The Crumbling Paradigm – Part One
Carl Jung (1875 – 1961)
In 1898, two events occurred in the life of Carl Jung which had a profound effect upon the choice of his future career. Although relatively modest in themselves, they were nonetheless sufficiently bewildering to prompt the youthful Jung towards an investigation of the properties of the mind.
When he came to record the story of his life some sixty years later, these two events were still indelibly marked on his memory.
The first event occurred when he was twenty-three years old, and took place during the course of his summer holidays. Jung was sitting in his room studying his textbooks while his mother was in the dining room, knitting. The door to the dining room, which led off from the room in which Jung was studying, stood ajar.
“Suddenly there sounded a report like a pistol shot. I jumped up and rushed into the room from which the noise of the explosion had come. My mother was sitting flabbergasted in her armchair, the knitting fallen from her hands. She stammered out. “W-w-what’s happened? It was right beside me!” and stared at the table. Following her eyes, I saw what had happened.
“The tabletop had split from the rim to beyond the center, and not along any joint; the split ran right through the solid wood. I was thunderstruck. How could such a thing happen? A table of solid walnut that had dried out for seventy years – how could it split on a summer day in the relatively high degree of humidity characteristic of our climate?
“If it had stood next to a heated stove on a cold, dry winter day, then it might have been conceivable. What in the world could have caused such an explosion?” 1
Jung’s astonishment was further compounded by another strange event which happened two weeks later. He arrived home on this occasion at six o’clock in the evening to find his mother, his fourteen year-old sister, and their maid, in a great state of consternation.
About an hour earlier there had again been a deafening explosion emanating from the dining room. This time however, it did not come from the previously damaged walnut table. Instead it had come from the direction of the heavy, wooden sideboard. Although the ladies had checked the sideboard closely, they had been unable to find any sign of a split in the wood. Jung then proceeded to take a closer look.
“I immediately began examining the sideboard and the entire surrounding area, but just as fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior of the sideboard. In the cupboard containing the bread basket I found a loaf of bread, and, beside it, the bread knife. The greater part of the blade had snapped off in several pieces.
“The handle lay in one corner of the rectangular basket, and in each of the other corners lay a piece of the blade. The knife had been used shortly before, at four o’clock tea, and afterward put away. Since then no one had gone to the sideboard.” 1
On the following day, Jung took the pieces of the shattered knife into town, where they were examined by the city’s leading cutler. This man was unable to find any flaw in the steel to account for the broken pieces.
He suggested that in order to have incurred so much damage, the knife would either have had to have been dropped onto stone from a considerable height, or else to have been inserted into a crevice and twisted, breaking off one piece at a time. When told of the circumstances under which the damage had been sustained the cutler laughed and said, “But good steel can’t explode. Someone has been pulling your leg.” 1
Paranormal Anomalies
The perplexity which Jung experienced in trying to discover some rational explanation for these two events was understandable in the light of the scientific theory of his day. At the end of the nineteenth century, physics was still dominated by the idea of the universe as a Giant Machine, in which objects could only be damaged by the impact of forces applied directly to them.
Yet despite the dramatic developments which have since taken place in science, and the insights into the nature of physical matter which the discoveries of quantum mechanics have provided, the conundrum which faced Jung then still challenges us to this day.
For although the New Physics has led to a profound re-evaluation of the physical world, mainstream science has continued to be bound by the old ideas. The majority of scientists today continue to be guided by the signals of their senses, and to regard the world in a totally material and objective way.
Because of this, the mysterious explosions which troubled Jung still continue to defy scientific explanation. They remain anomalies – events which lie outside the boundaries of the current scientific paradigm – and which are therefore overlooked by “normal” scientists.
However, these anomalies have begun to proliferate until they now embrace such a wealth of extraordinary material, that this anomalous data can no longer be ignored. Science has become forced to take note of these anomalies, and leading physicists have recognised the need to incorporate them within the overall scientific scheme.
On March 10, 1965, the American psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz interviewed a thirty year-old housewife who described to him an unusual event that had taken place during the previous week. The woman told Schwarz that she had had her kitchen renovated some two years earlier, in which certain decorative tiles had been placed by the sink and stove.
