PART 1:

NON-CONSCIOUS PARTICIPATION IN SOCIAL CONSENSUS REALITIES
(22Jan97)

There's a good chance I'll flub the message and the "text" of this particular essay -- the MESSAGE being whatever you can make out of the words; the TEXT being what is not put into words, but is being said anyway, the sort of read-between-the-lines thing.

But if I flub, there are two good reasons: We all are "victims" of the consensus realities among which we live; and it is necessary to utilize consensus reality concepts and nomenclature of the consensus reality in order to talk about it. So, plop! One ends up back in it.

However, consensus-reality formation, and thinking with or via its contexts, patterns, concepts, ideas and nomenclature, constitute the single biggest deterrent with regard to activating any of the superpowers.

Everyone of course has some idea about what a consensus reality is, if only from their mindset perspectives. But the idea is usually vague, and even so most feel they are free of consensus reality influences.

Allowing for differences at the individual level, the general consensus about consensus realities seems to be that they involve the majority who have trouble thinking for themselves and thus ape or imitate each other. But we, ourselves, are not like that, and even if influenced by consensus realities, we can escape from them any time we want.

After all, we are individuals with freedom of thought and choice, right?

Well, not if the language you are using is the same as the one the consensus reality is using. For when you speak or read the language and words the consensus reality is using, you are actually participating in the consensus reality format.

Before getting into what follows, I must alert you that it will appear I'm being very negative and condemnatory about consensus realities, and am probably targeting specific ones.

Well, nothing of the kind is the case.

Although I may be in error so far as I understand them, the manufacturing of consensus realities is an ongoing artifact of our species which needs to fabricate thinking patterns that make community possible.

So, not only are consensus realities NECESSARY, they are here to stay as long as specimens of our species are group-minded and interdependent.

Aside from the above disclaimer, I love to wallow within this or that consensus reality, simply to exercise my curiosity.

It will be obvious to just about everyone that consensus realities are always SOCIAL consensus realities, and that they can contain factors that boost any number of activities. But it is well known that they can prevent or deter any number of activities also. These deterring factors can be overt. Or they can be subtle and merely implicit. And they can have nearly invisible spin-offs. The deterring factors can also emanate from misconceptions not realized as such.

Social consensus realities are perpetuated by cloning their basic concepts into others via association with them, or by the tried and trusted method of educating, conditioning, convincing, or propagandizing.

But the single, surest method of the cloning is one few could imagine -- language itself. For when one learns language, one learns its nomenclature PLUS the meanings assigned to it BY the consensus reality that determines what the meanings are.

With this prelude having been stated, here we go into a topic that is flubbable no matter who addresses it.


Major Characteristics of A Consensus Reality
In sociology, a SOCIAL CONSENSUS REALITY refers to what the greatest number of people (i.e., the consensus majority) think or believe is real.

A general consensus reality should be distinguished from mindsets, in that a given consensus reality can contain any number of mindsets, right down to and inclusive of the individual level.

Mindsets are more likely to be found among social sub-groups formed of individuals whose "inclinations" are compatible with those of the others. Mindset groups can indeed form their own particular consensus realities, but these are "local" to the group and seldom achieve a general universality.

Although proper science considers it to be a mindset of fools, the "field" of parapsychology possesses a general consensus reality, but also a number of contrasting mindset groups within it.

This social arrangement is true almost everywhere and regarding all activities.

The usual result of a consensus reality formation is that what the consensus thinks is real takes on some kind of stability, often becoming immovable, enduring, habitual, unquestioned and cement-like -- and thus exhibiting various degrees of resistance to any kind of alteration or change.

Even if things are not all that stable, what is more or less an illusion of it serves the purpose of making community possible and maintainable. The other option is what people refer to as "chaos."

Consensus reality formation seems to be a trait of our species as a whole, for consensus realities are everywhere formed -- and usually perpetuated to their last gasp, especially if they have become "prevailing" ones. The length of their prevail reinforces the idea of their correctness and efficiency.

Much can be said for and against consensus reality formations, usually without getting anywhere in the longer run of things.
On the favorable side, it is obvious that consensus reality formation is THE basis for social coherency.

But somewhat on the questionable side is that social consensus realities are utilized to beat up on the social consensus realities of others' groups -- often with the result that members of two consensus reality groupings, neither of which have ANY hold on real realities, can mess around with each other in rather deplorable ways.

Consensus reality formations are so complicated that I personally would like to lift the panorama of the superpowers up and out of them altogether.

But this cannot be done, for reasons that ahead will be torn apart and beat up on.


The Relationship of Consensus Realities to the Superpower Faculties
There are THREE major reasons why the superpower faculties cannot be lifted up and out of consensus realities:

Such realities are everywhere, and the thinking-apparatus of each and everyone of us is linked into a variety of them. The link may be because of educational programming, but if not that then at least via language and nomenclature.

