Do you believe in psi?

Like a lot of authors, I imagine, I'm sort of this half-and-half mashup of critical thinker (hello, internal editor) and open-minded creative free spirit. Born and raised in Oklahoma, I got a healthy dose of superstition from my Granny. My pulse always jumps to find I've got an important appointment on Friday the 13th, though my common-sense half knows better. And I still eat black-eyed peas on New Year's Day. 

My photo of the old Colman School in Seattle.
Home to Seattle Psi Training Institute in my novel Echo 8. 

I can roll my eyes with the best of them when it comes to anything in the woo-woo category. I write sci-fi, and I believe in the power of scientific minds and scientific explanation. And yet ... 

I've lost count of how many times I've dreamed about something before it happened. In fact, just this morning I was woken from a dream by my phone ringing. The dream was about a truck that my ex-husband had apparently (only in the dream) left in front of our house. Big truck, like the ones that haul cars. He'd left it parked far from the curb and I had to move it. But each time I moved it and got out, I found it was still far from the curb. 

So back to that phone call. It was my landlord upstairs reminding me the garbage collectors were coming today. We live in a cul-de-sac and are supposed to park elsewhere on garbage day, but both my partner and I had forgotten. I scrambled into my clothes and flew out with both sets of keys (he was in the shower). My partner drives a truck that was broken into recently, and the thieves messed up the ignition, so first I struggled with the key. Also, it has an old camper on it, and you can hardly see out the camper window, so then I struggled to back up a hill looking only through the rearview mirrors. 

The Edgefield Hotel, formerly a poor farm.
By Ian Poellet (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)
or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)],
via Wikimedia Commons

You probably see where I'm going with this. And this happens at least every couple of months. Some dreams are more striking than others, like the time I dreamed about a ghost while staying in a hotel outside Portland. (Turned out the ghost had been seen by many guests.) 

So I have this history, but also I think there's just a part of me that wants to believe that we don't have all the answers yet. In fact we know we don't. Take quantum physics.   

In quantum physics, to the best of our understanding, observers affect (you might even say effect) outcomes. So of course there's been lots of talk about quantum physics from a "power of the mind" perspective. The lead researcher of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California recently published a paper in Physics Essays about how groups of meditators affected the outcomes of double-slit experiments. The researcher, Dean Radin, wrote the book Entangled Minds about how quantum physics may enhance our understanding of psi phenomenon. (This book was critical to the development of parapsychologist Tess Caufield, heroine in my recent sci-fi romance release Echo 8.) It's a compelling read about a marginalized branch of science, and it contains a fascinating history of parapsychology. 

One note Dr. Radin sounds often in the book is how even scientists can be prejudiced and refuse to accept facts if the implications of those facts don't fit with the scientist's worldview. The guy who first suggested the idea of our circulatory system was laughed at by his peers. One went so far as to say (paraphrase), "If he thinks he can actually hear this in the body, he's deranged."

I guess my conclusion here, if there is one, is there's plenty of room for a thinking person -- even one who reads lots of science books -- to question conventional beliefs about psi. In Entangled Minds Radin cites studies that have shown folks who indicate some level of belief in psi tend to be well-educated (while the opposite is true for superstitious beliefs). 

Certainly plenty of sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal authors include elements of psi in their stories. But what do they actually believe about it? What do you believe? Have you experienced psi phenomena (or anything you couldn't explain) first-hand? Do you have a psychic Granny (or Auntie, or sibling)? If you do believe in psi are you out of the closet about it? 

Science, Buddhism, Victorians...and the Genesis of Great Ideas

Over the last couple of years, a number of psychologists have published books based on the findings of recent neurological studies on meditation. This research shows, beyond a doubt, that meditation benefits the brain.

Meditation, or mindfulness, as the practice is often referred to, helps manage anxiety, stress, and depression. It also helps with motivation, focus, and relationships. I'm pretty sure it can even help your car run better. (I'm poking a little fun, but you could actually make a case for this. If mindfulness helps you focus your intentions and avoid procrastination, so you finally go and get that tuneup...)

Without going into too much detail (because this is really only the introduction for this post), meditation has been shown to gradually change the way your brain works, helping you ground yourself in the moment, and in your positive experiences. For more information about this, search on mindfulness authors (and psychologists) Rick Hanson, Dan Siegel, Marsha Lucas, and Elisha Goldstein. I'm just finishing Hanson's book now, and I love that it goes into physiological detail about how meditation works on the brain -- enough that I feel like I'm getting a crash course in neuropsychology.

And that is really the topic of this (meandering) post. As a fiction writer, and just as a curious human, I am fascinated by the growing connections between science and spirituality. Some of these connections are solid and proven; some are more tenuous. All are fodder for creativity.

Having taken a flying leap onto the mindfulness bandwagon myself (refer back to paragraph 2; notice the list of every stereotypical writer dysfunction), I have been attending meditation classes for the last two months. At the end of a recent class, meditators were told that a researcher was present. He had brought equipment to test whether focused attention could alter actual matter. (Yes, mind over matter!)

This illustrates another connection between science and more speculative ideas. Buddhist philosophy asserts that our mental perception of our existence actually forms our reality, and not the other way around -- in other words, we create our own reality. From a philosophical or psychological perspective, this is actually pretty easy to accept. Our feelings, reactions, judgments, etc., in any given situation, create our experience of that situation. (Mindfulness / meditation focuses on grounding us more in the experience than the emotion, so we suffer less.)

But quantum physics experiments can be construed to support the idea that we create our own reality in a more literal sense. (For a layman's explanation of observer-created reality, try Quantum Enigma, Physics Encounters Consciousness.)

So, back to the meditation experiment. The researcher instructed us to do two meditations: one where we focused on mixing lemon juice with a cup of water, and another where we did the same with baking soda. The researcher tested the pH of the water after each meditation. Before you start getting excited, the instruments showed no change in the pH that wasn't attributable to normal environmental factors.

But the experiment itself reminded me of the Victorian era, when seances were being conducted in the fashionable parlors of the well educated. WAIT! Please note: I am NOT comparing meditation, Victorian spiritualism, scientific research, etc. But there was definitely a flavor to this modern-day experience that hearkened back. (You have to admit! We even had a candle.)

I thought about the rise in popularity of steampunk (which often blends Newtonian gadgetry with the supernatural, as in Neverwhere), and how there is this interesting connection between the modern and Victorian eras. Quantum physics has resulted in huge technological advances in our time, just as Newtonian physics did for the Victorians.

Quantum theory has led to really fascinating questions about psi, as well as popular interest in those questions (as evidenced by all the recent film and book plots based on parallel universes and psi abilities, including one of mine!). It seems at least plausible to imagine Newtonian physics gave rise to Victorian spiritualism in a different way -- maybe as a backlash against rationalism, and all the physics-based advances. And spiritualism greatly influenced some of the leading authors and poets of the time (Wilkie Collins, for example).


The show Warehouse 13 actually blends elements of both of these eras together -- both the science-based and the more speculative elements. (To read more about connections between quantum theory and psi, as well as a fascinating history of psi research, try Entangled Minds.)

I love thinking and talking about this stuff, so it's not surprising I've wandered far afield of mindfulness. But hopefully not of my original thesis. Scientific discovery fuels the imagination. Less tangible ideas -- philosophical, spiritual, paranormal -- fuel the imagination. Where these two intersect, the creative potential is...well...potentiated.