My Library

In particular, the adherents of this philosophy stringently (and somewhat frivolously) reject anything which is supposedly tainted by immaterialism -- and which rejection includes, among other important phenomena, the phenomena of psi. This was as true of American materialists as of Soviet materialists. It needs to be vigilantly pointed up that materialism was the dominant mainstream philosophy of the modernist twentieth century -- at least until the mid-1980s when the concept of post-Modernism arose. Within post-Modernism was recognized that perhaps some factors rejected, arbitrarily and without anything resembling due examination, within the auspices of pure materialism ought to be reexamined. Something along the same lines had already been going on within, of all places, the cutting edge of physics, that former bastion of pure materialism. In any event, the publication of PSYCHIC DISCOVERIES... presented the mainstream Western world with something of a dilemma -- and within which certain real, but inconvenient issues were permitted to remain obscure. In any event, it was largely believed that the Soviets, as entrenched materialists, would vigorously denounce any psychical activities in their Empire. In fact, though, the book showed that such was not the case, and probably had not been the case for some time.