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2. Psi Bonds in the Past
It is likely that the concept of psi bonds will be found in many
places in the literature of parapsychology. My memory goes back to the
following passage by Rosalind Heywood in her book ESP, A Personal
Memoir (condensed in my book, Encounters with Parapsychology,
1982, p.64)
On my first visit to England in the mid 1950s, I met Rosalind Heywood
(b. 1895) and came to know her as a trusted friend. In her book she
reported how, with another player, she had performed Mozart's Concerto
for Two Pianos as an amateur at age 17 and was unexpectedly under a
professional conductor. Even his kindly message that he, too, was an
amateur, did not allay her nervousness until "on looking up to begin,
I saw miraculously stretched from him to every player, including me, a
shining cord. Owing to that cord, something, not me, played with zest
and assurance, and entirely out of my class. At the end, he bent down
and clapped and said 'Bravo! Bravo!'. But I knew dimly, though he did
not seem to, that he was congratulating himself, not me."
A few pages later (Encounters with Parapsychology, p. 74), on
the basis of her frequent telepathic experiences with her husband,
Heywood speculated that they were possibly in regular telepathic
contact with each other. "And, if us, then surely others. We are not
exceptional people. It may be that, even if signs of it never emerge
to consciousness--or at least are never recognized--that many other
married couples, parents and children, teachers and pupils, and
co-enthusiasts or co-workers, are also linked beneath the surface in a
similar fashion."
As a result of my investigations of the matter, most of which are
briefly reported in this document, I think it likely that the above
quotation from Heywood will become the classic statement of the psi
bond hypothesis.
3. My Relevant Life Experience
This document is based in part upon some of my beliefs and experiences
that I have not previously had reason to discuss publicly. Those
beliefs that go beyond the phenomena discussed in the conservative
literature of parapsychology are based upon events that I have
witnessed or experienced or that were reported to me by persons whose honesty and
judgment I have good reasons to trust.
Parapsychologists agree that nearly everyone experiences occasional
minor ESP. As documented in my books and in the literature generally,
a few paraprofessional psychics repeatedly obtain information
extrasensorily that is detailed and accurate. (A "psychic," as I use
the term, is a person who frequently exhibits strong psi effects.
"Paraprofessional psychics" are psychics who accept no compensation
for their services.) From the literature, it is known that strong ESP
is occasionally experienced by non-psychics. I believe that macro psychokinesis is likewise occasionally evoked by both psychics and
non-psychics.
My association with paraprofessional psychics began late in my
professional career, after I had completed my experimental work in the
laboratory. These psychics were related by blood or marriage to a wide
socioeconomic (SES) range of people. My relationships with these
psychics were sufficiently numerous and uninhibited as to give me,
through their families and neighbors, a perspective covering a wide
economic range of Caucasian social behavior.
To halt prostate cancer, I was chemically castrated by leuprolide
acetate at age 84. The significance of this relative my subsequent
investigation of psi bonds is described in Chapters 20 and 21. As will
be explained, my impotent condition made it possible for me to observe
a dramatic occurrence of love in the absence of lust.
4. Belief as a Psychological Mystery
I shall briefly leave the topic of "Psi Bonds" to comment upon what I
regard as a puzzling mystery of human behavior, namely, that
scientific, political, philosophic, and religious beliefs are profoundly resistant to change.
For example,
it is easy to understand why mankind should have developed religions
and why scientists should be proud of their scientific theories
explaining in scientific language the meaning of man's existence in
the universe. What is mysterious is that, almost without exception,
believers in science are unwilling to examine religious beliefs that
conflict with their scientific beliefs, even when the conflict is
expressed in scientific terms.
Religious leaders never discuss conflicting religious beliefs in
scientific terms because they do not understand scientific language.
It is puzzling, however, that religious leaders are unwilling to
attempt to resolve religious conflicts using religious language.
The question of scientific and religious beliefs is stated in the
above two paragraphs as a competition between beliefs. Instead, one
might compare scientific and religious beliefs on the basis of
epistemological merit.
Religions have never claimed validity that is independent of past
advocates. Science claims to provide absolute truth, independent of
history and individuals, and ready, at any challenge, to rebuild
itself from observation.
When science refuses to consider a challenge to its beliefs, there is
no mystery about the "resistance of those beliefs to change." One must
conclude that, for some of its leaders, science has become a religion.
The relevance of the profound resistance to change of philosophic
belief will be evident in my discussion of psi bonds.
