FOS COMMISSION: JOHN TAYLOR 8

Throughout the history of the empirical sciences, many roadblocks have stood in the way of its tumble into a materialistic discipline. Included among the most significant of these obstacles are quantum theory, phenomenal consciousness, ordinary sensation, and perhaps what we now know as extrasensory perception or ESP. 

The first three from this list we have examined in great detail, which leaves ESP as the final phenomenon in need of investigation. 

Accordingly, I will divide this essay into two parts. First, in Part 1, I will outline the long and meandering history of ESP. Second, in Part 2, I will examine how ESP accords with Wolfgang Smith’s ontology. In particular, how it accords with Irreducible Wholeness, Vertical Causation and the three levels of the Smithian cosmos. Additionally, as a matter of prudence, I will also explain why the Church prohibits the practice of ESP, while stating that Her prohibition need not prevent us from acknowledging that extra-sensory perception has scientific merit. 

Part 1: The long and meandering history of Extra-Sensory Perception 

It is not uncommon for an individual, or someone in their family, to have a story of an occurrence that seems to push the envelope of what can reasonably be expected from within a mechanistic universe.  

Such tall tales, among many others, may include: (1) dreaming of or otherwise sensing a future event (precognition); (2) perceiving an object or event at a spatial distance (remote viewing); and (3) transmitting information directly from one mind to another (telepathy).1 

In contemporary scientific terms, such phenomena are generally classified under the umbrella of extrasensory perception or ESP.2 Just like our ordinary senses ESP has a long and meandering history, with purported appearances extending back to the earliest of human civilizations. Starting with the commentaries of Henry Callaway and ending with the scientific studies of Daryl Bem, I will now outline portions of that history3. In doing so I will show how ESP has evolved from an everyday tool of human life to a scientifically studied discipline, today known as parapsychology.  

Let the story begin! 

According to Henry Callaway, the Anglican Bishop and 19th century Missionary, who just so happened to study ancient civilizations, ESP was just assumed among ancient cultures to be an ordinary faculty of human beings. To illustrate this, Callaway describes an instance among the Amazulu in which remote viewing was reportedly used in the following scenario: 

When anything valuable is lost, they look for it at once; when they cannot find it, each one begins to practice this inner divination, trying to feel where the thing is; for, not being able to see it, he feels internally a pointing which tells him, if he will go down to such a place, it is there, and he will find it. At length he sees it, and himself approaching it; before he begins to move from where he is he sees it very clearly indeed, and there is an end of doubt. The sight is so clear that it is as though it were not an inner sight, but as if he saw the very thing itself and the place where it is.4 

Comparably, Brian Inglis, author of Natural and Supernatural, concurs with Callaway, writing that, among the men of the Kalahari Desert, telepathy was also a common feature of human existence: 

When a Kalahari bushman killed an eland—regarded as a notable achievement—the camp immediately knew of it “by wire”, as one bushman described it, evidently under the impression that the white man’s telegraph also worked by telepathy. Before they reached the camp with the eland, Van Der Post would hear the sounds of the song which was used to celebrate on such occasions.5 

Likewise, a similar account appears in the work of the Aboriginal scholar David Unaipon. In a 1914 lecture, Unaipon argued that, contrary to popular belief, Aboriginal peoples used smoke signals not primarily as a means of visual communication, but rather as a signal intended to initiate telepathic communication: 

He might want to give his brother, who might be twenty miles away, a message; so he would set to and make a smoke signal, and then sit down and concentrate his mind on his brother. The column of smoke would be seen by all the blacks for miles around, and they would all concentrate their minds, and put their brains into a state of receptivity. Only his brother, however, would get into touch with him, and he could then suggest to his brother the message which he wished to convey.6 

Moving into the nineteenth century, President Abraham Lincoln reportedly dreamt what would become one of the most famous examples of precognition: 

About ten days ago, I retired very late. I had been up waiting for important dispatches from the front. I could not have been long in bed when I fell into a slumber, for I was weary. I soon began to dream. There seemed to be a death-like stillness about me. Then I heard subdued sobs, as if a number of people were weeping. I thought I left my bed and wandered downstairs. There the silence was broken by the same pitiful sobbing, but the mourners were invisible. I went from room to room; no living person was in sight, but the same mournful sounds of distress met me as I passed along. I saw light in all the rooms; every object was familiar to me; but where were all the people who were grieving as if their hearts would break? I was puzzled and alarmed. What could be the meaning of all this? Determined to find the cause of a state of things so mysterious and so shocking, I kept on until I arrived at the East Room, which I entered. There I met with a sickening surprise. Before me was a catafalque, on which rested a corpse wrapped in funeral vestments. Around it were stationed soldiers who were acting as guards; and there was a throng of people, gazing mournfully upon the corpse, whose face was covered, others weeping pitifully. ‘Who is dead in the White House?’ I demanded of one of the soldiers, ‘The President,’ was his answer; ‘he was killed by an assassin.’ Then came a loud burst of grief from the crowd, which woke me from my dream. I slept no more that night; and although it was only a dream, I have been strangely annoyed by it ever since.7 

Lincoln was shot dead two days thereafter, at the Ford’s Theatre in Washington D.C, by John Wilkes Booth. 