These tiles were coloured pink and each contained a fruit motif which was baked into the tiles themselves. On the previous Saturday evening, the housewife recalled that she had entered the kitchen and was amazed to see that, in place of the pictures of the peaches which had previously been incorporated in four of the decorative tiles, there now appeared pictures of a baby superimposed on the tiles.
Each of these four tiles contained the same face of a child with a birthmark on its head. This birthmark happened to coincide with a similar mark which her son Roderick had been born with. Thinking that she might be experiencing a hallucination, she called her husband to see this strange phenomenon. He confirmed what she had seen.
Subsequently, every member of the family together with friends, neighbours and colleagues, examined these tiles. All confirmed the presence of the faces, although none had ever noticed anything resembling a face in any of these tiles before. These faces were not painted on the tiles, and they subsequently resisted all efforts to remove them through abrasion or washing. 2
As in the case of Jung’s shattered knife and dining room table, several physical objects had undergone a transformation which defied conventional scientific explanation. Short of fraud, for which Dr. Schwarz could find no evidence, the appearance of the faces that were now superimposed upon the tiles could not be explained by any of the known laws of physics.
This incident was, and still remains, an anomaly to be added to the burgeoning collection of what Charles Fort once called “the dammed” – those incidents that defy common explanation.
When Paul Brunton visited India in the early years of the twentieth century in search of the mysterious and bizarre, he happened to meet a rather unsavoury character, a former clergyman, who had been expelled from the church.
Brunton discovered that this man possessed a strong hypnotic power which he was abusing, by exploiting credulous people and obtaining money from them by unscrupulous means. He discussed this situation with an Indian friend who was versed in the occult arts. The Indian agreed that the defrocked priest should be prevented from exploiting gullible people any further, and resolved to place a curse on the man.
When Brunton went to look for the clergyman a short time later, he was directed to a hall where the man was giving a demonstration of his powers. When Brunton entered the hall he was confronted by a scene of wild confusion. He later described the cause of this confusion.
“They had all been sitting peacefully upon their chairs listening to their leader’s lecture when all the electrical lamps had suddenly exploded with the force of bombs, shattering glass in every direction. The hall had instantly become dark and amidst the resulting gloom and chaos they had heard their leader fall heavily to the platform floor, uttering loud cries of fright.” 3
The plan apparently worked, for the defrocked priest was later persuaded to curtail his activities and leave town. Now while this event may easily be dismissed as mere coincidence, for power failures are not uncommon in India, they do not usually cause electric bulbs to explode “with the force of bombs”.
Clearly some extraordinary surge of power seemed to have been responsible. Yet what struck Brunton so forcibly on this occasion, and which qualified this event for inclusion in the growing body of anomalous behaviour, was the timing of this incident.
“And now for the curious point of the story. The hall had been plunged in darkness at the very moment when my Indian friend’s rite of cursing reached its culminating point!” 3
Phone Calls from the Dead
In 1975, California parapsychologist Scott Rogo was lying comfortably on his living room couch. It was four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon. Although he knew that he had to place a telephone call to the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute at that time, because he was listening to the radio and dozing, he felt it was too much trouble to get up and make the call.
Two hours later, however, while he was still lying on the couch, his reverie was disturbed by the insistent ringing of his telephone. Reluctantly, Rogo roused himself and answered it.
“When I picked up the phone, I was surprised to hear the voice of a young research assistant who worked at the Neuropsychiatric lnstitute.
‘I’m answering your message’ he said.
‘What message’? I asked, a bit puzzled.
‘The call you made to us at four’, he continued, equally bewildered.
‘What do you mean? I didn’t call you’, I added a bit nastily.
‘Oh? I just got in and found a message on my desk saying that you called at four and wanted us to return the call’.
To say the least, I was thunderstruck. Indeed, I had wanted to phone UCLA at 4.00 that day and I had actually wanted to speak to this assistant’s boss. But I most assuredly had never made the call.” 4
This spontaneous communication involving a real, physical telephone system so astounded Rogo at the time, that he began an investigation to see whether similar events had ever occurred to other people.
His enquiries led him to uncover even more extraordinary cases. He found, for example, that not only were there recorded instances of strange messages that had been intercepted from living people, but also some from those who were already dead.