5. Sexual Arousal
One purpose in offering this document is to explain the difference between sexual
propagation and love. It seems probable that what is called "sexual
arousal" in the human male and female is the same physical process by
which lower primates propagate and that it does not involve psi except
through the coinciding existence of a love bond.
When a teen-age girl, at a suitable time in her menstrual cycle,
is sexually caressed by a male for whom she has a friendly feeling,
her brain usually ceases to reason even while she says to herself that
she would like first to consider the advisability of intercourse. At
that point, another part of the brain takes charge and, without love,
intercourse will ensue if the social circumstances permit. This
physiologically determined behavior mimics insemination in many
animals and should be classified as a form of genetically brokered
lust.
It would appear that the feminist argument is correct, that
intercourse not resisted by the female can, under some circumstances,
be the moral equivalent of rape. The female's only immoral choice was
to enter a social situation where intercourse could occur or to accept
the first caress of her companion (which might be somewhat vague). If
the female has not been taught about her neurophysiological
susceptibility to seduction, she cannot be morally condemned and the
sin rests upon those who had the obligation to teach her.
Similarly, the immoral choice by the male was to enter, or persist, in
a situation where his own arousal would occur or was occurring. If
intercourse is not morally permissible under the circumstances, and
the male wishes to entertain a female in a situation where
uncontrolled arousal may occur, his moral obligation is to masturbate
beforehand so as to reduce his libido to a controllable level. The
presumption is that the male has previously learned the strength of
his sexual drive.
6. Instant Affinity
Among possible psi bonds, the two most mysterious, it seems to me,
are the "instant affinity psi bond" and the "romantic love bond."
An instant affinity psi bond may be said to exist when a sense of
psychic relationship is recognized by two strangers within seconds
after their first meeting and is immediately confirmed by speech or
action but without an immediate feeling of romantic love. I shall cite
one certain example and two possible examples of instant affinity.
When I was first introduced to my nephew's wife, we threw our arms
around each other and immediately walked away from the introduction as
we explained to each other that we felt an inexplicable attraction to
the other. She was, and many years later still is, happily married
with children. She is a deeply religious person who admits to many
minor psychic experiences. Our feelings of affinity have endured on
both sides, although we live at a distance, have rarely visited, and
exchange only cards annually or to announce family news.
My second example is a case of possible instant affinity. Recently,
while I was seated in a wheelchair in a hospital waiting room, a
female, conservatively dressed patient aide walked by, leading an
ambulatory patient. As she passed, she paused and we looked at each
other. I felt an instant affinity but made no sign. She made a gesture
that I felt indicated that she wanted to talk. The people between us
and her obligation to her patient forced her to move on, never again
to be recognized by me.
My third example, another possible case of instant affinity, was
reported to me by one of my paraprofessional psychics. While wheeling an infant in a
shopping center, she paused momentarily next to another customer with
a infant in a carriage. The infants fixed their gaze upon each other, locked
hands, and screamed in anger when the adults separated them. It was,
the adults agreed, a bizarre performance.
These examples show the difficulty of proving the reality of instant
affinity psi bonds. Instant affinity is a spontaneous experience
shared by two people. As currently conceived, it demands nothing of,
and it offers nothing to, the parties involved. It lacks the ecstatic
pleasure of romantic love bonding. I have no suggestion as to how
instant affinity and love bonding might be related.
7. Romantic Love Bonding
"Falling in love", or romantic love bonding, is the development of a
psychic relationship in which one wishes to be close to the loved one,
and, for that purpose, will marry that person if there are no
barriers. Being in love is not the same as wanting sexual intercourse.
How does a man fall in love with a woman? It is commonly said that a male can fall in love with
a female to some variable degree "at first sight," or, in a matter
of minutes merely by observing her in an intimate fashion. This can
happen in many discrete ways, as by looking at her face, by admiring
her hair, by hearing her speak, by observing her tenderly attending an
infant, by listening to her tell of her childhood, by being in an
audience for which she is performing artistically, or by seeing her
less than fully covered, on stage or off. For the male, falling in
love seems to be a potential event waiting to be triggered. If he then
woos her, and if she desires a mate, she will, almost inevitably, fall
in love with him.
One requirement for this kind of intimate observation to be effective in
bonding the man, is that it must be perceived to be innocently
offered, i.e., with no intent to sexually arouse the man. If it is
seen as an attempt to titillate him, sexual intercourse may follow.
