“Stanford’s questioning was based on two considerations: (a) extrasensory response, like sensory response, presumably functions in support of the needs and/or dispositions of the organism; but (b), serving those inclinations logically need not require conscious knowledge of the information to which psi-driven action is responding. Indeed, an adaptive or disposition-affirming outcome orchestrated by implicit (that is, unconscious, automatically processed) psi or sensory information often might be the most efficient way to move the organism away from a threat or toward a gratifying situation. PMIR mechanisms support that possibility even when the respondent has no conscious awareness of it.”

Duggan, M. (2020). “Rex G Stanford”. Psi Encyclopedia. London: The Society for Psychical Research. https://psi-encyclopedia.spr.ac.uk/articles/rex-g-stanford. Retrieved 30 March 2024.

“Coming events cast a shadow before them; each individual has a presentiment about his own destiny, which may remain latent: the normal processes of consciousness do not include such presentiments. To understand the presence in each individual of a detailed record of personal consciousness, it is necessary to take into account the fact that an individual being exists, as it were, on several planes simultaneously, or is capable of so doing. What is loosely termed the subconscious is actively interleaved with the astral levels; the mental and intellectual processes, emanating from the intelligence, link themselves in a living web to the spiritual levels.”

— Joseph Maxwell

“The basic concept surrounding the PMIR [Psi Mediated Instrumental Response] was that human beings utilize psi to accomplish something (the instrumental response) that fulfills certain needs in which the individual consciously or subconsciously possesses. Such concepts lead to arguments suggesting that psi may be far more common in daily life than is immediately apparent, but that psi does accomplish its goals in a subtle elegant manner void of conscious awareness. Further arguments then direct us towards the question ‘if psi is a staple in our subconscious daily life, can psi be directed to be a staple in our conscious daily life to any extent?’”

— Theresa M. Kelly [Ref.]

"In First Sight theory, several almost universal, implicit assumptions about psi are changed. Psi is not an ability; ESP is not knowledge; PK is not action. Perhaps the most important one is the new assumption that psi is not an ability. Instead, it is a universal characteristic of living organisms, a basic feature of their being in the world. It is the fact that we are all unconsciously and perpetually engaged in a universe of meaning that extends far beyond our physical boundaries in space and time. It is not an ability, better in some than in others, called up sometimes and not other times. It is always going on for all of us. It is less like riding a bicycle or discriminating red from green and more like being perpetually engaged as physical bodies with the reality of gravity, or as social beings with an interpersonal world of others. It is an unconscious and ubiquitous but still largely unmapped aspect of our nature."

James C. Carpenter, First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 84.

Luke, David. (2007). The science of magic: A parapsychological model of psychic ability in the context of magical will. Journal for the Academic Study of Magic. 4. 90-119.

Abstract: This paper describes a parapsychological model of psychic ability in terms of its intrinsically magical undercurrent, thereby providing a bridge, hitherto largely unconnected, between science and magic. Initially proposed by Rex Stanford in the 1970’s, the model, seeks to explain the unconscious everyday use of ‘psi’ (precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, or psychokinesis) as a means of serving the needs and desires of the organism. The model, termed ‘psi-mediated instrumental response’ (PMIR), is based on the principles and research of cognitive, behaviourist, and para- psychology from an evolutionary perspective. Yet it is shown that, by extrapolating the inferences of this model and by subtly re-orientating it to a magical perspective, it can serve as a useful psychology of magical operation. By drawing comparisons between Stanford’s model and the occult psychology of the chaos magic current, and with particular regard to the work of Austin Osman Spare, the essay highlights the parallels between these bodies of thought. While this demonstrates some synonymous mechanics for the manifestation of the magical desire it also offers a heuristic model for the functioning of magic that is compatible with mainstream cognitive science and which can be, and has been, tested empirically. Furthermore some consideration is given to scientific research’s magical nature, which has been unearthed in the process of searching for a science of magic. Despite objections from both magicians and scientists, by cross-pollinating the flowers of these two fields in this way possibilities emerge for the utilisation of empirical research to augment magical belief systems for those with a scientific leaning, whilst simultaneously illuminating new regions for growth in the formation of occult science.

