Institute of Parapsychology and Digital Physics
General
Institute of Parapsychology and Digital Physics was founded in Helsinki in June 1965 by parapsychologist Jarl Fahler. It became incorporated society in august 1965, now under Associations Act of Finland (503/1989), which means that it forms independent legal and fiscal entity, which is able to make official contracts and manage property. Our VAT identification number is 26711011. Our current executive director is Carla Arrieta and chair of the board is Jani Lassila.
Parapsychology is a collection of interdisciplinary methods to study issues which are related to questions, whether the mind can receive information from or influence to external world without any familiar physical mechanisms. There are four approaches in parapsychology: 1) To study apparent paranormal events, which seems to represent some kind of consciousness. Recording of such events and phenomena recorded, are not only data needed in the studies but also very reason for existence of parapsychology in the terms of science. 2) To study such experiences, in which a person feels they receive information or contributed to external world without known physical mechanisms. Such research of experiences is usually called as anomalistic psychology, when the aim is to find conventional explanations for them. 3) To study hypotheses concerning the apparent paranormal events or anomalous experiences as well as underlying phenomena. 4) To develop hypotheses, methodology criticism and philosophy of parapsychology.
Digital physics is a collection of theoretical perspectives related to physics and cosmology, based on the premise that the universe is, at heart, describable by information, and is therefore computable. Main issues in the digital physics are related to question whether we can gather information about realities invisible to us, such as the future or parallel universes, by using observational selection effects or by finding practical solutions for mathematical universe hypothesis. Or in theory, by making an evident contact with some supernatural entity. Another issue in digital physics is that whether it is possible to create new knowledge without conventional methods of deduction, for example by using time-loop computing or by even decoding so called ultimate ensemble. Main question related to that issue is whether it is possible to build so called reality machine.
Our vision is the better world, where no one needs to suffer because of limited resources. The World, where we find evolution for limited resources being faster than most needs, and where we have better means to adapt our needs for less suffering. The World, which has gone a bit more paranormal than the one we face today, in terms of cultural, philosophical and perhaps even physical development. The World where humanity has undergone a kind of enlightenment.
Our mission is to study experiences and events which seems to refute our current view how the world behaves, by using empirical and statistical methods. Phenomena which are related to consciousness, in a way they either allow apparent paranormal influences from the mind to external physical world, or from external physical world to mind. Besides of such parapsychological phenomena, the institute aims to to collect information and acquire instruments to study realities invisible from empirical science, existing variables we cannot reduce to the laws of nature in our universe. Third purpose of the institute is to promote cultural export related to those themes. It is also important for us that our data are exploitable within variety of related disciplines.
Our activities are currently related to cultural export and adult education. We are collecting (and later on sharing) information into our digital archives and organize public events related to our areas of studies, included seminars, ghost tours, lectures and courses. In the terms of studies, we are mostly networking and making ourselves useful in international level. In addition, we are making a wide survey from paranormal experiences and beliefs in Finland and started to further a public psi experiment on television. We still have quite a modest collection of equipments, such as EEG and RNG devices, but we are trying to expand.
Our premise is that such phenomena and issues are possible to study under controlled conditions and in the field, by using scientific methods, without making any a priori statements for or against the existence of paranormal, and without making any presuppositions about nature of such phenomena. For historical and practical reasons, our main interest is the status of so called psi hypothesis. Our another premise is that by leaving our mark in this field of study and by helping humanity to develop the cultural value of these issues in the terms of sustainable development, we can make progress with our vision. Our third premise that an organization from small country must do international cooperation in order to success, and major ways to find our place in the World is by specialization and by taking part in studies abroad.
Our motto is that we just don't try to find paranormal, we try to make our realities become more paranormal. What is means is that our aim is not to prove paranormal exists, we just practice activities described above, and give the evidence lead our implications for culture, philosophy and physics. It also refers to the fact that whether paranormal phenomena do exist or not, it is possible to make the World a bit more paranormal than the one we face today, in the terms of cultural, philosophical and perhaps even physical development.
Our founder Jarl Fahler
The Institute of Parapsychology and Digital Physics (Institute of Parapsychology in Finland until June 2015) was established in June 1965 from initiative of parapsychologist Jarl Fahler (27.12.1925 - 05.17.1990).
Fahler had begun to take an interest in parapsychology already as a young man and became a member of Sällskapet for Psykisk Forskning society in the late 1940s, when he was still studying psychology at the University of Helsinki. From 1951 onwards, he led the SPF's ESP team, in the footsteps of Severin Tigerstedt who studied telepathy for decades, from early 1910'es to late 1940'ies. Tigerstedt's life's work was presented to public in 1954 by Fahler.