This will lead toward bonding of the woman but not necessarily of the
man. To many people, this one-sided genetic tendency seems unfair to
women.
How does a woman fall in love with a man? As can be seen from examples
everywhere, with or without prior sexual intercourse, women form love
bonds with, and marry, men to whom they are not at all well matched
and whose only apparent qualification for the marriage is either
manliness or availability. Women marry in many cases not because
they desire sexual intercourse, but because they have "fallen in love"
with the man. Prior sexual intercourse with the man may accelerate,
but is not essential to such love bonding. For women, love bonding to
a male is usually passive and more gradual, rather than an active,
discrete event, as it seems to be for men.
If its expression is reciprocated, romantic love rapidly strengthens.
It then usually becomes an obsession that results in quick marriage
and the exuberance of a honeymoon. It can last for years, but it soon
cools and changes in character. Eventually, in old age, it may evolve
into a contented sense of oneness between the lovers.
8. Dating Strategies
The basic rule is that, if single, a woman should avoid friendship
with any man who would not be suitable as a husband. Otherwise, she
may respond to his love-making despite his inadequacy. To put it
bluntly, a woman does not always have full control over with whom she will
fall in love. She should avoid extended association with individual
men until she has matured to the point where she understands herself
and can make a spousal commitment that she will not outgrow. Age 21
may be the earliest age at which marriage is a reasonable risk. This
is one reason why alcohol is legally prohibited for minors in the USA.
This asymmetry in the male and female mating roles is supposedly a
genetically determined tendency existing in primitive man. Then, the
fighter male would choose his female and, to fulfill her child-raising
role, the female would have no choice but to learn to love the male
who chose her.
Some feminists argue that this asymmetry may have once existed, but
that today a single woman in the USA with no other obligations, can
choose from a wide field of candidates, with or without intervening,
exploratory sexual intercourse, as she may prefer. The contradicting
answer is that, unless a woman has rather commonplace interests, she
will not find a mate in a commercial dance hall. She must look for
marriageable material in a more rarified atmosphere where men must be
explored singly, in a time-consuming process. The same is true for men
with refined interests. Few single women or men today, as compared to
50 years ago, are "obligation free", i.e., have free time "to choose
from a wide field of marital candidates." Moreover, the asymmetry of
the male-female susceptibility to love bonding has a genetic basis and
cannot be wished away. A woman's genetically programmed attraction to
manliness does not help her to select for the gentler qualities in her
mate, which qualities she will need for happiness in today's world.
9. Mature Marriage
For sound reasons of child-rearing domestic economy, Nature, as a
rule, causes men and women to instinctively allow each of them only one
avid love bond at a time, i.e., they honeymoon, one with one. However,
in middle age as his sexual ardor for his wife cools, the man may
develop a new romantic interest, even while his love for his first
mate may still exist in a mature, less rapturous form. As long as they
are eager to produce a child, he will ordinarily remain faithful to
his wife. When her interest in intercourse lags, if not sooner, he is
ready for a new love bond. The social consequences of this genetic
tendency are regrettable in our culture.
In all of this, it must be emphasized that romantic love bonding is a
unique experience and that sexual intercourse is only a related
adjunct. Moreover, it should be obvious that there may be good reasons
to form a marriage partnership on the basis of what is only a mild,
mutual love bonding, especially among the elderly.
For any couple who are love bonded but for some reason cannot engage
in sexual intercourse, there is the option of spiritual love. This is
a version of the religious ecstasy of St. Theresa of Avila. It is an
unselfish love that, with or without sexual intercourse, desires
nothing but the pleasure of one's love mate. Subjectively, it matches
that good saint's description and is intensely rewarding. Is this
perhaps an ideal to which all of us might aspire?
10. Loveless Sexual Intercourse
I have no generalized knowledge about loveless sexual intercourse
beyond what is found in the news media. However, I know of one
confirmed case where a psychic enjoyed for a time, mutually satisfying
sexual intercourse without a feeling of love by either party. She
withdrew from the arrangement when she realized that she was bonding
(falling in love) with the man and decided that he was not
"marriageable material." She wanted love and children.
11. Mating Behavior in Women
Women might be classified by their mating behavior. On a promiscuity
scale there are two extremes: the sexually reclusive and the socially
promiscuous. Professional people are usually sexually reclusive.
Entertainers are typically socially promiscuous.