Many of the concepts that characterize a given consensus reality act as deterrents, sometimes permanent, to the activation of the faculties, and without much conscious awareness on our parts that they do so.

The THIRD reason mentioned here, but which will be discussed ahead in the second essay is "mental information processing viruses." This third reason is the most powerful -- and unavoidable -- of all. And it is THIS reason which, in my opinion, necessitates this somewhat over-long and possibly tiring essay.

Thus, anyone who might chance to want to activate their superpower faculties is obliged, without question, without release, to turn rather exacting attention to consensus realities (yes, you can take a deep sigh if you want).

These might at first seem very far removed from anything to do with the superpower faculties. But the two are right up next and against each other, no farther apart than two sides of a coin.

Now, any examination of consensus realities tends to be quite boring, complicated and thorny. So, to get into this I'll do my best to hack a path with the hope it won't immediately get filled in behind me merely because of boredom.


Two Typical Questions
Since the onset of my participation in research in 1971, I've found that people most frequently ask one or both of two questions. And since the inauguration of this website database, and the enormous amount of gratifying email resulting, the same two questions are still those most frequently asked:

• What can one read to understand more about the superpowers? and

• Are there any (inexpensive) documents, books or courses one can utilize as sources for self-development procedures?

Not long after this website got underway, I decided to address these questions in an essay.

But I soon got bogged down -- because there simply was too much to put into it by way of preparing the reader for comprehension.

For example, the consensus realities regarding psychic stuff are relatively antiquated. Some, but not all, of the most important concepts applied are either misconceived or are ambiguous. The consensus reality does not notice the misconceptions. Ambiguity might serve for easy and superficial think, but is not constructive otherwise.

But most importantly, significant discoveries in other branches of science have been made during the last thirty years, discoveries that are entirely relevant not only within those other branches, but to the overall situation psychic problems represent.

Yet these new discoveries have not been transferred into Psi research, while the other branches of science haven't made the connection either. If these new discoveries are integrated into Psi research, then the entire conceptual basis of that research will have to undergo radical shifts. But this will also mean that consensus reality formation regarding Psi will have to undergo radical reconceptualizing.

For example, the signal-to-noise-ratio concept has been in existence for a number of decades, but never applied with gusto to Psi "perceptions." And indeed, those "perceptions" cannot be fully understood without that concept.

Thus, in order to prepare the reader for THIS series of essays, I elected to introduce into this database essays focusing on important information not contained in the consensus realities regarding Psi stuff. And so you will find an essay regarding the signal-to-noise ratio already entered into this database, along with a number of other essays that expose and discuss important factors that are alien within the Psi consensus reality.

And here we encounter a tremendous, even over-sized situation which is intensely problematical in many ways.

The central fact regarding this situation is that if one wishes to discuss or communicate about something, anything, one has to do so via the use of concepts and words that stand a chance of being comprehended. In other words, one has to communicate via familiar contexts, not alien ones.

The concepts and words best suited for speaking and writing within the familiarity are those that enjoy a large consensus reality about the topic of interest, and which is shared and sharable among the many who utilize the same language.

In this sense, then, concepts and words constitute the "currency" that is utilized in order to offer and obtain information. But the "currency" has to be standardized, recognizable and agreed upon.

As it happens, though, the larger this consensus reality, the smaller and smaller, and more simplified, are the number of concepts and terms that can be used. And as the number of sharable and familiar concepts DECREASE, many more complex concepts needed tend to become not just unintelligible, but absent altogether.

Another way of putting this, and as many editors and publishers have told me, is that one cannot talk above the heads of the mass market audience and hope to achieve a successful mass market book.

The above paragraph constitutes a consideration everyone seems to think is logical. And logical it is -- IF it regards only producing a mass-market book.

But in considering this, we can begin to see that one of the definitions of a general consensus reality has to do with the "mass-market" concept, in that a consensus reality becomes one by the increase of simplicity regarding fewer and fewer concepts, and not by the increase of number of them. The increase of the number of concepts introduces prospects that might lead to social instability, and also introduces the likelihood that people won't understand them anyway.

You see, in order NOT to talk above the heads of the mass market or the mass consensus means that one has to utilize only those concepts and nomenclature most familiar to them.

In this sense, then, familiar and recognizable concepts PLUS nomenclature appropriate to them constitute the "currency" of the information exchange or transfer at the mass market, mass consensus level. But this also constitutes the concept-nomenclature basis of any language and which incorporates everyone who speaks it. And so the concept-nomenclature is the real basis for the "currency."

