not seem to fill any useful purpose in the realm of computers and computerized humans.
Laboring under these difficult conditions, Dr. Rhine developed a new scientific approach to the phenomena of the sixth sense some thirty years ago when he brought together and formalized many diffused research approaches in his laboratory at Duke University. But pure materialism dies hard—in fact, dies not at all. Even while Rhine was offering proof for the “psi factor” in human personality—fancy talk for the sixth sense—he was attacked by exponents of the physical sciences as being a dreamer or worse. Nevertheless, Rhine continued his work and others came to his aid, and new organizations came into being to investigate and, if possible, explain the workings of extrasensory perception.
To define the extra sense is simple enough. When knowledge of events or facts is gained without recourse to the normal five senses—sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste—or when this knowledge is obtained with apparent disregard to the limitations of time and space, we speak of extrasensory perception.
It is essential, of course, that the person experiencing the sixth-sense phenomena has had no access to knowledge, either conscious or unconscious, of the facts or events, and that her impressions are subsequently corroborated by witnesses or otherwise proved correct by the usual methods of exact science.
It is also desirable, at least from an experimental point of view, that a person having an extrasensory dealing with events in the so-called future should make this impression known at once to impartial witnesses so that it can be verified later when the event does transpire. This, of course, is rarely possible because of the very nature of this sixth sense: it cannot be turned on at will, but functions best during emergencies, when a genuine need for it exists. When ordinary communications fail, something within men and women reaches out and removes the barriers of time and space to allow for communication beyond the five senses.
There is no doubt in my mind that extrasensory phenomena are governed by emotional impulses and therefore present problems far different from those of the physical sciences. Despite the successful experiments with cards and dice conducted for years at the Duke University parapsychology laboratory, an ESP experience is not capable of exact duplication at will.
Parapsychology, that is, the science investigating the phenomena of this kind, has frequently been attacked on these grounds. And yet normal psychology, which also deals with human emotions, does not require an exact duplication of phenomena under laboratory conditions. Of course, psychology and psychiatry themselves were under attack in the past, and have found a comfortable niche of respectability only recently. It is human nature to attack all that is new and revolutionary, because man tends to hold onto his old gods. Fifty years from now, parapsychology will no doubt be one of the older sciences, and hence accepted.
It is just as scientific to collect data from “spontaneous phenomena,” that is, in the field, as it is to produce them in a laboratory. In fact, some of the natural sciences could not exist if it were not for in situ observation. Try and reconstruct an earthquake in the lab, or a collision of galaxies, or the birth of a new island in the ocean.
The crux, of course, is the presence of competent observers and the frequency with which similar, but unrelated, events occur. For example, if a hundred cases involving a poltergeist, or noisy ghost, are reported in widely scattered areas, involving witnesses who could not possibly know of each other, could have communicated with each other, or have had access to the same information about the event, it is proper scientific procedure to accept these reports as genuine and to draw certain conclusions from them.
Extrasensory perception research does not rely entirely on spontaneous cases in the field, but without them it would be meaningless. The laboratory experiments are an important adjunct, particularly when we deal with the less complicated elements of ESP, such as telepathy, intuition beyond chance, and psychic concentration—but they cannot replace the tremendous impact of genuine precognition (the ability to foresee events before they occur) and other one-time events in human experience.
The nature of ESP is spontaneous and unexpected. You don’t know when you will have an experience, you can’t make it happen, and you can’t foretell when and how it will happen. Conditions beyond your knowledge make the experience possible, and you have no control over it. The sole exception is the art of proper thinking—the training toward a