actually. Chance, or probability, is a human consensus. It’s not, strictly speaking, built into the universe. It’s not a physical fact. The universe favors 50-50 distribution of matter and energy? That never made sense to me.
Q: So from your perspective, what exactly did you accomplish [in the study]?
A: I “broke the rule” of common consensus, the rule that would have landed half the balls to the right and half to the left.
Q: Explain this “common consensus.”
A: I don’t see the universe as a remote thing. I think we influence it all the time. We have certain convictions that we all share and we “program” the universe with them.
Q: So for example, we program the universe with the idea that statistical probability—the 50-50 split—is the way things are?
A: That’s my view, yes.
Q: How would we do that?
A: I can’t give you a blow-by-blow account, but we do it subconsciously.
Q: And why would we do that?
A: For the sake of predictability and stability.
Q: But you don’t want stability? You said you broke “the rule of the shared consensus.”
A: Perhaps I’m a little more adventurous than the average person.
Q: You like upsetting apple carts.
A: Perhaps so, yes.
Q: When you put this “field” around the balls in the experiment, were you thinking about breaking the common consensus?
A: Sometimes. But mostly, I’m just doing what I do. I like being able to take things and move them off course.
Q: There’s nothing in your history, your past that would explain your ability?
A: Nothing that comes to mind. I didn’t have an accident where I hit my head and suddenly discovered I had a new talent.
Q: Can you do other things? Can you read the numbers on cards without seeing them? Can you read people’s thoughts?
A: No.
Q: When you put this field around the balls, do you feel anything?
A: I like it.
Q: It feels powerful?
A: Not “bad powerful.”
Q: Does it feel creative?
A: Definitely. In a unique sort of way, because nobody else is doing it exactly the way I am.
Q: You must have some sense of space when you’re doing it. You’re reaching out and placing this field there, around the balls?
A: Yes. It’s very spatial. Space is a palpable thing to me. I see it, but I also feel it.
Q: It’s not abstract.
A: Not at all. I’m not just thinking. I feel like I’m affecting physical space. I’m adding something to it. I’m almost replacing the type of space that was there with new space.
Q: And since you’re having a real effect on what’s in the space [the balls in the experiment], you’re changing physical space?
A: Yes.
Q: So a person can actually change physical space.
A: Yes.
Q: Ordinary space is filled with this “common consensus?”
A: Space is molded by it, so that events that happen [in it] are guided by the principle of neutrality, where statistical probability is the outcome.
Q: And we prefer this.
A: We make space conform to that [statistical probability].
Q: But you don’t.
A: I don’t want to sound like an outlaw.
Q: What do you want to sound like?
A: I’m just doing something that puts alteration into space.
Q: So you’re not acting directly on the balls as they drop down through the case.
A: No. I’m setting up the conditions for change.
Q: Do you feel, in any way, that you’re violating a rule or a law?
A: At first, I had a few reservations about that. But then I decided that the violations had already happened.
Q: Meaning what?
A: Well, all of us already influenced space by our common consensus. This has already happened. We programmed space to be “neutral.”
Q: And if we hadn’t?
A: I don’t know what space would be like. It would be a lot easier to change. I’m sure of that.
Q: Do you think there’s something wrong with this common consensus?
A: I really do.
Q: Why?
A: It makes a kind of grid.
Q: It locks us in?
A: That’s right. It keeps us in check.
Q: Whereas, if we were exerting our full power?
A: All together, or individually?
Q: Individually.
A: Life would be a lot more dynamic. People feel there are certain things they can do, and everything else is left to chance, or fate, or some idea of a remote force.
Q: Do you “remain anonymous” about what you can do?
A: I don’t perform at parties, if that’s what you mean.
Q: What about, say, at your place of work?
A: I’m an analyst. That’s all anybody knows. I keep it that way.
Q: Have you ever had a conversation where you told somebody what you’ve done, and he rejected it?
A: That’s how I learned my lesson. People want to believe this is nonsense.
Q: What about the research scientists who run the paranormal experiments?
A: I’m not sure. I feel they concentrate more on the results as an overall number, from all the volunteers, rather than focusing on what any one person can do.
Q: They want to prove that the paranormal is scientific.
A: But it isn’t. You have people [volunteers in the experiments] doing it, achieving the results. I don’t see how you can really put a number on it. I understand the theory. They [the researchers] want to tally up how everybody did, all together. Because that’s how they’re supposed to investigate. But the volunteers who do well in the studies aren’t statistics. It’s like a race. The 100-meter race. Do you add up the times of all the runners at the end? Would that show anything?
Q: What about your future? Do you have plans?
A: No decisions yet. I understand the [popular version of the] Observer Effect. If people change what they’re looking at, then what about changing things by consciously putting something there. Maybe that could be measured.
Q: You mean your field could be measured.
A: It would be interesting to find out.
Q: Do you think you could create fields that would move more than the balls in the experiment?
A: I haven’t tried, but maybe I could.
Q: Do you see your ability as natural?
A: I think it is. As I said at the beginning, I tried several ways to influence the distribution of the balls. I experimented. I think more people should experiment.
Q: So it’s occurred to you that people aren’t using the full range of their capabilities.
A: Sure.
Q: It’s been my contention that people are seeking some kind of average or normal level…
A: I think we give all the wrong names to things. Psychic ability, psychokinesis, paranormal—they imply either something mystical or something scientific. I don’t believe either category fits. It’s something else. I don’t have a name for it.
