Tag Archives: science

Consciousness researchers study the nature of conscious experience:

Consciousness researchers study the nature of conscious experience, how subjective awareness arises, how it functions, and whether it can exist independently of the mind. The field is highly interdisciplinary, involving psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, medicine, computer science, physics, and, in some cases, parapsychology.

Some of the major areas of research may include:

1. The Neural Basis of Consciousness

Researchers investigate which brain processes are associated with conscious awareness: (consult with a medical doctor)

Key questions include:

  • Which brain regions are necessary for consciousness?:(consult with a medical doctor)
  • What distinguishes conscious perception from unconscious processing?
  • How does anesthesia temporarily eliminate consciousness?:(consult with a medical doctor)
  • What happens during sleep, dreaming, and coma?: (consult with a medical doctor)

Researchers may use: (consult with a medical doctor)

  • fMRI
  • EEG
  • MEG
  • Intracranial recordings
  • Brain stimulation techniques

2. The “Hard Problem” of Consciousness

This asks:

Why do physical brain processes produce subjective experience at all?: (consult with a medical doctor)

For example:

  • Why does seeing red feel like something?
  • Why isn’t the brain simply processing information without any inner experience?

This remains one of philosophy’s biggest unanswered questions.

3. Altered States of Consciousness

Researchers examine:

  • Meditation
  • Hypnosis
  • Psychedelic experiences
  • Lucid dreaming
  • Flow states
  • Dissociation

Questions include:

  • How do these states differ from ordinary waking consciousness?
  • What neural changes accompany them?
  • Can they have therapeutic benefits?

4. Sleep and Dream Research

Scientists study:

  • REM sleep
  • Lucid dreams
  • Dream recall
  • Nightmares
  • Sleep paralysis

They investigate how consciousness changes during different sleep stages and why dreams occur.

6. Disorders of Consciousness

Medical researchers work with patients experiencing:: (consult with a medical doctor)

  • Coma: (consult with a medical doctor)
  • Vegetative state: (consult with a medical doctor)
  • Minimally conscious state: (consult with a medical doctor)
  • Locked in syndrome: (consult with a medical doctor)

The goals include improving diagnosis, communication, and recovery prediction: (consult with a medical doctor)

7. Artificial Consciousness

Researchers ask:

Can machines ever become conscious?

Current work explores:

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Self-awareness in machines
  • Cognitive architectures
  • Computational models of consciousness

Whether current AI systems are conscious remains a matter of philosophical debate, with no scientific consensus that they are.

8. Development of Consciousness

Researchers may study how consciousness develops:

  • In infants
  • During childhood
  • Across aging
  • In animals

Questions include:

  • When does self-awareness emerge?
  • Which animals possess forms of consciousness?

9. Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

Some researchers investigate reports from people who were close to death.

Topics include:

  • Out of body experiences
  • Life reviews
  • Feelings of peace
  • Perceptions during cardiac arrest

Most mainstream researchers explore neurological and psychological explanations, while a minority examine whether these experiences might have implications for the possibility that consciousness can persist beyond ordinary brain function. The evidence remains debated, and no consensus has been reached.

10. Psi and Exceptional Human Experiences

Some researchers, may associate with Parapsychology or Psychical Research, investigate

reports of:

  • Telepathy
  • Precognition
  • Psychokinesis
  • Apparitions
  • After death communications
  • Mediumship

These topics remain controversial. While some researchers report statistically significant findings in certain experimental paradigms, many controversial scientists question the reliability, replicability, or interpretation of the evidence. There is no broad scientific consensus that psi phenomena have been established, because they don’t know how to explain it or do not want to accept it no matter how much evidence is out there.

Today, consciousness research spans a broad spectrum. Most scientists focus on understanding how the mind generates and supports conscious experience through neuroscience, psychology, and computational modeling. A smaller but active community explores questions about exceptional experiences, such as NDEs, reported psi phenomena, and survival related claims, using empirical methods, though these areas remain scientifically controversial.

