Professor Otto Frisch and psychokinesis

Of course I knew when I was thrown out, to try to do research in the wilderness, that there was no sympathy with my position or predicament. I did not suppose that there was any great motivation in the world for the advancement of science per se, but the absolute negativity of the response to anything I could produce as evidence of my ability to make progress was a constant surprise, even to me, and one concludes that only the most absolute restriction and obstruction is to be expected. That is a simple law of human psychology, although not totally easy to understand.

Professor Otto Frisch FRS
(1904 -1979)

To give one example, the late Professor Otto Frisch of Cambridge University, who had been involved in the development of the atom bomb, once said to me that if there was such a thing as PK (psychokinesis), every physicist in the world should drop whatever they were doing and work on nothing else. This showed a theoretical recognition of its importance, although it would have been a stupid way of tackling the problem.

At that time, Professor Frisch asked me whether, among all the cases of possible PK that I had ever read or heard about, there was one that provided conclusive proof of the existence of PK. Of course I said that there was not, because proof of anything is, strictly speaking, impossible. However cast-iron a case might seem to be, the possibility would always remain that one’s informant was lying or misremembering. Professor Frisch seemed relieved at this, and said he was glad to hear me say that, so that he did not have to feel under pressure to organise any research into PK at all.

Now if somebody with my IQ, who has done enough relevant research of a respectable kind, has a lot of information and ideas about the possible psychology of PK, this would appear to be an opportunity for a scientific breakthrough potentially of such magnitude as to constitute a fairly irrefutable claim on funding. Especially considering the billions that are annually poured into totally futile ‘research’ guaranteed to lead to no outcome of any importance whatever.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

A friend in need

Text of a recent letter to a potential associate, whom I had known as a child, and with whom I had corresponded some months ago.

Dear ...

I was disappointed that you did not come to visit me here after you had apparently said that you would. You seemed to want to reminisce about an earlier stage of my life, and I could hardly think of doing that without correcting the misinterpretations that have always been placed upon me (and, of course, on my father as well). And when I talk about my past, I really want to get more of my past history into writing, which means dictating and editing.

Maybe you, or any other visitor, would be willing and/or able to help with the secretarial work that will go with doing this, when I am able to do it, but in any case it would be a break for me to have a visitor. Until people have made some contact with me here, there is certainly no possibility of their passing on any information about me, my need for new people, and my need for money, to other people, and this information is what I need to get spread around.

Anyway, could you not come and visit as a favour to me. Any new people might make a tremendous difference to me, and even a very temporary visitor who might pass something on would give me a boost.

Follow-up letter by me, in response to his reply.

Dear ...

It is interesting that you make it explicit that you will not visit me if I make the condition that I talk to you about my situation.

It has often seemed to me that this must be the reason for visitors rushing away soon after turning up, but you are the first person to make it explicit that you do not want to hear anything about my situation.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

Serviam (‘I will serve’)

Further to the previous post, the following is another extract from The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

This episode occurs soon after The Rat starts to live with Stefan Loristan (the exiled king), his son Marco and his servant Lazarus. The Rat goes to Lazarus’s room to talk to him, and to ask what he can do to serve Loristan.

“I want to find out everything he [Loristan] likes and everything he doesn’t like,” The Rat said. “I want—isn’t there anything—anything you’d let me do for him? It wouldn’t matter what it was. And he needn’t know you are not doing it. I know you wouldn’t be willing to give up anything particular. But you wait on him night and day. Couldn’t you give up something to me?”
Lazarus pierced him with keen eyes. He did not answer for several seconds.
“Now and then,” he said gruffly at last, “I'll let you brush his boots. But not every day—perhaps once a week.”
“When will you let me have my first turn?” The Rat asked.
Lazarus reflected. His shaggy eyebrows drew themselves down over his eyes as if this were a question of state.
“Next Saturday,” he conceded. “Not before. I’ll tell him when you brush them.”
“You needn’t,” said The Rat. “It’s not that I want him to know. I want to know myself that I’m doing something for him. I’ll find out things that I can do without interfering with you. I’ll think them out.”
“Anything any one else did for him would be interfering with me,” said Lazarus.

