Why PSI?*

A question that repeatedly comes up in connection with the psi hypothesis is: How is it, if a person has the wide range of latent cognitive capacities that are assumed under this hypothesis, that he does not use them to achieve wealth or other advantage, or to gain knowledge of facts that would permit him to avoid disaster or even death?

The answer generally given to this is that psi processes operate on an unconscious plane, the implication being that if we had them under our voluntary control things would be different. But is this really so? Let us extend the question posed above to the realm of ordinary behavior and ask why people do not use their normal cognitive and voluntary functions to their best advantage. The plain fact of the matter is that no end of examples can be drawn from a wide variety of fields to illustrate the simple truth that for the most part they do not, if we consider the term ‘best advantage’ to coincide with values and goals that are widely held to be desirable.

We can start with the realm of wordly goods since this is, peculiarly, the area most people imagine would be the first in which psi capacities would be deployed if some degree of control over them could be exercised. In fact it is inconceivable to some that things could be otherwise. On a recent American nationwide TV program on ESP, for example, the panel moderator, representing a common attitude, archly pointed up the damning significance of the fact that a well-known