The Investigation of Extra-Sensory Powers of Perception

As science begins to recognise the fact that there are ranges of vibration outside of the limited scope that we can normally experience, and that countless reports of perceptions that are inexplicable based on the outermost physical reality that we have heretofore treated as our sole reality, we have seen a breaking down of the narrow and blinkered approach to knowing that has ruled humanity for so many millennia. The insights provided by quantum mechanics have also greatly upset our formerly orderly world-view about things, and forced us to look at reality from an entirely new perspective.

Thus, we see that numerous scientists have developed experiments to explore the field of consciousness, to test the potential for extra-sensory perception, and in particular to try to determine the reality and scope of telepathy, distance viewing, clairvoyance, clairaudience, and telekinesis, among other things. It should also be noted that the Russian military and that of the United States have invested considerable resources in developing units of individuals capable of one or more of these powers of perception or action, and not without considerable results! In particular, the power of distance viewing has been tested and actually developed into a systematic methodology that many individuals can actually learn and apply. Sometimes such individuals have been made part of police investigations which otherwise had reached dead ends, and sometimes, with very notable results.

Of course, as with any new power of perception, there is a certain amount of translation and interpretation of the signals that have been received, with corresponding errors in interpretation and application. Thus, one must exercise care in attributing any specific result to such occult action. Yet, we find a similar failure of interpretation and understanding with our physical senses as well. While we frequently repeat the proverb “seeing is believing”, there is no doubt that this is not quite as failure-proof as the proverb would indicate.

Sri Aurobindo writes: “Constantly asserted by human experience and belief since the origins of thought, this truth, now that the necessity of an exclusive preoccupation with the secrets of the material world no longer exists, begins to be justified by new-bo
forms of scientific research. The increasing evidences, of which only the most obvious and outward are established under the name of telepathy with its cognate phenomena, cannot long be resisted except by minds shut up in the brilliant shell of the past, by intellects limited in spite of their acuteness through the limitation of their field of experience and inquiry, or by those who confuse enlightenment and reason with the faithful repetition of formulas left to us from a bygone century and the jealous conservation of dead or dying intellectual dogmas.”

Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, The Hidden Forces of Life, Ch.6 Hidden Worlds and Evolutionary Forces, pg.140