Studying Individual Psi Experiences

: To understand psi, we must study it at multiple levels of analysis. We need a sociology of psi, examining its patterns in different cultures and social groups; life history data so that we can find causes for changes in an individual’s psi ability; research on the conditions which affect ESP and PK in short periods like a single experimental session; and we also need careful examination of the individual psi experience. The latter is particularly difficult for several reasons: (1) The duration of the individual experience is unknown (a review of spontaneous cases suggests it may last for the briefest reportable flash, perhaps a tenth or hundredth of a second, or may continue for several minutes); (2) any one hit in an ESP experiment may be due to chance, not to psi; (3) psi often gives imperfect information (only partially correct or systematically misdirected); and (4) psi is not ordinarily under conscious control.