I have more faith in the understanding minds at the mass market level than publishers do. But none-the-less this rather naive publishing overview echoes something which IS true -- in that social consensus realities ARE tightly locked into and contained within familiar and recognizable concepts and nomenclature, and the more simplified or over-simplified they are the more widely recognized they become.


Stereotypes Within Consensus Realities
There is another difficulty that is always encountered in writing for consumption within the larger consensus reality. The larger the consensus reality, the more likely it is that what is traded as information packages among it will consist of over-simplified information packages, more commonly known as stereotypes.

There is a distinct deficit in this regard. Over-simplified information might not be information at all, but merely consist of fashionable, stereotype chit-chat which makes it easy to engage in conversation.

This leaves people thinking they have "communicated." But over-simplified ideas and concepts are virtually value-less as information except within the over-simplified contexts in which they are used.

Individuals comprising a given consensus reality may have radical differences in the quantity of vocabulary at their disposal. But consensus realities are not formatted on the amount of vocabulary per se, but on simplified and simplifying concepts via which the majority can comprehend easier and faster. The less one has to think, consider, and extrapolate, the better.
This, however, is not actually the fault of the individual. It is demanded by the social consensus reality, and the demand leads to adaptation of or the cloning of whatever is demanded.

If you feel bogged down by now, don't worry too much.

If you dig very deeply beneath their surfaces, consensus realities all tend to be swampy, and so it isn't your intelligence which has become boggy, it's the topic of this essay.


Questions Can Be Answered Only If the Answers Pre-Fit
Into the Consensus Realities Within Which the Questions
Have Been Formulated
In considering how the two most frequently-asked questions can be answered, I got the idea of asking those who asked them how THEY would answer them. Why, of course, they would direct the questioner to sources that would provide the information they are asking for.

In other words, the consensus reality within which the questions have been formulated seems to hold that one can turn to sources outside of themselves in order to obtain the information they are looking for.

In the case of the superpower faculties, then, what is being sought, then, is outside information that will help "turn on" the faculties the questioners are interested in turning on.

This seems perfectly logical, doesn't it? Especially since all learning theories of the twentieth century have been mounted with exactly this in mind. And especially since there ARE a great number of things that can be learned via this approach.
And so there is a "prevailing" consensus reality that this is the way to go, and the predictive expectation is that with enough outside information acquired that information will rev up the abilities they are after.

However, there is a category of human activity that does not respond, at least on a one-to-one basis, to this "outside stimulation." For example, one can sometimes read all one wants about the creative processes -- and can even accumulate a vast expertise regarding what has been read and studied.

But one's creative faculties can quite easily remain in a stupor or somnolent -- and so the activation of creative faculties is not really answerable within the learning-from-outside-sources stereotype.

And here is the very great contrast between "awakening" and merely reading-learning about a faculty. Indeed, creativity often "awakens" in those who never crack a book about how the creative processes function and don't even care about them.

The direct implication here is that certain faculties are self-starting in some kind of self-internal way while others respond to stimulation from outside sources. In this sense, the methods of the latter are not all that effective regarding the former.

Thus, we can rationally expect "enhancement" with regard to those faculties that do respond to stimulus from the outside, such as learning how to type. On the other hand, the self-starting faculties may be resistant to outside stimuli, no matter how much one slogs away with them.

Now, whether or not anyone has experienced any enhancement of their superpowers via or because of some kind of external stimulus is for them to say. My position in this regard is: if it works, go for it.

But the vast bulk of data in the collective archives of psychical and parapsychological research firmly establishes that hardly anyone developed significant abilities exclusively from outside stimuli.

Indeed, most if not all natural psychics whose faculties endure over time will say that their faculties have occurred not because of any outside stimuli, but that they just "awakened" all by themselves.

In any event, and since the above is more or less the case, and also the confusion, I got to wondering why the dependency on outside stimuli has become so paramount, and why the concept of self-starting faculties is not active in our present consensus realities.

Now, this particular question fell within the boundaries and goals of the project I have referred to in the Introduction. And so the question was researched with some gusto.

With regard to the absence of self-starting faculties, an astonishing, but probable reason was found -- and this in turn shed light on the problem of learning only from outside sources. I'll be as brief as possible, but the details involved require an unavoidable length.

I'll begin simply by saying that the nineteenth century saw the greatest "outbreak" of "paranormal" phenomena ever directly recorded and documented by history.

Indeed, it was because of this outbreak, astonishing in all ways, that the first psychical research societies finally became organized to investigate "psychic phenomena." For anyone who wants to read up on this, and the history of the superpower phenomena in general, I recommend Natural And Supernatural: A History of the Paranormal by Brian Inglis (1977).