A professional woman who wishes to avoid being wooed by male
professional colleagues must avoid feminine clothing and mannerisms
and must conceal her interesting intimate thoughts. When not
preoccupied by professional obligations, she may safely engage in
impersonal public activities, such as organized charity, financial
speculation, or animal breeding, but she must do nothing publicly that is
likely to trigger a love bond with a man. It is not enough for a
business woman to refrain from flirting. She must don a business
persona.
Entertainers typically display their intimate affairs to the news
media to advertise their services. On stage, their feminine
personalities are exhibited for a fee, with the understanding that no
permanence is intended in the resulting psi bonds. If we believe the news
media, entertainers' personal love bonds are usually short-lived,
often scarcely outlasting the honeymoon. Presumably, these life styles
are determined by genes and are not a matter of choice.
I have described two extreme female mating behaviors, that of the
reclusive business woman and that of the Hollywood/Broadway singer.
These do not do justice to the value and variety of female public
behaviors having mating implications. Moreover, there are a few actors
and actresses who live long-loving lives despite the nature of their
calling.
12. Parent-Child Bonds
Mother-to-child bonding and child-to-mother bonding and, likewise,
father-to-child and child-to-father bonding, change constantly from
infancy to adolescence, with a discontinuity in child bonding in
adolescence. (Father-child bonds often fail to develop, which is
presumably a fault of the father.) At some point, the adolescent
usually declares his or her psychological independence from the
opposite-sex parent.
13. The Inter-Sex Sibling Bond
The absence of romantic love bonds and the usual impossibility of
sexual arousal between male and female siblings after puberty can
perhaps be explained by the physiological impossibility of sexual
intercourse between children and the persistence of the
long-established non-sexual love bonds of childhood. This allows the
postulation of a special male-female sibling bond. (The strong
non-sexual love bonding of same-sex siblings presents no conceptual
difficulties.)
14. Persisting and Unwanted Bonds
One psychic whom I know, helps people by praying for them when they
are sick or in trouble. For reasons unknown to the psychic, when the
praying is finished for the problem under consideration, some of these
persons form lasting bonds with the psychic and some do not.
She cited two cases of persisting bonds in which the bonders
frequently sent her unwanted, emotion-laden information about their
personal problems. The psychic, for her part, has tried to ignore this
information. In one case, it was 18 months before the unwanted
information stopped coming. In the other case, burdensome messages are
still being received.
I have three psychic friends who say they frequently, but
unintentionally, pick up confidential information from people they
know. The repeating nature of these sensing events suggests the
existence of psi bonds. How these invasions of privacy are regarded by
the psychic depends upon the nature of her associations. If she
associates only with loving people, the psychic may find their secrets
amusing. If her associations include people who hate, the psychic may
find her unwanted knowledge of them sometimes distasteful.
15. Abusive Husbands
Abused females may tolerate their husbands for several reasons: either
for financial support, especially if there are children, or because
the wife is love-bonded to the man in spite of his cruel behavior, or
because she fears being murdered by her husband if she tries to leave
him, or simply to preserve her self-esteem after she has ignored
premarital warnings of parents or friends. (It should be acknowledged that there are
abusive females, although they are fewer in number if only because
males have more testosterone than females.)
Female tolerance of an abusive mate may have had survival value in
primitive man. The man who was prone to anger and violence would be
more likely to survive than his peace loving neighbor and, in
surviving, would be more likely to feed his mate. A wife who could
endure a cruel mate would share his better chance for survival and
might pass along her tolerance genetically.
Not all abusive husbands are consistently disagreeable. After being
cruel, either physically or verbally, some husbands repent and beg
forgiveness, and shower their wives with kindness until the next time
they lose their tempers and have to beg forgiveness again. (I have no
data on how many husbands are continually abusive and how many are
cyclically kind and abusive.)
One psychic with a low SES background told me that, until she came to
me for advice, she believed from her own and her friends' experience
that all males were prone to anger for trivial reasons and were wife
abusers either verbally or physically. She divorced two husbands for
physical abuse before she found one who, although he lost his temper
and broke objects of value, never abused her. After years of being
lovingly or vociferously reproved for his uncontrollable anger, he is
a changed person and has learned to control his temper (most of the
time).
A high SES psychic who has favored me with her friendship, has studied
wife abuse in her neighborhood. She is married to a medical doctor,
has had hospital nursing experience, and is currently professionally
employed. She lives in a housing development of two dozen homes where
incomes range from one quarter to perhaps a million dollars.
