What­ev­er per­cent­age of our brains we’re using, it’s already enough to sense what’s oth­er­wise out of reach. We are intrigued by the prospect of see­ing dis­tant places and uncov­er­ing infor­ma­tion to help make more ful­ly informed deci­sions by look­ing from the mind’s eye.

“The day sci­ence begins to study non-phys­i­cal phe­nom­e­na, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the pre­vi­ous cen­turies of its exis­tence.” — Niko­la Tesla

Clair­voy­ance is the sen­sa­tion of expe­ri­enc­ing infor­ma­tion about future events that goes beyond typ­i­cal sen­so­ry capac­i­ty. Many dif­fer­ent forms of extrasen­so­ry, para­nor­mal, psy­chic phe­nom­e­na have the poten­tial to lead to impor­tant break­throughs in the com­ing years.

Remote view­ing is an extrasen­so­ry per­cep­tion (ESP) tac­tic in which an indi­vid­ual views infor­ma­tion per­tain­ing to a place, per­son, or event with­out phys­i­cal­ly being in the same loca­tion as that vision. In the 1970s, instances of remote view­ing were per­formed with enough suc­cess to get the US gov­ern­ment to fund a $20 mil­lion project to study its effects and appli­ca­tions. Housed at a secret Army unit in Fort Meade, Mary­land, Star­gate Project employed sev­er­al full-time psy­chics and ran in con­junc­tion with the Men­lo Park non­prof­it SRI Inter­na­tion­al to inves­ti­gate poten­tial appli­ca­tions for con­trolled psy­chic phe­nom­e­na. The pro­gram was ulti­mate­ly ter­mi­nat­ed in 1995 due to doubts as to the verac­i­ty of the most com­pelling find­ings. Despite yield­ing con­clu­sive evi­dence that could have led to a new set of research, the pro­gram did not make fur­ther head­way.¹⁸ The CIA’s declas­si­fied papers shed light on why the project was ini­ti­at­ed, and explain the ben­e­fits of remote view­ing as being “pas­sive, inex­pen­sive, no known defense”. The CIA’s overview doc­u­ment describes the term psy­choen­er­get­ics as “the men­tal process by which an indi­vid­ual per­ceives, com­mu­ni­cates with, and/or per­turbs char­ac­ter­is­tics of a des­ig­nat­ed tar­get, per­son, or event remote in space and/or time from that indi­vid­ual.”¹⁹ Oth­er psy­chic abil­i­ties that were test­ed dur­ing the decades-long project involved telekine­sis: the abil­i­ty to move phys­i­cal objects with one’s mind. We believe the pos­si­bil­i­ties of  these extrasen­so­ry actions con­tin­ue to be valu­able areas to explore and entertain.

“Telepa­thy is just infor­ma­tion com­ing in; psy­choki­ne­sis, just infor­ma­tion going out.” — Edgar Mitchell, Apol­lo 14 astronaut

Sci­ence fic­tion often depicts enhanced ver­sions of para­nor­mal abil­i­ties. In the com­ic book fran­chise The X‑Men, Dr. Charles Xavier hooks him­self up to his own inven­tion, an elec­tri­cal head­piece that extends his already innate psy­chic abil­i­ty, and allows him to con­nect to the col­lec­tive con­scious­ness of all humans through his mind. And often, for this abil­i­ty, he is cel­e­brat­ed by the pub­lic and the U.S. gov­ern­ment. Yet, the oth­er side of the X‑Men sto­ry is soaked in pain and suf­fer­ing. The kids of this insti­tu­tion, all of them mutants them­selves, are often reviled by soci­ety despite their altru­is­tic inten­tions. The point of this part of the sto­ry is: We need to help, rather than fear, those who can assist us by way of their unique, hid­den tal­ents and bet­ter inte­grate these indi­vid­u­als into soci­ety. Right now marks a great moment to reex­am­ine the whole spec­trum of cog­ni­tive ranges in peo­ple and invite those who have extra­or­di­nary abil­i­ties to share in the col­lec­tive conversation.