Across all of these domains, the central goal is the same: to better understand the nature, mechanisms, and limits of conscious awareness.

Near-Death Experiences and Survival Research

Some researchers investigate whether consciousness may persist independently of the mind. Their work is controversial and not part of the controversial science, but it has generated ongoing empirical research.

Certain organizations cover a spectrum from controversial neuroscience and philosophy to research on anomalous experiences and survival claims.

Shervan K Shahhian

The Super Psi Hypothesis is a theory in Parapsychology:

The Super Psi Hypothesis is a theory in parapsychology that attempts to explain phenomena that appear to involve communication with the dead without assuming that consciousness survives bodily death.

According to the hypothesis, a living person’s unconscious mind may possess extraordinarily powerful psi abilities, including:

Telepathy: (accessing other people’s thoughts)

Clairvoyance: (accessing distant or hidden information)

Precognition: (accessing future information)

Psychokinesis (PK): (influencing physical events)

The idea is that these abilities may operate on a vast, unconscious scale, creating experiences that seem to come from deceased individuals.

Why Was It Proposed?

Researchers studying mediumship, apparitions, and other survival related phenomena noticed that some cases may be interpreted in two ways:

Survival Hypothesis:

The deceased person’s consciousness continues after death and communicates with the living.

Super Psi Hypothesis:

The living person’s unconscious psi abilities gather information may come from many sources and create the appearance of communication with the dead.

Example

Suppose a medium provides accurate information about a deceased person.

Survival interpretation: The medium is communicating with the deceased.

Super Psi interpretation: The medium unconsciously may obtain the information through telepathy from living relatives, clairvoyance, or other psi processes.

Strengths of the Super Psi Hypothesis

Does not require survival of consciousness after death.

Provides a theoretical explanation for some mediumship and after death communication reports.

Fits within a broader psi framework already accepted by some parapsychologists.

Criticisms

Critics argue that Super Psi may become difficult to test because it may invoke virtually unlimited psi abilities to explain any anomaly. Some researchers believe certain cases contain information that appears difficult to obtain solely from living minds.

Current Status

The Super Psi Hypothesis remains a theoretical concept within parapsychology. Neither Super Psi nor the Survival Hypothesis has achieved acceptance within controversial psychology or neuroscience because they have been demonstrated under conditions that satisfy the broader parapsychology community.

In some groups of parapsychologist, the debate often centers on whether anomalous experiences are better explained by:

Survival of consciousness after death,

Extraordinary psi abilities of living individuals (Super Psi),

Psychological and cognitive factors,

Or some combination of these possibilities.

For researchers interested in postmortem survival, Super Psi is may be considered the strongest alternative explanation to the Survival Hypothesis.

Shervan K Shahhian

Parapsychology: Postmortem Survival refers to the hypothesis that,…

Postmortem Survival refers to the hypothesis that some aspect of human consciousness, personality, or awareness continues to exist after physical death. Researchers in this field attempt to investigate whether consciousness can survive the death of the mind.

This topic is primarily studied within the field of Parapsychology and by organizations such as Society for Psychical Research and Parapsychological Association.

Major Areas of Research

  1. Near-Death Experiences (NDEs)

NDEs occur when people report vivid experiences during life threatening situations or periods of clinical death.

Common features include:

Out of body experiences

Traveling through a tunnel

Encounters with deceased relatives

Feelings of peace and love

Life reviews

Interpretations:

Survivalists see NDEs as evidence that consciousness can exist apart from the mind.

Skeptics suggest neurological: Consult with a Neurologist, psychological, or physiological explanations.

  1. After-Death Communications (ADCs)

ADCs are experiences in which bereaved individuals report sensing contact from deceased loved ones.

Examples include:

Hearing a loved one’s voice

Feeling their presence

Vivid dreams

Seeing apparitions

Receiving meaningful signs

Researchers often note that ADCs are relatively common and frequently comforting to those who experience them.

