Psychics, Science & Gambling

" Sir Isaac Newton secretly admitted to some friends: He understood how gravity behaved, but not how it worked!"—Lily Tomlin, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe.

Psychic functioning

I once took a course that promised to teach psychic functioning. They kept their promise and I enjoyed the course, but their task was easy because they knew something most people who take the course don't, that is, that we all function psychically, but for one reason or another don't recognize it.

The course took a very pragmatic approach. It didn't claim to prove psychic functioning exists, it simply taught it. At the end there was a simple test. If you didn't feel you had performed psychically, then you could have your money back. (In fact, when I took the course they returned the money if you were not satisfied in any way.)

The course taught meditation techniques that are used to perform psychically. It also taught what it called active meditation. In active meditation you visualize what you want to happen in life, and often, miraculously, it happens.

As I was experimenting with psychic functioning I had a number of remarkable things happen. They ranged from simple tricks such as cutting a deck of cards at the jack of diamonds on demand to major miracles like curing leukemia.

The leukemia story is a typical psychic story with proof for the believers and plenty of room for doubt for the skeptics. A friend's boyfriend was diagnosed with Leukemia and given six months to live. This friend did not believe in psychic nonsense but she was real scared and asked for help. A few of us meditated and actively visualized the leukemia leaving the boyfriend's body. A month later the doctors examined him, tested him and said they were really sorry, they must have made a mistake with the earlier diagnosis because he was healthy.

In a less dramatic case a neighbor's daughter had a bed wetting problem to an age that started worrying them. I meditated and visualized her problem disappearing and the bed wetting stopped the next day.

I have stories of failures as well. A scientist could not prove psychic phenomena by my experiences, but there was always a sense that something different was happening with the successes that convinced me it was real.

That something is not explained by cause-and-effect reasoning. I do not believe, for example, that my active meditation on the bed wetting problem caused the bed wetting to stop. It is more that my meditation and the end of the bed wetting happened at the same time. Not coincidentally, but connected as in Reflection.

The bed wetting incident filled many needs. The neighbor's daughter needed to get past that phase, and this was a catalyst. I needed to learn more about psychic functioning, and my being able to help showed me more of the magic. The neighbors were fascinated with, but skeptical of psychic phenomena and needed a close hand example of it. These same types of interconnected needs were at work in the leukemia story as well as in my many other experiences, both positive and negative.

The successful psychic healing experiences are simply another example of the helper/helpee relationships discussed earlier. I needed to learn about the mind and its affects on reality, and I needed the successes to bolster that understanding just as I needed the engineers to come to me with problems for which IEFBR14 was the answer. And, just as the engineers needed my help, the people who came to me for psychic help needed my help. As I began to understand both the power and the limitations of psychic functioning my reality was no longer filled with psychic wonders, just as I when I fully understood IEFBR14 I stopped getting asked questions for which it was the answer.

I learned of those limits when wrestling with those colds I got at my parents. I used active meditation to visualize the colds disappearing, and could, with will power and meditation, defeat the colds—but only for awhile, as they kept recurring. It was only after realizing the underlying need for the colds that they disappeared—without the need for active meditation.

This difficulty with psychic functioning as a way to cure is an example of a more general phenomena. Any cure, whether magical or non-magical, is more likely indicative of change rather than an instrument for change. For example, I have an on-again off-again relationship with yoga. When I do yoga I feel better. It would be easy for me to extol the virtues of yoga for making you feel better, but when I don't feel good, I don't feel like doing yoga. There seems to be a natural cycle of emotional ups and downs. My desire to do yoga follows that flow. It is not at all clear whether yoga makes me feel good, or feeling good makes me want to do yoga.

The same is true with all remedies. We sense the cycles of our lives and know when we are ready for change. At those times we look for some catalyst for change, such as yoga or vitamins or a cure from the doctor. The "cure" works, but it is not causal. Rather it works because it is in harmony with changing inner needs.