As this psychic exercised in the evening by hiking with her dog
through the neighborhood, she experienced feelings of hatefulness as
she passed certain houses. These feelings she intuited as indicating
the presence of an abused wife. Her feelings conformed to objective
evidence, such as the frightened behavior of some wives, screaming
audible in the neighborhood, verbal or physical abuse of small
children, and confidential complaints from wives to their neighbors.
By her count, one-third of the homes have abused wives.
This estimated incidence of wife abuse in a high SES neighborhood
suggests a need for confirming sociological study. It may reflect the
personality of highly successful businessmen. I have reason to hope
that love without cruelty is the usual situation in middle-SES
families.
16. Good and Evil People
Personal experience has convinced both me and my psychics that there
are inherently good people and evil people. We have puzzled over the
meaning of those words. We agree that the best operationally definable
equivalents are "generous" and "selfish." These definitions should be
supplemented by the idea that good people are friendly to non-family
others and that evil people despise non-family others. It is the
central idea of this document that, when there are feelings of any kind between
two persons, there exists a psi bond reflecting that feeling. There
are hating bonds as well as loving bonds. Good people tend to
associate personally with others who are good and to share friendly,
helpful bonds. Evil people tend to associate with their own kind,
usually to their mutual discomfort.
Today, from the news media, we know that evil is universal among
top-earning CEOs. Consequently, I am inclined to believe that being good or evil
is largely a genetic matter. But I have friends who stoutly insist
that economically lower-class grownups are made evil by childhood
abuse.
17. Good and Evil Psi
Civilization is a cooperative enterprise, requiring a variety and
range of individual abilities above some minimum level. If life is
good in essence, I presume that whatever preserves and improves
civilized life is "good" and that whatever is destructive of present
or future civilization is "evil."
Psi is good when it is used to achieve a good purpose. It is evil when
it is used to achieve evil. The most dramatic, evilly used psi bond I
have witnessed (as shown later on TV) was the frenzied response of a
German street crowd as Hitler promised them victory after the
occupation of Poland in the early part of World War II.
Most people would dismiss this as "mass hypnosis." But hypnosis, as
shown by L.L. Vasiliev's Russian research demonstrating the remote control
of sleep, fits the operational definition of the psychokinetic control
of one brain by another and suggests the formation of a psi bond.
18. On Being a Paraprofessional Psychic
The burdens of being a paraprofessional psychic are likely to be
cultural, social, and technical.
Paraprofessional psychics, by reason of their average superior
intelligence as compared to professional psychics, have rejected
religious and pseudoscientific interpretations of psi and are thus of
an upper-class culture. However, upper-class authority figures
(physicists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and intellectuals of all
kinds) ridicule belief in the reality of psi as superstitious or
psychopathological. The resulting cognitive dissonance can be painful
for a paraprofessional psychic. The pain, in these cases, is
internalized.
Some paraprofessional psychics, who came from a low-class background,
have been accused by family members or family friends of being either
crazy or agents of the devil. The ridicule in these cases is perceived
as intentionally inflicted by others.
Because they are not physical scientists, paraprofessional psychics
cannot distinguish among the unusual phenomena they experience as to
whether those phenomena are probably physical or probably psychic. Of
course, some of their experiences are unmistakably psychic, and these
convince the paraprofessionals that they are themselves "psychic".
However, because of their lack of technical training, paraprofessional
psychics are seriously frustrated by being uncertain as to how much
psi there is generally in the world in which they live.
I cannot speak for male paraprofessional psychics, but the female
paraprofessional psychics with whom I have interacted are grateful to
have their uncertainties reduced by finding a scientist who has
credentials in physics, psychology, and biology, who has spent much of
his professional life studying parapsychology, who endorses, without
quibble, the reality of psi, and who agrees to mentor her. She will
feel psychologically rewarded if her mentor responds freely to her
description of an experience by saying: "It sounds like psi", or "It
sounds like an ordinary physical event", or "I have no idea whether or
not it was psi."
However, there is more than that to the story of my relationships with
paraprofessional psychics. Early in my experimental research career,
and before I was collaborating with psychics, I learned the emotional
nature of the opposition of scientists to psi. I decided that it would
be necessary to be extraordinarily meticulous in performing and
reporting experiments and also that it would be necessary for me to
show my feelings toward the work I was doing.
