The Parapsychological Association

Humanity’s greatest challenge is the current ecological crisis. How may parapsychology contribute to the expected changes of behavior?

PA Members will explore this question on November 21, 2020 (9am - 3pm EST) in an online symposium chaired by PA President Renaud Evrard. This event is the first of a series of quarterly symposia on various parapsychological topics.

Register at EventZilla

Parapsychology is a scientific attempt to explore as-yet-unknown rules of nature. With the current concerns of the ecological crisis, it’s time to assess how this discipline may contribute to expected changes of behavior by changing the way we think about our place in the cosmos. Ecology may become parapsychology’s next challenge.

The most obvious intersection between ecology and parapsychology is a commonly reported aftereffect of several different types of exceptional experiences (psychedelics, near-death or abduction experiences, etc.): the experiencer comes away from their encounter with an enhanced sense of connection to the environment and the world around them.

The “ecological self” is a new sense of self that sees the environment as an extension - or part - of the person. The study of this rising “ecological consciousness” shows another promising aspect of exceptional experiences. In a similar vein, the worldview of animism may offer parapsychology a viable alternative to physicalism, entailing ethical implications for its methods and practices.

Explanatory models for living organisms must take into account the existence of the background reality described by parapsychology, along with the modes of causation it implies. Therefore, a new theory of evolutionism is being developed in parapsychological circles. What is the place of psi in nature?

Sessions and Speakers

Ecology: Parapsychology’s Next Challenge
Renaud Evrard

The notion of ecosystems is all about relationships, a connection of everything through networks of reciprocal exchange. How does parapsychology intersect with the field of ecology?

Parapsychology and the Ecological Self
Jack Hunter

Deep Ecologists have argued that the ecological crisis is simultaneously a psychological and spiritual crisis, and that we will need to re-conceptualize our relationship to the world in which we live.

The Missing Link: What Psi Tells Us About Biology and Evolution
Michael Nahm argues that current mainstream biologists lack an encompassing understanding of organisms, and explains why psi is necessary to expand current biology, including evolutionary biology.

Psi, Psychedelics and Nature
David Luke

The practice of psychedelically inducing psi is embedded within a nature-based eco-spiritual epistemology and is difficult to disentangle as a web of interconnected relations

The Ethical Implications Animism Psi Has for Parapsychology
Building on recent research in science studies, the worldview of animism offers parapsychology a viable alternative to physicalism entailing ethical implications for its methods and practices.

General admission: $40
PA Professional, Associate, and Supporting Members: $25

Register at Eventzilla 

The latest issue of the Journal of Parapsychology is out and PA members can download it for free. Here is the table of contents:

Journal of Parapsychology Volume 83 / Number 2 Fall 2019

EDITORIALS
Errors of the Third Kind
Etzel Cardeña

Methodological and Statistical Recommendations: Option or Necessity
Jessica Utts and Patrizio Tressoldi

ARTICLES
In Memoriam: Elizabeth A. Rauscher (1937-2019)
Marilyn Schlitz

Abstracts of the 62nd Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association
Various

Quantifying the Phenomenology of Ghostly Episodes: Part II - A Rasch Model of Spontaneous Accounts
James Houran, Rense Lange, Brian Laythe, Neil Dagnall, Keith Drinkwater, and Ciarán O’Keefe

Magnetospheric and Lunar Interactions with Reported Sensory Hallucinations: An Exploratory Study
Vladimir Dubaj and Tony Mowbray

Secondary Analysis of Sitter Group Data: Testing Hypotheses from the PK Literature
James McClenon

An Exploration of the Effects of Mood and Emotion on a Real-World Working Computer System and Network Environment
John G. Kruth

A Contribution to the Study of the Possession Trance Mediumship of Jane Roberts
Paul F. Cunningham