He completed a master's degree in political science from the University of Helsinki in 1953 and the following year he was elected President of the Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning society. After this Sällskapet for Psykisk Forskning began to maintain close relations with parapsychologists at the Duke University in the United States, where Fahler worked with Joseph Banks Rhine who had set up the parapsychology laboratory there in 1930, as well as Swedish parapsychologist John Björkhem and German philosopher Gerda Walther.
In 1956, Fahler moved for a period of two months to work in Ütrehct under the auspices of the professor Wilhelm Tenhaeff, who held the first chair of parapsychology in Europe. The following year he traveled to Duke University's parapsychology laboratory, where he assisted in studies for 1.5 years, which included experiments with telepathy and telekinesis. After that he served as a volunteer in the Parapsychology Foundation.
After returning to Finland, he wrote a book Parapsykologia (Parapsychology), whose first edition appeared in 1961. At the same time from 1959 to 1962, he made a few years LSD experiments, which he ended as he realized hazards included and continued his experiments with hypnosis. He came back into parapsychological studies shortly before the establishment of the institute. He published about 10 studies on parapsychology in international journals between the years 1957-1975. In addition, Fahler popularized the subject diligently in his articles and dozens of lectures.
Fahler founded the Institute of Parapsychology in Finland as a part of his efforts to establish serious research on parapsychology to Finland, in cooperation with parapsychologists in USA. Thus they formed the rules of institute as following: "(it's purpose) is to engage and promote research and understand the origins and manifestations of the deepest layers of the human mind and especially parapsychological phenomena, to promote results from such research; to engage in publishing activities, as well as establish and maintain international relations." The institute had regular contacts with foreign countries to late '60s and Fahler went to represent Finland in international conferences. Other founders of the institute were his wife Astrid Fahler, artist Orvo Raippamaa and Gustaf Gabriel Eneback.
Background of the institute
Establishment of the institute was obviously inspired by the Institute of Parapsychology in United States, which was founded also at 1965 when the Parapsychology Laboratory in Duke University was closed after J.B. Rhine's retirement. Today Institute of Parapsychology is known as the Rhine Research Center. Backbone of the Institute of Parapsychology was Research on the Nature of Man Foundation, which was supported Xerox founder of Chester Carlson's in 1962, so it could get enough capital to open the private institute.
When Fahler started his career in parapsychology in the 1950s, there was still significant academic interest in the parapsychology and many enthusiasts had hopes to consolidate the academic parapsychology in Finland. In 1950 Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning society added new objective in their rules, which stated that the society is aiming to have a professorship of parapsychology in Finland. During that time parapsychological activities were blossoming in the academia.
At 25th of January 1950, University of Helsinki made a psychoscopic experiment with famous psychic Lilly Åkerblom, in cooperation with Finnish Crime Research Centre. According to records, experiment was supervised by professor Kai von Fieandt, professor and previous Rector of the University of Jyväskylä Erik Ahlman, a psychologist and later rector of the University of Jyväskylä Martti Takala, in addition of the previously mentioned Severin Tigerstedt and Jarl Fahler. In 1953, Finnish police used Åkerblom to assist criminal investigation to the murder of Kyllikki Saari, which helped to locate the body according to criminal police.
In winter 1952-1953, and in the spring of 1960, there were organized public psi experiments through the radio and television, which aroused interest in the country and abroad. People who were helping to organize these experiments included dr. Reino Tuokko (the inventor of the idea), professor Kai von Fieandt, professor Alvar Wilska, Jarl Fahler and Gösta Lindholm, who made his Ph.D thesis Fehlerquellen der sog ASW-Versuch (sources of error in so called ESP experiments) about those experiments. Polemics caused by these experiments, academia started to take parapsychology more seriously in Finland during the 1950s. One who made sympathetic public statements for parapsychology was Erik Lönnroth, Rector of the University of Helsinki.
Public psi experiments in radio 1952-1953 contained 12 trials with four different options and produced 84,000 replies from the public. The results roughly followed the mathematical probabilities, but there was about 10% more people than expected who got the best result. Number of 250 people from the first round, who got the most hits, were chosen for the next round and apart from that, 250 others were chosen who got average results and 250 people who had guessed all wrong. Those who scored the best results In the first round, scored also the best results in the second round, although the difference was between groups quite small - the result of top 20 was about 2% above the expected value from average. In the third round of the results differed statistically significantly higher from the expected value. According to Reino Tuokko, these results supported the existence of telepathy.
