Tag: Rhine

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Jeffrey Mishlove and “New Thinking Allowed”

My history with parapsychology began when I walked into a weekly research meeting at the Rhine Research facility just off the Duke University campus (please see my post about J.B. and Louisa Rhine). A group of mostly retired psychologists was discussing the most recent article in the Journal of Parapsychology as I sat down at the table. I was unemployed and working as a volunteer at the local museum so I was wearing the volunteer T-shirt at the time. I told the group that I was not a researcher, nor was I interested in being one, and that I wanted to write accurately about parapsychology. Thus began my journey into the deep and vast ocean of books, research papers, and websites involved with the subject. 

I spent as much time as I could in the Alex Tanous library reading from the hundreds of books it has, I took courses and participated in research studies, but I still wanted to learn more. Of course, I surfed the net and landed on the “New Thinking Allowed” YouTube channel where hundreds of videos on subjects ranging from aliens to meditation can be found. I tried to stick to videos on telepathy, dowsing, remote viewing, and mediumship, but the other titles tantalized me enough to delve further into related subjects.

Jeffrey Mishlove is the current host of the channel and he’s been the public face of parapsychology since his original public television show “Thinking Allowed” began in 1986. He migrated to YouTube with the “New Thinking Allowed” in 2015 where he has posted both taped interviews and live stream events several times a week. 

Dr. Mishlove is the only parapsychologist to have received his Ph.D. from an accredited American University migrating from an anomalous psychology interest that had him working with people incarcerated in prison. He wrote two books “The Roots of Consciousness” which was his doctoral dissertation and “The PK Man” about Ted Owens, a talented psychokinetic whom Jeffrey researched. He won the Bigelow Institute essay contest in 2021 with his piece “Beyond the Brain” about survival after bodily death which brings many concepts together into a “bundle of sticks” creating strong evidence for life after death. He is not your run-of-the-mill researcher, rather he is a most knowledgeable and patient interviewer who brings out the most in his guests.

I applied to the New Thinking Allowed foundation to be a volunteer beginning with editing the closed captions on the YouTube channel. Since I suffer from hearing loss and tinnitus, I find accurate subtitling to be important for those in the hearing-impaired community and worked on many videos along with a team of four others. Jeffrey put out a request for editors to work on a book he wants to publish (and hopefully will be) called “Psychic Liberation”, a compilation of a few dozen YouTube transcripts. We worked on this for over two years meeting once every few weeks with Jeffrey to discuss our progress and assignments. I got a chance to look at the first draft of “Beyond the Brain” and found the arguments compelling as did the judges from the Bigelow Institute. I recommend that you go through this multi-media essay for one of the most definitive and thorough arguments for the survival of consciousness that I’ve ever seen. 

Amongst his many distinctions, Jeffrey also managed to win a libel case against The Amazing Randi who had made claims in the Journal of Psychology that Jeffrey did not have a degree in parapsychology and that, if he did, he was obviously incompetent. Had he not won that court case, he would not have been inducted into the various scientific associations that have benefitted from his membership.
Although I have great respect for Jeffrey, you will not see a character based on him in my novels (yet). That being said, if you want to watch some really cool, mind-bendingly informative videos about the esoteric, sign up for the weekly newsletter at NewThinkingAllowed.org.

The New Thinking Allowed Foundation has just released its maiden periodical called “New Thinking Allowed” magazine for Spring 2023. You can find it here. For future releases and interviews, join the New Thinking Allowed newsletter.

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Book Review: “Chrysalis Crisis: How Life’s Crises Can Lead to Personal and Spiritual Transformation” by Frank Pasciuti

I was asked to write up a blurb for the upcoming Rhine Friday night talks to make it interesting and compelling for people to attend. I did well enough to compel myself to purchase and read the book before the author has even taken to the lectern. Dr. Pasciuti is a Jungian Transpersonal Psychologist who is also a psychic experiencer. His book on personal growth through crises goes beyond the day-to-day issues we all must weather to those of a supernatural (psychic) type. I haven’t read many self-help books nor have I read many psychology texts other than those I was assigned in college (and other programs) so I cannot say for certain that other psychologists have not delved into supernatural subject matter. However,  the predominant philosophy out there is that supernatural events are simply impossible and must be reduced to the workings of the brain. I disagree of course, and my fervent desire in writing for this blog and my series of books about Callie O’Callahan is to teach others that their supernatural experiences do not automatically make them insane. 

The book is written in layers, the first section dealing with topical matters of life and difficulties that we all share with subsequent sections delving deeper into more personal levels of development. The sections regarding spirituality are where the supernatural phenomena are handled quite deftly. In our predominantly Christian materialist society, many psychic phenomena can lead people to a spiritual crisis especially if it happens only once or a very few times. We do not teach people in our Western philosophy how to deal with apparitions, telepathy, psychokinesis or precognition because it isn’t supposed to happen…yet it does happen…to so many people. Dr. Pasciuti handles the psychic subject with care, because this book is for a broad audience, by using personal and client experiences as examples and bringing across the most current hypothesis for psi in his section called “Sit Lightly in the Saddle of Belief”. Instead of beating us up with dogmatic belief systems, he weaves psi experiences in gently and carefully with the other issues that might cause us existential crises.

His client Dawn exemplifies the expansion of human consciousness once the ten key areas of human development have been examined. The author’s experience both with clients and his own path has led him to believe that this is possible for everyone to attain. Besides recognizing the ten key areas, it is important to reveal those aspects we are unaware of called Shadow Areas. Some people may still be dealing with issues from a past life which can be revealed through regression therapy if done properly by a skilled therapist. Time in quiet contemplation, meditation, ascetic practices, breathing exercises or even running or biking for miles can aid in opening up the brain to the mind and the mind to Consciousness.