Science

Science and logic have become so prominent in Western thought that they are, in a way, the dominant religion of our time. The belief in underlying logical explanations of things is so strong that it even blocks scientists from accepting scientific evidence that does not have a logical explanation.

This was illustrated by the debate over the theory of continental drift. The theory states that the continents were originally all joined, and have gradually drifted apart over time. The origins of the theory are apparent simply by looking at a globe. The continents appear to be related in jigsaw puzzle fashion.

The first scientists to propose the theory accumulated solid scientific evidence, such as rock formations and fossils that existed in corresponding pieces of the jigsaw puzzle, showing it was more than just the shapes that matched up, but these first scientists were ridiculed. Their evidence was always explained as bizarre coincidence and never accepted as proof of the continental drift theory.

As explained in Jay Gould's book, Ever Since Darwin, the reason for the ridicule was simple. The opposing scientists could not imagine any mechanism by which the continents could drift. As far as anyone knew at the time, the continents were solid pieces connected to the solid core of the earth, and anyone who suggested they could move must be nuts, even if the evidence indicated it was true.

The minority group of scientists who argued in favor of continental drift did not know how it happened, but insisted that it happened. They were on the losing side of the argument, since the bulk of the scientific establishment thought they were nuts.

Then a new theory about the interior of the earth was developed, called plate tectonics. This new view of the earth saw the center as not solid, but as made of molten lava. The continents are part of a crust floating on the molten center. They could move. Suddenly the scientific climate swung completely around. All of the evidence was trotted out again as proof conclusive of continental drift and the theory was universally accepted in the scientific community.

If the scientific community won't accept scientific evidence it doesn't believe in, how then can inexplicable non-scientific evidence have any credibility with scientists, and thus the majority of our society?

Today, while there is evidence for psychic phenomena, religious experience, and Reflection, there is no logical or scientific explanation. As such they are not accepted by a significant portion of the scientific establishment. There are many who have seen the evidence and believe, but, just as the scientists who first believed in continental drift were, they are ridiculed by the more rational elements of society.

Being closely associated with the scientific and logical world, I have always been fascinated by how much the scientist's belief in logic resembles the religious zealot's belief in a supreme being. My favorite example of this was a conversation overheard at party.

Two individuals were arguing about the existence of God. One was extremely smug in the power of his logic to interpret the world. He felt there was no God. The other asked him a hypothetical question: "What if when you die you find out you were wrong and are confronted by the supreme being?"

He replied: "If that is the case, I will simply inform him he did not provide me with sufficient evidence to verify his existence."

He was serious. Even hypothesizing a supreme being he insisted the supreme being would bow to the power of his logic.

And yet, his logic and science are weak. A good scientist always examines the basic assumptions. In this case, what if logic does not explain everything? What if there are phenomena which the logical portions of the brain simply cannot understand? Is it logical to assume that all is logical? In fact it is not and, ironically, this has even been proved logically. Gödel showed that all logical systems must contain inconsistencies.

The ability to reason is a capability of human beings that makes it easier to survive. It is as integral to our ability to compete with other life forms as a shark's teeth are to its. Looked at this way, it is just a tool for survival.

But what if cause-and-effect reasoning is not appropriate for understanding the bigger issues of the cosmos? It is useful for planting, harvesting, and hunting but not necessarily for understanding God. Yet it is how our brains work.

Science itself has produced a number of theories and observations which today cause it to begin to question its own logical foundations. It might be the case that the scientific mysteries of the universe are not explained by cause-and-effect either. Often the common sense experience of our senses turns out to be wrong, scientifically. Who would think we are mostly just space? (Our atoms are mostly space.) Who would believe that our clocks go slower when we go faster and that our mass increases? (Relativity.) Who would believe that logical systems cannot be perfect and always contain paradoxes? (Gödel's Theorem.) Who would believe it is theoretically impossible to precisely measure anything? (Heisenberg's principle.) Scientists today are coming up with bizarre theories of the universe that include changing directions for the arrow of time and up to eleven dimensional space.

