Angela Puca AP: If you are interested in Parapsychology and Academia and how perhaps Parapsychology relates to the scientific world and the scientific community you are really going to enjoy this one.

Hello everyone. I’m Angela and welcome back to my channel, your online resource for the academic study of Magick and Magic practising religions and traditions.

Today I have a special guest here on the channel. Jeffrey Mishlove, author of “The Roots of Consciousness,” “Psi Development Systems,” and the “PK Man.” Between 1986 and 2002 Jeffrey hosted and co-produced the original “Thinking Aloud” public television show. He is past President of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate their inner abilities. He’s a recipient of, as he reports, the only doctoral diploma in Parapsychology ever awarded by a university in the US, which is the University of California Berkeley. He currently hosts the new Thinking Aloud YouTube channel, although Jeffrey’s channel employs quite a different approach than the one I employ here on Angela’s Symposium, as I focus primarily on academic, peer-reviewed literature and research, I know that many of you are not Academics but rather Magic or esoteric practitioners and hence you might be interested in exploring the variety of topics he covers, which usually gravitate within the realm of Parapsychology and Psi phenomena since, as I just mentioned here in Angela’s Symposium, we focus primarily on the academic side of these kinds of topics, we are going to explore, with Jeffrey, relations and contrasts between Parapsychology and academia.

So please help me in welcoming Jeffrey on Angela’s Symposium. Hello Jeffrey.

Dr Jeffery Mishlove JM: Hello Angela, it’s a pleasure to see you again.

AP: Yeah, I’m really happy that you accepted to be here on Angela’s Symposium.

JM: Thank you for inviting me.

AP: Yeah and I already introduced you to my audience and I explained what’s your background and what is it that you currently do on your YouTube channel and in general, even with your books and I’m really fascinated by the fact that even though you’re not an academic you do have an academic background and so I wanted you to kind of tell me something about your PhD experience, researching something so, you know, on the edge or on the fringes.

JM: And actually I didn’t include it in my biography that I sent you but I do teach Parapsychology and of course on William James and the stream of consciousness through an accredited institution called the Holmes Institute, which is for ministers in training with a church currently known as the Centers For Spiritual Living, formerly known as The United Church of Religious Science. So I’m not totally removed from academia but when I got my Doctoral Degree in Parapsychology at Berkeley, the University of California at Berkeley in 1980, it was a very unique degree. It was an individual interdisciplinary doctoral degree in Parapsychology and through a unique program, that I created and I’m the only person who’s ever been through it, so I have a doctoral diploma that actually says Parapsychology right on the sheepskin, so to speak, and to my knowledge, it’s the only such diploma ever awarded by an accredited university anywhere in the world which isn’t to say that there are no other Parapsychologists, there are actually about 400 members of the Parapsychological Association, many of whom have doctoral degrees from universities, particularly in England as a matter of fact but to my knowledge, all of those degrees would say Psychology or something similar.

AP: Oh yeah, I see. I was wondering what you meant by the only doctoral degree in Parapsychology.

JM: Yeah, it’s kind of narrow. It means I have a diploma that has the word Parapsychology printed right on it and because there are many good people in England doing Parapsychological research but I think I have a broader approach because when you go through a program that’s basically experimental Psychology and then you do some Parapsychology experiments you’re not necessarily exposing yourself to the long history of the field or to a study of the many esoteric, mystical, Shamanistic traditions that have well over a thousand years of history of dealing with and exploring and applying what we call Psi or psychic phenomena.

AP: Yeah, that is fascinating. How was your PhD experience?

JM: I’m sorry, could you repeat that?

AP: How was your PhD experience?

JM: Well, I was a student in the program from 1973 after I got my master’s degree in Criminology until 1980. So it was a seven-year program and I can say this, the closer I got to actually graduating the more and more obstacles the university threw at me because they were under pressure from various sceptics not to grant a degree in Parapsychology. And even after I was awarded the degree, various sceptical organizations launched a pressure campaign on the university to get them to revoke it.