The attitude of wanting to serve an admired person by doing useful things for them is very much at variance with the attitude of employees nowadays. The richest and most famous are left to eat cold food alone on Christmas Day, or after a late-night performance, so that their assistants, however highly paid, can give priority to their own interests.

Frances Hodgson Burnett
(1849-1924)

Frances Hodgson Burnett had spent decades of her life in social environments where attitudes like that of The Rat and Lazarus were much easier to observe and imagine. The attitudes ascribed to Loristan’s associates seem to go beyond what might arise from wishing to curry favour with someone who could confer advantages upon you.

The average modern employee seems to reject considerations, such as currying favour with his employer, or doing something for idealistic reasons, as being beneath him or her.

* Serviam is the motto of the Ursuline convent schools, one of which I attended for four years after coming top of the Essex Grammar School Scholarship exam.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

The Lost Prince

The following are extracts from The Lost Prince* written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, published in 1915. This is the story of Stefan Loristan, the exiled King of Samavia (a fictional European country), and his son Marco, a boy of about 12. The story is apparently set in the late eighteen hundreds or very early nineteen hundreds.

When the story starts, they are living in poverty in dingy lodgings in London with their loyal servant, an ex-soldier called Lazarus. Marco has made friends with a street boy nicknamed ‘The Rat’. The Rat is the leader of a group of street boys who wear ragged clothes, go barefoot, and do not go to school. One evening, The Rat comes to the lodgings and says that his father has died in a drunken fit. Marco and his father welcome him, and The Rat clearly wants to stay with them.

... Loristan did not turn and walk away. He looked deep into the lad’s eyes as if he were searching to find some certainty. Then he said in a low voice, ‘You know how poor I am’ ... ‘I am so poor that I am not sure that I can give you enough dry bread to eat – always. Marco and Lazarus and I are often hungry. Sometimes you might have nothing to sleep on but the floor. But I can find a place for you if I take you with me,’ said Loristan. ‘Do you know what I mean by a place?’
‘Yes, I do,’ answered The Rat. ‘It’s what I’ve never had before – sir.’

Later in the story, Marco’s father has left the lodgings and the landlady, Mrs Beedle, is worried about whether they can pay the rent.

‘That’s just what I want to find out about,’ put in [Mrs Beedle]. ‘When is he [Marco’s father] coming back?’
‘I do not know,’ answered Marco.
‘That’s it,’ said Mrs Beedle. ‘You’re old enough to know that two big lads and a fellow like that can’t have food and lodgin’s for nothing ... Your father’s out of sight. He,’ jerking her head towards Lazarus, ‘paid me for last week. How do I know he will pay me for this week!’
‘The money is ready,’ roared Lazarus.
...
‘Is there so little money left?’ said Marco. ‘We have always had very little. When we had less than usual, we lived in poorer places and were hungry if it was necessary. We know how to go hungry. One does not die of it.’
The big eyes under Lazarus’s beetling brows filled with tears.
‘No, sir,’ he said, ‘one does not die of hunger. But the insult – the insult! That is unendurable.’

After finding out that they have enough money to cover the rent for one, possibly two more weeks if they are very frugal:

‘Never mind,’ said Marco. ‘Never mind. We will go away the day we can pay no more.’
‘I can go out and sell newspapers,’ said The Rat’s sharp voice. ‘I’ve done it before. Crutches help you to sell them. The platform would sell ’em faster still. I’ll go out on the platform.’
‘I can sell newspapers, too,’ said Marco.
Lazarus uttered an exclamation like a groan.
‘Sir,’ he cried, ‘no, no! Am I not here to go out and look for work? I can carry loads. I can run errands.’
‘We will all three begin to see what we can do,’ Marco said.

In the pre-Welfare State world, people’s minds were constantly preoccupied with the urgent need for money to buy food, pay the rent, and support their families; and for work as a way of obtaining money. Therefore people wanted to do what other people wanted, in order to be paid for it. As a result, the motivation to ‘get at’ other people, by making them do things for themselves, was suppressed.

People had been selected, for centuries if not millennia, by being able to do better than other people in these circumstances.