Although phenomena of this kind can be found smattered across the lives of both ordinary and extra-ordinary people, it wasn’t until the early 1930s that the first major scientific studies on ESP were conducted—by the psychologist J.B. Rhine—who is widely regarded to be the "founding father” of parapsychology.8 

Stationed at Duke University, Rhine would conduct a whole host of experiments aimed at testing the validity of remote viewing, many of which involved “Zener cards”. Named after his assistant Karl Zener, these cards featured five distinct symbols: a star, a circle, three wavy lines, a cross, and a square.9 In a typical remote viewing session, Rhine would position two participants at opposite ends of a table, separated by a wooden screen.10 Using a deck of 25 Zener cards, one participant the “sender” would randomly select a card, while the other “the receiver” was asked to identify the symbol on the card without seeing it.11 

Throughout the course of these experiments, which were conducted in multiple trials, Rhine consistently found that the rate at which participants identified correct cards far exceeded statistical chance. 

For example, in one sequence of trials, Duke student Hubert Pearce correctly identified 558 out of 1,850 card draws, achieving an approximately 30% accuracy rate.12 By comparison, random guessing would be expected to produce a precision rate of just 20%.13 

Rhine went on to publish his findings in two major works: Extra-Sensory Perception14 and New Frontiers of Mind (1937).15 However, in the years that followed, his research amassed considerable criticism, particularly concerning the adequacy of his experimental controls. 

Nevertheless, by the 1970s, many of these criticisms were addressed in a second major series of ESP trials at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), now known as SRI International. Led by two laser physicists Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ, the SRI studies reported that participants, including Uri Geller and Ingo Swann, were able to describe remote targets with an accuracy rate far exceeding above chance expectations.16  

Additionally, Targ and Puthoff sought to eliminate certain physical explanations for ESP. For example, by placing test subjects in underwater submarines, they were able to rule out the theory that electromagnetic waves were responsible for carrying the information accessed by remote viewers.17 

The reported success of Targ and Puthoff’s experiments eventually attracted the attention of the CIA, which went on to investigate and operationalize remote viewing techniques in what became known as the Stargate Program.18 

In its 25 years, Stargate would see operational remote viewers provide intelligence on a range of foreign and domestic targets. Some notable hits from the program’s history include: locating a secret Soviet submarine under construction in Siberia during the Cold War19, assisting in the search for hostages during the Iranian hostage crisis20, and locating a crashed Soviet Tupolev Tu 22 in a remote African jungle.21  

Not to mention, there is also the peculiar case of Pat Price a former police officer who claimed psychic abilities. In 1974, Price was asked to remote view a secret soviet facility. During the session Price described seeing a wheeled crane, so large that a man standing next to it was only half a wheel’s height!22 He further reported that the crane was being used to transport rocket components.23 

When first presented with Price’s drawings CIA officials quickly dismissed the possibility that such a crane existed.24 However, a few months later photographs taken by a U.S. reconnaissance satellite appeared to show a crane matching exactly Price's description at the very site he had been asked to observe.25 

The final figure in the ESP story worthy of mention is Daryl Bem. A social psychologist by training, Bem brought ESP back into the scientific spotlight with his 2011 precognition study entitled, “Feeling the Future”.26  

In this study, Bem reported that participants were able to guess the details of randomly generated computer images with above average chance, thereby, confirming precognition.27 What is crucial about Bem’s study is that it employs many of the tightly controlled procedures emblematic of modern psychology.28 This fact has led proponents of parapsychology to regard his findings as some of the strongest evidence in favour of ESP and its detractors to conclude that the whole of modern psychology should be scuttled.29 

With Bem’s study, our survey of the scientific story of ESP ends in the 21st century and sets the stage for what will be covered in Part 2, namely: the relationship between ESP and Wolfgang Smith’s ontology. 