It’s pos­si­ble that many indi­vid­u­als have psy­chic intel­li­gence, and yet, the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion wouldn’t know about these peo­ple’s abil­i­ties due to their con­cern of adverse response. Those who might exhib­it an extra-sen­so­ry gift might very well seek to pro­tect them­selves from oth­ers who would either fear, not under­stand, or sin­gle out that per­son for their abil­i­ty. Yet, there must be a right­ful place for clair­voy­ance in our soci­ety. For human civ­i­liza­tion to evolve to its next phase of abil­i­ty and dis­cov­ery, what if we could learn from those whose insights could lead us into the pos­si­bil­i­ties of enabling mind over mat­ter? The abil­i­ty to con­nect, through the mind, to oth­er peo­ple and places, is such an extra­or­di­nary skill that it tran­scends any cor­po­re­al expe­ri­ence to which most peo­ple relate. But what if col­lec­tive con­ver­sa­tion were to shift around the place of psy­chic abil­i­ties in soci­ety— how might that allow us to greater expand human innovation?

The kind of heal­ing our plan­et needs might very well be informed by intel­li­gence that is of yet beyond our access. SETI (Search for Extra Ter­res­tri­al Intel­li­gence) is look­ing for signs of intel­li­gent life using radio sig­nals. But this could be insuf­fi­cient tech­nol­o­gy to explore a more diverse field of ener­gy and fre­quen­cy. What if psy­chic abil­i­ties were to play a greater role in chan­nel­ing oth­er life? There are already peo­ple who claim to be doing this. Per­haps we can find rel­e­vant approach­es to see the unseen. How might we be able to take a look into the 95% dark ener­gy and mat­ter of our uni­verse that might offer pro­found answers that have so far been out of view?

If con­scious­ness is every­thing, then we can’t exclude any­thing from offer­ing us the pos­si­bil­i­ty to evolve our con­scious­ness. Empow­er­ment and inclu­siv­i­ty are the ingre­di­ents to pos­i­tive evo­lu­tion. Greater explo­ration into psy­chic abil­i­ty could offer insights beyond any­thing human­i­ty has pre­vi­ous­ly known. Innu­mer­able peo­ple are work­ing in the inter­est of such exploration.

Access to mind-enhanc­ing agents con­tin­ues to increase. A range of prod­ucts called “nootrop­ic sup­ple­ments” are already on the mar­ket boast­ing ampli­fied neur­al pow­ers. Nootrop­ics denote ways of enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion, and show up as com­mer­cial­ly-avail­able, syn­thet­ic “smart drugs” and “brain enhancers”. The com­ing years will see more and more of these prod­ucts. But hope­ful­ly, along with these advance­ments, we will also see more tol­er­ance for peo­ple exhibit­ing cer­tain savant-like abil­i­ties that do not fit with­in the cur­rent social stan­dard of accept­abil­i­ty. Cur­rent­ly chil­dren with Asperger’s, or those who are on the Autis­tic spec­trum, are most­ly with­out ade­quate sup­port in our soci­ety. And often, a devel­op­men­tal dis­or­der marked by dif­fi­cul­ty with social inter­ac­tion and non­ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion, results in such indi­vid­u­als being ignored, when what they have to share may be of unde­ni­able val­ue. Some chil­dren with Asperg­er’s might be able to help advance some of the more dif­fi­cult prob­lems fac­ing soci­ety at large if only these indi­vid­u­als were giv­en a more fit­ting place with kind­ness, com­pas­sion, and empow­er­ing sup­port to pur­sue their interests.