In 1959, a Swede by the name of Friedrich Jurgenson claimed to have discovered strange voices on his tape recorder while he was out taping bird calls, and again while recording various radio broadcasts. Another European, this time a German named Konstantin Raudive, later announced that he too had been successful in recording on tape strange voices which allegedly belonged to people who were deceased.
In another series of experiments conducted in America, both Attila von Szalay and Raymond Bayless succeeded in obtaining recordings of strange, discarnate voices. 5 Berthold Schwarz also reported a case where a friend of his happened, on a sudden impulse, to record a message on his tape recorder. The message was as follows:
“Please, Spirit, help us. Please guide me. Dear Spirit, soon help me. Dear Helpful Spirits, dear Guiding Spirit, spirits of the so-called dead, please help me. Please guide me. Please speak up that I may hear you clearly on this tape.”
When this man replayed his recorded message, he was shocked to hear the voice of his late father, whose voice could be heard over the original message, saying, “Please help me please guide me. Help.” 6
When Rogo pursued these investigations, he found that not only were certain individuals successful in obtaining recordings of discarnate voices on tape recorders, but that they were also able to receive messages via an astonishing range of other electrical equipment as well.
He found that ever since radio telegraphy had been invented, there had been enigmatic reports of odd messages that had unexpectedly been received. Unusual voices and messages had also been reported from radios, gramophones and telephones. These messages ranged from simple letters, to signals in Morse Code, to actual voices.
These voices were frequently clearly heard, and in many cases were recognisable to those receiving the messages. Rogo found that these unusual messages were not only received through accepted modes of communication, but via odd conglomerations of equipment as well. These homemade contraptions seemed equally adept at attracting the attention of the denizens of the dead.
In one instance which Rogo uncovered, a London solicitor by the name of David Wilson elicited strange messages in 1915 from a device which he had personally concocted. It consisted of a battery hooked to an electrical detector, which in turn was attached to a galvanometer.
In 1921, another innovative investigator, F.R. Melton of Nottingham, designed a device which he called a “psychic telephone”. It consisted of some telephone apparatus hooked to an amplifier and placed in a small box. Rogo described another device which again succeeded in attracting mysterious responses. This mechanism was invented by a man named Henri Vandermeulen, and was actually granted a patent by the Belgian Government.
“The apparatus consisted of two glass prisms coated with resin; an electric bell; and a dry cell. All these components were connected by various wires. A light metal triangle was balanced between the prisms, next to one of the connecting wires. The bell would activate when the metal triangle was pushed (physically that is) into contact with the positive connecting wire, thus closing a circuit between the component parts.” 7
In yet another instance, a Mrs. L. N. Geldert received messages over a wireless set that was not plugged in at the time, which she claimed originated from her son Bob who had been killed in action during the First World War. Geldert personally described this saga in a book entitled Thy Son Liveth. 8
Matter and Mind
The large body of evidence that Rogo has accumulated is data which continues to remain anomalous. It is completely at odds with the laws of conventional physics. Mainstream scientists still continue to cling tenaciously to the Cartesian divide, in which all the phenomena of life are neatly separated into two distinct categories of matter and of mind.
They do not welcome therefore, data which suggest that in some perplexing manner, the sphere of mind is able to intrude into the realm of matter. Conventional scientists continue to function today in the firm conviction that these two spheres are inviolable, and that the subjective properties of the mind are entirely divorced from matter, and are in no way able to influence it.
It remains a fundamental article of faith among conventional physicists, rooted in the classical tradition, that matter can never be influenced by such ephemeral things as emotions or thoughts. The problem for such physicists, is that the body of anomalous data that conflicts with this view continues to increase.
As it does so, the natural response is to repress this unwelcome evidence with even greater force. The drawback in adopting this defensive strategy is that the existing scientific paradigm necessarily becomes even more rigid, and thus becomes even more vulnerable to revolutionary change.
There is growing evidence to suggest that the minds of certain people not only do influence the sphere of matter in ways which are highly unconventional, but that they do so in ways which are often distinctly hostile.
It remains a commonly reported phenomenon that certain people relate badly to their wrist-watches, which never seem to function properly while they are being worn. Yet when these same wrist-watches are later examined, they are found to be in excellent working order.