Part 2: ESP and Wolfgang Smith’s Ontology 

With this brief history of extra-sensory perception in place, I will now outline my thoughts on the relationship between ESP and Wolfgang Smith’s ontology.  

Before undertaking this challenge, however, it would be deeply irresponsible of me if I did not offer a few Christian words of caution concerning the practice of ESP. For while Aquinas and many other Scholastics do acknowledge the reality of extra-sensory perception, the Church does teach that ESP should not be practiced deliberately, even by those in a state of grace.30 

However, at the same time the Church’s prohibition should not be taken to mean that ESP is somehow unnatural or intrinsically evil. On the contrary, Aquinas seems to imply that such faculties may belong to us by nature.31 

The real danger, then, and the reason that the Church prohibits deliberately practicing ESP, lies in the fact that unless such faculties are awakened through a gift of sacramental grace, as in the case of St. Padre Pio, their deliberate cultivation can open the door to the demonic. 

As Wolfgang Smith writes in Christian Gnosis ESP: 

Should not be activated prematurely, nor without the protection of sacramental grace, a danger with which our ecclesiastic guardians are ill-equipped to cope.32 

Nevertheless, although the Church prohibits deliberately practicing ESP, extrasensory perception, and its attendant scientific corroborations, can arguably be understood as fitting organically into Wolfgang Smith’s ontology. Indeed, the various forms of ESP can be mapped onto a threefold division corresponding to Smith’s levels of the cosmos, with: (1) remote viewing at the corporeal level, (2) telepathy at the intermediary level, and (3) precognition at the aeviternal level. At each of these levels, irreducible wholeness makes ESP possible, albeit in distinct ways. 

I will now explain precisely how this correspondence works. 

Firstly, for remote viewing, the irreducible wholeness of the corporeal universe provides a non-physical connection between all peoples, locations, and events. As a result, we can conjecture that the perception of distant objects or events occurs through participation in this irreducible wholeness, which permeates the entirety of the corporeal world. By participating in this IW, one may, in principle, extend one’s awareness beyond their immediate environment and mentally access distant locations, allowing one to “eavesdrop”, if you will, on what is happening. 

Nevertheless, I would make one exception to the claim that remote viewing is mediated by corporeality alone: namely its capacity to perceive spatially distant past events. Since such a perception transcends time, aeviternity must be invoked. As we will see, aeviternity contains a kind of database of past, present, and future events, thereby providing a means for their access. 

Secondly, for telepathy, there is good reason to think that this phenomenon is mediated by the intermediary domain. As Smith states in his final book, the intermediary is the domain of time alone and is also the domain of our ordinary mental capacities.33 Given its intrinsic relationship to the mental, it is therefore reasonable to hypothesize that telepathy occurs through the intermediary domain. Smith appears to suggest as much when recounting an encounter with a Fakir, the lowest grade of Yogi, in India: 

I had just arrived in New Delhi, when I received word that a personage whom I was very eager to meet was scheduled to arrive the following morning at 11 a.m. Highly pleased, I took a stroll through the city, and on my way back to the hotel was accosted by a fakir, who—out of the blue—informed me that something “very good” would happen to me “tomorrow at 11 a.m.” Since no one in New Delhi besides myself could know of this, I became interested. Repairing to a nearby garden with this individual, I wanted to put him to the test. He began by handing me a piece of paper, which he requested me to examine: I found that it was blank. He then asked me to fold the paper and hold it in my hand. Next he asked that I think of a number between 1 and 100. I did, choosing the number 36, as I recall. Then he asked me to examine the paper: and there, clearly visible, was the number 36. 

What are we to make of this? I realized soon enough that the number 36 must have been inscribed on that slip of paper in so-called “invisible ink,” which turns visible when it is warmed—as presumably happened when I held it in my hand. Yet that number, it appears, must have been conveyed directly from the fakir’s mind to mine, a transfer which I presume can only be situated in the intermediary plane: that much is clear. It appears that this fakir was able to accomplish two things our Western savants believe not to be possible: first, to pick information directly out of someone’s mind (the “11 a.m.”); and second, to reverse the process by putting something directly into another person’s mind (the number 36).34 

As in the corporeal realm, it is also the irreducible wholeness (IW) of the intermediary domain that facilitates telepathy at this level. Once again, this facilitation is made possible through participation. Because each of us participates in the irreducible wholeness of the intermediary we are able to access and convey messages to one another through this “shared mental space.” 