I'll next say that the outbreak dwindled into almost nothing after about 1920 -- even though the amount of information about "psychic" powers and abilities INCREASED many times over, and did so in organized ways.

To put this into perspective, we can say that the gross increased many times over, but the net in the twentieth century decreased beneath what it was in the nineteenth, the century when LESS information was available, and what there was of it was disorganized.

If you were an accountant, you would get alarmed and leave no stone unturned as to the reasons why.

I'll next state that my perhaps somewhat wobbly understanding of consensus realities led to the consideration that the consensus realities of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries might have something to do with all of this -- for consensus realities, although desirable in themselves, also contain deterrents with regard to which and what phenomena can emerge.

My general overview of the superpowers is that they are self-starting. So I looked into the nineteenth century for the existence of consensus realities that permitted and expected self-starting activity of any kind.

And then I looked into the consensus realities of the twentieth century for consensus realities that did not reflect the self-start concepts, and which advocated the outside stimulus kind of thing.

And you can believe it or not. The shift from self-start concepts to learn only from outside stimuli was found to involve only ONE WORD, but from which countless conceptual spin-offs arose.

ONE F-----G word, but one whose general consensus reality meaning in the nineteenth century shifted to the exact opposite in the twentieth.

And THAT word was,


Dynamic
There is a great deal to be known about electricity, and all of which learning is compartmentalized and identified by a large assortment of terminology beginning with the prefix "electro."

But the largest consensus reality responds not to fifty-five terms beginning with "electro," but only to one which means "power," "energy," or "juice" to light up bulbs, or to activate something.

At the most over-simplified consensus reality, therefore, electricity, energy and "juice," are thought of as equivalents. But the source of electricity is a dynamo somewhere, and so energy-juice is obtained from an outside source.

This has led to the somewhat hidden consensus reality concept that it takes an outside source of energy to "energize" something, to turn it on, power it, juice it up, or to activate it.

And so in a simple, but social-consensus powerful way, people are always looking outside themselves for something to "turn them on," and the context and expectation revealed in this phrase is unmistakable.

If social consensus realities are based in recognizable concepts and nomenclature, then the going gets rough when there is an ABSENCE of needed concepts which exist outside of the parameters or boundaries of the consensus realities.
After all, there are many horrendous gaps in knowledge and which NEED new and/or different conceptualizations, even new nomenclature perhaps -- and which absent knowledge cannot really be comprehended by relying on existing concepts.

Absent knowledge might consist of knowledge that has not yet been discovered, or consist of knowledge that has not been simplified to enter into the consensus reality.

But another form of absent knowledge occurs when a nomenclature bit meant one thing in the past, but the meaning of which has somehow been converted into its exact opposite. In this case, the former meaning has become "absent."

For example, based on the all-available evidence, all life forms are self-starting, self-turning-on, and in their raw state don't really need outside energy to turn them on. Upkeep may demand energy from outside sources, but the essential life "thrust," so to speak is, by comparison, self-starting.

Knowledge of how life forms START UP is completely absent in our knowledge pools. Food or nutrients are converted to growth and maintenance "energy," but the system that converts them belongs within the self-starting thing.

However, if the consensus reality into which one becomes immersed holds and, more importantly, SHARES the "reality" that one can do nothing without an outside energy stimulus, then that concept will be non-consciously cloned far and wide -- and the concept of self-starting will become devitalized and non-recognizable, even if one hears the words.

The vitalized and shared concept of self-start-up belongs to what might be called the Age of Dynamism which began roughly during the High Renaissance and dwindled into relative non-existence during the 1920s.

During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Dynamism was not yet associated with electricity or electrical power, but was a concept that belonged to VITALISM -- a concept-philosophy which held that all animate organisms are vitalized by a "life principle" distinct from psycho-chemical forces.

The psycho-chemical forces were energy-expending forces, and so THEY needed outside sources of "fuel" that could be converted into it. But to the vitalists, the life principle was different in that it was interpreted as being self-animating, therefore self-powerful and self-starting as well.

The "animating" principle had to do with MOTION. Whatever had motion because of some self-contained interior set of factors was considered to have self-motion, and therefore was animate, an animate organism, a living organism. Any growth and development process of a living organism also had motion, and so these processes were seen as animating motion, too.
Hence, the vitalists expected to find that the growth and development processes of the life principle would have structure and patterns of internal organization of their own.

These structure-patterns would be different from the structure-patterns of the psycho-chemical forces. But it was expected that these self-vital patterns could be mapped much in the same way that the structure and patterns of the psycho-chemical forces were being mapped in the material sciences.

The term assigned to this life principle, self-vitalizing, self-motion kind of thing was DYNAMIC, most probably intended as an adverb or adjective.

The term DYNAMIC seems to have been introduced into German and English from the French DYNAMIQUE at about 1692, especially in the writings of Leibnitz.

