What is it?

Psychokinesis means quite simply, motion caused by the mind. The term is generally used in parapsychology to describe various phenomena with a physical effect. The word has also been used in general psychiatry as ‘uninhibited maniacal motor response’, which also has been related to poltergeist activity.

Generally speaking if an object moves by itself without any kind of physical interaction then the cause of this could be down to psychokinesis. Hence why we say ‘mind over matter’.

Parapsychologists often split Psychokinesis into that which is larger scale and detectable with the naked eye (e.g. table tipping) ‘macro-PK’, and the smaller scale effects which require statistical analysis to detect them (e.g. the psychokinetic influence on an output of an electronic source of randomness) ‘micro-PK’.

Background & Research

Psychokinesis has been reported throughout history in varying forms and by many different cultures. However due to the obvious difficulty in continuous success and that it completely violates the physical laws, science generally tends to disagree with its possibility. Its random appearance has made it difficult to investigate at a satisfactory level.

However due to the large amount of anecdotal evidence researchers such as J.B. Rhine have done extensive work on it and more recently I believe Dean Radin or at least he’s colleagues at IONS have.

Since around the 1850’s Psychokinesis has been studied in three general areas:

• Spontaneous occurences
• Occurences related to gifted individuals
• Controlled laboratory Experiments

These three areas often overlap though as you can imagine given that the subject is such an unknown.

J.B. Rhine started a long period of Psychokinesis experimental trials in 1934. The trials took place in his laboratory at the Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Rhine was looking to record statistical evidence rather anecdotal accounts similar to which had already been seen. When the initial findings were published in 1943, the statistical significance wasn’t high, but Rhine did discover other things. He noted that the results were generally better at the beginning of the session. This ‘decline effect’ has been called parapsychology’s only truly repeatable experiment, but it must be coupled with the observation of the ‘experimenter effect’, which could make independent replication of psychokinesis experimentation almost impossible.

Psychokinesis research in the laboratory saw some interesting advances with the thanks of Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt used ‘random event generators’ to test subjects ability to alter an unpredictable process, which was radioactive decay by psychokinesis. This almost built a link between psychokinesis and quantum physics.

Many Universities and organisations are still researching psychokinesis, which in my opinion highlights its probable importance as field of research. The statistical evidence for continues to grow similarly to telepathy, but equally remains a controversial subject area.

My Own Experience of Psychokinesis

I have stumbled across psychokinesis a few times in my years of investigation. The first one which springs to mind occurred when I investigated Peterborough Museum. A group of us stood on the first floor attempting to communicate with the spirit of a child. We focused our attention on various objects asking the spirit to move them.Eventually one item rolled briefly, but as soon as we realised it stopped. This could have equally been an occurrence of psychokinesis as it could be a spirit. Had we moved the object with our minds?

Another time was when I investigated the Royal Oak in Swanage. I sat in an attic space with a resident of the pub and we asked the probable spirit to move the trigger object, which was my grandfathers pocket watch. However the unwound watch simply started ticking and the worked for a further 20 minutes I believe. Did the spirit do this or perhaps it was a case of psychokinesis.

It was also at the Royal Oak that during a more spiritual investigation we placed a bottle on a table that we were all (majority of the group were sensitive) sat around. We then concentrated on asking the spirit to move the bottle, but this actually sparked a more philosophical discussion. If the bottle moved, would it be ‘power of spirit’ or ‘power of mind’. These days I would tend to say perhaps the latter.

I have also taken part in various table tipping sessions at various locations over the years. The majority were completely unsuccessful to be fair. However a few of them had a few interesting results with the table tilting, rising and on one occasion walking so to speak. Generally the activity of table tipping is associated with spirit communication, but given the individuals focus on a particular item perhaps this is more psychokinesis.

What Next?

The research of psychokinesis continues today and I believe there is so very much more to this area that begs further research.

I guess there is only one real way to finish this post, next time an object moves by itself or something is affected oddly with no real explanation that fits the physical laws of science. Then perhaps its time to contemplate; was that power of spirit or was it power of mind?