Once there is a Welfare State, which removes the threat of starvation, people start to interact with one another on quite different terms, and this affects everything that goes on, not only the attitude to working – such as people’s levels of politeness and honesty.

* Illustration taken from the US 1915 edition, published by The Century Company, New York.

I appeal for financial and moral support in improving my position. I need people to provide moral support both for fundraising, and as temporary or possibly long-term workers. Those interested should read my post on interns.

Loans

I have always had a strong principle against getting into debt, as had my parents.

The accepted attitude towards being in debt changed abruptly in 1945 after the Second World War, and this was obviously an important element in the oncoming ideology.

In the modern world, nominal loans are often made, with little or no expectation that they will ever be repaid. Perhaps this is considered to be less insulting to the recipient. When I was a poor student, with no grant and not even a small salary (and not in receipt of any state benefit), people sometimes offered me loans of this kind, seeing that I was short of money and with no real expectation of repayment. These I never accepted, although I would have accepted an outright gift. And now I certainly would not accept any gift of money if I had any reason to think that the donor regarded it as a loan.

In general, my associates and I are too aware of the existential uncertainty to place themselves at anyone’s mercy by getting into debt.

Not only do people offer gifts as if they were loans; they also ask for gifts as if they were loans. When one of my colleagues was at school, a rather demoralised working-class friend quite often asked her to lend her something, which she did, but without expecting to get it back – and she did not ever get it back. She never asked for it back, and regarded these ‘loans’ as outright gifts as soon as her friend asked for them.

Nowadays being in debt, rather than having savings, increases eligibility for benefits. This is rewarding irresponsibility, and hence penalising responsibility. As Polonius in Hamlet (c.1601) says:

Neither a borrower nor a lender be;
For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.

Educational ideology and the loss of clarity

One of my colleagues has a book that was given as a school prize in a State primary school 50 years ago, and which shows how the dominant ideology has developed since then. The book is entitled The Living World of History, the author Gareth H. Browning, and it was published by Collins in 1963. Evidently the book was regarded as respectable at the time, but it expresses an unfashionable world view by today’s standards. It is implied that the value of compulsory education is not unquestionable.

The Factory Act of 1833 (one of a long series to come) prohibited the employment of children under nine and limited the hours of those under thirteen to forty-eight per week. Then, as a doubtful treat, the latter group were given schooling for two hours a day. The government also made a money grant for educational purposes. These were the first effective steps made by the State towards the free, compulsory, universal education that children “enjoy” to-day. (p. 112)

Then again, the goodness and rightness of socialism, as opposed to capitalism, is also questionable.

In Britain, in the general election of 1945, the Socialists swept the country. There was an urgent feeling that society must be created anew on truly democratic lines. The State must ensure a higher standard of living for ordinary people. All the political parties were pledged to social reform. But, while the Socialists sought it through State ownership and control in industry and the public services, the Conservatives believed in private ownership, free competition and individual enterprise. (pp. 155-6)

Another sign of the changing times is the clarity with which the book expresses what it says. The attitudes described may or may not seem convincing to the reader, but it is clear what they are.

As the modern ideology became more dominant, although presented as unquestionable it was expressed with a certain vagueness or blurriness, which had the effect of making it difficult to criticise. This kind of blurriness, after a certain date, became fairly universal in academic productions. It became a feature, not just of subjects such as history or sociology, but also of ostensibly objective subjects such as physics.

Interns

People who are thinking of coming to form an association with us should be aware of the concept of ‘interns’.

People starting their careers are often glad to be allowed to work for a statusful organisation without being paid, as the work experience is supposed to enhance their chances of paid work later on. There are even people who are willing to pay a firm or university for allowing them to work as an intern. People have expressed objections to this, and say that employers should not be allowed to accept paying interns, because this is giving an advantage to those who can afford to pay for an internship, while the poor, who cannot afford to pay for one, are at a disadvantage.

As we are not a statusful organisation, or a socially recognised university department, people think that we should pay for any scrap of work they do for us, although the useful information and practical experience acquired by working here could be extremely valuable to them, even more so than that gained from working for an organisation with an accepted social position. It would actually be very reasonable, for someone who wanted to develop an association with us, to offer to pay us so much per annum for working here.