The early conceptualizing meaning associated to it had to do with force-producing-motion in some kind of self-making sense, as contrasted to STATIC things that did not self-produce motion, but were inert or non-self-moving.

But the term DYNAMIC was derived from a Greek term, DYNA, and which referred to TO BE ABLE in a sense that was opposite to the Greek STATIKOS which meant NOT ABLE to be in SELF-MOTION.

Hence the English connotations of STATIC are motionlessness, stopped, non-changing, frozen up, or cement-like. Even today, TO BE ABLE is implicitly associated with motion, since what is motionless is not able.

To link DYNAMIC-STATIC to the superpower faculties, IF they belong in the self-start-up category, then they are dynamic. If they are not started up, then they are static, but for reasons that have prevented or deterred their starting up.

There is much justification for thinking about them this way, for when they occur spontaneously, they do so of their own accord. When we try to deal with them according to our intellectualizing will to do so, they stubbornly refuse to strut their stuff.

The only conclusions is that our intellectualizing about them is not consistent with their actual structure and functioning -- in which case the faculties just yawn and go back to sleep.

Additionally, when our intellectualizing faculties are drowsy, asleep or in some "altered state," we experience traces of the superpower faculties. Our intellectualizing will is principally formatted by consensus realities. Are you getting the bigger picture here? And an idea of why an examination of consensus realities, although boring in the extreme, is meaningful?

I've not been able to identify just when the term DYNAMISM came into full usage, probably somewhere between 1725 and 1800. In its original sense then, it referred to the philosophic-theory that sought to explain the phenomena of the universe by some immanent force or energy.

IMMANENT means "inherent." INHERENT refers to self-containing, self-perpetuating, self-changing, self-processing, self-moving, self-motivating -- all in some kind of pre-existing way, and all without the need of any outside forces or energies.

In the sense of all the above, then, the vitalistic life principle was dynamic-active, defined as "self-full of power, or self-power" (sorry for the redundancy here.) And as such, it was marked by self-continuous, self-productive activity -- and that therefore all life forms were themselves internally dynamic-active in self-start-up kinds of ways.

The whole of this seems to have been broadly formulated into a consensus reality that "prevailed" during the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries. THIS consensus reality seems to have produced innumerable conceptual spin-offs that justified individual self-starting activity of all kinds, since that activity was seen as inherently present within the remarkable human species -- and the universe as well.

For example, the maxims "rely on oneself" and "improve one's own mind by virtue of one's own dynamic-inherent factors to do so" belong to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We retain the words today, but have lost their nineteenth century substance.

These maxims are the famous "lift oneself by one's own boot straps" ideas. And those ideas and were very luminous during the nineteenth century, whose societies were just freshly released from the concepts of feudalism -- in which everyone was born into the status in which they were to live their life thenceforth without any hope of what we today call "upward mobility."

The boot-strap maxims were also entirely compatible with the fundamental concepts of capitalism -- the freedom of anyone to compete and make money who had the self-starting aptitudes to do so -- and to do so WITHOUT looking for outside guidance.

Indeed, although I'll paraphrase it for convenience here, many noted early capitalists have been noted to say something like: "Screw outside guidance, which, if followed, will doom one to poverty."

In other words, the general consensus realities of the nineteenth century were entirely saturated with self-dynamic concepts accompanied by an enormous variety of conceptual spin-offs. And historians have remarked on the sheer volume of discovery, creativity and inventions that were TYPICAL of that century.


The Destruction of the Consensus Reality Concept of Self-Dynamism
The concept of self-dynamism has not really been distorted at the individual level, of course, and many individuals today are self-made because of it.

But it has become considerably weakened in terms of general consensus realities -- especially during and after the 1920s when the concepts of VITALISM were wrecked and debunked as having no "scientific" or "philosophic" value.
One of the results of this wrecking was that the terms DYNAMIC and DYNAMISM became unfashionable and politically incorrect by the 1950s.

How this came about is a rather amusing sequence. But it's worth noting before going on that IF we can become fashion "victims," then we clearly can become victimized by general consensus realities.

The inverse of the concept of pre-existing, self-immanent, self-mobilizing dynamism would be the idea that one has to go outside oneself not only for energy, but for learning, guidance, and models regarding how to do something or anything.
In this sense, then, we would have to utilize outside sources with regard to shaping our own intellects -- this a factor which sucks one INTO consensus realities and often into a near complete cloning of them.

Shortly after 1831, a mechanism was invented that could convert mechanical energy into electricity. It was known as the GENERATOR, but was dubbed the DYNAMO.

