Skeptics, rationalists, disbelievers, get ready to sharpen your arguments. Is the existence of another world or worlds just wishful thinking? Are ghosts, the soul, the paranormal all hogwash? Yet such questions notwithstanding, can anyone battle with their importance? More than ten of the world’s topnotch, most distinguished universities such as Harvard, UCLA and Princeton considered them important enough to conduct paranormal studies in their labs. Some like the University of Arizona have even expanded their research. Curiously, one of these universities was, it seems, “embarrassed” by the results. Writing in the Hauntist, Sasha Brown-Worsham revealed last year that for almost 30 years, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) project at the Princeton University looked into ESP and telekinesis. “Officially the university is embarrassed by the work, but the reality is it was affirmative. ESP exists.”
Sasha points out that the study of paranormal activity, whether it is extrasensory perception or ESP, telekenisis, ghosts, or any other kind of haunting are considered “fringe” science . And yet, it may not all be as “fringe” as you might think. She cites the example of the University of Arizona. “The Department of Psychology at the University of Arizona owns both the VERITAS and SOPHIA research projects. They are designed to explore the possibility that human consciousness transcends death. VERITAS looked at the existence of the personality beyond death as well as mediumship. It expanded into looking at more after-death communication, including spirit guides, angels, and divine higher power under the name SOPHIA.”
Stanford University was the first academic institution in the US to study ESP and psychokinesis or PK. Some years ago, UFOTV® The Disclosure Network disclosed that for over 20 years, scientists at Stanford Research Institute or SRI, carried out secret investigations into ESP and psychic phenomena and our ability to experience and describe distant events blocked from ordinary perception. This intuitive capacity was named RV or Remote Viewing. Laboratory experiments conducted featured, amongst others, the famed psychic Uri Geller and the findings were summarised in a video and a scientific paper. “The research was supported by the CIA, NASA and many other government agencies for gathering intelligence about world-wide targets in China, USSR, Iran, etc. during the Cold War. This was a Real X-file!” After this information was declassified, it was made into a fascinating DVD—”ESP & Psychic Spies”.
In “Phenomena: The Secret History of the US Government’s Investigations Into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis,” investigative journalist Annie Jacobsen explores the bizarre world of government-funded research into the paranormal. The SRI results were controversial and the project was ended officially but some say it continues under another name. “Presently, the Office of Naval Research calls this program Anomalous Mental Cognition,” Jacobsen says, referring to a $3.9 million program founded in 2014 to investigate the existence of precognition. Because of the stigma surrounding ESP and anything having to do with the supernatural, the nomenclature has changed but Jacobsen argues that the research continues.
In 2010, Cornell University’s Daryl Bem completed a study on precognition or knowing things that will happen before they do. His research ultimately affirmed that it is a real, scientific phenomenon. Harvard University took up the subject of ESP with the objective of disproving it. “Using brain scans they were able to cast some real doubts on ESP” but not totally disprove it. Ultrecht University in the Netherlands brought together 78 scientists and parapsychologists from 13 countries in 1953 and hosted the “First International Utrecht Conference on Parapsychology.” In 2008, there was an “Utrecht II” conference that “looked into psi phenomena, ESP in dreams, field investigations of hauntings and poltergeist activity, self-organised reality, clinical parapsychology, and more”.
Apart from universities, there are innumerable institutes carrying out paranormal research. There is the Institute of Paranormal Psychology (IPP), Rhine Research Center, the very recently formed M&D in North Carolina, a southeastern U.S. state and many others. The prestigious Max Planck Institutes, run by the Max Planck Society which has “a world-leading reputation as a science and technology research organization, with 33 Nobel Prizes awarded to their scientists”, is widely regarded as one of the foremost basic research organizations in the world which focuses on excellence. Its findings have contributedappreciably to understanding paranormal phenomena.
Yet no matter how much skeptics, rationalists and disbelievers may sharpen their arguments, the reality is that despite a tremendous increase in scientific research and highly advanced technology, the paranormal with all its many aspects has not only held its own but is now witnessing a global surge at the highest levels of society.
Significantly, current research is being driven in several instances by tech billionaires like Dmitry Itskov, a Russian multi-millionaire internet mogul in his thirties who, according to Zoë Corbyn, draws on the ideas of Ray Kurzweil, a prominent futurist, who is director of engineering at Google. Kurzweil has predicted that scientists will one day find a way to download human consciousness, no longer necessitating the need for our bodies. Then there is forty something Peter Thiel, PayPal co-founder and Facebook’s first investor, who in an interview identified three main ways to approach death. “You can accept it, you can deny it or you can fight it. I think our society is dominated by people who are into denial or acceptance, and I prefer to fight it.” When it comes to the paranormal, there are two ways to approach its existence: you can accept it, you can deny it, but you cannot fight it, you cannot fight its enduring importance.