Q: This idea of a common consensus. Doesn’t that suggest a group consciousness?
A: Individuals are contributing to it.
Q: Everybody is subconsciously joining in.
A: That’s the way it seems.
Q: Like a shared secret, through which we settle for being average.
A: Right.
Q: I see this average being applied in more and more situations in life. It’s an agenda. To be average.
A: It’s ridiculous.
Q: You said that by creating a field you’re changing space. Do you think you could change “a piece of space” permanently?
A: I’ve never thought about it. The space I changed would probably snap back to being what it was before.
Q: Why?
A: Because of that common consensus.
Q: It [the space] would revert back.
A: But you know, suppose you could create a field around a garden? The motive you put in the field would be for flowers to grow bigger. Then a few years later, you look at the other gardens in the neighborhood, and you see your garden is healthier. It’s still healthier. That probably does happen. People do that.
Q: You bring up an interesting point. In the study you volunteered for, you were working with inanimate objects. Not flowers.
A: When those balls are dropping down and landing in the holes, they don’t quite seem inanimate.
Q: You mean they’re alive?
A: Not exactly that either. It’s as if I put a certain desire in them and they do what that desire wants. They’re enhanced.
Q: This cup on the table here. Would you say it has a desire?
A: Yes. It has a desire to be where it is.
Q: You feel that?
A: Sometimes I can sense it.
Q: So it [the cup] is flexible.
A: Wherever it is, it has the desire to be there. Objects are accommodating. They have the desire to be where they are or to move where they’re going. But if their position is changed, so does their desire.
Q: That sounds like a different formulation of the law of inertia.
A: To remain at rest or to continue in motion. The law of inertia is close to the idea that objects have desire.
Q: Have you seen the [1999 movie] The Matrix?
A: Yes. It was very interesting. But I see this “program of reality” in two ways. It’s like looking at the same geographic location from two different angles. From one angle, it looks like our reality has been programmed and set in place by an external force. From another angle, it looks like we ourselves did it. We did the programming.
Q: This unconscious collective consensus that establishes statistical probability and the 50-50 rule…
A: We do that.
Q: On a scale from zero to a hundred, where a hundred is sheer ecstasy and zero is boredom, where would you rate your own feeling about what you can do in influencing matter and space?
A: About sixty.
Q: Why so low?
A: Because I think there’s a lot more that’s possible. I’m only using part of my potential.
Q: A slice of it.
A: Yes.
Q: What’s the rest like?
A: I don’t know. I want to find out.
Q: Back to your idea that objects have desires in them. It reminds me also of certain Medieval points of view.
A: But I’m saying that people can change the desire of an object.
Q: By putting a new desire in it.
A: If I could really put a desire to fly in a book, it would jump off the shelf.
End of interview
My comments:
Paranormal ability is a fact. The implications of this fact are staggering: space-time is not impenetrable or fixed or final. Space-time isn’t some entity we, at best, can understand. We can affect it directly. The individual can do this.
Therefore, to the degree that the Continuum appears to us as an unshakable foundation, we are dealing with a delusion.
But this is a particular kind of delusion. It isn’t something we replace with a more profound grasp of a better alternative. We, as individuals, are the better alternative.
About a dozen years ago, I did an interview with Dean Radin, the author of The Conscious Universe. During an academic career as a paranormal researcher, Radin undertook a comprehensive and exhaustive review of well-formed (published) studies of various types of paranormal experiments, and he concluded that the evidence shows, overall, that statistical probability was exceeded in these studies, that paranormal ability is real.
The Matrix, the actual one, not the movie, involves the common shared conviction that human capability is limited. The idea that a person can change matter and space is largely rejected as fantasy. If Radin is correct in his assessment, however, and I think he is, the mainstream evidence shows that paranormal abilities are authentic.
I also agree with the volunteer I interviewed that academic scientific investigation of the paranormal is catering to methods that are misleading. Overall performance of volunteers across a broad spectrum of studies masks what key individuals are doing—the individuals who clearly perform beyond expectation.
This is important. These days, the emphasis is on what the group can do collectively. But what if group numbers conceal what key individuals in the group are making happen?
For example, experiments have been done in which random number generators, placed in various locations, suddenly depart from their typical randomness just before momentous global events that many people are focused on. This change in the generators’ pattern is attributed to collective reaction. Again, suppose the change is primarily being caused by a much smaller number of individuals, acting or reacting on their own?
The conviction that matter and space follow their course without interruption, according to immutable laws, is a major element of the Matrix. It works very well where technology is concerned, but that doesn’t mean humans must go along for the ride.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism states that man derives the thrust of his power from exercising reason. Yet in The Fountainhead, her hero, Howard Roark, is an innovative architect. He is creating his buildings. Does reason explain his actions? If so, and if reason runs strictly according to the principles of logic, then why don’t his buildings absolutely derive from that logic?
This is not to demean logic. It is a vital discipline. But all around us, we also see the results of imagination in action. In fact, if you reread the volunteer’s comments on the field he used to influence the direction of the dropping balls, you can see he is talking about creation. In other words, he wasn’t utilizing some field that was already there. He was inventing that field.
The Matrix is formed to convince us of its monopoly on What Is. Imagination, creation, and invention cut across that grain. They produce realities that are new, that owe nothing to Matrix.
Jon Rappoport
The author of an explosive new collection, THE MATRIX REVEALED, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world.