The Sensory Mind/Psi Mind Hypothesis

The sensory mind/psi mind hypothesisDespite the many reports of extrasensory perception (ESP) recorded in the literature (see Feather & Schmicker, 2005;Hearne, 1989;Mackenzie, 1997;Osborn, 1961;Rhine, 1961) there must be a reason why, according to surveys, only some 20-25% of people report having one or more experiences of ESP.Why is there a corresponding dearth of ESP experience in 75-80% of the population?Is there anything that we know about ESP phenomena that may give us a lead?An ESP experience is said to occur when someone receives new telepathic, clairvoyant, or precognitive information about someone or something that was not accessible to the bodily senses, and could not have been inferred from prior personal knowledge.ESP experiences appear to be unpredictable, involuntary, and usually last less than a minute.Strikingly, what most ESP experiencers seem to agree upon is that during the experience they feel in a different state of mind to their normal, everyday, state of mind.It seems that ESP is most likely to occur when at rest and mentally relaxed, or engaged in a rather monotonous activity, or dreaming before waking, circumstances in which conscious engagement with sensory information is low.These observations suggest that ESP experiences may occur when in a different state of mind from the everyday-i.e., that there is a sensory mind, based upon sensory input only, and a psi mind receptive to non-sensory information only.From descriptions of the unexpected onset of an ESP experience it seems that ESP enters conscious awareness when the psi mind momentarily interrupts, or supervenes upon, the continuity of normal sensory mind experiencing.This implies that an ESP experience only occurs when the psi mind overcomes, or replaces, the signal strength of sensory input.This is the sensory mind/psi mind hypothesis.That some 75-80% of the population never experience an ESP implies, according to this hypothesis, that their mind has remained within such strong sensory mind constraints that psi has not been able to break through.Of those in the 20-25% who do experience ESP, some appear much more susceptible to ESP experiences than others, sometimes to the point, often from childhood, of ESP-acquired knowledge being accepted as a normal experience.This implies