The Psychic Nucleus, the Deeper Self, and the ESP Core
The secret of the clairvoyant’s power may consist in the fact that he or she is able to effect a momentary form of fusion or collaboration between the conscious mind and the secret self.
Leo Talamonti, Forbidden Universe, Stein and Day, New York, 1975, p. 44.
The Second Reality
The greatest drawback to any progress in comprehending extrasensory perception, at the individual level and in parapsychology, is trying to make ESP fit into the reality we think is the only reality. We are used to viewing the physical realities with our consciousness. What we can perceive with our physical senses and what we can think about with only our conscious minds has come to constitute the one and only reality.
The other parts of our minds—the unconscious or the supraconscious, for example—predominantly have been thought not to have any reality of their own, but to exist in some sort of a subjective arrangement that depends upon our consciously perceived reality. This label-like concept needs to be disposed of in short order, and we can do so by making three statements about it.
First, it is a concept that is peculiar only to Westernized science and its ideas of enlightenment. Second, there is hardly any other culture that has entertained this polarized concept, much less clung so tenaciously to it. Third, two branches of Western science—quantum physics and psychology—have reached a point where evidence clearly indicates the existence of another reality.
The late 1970s and the 1980s have seen several culture-shaking books come into print that posit the existence of this second reality. These books, and many scientific papers, have not been authored by fringe kooks detached from serious science, but by highly achieved scientists exceedingly expert in their different fields.
Some fifty years ago it began to be apparent, to physicists studying the quantum fabric of the universe, that our known physical universe has, beneath it, another universe. This second universe is peculiar: It is, first of all, nonmaterial; yet, all things material seem to be derived from it, and this second universe has qualities that are quite contrary to our standard notions of time and space. Einstein was among the first to speculate on its potentials, but in the 1920s, the physicist Werner von Heisenberg developed his “uncertainty principle” (or indeterminacy principle) that showed that the laws of physics should be turned into statements about relative probabilities instead of absolute certainties. In 1926, Heisenberg developed a form of quantum theory known as matrix mechanics, which was quickly shown to be fully equivalent to the “wave mechanics” of another noted physicist, Erwin Schrödinger.
This early work opened the door upon the other invisible and nonmaterial universe; matrix mechanics and wave mechanics have fertilized and inspired deeper inquiries into the fabric of this largely unmapped cosmic whole. During the last ten years, many books have appeared that give the layperson a chance of grasping some of the fundamentals involved. Some of these works are: David Bohm’s Wholeness and the Implicate Order; J. L. Mackie’s The Cement of the Universe; Paul Davies’s ironically titled book The Accidental Universe, which marvels at the astonishing precision of the other universe; N. Katherine Hayles’s The Cosmic Web, which is a review of scientific field models relevant to this new universe. Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism is cast against this new universe, as is Rupert Sheldrake’s bestselling book A New Science of Life.
All these books seek to show that the material universe, as we know it in all its divisions, is itself interlocked in some kind of fundamental, invisible harmony that holds it together with precision. This harmony is variously called implicate order, universal glue or cement, wave or field models, a cosmic web, and so forth. But they all refer to the invisible gigantic sub- or second universe that unites all things, great or small, into a “cosmic” whole.
It is worth noting that parapsychologists (especially in the United States) and their financial benefactors have been exceedingly slow in incorporating this new wave of understanding into their workings. When significant funding is made available, the largest portion of it is poured into efforts to continue the process of trying to find ESP within the old reality framework. The physical brain continues to be probed, and electromagnetism continues to be thought of as the carrier of ESP “signals,” while all along, new wave research in physics has virtually established the fact that there is a second reality that operates totally independently of any brain-electromagnetic arrangement. In fact, the old reality pales in importance if the basic elements of the new second reality are grasped.
At first, it might seem that the elements of this second reality will be difficult to grasp. This is not the case at all. The second reality is actually quite accessible intuitively. The only difficulty has been trying to make it fit into the old framework.
As far as extrasensory perception is concerned, one of the first cracks to appear in the standard approaches to ESP and testing for it came in the 1920s as a result of the exhaustive work on telepathy done by the Russian researcher L. L. Vasiliev, a professor of physiology at the University of Leningrad.
Vasiliev’s seminal book was first published in 1962 by the Leningrad State University, with an English version reaching the West in 1976. [L. L. Vasiliev, Experiments in Distant Influence, E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1976.]