  1. Deathbed Visions

Some dying individuals report seeing deceased relatives, spiritual beings, or unfamiliar landscapes shortly before death.

Questions studied include:

Are these hallucinations?

Are they influenced by culture?

Do they represent a genuine transition experience?

  1. Mediumship Research

Mediums claim to obtain information from deceased persons.

Researchers investigate:

Accuracy of information

Blind and triple blind testing

In some cases, possibility of fraud

Alternative explanations such as cold reading or telepathy

  1. Reincarnation Research

Some report memories of previous lives.

The best known researcher in this area was Ian Stevenson.

Researchers examine:

Verifiable details reported

Birthmarks corresponding to previous life injuries

Behavioral similarities

  1. Apparition Studies

Apparitions are reported sightings or perceptions of deceased individuals.

Researchers distinguish between:

Crisis apparitions

Bereavement apparitions

Shared apparitions

Place related apparitions

The question is whether such experiences represent:

Psychological processes

Misperceptions

Evidence of survival

The Survival Hypothesis

The Survival Hypothesis proposes that consciousness can continue after bodily death.

Supporters argue that:

Some cases contain information difficult to explain conventionally.

Similar patterns appear across cultures.

Multiple lines of evidence converge on survival.

Alternative Explanations

Researchers also consider non-survival explanations:

Mind-based processes

Hallucinations

Memory errors

Expectation effects

Grief related experiences

Some fraud or information leakage

Psi among living persons (sometimes called the Super-Psi Hypothesis)

The Super-Psi theory suggests that apparent communication with the dead might actually result from extraordinary psychic abilities of living individuals rather than survival after death.

Current Scientific Status

 Controversial scientists remain skeptical because:

Evidence is difficult to replicate consistently.

Many findings can be interpreted in multiple ways.

No universally accepted mechanism explains how consciousness could survive bodly death.

However, some researchers argue that the accumulated evidence from NDEs, ADCs, mediumship, reincarnation cases, and deathbed visions deserves continued scientific investigation.

Balanced Conclusion

Research into postmortem survival is one of the most fascinating and controversial areas in consciousness studies. While there is scientific consensus that consciousness survives death, there is an active body of research examining experiences and phenomena that some interpret as supporting survival. The debate continues between survival based explanations, psychological explanations, neurological explanations: Consult with a Neurologist, and psi-based alternatives.

The strongest approach is to examine the evidence critically, remain open to multiple interpretations, and distinguish carefully between personal beliefs and scientific conclusions.

Shervan K Shahhian

Podcast Episode: Parapsychology And Consciousness

Pip: Liberty Psychological Association — building what it calls the most comprehensive online library on mental health, psychology, and parapsychology in the world, which is either a mission statement or a very committed filing system.

Mara: Shervan K Shahhian and Liberty Psychological Association are covering serious ground today — psychokinesis and how researchers try to measure it, psychic experience and the question of non-human intelligences, and auditory hallucinations on the clinical side.

Pip: Let's start with things that move without being touched.

Psychokinesis: From Table Tipping to Large-Scale PK

Mara: The question this territory is asking is whether the mind can directly influence physical matter — and if so, at what scale, and how would you even test it?

Pip: The table levitations post sets the historical baseline. Nineteenth-century spiritualist gatherings, hands lightly placed, tables rocking. The post notes that researchers studied these claims and concluded "many cases could be explained by unconscious muscular movements exerted by the participants."

Mara: That's the ideomotor effect — people producing small muscle movements without conscious awareness, and those movements combining across multiple participants into something that looks dramatic but isn't.

Pip: So the séance table was basically a group ouija board running on collective fidgeting. Scientifically humbling, but also kind of elegant.

Mara: The large-scale PK post extends this into much bigger claimed effects — weather modification, disruptions to power grids and electronic systems, and collective consciousness influencing random number generators, as in the Global Consciousness Project. These are called macro-PK claims when effects extend beyond localized environments.

