There is a great deal of evidence–some reliable, some not so reliable–that the mind is much more than merely the central processor for sensory information.
We know that sensory processes are all local, i.e., they depend on local transmission of information. However, extrasensory processes may be non-local, i.e., they may depend on non-local correlations between two minds or between a mind and an event that is remote, either spatially or temporally (see Section 4.3). Nevertheless, whether the extrasensory processes are local or non-local, we shall refer to all of them as non-local mind.
Russell Targ and Jane Katra in their 1998 book, Miracles of Mind, list a few of the extrasensory abilities that have been demonstrated:
Telepathy: Direct mental communication between one mind and another.- Remote viewing: Obtaining a mental image of a remote target object at which an accomplice is located. This is different from telepathy because the image often contains details not noticed by the accomplice.
- Clairvoyance: Obtaining a mental image of a remote target without the aid of an accomplice.
- Precognition: There are several types of precognition. A prophecy is a dream or vision of a future event when there is no possibility of taking any action that could change the future. Examples are recording a prophecy and revealing it only after the event has occurred, or prophesying in a vague, nonspecific way. If the precognition is specific enough to allow an action to be taken to avert a future event, then it is called a forecast, premonition, or presentiment (pre-sentiment). Example: a dream of an airplane crash that allows a person to avoid that flight.
- Distant hypnosis: Inducing hypnosis of a person at a distance.
- Psychic healing: A type of remote viewing and healing in which the healer actively transposes intuitive impressions into thoughts and specific healing actions in a patient’s body to remedy a perceived problem.
- Spiritual healing: Remote healing in which the healer is in a receptive, aware, nonjudgmental state which allows his or her consciousness to be used as a conduit for healing by nonlocal, universal mind.
Energy healing: Healing in which the healer directs his or her attention to the patient and concentrates on replenishing or manipulating the patient’s vital energy flow. Examples are reike, therapeutic touch, laying on of hands, pranic healing, and Qi Gong.- Intuition: Direct, nonanalytical awareness that can come from nonlocal mind, internal subconscious processes, psychic sources such as mind-to-mind connections, or direct clairvoyant perception of the outside world.
- The existence of extraordinary abilities attained through the practice of yoga is well established and documented in the literature of yoga,
- Knowledge of past and future; understanding of the sounds made by all creatures; knowledge of past lives; knowing what others are thinking; prior knowledge of one’s death; the attainment of various kinds of strength; perception of the small, the concealed, and the distant; knowledge of other inhabited regions; knowing about the stars and their motions; knowledge of the interior of the body; control of hunger and thirst; steadiness; seeing the adepts in one’s own interior light; intuition; understanding of the mind; entering the bodies of others; lightness and levitation; brightness; control of material elements; control of the senses; perfection of the body; quickness of the body.
The effects of nonlocal mind are clearly experienced when people are meditating in a group. (Because of the interactions between the minds of pairs of meditators, the effects of nonlocal mind presumably increase with the square of the number of meditators.)
The Transcendental Meditation (TM) organization has conducted several demonstration projects to show the effects on the surrounding community of a large number of people meditating in a group. This project occurred in Washington, D.C. between June 7 and July 30, 1993 and involved up to 4000 people meditating in a group. An independent group of scientists approved the research protocol and analyzed statistically the results.