AP: Really? Wow!

JM: Yeah, yeah, it was a very dramatic situation. You know, looking back now I can kind of laugh about it but at the time it was extremely stressful. It affected my health as a matter of fact.

AP: I can imagine.

JM: Yeah, yeah, you know, it was not an easy thing. I actually ended up, after I got the degree I was libelled. An article appeared in Psychology Today magazine claiming I probably really didn’t get the degree and if I did get it I certainly didn’t deserve it. So after working for seven years to get the degree I spent another six years fighting a libel suit.

AP: Oh, that’s really, I’m really sorry you had to go through that.

JM: Well you know it was stressful but as I look back now I can laugh at it because I’m living comfortably in a big house in Albuquerque and a lot of, you know, the small fortune that I have really started when I got a cash settlement from that libel suit and was able to invest in real estate in California. So it worked out actually quite well for me at the end of the day.

AP: Yeah, it worked out in your favour even though they, yeah, they didn’t want you to. Yeah, that’s quite fascinating but was it just because of the topic which was in the realm of Parapsychology or was it also because of the methodology you were employing in your doctoral research because what I mean, from what I’ve been trained to understand, academia and academic work and academic research is all about methodology. So as long as you use the proper methodology you really don’t have a subject that is not deserving of scholarly inquiry. So I was wondering did this kind of contrast that you had with the with the institution, was there anything to do with a methodology? Was it about the methodology as well or was it just because it was in the realm of Parapsychology?

JM: Well, there were methodological issues that had to be addressed. I undertook, at the time, something very ambitious which was my doctoral dissertation was on training psychic abilities and actually put together a training program and came up with some very interesting data but at the end of the day, there were some methodological problems. So I had to rework the dissertation and instead of highlighting the experimental work, it became more of a historical overview of methods for training psychic abilities. My dissertation was published as a book eventually, it’s called “Psi Development Systems.” It’s still available at different locations. So if anybody wants to review the methodology it’s all public.

AP: If I recall correctly even Carlos Castaneda encountered difficulties in getting his doctoral research approved and everything. So yeah, seems to be a theme that was going on especially around at that time. Because I think he was also graduating in the 70s, I think.

JM: Yes. Castaneda and I were both students at the University of California at the same time. I was at Berkeley he was at the UCLA campus and both of us had books out.

AP: Have you met him?

JM: No, I never met him. I do know other Parapsychologists who have met him but I think it’s fair to say he had a much higher profile than I had at the time and it was very controversial.

But to your other question, you know, at one point, under pressure the Dean of the Graduate Division actually did issue an order revoking my doctoral degree. And when I met with him at that point, to say you know what’s going on, his reply to me was major universities do not award degrees in Parapsychology. So I had to fight a political battle, of sorts, within the university. I had to go over his head to the Provost of the university at the time who reviewed the work I had done and the fact that I had five professors who had signed off on my dissertation and approved the degree and so at the end of the day the Dean of the Graduate Division was overruled by the Provost. It was then that I would I was libelled and had spent six years fighting a libel suit.

AP: Yeah, as I said, I’m really sorry you had to go through this. Yeah, but I guess that now in hindsight it makes your work, even more, I don’t know, I guess, inspirational, even valuable, we may say.

JM: Well you know in a way it feels sort of lonely because after 40 years still being the only person with a doctoral diploma in Parapsychology one of the reasons I’m putting up five videos every week on the New Thinking Aloud channel is in the hope that in the future there will be more opportunities for students to work in this field and all of the videos will be a legacy, an archive for those people.