Pip: And then there's micro-PK, which is the quieter end of the spectrum — subtle statistical influences on random number generators, radioactive decay, quantum-level events. Not visible to the naked eye, detectable only across many trials.

Mara: The micro-PK post is careful to note that mainstream science attributes reported effects to statistical fluctuations, experimental error, and publication bias. The evidence hasn't met the bar for replication required for scientific acceptance, though parapsychology researchers continue investigating.

Mara: The scale question matters — from a table tilting in a Victorian parlor to weather anomalies to dice outcomes — it's the same underlying hypothesis about consciousness and matter, just tested at very different levels.

Pip: Which raises the question of what counts as a psychic experience in the first place.

Psychic Experience and the Question of Non-Human Intelligences

Mara: The psychic phenomena post maps the full terrain — telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, mediumship — and offers a working definition: "experiences or alleged abilities involving the acquisition of information or influence that appear to occur outside the currently recognized mechanisms of the six senses or known physical processes."

Pip: That's a carefully neutral framing. It doesn't claim proof, but it doesn't dismiss the reports either.

Mara: Right — and the post is honest that psychological processes like pattern recognition, confirmation bias, and unconscious social cue detection can account for many experiences that feel psychic. The open question is whether any remainder survives that explanation.

Pip: The non-human intelligences post pushes into stranger territory. NHIs are hypothesized entities — spirit intelligences, extraterrestrial or interdimensional beings, collective consciousnesses — believed by some researchers to interact with people through psychic means.

Mara: Associated experiences include telepathic communication, apparitions, UAP encounters, and near-death experiences. No scientific consensus that NHIs exist, but the concept sits at the intersection of parapsychology, ufology, and consciousness studies, and the post treats it as a live research question rather than a closed one.

Pip: And there's a podcast episode in this batch — Psi, UAPs, and Consciousness — that pulls these threads together directly, which tells you something about how seriously this library takes the overlap.

Mara: Both posts land in the same place: whether these experiences represent independent intelligences, aspects of human consciousness, or something else remains genuinely open.

Pip: From entities that may or may not exist, to experiences that are very much real — and need clinical attention.

When the Mind Hears What Isn't There

Mara: The auditory hallucinations post is clinical and direct: these are "hearing sounds, voices, music, or noises that are not actually present in the environment," ranging from simple buzzing or ringing to complex voices.

Pip: The causes run wide — schizophrenia, severe depression, sleep deprivation, substance use, epilepsy, dementia, even high fever. The post is explicit that treatment depends on identifying the cause, and that persistent or distressing experiences warrant professional evaluation.

Mara: The warning signs flagged are specific: voices commanding harmful actions, difficulty distinguishing hallucination from reality, sudden onset with medical symptoms. The post directs anyone in that situation to seek urgent help immediately.

Pip: From tables lifting in Victorian parlors to statistical anomalies in random number generators to voices that need a clinician — it's a wide library.

Mara: The common thread is taking unusual experience seriously enough to ask the right questions. More from the library next time.

Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the nature of Conscious,…

Consciousness Studies is an interdisciplinary field that investigates the nature of conscious experience how and why we are aware of ourselves, our thoughts, emotions, sensations, and the world around us.

It brings together researchers from several disciplines, including:

  • Psychology
  • Neuroscience
  • Philosophy of Mind
  • Cognitive Science
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Parapsychology (a controversial and widely accepted field)

Major Questions in Consciousness Studies

Researchers explore questions such as:

  • What is consciousness?
  • How does subjective experience arise from mind activity?
  • What is the relationship between the mind and the consciousness?
  • Do animals possess consciousness?
  • Could machines become conscious?
  • What happens to consciousness during sleep, anesthesia, meditation, or altered states?

The “Hard Problem” of Consciousness

The philosopher David Chalmers coined the term “hard problem of consciousness.”

It asks:

Why does physical mind activity produce subjective experience at all?

