Photo by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash
It’s a bit paradoxical, or perhaps not, that in a technologically driven world like the one we live in, more and more people tune into arcane concepts to find a deeper layer of connection with everything. And sometimes technology and obscure disciplines marry, such as online psychics that can give you remote readings.
Many wonder if there’s more to reality than what we can understand with our five senses, while others take it as pure hogwash. Are we truly able to get information using our minds? Can we influence the outcome of situations? Let’s take a look at these fascinating ideas.
Knowing the Future
In 2011, Daryl Bem of Cornell University published a report that showed evidence of retrocausal information transfer, with the potential of rewriting our understanding of science and reality. In a series of experiments, he aimed to find out whether a person can get information from a situation before it happens
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To test this idea, he tasked his subjects to see two obscure images on a computer monitor. They had to guess which image had a hidden extra image. The twist was that the image containing the hidden image would be determined randomly after the subject decided, not before.
The result was that students were right 53% of the time, far above what would be statistically expected. Does this mean you can know the future? These findings naturally have many detractors, and it was a controlled experiment with specifically chosen images.
However, it opens an intriguing possibility that there’s a lot of hidden potential in our minds we still don’t know how to use. Future research might provide more insight into it.
Enter the CIA
Whether the mind can sense or get information from matter has an unlike protagonist, the CIA. This agency has long been involved in parapsychological research. It’s known that in 1973, the CIA conducted rigorous tests of the remote viewing phenomenon together with the Stanford Research Institute.
Remote viewing means getting information from an object or place without the five traditional senses. The subject, called the viewer, has no previous knowledge of it. Incredibly enough, the tests provided statistically significant results.
This is a fascinating topic for the intelligence community and the military. Imagine if you could remotely review what a distant enemy is doing or where hostages are being held. It could revolutionize the way the world works.
However, it’s still a controversial topic. Many criticize this discipline because they feel it lacks proper controls. Also, because every individual and situation is unique, it’s challenging to prove repeatability, a critical aspect of current science.
Sharing Information with the Mind Only
Another hot debate that found its way into science is whether humans have any telepathic ability. But what is it? Telepathy is a non-verbal communication between people, primarily attributed to some kind of mental connection.
One of the most popular ways to study it is with card-guessing games. For example, a person has a deck of cards designed explicitly for telepathy and has to “transmit” the information to a receiver, who has to guess the correct card. Analyses show that the phenomenon might be real.
Another exciting study put it to the test when using a well-known “mentalist” in a telepathic task together with a “non-psychic” subject. The study showed that the mentalist had significant activation of the right parahippocampal gyrus when he was successful. This didn’t happen with the control subject.
It doesn’t automatically mean that telepathy is real, though. The study concludes that there’s a suggestive limbic basis for it, and more research should be conducted.
Find the Magic Within
Ultimately, each person has a unique mind, and it’s up to you to discover any hidden truths in yourself. Whether you’re a believer or a skeptic, there’s no denying that delving into it can provide more insight into your place in the Universe and your inner world, too.