AP: Yeah, it is kind of something that drives me as well with Angela’s Symposium and I get a lot of emails and DMs of people saying that they were inspired to do academic work in this kind of field because of my videos. And that really gives my work purpose, I’d say because it was the same for me. Because in Italy this kind of field is not studied at all. I mean in my case it’s Anthropology of Religion on the contemporary western traditions. And so basically I never thought I could have pursued this kind of research from an academic point of view until I saw a Youtube video by Dr Jenny Butler, who’s now a friend of mine and a fellow academic, and I also have an interview with on my channel. And yeah, I saw a video of her and she was talking about her doctor research with Irish Pagans and Witches and it to me was like, what? Can you study that at university? So that was kind of a turning point for me because it really made me realize that it was possible because, at the time, according to what I had around me, I didn’t think that was an option, to be honest. So yeah, I think that our work on YouTube maybe can help people, maybe people that are in places where these subjects are not studied in schools, institutions or universities to see that it is possible to pursue them from an academic point of view.

JM: I think things are opening up slowly but surely because the culture as a whole is changing and more and more people are beginning to explore forms of spirituality other than mainstream conventional religions. So secular spirituality has become a very big movement, for example, not to mention all the interest in Paganism or in eastern religions or in other forms of mind dynamics and Shamanism and so on. It’s a burgeoning social movement.

AP: Yeah, that is true. Even Satanism, as a secular religious movement. Well of course the secular kind of Satanism, yeah that’s also very fascinating. So yeah, I agree with you that it is something that is on the rise. So maybe we will have more and more PhD students and researchers in the future who will study these kinds of topics. So that is interesting. On that note another thing that I wanted to ask you is, since we talked about how difficult it was, your PhD experience doing research in Parapsychology, I wonder what is in your opinion the relation between science and Parapsychology. So do you think that Parapsychology can be considered as a form of science or is it the edges of science or is it something different but related somehow? So how do you position Parapsychology in relation to natural science, I’d say?

JM: Well, you know it all depends on who you talk to. You can go on Wikipedia where the Wikipedia article on Parapsychology says point-blank, Parapsychology is a pseudoscience. On the other hand, in 1969, the American Association for the Advancement of Science formally recognized the Parapsychological Association as an affiliate AAAS member body and that came after a lengthy debate and a vote of the council of the association over a hundred members of the council debated this and voted on it and they determined that the methods used by Parapsychologists are the same methods used in other behavioural sciences. So by that strict standard Parapsychology is a science. I think that it has many components. There’s an applied component, there’s an educational component, a training component, a field-study component but actually, when it comes to double-blind experiments, meta-analysis, improvements in statistical methodology, in many ways, Parapsychologists are more advanced than other areas of behavioural science.

AP: So you do think that it is science. Since you said there are different opinions on the matter, you do endorse this latter opinion this latter view that it is science.

JM: I personally do. The Parapsychologists I know, who are doing experimental work, are as rigorous and dedicated and precise in their work as any other scientist. And in general, one critic put it this way Parapsychologists are light years ahead of their critics, in general, that’s my opinion, that the criticisms of Parapsychology are becoming, I have to say, lame. For example, I did send you, I believe a copy of an analysis of several meta-analyses covering over 1300 experiments in Parapsychology had been published in the American Psychologist, the flagship journal of the American Psychological Association, which has historically been very hostile to Parapsychology. It is the first article they had published in 50 years but it reviewed the experiments and pointed out that they had overwhelming statistical significance, that the methodologies were solid that there are many attempts to model the findings using theoretical physics that is not necessarily inconsistent with what we know about physics today. And so some sceptics saw that article and they tried to rebut it but all they could say is we don’t care how good the experiments are or what the statistics say because we think it’s impossible, so, therefore, we don’t accept it. Which, you know, from a logical point of view is about the weakest response you can provide – confronting empirical data by saying it’s impossible, therefore it doesn’t exist.

AP: So why do you think that people or scholars may just reject outright these kinds of findings? Why do you do that, in your opinion?

JM Why do they do that?

AP: Yes, why do they do that?

JM: Well, I think it’s fair to say mainstream academia comes from, largely, a materialistic metaphysics. It’s an unquestioned metaphysics but they assume that from that point of view these phenomena are impossible. For example, in the late 19th century, when the Society for Psychical Research in England was investigating Spiritualism, for example, a German scientist Hermann von Helmholtz wrote that he didn’t care if all of the members of the Royal Academy were to testify to it, nor even the evidence of his own senses – he wouldn’t believe it. So, you know, there’s a very strong resistance.

