The Science of Channeling and Psychic Abilities

I've been reading the book called The Science of Channeling by Helane Wahbeh and I thought I would share some interesting information from the book. Wahbeh works at the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS), a research group founded by astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell. Mitchell created IONS in 1973 to explore the interplay between scientific knowledge and inner knowing. IONS (https://noetic.org/) uses scientific methods to study consciousness, specifically they have research projects on remote viewing, meditation, channeling, energy healing, and spontaneous remission of disease.

Wahbeh explains in the beginning of the book that trance channeling runs in her family. She says the following, "You wouldn't know from my academic biography that I come from a long line of trance channelers. You also wouldn't know that every single member of my mother's family has channeling abilities. My grandmother surprised everyone by going into a trance at fifteen years old. My grandmother was what some might call a trance channeler. Trance channelers go into trance like states and believe that they use their bodies as a vehicle for a nonphysical being to incorporate into and communicate directly via speaking, writing, or movement". She also says, "My uncle was tested for psychokinetic skills at John F. Kennedy University and channeled a book through automatic writing". Wow, pretty cool right! So she has been around channeling her whole life.

Wahbeh says that she wasn't a trance channeler herself but she always felt she was sensitive to energy and aware that there was more than the physical. She says that she was curious about trance channeling as she got older. After attending six hypnosis sessions with a researcher in Italy who taught people to channel through hypnosis, she trance channeled for the first time. She says the following, "It was a bizarre and incredible experience. I was aware of what was happening, but someone/thing else was speaking through me, using my body to communicate directly with the hypnotist. I had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth next. I had a completely new understanding of the process and could help guide our studies. I now trance channel if I choose to, and my journey with channeling continues to unfold".

In her book, Wahbeh defines channeling based on the idea that consciousness is nonlocal. She says, "This means your consciousness is not local to your physical brain or body. Your consciousness is more expansive than our conventional notions of time and space. Your true nature is so much more than your physical body. All humans have this capacity because of the inherent nonlocal nature of our consciousness. In this book, I call our ability to reveal and express information and energy in this way channeling". This can also be called Parapsychology or "psi". Basically Wahbeh uses the term channeling very broadly so when I use the term channeling in this blog post just think of it as overall psychic abilities or parapsychology. She uses the term "Trance Channeler" for someone that is energetically connected with a higher source and speaking as that source.

Her book provides a very academic perspective on paranormal experiences, psychic abilities and channeling. Wahbeh provides the scientific papers, statistics, surveys, and experiments to back up what she says in the book. Let me provide some quotes from the book:

"An important paper on the realness of channeling was recently published in the American Psychologist. The American Psychologist is the official journal of the American Psychological Association. The paper summarized meta-analysis on channeling experiences. A meta-analysis combines data from multiple studies. In general, meta-analyses are the highest level of evidence or proof for a specific research question. They are the gold standard used in evidence-based medicine. The American Psychologist paper showed that there is evidence that many channeling experiences exist and can be observed. The channeling types included telepathy, precognition, presentiment, remote influence, distant healing, remote viewing, and psychokinesis."

Wahbeh explains that scientists have found intention can affect our physical world. She says, "Multiple laboratory studies have demonstrated that yes, participants can influence these random processes". She also says that multiple studies have been done to confirm that intention can affect other people's bodies. Scientists call it Direct Mental Interactions with Living Systems or DMILS. They tested this where a loved one, the receiver, was sitting in a room by themselves with a head cap on providing electrical signals of their brain neurons, stickers on their chest collecting heart signals, and small bands on their hands and fingers measuring the skin's signals, temperature, and blood pressure. The other loved one, the sender, is occasionally seeing the receiver's picture on a TV and when they see the image, they send as much positive intentions about them as they can. Wahbeh says, "Dozens of these types of experiments have been done using DMILS. The results are clear. The receiver's body changes when the sender is sending versus not sending. The effect appears to be instantaneous. The results are small, observable, and astonishing".

Wahbeh also says that using intention to heal is also scientifically confirmed. She says, "People sending positive healing intentions from a distance or without physical contact have a small but consistent positive effect. These positive results are also seen when the intentions were sent to nonhuman animals, cells, or plants. Modalities like therapeutic Touch, Reiki, and spiritual healing for conditions including pain, cancer, mental health symptoms, and hypertension have positive research results".