Appeal for funding to lucid dream researchers

The following is an edited version of something I published on the web some years ago. Since that time, no financial contributions have been made by any of the individuals mentioned.
I continue to appeal to anyone who has derived advantage from the topic of lucid dreaming, either as a field for research, or as a topic of personal interest, to contribute not less than £2000 per annum towards funding for my research and my personal income.

When I was interviewed by the head of the Oxford University philosophy appointments board, a senior professor, to discuss how I might get onto a salaried university career track as an academic philosopher, I did not attempt to conceal my bitterness at the fact that my book on lucid dreaming, which I had written under duress because I had no other way of advertising my need for funding to do laboratory research to force my way back into a university career, had provided academics around the world, already safely on career tracks, with advantageous areas of research.

The professor hastened to defend the academics for doing nothing to improve my position, by saying that once a piece of work had been published it was free to anyone to work on it. And of course there is no law asserting that anyone should recognise the socially disadvantaged position of someone else, or do anything more than is strictly prescribed by law to help them. But spontaneous decency is not illegal, even where not socially prescribed. It is not explicitly recognised that it is socially proscribed. There was no law against the professor himself, having recognised that he had become aware of someone so seriously disadvantaged in life in comparison with himself, donating to me half of his own salary, or any other fraction of it, from that time forwards. Or he might have wished to make a mailing to all academics around the world known to have worked on lucid dreams, in which he could have expressed to them his own recognition of my disadvantaged position, and his own hope that each of them would make a significant annual donation out of their own salaries towards compensating me for my continuing lack of a university career, despite the fact that there was no legal obligation on them to do so.

Many years ago an international conference on lucid dreaming was held at London University and I was invited to contribute by giving a paper, although no one had shown any sign of wanting to provide me with funding to contribute by way of research.

At the conference someone informed me that he was sure I should be really pleased that some more of my ideas for research were going to be tried out at Stanford University. I felt about as overjoyed as if I had been slapped in the face, and it just illustrates how insensitive to my predicament those who themselves benefited from my work on lucid dreams have always been.

I was (and still am), in my grievous and destitute position, very embittered that it did not occur to any of those who worked on lucid dreams, salaried as nearly all of them were, to send me money to relieve my unsalaried position. If each of those concerned had sent a contribution of £2000 per annum (even if only while they were actually working on lucid dreams) my position would have been significantly improved and by now I would probably have been able to publish enough research to force my way back into a university position. It is not too late for my position to be relieved in this way. In fact the urgency that it should be has only increased with the decades of delay, since I am still physically alive, and needing to get started on my forty-year academic career.

So I am appealing to anyone who has derived advantage from lucid dreaming, either as a field for academic research or as a topic of personal interest, to contribute either a lump sum towards the £2 million which I need to set up a residential college, or to contribute not less than £2000 per annum towards my research and my personal income.

Legacies of any size are also requested. There is no upper limit, as the endowment required for residential colleges and research departments is considerable. Please note that any donations or legacies should be made direct to me, and not to any organisation with which I may seem to be associated. The latter leads to so much complication that the benefit is severely reduced, and probably completely aborted.

I address this appeal particularly to the following, who are known to have made use of the concept of lucid dreaming in their careers.


List of lucid dream researchers

A. Baker A. Brylowski A.A. Sheikh Alan Moffitt Alan Worsley B. Kediskerski B. McLeod B. McWilliams B. Rodenelli B. Shillig B.G. Marcot C. Sachau C. Sawicki C.N. Alexander Charles Tart D. Armstrong-Hickey D. Davidson D. Foulkes D. Orme-Johnson D.B. Jenkins D.E. Hewitt D.S. Rogo David B. Cohen Elendur Haraldsson F.A. Wolf Fariba Bogzaran G.S. Sparrow Gayle Delaney George Gillespie Gordon Halliday H. Reed Harry Hunt Harvey J. Irwin J. Adams J. Dane J. Walling J. Wren-Lewis Jane Bosveld Janet Mullington Jayne Gackenbach Judith R. Malamud K. Kelzer K. McGowan K. McKelvey

