Eisenbud of the University of Colorado at Denver startled the world with his disclosures of the peculiar talents of a certain Ted Serios, a Chicago bellhop gifted with psychic photography talents. This man could project images into a camera or television tube, some of which were from the so-called future. Others were from distant places Mr. Serios had never been to. The experiments were undertaken under the most rigid test conditions. They were repeated, which was something the old-line scientists in parapsychology stressed over and over again. Despite the abundant amount of evidence, produced in the glaring limelight of public attention and under strictest scientific test conditions, some of Dr. Eisenbud’s colleagues at the University of Colorado turned away from him whenever he asked them to witness the experiments he was then conducting. So great was the prejudice against anything Eisenbud and his associates might find that might oppose existing concepts that men of science couldn’t bear to find out for themselves. They were afraid they would have to unlearn a great deal. Today, even orthodox scientists are willing to listen more than they used to. There is a greater willingness to evaluate the evidence fairly, and without prejudice, on the part of those who represent the bulk of the scientific establishment. Still, this is a far cry from establishing an actual institute of parapsychology, independent of any existing facilities—something I have been advocating for many years.
Most big corporate decisions are made illogically, according to John Mihalasky, Associate Professor of Management Engineering at the Newark College of Engineering. The professor contends that logical people can understand a scientific explanation of an illogical process. “Experiments conducted by Professor Mihalasky demonstrate a correlation between superior management ability and an executive’s extrasensory perception, or ESP.” According to The New York Times of August 31, 1969, “research in ESP had been conducted at the college since 1962 to determine if there was a correlation between managerial talent and ESP. There are tests in extrasensory perception and also in precognition, the ability to foretell events before they happen. The same precognition tests may also be of use in selecting a person of superior creative ability.”
But the business side of the research establishment was by no means alone in recognizing the validity and value of ESP. According to an interview in the Los Angeles Times of August 30, 1970, psychiatrist Dr. George Sjolund of Baltimore, Maryland, has concluded, “All the evidence does indicate that ESP exists.” Dr. Sjolund works with people suspected of having ESP talents and puts them through various tests in specially built laboratories. Scientific experiments designed to test for the existence of ESP are rare. Dr. Sjolund knows of only one other like it in the United States—in Seattle. Sjolund does ESP work only one day a week. His main job is acting director of research at Spring Grove State Hospital.
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According to Evelyn de Wolfe, Los Angeles Times staff writer, “The phenomenon of ESP remains inconclusive, ephemeral and mystifying but for the first time in the realm of science, no one is ashamed to say they believe there is such a thing.” The writer had been talking to Dr. Thelma S. Moss, assistant professor of medical psychology at UCLA School of Medicine, who had been conducting experiments in parapsychology for several years. In a report dated June 12, 1969, Wolfe also says, “In a weekend symposium on ESP more than six hundred persons in the audience learned that science is dealing seriously with the subject of haunted houses, clairvoyance, telepathy, and psychokinesis and is attempting to harness the unconscious mind.”
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It is not surprising that some more liberally inclined and enlightened scientists are coming around to thinking that there is something to ESP after all. Back in 1957, Life magazine editorialized on “A Crisis in Science”:
New enigmas in physics revive quests in metaphysics. From the present chaos of science’s conceptual universe two facts might strike the layman as significant. One is that the old-fashioned materialism is now even more old-fashioned. Its basic assumption—that the only ’reality’ is that which occupies space and has a mass—is irrelevant to an age that has proved that matter is interchangeable with energy. The second conclusion is that old-fashioned metaphysics, so far from being irrelevant to an age of science, is science’s indispensable complement for a full view of life.
Physicists acknowledge as much; a current Martin advertisement says that their rocket men’s shop-talk includes ’the physics (and metaphysics) of their work.’ Metaphysical speculation is becoming