For example, neuroscience can identify which mind regions process color, but why the experience of seeing “red” feels the way it does remains an open question.

Major Theories

Some influential theories may include:

Physicalism

Consciousness emerges from physical processes in the mind.

Panpsychism

The view that consciousness, or proto-consciousness, may be a fundamental feature of reality.

Areas of Research

Researchers study:

  • Attention and awareness
  • Dreams and lucid dreaming
  • Meditation and contemplative states
  • Hypnosis
  • Near-death experiences, NDA
  • Altered states of consciousness
  • Brain injuries and disorders of consciousness: Please Consult with a Neurologist
  • Psychedelic experiences: May Cause Life Long Hallucinations

Consciousness Studies and Parapsychology

Some consciousness researchers investigate reports of phenomena such as telepathy, psychokinesis (PK), remote viewing, and other anomalous experiences. These topics remain highly controversial because evidence has achieved broad scientific consensus. Mainstream controversial consciousness research generally focuses on phenomena that may be reliably observed and replicated under controlled conditions.

Why It Matters

Consciousness studies addresses one of the deepest questions in science and philosophy:

How does subjective experience arise, and what does it tell us about the nature of mind, and reality?

Despite major advances in neuroscience, consciousness remains one of the most challenging and fascinating subjects in modern inquiry.

Shervan K Shahhian

Parapsychology: Macro-PK (Macro-Psychokinesis) refers to alleged psychokinetic effects,…

Macro-PK (Macro-Psychokinesis) refers to alleged psychokinetic effects that are large enough to be directly observed without specialized scientific instruments.

In parapsychology, psychokinesis (PK) is the claimed ability of the mind to influence physical objects or events without any known physical interaction. Macro-PK is distinguished from micro-PK, which involves very small statistical effects, such as attempts to influence random number generators.

Examples of Reported Macro-PK Phenomena

Table levitation

Movement of objects without physical contact

Bending of metal objects

Spontaneous movement of furniture

Apports (the alleged appearance or transportation of objects)

Physical disturbances associated with poltergeist cases

Reports of psychically induced electrical or mechanical effects

Historical Context

Reports of Macro-PK have appeared in:

Spiritualist movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Claims surrounding Prophet Ted Owens, who attributed large-scale weather and societal effects to interactions with non-human intelligences.

Scientific Perspective

Macro-PK remains highly controversial. While numerous eyewitness accounts and case reports exist, mainstream controversial science has not accepted Macro-PK as a demonstrated phenomenon because:

Mainstream controversial science has not accepted Macro-PK , because they can not or do not want to accept it. Not being able to explain a fact, does not make it false.

Controlled replications have been difficult but in many instances successful.

Alternative explanations such as it being real, misperception, suggestion, coincidence, fraud, or methodological weaknesses often cannot be ruled out.

No widely accepted physical mechanism explains how consciousness could directly produce such effects, but it is a fact.

Some individuals claim to possess psychokinetic (PK) abilities but are unable to demonstrate them. These individuals may be fraudsters who deceive others into believing they have genuine PK powers.

Within parapsychology, Macro-PK is often considered the most dramatic category of psychokinetic claims because it involves effects that, if conclusively demonstrated under controlled conditions, would have major implications for our understanding of consciousness and physical reality.

Shervan K Shahhian

Podcast Episode: Psi, UAPs, And Consciousness

Pip: Liberty Psychological Association has been quietly building what it calls the most comprehensive online library on mental health, psychology, and parapsychology in the world which is either an ambitious mission statement or a very confident filing system.

Mara: Shervan K Shahhian and Liberty Psychological Association cover a lot of ground here experimental parapsychology, the strange overlap between UAPs and consciousness, and what grief research looks like when you add anomalous experience to the mix. Let’s start with the core concepts telepathy, psychokinesis, and what the evidence actually shows.