Vasiliev’s first hypothesis was to discover how telepathy corresponded to electromagnetism, thought at that time to be the carrier of telepathic signals or information from the brain-mind of a “sender” to the brain-mind* of a “receiver.” [The current trend in brain-mind research has begun to question the idea that the mind is the same as the brain. Vasiliev, along with Penfield in the U.S., was among the first to postulate that the mind might not exist in the brain and parts of the mind might well be external to the physical body. But at least, brain and mind are no longer synonymous, and have broken apart. In terms of telepathy though, it is now thought that brains themselves are not telepathic, but that they do act as a central processing center of information picked up by the mind which is telepathic, so that the subject (receiver) can render his response into language or drawing. In this new context, we are obliged to use the new term “the brain-mind system.” And, in fact, such is the title of Marilyn Ferguson’s very widely read Brain-Mind Bulletin.] The sender was isolated in chambers of different kinds, as was the receiver, and the distance between them was sometimes as great as twelve hundred miles. As Vasiliev put it, the purpose of the telepathy study was to determine, as far as possible, its physical basis. What were the wavelengths of the electromagnetic radiation that produced “mental radio,” the transmission of information from one brain to another?
Vasiliev was eventually able to demonstrate that no electromagnetic shielding could prevent telepathy from taking place. “The analogy between the telepathic sender and a radio transmitter of electromagnetic waves, and the percipient as a receiver is inaccurate.…” Vasiliev also noted instances where “reception” sometimes took place before “transmission.” There was no known apparatus or concept that could account for a telepathic receiver receiving communications before they were sent.
He then speculated that the sender would be something more like a tuning fork by which the receiver’s thoughts are tuned, which is not the result of psychical processes per se, but must be attributed rather to their underlying energetic processes. He concluded that attempting to make telepathy fit into prevailing electromagnetic ideas only made it more problematical. [Ibid., p. 178.]
Between the 1930s and the 1970s, while American parapsychologists were still testing for ESP with cards and dice, and trying to locate a psychophysical link in the brain to explain ESP, the Russians abandoned much of standard parapsychology and brought into existence an entirely new field called “psychoenergetics,” a field that has been hot on the traces of the energetic processes that underlie the psychical processes themselves.
Just how far the Russians had run with their new ball, psychoenergetics, did not become clear in the West until a new book was translated into English in 1982. It was authored by the now famous Russian geomagnetobiologists A. P. Dubrov and V. N. Pushkin. [A. P. Dubrov and V. N. Pushkin, Parapsychology and Contemporary Science, Consultants Bureau, New York and London, 1982.]
As given in their book, the overview of ESP and psi now held by the Russians is quite dissimilar from the prevailing old ideas still clung to by much of the West.
According to our understanding of the universe, which scientists have constructed over centuries and which therefore, seems perfectly natural to us, individual objects exist separately from each other. They connect with other objects only when they enter into a mechanical or field interaction. Similarly, we believe that peoples’ and animals’ brains are discrete and separate from each other. We believe all animals, including man, may interact only through sensory communication: sounds, written messages, special signals, etc.
In recent years, sub-atomic physics have been undermining this concept of nature…. According to this new development in physics, elementary particles have the characteristics of both corpuscular bodies and waves. That is, a particle with wave properties is not located in a particular, strictly determined place; as a wave, it can be all over the entire universe or at different points at the same time.
Obviously, this non-localized physics destroys our customary concept that the universe is made up of discrete objects which occupy specific locations in space and interact only under certain conditions. [Ibid., p. 40.]
Expanding their hypothesis a little further, Dubrov and Pushkin state:
Since, according to the non-localization principle, each element of the universe is present at any point in space (although in a form not directly observable), all a clairvoyant does is bring out, by appropriate focusing, the wave structure of a distant object, which is latently present in any particular point in space. [Ibid., p. 41.]
Don’t let the term “wave structure” throw you. Basically it means that at the energetic level that underlies the physical universe, information is simultaneously available at all places all the time. Now you can be confused, if you choose, but you will be in good company. While advanced physicists feel they can observe this “interconnectedness” with certainty, they, themselves, are at a loss to explain it.
What the gods of physics can’t explain, we don’t need to bother our heads about. But we can observe that what we are calling ESP and psi can and does exist because of this interconnected information principle, providing, as Dubrov and Pushkin indicate, the individual focuses on the simultaneous information available between himself and the desired target.
It is this newly discovered universe of simultaneous information—variously being called “waves” or “energetics”—that constitutes part of that which can be called the second reality. Even with this minimal understanding, we can see why that reality is perhaps the first reality, while the physical-conscious reality we have been living in is the more limited second.
