The Rhine and life September 15, 2021
Yesterday I listened to a podcast from the Rhine Center with Lisette Coly https://parapsychology.org/ and Sally Feather https://www.rhine.org/. It was fascinating, funny and enlightening. https://www.rhineonline.org/video-library If you are interested in understanding our complicated world, tune in!
It was perfectly hosted by John Kruth, Executive Director of the Rhine.
I love both of those women-true pioneers and preservers in the world of PSI, parapsychology, psychic phenomena, the paranormal, -whatever you like to call it. That it has so many different names says so much about entire field-so varied, so far flung and hard to grasp like a wiggly worm.
It seems to me that consciousness is obvious to any thinking person and that evidence has shown over and over that we are more than our bodies, our brains, more than this one life.
It’d be like studies of the physical body all done in one research effort –-while a serious percentage of mainstream scientific researchers deny its existence– explaining something so complex, so diverse and affected by zillions of mental, emotional and physical experiences.
Thankfully quite a few valiant, brilliant and persistent researchers have continued to work on this extraordinary human ability, this natural gift, this puzzle, for over a century.
Before our times it seems to have been accepted as “natural” and until Christianity made it a sin to be psychic and killed so many healers and sensitives. Dean Radin talks about how, perhaps, the “culling” of psychics changed our DNA.
Most obvious are “everyday accounts” from “everyday people” – I saw a ghost, I heard my dead father speaking to me, I died and went to heaven, my dreams have predicted my future, my sister and I read each other’s mind and on and on. That doesn’t even get into the angels/dead relatives experiences during war saving soldiers’ lives. But these things are discarded by mainstream science and called hearsay, not verifiable, hard to classify, or worse-just not believed.
How can we research this? Is it even possible to create a concrete verifiable experiment?
Of course, it is.
Mainstream America and also around the world, the masses, in fact, a majority of people already believe it.
A CBS Poll:
A majority of Americans – 57% – say they believe in psychic phenomena such as ESP (Extra Sensory Perception), telepathy or experiences that can’t be explained by normal means.
Just over a third, however, do not think such phenomena occur. But the number of believers has declined somewhat over the years. In 1989, when CBS News last polled on the subject, 64% of the public said they believed in psychic phenomena; 26% said they did not.
There are some demographic differences. Americans age 65 and over are most skeptical about ESP, telepathy and other like experiences. Those age 65 and over do not believe in the paranormal by 47% to 32%. By 62% to 31%, those under 65 think psychic phenomena take place.
In 1965, J.B. Rhine retired from Duke University and formed the independent research center named the Foundation for the Research into the Nature of Man (FRNM) in order to continue to explore his interest in ESP and consciousness studies. In 1995 the name was changed to the Rhine Research Center.
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I have a sweet story about the Rhine when it was called, FRNM-Foundation for the Research into the Nature of Man. I’m not sure of the year but it seems it was in the late 70s and I also don’t know how it was that I was driving a famous medium, Malcolm Bessant and a young Russian PSI researcher, whose name I have forgotten, around. Drove them from somewhere to Durham, then drove them back-No idea.
After the meeting, the talk, or whatever it was I drove them back to my parent’s farm about 60 miles north of Durham. The tobacco farm I grew up on. My parents were the most open, loving, accepting people I’ve ever known. They welcomed everyone. My parents were farmers and lived a farming, closed and quiet life. We arrived mid-afternoon, Mom made a big southern supper, which they both enjoyed and after great conversations and walks around the farm, we all went to our assigned places to sleep: Malcolm in my brother’s room, me in my old bedroom and the young Russian on the sofa in the den.
The next morning, Dad woke up at dawn as usual, and went into the kitchen to make coffee and noticed movement in the den. The door between the den and kitchen was closed but had three glass panels so Dad looked through. What he saw perplexed him so much that he went to get Mom up and ask her to come and look. They stood at the door/window watching as the young Russian performed master yoga postures. Making his body into pretzels, on his head, then prone – Mom and Dad were mesmerized. Mom said, “I think that is yoga he is doing.” And it was and he was obviously a master of it.
Dad entertained locals for years about how this young Russian could “twist” his body up, down and around. He was duly impressed.