The latter is difficult for a scientist to do. For my purpose I had to
reveal intimate thoughts in various areas of my life. The danger of
that sort of thing is that one will be seen as either ridiculous or
offensive.
The eight books that I have authored or edited that are still in print were deliberately written to be an autobiographical display of my
technical and emotional development. In each of those eight books I
have taken every reasonable opportunity to tell the reader who I am
and what I did in every step of my career.
If one reads all eight books, one cannot escape knowing me as a
scientist and knowing something about me as a human being. If a female
paraprofessional psychic wants to know if she can safely tell me
secrets, she can read my books, which she might want to do anyway to
learn all that she can about the nature of her psychic burden.
Reciprocally, any parapsychologist would be gratified to have his
professional efforts justified by working at length with an
intelligent paraprofessional psychic who was honest, who would reveal
the relevant details of her personal life, and who was friendly to his
scientific mission.
Under these ideal circumstances, there develops a relationship of
complete reciprocal trust between mentors and psychics, with psi bonds
in both directions appropriate to the circumstances.
Whatever may be said about the nature of such relationships, they are
not based on fraud or ignorance. If one wishes to consider the
possibility that my relationships with psychics may be collective
self-delusions, one might begin by examining my relevant professional
work as summarized in this document, "Psi Bonds: What Are They?", and in
God.org Are You There?
The latter should be supplemented by my most important book,
Joyride to Infinity: A Scientific Survey of the Doomsday Literature.
(ISBN 1-878465-35-X), which has just reverted to my possession and
control, thereby making me the publisher. THE DISTRIBUTORS, Inc., and
the University of Pittsburgh Book Center, who handle my other seven
books in print, have agreed to handle Joyride.
19. Kinds of Love Bonds
In my conception of psi, there are endless kinds of psi bonds. As
stated in the introduction to this document, every communication implies
a psi bond. I shall now expand my earlier definition of psi bonds. The
purpose of this chapter is to define the kind of psi bonds I refer to
as love bonds.
Love bonds are of two kinds: romantic love bonds and non-romantic love
bonds. Non-romantic love bonds do not lead toward marriage, while
romantic love bonds may. Most of my love bonds with psychics are
emotionally rewarding and result in life-long friendships, but, as is
mutually understood, they do not lead toward marriage. They are not
"romantic" love bonds.
The remainder of this document will deal largely with romantic love bonds
involving two hypothetical persons, designated for the purposes of the
discussion in this chapter as A and B. A is said to be romantically
love bonded to B when A experiences an ecstatic pleasure while
contemplating or being near to B. At any one point in time, there are
three love bonding possibilities: Either A is bonded to B, or B is
bonded to A, or they are reciprocally bonded to each other.
If one naively hopes to understand causal relationships among these
three conditions, one might consider the time sequence in which a
particular condition was established. One would also wish to know, in
time sequence, the relevant behaviors of A and B, including sexual
intercourse.
The nature of love is such that a woman may grow to love and then
marry a man in a series of unrecognized steps. Most often, the
variables involved are too numerous and uncertain to be useful for
theorizing as to how it happened. At best, one may be able to learn
the current situation after the action is over.
Those who wish to explore the outer reaches of ecstatic romantic love
from an historical point of view might start by examining the tragedy
of Abelard and Heloise. Peter Abelard, one of the great classical
intellects of the Twelfth Century, was castrated by a group of
ruffians at the behest of the overly protective uncle of Heloise.
Abelard was Heloise's first and only love. Heloise, a brilliant
scholar in her own right, then became a nun, but her love for her
husband continued unabated. Her subsequent love letters to him hold a
unique place in history.
Another treatment of the romantic love bond is described in Chapter
23, under the heading "The Negotiated Marriage Contract."
20. A Love Story
I think it highly probable that love is a psychic phenomenon. In that
belief, I could be wrong, of course. But it is generally accepted that
love and lust are different phenomena. I know that to be true from
personal experience. In either case, the challenge of the difference
between love and lust remains.
As mentioned in Chapter 3, to halt prostate cancer, I was chemically
castrated in December 1998, thereby preventing penile erection and
leaving me with no felt response to the thought of sexual intercourse.
It was, I found, convenient to be rid of that amazing itch, which
mostly males feel and which causes a lot of trouble in this world.
In January 1999, a middle-aged, college educated woman, whom I had
distantly known for several years as a paraprofessional psychic, asked
whether I would be willing to investigate her psychic ability--a
proposal to which I readily agreed.
