Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

The sittings were held in rooms rented by carrington and his fellow investigators at the Hotel victoria in naples. The researchers carefully searched the rooms before the sittings. When Eusapia came, she herself was carefully searched, to insure there was nothing suspicious on her person or in her clothing. The rooms were on the fifth floor of the hotel, and the windows opened onto the street side of the building. After Eusapia entered the room chosen for the sitting, the door and windows were carefully locked and bolted. There was no possibility that any confederates could have entered. The researchers set up a “cabinet” by hanging two thin black curtains across a corner of the room. Upon a small table in the cabinet, the researchers placed objects such as a bell, guitar, and toy piano. The cabinet was inspected before each sitting, and several times during each sitting (carrington 1931, pp 213–214). The researchers carefully controlled Eusapia’s hands and feet, sometimes tying her to her chair at a table near the cabinet. carrington (1931, p. 215) noted that “all three of the investigators were fully aware of all the methods of trickery employed by mediums in order to release their hands, feet, etc., and were fully prepared to detect it, should trickery of this kind exist.” The researchers recorded levitations of a table and inexplicable movement of objects from the cabinet (Richet 1923, p. 420).

from 1909 to 1910 sittings were held in new York under the supervision of carrington. The usual phenomena occurred under carefully controlled circumstances. carrington (1931, p. 210) observed a table floating out of a curtained enclosure, noting that this happened “in a light sufficiently good to see that the medium was not touching it.” The table rose four feet in the air, bounced five times against a wooden partition set up in the room, and then turned upside down and fell to the floor. While this was happening, Eusapia was being carefully controlled, with some experimenters holding her hands while carrington was holding her feet with his hands.

during one of the new York sittings, the experimenters heard a mandolin playing inside the curtained enclosure. The striking of the strings was coordinated with the movements of Eusapia’s fingers on the hands of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “The mandolin then floated out of the cabinet, on to the séance table, where in full view of all, nothing touching it, it continued to play for nearly a minute—first one string and then another being played upon.” during this demonstration, Eusapia was carefully controlled, her hands tightly gripped by the experimenters.

On another occasion the experimenters placed a flutelike musical instrument on a table in the curtained-off enclosure in the room. Suddenly the instrument appeared floating in front of the face of one of the experimenters. carrington (1931, p. 211) stated: “no one saw how it got into its present position; but there it was, suspended in space, about five feet from Eusapia, and certainly too far for her to reach.”

carrington reported that he had often seen a wooden stool follow the movements of Eusapia’s hand, moving forward, backwards, and from side to side. “during its various movements I repeatedly passed my hand and arm between her hand and the stool, showing that no threads, hairs, wires, etc., were utilized for purposes of its manipulation,” said carrington (1931, p. 121). He reported that sometimes Eusapia transferred the power to him by touching him, and that at such times the stool followed the movements of his hand, until Eusapia removed her hand from him.

Richet himself concluded (1923, p. 421): “I have insisted on the phenomena of telekinesis produced by Eusapia because there have perhaps never been so many different, skeptical, and scrupulous investigators into the work of any medium or more minute investigations. during twenty years, from 1888 to 1908, she submitted, at the hands of the most skilled European and American experimentalists, to tests of the most rigorous and decisive kind, and during all this time men of science, resolved not to be deceived, have verified that even very large and massive objects were displaced without contact.”

Margaret mead (anthropologist)

Margaret Mead (1901–1978), a prominent American anthropologist, endorsed research into the paranormal. In 1942, she was elected as one of the trustees of the American Society for Psychical Research and was appointed to the Society’s research committee in 1946. In 1969, she was influential in getting the American Association for the Advancement of Science to accept the Parapsychological Association as an affiliated organization. She herself was a former president of the AAAS.

Mead believed her own interest in psychical research might be connected with her family history. Mead’s longtime friend Patricia Grinager wrote (1999, p. 195): “Two relatives in the family of her father’s mother possessed psychic abilities: her great-grandmother Priscilla Rees Ramsay and her great-aunt Louisiana Priscilla Ramsay Sanders. Residents who lived around the Winchester, Ohio area a century ago spread word that this mother-daughter team diagnosed illnesses, read people’s thoughts, and levitated tables. Margaret herself had been what her Ramsay kin called ‘a psychic child.’” Mead thought she might be a reincarnated representative of her pair of psychic ancestors (Grinager 1999, p. 195).

Throughout her life, Mead consulted various mediums, psychics, and healers. for example, before she married Gregory Bateson in 1936, she consulted a Harlem medium about him. The medium approved (Howard 1984, p. 187). Toward the end of her life, Mead spent a lot of time with famous psychic Jean Houston and a chilean healer named carmen de Barraza. The first time Mead, accompanied by Houston, met de Barraza, she asked, “do you see more people in the room than we do?” de Barraza said she could. Mead continued, “do you see the tall one and the short one with me?” de Barraza said yes. Mead explained that these were her spirit guides, and that seers in all the tribes she had ever studied had noticed them (Howard 1984, p. 412).

At a conference on holistic medicine in Los Angeles, held shortly before her death, Margaret Mead said: “When I went away to college, I discovered that organized established science objected to the exploration of psychic abilities. Our culture suppresses them. It’s just the opposite in Bali. The Balinese indulge every form of psychic activity: trance, prophecy, finding lost objects, identifying thieves, the whole range from trivial to important” (Grinager 1999, p. 252). Mead went on to say that we should study these capabilities and perhaps find ways to apply them in modern society.

John G. taylor (mathematical Physicist)

In 1974, dr. John G. Taylor, a mathematical physicist at the University of London, appeared with Uri Geller on a BBc television show. Geller had become famous for his ability to bend and move metal in ways that seemed impossible in light of ordinary physics. Taylor’s initial encounter with Geller was deeply upsetting. In his book Superminds , Taylor (1975, p. 49) said: “One clear observation of Geller in action had an overpowering effect on me. I felt as if the whole framework with which I viewed the world had suddenly been destroyed. I seemed very naked and vulnerable, surrounded by a hostile, incomprehensible universe. It was many days before I was able to come to terms with this sensation. Some of my colleagues have even declined to face up to the problem by refusing to attend the demonstrations of such strange phenomena. That is a perfectly understandable position, but one which does not augur well for the future of science.” faced with the challenge of the Geller phenomena, Taylor decided to confront the challenge directly.