However, a generator is not a self-dynamo strictly speaking, since IT needs an outside source of energy or motion in order to make its parts move and thus produce electricity. In this regard, a true dynamo would be the fabled perpetual motion machine which itself did not need outside power or fuel, but which none-the-less would produce electricity, etc.

One of the more amusing, but now forgotten, facets of the nineteenth century was that the terms GENERATE or GENERATION were a bit overloaded with consensus reality concepts having to do with procreation and SEX, SEX, SEX and the various formats of it -- this being one of the few areas of those nineteenth century consensus realities that did not permit much in the way of self-starting-up and self-realizing.

Serious public relations problems thus arose regarding the electric generator -- and it appears that these were quickly remedied by linking the machine to the concepts of dynamic and dynamism which the then-consensus-reality understood as self-productive of energy.

After a series of manufacturing failures and stock frauds, the Dynamo Corporation was formed and which dubbed generators as dynamos, a concept that detached from the sex connotations, fitted neatly with consensus realities regarding energy, and which aided in sales of the contraptions.

The inappropriate but hyped use of the "new" term caught on, as might be expected, and it was generally used until about the late 1950s when the concepts and contexts of dynamism became unfashionable. But by then it was permissible to refer to dynamos as electrical generators -- although I believe the enormous generators at Niagara Falls and at Hoover Dam are still called dynamos -- dynamos that mean energy from outside sources.

The shift of the meaning of DYNAMIC from self-internal starting-up to the need for external energy to start-up is easy to understand. You see, it releases the individual from the absolute necessity to self-start-up by increasing the concept and value of getting started-up via learning from outside sources.

And this results in a general consensus tendency to become dependent on outside sources that might effect the start-up for them. And to the degree THIS concept comes to prevail in general consensus realities is the degree the self-start-up concepts decline almost to the point of banishment.

Finally, there is that particularly difficult but widespread phenomenon present among our species already outlined: the intake of information by reducing it to fit with one's existing realities, group consensus levels, cultural cohesion processes -- and, last but by far not the least, to fit with one's ALREADY INSTALLED belief systems. (A very good example of this will be found ahead in the essay on PERCEPTION.)

For example, those that already believe that only outside stimuli can result in, well, stimulation of energy or knowledge will expect questions about how to get knowledge/understanding to fit that consensus reality.

The shift may be very subtle regarding the meaning of dynamism as self-start-up, self-motivating, to a meaning that refers to something obtainable from an outside source.

And I certainly am not insisting on anything in this regard. This essay, as are all those in this database, is offered for what it is worth to each individual who chances to come across it.

I'll only note in passing that during the nineteenth century "self-help" referred to one's bootstraps. Today it means "go buy a self-help manual," or consult some other external source.


What Governs Output and Input of Information
So, among consensus realities there are many overt, covert, subtle and non-conscious factors which somehow govern the output, transmission and intake of information at various levels. One encounters these limiting and limited factors everywhere and in any kind of mix or combination.

The most direct, but usually non-conscious, link is the language a society and all of its members are required to utilize, no matter their status or educational backgrounds.

Even if someone has a new idea, to communicate it verbally or in writing requires use of the nomenclature shared and utilized at the consensus reality level. As we shall see in an essay ahead, this factor is a very important regarding theory and information transfer processes.

In this sense, then, nomenclature is the first governing factor regarding information transfer, and the concepts behind the nomenclature are the second factor -- whether these concepts be exact, explicit, assumed, imagined, taken for granted, or whatever.

And one usually finds these governing factors running on automatic in various social echelons -- with very few ever realizing that their innate and wonderful thinking processes are being reduced and victimized by them.

Even way before I began acting as a research subject, I had gotten some idea of the limitations resulting from the major concepts central to psychical research and parapsychology.

I had realized that some of those major concepts were not correct either in theory or in demonstrable fact.
I had thought, even since childhood, that some of the nomenclature used as a basis for consensus reality regarding psychic stuff was in fact silly and stupid.

For example, take the word PSYCHIC -- a term used with wild abandon so much so that everyone assumes they and all others KNOW what is meant by it.

As I remember it, I think I was about six when someone indicated to my parents that some of my experiences were PSYCHIC. I overheard this, and immediately chimed in by asking what it meant.

What then followed (and which went on for about two weeks and came to involve our extended family, various friends of my two grandmothers, my Sunday School teacher, and finally the local minister) was a great deal of psychobabble accompanied by an entirely disproportionate amount of ill humor.

Kids are noted for asking embarrassing questions, probably because they haven't yet fully adapted to the no-speak, absolute silence aspects of the consensus realities they will ultimately clone.
And in my case, after asking what SEX was all about, asking what PSYCHIC meant was the next single biggest nomenclature bit to cause a very unreasonable amount of upset.