Wahbeh also discusses the Star Gate program. She says, "Star Gate was the most extensive funded program in parapsychology, receiving approximately $20 million from 1972 to 1995. She goes on to say, "Drs. May and Marwaha synthesized all the Star Gate material in a comprehensive four-volume text. The Star Gate data indicates that informational psi is a scientifically valid phenomenon". To summarize, remote viewing, a form of clairvoyance is a real thing and has been validated in scientific settings.

In addition, Wahbeh provides scientific research and evidence of precognition, basically knowing something before it happens. She explains that scientific findings by a Cornell University professor, Daryl Bem was picked up by the media. She says, "how fast a person pressed a button was affected by a word that showed up after they pressed the button. Other researchers got similar results. Combining ninety studies of Bem’s task showed a precognition effect overall. These results were spotlighted in the media because they were about a well-known psychology test and because Dr. Bem was from Cornell University. The controversy over these results still continues".

As for mediumship, Wahbeh says, "Drs. Julie Beischel and Mark Boccuzzi at the Windbridge Research Center have championed mediumship research, outreach, and education. Their research center tagline is 'Studying dying, death, and what comes next.' Their and others’ laboratory studies show that mediums can receive accurate and specific information about deceased individuals. The strictest methods are used to prevent the mediums from learning information through cues from the person getting the reading, prior knowledge of the deceased person, or other deceptive tactics. Volumes have been written describing tests of the validity of mediumship in and out of the laboratory".

Wahbeh also says the following about how meditation improves the likelihood of channeling, "Meditation is one of the strongest predictors for channeling experiences or doing well on channeling tasks." Wahbeh also discusses the fact that many studies on psychedelics confirm that when someone is having a psychic experience, the blood flow is reduced. Essentially, when we meditate or use a psychedelic drug there is decreased activity and connectivity in the brain's key connector hubs. Thus, we are accessing information from outside the physical body when we quiet the brain.

Now let's talk about trance channeling. Wahbeh says that she believes trance channeling works due to the interconnectivity of everything. She explains the theory of Entanglement: "Big bang cosmology, or the study of the origin and development of the Universe, tells us that there was a point in time where everything in the Universe was connected. In theory, this means that the physical properties of a photon at one end of the Universe are completely linked to another photon at the other end of the Universe. The physical properties of the photons, like position, speed, and spin, are connected. For example, suppose you change the spin of one entangled photon. In that case, the paired photon’s spin will also change instantaneously and across long distances. This relationship between quantum systems is called quantum entanglement. These results are not limited to photons. Entanglement is even seen in small molecules called buckyballs and even macroscopic diamonds! The implications of these experiments are mind-blowing. Labs worldwide are rushing to implement practical applications like quantum information and computation systems." Interestingly, Suzanne Giesemann, a prominent channeler says that trance channeling works because we are all interconnected through one Source.

Wahbeh asked the trance channelers to channel how it works: "Here is a summary of what was said about how trance channeling works. The pineal gland has a physical and energetic aspect. It receives information that it “translates” through the channeler to be spoken. The pineal gland can receive light. Channeled information is sent through specific multidimensional light structures or constructs, and the pineal gland can read this information. It then gets translated into the energetic matrix of the body in cooperation with the DNA. DNA is like a being within the cells. It is an information warehouse but also an information manager."

What are the characteristics of someone that trance channels? Wahbeh says the following, "Individual characteristics, like age, race, gender, religious affiliation, and psychological characteristics, have been studied in relation to channeling experiences. Most people in our channeling studies are older, well-educated, Caucasian women of higher economic status. They are also spiritual but not religious, empathetic, and highly sensitive." In my own research of trance channeling, I found that people don't normally just channel out of nowhere. There is usually years of meditation and/or a spiritual experience that turns into channeling. See my blog post called Channeling Wisdom from the Higher Realms where I discuss this.

I could go on and on about the scientific research provided in the book. These are the same points discussed in Mona Sobhani's book, Proof of Spiritual Phenomena: A Neuroscientist's Discovery of the Ineffable Mysteries of the Universe. You can read my blog post summarizing her book here: Neuroscientist Discusses Proof of Spiritual Phenomena in her Book. The fact is, the little money that has been provided to the scientific community for parapsychology, has been enough to provide the scientific research and evidence that remote viewing, healing through intention, mediumship, and precognition are all very real and backed by scientific method.

To summarize, Wahbeh provided the scientific research and evidence that remote viewing, healing through intention, mediumship, and precognition are all very real and backed by scientific method. What if humans were always supposed to be able to connect to our higher selves and guides? As we ascend over time into a more evolved human race, perhaps connecting with our higher selves, spirit guides, and loved ones in spirit will become "normal" instead of "paranormal".