BOOK REVIEWS
A Challenge to Materialist Models of Mind
Max Velmans

An Uneven Discussion of Psi in Psychoanalysis and Culture
Etzel Cardeña

Fortean Perspectives
Gerhard Mayer

The Meeting of Psychoanalysis and Feminism in the Study of Mediumship
Everton de Oliveira Maraldi

CORRESPONDENCE
The American Statistician Special Issue on Statistical Inference
Caroline A. Watt and J. E. Kennedy

On Women in Parapsychology
Nancy L. Zingrone and Carlos S. Alvarado

---

Join the Parapsychological Association to download this issue today. There is a level of membership for everyone interested in the scientific and scholarly advancement of parapsychology. Those who join the PA enjoy many benefits including the Journal of Parapsychology and Mindfield: The Bulletin of the Parapsychological Association. Members also receive discounts at annual PA conventions and are granted online access to an electronic archive of selected convention papers and videos.

We are delighted to announce that the 2019 J.B. Rhine Address will be delivered by quantum physicist and philosopher Antoine Suarez. Born in Allariz, Spain, Suarez earned Masters’ degrees in Theoretical Physicals from University of Zaragoza and Experimental Physics from University of Fribourg, and his PhD from ETF Zurich (Swiss Institute of Technology) in 1975. Upon meeting John Bell in 1988 at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, Suarez, with Bell’s support and collaboration, promoted the activity of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies and Center for Quantum Philosophy. Suarez’s notable contributions include: “before-before experiment” - where there is no time ordering behind quantum correlations, they come from outside space-time; single-photon space-like antibunching experiment, timeless nonlocality and free-will as axiom of science.

Suarez advocates the philosophical view that all interpretations of quantum physics are basically equivalent and amount to state that not all what matters for the physical phenomena is contained in space-time. This principle proves useful in tackling anthropological and theological issues like the “soul-brain relationship”, “definition of death”, “beginning of the human being”, and the “origin of humanity”.

Suarez’s address to the PA convention – What Is and Is Not Possible for Human Experimenters – will discuss the conditions for the possibility and reproducibility of psychophysical phenomena. Join us in Paris, France for the 62nd Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association for this and a wide array of presentations on topics at the avant-garde of science.
 

Next month in Petaluma, California, Gerhard Mayer, from the Institut für Grenzgebiete der Psychologie und Psychohygiene Freiburg, Germany will deliver his paper entitled “The authority strikes back: considerations about the allegedly fraudulent ‘Chopper’ poltergeist case.” Mayer explores the cultural phenomenon of ‘rational gravity’ in the Chopper case and will detail the reaction of a society as it desperately strives to restore normalcy. The Chopper case began with a 16-year-old female dental assistant, in 1981 who was the target of aggressive, violent and threatening alleged poltergeist activity from a voice calling himself Chopper. This included up to 120 calls a day, physical PK activity, and also involved a death threat. How does a society scramble to restore order after observing and investigating paradigm-shattering phenomena? Mayer describes ‘rational gravity’ as a pulling back to normality by backwards rationalizing. In the Chopper case, which socially suppressive reactions determined verdicts of fraudulence and from which parties involved? How did parapsychologists work inside this case, with the various parties including mass media and local authorities, and maintain their scientific inquiry? What can we learn from this case for future investigations?

Join us at the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association to learn more about the latest research in parapsychology. This is expected to be a sold out event, so don't delay - register today.

There is an ongoing debate among scientists who are interested in mind–matter interaction—what is a sufficient conceptual definition of the process? Where are the limits drawn on the acceptance or rejection of the concept of mind matter interaction? Ana Flores, Ian Tierney, and Caroline Watt from the Koestler Parapsychology Unit, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom, are reporting two experiments that attempted to replicate experimental results achieved using a new methodological paradigm, the Correlation Matrix Method (CMM). The method claims that some of the more-than-expected significant correlations between psychological and physical variables that are observed in correlation matrices of the experimental data are non-local entanglement correlations that occur when there is a conflict between local and global observables. The CMM allows for the testing of predictions from the model of pragmatic information (MPI) and generalized quantum theory (GQT), which permit the experimental observation of mind-matter correlations, and ultimately may address the replication problem in parapsychology. Additionally, the theory allows for psi studies to be explained by changing the perspective used to handle psi effects. Flores and her team ran two studies at the University of Edinburgh and found that the correlation between psychological variables collected from a participant while interacting with a physical system, an RNG as output, created more significant correlations than compared with a statistical permutation running 10,000 sessions as control. The experiments demonstrated that in an environment where physical and psychological variables are subject to intention, more significant correlations occur than in the control data.

