To Stretch a Plank

What are the relations of mind to matter? Are mental processes always and everywhere intimately and utterly dependent upon material or physical organizations? Do the volitions, the strivings, the desires, the joys and sorrows, the judgments and beliefs of men make any difference to the historical course of the events of our world, as the mass of men at all times have believed?

William McDougall (162)

A young man concentrates on a computerlike machine with flickering dials. The machine, best described as an electronic coin-flipper, should end up with roughly equal “scores” for heads and tails. Yet it shows a score of 60 percent heads when the man is concentrating on heads, and 42 percent heads when he is concentrating on tails.

In Toronto a group of people sit together, laughing and singing, waiting for the “appearance” of an entirely imaginary person whose life story they have concocted out of thin air. After a while loud raps from the table before them seem to indicate that he has arrived.

In New York a young Israeli showman gently and thoughtfully strokes one end of a key, the other end of which is lightly held by a man of considerable experience in both sleight of hand and psychical phenomena. Though the latter can feel no pressure on the key, which does not leave his hands, the key bends.

What have these varied and unlikely events in common, apart from their apparent impossibility? Each has two possible explanations. It may be the result of very clever trickery, or, possibly, it may have been caused by some form of psychokinesis, or PK.

PK, also popularly but inaccurately known as “mind over matter,” is the moving or affecting of an object without the use of any physical intermediary. Something happens. You do not physically make it happen—no muscle power is involved—yet apparently you make it happen in some other, mysteriously mental, nonphysical way.

Perhaps a die falls in a certain direction, or with the desired face uppermost, just a little more often than might be expected. Or a pendulum may change the speed of its swing; a random generating machine produces a certain number more often than it “should.” Perhaps, just possibly, a metal object may bend; a watch, silent for months, may start to run. As we will see, PK seems to take many different forms.