My Library

This time no one was snobbish and everyone was agreeable and nice -- at least here at the start-up. Something now needs to be interjected because it has a slight importance on the one hand and inspires a very great misunderstanding on the other. The American Society for PSYCHICAL Research had long since abandoned interest in PSYCHICS, and certainly did not "test" them. Neither did it recommend or identify psychics. It did not hire as staff workers anyone known to be psychic. And, as we will see ahead, it forbade any psychic consulting on its premises, especially regarding its employees. In effect, the Society had been converted into a parapsychological establishment -- but had retained the term "psychical" because of the long tradition of the Society and direct links to the eminent founders who WERE psychical researchers, not parapsychologists. At some convenient point ahead, I'll work you through all of these subtle, but important distinctions. One thing in my favor which might have aided my entry into the ASPR was my voluminous protests that I was NOT "a psychic." If anything, I was a consciousness researcher who sometimes had experienced "altered states of consciousness." Osis had a great experiment going, indeed.