Spirituality/General: Are Psychics Real? by Frederick Gimino

Police use them to solve crimes, and every day ordinary people visit them to get answers on love, money and spirituality questions. In many people's minds, however, the question remains: Do psychics really exist?

If you have ever wondered "are psychics real?" you are not alone. Many people ask themselves this very same question every day. The answer is often not an easy one, but for thousands of years people have turned to psychics, and clairvoyants for love, romance, and life advice. Some say psychics even have the ability to communicate with the spirits of the departed.

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Zener Cards - Illustration courtesy Wikipedia

Over the years claims of spiritualism and psychic powers have been so widespread and the reports of its effects so numerous and impressive that it was inevitable that scientists would be attracted to the alleged phenomena. Parapsychology, the science that studies these phenomena, focused on many areas including telepathy, clairvoyance, hypnotism, spirits, spiritualism, and the history of spiritual manifestations.

Although Parapsychology is still considered a fringe science by many scientists, it still merits the attention of renowned educational institutions such as Princeton University and Berkley. Princeton offers the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) degree and the University of Berkley in California awarded the only American accredited degree in Parapsychology to Jeffery Mishlove in 1980. But in saying this I am putting the cart before the horse.

The pioneers of modern Parapsychology began using the experimental approach to psychic phenomena at Duke University in the 1930s under the direction of Joseph Rhine. Subsequently, Karl Zener, one of J.Rhines associates, developed the world renowned Zener card test for testing ESP abilities using the scientific method. These ESP tests were conducted at Duke University in one of the first Pavlovian conditioning laboratories.

Parapsychology progressed throughout the 20th century and adopted current technology as it became available. The use of more sophisticated methods of paranormal investigation advanced as technology did. In modern times, advanced electronic equipment is often used to test for psychic phenomena. This is because paranormal events reportedly cause energy disturbances across the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Some speculate that energy is drawn from the surrounding environment to power psychic events. Modern day paranormal investigators monitor these environmental energy changes with a variety of modern instruments including EMF detectors, temperature sensors, static electricity detectors, ionization detectors, motion detectors, EVP recording devices, RF detectors, and radiation monitors.

So, whether you believe in psychics, paranormal activity, or spiritualism the fact of the matter is there is currently hard scientific data documenting the anomalous psychic events which occur in the everyday world around us. In addition, for thousands of years unexplained phenomena have been documented. Are millions of people crazy? I think not. I assure you that the spiritual realm does exist and I am not alone in that belief. Many scientists, layman, and spiritualists share the same views about our universe. Even some world renowned physicists speculate the need for more than one dimension to explain life as we know it.

My best advice is to try to keep an open mind and an objective outlook about things that we do not fully understand. that is unless you believe the sole criterion of reality is our limited human ability to quantify, tag, and label it. After all we can not see the wind but we do see the affect it has on the leaves as they blow about. Does this mean wind does not exist just because we cannot see it?

In closing I leave it up to you the reader to decide for your self the answer to the question at hand. But, know this my answer to the question "are psychics real?" is yes. Psychics, psychic abilities, spirits, and ESP are real whether you believe in them or not.

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