The Useless Nature of the Term "Psychic"
I don't particularly care if the term "psychic" is used or not. After all, one has little control with regard to consensus realities, or regarding the mighty social forces that establish them. And so I'm not going to grind my dilapidated mental gears over "psychic."

But "psychic" is a good exemplar of consensus reality nomenclature that achieves wide usage -- but which has never had a stable definition. And so I'll use this word as exemplary of the other many definitionless terms encoded into this or that consensus reality.

I will only say that the word has never been adopted in a number of countries, precisely because it has no definition -- Germany, China, Japan, for example, while the French resisted its usage until just recently. The term was used in pre-Soviet Russia, but was eradicated during the reign of the USSR.

Of course, one then wonders how psychic matters are discussed in those countries without the term "psychic." Well, quite creatively, actually.

As to the term PSYCHIC, there IS a formal definition for it having to do with human mental phenomena "which lay outside of the boundaries of science." But this "definition" induces ambiguity which is shifty and unstable.

So, much beyond that ambiguity, PSYCHIC can mean anything anyone wants it to mean (including abnormal, wacko, crazy, illusory, imagination, unscientific, irrational, illogical, paranormal, transcendental, non-material, the work of the devil, a gift of God, an ability, an exceptional human experiencing -- and on and on) until one DOES realize why it exists as an over-simplifying stereotype the exact or detailed meaning of which is absolutely unnecessary.

So, discussing psychic stuff with someone who believes it the work of the devil, with someone else who believes it to be scientifically illogical, and then with a transcendentalist, actually consists of dealing with THREE confusions, of which ambiguity is the chief characteristic.

Here it would be obvious to all but a high-density dimwit that the conceptual information packages the three are utilizing are completely different -- although all three are utilizing the same word: PSYCHIC.

Indeed, there are many words utilized for which meanings are vague and ambiguous. And these are usually very popular -- such as the words "stupid," "groovy," "nerd," or "abnormal" which can ardently be utilized every which way, and much to the glee of those who do so.

In any event, stable meanings for an ambiguous term are "unnecessary," because each of us anyway reduces whatever it MIGHT mean so that it fits with our own "realities." This IS true at the individual level, and true as well of the vaporous realms of human activity I won't dare to point up because doing so might erupt in volcanic overflows.

It is little wonder, then, that as the conceptual contours of parapsychology began to take on concrete formats (during the 1930s) that the term PSYCHIC was more or less expunged from it.

It was replaced by the "concept" of "PSI," this nothing more than a letter of the Greek alphabet. But this was a step out of one ambiguous frying pan into one hotter and bigger.

It could have been replaced by the letter "X" with just as good avail.

But I've often wondered why it wasn't replaced with something more dramatic and fetching -- such as "the Adelphus Factors" of human awareness.

At any rate, if one wishes to write about "the Adelphus Factors," one might get away with the neologism, but thereafter one must do so via EXISTING concepts and nomenclature -- such as utilizing terms as perception, awareness, mind, and etc., and all of which have established, over-simplified and somewhat ambiguous "definitions."

And PLOP, there one is back into the consensus realities which utilize and depend on those terms.


Concepts Missing or Absent Within Consensus Reality Formats
There is one additional category within consensus reality formatting that is of importance so supreme that few can even notice its egregious existence.

I'll pick up this category in another essay in this series, because before taking it on we need to examine at length a few examples of it and its overall implications -- always, of course, with regard to discussions leading to the activation of the superpowers.

But a very brief note here is required.

One of the primary or principal signatures of a consensus reality is that the string or interlocking of its fundamental over-simplifications are thought to have no holes or blank spaces in it.

If it is THOUGHT to contain such holes or blank spaces, the "consensus" tends to become shaky and even unglued. Even if such holes may be apparent, still it is thought that whatever they represent "will ultimately be explained within and by" the fundamental concepts of the consensus reality.

As but one example, when the modern sciences "went" totally materialistic, beginning about 1845, and then firmly so during the 1920s, it did so on the basis that science "expects to find materialistic explanations for everything." A noted encyclopedia (published during the 1930s, even states as much -- that science has already discovered basic materialistic explanations for everything. And what was left was only, to quote, "a mop-up job."

Unfortunately for THIS much vaunted and hyped "scientific" consensus reality, the electron microscope was in process of being invented at about the same time as the encyclopedia was published. Holes and blank spaces were thus discovered, and new mops were bought and employed, even though the electron microscopes showed that the mops themselves were, at a certain level of their atomic structure, not composed of material matter at all. Alas. I drift in my attempts at sardonic witticism.

And alas, again. If holes and blank spaces DO exist within given consensus realities, they none-the-less are looped over so as not to be all that visible. And if push comes to shove, they are merely stereotyped as the "unexplainable," and so everyone thinks they know what they are -- unexplainable.