AP: That is a very religious statement.

JM: Yeah, it’s a religious belief in what some people would call Scientism that…

AP: Yeah, I address Scientism you know.

JM: But so it’s a sociological phenomenon, to my way of thinking, the resistance. Now some sceptics will point out they have legitimate criticisms of the research which is fine. Parapsychologists are amongst the most critical of the research themselves so decade-after-decade the research gets better and better because of all the harsh criticisms but the findings haven’t gone away – we have 140 years of empirical data now.

AP: Yeah, that is very interesting. Is it open access? The article that you sent me.

JM: I’m sorry it is not an open-access article.

AP: I can still yeah put the reference in the infobox.

JM: You, can put the reference in and you can share it privately on a one-to-one basis with interested people but it cannot be, it would be a violation of copyright to widely distribute it. But it’s there on the record. Any person with access to an academic library can check out the August 2018 issue of the “American Psychologist.”

AP: Yeah and for you watching, you will find the reference in the infobox, as always, the reference to all of the books and the articles we will be mentioning.

JM: I think it’s wonderful that you include these references for people.

AP: Yeah, I think that it is important because especially nowadays with, you know, that we are… over on your channel and do check out the interview that I did with Jeff on his channel. We briefly mentioned ‘close truth’ as this kind of new paradigm in society and so especially now where, you know, people tend to not adhere as much to facts, I think it is extremely important nowadays you kind of back what you say with sources and allow people to evaluate them themselves.

So it is true that I always use academic peer-reviewed sources but people know where the information is drawn from so they can say, oh look, there is this other research which has better methodology or is more updated and I would just say, well done, you are a step ahead of what I’ve studied in the video. So to me, it’s not about conveying absolute truth or knowledge, it is just educating based on literature and proper research and of course, that can be challenged because any knowledge, in my opinion, can be challenged and as long as you have the sources then you can. And it is even maybe it is a good thing to do when you do it in a proper way, of course, not just insulting or saying that you, that I’m going to hell because I talk about these things on my channel, which does happen in the comments. So that is not the kind of criticism and research that I really wish for but it happens too.

AP: Yeah, on the theme of Scientism, which is sort of this kind of belief that people have nowadays, that natural science can answer even the questions that it was not designed to, so even metaphysical questions. So it is kind of almost a religious belief in science as the answer to everything that is. I was wondering does it matter whether Parapsychology is in science or not and if so, why?

JM: Does it matter? Is it really important? I wonder? I think it’s important for researchers who are trying to get funding to do this work. If Parapsychology is accepted as a science then eventually the funding sources that fund scientific research will allocate some money for Parapsychology. But in terms of the general public, it probably doesn’t matter. I think that most people I run into and in fact, not just me, every Parapsychologist I know when we speak in public people come up to us afterwards and say I want to tell you about my experience and they almost always say and I’ve never told anybody else before. The truth is that most people in the public are having paranormal experiences. Surveys suggest that it’s roughly two-thirds of the population are having these experiences and they want to have some sort of a handle. They want to know that, for example, they’re not crazy because oftentimes friends and relatives and teachers and colleagues tend to look at them funny if they talk about their experiences. So many people just refuse to discuss it at all. But you know, it’s hard for them, so at a personal level, I think people just want to be able to know that they’re okay when they have these experiences.

AP: Yeah I think you made a really, really good point there. I guess that my question was like does it make it more true or truer if it is a science but actually you raised points that are besides this and yeah, it is important for people to get funding and we cannot escape the theoretical framework in which we live, which is of a scientific nature and so yeah it is important I guess for people to feel like they are not crazy when they experience these kinds of things and to have access to empirical data which suggests that these occurrences are not as isolated as some people may think.