Inspired by the earlier promising results, televised psi experiments in 1960 used a Zener deck which contained five different options. These experiments included two rounds, both of which had 25 trials. During each trial, supervisor of the experiment displayed back of the card in TV studio and held it in one hand, while supervisor displayed order number of the trial in another hand. All participants filled the form, where they were also asked to tell their opinion about accuracy of their answers and their attitude to the existence of telepathy. In the first round, total amount of respondents was 1040, of which 450 were selected for the second round. In the first round, average results were little worse than expected value, and in the second round, matches was clearly better than expected value, but not yet statistically significant. However, follow-up study was seen justified, although it never happened.
In 1954, the University of Helsinki was established laboratory for hypnosis, which mainly focused to organize psi experiments during the period of three years, under supervision of dr. Uno Remitz and professor Kai von Fieandt. Purpose of these experiments was to determine, if the hypnotized subjects able to empathize to situation where they were hypnotized to believe that their sense of touch was transferred to a glass of water. Psi experiment was put into practice when the respondents were supervised to see if they can feel when that glass of water was injected with a needle, when all normal sensory data sources have been carefully excluded.
Remitz was Jarl Fahler's predecessor as a president of the Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning society between 1948-1953, and he had already carried out similar tests within the society. According to Remitz, experiments yielded a positive result while von Fieandt kept the results too preliminary to draw conclusions. Kai von Fieandt's assistant Johan von Wright, in turn, saw the results negative due to lack of control during early test conditions, although this gap was corrected in subsequent experiments. Due to lack of funding experiments in college was not renewed after three years, and further experiments were eventually carried out by Jarl Fahler as part of his activities with the institute. However, there were still some psi experiments in University of Helsinki during the 1960's.
It is not surprising that while Jarl Fahler was establishing the institute in 1965, he entertained hopes of getting funds for the Finnish parapsychology, in the similar way as happened in the United States, although on a smaller scale. He worked hard to get necessary funding, where people like dr. Ilkka Taipale and dr. Antti-Veikko Perheentupa provided some support (both later members of the Finnish parliament), but had no success whatsoever. The University of Helsinki did not organize psi experiments anymore after the 1963 and academic debate was turning into disadvantageous for the parapsychology.
The final turning point was the publication of Gösta Lindholm's thesis in 1967, which presented a "very inadequate, even misunderstood, and clearly biased information ... and based on such information, made allegations about parapsychology that was not true", according to according to Fahler. Lindholm was criticized especially for connecting parapsychology with animism, which belonged to the field of religious studies anyway, not the field of psychology. All the same, interest in the parapsychology waned among the academia, and attention shifted to the potential sources of error. For example, previously mentioned professor Kai von Fieandt contributed into this development in 1969 by analyzing sources of error within psi experiments in Nordisk Psykologi journal.
One source where Fahler applied for funding, was Donner Institute after it was established at University of Åbo Akademi in 1959, which sought to "promote religions studies and cultural sciences by following the scientific principles". It was founded by the help of bequest from Finnish anthroposophy patrons Uno and Olly Donner, which was worth about 400 million old Finnish marks. Fahler felt the spirit of this bequest as such, which also offers possibility contribute to psi related research. He probably applied for a grant containing a cultural and historical perspective on the study, but was not successful with that strategy to promote parapsychology. On the other hand, however, the Donner Institute also founded the Steiner Library, which still contains fairly comprehensive collections of parapsychological literature.
Since Fahler failed to get funding for his work with the parapsychology, The Institute of Parapsychology in Finland was closed quietly and stayed long hiatus in 1970. About the same time Fahler's career in parapsychology virtually ended once and for all, although he still later visited to international conferences and later published a case study about Nina Kulagina with Jürgen Keil, after a visit in Soviet Union.
New beginning
Although Fahler's studies came to the end during the 70s, this did not mean the end of the experimental parapsychology in Finland. Inspired by the methods of Duke University, modern parapsychology was rooted in the Finland and far into the 80's, occasional psi experiments were done by enthusiasts within variety of Finnish parapsychological societies. At that time, Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning society studied telekinesis under the supervision of engineer Birger Wasenius, for which purpose he had built electronic random number generator, inspired by Helmut Schmidt. Parapsychological Society of Finland, in turn, dealt with the Kirlian effect in their most recent experiments, which was studied until the beginning of 21th century, under supervision of Pekka Kuhmonen, head of photographic laboratory in University of Kuopio.