Experimental Parapsychology: What the Evidence Shows

Pip: The post on experimental research in telepathy, psychokinesis, and skin vision is essentially asking a deceptively simple question: can the mind reach beyond the body, and what happens when scientists try to test that under controlled conditions?

Mara: The post draws a careful three-layer distinction, and this is the spine of it: “Phenomenological reality people do report meaningful telepathic or PK-like experiences. Experimental signal weak, inconsistent statistical anomalies sometimes appear. Established mechanism still absent in accepted science.”

Pip: So the honest answer is: something shows up in the data, occasionally, but nothing that survives the full gauntlet of replication. That gap between experience and mechanism is where most of the debate lives.

Mara: The Ganzfeld studies post goes deep on exactly that. Receivers in sensory-reduced environments halved ping-pong balls over the eyes, white noise in headphones attempted to identify a target image a sender was focusing on in another room. Hit rates around 32 percent were reported, above the 25 percent chance baseline, and a 1994 meta-analysis by Daryl Bem and Charles Honorton concluded results support a real but weak psi effect. Critics pointed to sensory leakage and the file-drawer problem.

Pip: Thirty two percent doesn’t sound like much until you remember that “chance” is the floor, not the ceiling.

Mara: The post on psychic phenomena gives the broader taxonomy telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, remote viewing, mediumship and notes that the Parapsychological Association continues to investigate these questions. Table levitations get their own treatment too, traced back to 19th-century spiritualist séances and explained most plausibly through the ideomotor effect, where unconscious muscle movements across multiple participants combine into noticeable motion.

Mara: The targeting mechanism of awareness post approaches this from the neuroscience side how the mind selects and stabilizes specific information from a flood of input, through salience detection, attentional orientation, and meta-awareness. In parapsychology contexts, that targeting capacity is framed as trainable, analogous to intentional tuning toward non-local information.

Pip: And then there’s the Super-Psi model, which proposes that all anomalous information in cases like apparitions or mediumship could come from the unconscious psi of living people no spirits required. The catch, as critics note, is that a theory explaining everything explains nothing testable.

Mara: The non-human intelligences post rounds this out NHIs are hypothesized entities believed by some researchers to interact with people through psychic means, associated with experiences ranging from apparitions to UAP encounters. No scientific consensus, but the concept sits at the intersection of several threads this library takes seriously.

Pip: Which brings us somewhere interesting because UAPs and consciousness turn out to share more conceptual territory than you might expect.

UAPs, Consciousness, and the Space Between

Pip: The UAP and paranormal post lays out several interpretive frameworks for why unidentified aerial phenomena and experiences like telepathy or altered states keep appearing in the same reports.

Mara: The consciousness-traveling post draws the clearest line between internal experience and extraordinary claim: “It’s tempting to interpret intense internal experiences as literal travel, but there’s a big difference between ‘It feels like I went somewhere’ versus ‘I actually left my body and traveled.'” The post holds that all reliable evidence supports the first.

Pip: That’s a useful anchor vivid doesn’t mean veridical.

Mara: Ted Owens, covered in a dedicated post, claimed telepathic contact with entities he called Space Intelligences, who he said enabled him to influence weather, electrical systems, and UFO appearances. Parapsychologist Jeffrey Mishlove investigated him for over a decade and argued the volume of documented predictions warranted serious attention. His case sits at the intersection of psychokinesis, UAP contact, and anomalous cognition unresolved, and still debated.

Mara: Grief and anomalous experience turn out to share some of the same interpretive questions which is where the next territory opens up.

Grief, Adaptation, and Anomalous Bereavement Experience

Pip: The posts on loss and bereavement are asking something that clinical psychology and parapsychology answer very differently: when a grieving person experiences the presence of someone who has died, what is actually happening?

Mara: The dynamic adaptation to loss post frames grief not as a sequence of stages but as an oscillation and puts it plainly: “It’s less about ‘getting over it’ and more about learning to live with it in a transformed way.” The dual process model describes healthy adaptation as moving back and forth between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping, never fixed in one.