In the psychic sense, what now becomes of great interest is how consciousness gets into shape to attune itself with this vast second reality and its interconnected information. What are the central processes involved?
We will discuss these shortly. But first, if all the above is true (and it is), then obviously a new concept of consciousness is going to have to evolve. Our awareness of the physical universe and our thinking experience of it is not the only form of “consciousness” we possess.
We must also have a second consciousness that integrates with the second reality and with the physical as well. In his delightful hook A New Science of Life, Rupert Sheldrake hazards a description of this consciousness:
Contrary to the philosophy of materialism, the conscious self can be admitted to have a reality which is not merely derivative from matter… . This “common sense” view leads to the conclusion that the conscious self and the body interact…. The conscious self can be thought of as interacting not with a machine, but with motor fields. The motor fields are associated with the body and depend on its physico-chemical states. But the self is neither the same as the motor fields, nor does its experience simply parallel the changes brought about within the brain by energetic and formative causation. It “enters into” the motor fields, but it remains over and above them.… If the conscious self has properties of its own which are not reducible to those of matter, energy, morphogenetic fields and motor fields, there is no reason why conscious memories—for example, memories of particular past events—need either be stored materially within the brain, or depend on morphic resonance. They could well be given directly from past states, across time and space, simply on the basis of similarity with present states…. [“Morphic” refers to the form and structure of animals and plants, while “formative” refers to results of those forms and structures.]
Once the conscious self is admitted to have properties unlike those of any purely physical system, it seems possible that some of these properties might be able to account for parapsychological phenomena which are inexplicable in terms of energetic or formative causation. [Rupert Sheldrake, A New Science of Life, J. P. Tarcher, Los Angeles, 1981, pp. 202-203.]
You will note that Sheldrake is using the term “conscious self” as opposed to the term “consciousness,” which normally refers only to what we are aware of while we are awake.
Sheldrake’s conscious self has been referred to by other names in the past. The most traditional name, outside its theological connotations, has been, of course, soul. But it has also been called over-soul, transcendent ego, the super-self, subliminal ego, divine self, intrinsic real self, integral subconscious personality, dream self, cosmic consciousness, and as we saw in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, Leo Talamonti, the well-known Italian parapsychologist and science popularizer, refers to it as the secret self.
Use whatever label you prefer. I’ve elected to use “deeper self” because it corresponds with the basic ESP core processes, which themselves lie beneath normal waking consciousness.
The capabilities of this deeper self are quite astonishing. We can by now, I think, appreciate how the deeper self participates with the interconnected information universe, the second reality. The deeper self runs on its own realities—which we might assume are in keeping with the workings of the second reality. Waking consciousness has to become “awake” to it through focusing and training. This focusing and training are not normally available in our present culture, but special education and orientation are necessary to begin to incorporate the realities of the deeper self and the second reality into one’s average awareness.
It is the deeper self that is in contact with all else, albeit unknowingly to the normal consciousness. As a result, it emerges into consciousness spontaneously and even then only partly so. An example is that of telepathic bonding between loved ones: a sense of disaster, when one’s kin is in danger. When Napoleon was in his first exile on the island of Elba, one day while talking to one of his generals, he suddenly began to weep for no reason that he or others could understand. It turned out that at that moment, Josephine, his first wife and love, was dying at her home outside Paris.
Dreams are our most common contact with the deeper self and its capabilities. Dream states often solve problems for us, give us glimpses of the future, predict events, link us to loved ones, and warn us of illnesses in the body before symptoms appear. Dreams have other effects that we do not readily understand, but which show the interconnected linkage between individuals. Collective dreams have often been reported, where two people, usually linked by some special bond of affection, simultaneously dream the same event. This sharing of dreams, even if the content is not real, refutes the view that human beings can communicate only by means of language, spoken or written. At the individual level, these dreams also give credence to the concept that within the second reality, the information linkage between two people, between people and animals, or between people and a thing, can become very precise.
But we do not need to resort to dream states to begin demonstrating this linkage. We can use hard-wired ESP to begin to familiarize our conscious experience with it. After a while, the environment of this second reality will become more familiar, and many of you will begin to expand your natural ESP core to include more than just hard-wired ESP trials.
If we accept, as we now should, the existence of the second reality and a deeper self that is hooked into it, then the first issue of psychic perception revolves around those mental elements between the deeper self and waking consciousness that prevent the arrival of second-reality information into that consciousness.