She visited my house, and I visited hers, several times. We talked at
length by telephone. I met her husband, a medical doctor, who affirmed
her psychic ability, but did not otherwise enter into my interactions
with his wife. She described in detail the events of her childhood and
of her psychic experiences. She was, I discovered, a kind, generous,
and highly moral person, who had seen a lot of the world.
To my surprise, after several months I suddenly fell in love with her
in my de-sexed old age. As it turned out, it wasn't simply a fondness.
It was a wild story-book thing, summed up in the simple thought that I
wanted to be close to her. I rather doubt that I felt a comparable
ardor when I happily married my now-deceased, wife. That was 60 years
ago, and I have forgotten what it was like. What I now felt was beyond
description. I was transported to another world.
For me, this was an educational experience. From it, I inferred that
ecstatic romantic love, once a person reached puberty, has little to
do with the lover's age. This should be of scientific interest.
In retrospect it would appear that the psi bonds between myself and
this paraprofessional psychic were initially non-romantic. Both of us
were presumably engaged by the idea of the production of psi, but not
with the thought of each other as persons. This psychic is tall and
slender, but she had never been in my presence dressed in anything but
a shapeless ankle-length gown, which I assume was her normal
professional attire. She had never read any of my books.
What unexpectedly happened on a particular occasion, as I remember in
detail, was that I accidentally observed from across a lunch table in
a restaurant, that my psychic colleague was taking a moment away from
the rest of us to whisper tenderly to a mentally impaired child for
whom she was caring. I did not hear the words, but the loving nature
of her message was obvious. I felt as though I was momentarily joined
with the innermost self of the psychic. That was the magical nonsense
that instantaneously changed my life. At that moment an ineffable
pleasure in contemplating her began and persisted. The only clue I can
find for this experience is in the second paragraph in Chapter 7. In
the light of this experience, I am mystified by the triggering of
ecstatic romantic love. This is an area demanding scientific research.
When I brought up for discussion with this paraprofessional psychic
the topic of my suddenly acquired love, she declined to discuss it. I
was an unrequited lover. No matter what gentle approach I tried, I got
nowhere. I had lost a friend. In the following years there were
occasional conversations and written notes, but we never resumed a
state of familial intimacy and our joint investigative venture was
terminated.
As every mother of a wayward child knows, parental love doesn't stop
because it logically should. Likewise, when a woman has captured one's
mind, one cannot easily stop romantically loving her just because she
doesn't love you. This is especially true if one understands and
sympathizes with her reason for disconnecting. I inferred that she
simply did not want a second lover in her life who might complicate
her marriage or other parts of the life that she was busily leading.
My feeling of love was so enjoyable that I decided not to try to
forget her. Without personal contact, my ardor has slowly lessened, but
the mere thought of her still brings an irrepressible smile to my face
and a feeling of gratitude to my conscious mind.
21. Love in Perspective
From my several psychic friends I have learned that there are many
kinds of love, each rewarding and entangling in its own way. By
subjective hints that come to me, I am convinced there is far more
observably involved in romantic love than I had initially surmised. I
suspect that full-blown ecstatic love such as mine was, is relatively
rare and that for the average engaged couple, the phenomenon has been
tempered. But how? By what? I shall discuss that later. And why was I
chosen to be "struck by lightning"?
I now suspect that if a couple lives in a perfect marriage, one or
both can simultaneously enjoy an unlimited number of non-sexual but
deeply loving companionships. In a perfect marriage, jealousy cannot
occur. I suspect also that a mild clothing fetishism may be a normal
part of romantic love. If not emotionally embraced in association with
one person, romantic love may become a chronic non-lustful pleasure
associated with femininity. I believe we have barely begun to
understand the dynamics and ramifications of ecstatic romantic love.
In my lifetime I have been fortunate. In early adulthood, I
experienced a negotiated romantic love bond with my wife. Later, I had
various non-romantic love bonds with psychics. Beginning in late 1998,
at age 84, I was chemically castrated, which allowed me to
subjectively examine my love bonds in the absence of lust. In 1999, as
described above, I experienced a romantic love bond that allowed me to
feel an ecstasy beyond anything I had known before.
The foregoing has led me to believe that by personal experience I have
established (a) that love and lust are different, and (b) that lasting
ecstatic love (a wish to be close to someone), which is widely assumed
to be an experience of young females, can be experienced by an aged,
castrated male without involving sexual intercourse by anyone. Whether
castration was essential to my experience was not demonstrated.