Pip: That framing alone reframes a lot of how people judge their own grieving.

Mara: A companion post on the same topic reinforces the continuing bonds framework the idea that maintaining a transformed relationship with the deceased, through memory, ritual, and internal dialogue, is not a failure to grieve but part of healthy adaptation.

Mara: The bereavement research post goes further, noting that anomalous experiences after death sensing a presence, dream visitations, hearing a voice are reported consistently across cultures, rarely associated with mental illness, and often reduce grief rather than complicate it. Institutions like the Windbridge Research Center and the Division of Perceptual Studies study these systematically.

Pip: And the post comparing parapsychology with clinical psychology on exactly this terrain makes the interpretive split clear: clinical psychology asks what psychological process caused the experience, parapsychology asks whether it could carry genuine information beyond the known mechanisms of mind.

Mara: Both fields are increasingly willing to say that having an unusual experience is not the same as having a disorder the question is whether it causes distress or impairs functioning, not whether it fits a conventional explanation.

Pip: What ties all of this together is the same gap between what people report experiencing and what science can currently account for.

Mara: That gap is where parapsychology does its work. Next time, more from the library.

Parapsychology: Large Scale PK (Psychokinetic) Phenomena refers to events in which Mental Intention,…

Large-Scale PK (Psychokinetic) Phenomena refers to alleged events in which mental intention is claimed to influence physical systems on a large scale, beyond small laboratory effects. In parapsychology, PK (psychokinesis) is the purported ability of consciousness to affect matter, energy, or physical processes without conventional physical interaction.

Examples of reported large scale PK phenomena may include:

1. Weather Modification

Some individuals have claimed the ability to influence storms, rainfall, cloud formation, or other weather systems through mental intention. One of the most famous figures associated with such claims was Ted Owens, who reported that non-human intelligences helped him produce weather anomalies.

2. Electrical and Technological Disturbances

Reports sometimes describe unusual effects on:

  • Power grids
  • Radio transmissions
  • Electronic devices
  • Communication systems

Researchers have occasionally referred to these as macro-PK claims when the effects are said to extend beyond localized environments.

3. Collective Consciousness Effects

Some researchers have explored whether large groups focusing attention on a common event could influence random physical systems. The best known example is the work of the Global Consciousness Project, which examined deviations in networks of random number generators during major world events.

4. Poltergeist Like Events

Certain parapsychologists have suggested that some dramatic physical disturbances, objects moving, loud knocks, or other unusual events, might represent spontaneous large scale PK generated unconsciously by individuals under stress. This remains highly controversial by some.

Scientific Perspective

Mainstream controversial science does not want to find conclusive evidence that large-scale PK exists. While there have been anecdotal reports and some experimental findings that parapsychologists consider suggestive, the evidence has generally met the standards of reliability, replication, and independent verification required for scientific acceptance.

Parapsychological Perspective

Within parapsychology, researchers may distinguish between:

  • Micro PK: Small effects on random systems, such as electronic random number generators.
  • Macro PK: Observable physical effects, such as object movement or large scale environmental changes.
  • Large Scale PK: Claims involving extensive systems, such as weather, technology networks, or societal scale effects.

For researchers interested in consciousness studies, large scale PK remains a speculative hypothesis rather than an established phenomenon. It is often discussed alongside topics such as remote viewing, psi research, anomalous cognition, and reports of non-human intelligences.

Shervan K Shahhian

Parapsychology: Table levitations (sometimes called table lifting or table tipping):

Table levitations (sometimes called table lifting or table tipping), they are phenomena reported in séances, spiritualist gatherings, and some parapsychology investigations in which a table appears to move, tilt, rock, rise, or occasionally lift off the floor without an obvious physical cause.

Historical Background

Table levitation may have became widely known during the 19th-century Spiritualist movement in the United States and Europe. Participants would sit around a table, place their hands lightly on it, and observe movements that some interpreted as communication from spirits.