With ample justification, we may assume the existence of a kind of psychic nucleus possessing unsuspected capabilities and powers of comprehension hidden somewhere in the recesses of the total self. With the advancing theories in quantum physics, all the evidence tells us that the rules and processes of this hidden psychic nucleus are quite unlike those of the conscious mind, and do not fit into the ordinary rational categories that characterize it. As the famous Belgian poet and dramatist Maurice Maeterlinck says in his work L’Hote Inconnu (The Unknown Guest): “It takes no account of time and space, those formidable yet illusory walls that prevent our reason from straying: it knows no difference of near or far, present or future, nor is it affected by the resistance of matter.”
We can suppose that if there were no barriers, our everyday consciousness would be flooded with information coming into the deeper self from the second reality in which all information is interconnected. Where, in all our mental apparatus, are those barriers constructed? Many writers, such as Leo Talamonti, have suggested that the conscious mind itself, like a Freudian censor, erects these barriers in order to protect its own functions against wholesale invasion from the supersensory world of the second reality.
This may indeed be the case, at least in part. We are familiar with the fact that the conscious mind does erect barriers. We know that the conscious mind rejects almost everything that doesn’t fit with its “ideal self,” this phenomenon giving rise to the concept of “ego.” Even when people are trying to have an “open mind” they are sometimes incapable of truly having one, especially in the face of information that contrasts too highly with their consciously held realities. In addition, many cultural and value imprints first occur in childhood, and either submerge naturally or are repressed into the unconscious where they continue to exert sway whether consciousness knows it or not.
As far as ESP is concerned, the problem is probably not that simple. It seems that, somehow, the human is constructed so that there are natural barriers between consciousness and an overwhelming influx of second-reality information. Otherwise, our consciousness would be inundated, as if listening to a thousand radio and TV channels simultaneously. We cannot imagine how we would be able to function without these natural barriers.
All the evidence suggests that these natural barriers are not irrevocably solid. Information that is meaningful to an individual often gets through. There are thousands of well-documented cases. In 1517 Pope Pius V in Rome “saw” the defeat of the Turkish fleet at Lepanto and ordered a Te Deum sung before receiving the official news of the victory. It is well attested (by Kant) that Emanuel Swedenborg was clearly aware of a gigantic fire destroying Stockholm hundreds of miles away. These extrasensory intrusions are especially common with sensitive mothers. On Christmas Eve, 1955, a housewife in Salerno suddenly dropped her household chores, hired a car, and drove to Teggiano in the same province. There she found her son lying dead in the gutter after a motorcycle accident. She had “seen” her son crying for help and telling her where his body could be found.
Often these extrasensory intrusions affect the individual’s biosystem, although the exact information does not reach consciousness. People “feel” apprehension, which is unexplained, and only afterward find out a loved one was in danger or dying.
The greater part of spontaneous ESP that comes to be known has to do with circumstances involving a loved one. This indicates that the barriers between the second reality and consciousness select information that is important to the individual, and let it through the barriers. When you think of it, all this suggests some remarkable functions indeed, functions that we all must possess via the deeper self, whose nature is unfamiliar to consciousness.
We can also observe that when waking consciousness does try to focus on the content of extrasensory intrusions, it tends to filter the incoming information through processes that it normally uses to consciously divide information into compartments of understanding. Consciousness tends to try to make information fit into what it already knows. In this way, incoming information frequently gets distorted and misinterpreted, or it is only partially received.
The gifted psychic becomes gifted because to a large degree he or she learns intuitively to attenuate the conscious censoring processes to a point where the incoming psychic information can be more clearly perceived without being seized upon by conscious processes in which it might become misinterpreted or distorted.
In cases of powerful spontaneous ESP, this is somehow brought about naturally. The emphasis of focus shifts naturally from waking consciousness to the consciousness of the deeper self, in many cases without any voluntary reduction of consciousness. For the moments necessary, the deeper self assumes a greater place than does consciousness and the extrasensory experience takes place with astonishing clarity. When this happens, it is practically impossible to insist that the deeper self is unconscious, since during the course of the ESP event it is anything but unconscious.
Thus, in considering the components of the psychic nucleus, the two normal labels—consciousness and unconsciousness—are not going to stand us in very good stead. It is impossible to cram the several different components of an ESP experience into them, and it is appropriate to break down the different ESP aspects into the several components that are obviously involved.
This is best done first by giving an illustration of the entire workings.
