Parapsychology at the Rhine Center

What do you know? I just checked in to the Rhine Center website to look at some of their current research and what popped up but a familiar photo

Zener cards for psi experiements
Zener cards for psi experiements

It’s an old shot of J. B. Rhine and me. Rhine, a major pioneer in laboratory parapsychology, posed for this photo with me as if he were testing me in an early form of PK (psychokinesis) experimentation, in which falling dice in a cage came to rest at specific numbers with mental influence over how they landed. At least, that was the idea. Rhine thought that some gamblers on a roll had a genuine sense when they were lucky. But this was a posed photo, not a real test. However, the photo then traveled around the world, reprinted in various books, such as The Unexplainable. I didn’t realize that even today it might be picked back up, dusted off, and put onto the web – surviving into the  current era. So take a look. Click to see it on their website: Margaret Harrell at the J.B. Rhine Lab.

Rhine comes into the Keep This Quiet! series in various guises. He relates to Carl Jung’s exploration of synchronicity. What is it? Is it a form of psi or something else, related more to Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious? Jung and Rhine corresponded and Jung felt his work greatly supported by Rhine’s research, such as, his experiments with the Zener cards (above) and the dice cage. Experiments with Zener cards, which his lab pioneered, tested gifted subjects’ ability to know in advance which of the card images were drawn.

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