In cor­re­spond­ing aca­d­e­m­ic research, Allan Sny­der, direc­tor of the Cen­tre for the Mind at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney, hypoth­e­sizes that by tem­porar­i­ly de-acti­vat­ing the more con­cep­tu­al and log­i­cal deci­sion-mak­ing appa­ra­tus of the brain, any human brain can approx­i­mate the gifts of autis­tic savants. Sny­der research­es how elec­tro-mag­net­ic stim­u­la­tion to the brain’s frontal lobes can pro­hib­it that region of the brain’s activ­i­ty in order to stim­u­late the abil­i­ty to recall incred­i­bly detailed infor­ma­tion, or per­form quick, com­plex calculations.

With the costs of sci­en­tif­ic inquiry drop­ping, there will be an increas­ing­ly open field for research into psy­chic phe­nom­e­na. It’s even pos­si­ble that the human genome can point out the genes asso­ci­at­ed with psy­chic abil­i­ties, and then it’s only a mat­ter of time and effort before genet­ic edit­ing results in real life X‑Men walk­ing among us a few decades for­ward in the future.

“The whole prob­lem with the world is that fools and fanat­ics are always so cer­tain of them­selves, and wis­er peo­ple so full of doubts.” — Bertrand Russell

In 2015, para­psy­chol­o­gy researcher Dean Radin pre­sent­ed his work on the future of con­scious­ness to an audi­ence gath­ered by the Insti­tute Of Noet­ic Sci­ences (IONS), where Radin holds the posi­tion of Chief Sci­en­tist. His talk cov­ered many of the top­ics described in this subsection

in greater detail, and drove toward the impor­tance of democ­ra­tiz­ing inves­ti­ga­tions into psy­chic phe­nom­e­na and devel­op­ing para­nor­mal abil­i­ties. The cur­rent par­a­digm of con­cen­trat­ed pow­er in mod­ern civ­i­liza­tion is a dan­ger­ous premise for how the poten­tial for psy­chic abil­i­ties might be manip­u­lat­ed. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of an elite group con­trol­ling resources, research, and super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties also sounds a lit­tle like a bad plot for a dystopi­an thriller. Yet, pro­grams of psy­chic espi­onage, like the CIA’s Star­gate Project, have been devel­oped with­in gov­ern­ment-spon­sored activ­i­ties in order to tar­get such infor­ma­tion as the mil­i­tary pro­grams of for­eign gov­ern­ments. This is not the future of human poten­tial we envi­sion. We don’t want to see psy­chic phe­nom­e­na become the means of mind-con­trol at the expense of oth­ers. We want to see these super­nat­ur­al abil­i­ties be used for com­mon good and co-cre­ation. What­ev­er we pur­sue and how­ev­er we pur­sue activ­i­ties around psy­chic abil­i­ties, there will always be unin­tend­ed con­se­quences. Yet, we can sure­ly mit­i­gate some of the risk by cre­at­ing a more open space and avenues for soci­etal inte­gra­tion of psy­chic power.

In the mean­time, per­spec­tives are open­ing with greater inter­est in expand­ing con­scious­ness. So whether we engage in remote view­ing, decide to take nootrop­ics, or choose to escape our typ­i­cal plane of cog­ni­tion through a tra­di­tion­al selec­tion of psy­che­delics, many of us are look­ing for ways to open our minds to new dimen­sions of insight. Increased inter­est in MDMA, ayahuas­ca, mesca­line, pey­ote, and salvia divi­no­rum (just some of the more than 100 psy­che­delics cur­rent­ly in rota­tion, with over half in syn­the­sized form), high­lights the gen­er­al fas­ci­na­tion with altered states of consciousness.

No mat­ter which path we take toward greater insight into con­scious­ness and the mys­ter­ies of the uni­verse, it’s para­mount that we think of alter­na­tives to the cur­rent sys­tems influ­enc­ing the van­guard of research. We feel human­i­ty will ben­e­fit immense­ly from adopt­ing a whole new sys­tems approach to expand­ing con­scious­ness and enhanc­ing cog­ni­tive func­tion for every­one. Imag­ine what our lev­el of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, under­stand­ing, and co-cre­ation will be like then…