Reading upward through this illustration, we can see that psychic information coming in from the second reality must make a path through several levels before it reaches immediate frontal consciousness.
Frontal consciousness is our everyday consciousness. It is governed solely by our senses, and its pinpoint is wherever our senses are focused. When we focus on something in our past—experience or values—we temporarily can lose consciousness of the physical universe around us. We technically become unconscious of it. If we lapse too deeply into reverie, daydreaming, or re-experiencing some past experience, we can lose consciousness of being awake.When the psychic focuses on elements or information of the psychic nucleus, he or she has to penetrate the subliminal barrier that normally acts as a dividing line between the first and second realities. His or her consciousness becomes focused on information that exists well into what we normally refer to as the unconscious.
When we go to sleep, everything above the subliminal barrier closes down, yet we know that dreaming takes place. Dreaming is often precognitive and frequently works on problems that have involved the person during the day.
When high-stage psychic information arrives in one of the consciousness areas, it does so already formed. This indicates that either the psychic nucleus is capable of exact perception of information and presentation of it, or that associated to the psychic nucleus are a series of preconscious processes that accomplish the work for it.
Because of this, the psychic nucleus, the preconscious processes, the subliminal barrier, and the area labeled “past conscious experience” are of primary importance to the study of new wave ESP. Taking all these together, I’ve labeled them the ESP core in my own work, and we will go into its elements in some detail.
We can now see that what we normally call consciousness is a matter of focus, and that focus changes depending on our interest and goals. When we deliberately try to activate an ESP experience, that consciousness can plunge its focus into the deeper self and beyond it into the elements of the second reality. When the deeper self, for reasons we do not understand, decides to send an important ESP event, it can do so of its own accord, sending upward a powerful spontaneous ESP event that can and does attenuate all the other consciousness fluctuations.
People who are already sensitive to their own psychic potentials will find this easier to grasp than those who are culturally and educationally barriered against the reality of the ESP experience. I have personally witnessed several times when trenchant disbelievers could be talked into a well-controlled ESP-viewing experiment. Many of them, to their own amazement, produced a perfectly good result. These results suggest that everyone possesses an ESP core, and that the antipsychic attitude is one that is culturally or educationally acquired.
All talents have a raw core upon which the talents rest. If the core is even partly understood, it can be built upon. Understanding, though, implies a grasp of the intrinsic nature of the core, from which one can arrive at the rules and laws at work within it and gain direction for the subsequent training, practice, and discipline needed to develop the raw core potential into a practical talent.
We are familiar with the word “core” as it applies to apples. But core means a central or foundational part of something around which other attributes are arranged. As it applies to study, the core is the arrangement of a course of studies that combines basic material from separate fields, and aims to provide a common background for all students.
Lifting the word “core” into the area of our discussion, it suggests the center or foundation of a natural talent. The source of natural talent cores is not well understood. They may be genetic, but they may also be part of one’s early environment, upbringing, and education. Certain individuals seem to have a propensity for a given talent. The foundational aspect can be spotted and developed upon.
Talent cores are made up partly of intuition, partly of innate understanding, and partly of a “leaning” in the direction of a particular talent. Creativity is brought into play when one decides to develop upon the core talent. It is quite probable that talent cores are found in everyone, but are more pronounced in certain individuals. One has, so to speak, an “ear” for music, or one doesn’t.
The combined work in ESP of the last fifty years suggests that almost anyone can demonstrate some minimal degree of ESP. This has led to speculation that ESP is a general but undeveloped talent in many more people than was ever thought possible. Such widespread evidence for ESP logically could not exist unless there is a natural endowment for it as part and parcel of the human makeup.
I think we will have to understand that the core itself is something quite intangible. But if it is a universal human endowment, then one should be able to elicit common, respectable effects that can be identified in anybody. Once these common core fundamentals are observed and studied, then understanding the core seems quite simple. Talent cores seem to possess a common integrity to produce similar or identical phenomena in different individuals—even in the raw state.
Once these phenomena are accepted and learned, especially in regard to their similarities—the confusion surrounding them drops away and the simplicities can be seen clearly.
There are many human talents that lie fallow until there is a need to bring them into use. There are also many natural talents that are suppressed because their exercise would conflict with prevailing values.
The study of extrasensory perception has been hindered on both counts. But times are changing; the new transformative, visionary consciousness seeks to rise above the individual, in order to comprehend the greater realities in which earth, its people, and its ecosystem exist.