Education

Modern American education is oriented toward the cultivation of the mental abilities charted by Benjamin Bloom et al. in their three taxonomies of educational goals: cognitive, affective and psychomotor. Psi functioning has not been included within this taxonomy. This "cultural vacuum" may have been responsible for the growth of many cults and organizations claiming to train psi and other related abilities. The mainstream educational community has yet to awaken to the challenge of assessing the need and potential for parapsychological education within the school system. One area of obvious potential application and some apparent results is in special education for the blind., Some steps toward the evaluation of popular programs for psi cultivation are found in my second book, Psi Development Systems.
 

Creativity in Art, Literature and Music

Trance experience is sometimes accompanied by artistic production that seems beyond the experience and talent of the conscious mind. Well-known examples of this phenomena are the literary productions of the Brazilian spiritist Chico Xavier, the artistic productions of Luiz Gasparetto (another Brazilian spiritist) and the classical musical creations of the English medium, Rosemary Brown. In each of these cases, mediums claim that the artistic creations are produced with the aid of discarnate entities.
 

Agriculture and Pest Control 

The use of magical rituals as an adjunct to agriculture certainly dates back to prehistoric times. It eventually became formalized in the Eleusinean mystery religion of ancient Greece. In contemporary society, some practitioners use "radionics" instruments as devices for focusing concentration and eliminating pests and disease from crops. Many anecdotal accounts, such as those of Arthur M. Young, attest to the success of this method. Controlled experimental investigations have not been published.
 

Athletics and Sports 

Anecdotal accounts, collected by Michael Murphy and Rhea White, suggest peak moments of psychic perception, psychokinesis, and synchronistic flow are associated with dramatic levels of athletic performance.

Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, has developed a database suggesting that athletes develop extraordinary control of the human body -- powers comparable to that those reported of yogis, mystics and saints.

Finding Lost Objects

Tribal shamanism, perhaps the world's second oldest profession, cultivated practitioners who were noted for their ability to find lost objects. Adrian Boshier reported that tests for this are a normal part of shamanistic training in South Africa. An experimental model for testing this ability in natural situations has been designed by Patric Geisler, a psi researcher and anthropologist. Popular advertisements in Fate magazine present many claims of this ability.
 

Scientific Discovery

At the beginning of the twentieth century the theosophist clairvoyant C. W. Leadbeater published a book called Occult Chemistry in which he attempted to use psi perception to determine the structure of molecules. In so doing, he anticipated the discovery of deuterium, an isotope of hydrogen. Later, similar attemppts were reported by French researcher Z. W. Wolkowski who conducted successful tests with a sensitive, Raymond Reant. In the realm of astronomy, remote viewing experiments have reportedly provided unexpected data that was later confirmed by satellite probe. These reports have been very controversial.
 

Weather Prediction and Control

The ability to control the weather is reputed to occur among shamans of many tribal groups and has reportedly been observed in the American Indian culture as well as the Tibetan. Several ostensible instances with an American practitioner have also been documented by myself and are included in the earlier discussions of UFOs and macro-pk. Followers of the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich claim to have developed control over the weather through the use of mysterious "cloudbusters" that are said to manipulate "orgone energy."