After Fahler's death by complications of malaria in 1990, popular lectures related to parapsychology pulled public halls full of audience, but activities with scientific studies was halted and clearly this area of subject lived through transitional period. Sällskapet för Psykisk Forskning had already ceased operations ten years earlier when it suddenly received a bequest from SPF's former president Atle Blomqvist, which was put in the action ten years after his death when his wife died in the mid 1990s. Donation was meant to support parapsychological research project, including also grants for students who are trying to start a career related to parapsychology. The society quickly founded ad hoc committee to deal with this donation of 130.000 euros, but eventually the process led into nothing. Couple years later the money disappeared under the supervision of chairman and his wife, who acted as a treasurer in the society, while they managed to use money for their expenses without any criminal laws, according to police who investigated the issue and who were only able to advise dissatisfied people to contest a case in court. However, remaining members of the society were mainly aged and could not afford to such a risky move, consequently leaving the future parapsychology students with almost empty hands for this career choice. Few years later in 2002 SPF itself vanished, shortly before 100 years SPF's anniversary, and the leading couple have been out of reach ever since, Meanwhile, Finnish Parapsychological Society had significant activities during the 1990s, but it didn't carry out any research except for some preliminary experiments.
However, academic activities related to parapsychology were once again on the rise in the late 1990s, which had shown signs already in the 1980s. Students were more able to choose paranormal related issues with the respect of their theses and first Master's theses concerning to parapsychology appeared in the 1980s. By the turn of the millennium, there had already appeared number of theses and a number of Master's studies were going on. After the turn of the millennium there has been published about ten doctoral dissertation on parapsychology or anomalistic psychology in Finland, a number of different disciplines point of view. At the same time, criticism has been increased as dissertations have been growing and one doctoral hat has already been shelved after local skeptics complained about his dissertation ”Spontaneous movements of hands in gradients of weak VHF electromagnetic fields”. It was dismissed after a new examination. Within more conventional topics, similar cases has not led into the new examination, which suggests that the threshold of being dismissed is higher with such unconventional topics.
As the academic interest into the paranormal was rising, young students Jarkko Kari and Jani Lassila established a Finnish Network for Scientific Research on the Paranormal (ParaNet), In february 1999, Jani Lassila made a initiative to establish a parapsychological institute in Finland. This indeed occurred in the spring of 2002, when Institute of Psychobiophysics was founded in Turku. The name was chosen partly because the concept of psychobiophysics was seen more compatible with the key factors in the studies at the time. and on the other hand, it also covered biological issues (quantum biology) as well as consciousness studies. Furthermore, countries like Sweden, Germany, Italy, Argentina and Brazil had already established a number of similar research units, so the continuation of this tradition was natural. In particular, similar activities in Stockholm couple decades earlier affected by the choice of this name.
Headquarters of the ParaNet and the Institute of Psychobiophysics, latter as a division of the former, were located in Turku downtown (Torninkatu), and after the landlord decided to take the rooms for their own use in 2003, the institute moved into local industrial complex in Isoheikkilänkatu where it continued to operate until february 2004. First head of research was Ingrian-Finnish physicist Alex Kaivarainen, followed by dr. Arsi Ikonen. The Institute was ran and financially supported by more than 20 assistants, while it systematically tried to seek more funding, but with only little success. The Institute engaged in few preliminary research projects and employed the number of volunteers and one full-time employee, in addition of one part-time trainee and a retired volunteer who worked to build equipments for parapsychological research.
After couple of years, the institute was eventually forced to move out from its premises, because the financing was not longer sufficient. Six month earlier Department of Cultural Studies in University of Turku had stopped cooperation with the ParaNet in poltergeist research project, which already burdened people who still had hopes of continuing this research. In this situation, outcome was the same as with Helsinki University hypnosis laboratory 50 years earlier: the results were too preliminary, thus they were not published. Around the same time, activities in ParaNet also turned to decline, since it was a student organization in its core, and after graduation their focus shifted or they managed to integrate their studies into the mainstream science.
After activities of the ParaNet faded in 2007, and while Finnish Parapsychological Society concentrated only for public events, the Institute of Parapsychology in Finland was revived to continue tradition of parapsychological studies in Finland. A decision was made in honor of SPF's 100 years anniversary and this effort was recognized by Finnish Patent and Registration Office in 17th of April 2008, when it accepted a new board which was chosen under the mandate of only surviving member of the old board, Gustaf Gabriel Eneback. More than 35 years after the fading of the original institute, bit by bit it started to build new activities.
Our intention is to continue on the footsteps of parapsychologist Jarl Fahler in maintaining traditions of modern parapsychology, while we are developing our activities under the modern day globalizing environment. However, actual operations didn't start until 2014. In January 2015, dozens of our members and Facebook followers poured into the Parapsychology Foundation's course ”Parapsychology and Anomalistic Psychology”. At the end of January 2015, we handed over our 57 pages grant application for the Ministry of Education and Culture in Finland, with the petition which had been signed by 5000 people in order to promote parapsychological research in Finland. As a part of 50 years anniversary celebration, we tried to move forward Jarl Fahler's dream for institutionalizing parapsychology and approached this by applying financing for cultural export project related to parapsychological experiences. This grant application wasn't successful either, but fortunately a backup plan seems to be little more successful.
(this site is still under construction)