Psi & the Limits of Knowledge

by Peter Mark Adams

www.petermarkadams.com petermarkadams@gmail.com

Psi is a faculty that we all possess, albeit to different degrees. Most of us have experienced our own capacity for Psi at some time even if it is only thinking of someone to have them suddenly appear or call us. Despite its universality there is a big difference between these occasional events and the experience of those professionals who make their living from, or survive because of, their sixth sense. At the core of the professionals expertise lays the ability to combine highly receptive modes of awareness with a focused intent towards the acquisition of relevant information. In this context focused intent and relevance provide sufficient precision to filter out everything that doesnt fit these criteria and so highlight the desired information. In other words, the Psi faculty operates as an open, intentionality directed search and locate with non-local capabilities. As we noted previously, non-local signifies an object or event with which we have no physical connection whatsoever. This may be because it is lost in the past, relates to the future, is hidden, unconscious or undisclosed. But if we have no physical connection with the source of the information, given the cases that we have looked at, we must have some other connection with it. Understanding the nature of this connection takes us to the very heart of the issue of what consciousness is. I suggest that Psi is a defining, if not the defining, property of consciousness. The existence of Psi challenges a number of concepts that are fundamental to the way in which we think about ourselves and reality. In particular questions as to what constitutes

knowledge, what is the nature of truth and what is consciousness, are all challenged by Psi. Few of us stop to reflect on these concepts. After all, they form some of the most fundamental conceptual tools for sifting through and organizing all of the information we come across in our day to day lives. And yet what we accept as knowledge, truth and what we understand of our and other peoples awareness is as much determined by cultural assumptions as by evidence. The anthropologist, Charles Laughlin, noted that many societies derive their knowledge from many different states of consciousness including intuition, dreams and visions. He called these cultures polyphasic and contrasted them with Western societies whose monophasic culture only credits experience had in normal waking consciousness 1. But even in the monophasic west a large, and growing, segment of society are far more willing to accept if only in private information derived through intuitive and empathic awareness. As we noted earlier, 80% of people claim to have experienced the more common forms of precognition2 and over half the US and European populations claim to have experienced telepathy, clairvoyance or contact with the dead 3. A further survey found that two thirds of the US population claim to have had a Psi or mystical experience. Outside of academia, mainstream science and media, the grassroots of western culture is in many ways polyphasic. The majority of people honor a variety of ways in which things can be known, though they tend to draw the line at information derived from the more extreme end of the spectrum, such as prophecy and divination.

Why are these states so important?

Openness to receiving information through different states of awareness can be thought of as perceptual diversity. Perceptual diversity, which operates with intuitive and empathic states of awareness, implies a far more holistic engagement with reality. It is easy to see how such states can play an important role in retaining harmony and balance within society and with our environment 4. The ability to connect with others, and ourselves, in a more empathic way is also a key to our continued personal and spiritual evolution. Humanity is challenged to move beyond the reflex projection of its shadow-self onto others. Everywhere the same forces of globalization (we encounter the same brands, clothing, entertainment, fast food, occupations and so on wherever we go) and the industrialization of agriculture (mechanization and genetic modification) are eroding bio-diversity and destroying cultural diversity. Less commented on is the fact that they are also undermining perceptual diversity our natural ability to pick up information using different levels of awareness. And

with this loss we are losing the sensitivity, discrimination and refinement of understanding that this gives rise to. All three losses of diversity (bio, cultural, and cognitive) are closely inter-related5. Once we open the door, so to speak, to other ways of knowing, when we accept that they provide access to a broader, more connected understanding of reality, then our entire conception of the relationship between self and the environment has to change. These more holistic, intuitive and empathic ways of relating to reality are often thought of as sacrificing objectivity in favor of imagination or guesswork. In other words, intuitively derived information, even if it turns out to be true, cant qualify as knowledge. One classical definition of knowledge that has been around for at least 2,500 years defines knowledge as justified, true, belief 6,7. But because of the way in which our concept of justification has evolved over the last 500 years or so, both intuitive and direct knowledge are thought to lack justification, that is, causal linkages that can be independently demonstrated to and reproduced by others. Intuitive and direct knowledge fail to meet these criteria for the simple reason that they are dependent upon each persons capacity for these special forms of discernment. But as we saw in the German government study, the success rates of professional dowsers are consistently so far beyond the performance levels of conventional hydrologist. If these other forms of knowing produce results that are right more often than they are wrong then we need to revisit our understanding of what constitutes knowledge. The ability to develop our awareness in order to reliably access non-local information has always required some degree of personal transformation. And indeed for most of humankinds history, personal transformation has always played a central role in the quest for knowledge: For the philosophical theme (how to have access to the truth) and the question of spirituality (what transformations in the being of the subject are necessary for access to the truth) were never separate.8

Notes
1

Laughlin, C. Consciousness in Biogenetic Structural Theory Anthropology of Consciousness, 1992,

3(1-2):17-22.
2 3 4

Breen, R. 2008, op.cit. Haraldsson, E. & Houtkooper, JM. 1991, op. cit. Lumpkin, TW. Perceptual Diversity and its Implications for DevelopmentBased on Research among Lumpkin, TW. Perceptual Diversity: Is Polyphasic Consciousness Necessary for Global Survival?

Traditional Healers and upon Community Use of Traditional Medicine in Namibia, March 1996. PhD Thesis
5

Anthropology of Consciousness, Vol. 12, No. 1, March/June 2001

6 7 8

Plato Theaetetus 201b-d Ayer, AJ. (1956) The Problem of Knowledge Foucault, M. (2005) The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the College de France 1981-82 p.17