My Library

Rather than looking at the phenomena in the first instance of all things, one should first look at the scenarios in which the phenomena are to be studied, and in which the drama of the "work" is to be played. In this case, parapsychology was probably already moribund, largely from internal conflicts. But in any case, social forces external to it were poised to attack any positive developments -- if only to keep parapsychologists on the defensive, keep them ghettoized. I didn’t see why one should adapt to all of this, and especially not Puthoff who came with credentials and vision that were, in my estimation, unique to the parapsychology scenario. Why not attempt to create a whole new approach -- a different kind of scenario? Why not cast the phenomena into a scenario of physics, rather than into the familiar psychological one? To be sure, Puthoff was already thinking along these lines, and had been for some time evidence of which was in existence in his earlier proposals that Cleve Backster had given me to read. For starters, why continue to utilize the nomenclature of moribund parapsychology -- for doing to would directly reconnect to that field. Surely, there ought to be some kind of comparable nomenclature in physics that would serve three positive purposes: First, to confuse the social forces poised to discredit, for example, clairvoyance, telepathy, and etc. Second, to make the phenomena more recognizable to physicists, or at least more amenable to them.