I shall die soon. I hope others will pursue the puzzle of love in
relation to psi. Where, for example, are psi bonds found in history?
Any force so fundamental as psi must permeate history even if taboo.
Did it enable the First Crusade? Was it perhaps an inspiration in the
building of gothic cathedrals? Both of these activities exhibited a
surprising element of spontaneity. Throughout history, love as
distinct from lust must always have been a competing variable.
22. Wanted: Wise Parents
In their innocence, adolescent girls especially, need guidance to
avoid pregnancy and to preserve their future options by avoiding
unwise marriage. The problem was discussed in general terms in Chapter
8, under the title Dating Strategies. Boys likewise need warning
guidance to avoid pitfalls and need inspiration and worldly guidance
until they reach maturity.
Having willingly conceived a child, the responsibility for its future
rests initially with the parents, in so far as they can determine the
child's environments.
The environments will consist of the mother and the father or their
substitutes, of siblings and playmates, of school mates, and of
teachers. To create these environments wisely will require moral
excellence, intellectual competence, and economic power in the
parents. These traits do not correlate highly.
These ideas could be expanded in many directions. I shall be content
to offer one provocative thought. Most of us believe that progress in
civilization requires that men and women progress toward equality in
their privileges and their duties except as limited by biological
constraints. How can males and females learn to work together without
interference by love and lust?
23. The Negotiated Marriage Contract
There must be cases where male and female are a near perfect match in
some psychic sense. Unfortunately, a workable marriage requires other
kinds of compatibility as well.
From my association with psychics, I have been led to believe that
most successful marriages involve both love and lust. Moreover, I am
convinced that most economically upper-class marriages are based upon
a "negotiated marriage contract."
By some time in their college careers, most economically upper-class
students will have found someone whom they would like to consider for
marriage. As time allows, they will explore their relationship with
each other, usually including sexual intercourse. With experience, the
pleasure of sexual intercourse lessens. When one has an abundance of
social and intellectual obligations, sexual intercourse, fitted in
between, tends to follow the minimum routine that will provide an
orgasm. Thus, the pleasure of orgasm can vary enormously from couple
to couple, and becomes a variable clause in the marriage contract.
Exchanged childhood memories may retain non-sexual bonding efficacy.
Children, or the lack thereof, may be a powerful bond-making or
bond-breaking factor. Personality traits may be enjoyed or hated by
either mate. Couples sometimes support one another in a joint
stressful situation, which leads to permanent bonds of trust.
All of these factors are added up and the couple decides whether to
"sign the contract". Love, i.e., the urge to be close to one another,
may have little or a lot to do with what happens then or later. I am
saddened to conclude that love has relatively little to do with most
stable marriages. I am told that lust is dominant over love for most
men and for some women. However, I do know personally of marriages in
which love plays an important and even a dominant role for both
parties.
In summary, after waiting until age 21 to choose a spouse for a stable
marriage, one may be surprised to find that he and she are being asked
to sign a "negotiated marriage contract" and that their choice is
based more on lust than on love.
24. Dating Guide
The foregoing ideas, viewed as an account of things I learned from my
psychic friends, are, I believe, a worthwhile offering. However, this
document covers a very small sample of psychics, each of whom differed
significantly from the others. The literature of the field shows that
this sample did not exhaust the variety of psychic experience.
Viewed, instead, as an account of some of my experiences as a
parapsychologist trying to understand what I found in the literature
and in life, this document is, I believe, adequate as far as it goes.
But if it is considered as an instruction manual for selecting a
spouse, it is incomplete and should be extended. There are many
marriages that endure forever in unremitting hatred. There are other
marriages in which one partner betrays the other for material gain,
leading to unhappiness and often to divorce. Both of these are
marriages one would hope to avoid.
Courtship is not a time for fun and games. Courtship for each member
of the prospective couple is a time to determine whether the other
person is morally and socially acceptable.
Is this the person on whom you wish to gamble your life? Said
differently, is this a person whose moral superiority matches your own
and to whom you can, therefore, entrust your total intimacy, i.e.,
your essential self? Is this a person in whom you can have unlimited
trust?
Also, is this a person whose physical and mental habits you could
enjoy, or willingly endure, throughout your life? These questions are
especially pressing for the woman.
Here are several factors believed to favor a happy marriage: |