Other people manage to exert inexplicable effects on the operation of machinery, particularly in the field of electronics and computers. These people have come to be categorized as “machine unfriendly”. But if some people exert an influence on matter that is less than benign, other have an effect that is downright lethal.
In a Vancouver news report, a twenty-five year-old housewife by the name of Jackie Priestman, who was then living in Stockport, Cheshire, had put out of action sixteen vacuum cleaners, plus an assortment of hairdryers, lawnmowers, light bulbs, kettles, clocks, heaters and washing machines over a four year period.
The report noted that whenever she approached a radio or television set, its reception was adversely affected. Her husband Paul, who was himself a qualified electrician, was quite unable to account for these extraordinary events. “It’s got beyond a joke,” he complained, “an electric iron caught fire in Jackie’s hand the other day, and the central heating went crazy. We’re both mystified.” 9
In another case that came to my attention, a personal friend had an episode in which household appliances, electrical and mechanical devices, simply self-destructed around her. During one twenty-four hour period, her telephone refused to ring for incoming calls and crackled noisily with static whenever she tried to make an outside call.
Her television set suddenly malfunctioned, as did her stereo, laser disc-player and tape recorder. The charge in her car battery drained completely, preventing the car from starting. When she tried to get out of the car, the car doors mysteriously jammed.
Later, upon entering an elevator, she found that it ascended and descended completely four times without stopping. When it finally did come to a halt, the elevator doors refused to open.
The ability to manipulate objects by means of mental concentration is now a widely reported phenomenon. Former President of the Cambridge University Society for Psychical Research, Dr. A. R. G. Owen, described experiments which he conducted personally with a subject named Jan Merta in Toronto in 1971.
For these experiments, two chicken feathers were joined together by their quills, and then hung by a nylon thread inside a glass jar, which was two feet (60 centimetres) high and one foot (30 centimetres) square. The thread was then taped to a glass plate which covered the opening at the top of the jar.
Air was prevented from entering the jar by greasing the contact between the plate and the rim of the jar. Although some random motion still persisted after the jar was sealed, this gradually ceased after a short period.
Owen described how Merta stood about six feet away from the jar, and alternately raised his right and left hand. When he raised his right hand, the feathers swung to the right, and vice-versa. In each case the feathers were allowed to come to a complete halt before Merta initiated any subsequent movements. Dr. Owen commented on what took place.
“Throughout, Jan was not only remote from the apparatus, but also physically quite passive. In one series of demonstrations he did not move head, body or hands, and did not himself announce the expected direction of movement. The feather moved to the right or left according to the requests of the observers, which they made to Jan.
“On some occasions when the feather had just completed the movement which it had made according to the instructions, Jan was asked to continue swinging it in the same direction and it picked up speed again. On other occasions Jan was asked to stop and reverse the motion just after it had started, and this he successfully did.
“In a final series, Jan sat, completely passive, about twenty-five feet away from the jar with his hands clasped behind his head. The responses of the feather were no less definite than the others at closer range.” 10
Continued in Part Two
References
1 Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections“, recorded and edited by A.Jaffe, Pantheon Books, New York, 1961, pp. 105-106.
2 Berthold Schwarz, “Psychic-Nexus”, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1980, pp. 146-147.
3 Paul Brunton, “A Search in Secret Egypt”, Dutton, New York, 1936, p. 89.
4 Scott Rogo and Raymond Bayless, “Phone Calls from the Dead”, Berkley, New York, 1980, pp. 113-114.
5 Scott Rogo, “Paranormal Tape-Recorded Voices: A Paraphysical Breakthrough”, in “Future Science”, edited by John White and Stanley Krippner, Anchor, New York,1977, pp. 451-464.
6 Berthold Schwarz, “UFO Dynamics”, Rainbow, Moore Haven, 1983, p. 264.
7 Scott Rogo, “Phone Calls from the Dead”, op.cit., p. 167.
8 Ibid, p. 146.
9 Quoted from “Vancouver Province”, Vancouver, British Columbia, January 18, 1983.
10 A.R.G. Owen, “Psychic Mysteries of the North”, Harper & Row, New York, 1975, pp. 155-6.