I am a Taoist by philosophy which means I do not follow any religious belief system. It also means that I do not try to understand God (The Tao is unknowable). Wow does that free up your mind. Anyway, I also view life through Yin and Yang: all things have light and dark, constructive and destructive, positive and negative, the flow of Yin and Yang determine how much of one or the other prevails. A third aspect is Wu Wei or be like water: it flows over or around obstacles and conforms to its environment. I also look at many different philosophies and choose aspects that work for me and throw away the rest. Reaching an enlightened state where the mind touches the Consciousness of which we are all a part is a personal journey that is different for everyone. This book is not a self-help book that will guide you step-by-step through a process, rather, it discusses those areas that can hold us back from our true potential if we do not recognize them and try to balance them.

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Winner Adjacent

When I got on the good ship “Psychic Adventure”, I did not think myself psychically adept. Although I am far from adept, I have become more aware of events that may have more of a psychic nature than coincidence or inductive reasoning would explain.

I do not win things. On average, I will win one raffle or contest a decade. I do not often win games either which is kind of a bummer since my family are game players. After a raffle event where everyone at my, albeit, small table won something but me, I decided to pay closer attention at future raffle events.

I attended holiday dinner conversing with the three people closest to me but had no contact with the other three farther down the table. At the end of dinner, it was time for the raffles to be called. I calculated that there were a total of seventy people, give-or-take, and eleven possible prizes. I turned to my neighbor and said “I want to let you know that I am a winner adjacent. I will not win but there is a good chance you will.” and she did.

Of the eleven prizes, four were won by the other six people at my table. I also noted that some of the numbers called were one or two digits off from my number though the winner was not at my table. So one-tenth of the room got 28% of the prizes while others having numbers similar to mine got prizes, too. I’m no math whiz, but this seemed statistically significant. I notified John Kruth of the Rhine Institute since I had been a test subject of his in the past. He agrees that this is a significant effect, especially since it wasn’t a one off. I also couldn’t see how this was either coincidence or inductive reasoning on my part so how did it happen? Was it micro- psychokinesis? Had I some kind of effect on the tickets that were drawn? I can’t imagine it was precognition since the concentration of winners was near me and I hadn’t figured out who was to win throughout the room in a less concentrated fashion.

I know there are small experiments going on having to do with games of chance and psychokinesis. The casinos in Las Vegas feel those experimenters are successful enough to ban them from their premises. Have they done anything with passing on “the luck”? Not that I’m aware of, but I’d be happy to participate in any experiment that will pay my way to Vegas :P.

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An Uncommon Experience

For the last three years, a very generous person who strongly believes in psychic ability and the paranormal opens his beautiful and ethereal Uncommon Garden to the Rhine for a fundraiser. This amazing place is nestled in a community in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This year, we were serenaded with music that sounded like the soundtrack to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”. I could almost see the misted mountains of China as I listened to them.

Continue reading “An Uncommon Experience”

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Precognition

“Well, if you can see into the future, why haven’t you won the lottery?” Gosh, if only it worked like that. Imagine a world where psychic ability was an on-demand, accurate and clear sense: we’d all be millionaires and never make mistakes! That being said, precognition is all about seeing possible futures. J.B. Rhine tried to study precognition using the famous Zener cards. The test subject would write down what order the cards would eventually be in once the tester shuffled the deck. Then the tester would shuffle the deck and turn the cards over from the top of the deck comparing them to the predicted order of the cards. If the test subject guessed correctly higher than statistical average through a series of runs, they would be considered a Precog. As with telepathy, there are levels of ability and accuracy depending on how skilled the Precog is.

What are Zener Cards?

When J.B. Rhine was developing the precognitive card test, he was originally using playing cards. Magicians have long known how to identify playing cards and so did some of the test subjects. As a result, J.B. created the Zener card deck which has five of each geometrical shape. Some decks also have the shapes colored to include one more possible variable. This prevented most of the cheating that had occurred with playing cards. Continue reading “Precognition”

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Psychokinesis

If you’re anything like me, you have probably focused all your attention on the T.V. remote control willing it to move into your hand so you wouldn’t have to get up off the couch. If you’ve succeeded in making that happen, congratulations, you’re a Psychokinetic. One of the most famous Psychokinetics in fiction today is Eleven from “Stranger Things”. It’s a great show with compelling characters and a creepy storyline, but it isn’t precisely accurate. Eleven is a pre-pubescent girl who was taken in by a shadow organization because of her incredible and innate ability to move objects simply through concentration. In one scene, Eleven is able to move a soda can a short distance across a table, something that hyper-talented Psychokinetics might make happen. Later in the show, Eleven wrecks her room with the sheer power of her mind. That’s never been proven to happen anywhere in Parapsychological research. However, the prevalent theory of Poltergeist hauntings is the acute psychokinetic activity of a young person living there. Continue reading “Psychokinesis”

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What is Telepathy and is it Paranormal?

Parapsychologists who study psychic ability say that telepathy is gaining information from someone else without using one’s senses. If you see a picture without viewing it with your eyes or you hear something in your head without your ears picking it up, that is the definition of telepathy. The question that creates a rift between the parapsychology community and the skeptical anomalistic psychologists is whether the source of telepathy is paranormal or if it’s due to some subconscious awareness or other psychological phenomena. Continue reading “What is Telepathy and is it Paranormal?”