JM: They’re very widespread and the interesting thing is that on the one hand two-thirds of the public are having these experiences but, on the other hand, in academia people tend not to have them when you’re in this culture that so strongly wishes to emphasize what you call the scientific world view then people, even if they’re having these experiences, they’re really afraid that they’ll lose their job if they talk about it.

AP: Yeah, so what is your hope when it comes to the future of Parapsychology in general and Parapsychology as a scientific discipline?

JM: Well, you know, just yesterday I released a video with a professor from your country, Bernard Carr who taught Cosmology and Mathematics at Queen Mary University of London and he talked about how he’s had a lifelong interest in this area but has always been afraid to share it with his colleagues. Only now, when he’s finally retired, does he feel completely free to open up about these experiences. But he expressed the hope as a scientist that someday science will be able to include consciousness and even include spirit, that we will have you know in physics they’re trying to have a theory of everything which means a theory of the forces known in physics but he said a true theory of everything would also include consciousness and would also include spirit and he thinks this could eventually happen. Maybe in a hundred years or a thousand years, we don’t know but eventually, it would seem to me that it’s a nice goal to think that we might have a unification of all knowledge.

AP: That sounds very Renaissance-like but they were trying to do in the Renaissance, at least in the Italian Renaissance that was precisely what they were trying to do.

JM: And the Italian Renaissance was a cultural high point.

AP: Yeah and I really like the philosophy from the Italian Renaissance because of that and they also included Magic a lot and saw natural Magic as the practical aspect of Natural Philosophy which was, at the time, science. So yeah, I always thought that was really interesting how they kind of conceptualized natural Magic as the practical aspect of science. Like you learn how nature works and then you apply the laws of nature.

JM: That is an ambitious project. I think they did reach a cultural high point. They were very interested in the ancient Hermetic teachings as a sort of a unifying philosophy for both Magic and science, as you put it and I think today parapsychology is actually carrying on that tradition.

AP: Yeah, I’m really happy we had this conversation. It was really interesting. Is there anything else you’d like to share, Jeffrey?

JM: Well I just simply invite viewers of Angela’s Symposium to take a look at new Thinking Aloud on YouTube. I think you’ll find a lot of overlap between the topics we cover and the topics you cover.

AP: Yeah, I’m sure they would really, really enjoy your content and yeah I think that your work on the channel and in general is really valuable and even though I’m doing something quite different, I guess yeah, I guess, some of our intents may overlap, I’d say.

JM: Yeah actually, quite a bit I would say.

AP: Yeah do you think so too?

JM: I do. I think we’re not strictly an academic channel but I tend to emphasize people with an academic background.

AP: Yeah, so thank you very much Jeff for being here and sharing your knowledge. It was really fascinating and I’m sure that my viewers will really like it so, of course, let me know in the comments what you think of what Jeff said and do also check out his channel because it’s really fascinating.

AP: Yeah, so thank you very much Jeff for being here and sharing your knowledge. It was really fascinating and I’m sure that my viewers will really like it so, of course, let me know in the comments what you think of what Jeff said and do also check out his channel because it’s really fascinating.

Bye for now.

CHECK OUT ‘NEW THINKING ALLOWED WITH JEFFREY MISHLOVE’:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFk448YbGITLnzplK7jwNcw

REFERENCES

Cardeña, E. (2018) ‘The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review’, American Psychologist, US, American Psychological Association, vol. 73, no. 5, pp. 663–677 [Online]. DOI: 10.1037/amp0000236.

Mishlove, J. (1988) Psi Development Systems by Mishlove Jeffrey Ph.D., Ballantine Books.

Mishlove, J. (1997) The Roots of Consciousness: The Classic Encyclopedia of Consciousness Studies: Revised and Expanded, Revised edition., New York, Marlowe & Co.

Mishlove, J. (2000) PK Man: A True Story of Mind Over Matter, Charlottesville, VA, Hampton Roads Publishing Co ,U.S.

First uploaded 28 Sep 2020