"The usual interpretation of a precognition is that it is a glimpse from the present into the future as if looking forward through a time window at an event-to-be-experienced, but in the time loop hypothesis, the event-to-be-experienced is causally acting back upon the now, whether in the form of a vivid precognitive dream or a sudden waking vision. According to this hypothesis, the personal future of each of us acts back upon the present in a continuous cycling loop of retrocausal experiencing along a retrocausal spectrum of effect from subliminal influencing of one future scenario over other scenarios before making an apparent free will decision to full blown premonition. Wargo emphasises that we do not precognise an external physical event such as a car crash—what is precognised is our eventual knowledge of it. He suggests that this retrocausal faculty is an evolutionary strategy, citing James Carpenter (2012) who argues that psi acts as the ‘leading edge’ of subliminal perception throughout life. As Wargo says 'This is an important corrective to the common presumption that if ESP exists it must be a rare occurrence. We should not confuse how difficult it is to imagine a thing with how difficult nature finds in accomplishing it' (p. 85). Wargo proposes that retrocausation is not only the best explanation for precognitive experiences but probably the best explanation for telepathy and clairvoyance as well in that their occurrence is confirmed by later knowledge. What he proposes is that retrocausation is the agent of psi-acquired information as psi cannot present information about what you will never know has happened or will happen."

Robert Charman, “Time Loops: Precognition, Retrocausality and the Unconscious,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 83, no. 4 (October 2019): 234.

"Extrasensory prehensions are unconscious, and we can only glimpse their effects by suspending cognitive work and consulting the vague material at the edges of experience. When rational, cognitive work is called for, attention to the preconscious material is best suspended. Since balanced hitting and missing tendencies produce an effective nonrelation to the material in question, this is a sensible mechanism for protecting the focus of conscious work. To attempt to use conscious work in an ESP test is therefore self-defeating as White (1964) has reminded us from examining the introspective discoveries of earlier explorers in this area."

James C. Carpenter, First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015), 69.

"It seems to me a common-sense thing to suppose that all life and all its parts are interested not in its destruction but in its survival, and that the purpose of psychic insights overall is to aid in that survival. If this is so, as I believe it to be, these kinds of intuitive promptings have the intent of alerting individuals to future times and events that will be dangerous to survival. If the individual could accept these insights as alerts (and not as unalterable fatal predictions), then extra precautions might be taken during the times indicated. Otherwise, we would have to accept the unavoidable fatalism implied. Indeed, many students of the occult and psychic matters have accepted the idea of psychic fatalism. But, in my opinion, psychic fatalism is hogwash. It does not make any common sense at all that the psychic factors would tease certain people with forecasts of their own doom unless it was for some completely constructive reason—the avoidance of that doom."

Ingo Swann, Psychic Literacy: & the Coming Psychic Renaissance (Agoura Hills: Swann-Ryder Productions, 2018), 114–115.

Ingo Swann on Anomalous Cognition

"Mistakenly, we interpret telepathy, clairvoyance, or precognition as processes, when they are, in all instances, the results of processes and not the processes themselves" (Swann, 2018, 104).

"We cannot further develop a cake that has already been baked. Since what we experience as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, etc., are instances of end products, we really should realize that we cannot further develop them per se but must try to locate and seek to become proficient in managing the factors that have culminated in them" (Swann, 2018, 108).

Swann, Ingo. 2018. Psychic Literacy: & the Coming Psychic Renaissance. Agoura Hills, CA: Swann-Ryder Productions.

"The basic assumption in psychic research has always been that psychic aptitudes were powers of the mind—which is to say, mental activities. Although it took me two years to discover it, I actually disagreed with that basic premise. To me, psychic aptitudes were powers not of the mind, but powers in themselves, and powers that at times actually transcended 'mind,' or cut across it, or, even, were capable of operating when what we call 'mind' was asleep or unconscious—or, even, when clinically dead."

Ingo Swann, Psychic Literacy: & the Coming Psychic Renaissance (Agoura Hills: Swann-Ryder Productions, 2018), 197.

May, Edwin C., and LaBerge, Stephen. 1991. Anomalous Cognition in Lucid Dreams. Menlo Park: Science Applications International Corporation. Accessed June 17, 2023. https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/document/cia-rdp96-00789r003100140001-2. Declassified document released by the Central Intelligence Agency under the Freedom of Information Act on October 27, 1998.

"Bergson, drawing upon his filter theory of consciousness, suggests that it is possible that 'we perceive virtually many more things than we perceive actually, and that here, once more, the part that our body plays is that of shutting out from consciousness all that is of no practical interest to us, all that does not lend itself to our action' (ME 95–96). Given this he asks if it is not also possible that 'around our normal perception' there is an unconscious 'fringe of perceptions' associated with psi phenomena that occasionally enters into our consciousness 'in exceptional cases or in predisposed subjects' (ME 96)."

G. William Barnard, Living Consciousness: The Metaphysical Vision of Henri Bergson (Albany: Suny Press, 2011), 255.