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ESP
ESP or extrasensory perception may be considered a particular kind of intelligence, but one independent of the specialised senses or sensors which largely determine our normal intelligence. We are aware of our surroundings through our organs, our senses of sight, sound, touch, taste and smell, but extrasensory perception makes no use of these.
The amoeba, for example, has no sensors, yet communicates with its environment. It relies exclusively on extrasensory perception.
ESP functions in higher animal forms also. There are many instances in which animals have had foreknowledge while man remained in ignorance, and have warned him of earthquakes, of cyclones and floods. During the last war for example there was a drake in Freiburg which alerted a section of the town with loud quackings. The people heeded the warnings and took to the shelters before there was time even for an official alarm. The last great air attack reduced 80% of the town to ashes, but the grateful survivors honoured the now famous duck with a monument.
In this respect it seems that the lower forms of life are more intelligent than man. But why is this so? We have seen that for knowledge man relies upon his senses; through them he is made aware of his environment. And it is these sense that have practically replaced the more ancient mechanism of awareness, ESP. But this mechanism is still there in man, and indeed we exercise it to some extent whenever we determine to be asleep or awake, alert or placid. Probably it is only because we refuse to acknowledge its presence and heed its warnings that its contribution to our lives is so severely limited. Evidently, the higher the form of life the less the dependence on ESP. This is true even if we limit our observation to human ranges alone. Primitive people are more likely to take notice of a premonition than civilised man. A planned activity is cancelled for no other reason than apprehension. The Polynesian fisherman can postpone his daily chores, but it is difficult for the airline pilot to refuse to fly simply because he doesn't feel like it. The ancient mechanism in the brain functions equally for pilot and fisherman, but it is their reactions that are different. Civilised man does not trust his premonitions.
And this is the crux of the matter, for the civilised man is the reasoning man. ESP formations are disregarded because they are unreasonable. Before they are heeded they have to be justified, subjected to sense experience and evaluated in the stores of sense memory. Unless a reason can be found for the warning man hesitates; he is sceptical of the old hypothalamus which says simply “Look out!” without giving any ‘why’ or ‘wherefore’.
The purpose of the ‘danger’ sense in higher animals and primitive man is to alarm, to alert instantaneously their sleeping awareness, against some danger to the life form. It does not, therefore, have to function repetitively once the alert is given, and so it is of no consequence that the primitive part of the brain involved tires easily.
On the other hand, the emerging ‘oneness’ sense of the saint or yogi represents a summit of awareness, a sense of perception obtained only by a very conscious effort and intense concentration motivated by a deep sense of love and identity.
The ESP of the higher animals, of primitive man and of the yogi functions normally under conditions very different from those to be found or created in the laboratory, and herein lies the difficulty for the scientist. It is hardly possible for him to reproduce either the primitive ‘danger signal’ or the evolved ‘oneness’ sense for the endless repetitive tests science finds necessary in order to prove their relevance statistically.
Moreover, systematic scientific exploration of ESP and all attempts to prove it by a statistically significant series of experiments suffer from the handicap which the very nature of ESP imposes on the experimenter. However, in a universe where everything is fundamentally one, ESP should not come as a surprise. When in reality there are no boundaries between beings, it is the absence of ESP which would be astonishing. Mental awareness is one and the same wherever it is found, and its limits in space and time we have accepted simply because we have thought that what is space and time for a physical body must be the same for the world of mind.
The time will come when we realise that this is not the case, and then ESP will again be the common possession of all human beings and its daily use as natural as seeing with our eyes.
It is conceivable that in the schools of the future children will be exhorted and encouraged and guided to exercise their ESP faculties with the same care as that with which, today, they exercise their manual, linguistic and mathematical capabilities.