Some scientists have even presented anthropocentric theories of the origin of the universe that sound a lot like Reflection. The Universe is the way it is because if it weren't we wouldn't be here to question it.

Even our logical scientific theories are not always based purely on scientific evidence, but rather are elaborate structures designed to support some deeper, intuitive belief. That is, often times logic isn't used to reach an understanding of something, rather logic is used to defend an already held belief.

This phenomenon was documented in Ever Since Darwin. Jay Gould describes old theories on race in which whites were supposedly superior to blacks, and he ties these theories directly to the racist beliefs of the time. He then ridicules them and presents his own theories. He scientifically shows that race should not be used to subdivide any species, let alone humans. He proves his point with studies of snails.

But much as I admire Jay Gould, and in fact concur with his sociological beliefs, he too has used science and logic to support his beliefs. As part of the liberal northeast academic community one can only assume he has progressive racial beliefs. His science and logic support those beliefs.

Another example occurred around the turn of the century when scientists were wrestling with the Ether theory. Either there was an ether, some substance that pervaded all space, or their wasn't. We are taught today that the debate had to do with how light waves propagate. Either they were vibrations of the ether as sound is vibrations of the air, or they were something else.

But the debate was more than that. The ether was also believed to be the plate tectonics of God. If there was an ether then there was a physical place for the energy of God. The ether debate was more than science, it was atheistic rationalism versus a belief in God. When scientists proved there was no ether they also proved there was no possible mechanism for God or any other spiritual phenomenon. This is the spiritual heritage that has pervaded most of the twentieth century.

But the spiritual climate is changing, and our scientific view of the world along with it. Physicist Fritjof Capra, in The Tao of Physics, draws remarkable parallels between the insights of modern physics and ancient Hindu thought. He describes a degree of connection between elementary particles that is very similar to the way Reflection describes connections between people.

Current research into the paranormal shows how unscientifically scientific data is used. I do not know enough to form my own judgments of scientific experiments in psychic functioning, but I do know that believers in psychic functioning claim that countless repeatable experiments have shown it is real. I also know that non-believers claim there has not been a single conclusive repeatable experiment. Here are scientists for and against using the same experiments to support their deeper beliefs.

But if you have had psychic experiences then you believe in them and all the experiments in the world are irrelevant. If you want to see if there is anything to the paranormal, the best place to look for evidence is in your own life.

So it is with Reflection. We do not know, and may not be capable of understanding, how it works, but we can look for evidence of it in our own lives. It is like the situation with the old pro-continental drift scientists. The pieces look like they fit, personal evidence says it is real, but I have no idea how it could work.

Maybe someday someone will discover the plate tectonics of Reflection. Until then we do not have to reject the idea but can continue to gather evidence.

Games of Chance

Having seen how reality and people's inner selves reflect, it becomes natural to ask how the other things in our environment interact. It is a little anthropocentric to assume that people are the only things reflecting reality. Reflection is probably true of not only all other living things, but maybe inanimate ones as well. While this is a staggering thought, it is exactly where modern physics is leading us according to Fritjof Capra in The Tao of Physics.

In one sense this section is a look at the light side of Reflection, but in another it is the most critical section. The fall of the cards in a poker game or in a Tarot reading behave the same. It is here that the scientist and mystic absolutely disagree. It is exactly these issues that caused Jung to fall from grace with his peers, as he explored the mysteries of the I Ching and proposed there might be something to it.

It is here also that it is possible to reconcile the mystic and the scientist. The mystic sees connections and meanings in the flip of the cards or the roll of the dice. The scientist sees probability, coincidence and superstition. Both can be seen as flip sides of the same coin.

From time to time professional conferences have brought me to Las Vegas where I enjoy the opportunity to try my hand at the games of chance. Being of a scientific mind, I know the odds are in favor of the house and I cannot win at Las Vegas. With this attitude I lose fast and regularly.

On one trip I decided to try to beat the odds by playing with a different set of needs. I combined my need to try something different with other's needs to win at gambling.

