Psychic Research – for the Skeptic in You

Psychic Research for the Skeptic in You – We all have skeptical thoughts. As a professional psychic who’s given thousands of readings over 30 years, I appreciate the skeptic in me.

My skeptical mind has kept me safe. It has helped me discern truth from fiction.

It has prevented me from being taken advantage of.

It has safeguarded me against over-confidence.

The fact is, I actively encourage my clients and students to be skeptical.

And this means: asking questions and not taking everyone’s word or ‘fact’ at face value.

Particularly when developing intuition or seeking to join a spiritual group.

Even connecting safely to spirit requires you to be skeptical and questioning (– see my video).

Psychics and other natural healers have had a hard time since the scientific revolution of the 17th Century.

Critical analysis of our field can be difficult to find. There are black holes in scientific research on parapsychology.

While science struggles to explain the workings inside an atom, there are other natural phenomena that – so far – cannot be measured or understood by scientific means.

The curious must must follow breadcrumbs to find more rational arguments explaining psychic phenomena and alternative / complementary healing methods.

Before we go further, a word of caution…

Psychic Research for Your Inner Critic

Don’t fall down a psychic research rabbit hole and start to doubt your inherent intuitive abilities.

There’s a wall of negativity out there.

Some of the reasons you shouldn’t let fear crush your intuitive or professional development include:

• Vocal skeptics very rarely conduct research, empirical analyses or studies to assess their own alternative explanations.

• Many scientists sermonise about fields they’ve not studied or evaluated systematically. Despite their strong views, they often lack any training, experience or knowledge of parapsychology, energy medicine or psychology.

• Some academics cite lack of evidence as sufficient proof of non-existence of psychic phenomena.

• Other skeptics avoid questioning their own assumptions and biases relating to the psychic field. For example, they believe unquestioningly that that psychic workers are quaint and uneducated, then hypothesise from there.

• Many stereotype psychic workers and energy healers in the same group as fraudsters who prey on the vulnerable.

• Skeptics also assume that most psychic workers are motivated by money, as opposed to a desire to help.

• Debunkers use threatening and venomous rhetoric towards academics and scientists who dare to explore psychic phenomena or energy medicine seriously.

• DIY teams of vigilante debunkers systematically edit the complementary and alternative health pages of Wikipedia, including the pages of academics and scientists who offer different worldviews. Their edits are characterised by the insertion of the word ‘psuedoscience’ or ‘psuedoscientist’ as well as other slurs and smears.

• Scientist and academics usually criticise psychic work and complementary therapies without consideration of and context against the failing medical industrial complex.

• Similarly, authors like Chris Carter argue that the existence of psychic phenomena challenges fiercely held worldviews more rooted in religious, philosophical and materialist idealogy than in hard science.

• Refusing to acknowledge stigma, critics assume the clients’ of psychic workers lack critical thinking. Or that they simply want ‘to believe’ in someone telling them ‘everything will be okay‘.

Some of the most impactful psychic readings I’ve received felt like a slap in the face. A psychic reading can be a wake up call and does not always tell you what you want to hear!

Psychic Research Starting Points

Here’s a few psychic research and spiritual / science resources, that you may find interesting to explore…

Science and Psychic Phenomena by Chris Carter. Chris Carter received his undergraduate and master’s degrees from the University of Oxford. His book is an argument against the science community’s vehement denial of psychic phenomena. It provides reproducible evidence, from scientific research, that telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis are real.

The Scientist and the Psychic by Dr. Christian Smith is a memoir about a scientist’s life with his famous psychic mother and his revealing exploration of the paranormal realm. Dr Christian Smith holds a doctorate in the molecular and cellular biology of cancer from the University of Toronto, has over twenty-five years of experience as a research scientist. Since 2006, he has been the Manager of Research Operations at the world-renowned Brain Tumour Research Centre in Toronto.

Internationally acclaimed neurosurgeon Dr Eben Alexander’s was in a coma for seven days. Before he underwent this near death experience, he could not reconcile his knowledge of neuroscience with any belief in heaven, God, or the soul. He writes about how that has now changed in his New York Times Best Selling book: Proof of Heaven: A neurosurgeon explores the mysteries of the afterlife and the truth about what lies beyond.

An interesting article in Psychology Today about mainstream scientific materialism versus parapsychology, by Steve Taylor Ph.D. Doctor Taylor is the author of Spiritual Science and holds the view that: “…psi phenomena such as telepathy and precognition are real.”

Daryl Bem Proved ESP Is Real – Which means science is broken. A 2017 article on Slate about the author of Real Magic.

