Boom Times on the Psychic Frontier

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respectable publishing firm of Thomas Y. Crowell will publish the story of yet another psychic healer, the late great Brazilian Arigo, Surgeon of the Rusty Knife. The author: John Fuller, whose pro-flying-saucer books Incident at Exeter and The Interrupted Journey were big sellers during the UFO craze of the 1960s. The afterword is written by Geller Biographer Puharich, who in Uri incidentally tells of extraterrestrial intelligence assuring him that Arigo was not hurt in his fatal car accident in 1971: "There was no pain. He left his body before the crash."

No amount of demonstrable fraudulence, no exposure of the fake, the manipulator, the unscrupulous, ever seems capable of dissuading the true believer in paranormality. James Fadiman, of the Stanford School of Engineering, believes that "most (but not all) parapsychologist demonstrators are also frauds," then gives the classic rationale: "Look at it this way. You think you have powers of clairvoyance, and finally you become a celebrity because of it. You're on the stage or in an experimental situation and sometimes your powers fail you. They do very often for most of these guys. So what do they do? They cheat."

Robert Benchley once separated people into two categories: those who separate people into two categories and those who do not. Parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler of New York's City College is in the first category. Her studies show that on the issue of parapsychology her subjects divide into believing sheep and doubting goats. The sheep almost invariably score higher in tests of paranormal powers. Will the sheep ever convince the ruminating goats? Will the goats ever undermine the faith of obedient sheep? Stranger events have occurred.

Just a few years ago what smug Western rationalist would have accredited acupuncture? Yet the ethnocentric prejudice seemed to disappear almost at a stroke when the Western world learned of James Reston's appendix operation. The New York Times columnist submitted to acupuncture after surgery on a trip to China in 1971; thereafter, the unorthodox method was examined throughout the U.S. Today acupuncture is under intense study at several medical centers. Although some of the beneficial effects of "paranormal" medicine have been acknowledged by Western scientists, they are still at a loss to explain it. It was not long ago that most Americans attributed the feats of Eastern yogis to clever fakery. Yet the new Western experimentation with biofeedback* has shown skeptics that the mind can indeed control what are normally involuntary bodily functions.

The Menninger Foundation in Topeka, Kans., reports incontrovertible proof that subjects trained by biofeedback can control their blood circulation and lower the temperature of the parts of their bodies at will; migraine headaches can be literally wished away. The ancient yogic mythic skills suddenly seem within the grasp of everyone.

Is it not possible that thoughts—like TV programs—can be transmitted from one brain to another? And if enough energy can be generated by the brain, why should it not influence the roll of dice? Or make a plant respond?

In an epoch when the new physics posits black holes in the universe and particles that travel faster than the speed of light, and has already confirmed the existence of such bizarre things as neutrinos