I went to my friends at work and told them I would double their money in Las Vegas—or lose it all. My right pocket was my gambling pocket. I put one hundred dollars of my money in it and anyone else could invest as they saw fit. Whatever percentage of the money was originally theirs, that percentage of the right pocket would be theirs at the end.

It would certainly be a boost to me to double their money. Only a few people saw fit to invest, but they were people I felt had good luck, and a good sense of humor.

The conference went for a week. I nursed $25 a night for every night I was there, and, as I normally expected, the house odds kept eating away at it. I mostly played the $2 blackjack tables because you could play there the longest before losing your money.

I still had $40 in my right pocket on Thursday afternoon and I was leaving in an hour. My gambling experiment had not paid off. It was time for one more shot. I said I would either lose the money or double it.

I went back to the tables, but this time with a mission. I had a different sense. I felt like a winner. I looked for a table with a dealer that looked like a loser. I started betting $5, because I didn't have much time. I was winning. I upped the bets to $25 and immediately got hands that allowed me to split my cards and double my bets, magnifying my winnings. In a few quick hands I had made up the losses of the week and doubled the original money.

I repeated the same trick in a casino in Australia on another business trip. After having lost all evening, I took the small amount of remaining gambling money and put it on a single 36 to 1 number on the roulette table. I won, just about exactly doubling everybody's investment in me.

In both cases I had a sense something good was going to happen at the end of my gambling period. In both cases I came back and filled my need to pull off a neat stunt for my friends. In both cases the outcome was a perfect reflection of my inner-self.

Cosmic Wimpout is a cult dice game, appealing to those who like to look for karma in the dice. There are five dice with different patterns on the faces. By rolling different patterns you score points. It is, however, the mechanics of a turn that make the game interesting.

On a turn you roll the dice. If there is no score, the dice pass to the next player. If you score some points, you can either keep them, or roll again trying to gain additional points. If at any point you fail to score points you lose all the points in that turn.

The game is further complicated by a number of rules which force you to keep rolling the dice even when you would rather stop. It is not uncommon to rack up hundreds of points (in a game which goes to 500) in a single turn and then lose it because you were not allowed to stop rolling and failed to add additional points.

You might say this is just another game of chance, but not so say the devotees. It's a game of karma and the best karma wins.

Mary and I frequently play Cosmic Wimpout and it is often clear to us that there is more than just chance working. The vibes will twist and turn during a game, but we can sense who will win and why. Those that play Cosmic Wimpout know this.

These feelings are not unique to Cosmic Wimpout. Anyone who has played cards has had the sense at one time or another that the right cards would or would not show up. Golfers know when the 30 foot putt will drop. Celtic fans know Larry Bird's final shot will win the game at the final buzzer. Often things which should be governed by luck and statistics seem to be driven by something else.

With my admitted mystical bent, I accept this. Reflection would clearly indicate the dice come out the way we need them to come out and I've had enough anecdotal experiences at cards, Las Vegas, and Cosmic Wimpout to bear out my feelings.

But my scientific side understands probability theory. To find out more about the dice, Mary and I kept a running total of our Cosmic Wimpout scores. After 20,000 points each we are only a hundred points away from each other. The laws of probability hold true.

So now I had both sides of an argument. I could scientifically demonstrate that the dice follow normal laws of probability, and I could give anecdotal evidence that the dice are directly related to both Mary's and mine inner feelings.

How can these two points of view be reconciled? It is only our belief in common sense cause-and-effect reasoning that makes the two seem to contradict. Cause-and-effect implies that either the dice are driven by feelings or they are driven by probability. The mystic and the scientist each takes an opposing point of view.

But this is exactly the same difficulty discussed in the earlier chapters of the book in regards to the interactions between two or more individuals. With people, each being a perfect reflection of the other can only be understood by dropping cause-and-effect thinking and accepting 100-100 responsibility. The same is true of the dice and the people. You might say the people are a perfect reflection of the inner-self of the dice, just as the dice reflect the inner-selves of the people.