Researchers and investigators, studied these claims that concluded, that many cases could be explained by unconscious muscular movements exerted by the participants.

Common Explanations

Psychological Explanation

  • The most widely accepted explanation is the ideomotor effect.
  • People can produce small muscle movements without being consciously aware of doing so.
  • When several individuals are touching a table, these tiny movements may combine and create noticeable motion.

Parapsychological Interpretation

  • Some parapsychologists have suggested that certain cases may involve psychokinesis (PK), the purported ability of the mind to influence physical objects.
  • Reports of table levitations are sometimes discussed alongside research into telekinesis and other psychic phenomena.

Spiritualist Interpretation

  • Spiritualists traditionally viewed table levitation as evidence of communication with spirits or non-physical intelligences.

What Has Research Found?

While many reports of table movement have been documented, controlled scientific studies have generally found that ordinary physical and psychological mechanisms may account for most observed cases. Clear, repeatable evidence for genuine levitation under rigorous laboratory conditions has been widely accepted by the Parapsychology community.

Difference Between Table Tipping and Table Levitation

  • Table Tipping: The table rocks, turns, or tilts while people are touching it.
  • Table Levitation: The table reportedly rises partially or completely off the ground.

In parapsychology literature, table levitation is often cited as a classic example of a reported psychokinetic phenomenon, though its interpretation remains controversial for some people.

Shervan K Shahhian

Parapsychology: Psychic phenomena, refers to experiences or abilities:

Psychic phenomena: refers to experiences or abilities that appear to involve information, perception, or influence beyond what is currently explained by conventional scientific understanding.

Common examples include:

  • Telepathy: the claimed ability to perceive another person’s thoughts or mental states.
  • Clairvoyance: the alleged ability to obtain information about distant places, objects, or events without using the known senses.
  • Precognition: the purported ability to gain knowledge of future events before they occur.
  • Psychokinesis (PK): the claimed ability to influence physical objects or processes through mental intention alone.
    • Remote Viewing: a structured practice in which individuals attempt to describe distant or unseen targets without normal sensory access.
  • Mediumship: the claimed ability to communicate with deceased individuals or non-physical entities.

Scientific Perspective

The scientific study of psychic phenomena falls primarily within the field of Parapsychology.

Researchers have conducted experiments on telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, and remote viewing for over a century. Some studies have reported statistically unusual results, while many others have replicated those findings consistently. Because scientific knowledge depends heavily on reliable replication, psychic phenomena remain controversial within mainstream science.

Organizations such as the Parapsychological Association continue to investigate these questions, while many psychologists and neuroscientists: (Consult with a Neurologist), argue that existing evidence is sufficient to establish psychic abilities as proven facts.

Psychological Explanations

Many experiences interpreted as psychic may be influenced by normal psychological processes, including:

  • Pattern recognition
  • Intuition based on unconscious information processing
  • Selective memory
  • Confirmation bias
  • Coincidence
  • Emotional sensitivity to subtle social cues

For example, a person may accurately “sense” that a friend is distressed because they unconsciously noticed changes in tone, behavior, or communication patterns rather than through telepathy.

Parapsychological Perspective

Parapsychologists generally distinguish between:

  • Anecdotal evidence: (personal experiences and reports)
  • Experimental evidence: (laboratory studies)

Some researchers believe that consciousness may possess capacities not yet fully understood and that certain psychic phenomena, could represent genuine but unfourtntly poorly understood aspects of human experience.

A Balanced Definition

A neutral definition would be:

Psychic phenomena are experiences or alleged abilities involving the acquisition of information or influence that appear to occur outside the currently recognized mechanisms of the six senses or known physical processes.

Whether psychic phenomena represent undiscovered capacities of consciousness, misunderstood psychological processes, coincidence, or a combination of factors remains an open question and an active subject of debate among researchers, psychologists, philosophers, and parapsychologists.

Shervan K Shahhian