Just finished Stephen Braude’s newest book, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations, and found it entertaining and illuminating in equal measure. A very enjoyable excursion into the world of hands-on psi research, with all its rewards and pitfalls.
One of the most fascinating chapters is the last one, which I approached with some trepidation, because it covers astrology. I have trouble taking astrology seriously. So does Braude, but his attitude came up against a challenge when he married a Serbian immigrant who, in her spare time, cast horoscopes – and made a very good living at it. The method used by Gina Braude is considerably more sophisticated and refined than standard "by-the-numbers" astrology, and requires charting each client’s life from the day (and if possible the hour and minute) of birth. Using her techniques, Mrs. Braude was able to forecast the fortunes of sports teams with remarkable accuracy. Braude’s wry, winsome description of the couple’s successful experiments in gambling is a highlight of the book, though no doubt it will leave skeptics more aggravated than ever.
On second though, most skeptics probably will stop reading long before the final chapter, and maybe even before finishing the preface, in which Braude vents his frustration with his more closed-minded colleagues, who are absolutely certain they can explain away all reports of psi without so much as looking at the evidence. This section is worth quoting, but I will refrain from doing so in order to give you further encouragement to buy the book.
The Gold Leaf Lady also features an interesting discussion of synchronicities, which prompted me to consider my own – highly speculative – notions on the subject.
I think many so-called synchronicities are actually premonitions. Some, like the famous incident involving Freud’s bookcase, are probably PK. Of course, many are pure chance. As for the ones that are don’t fall into any of those categories, I suspect that our true nature is divided between a Higher Self and our ordinary consciousness. Ordinary consciousness is like a Flatlander, a 2D person walking through a maze like a dot being advanced along a series of intersecting lines. The Higher Self is like a 3D version of that dot, projecting perpendicularly from the axis of travel, and from that elevated vantage point able to see patterns and possibilities the Flatlander cannot see. The Higher Self sometimes guides the little Flatlander down the appropriate path, or at least calls attention to meaningful coincidences that would otherwise be missed.
I admit this is very vague and untestable, but for what it’s worth, I also suspect that the Higher Self is part of a group of Higher Selfs, which in turn are part of a species-wide or even planetary consciousness, which in turn is part of Cosmic Consciousness. Each nests inside the other like Russian dolls or Chinese boxes. Ordinary consciousness is sometimes dimly aware of the Higher Self, but never aware of the others. The brain must be altered or shut down in order for us to ascend to progressively higher levels through mystical experiences, NDEs, OBEs, certain dreams, trance states, etc.
Braude himself does not wander into such arcane thickets of speculation. Unlike his other books, The Gold Leaf Lady is predominantly concerned with the nuts and bolts of psychical research. (With perhaps a slight emphasis on nuts.) He tells about his encounters with an apparently fake psychic, and about how a psi enthusiast did his best to sabotage a series of tests with a much more promising subject, simply from personal spite. His book is both a picaresque memoir and a cautionary tale. As he makes clear, if he had pursued his interests before obtaining tenure for more mainstream work, he would very likely have been ousted from academia.
And that’s the sad part of the story. If someone as knowledgeable, balanced, and cautious as Steve Braude can find himself branded a pariah just for investigating psi, then what chance is there of encouraging future researchers? Not much, I guess – which is one reason psi is likely to remain a marginal area of study for the foreseeable future, no matter how much evidence is gathered.