So when I am feeling good and winning best reflects my inner self, so too the dice come out on my side. It cannot be said that my inner state gave me good rolls, or that the good rolls created my inner state. They both happen at the same time, joined together by the same web of Reflection that ties us all together.

So, the mystic and the scientist meet at the dice table. The mystic claims to be in touch with the rolling of the dice. The scientist shows the dice follow normal statistical patterns. Neither understands or respects the other, yet both are right when understood in light of the 100-100 proposition of Reflection. The scientist understands the one hundred percent responsibility of the dice as an explanation of the outcome of the game; the mystic understands the one hundred percent responsibility of the player.

Sandom phenomena seemingly linked to human situations is described in the workplace as Murphy's Law—"If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst time." We joke about it being a law, but it is because we have all seen it happen so much that we call it a law. I have seen it happen many times in the computer software industry. Software projects are notorious for being behind schedule, which leads to management pressure. That's when the machines fail. That's when the chips burn out. What better way not to have to take responsibility for the late delivery of work?

In any major project where the participants are under tremendous pressure, and their self-images are on the line, the best thing to happen is some external phenomena which prevents completion of the project. Murphy's law follows naturally from Reflection. It is not a joke.

Murphy can only be beaten by either delivering on time, or feeling good about saying the project will be late. However, it is usually impossible to feel good about being late because there are only two reasons for being late, and both are your fault. The first is you simply did not perform as you should and the second is you agreed to do something unrealistic. Unless there are other needs greater than your need to save face, Murphy will intervene.

Once a chip burnt out on my personal computer that was dramatically related to my inner feelings at the time. It was not related to a deadline, but rather software piracy.

A major problem with software for personal computers is the ease with which it can be copied. It is as simple as taping a record or radio station with a tape player. Just as record vendors lose potential revenue to people who tape friend's records, so software vendors lose potential revenue to people who copy their software, but it is worse because programmers are all connected through networks of computers and freely exchange software. Further, unlike a taping of a record, software can be copied forever with no loss of quality.

In the work place, the real problem is it is actually easier to steal software than to buy it. I can just copy my neighbor's disk in a minute, rather than having to order the software. So you wind up with basically honest people stealing software simply because it is more convenient.

To prevent this, the software vendors have tried to devise schemes that prevent the software from being copied. Still other vendors, however, make money selling programs which copy 'copy-protected' software. One such program is Copy II PC. The use of these programs is the subject of great ethical debates within the software industry.

My own ethics on piracy were relatively simple. There were two types of software I convinced myself it was all right to copy (maybe wrongly, but the important point is I was comfortable with my ethics). One was utility type software that my employer had purchased, making it all right in my mind for me to make a copy for my home machine, which I often used for my employer's work. The other was arcade type games that I would never actually buy myself and did not use much so the vendor was not losing any potential business.

Someone at work lent me their copy of Sargon, a chess playing program. I was fascinated with the art of building game playing programs at the time and was very impressed with the program. On the opening screen of the program it gave the authors' names. Real people had written this great program.

I then proceeded to use my Copy II PC program to make a copy of Sargon for my own use. As the disks were churning, I was suddenly overcome with guilt. I distinctly felt like I was ripping these people off. They had written a great program, and were trying to make a living from it, and I was stealing it to use for my own enjoyment. Seconds after this guilt overwhelmed me—click—the machine stopped churning and went dead. A chip had burned out preventing the illegal copy from being completed. (This, by the way, was the only time in my 20-odd years of experience with computers I had a chip burn out.)

The next day I bought my own copy of Sargon, stole a chip from work to fix the machine, (my ethics said that was all right since I used my home machine for my employer's benefit as well) and felt absolved of my guilt.

The key point is Sargon was not a trivial game I would not have purchased myself, nor was it a utility that my employer purchased. Copying it fell outside of my own ethical limits. This was real stealing in my own mind and I was caught.

Copyright ©1992 Dennis Merritt. All Rights Reserved.