Finally, precognition is made possible through aeviternity. As Dante describes in the nunc stans, which can be understood as the aeviternal realm, “everywhere and everywhen” are collapsed into a single point.35 This suggests that, within aeviternity, all events that have or will occur are already present, much like how a database contains a complete record of past and future events. By participating in aeviternity, and accessing this database, one can effectively “jump a few steps” ahead in the temporal sequence. (As pointed out remote viewing of past spatially distant events also happens by way of aeviternity). 

However, the only exception I would add for precognition being solely mediated by aeviternity is in the case dreams, like the one Lincoln had. Given the temporal nature of precognitive dreams, it is reasonable to suppose that these are mediated by a combination of aeviternity and the intermediary. The aeviternal domain supplies the future event itself, while the intermediary supplies its mode of presentation, as a dream. 

Having mapped the different modes of ESP onto the corporeal, the intermediary, and the aeviternal, I will now conclude with some final observations on how extrasensory perception relates to the different modes of vertical causation. 

In the first and second essay of this series, I introduced a distinction between two classes of vertical causation: (1) primary vertical causation, which is wholly instantaneous, and (2) secondary vertical causation, which is temporal yet irreducible. 

So how might these two forms of vertical causation relate to the three modes of ESP? 

Well, in the case of precognition, this is standardly mediated by primary vertical causation. Quick depictions or senses of future events are, by their nature, instantaneous, and therefore ought to be mediated by the primary mode of vertical causation. Precognitive dreams, however, present a different case. Because they are temporal while remaining irreducible, they are mediated by the secondary mode of vertical causation. Nevertheless, this secondary VC derives its efficacy from a primary act of vertical causation, which supplies the future event itself and thereby enables it to unfold within the dream state. 

However, telepathy and remote viewing are primarily mediated by the second, temporal mode of vertical causation. Since, both phenomena occur within time, but their effects, namely, the transmission of thoughts in telepathy and access to otherwise inaccessible sensory information in remote viewing, are irreducible to ordinary temporal causation. Nevertheless, there are cases, particularly in remote viewing, where mediation occurs more directly through the aeviternal realm. For instance, perceiving the details of a past spatially distant event would seem to require some transcendence of temporal succession, and therefore the primary mode of vertical causation. 

Conclusion: 

In closing, we have surveyed and covered the main aspects of extra-sensory perception. In doing so it has been argued that ESP is closely tied to Smith’s notions of irreducible wholeness and vertical causation. In the next essay I will attempt to connect IW to Goedel’s Incompleteness Theorem. 

Drawing on the two principles of Smithian science outlined in the first part of this series it will be argued that the Goedel sentence is an irreducible wholeness and constitutes a “grounding-to-emergence”, within mathematics. 

Bibliography: 

Alighieri, Dante. (2009). The Divine Comedy (H. F. Cary, Trans.). Wordsworth Editions. 

Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologiae, 2nd rev. ed., trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920; online ed., New Advent, 2008). https://www.newadvent.org/summa/  

Bem, Daryl. Feeling the future: experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2011 Mar;100(3):407-25. doi: 10.1037/a0021524. PMID: 21280961. 

Callaway, Henry. The Religious System of the Amazulu. Cape Town: C. Struik, 1970. 

Carter, Chris (2012), Science and Psychic Phenomena: The Fall of the House of Skeptics. Edition 2. Inner Traditions. 

Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II. United States Catholic Conference, 2000. https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/catechism/index.cfm?recnum=5791  

Smith, Wolfgang (2023), Physics: A Science in Quest of An Ontology (PSQ). Edition 2. Philos-Sophia Initiative Foundation. 

Smith, Wolfgang (2011), Christian Gnosis: From Saint Paul to Meister Eckhart. (2011). Second Edition. Angelico Press. San Rafael, California. 

Feather, S. R., & Ensrud, B. (n.d.). Joseph Banks Rhine. PSI Encyclopaedia. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/jb-rhine/#footnote13_z7e7pgo  

Formscapes (2024), Interweaving; The Story of Parapsychology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTPGnMzC0lU 

International Remote Viewing Association. (n.d.). A brief timeline of RV and IRVA. https://www.irva.org/time-line 

Lamon, Ward Hill. Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, 1847–1865. Edited by Dorothy Lamon Teillard, A.C. McClurg and Company, 1895. 

Puthoff, H. (2012). Remote viewing – The evidence [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmSr_RMGlcI  

Rhine, J.B. (1934). Extrasensory perception. Society for Psychic Research. 

Rhine, J. B. (1937). New frontiers of the mind: The story of the Duke experiments. Farrar & Rinehart. 

Roe, C. (n.d.). Feeling the future (precognition experiments). PSI Encyclopaedia. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/feeling-future-precognition-experiments/