K.P. Vieira Keith Hearne L. L. Magallon L. Levitan L. Nagel L. Rokes L.L. Magallon M. Walters M.L. Lucescu Mary Godwyn Morton Schatzman N. Heilman O. Clerc P. Maxwell P.D. Tyson Patricia Garfield Paul Tholey Peter Fellows Peter Fenwick R. Boyer R. Cranson R. Curren R. George R.J. Small Robert D. Ogilvie Robert F. Price Robert Hoffmann Robert K. Dentan Robert Van de Castle Roger Wells Ross Pigneau S. Boyt S. Hammons S. Stone Sheila Purcell Stephen LaBerge Susan Blackmore T. Neilsen Thomas Snyder V. Zarcone W. Dement W. Greenleaf Wynn Schwartz

Dream research

We recently received an enquiry from the magazine of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, requesting an interview. This is the text of my colleague Dr Charles McCreery’s reply.

“Thank you for your email addressed to Celia Green, to which she has asked me to reply. I am the co-author with her of Lucid Dreaming: the Paradox of Consciousness During Sleep, which was published by Routledge in 1994.

We were invited by Routledge to write this book. We would not otherwise have considered writing a follow-up to Dr Green’s first book on the subject, Lucid Dreams, published by Hamish Hamilton in 1968, since the latter had not resulted, as we had hoped, in any financial support being forthcoming to enable us to carry out any of the experimental work which Dr Green had in mind.

Instead, several years after the publication of Lucid Dreams, we found other people entering the field, who were funded by university appointments in most cases. They began to carry out work which acknowledged Dr Green’s priority and the influence it had had on their own decision to enter the field of research, but which did not represent the sort of research which she had had in mind to do herself. Nor did it have any effect in making it any more possible for us to raise funds for our own work.

We are still appealing for funding to continue our work in this and other fields. We are also appealing for funding to keep Dr Green’s first book on lucid dreams in print, as well as books on other topics which we have written and published, and further books which we could write, or edit and publish, if we had funding to do so.

We are short-staffed on account of our lack of funding. Dr Green does not give interviews as we have found it impossible to avoid misinterpretations.

I add below three links to pieces which Dr Green has published on the topic of lucid dreaming in recent years on her blog, and which describe our attempts to get funding for continuing her research in this area.”

Lucid dreams: watching others get the benefit

An appeal to Harvard

More on lucid dreams and the BBC

An evil headmaster

I reproduce below an account by one of my associates of an experience they had with the headmaster of their primary school. The account illustrates what is seldom acknowledged: that teachers, especially those employed in the state sector, may have destructive motivation towards some (or all) of their pupils, particularly those of high ability.

“Mr ‘X’ was the headmaster of the primary school I attended. When I was nine, he was in charge of the relatively small class of pupils deemed as possibles for passing the 11-plus exam. There was a parallel, and larger, lower-ability class. Although I was not aware of any formal policy on this, there were clear signs that this second class were regarded as no-hopers for the 11-plus exam. For example, the first class were occasionally given hints about how to do well in the exam, which was not done for the second class.

At that time, pupils of age 9 at the school entered either the 11-plus class or the parallel class, and left the school at 11 to go to secondary school – normally a grammar school if they had passed the 11-plus, or a secondary modern school if they had not.

At nine, I was among those selected to enter the ‘top’ class (as I, not the school, called it). I was at that time a bouncy, sociable and self-confident person. I was also conscientious, and felt identified with working hard and doing my best.

However, after entering the top class it soon emerged that I had not completely learnt my multiplication tables by heart, as I was apparently supposed to have done. This gave Mr X an excuse to punish me. As a result of my relative weakness in multiplication, I scored badly in the mental arithmetic tests Mr X gave regularly, and he began threatening me with the idea that I might be relegated to the ‘lower’ class. I was too full of shame and panic to tell my parents about these threats.

In due course I was relegated to the lower class, which happened towards the end of the first term. I did not tell my parents immediately that it had happened, because I felt ashamed. Mr X made no attempt to teach me the tables himself, nor did he contact my parents to encourage them to do so.

Mr X generally treated me as if I were a criminal or similar moral reprobate. He appeared to attribute my not having learnt the multiplication tables to laziness and frivolity, and hinted that my defect might consist in something even worse. When I thought about it later, I realised that (at the time) I felt that I had not known how wicked I was until Mr X had told me.