Real Magic (Random House USA Inc, 2018) – The chief scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) turns a critical eye toward the practices of telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and psychokinesis. Are such powers really possible? Science says yes according to author Daryl Bem.

Psychic Research + Spiritual Thought Leaders

Rupert Sheldrake PHD is well known for his spiritual theory of morphic resonance. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge University, where he was a Scholar of Clare College, took a double first class honours degree and then studied philosophy and history of science at Harvard University, before returning to Cambridge, where he took a Ph.D. in biochemistry (1967). He is the author of 90 scientific papers and 9 books, and the co-author of 6 books. You can see a list of Rupert Sheldrake’s science + spirituality books here.

“…[healthy skepticism] involves questioning new ideas, looking critically at evidence, but includes an open-mindedness and willingness to accept new ideas or evidence if the case is persuasive… this healthy skepticism is an essential part of scientific discovery. However, there is another kind of skeptic, the dogmatic skeptic or scientific fundamentalist, who is more concerned to defend a materialist ideology than to pursue scientific inquiry in an open-minded manner.”

Rupert Sheldrake PHD

Doctor David R. Hawkins, M.D., PhD. is an internationally renowned spiritual teacher, psychiatrist, physician, researcher, lecturer and developer of a Map of Consciousness®. This map resulted from over 250,000 muscle testing calibrations, spanning 30 years of multiple research studies, conducted by his Institute for Spiritual Research.

New York Times best selling author Dr. Lisa Miller PHD founded the Spirituality Mind Body Institute at Columbia University. She is Director of Clinical Psychology and Associate Professor at this graduate school with a mission to generate and use science to guide a more spiritually supportive society. Her organisation works closely with the US Military, US Department of Health and Human Services, K-12 schools and higher education, environmental initiatives, and private and non-profit organisations. She writes about psychology and spirituality in her book The Oxford Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality (Oxford University Press, 2013).

More Spiritual Academics, Scientists and Doctors

Doctor Judith Orloff MD is the New York Times bestselling author of The Empath’s Survival Guide: Life Strategies for Sensitive People, Thriving as an Empath, and Emotional Freedom. She is a psychiatrist, an empath and intuitive healer, and is on the UCLA Psychiatric Clinical Faculty.

Dr. Candace Pert was an internationally recognised neuroscientist and pharmacologist who discovered the opiate receptor, the cellular binding site for endorphins in the brain, and published over 250 research articles. Her many books and publications included Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine. She was a significant contributor to the emergence of Mind-Body Medicine as an area of legitimate scientific research in the 1980’s, earning her the titles of “The Mother of Psychoneuroimmunology” and “Goddess of Neuroscience”

Doctor Norman Shealy, MD, PhD is the ‘Father of Holistic Medicine’. His studies of autogenic training and biofeedback methods led him to conclude that self-regulation is the single most important thing anyone can do. His organisations provide biofeedback, autogenic, auto-suggestion, humanistic psychology and sound technology training to help people reduce stress, anxiety and depression. He’s written many books on energy medicine.

Stem cell biologist and bestselling author of The Biology of Belief, Dr. Bruce H. Lipton, PhD studied the principles of quantum physics and went on to research at Stanford University’s School of Medicine. His work led to new understandings of the molecular pathways connecting the mind and body, and how our beliefs affect us at a cellular level.

Psychic Research Organisations

The Society for Psychical Research was founded in 1882 at Cambridge University, UK. It was the first UK organisation to conduct scholarly research into human experiences that challenge contemporary scientific models. Areas covered included: Thought-Transference, Mesmerism, Mediumship, Reichenbach Phenomena (– also known as Odic Force), Apparitions and Haunted Houses, and Séances. Check out manuscripts in the Cambridge University Library.

Psychic Research Conclusion

Don’t be intimidated by fundamentalists from the church of skepticism.

Be open minded and reach your own conclusions.

Be cautious and skeptical, but don’t allow your heart to be closed by dogma.

Viktor Schauberger (1885-1958), an Austrian forest caretaker, naturalist, scientist, philosopher, inventor and biomimicry experimenter, put it well:

Closing on a more philosophical note, I wonder if we humans will ever have the intellectual capacity to comprehend all of our mysterious universe.

Surely, we’re just like a bigger version of ants trying to cross a road without getting run over?

We wouldn’t expect a humble ant to understand the inner workings of a car.

Isn’t it arrogant to assume we humans have the inbuilt equipment required to translate all of our mysterious universe into hard facts?

Article + Images Copyright Amy Garner 2021. See my Copyright Notice and Disclaimer here.

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