Join us at the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association to learn more about the latest development in parapsychology. This is expected to be a sold out event, so don't delay - register today. 

At the fast approaching 61st PA convention, held at IONS, CA, Christine Simmonds-Moore from the University of West Georgia, Carrollton, USA and Chase O’Gwin of Northwest Missouri State University, Maryville, USA will update us on their ongoing investigation to explore the psychology of subjective apparitional experiences. An online survey investigation, using Qualtrics, was administered with a series of questions carefully worded to separate out the tendency to experience, from the tendency to consider the experiences, as paranormal. Questions were crafted to ask about ways of experiencing and the nature of the experiences. Individual difference measures included a measure of creativity, synesthetic experiences, locus of control, the revised Transliminality scale, Hartmann’s BQ, a measure of hyperaesthesia and two measures of body awareness. What will be the dominant correlates and nature of subjective apparitional experiences?

Join us at the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association to join the discussion. This is expected to be a sold out event, so don't delay - register today.

The psychosocial and cultural aspects to anomalous experiences (AEs) add to the complexity of the phenomena. Everton Maraldi of the Institute of Psychology, University of São Paulo, Brazil and Stanley Krippner of Saybrook University, California set out to critically review the scientific literature on AEs in light of cross cultural research. They also sought to fill existing gaps in knowledge about the cultural underpinnings of these experiences. The description of AEs as possibly non-ordinary or exceptional in terms of the Western scientific thinking raises questions as to whether this definition can be considered cross-culturally valid since cultures define and determine what is ordinary and what is anomalous. Experiences categorized as anomalous vary across cultures and are influenced by a range of factors such as religion and politics.

Maraldi and Krippner agree that the use of established and cross-culturally adapted quantitative measures is useful to allow for direct comparisons between samples, but they also note how those measures exclude illiterate participants or individuals less accustomed with psychological testing and measurement procedures. The cross-cultural investigation of AEs, especially in more isolated cultures, requires a good dose of creativity and adaptation, since conditions will not always satisfy the prerequisites for systematic data collection. Maraldi and Krippner summarize their review by noting that these conceptual problems can be appended by the sharing and inclusive construction of knowledge. They believe that scientists need to move beyond their laboratories and study AEs in their own context, improve their communication with society, and have the feedback of the experiencers of anomalous phenomena.

Join us at the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association to join the discussion. This is expected to be a sold out event, so don't delay - register today.  

What if your mood and emotion affected the performance of your computer system and networking environment? Would this alter your behavior, choices and self-regulation whilst operating technology? John G. Kruth of the Rhine Research Center, Durham, NC USA devised an experiment drawing from literature detailing the link between poltergeist investigations and indications that anxiety and stress contribute to the demonstration of unintentional PK events. Kruth selected 130 participants to assess whether anxiety causes errors in computer processes. With tightly blinded and controlled procedures, the participants completed an exercise and self-rated their anxiety during the experiment. One group had no purposeful “hiccups” as they were completing the computer-based task and the other group experienced planned obstructions and barriers designed to induce frustration and anxiety. The tests were run on a computer that was constantly communicating data to another computer – quite like that of a random number generator. What appeared in the communicated data? What is the impact and significance on businesses and organizations using computer operators and providing technical support? 

Join us at the 61st Annual Convention of the Parapsychological Association to hear the the latest parapsychological research into psi and related phenomena. This is expected to be a sold out event, so don't delay - register today.