Eventually I had to tell my parents about the situation, and they reacted as I feared they would. They assured me that they ‘loved’ me but took it for granted that my being relegated to the lower class by Mr X meant that I was deficient in arithmetic, and that I would not pass the 11-plus. They started to console themselves with the idea that even if I went to a secondary modern school, I might still have a chance to take O-levels, like the children who got into grammar school.

Being in the ‘lower’ class damaged my self-confidence and did not improve my prowess at mental arithmetic. In neither the ‘top’ class nor the ‘lower’ class were the multiplication tables actually taught. I felt cowed.

One thing I remember vividly is that I had been in the school choir, which Mr X was in charge of, and that I had greatly enjoyed it. However, it appears I was penalised for my ‘sins’ by being excluded from choir events as well. That school year, the school choir performed with a number of other choirs at a concert in a nearby town, and one of my brothers was on stage as a member of the choir, but I was not. Instead, I was in the audience with my parents and younger siblings (they were too young to be in the choir).

At the end of that school year, I only managed to come third in the ‘lower’ class, even though I had previously come top of my year. I am sure this was because I felt demoralised and unable to identify with myself.

At the start of the next school year, Mr X graciously allowed me back into the ‘top’ class. I was relieved that I was back in the ‘land of the living’, i.e. in the same class as other obviously intelligent children, but my confidence had been damaged and I continued to think of myself as naturally lazy and frivolous.

All the pupils who turned 11 in that school year, including me, took the 11-plus. I made my best attempt at it. By that time I had learnt the multiplication tables by myself, at home. I didn’t feel I was doing particularly well at school (we didn’t get much feedback about how we were doing, until the end of a year) and so I fully expected not to pass the 11-plus. Nevertheless I did pass it, along with a few others in the top class. Also, at the end of the year it was announced, to my surprise, that I had come first in class, in terms of marks for schoolwork during the year.

I expect Mr X was fuming as he signed my book prize for coming first, as he evidently hated me. During the ‘demotion’ episode he had treated me as if I had somehow injured him, and as if he had to try to take revenge.

Although I could be said to have left that school on a relatively high note, my self-confidence did not return until many years later. I remained disconnected from my schoolwork throughout most of my time at the secondary school, and only achieved mediocre results in my O- and A-levels.

Thirty years later, I was only reminded that I had in fact come first at the end of the last year of primary school when I visited my parents, noticed the prize book there, and opened it to see the inscription signed by Mr X.

In retrospect, I expect Mr X had first noticed me when I went with my mother, at the age of four and half, to meet him for an interview about my attending the school in due course. At that time I could already read. While my mother was talking to Mr X, I took a great interest in the school noticeboards which I found in the corridors. Mr X asked me about what I could see, so I told him what I had read. I came to his attention again when I came top of my school year at the age of eight, and he was no doubt reminded to keep an eye on me.

By the time I was nine I was on the board of distinguished readers, an elite group of about ten pupils. One bad thing Mr X did not do when I was put down a year, though he had the capacity to, was to wipe my name off that list. But it was not my ability that he had called into question; it was my character. This may have done me more harm than if he had merely implied I was stupid.

My tentative interpretation of what happened is that Mr X was hostile to me because I was clever. Hence his desire to punish me by making me appear stupid. I think this reaction to ability, and desire to do someone down, is more common among teachers than is generally realised. The concept of the sadistic teacher is relatively commonplace, but the idea that hostility is particularly aroused by the able is less so. Of course this characteristic can be found among private school teachers as well as those working in the state sector. However, in the private sector there is at least a modicum of competitive pressure to keep anti-ability motivation suppressed.

Parents may not always care about the effects of a school as much as one might hope. However, they care more if they are paying, and are liable to transfer their children to another school if they think their money would be better spent elsewhere. By contrast, there is little pressure on state school teachers not to behave destructively. The parents aren’t paying and they typically have little power to change schools. Even if they do change, the school being rejected doesn’t suffer financially, so it has little reason to avoid teachers who behave like this, or to give them an incentive not to do so.”