Reviewed by Robert McLuhan
Robert Charman will be familiar to regular readers of our Journal and Magazine as a contributor of reviews and critical commentary. Some will also know his 2022 book Telepathy, Clairvoyance and Precognition, which re-evaluates case studies of spontaneous psi experiences to determine whether they can either be explained by normal psychological processes or might stand as evidence of an ESP effect. The PSI Mind in Action takes as its subject the psychokinetic influences which appear to be at work in different contexts. That symmetry aside, this is a different and rather more ambitious sort of book.
Charman starts by presenting two contrasting states of consciousness, both of which which “exert a controlling, purpose driven, psychokinetic influence on the brain…” while, reciprocally, the brain “exerts a neuro-kinetic influence on the mind through sensory input.” In the everyday state of mind, Charman continues, “this reciprocity is total and controls all that one can know about the external world and how to physically interact with it. But when in the psi state the mind is released from such total reciprocity, ESP becomes the informational norm and the PK effect on other living systems and physical objects becomes possible” (pp. 7-8). The theme of a psi mind is developed throughout the book, backed by reports of suggestive personal experiences, field research and controlled experiments, including EEG and fMRI studies.
In the first two chapters, on the topic of psi healing, Charman describes an individual who obtained complete remission from terminal lung cancer after a series of weekly half-hour sessions by a member of the Healing Trust. He notes that such spontaneous cures can be explained in terms of placebo effects. But he goes on to cite non-pacebo research with plants and animals, including experiments by William Bengston, who in the controlled environment of a medical research laboratory was able to demonstrate a healing effect on mice that had been injected with (normally fatal) breast cancer cells (Bengston, 2010); similar effects were noted in research involving Sean Harribance, a Trinidadian psychic. The psi mind at work is revealed in EEG studies carried out by Cecil Maxwell Cade, which showed healers’ brains characteristically working at alpha amplitudes, and a close relationship between the mind of healer and patient developing during a successful session (Cade & Coxhead, 1979).
Chapter 3 examines evidence for the Maharishi Effect, the claim that the practice of transcendental meditation, specifically the advanced “TM-Sidhi” technique, by a sufficiently large group of people can exert a calming influence on the surrounding local population. For instance, an experiment carried out in Rhode Island in 1978 appeared to show a link with a significant fall in burglaries, murders, traffic accidents, and other studies found a similar statistical relationship. Here too Charman notes evidence from EEG studies of brainwave synchrony, in this instance among the meditators themselves, to the point that their brains seemed like soldiers marching in step. Pushback by sceptics centres on the alleged impossibility of any such causal connection. But Charman comments that the statistics seem robust, and that it appears well-proven that intense group meditation does have a beneficial social effect.
Chapter 4 looks at veridical out-of-body perception, which Charman takes to be well demonstrated, citing cases described in The Self Does Not Die by Dutch near-death researcher Titus Rivas and colleagues (2016). Here he proposes a non-survivalist interpretation, drawing on a widely reported 2013 experiment by Jimo Borjigin that showed a 30-second surge of intense, coherent, brainwave activity in dying rats; it was seen across all frequency bands, including those associated with high-level conscious functioning in humans (Borjigin et al., 2013). Charman accepts Borjigin’s view that this offers the beginnings of a physicalist explanation of near-death experiences. He suggests that the disengaged brain, lacking any sensory stimulus, enters into a non-sensory psi mind state, which, in order to be activated into conscious awareness, needs a surge of activity sufficient to sustain observations and for memory recall. He adds that such a surge has also been seen in some dying human patients, answering a key criticism made by Bruce Greyson and other near-death researchers (e.g., Greyson et al., 2013).
Charman then broaches the subject of Jotts, the acronym for “just one of those things” – episodes where an object mysteriously disappears and sometimes reappears in a different place. He describes examples given by Mary Rose Barrington and by the Australian researcher Tony Jinks, who independently researched the phenomenon. He cites Jinks’s hypothesis based on quantum mechanics: the physical external reality we experience is held in place by mass conscious observations of people past and present, but the strength of this is weaker in the case of objects that depend on only one or two people to sustain it, and may lapse back into “an unseen pre-physical substrate” (p. 121). He notes that the psi mind does not seem to be operating here, as observations of Jotts are made in a normal state of consciousness, but from this constructs a three-tier state of what he calls “mentalness” which might seem to accommodate the phenomenon.
The theme of mind directly interacting with objects is further developed in the following two chapters. One examines the famous Philip experiments carried out by a Toronto psychical research group, which produced psychokinetic phenomena. Here he speculates that group psi “seems to have interacted with the molecular structure of the table, maybe in the form of a mental field, psychokinetically interacting with its physical nature” (p. 157) – probably at the subatomic a quantum level. The other focuses on the Andover poltergeist reported by Barrie Colvin (2008), noting in particular the striking difference between the poltergeist’s raps and those made by humans, as revealed by acoustic analysis.
The penultimate chapter is based on Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer’s experience of recovering a stolen possession, a precious harp, by consulting a dowsing psychic. This is the longest chapter and also the most wide-ranging, describing not only the event itself but also the acute cognitive dissonance she felt as a result of it, the discovery that some of her psychoanalyst colleagues were experiencing psychic phenomena, and her follow-up investigation of psychics, who all seemed to experience a transition from the everyday mind to the psi mind in their work. It ends with a discussion of remote viewing, ganzfeld and presentiment, while the final chapter summarises the topics covered and adds some anecdotal material.
The relation between psychic experience and certain brain states, as revealed by neuroscience, is becoming a major theme in parapsychology. In a book that present a lot of descriptive material some kind of context is needed and Charman is surely right to emphasise this particular aspect. The tight focus dissipated somewhat towards the end, where he seemed to be letting Mayer do the talking, and I wasn’t sure how much was added by the final chapter. I also lamented the absence of an index. But I was impressed by how much information the book conveys in a relatively short space, and with the clarity of the presentation. There’s a finely-judged balance between descriptions of case studies and experiments on the one hand, and comment and analysis on the other – the material all handily divided into bite-sized chunks with short subheaded sections. As for it’s reach, it can be read with profit by people who are already knowledgeable about parapsychology – several of the cases presented here were new to me and it was good to be reminded of others. And as an intelligent and accessible survey it should also be ideal as an introduction to the field for an open-minded newcomer.
References
Bengston, W., with Fraser, S. (2010). The Energy Cure: Unraveling the Mystery of Hands-On Healing. Sounds True.
Borjigin, J. et al. (2013). Surge of neurophysiological coherence and connectivity in thedying brain. Proceedings of the National Academyof Science, 110 (35), 14432-14437.
Cade, Maxwell C., Coxhead, N. (1979). The Awakened Mind: Biofeedback and the Development of Higher States of Awareness. Element Books.
Colvin, B.G. (2008). The Andover Case: A responsive rapping poltergeist. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 72, 1-20.
Greyson, B., Kelly, E.F., & Dunseath, W.J.R. (2013). Surge of neurophysiological activity in the dying brain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science 110 (47).
Owen, I. M. & Sparrow, M. (1976). Conjuring Up Philip. An Adventure in Psychokinesis. Harper & Row.
Rivas, T., Dirwen, A., Smit, H., & May, R. (2016). The Self Does Not Die. Verified paranormal phenomena from near-death experiences. International Association for Near-Death Studies.