The "alas" part of this is that when one clones into a consensus reality format, one also clones the holes and black spaces, too, and usually with "unexplaining" nomenclature readily at hand.

One very good example of this looping over all the holes that need to be mopped up was the consensus reality which "explained" that humans have only five physical senses and no others. Most frontier people, miners, sailors, and the early aeronauts knew this was sheer idiocy.

But for the masses, it "explained" the scientifically confirmed limits of the human senses, and also established why it was useless or neurotic or psychopathic to propose there were more senses, much less to utilize scientific funding to do so. All of which, of course, amounted to nothing more than a heaping pile of mierda del toro.

I will now postpone continuing this major discussion regarding the structure of consensus realities, and will pick it up again in two essays ahead under the headings of Paradigm Shifts Relevant To The Activation Of The Superpowers and Performance Versus Knowledge.


The Answer to the Two Most Frequently Asked Questions
Each specimen of our species is a fabulous specimen, naturally endowed with very many impressive faculties, most of which have never been identified, but many of which have -- and are defeated anyway.

Some portion of these faculties DO respond when outside stimulation is applied to them, the stimulation achieved by the inflow of information and by practical exercises pertinent to their enhancement.

Other of the faculties, however, apparently are of the self-start-up kind. Evidence for the existence of these faculties is not only voluminous, but convincing.

The issue then is, if they are not activating, the resolution then more or less falls into the category of discovering what is preventing them from doing so.

Well, anyone who desires to do so is urged to search for THIS kind of information. I'd be interested in receiving notification from anyone who discovers the existence of something along these lines. I have nothing to recommend along these lines, at least regarding the activation of the superpowers.

However, many sages of the past have indicated among their separate selves, often divided by centuries, a consensus reality that makes remarkable sense.

I crudely collect this consensus reality by paraphrasing it: that if one wants to understand something, one needs to construct mental concepts that are compatible with IT -- not develop and depend on concepts that constitute -- well, consensus realities that are full of looped over holes.

For if a concept that is being utilized to comprehend something is not as exactly compatible as possible with it, then that concept is, in one sage's terms, an "erroneous thought-form."

I am very partial to the general context of THIS consensus reality, but am uncomfortable with the phrase "erroneous thought-form."

This is because everything is what it is, even thought-forms, and as such is "correct" within itself -- "error" only being possible relative to something else.

I will therefore take what is a possibly unjustified liberty and shift the nomenclature of "erroneous thought-form" into "mental information processing viruses" -- this in an experimental or hypothetical sense only.

This concept-nomenclature was not possible even twenty years ago, but the concept of "viruses" has now been widely proliferated into the consensus realities of ComputerLand, and computer realities.

In that now monolithic Land we can see and have feedback regarding what an information virus can do to the information processing functions of computer software and even to computer hardware.

I dare to adapt this concept into the contexts of the faculties superpowers of the human biomind -- because all of them can easily be conceived that at base they are information processing and information transfer systems.

Furthermore, and as will be discussed in detail in a following essay, the concepts of information theory ARE compatible with them as information-processing systems, especially in that information transfer is mitigated by the signal-to-noise ratio.
The increase of "noise" in an information transfer process or system can be likened to "viruses" -- loosely speaking anyway. The decrease in "noise" enhances transfer, reception, and more exact duplication of signal.

If the superpower faculties can be conceived of as signal receptors or signal monitors, whatever they transfer in the way of information to the cognitive mind/intellect is usually processed through its already-installed concept networks or concept "grids."

If the pre-installed concepts are not exactly compatible then the end product will be signal + the noise introduced by the misfitting concepts. If the pre-installed concepts not compatible at all, then the end product will probably consist of noise with the signal so buried in it that it can neither be located or decoded by the mind/intellect.

A central question then emerges: wherefrom do we get our pre-installed concepts that might be noisy ones?
The answer here is twofold. We can formulate them ourselves, and which is entirely possible, even though many doubt it of themselves.

But there is a "process" which, in some sense, is geared to "help" us NOT formulate our own concepts, and it is one process that all of us adapt to in many ways from day one.

And this process is called consensus reality making.

And we adapt to the elements of consensus reality making, for if we do not all hell descends from a wild assortment of directions.

Anyway, we have to learn our local language, and THAT language consists not only of its nomenclature, but the meaning-concepts that go with the nomenclature.

Zippo!

There you are (all of us, including my overly humble self, a CR Clone of some kind).

Two of the major deterrents or preventives toward the activation of the superpowers are:

• information viruses inhabiting consensus realities and which distort and clog the grids (arteries) of our thinking processes; and

• needed but missing information concepts -- which cause mental information processes to act like they have viruses

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