INSTRUMENTAL  TRANSCOMMUNICATION
by Ernst Senkowski

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A      FOUNDATIONS AND EVOLUTION  

A-1     MODES OF COMMUNICATION                                                          

This is a spiritual source.

The intersubjective reality of audiovisual, technically verifiable signals with meaningful content must be accepted as a fact [1]. Because of their unexplained source and incomprehensible conditions of genesis, we are dealing with paranormal (parapsychological, paraphysical) effects which must therefore be assigned to the ‘margins’ or to an evolving, expanded conception of science.

It appears that such a new view on the world will be non-mechanistic, holistic (unitary), and open to transcendency (c.f. DOBBELSTEIN, EMDE, MOSER, MYNAREK, RAVAGLI (3/1988), REISER). Prospectively a profund revision of the paradigms not sufficiently examined (KUHN) is needed, a new epistemology (HARMAN/DE QUINCEY) giving better answers than so far received to the fundamental question on how ‘knowledge’ originates. The content and form of an immense number of unequivocally interpretable speech signals, documented for decades on magnetic tape-recorders, and supplemented more recently by electro-acoustic voices capable of dialogue, by transvideo and transtext, persistently point to people who have passed on, the so-called ‘dead’, as the primary instigators of these signals. They thereby assert their conscious existence in a world beyond the one our waking consciousness perceives, i.e., in a transworld. Since the historically based materialism-spiritualism dichotomy cannot be transcended within a bivalent logic and ought rationally to be replaced by a concept of ‘not only but also’ (cf. HEIM), the accumulated body of experience permits and requires impartial analysis, provided only that personal prejudice does not stand in the way. The terms voices on tape (VOT) and electronic voice phenomena (EVP), psychophony, metaphony, conceptophony encompass only the acoustical forms of a big complex. This book employs in the following the wider concept transcommunication, in which ‘trans’ denotes the Beyond we are unconscious of, and ‘communication’ is to be understood as the receiving or exchange of ‘information’ [2].

The waking consciousness of Western man, restricted by the limitations of his body, and by sociocultural conditions [3], is accustomed to two forms of audiovisual informative interaction with its environment: organic, sensorimotor communication functioning at close range, and subsensory, electromagnetically propagated technical telecommunication, which, at the speed of light, traverses the space normally experienced as a separation ([4], Ill. 2).

 Ill.  2:   MODES OF COMMUNICATION 

Paranormology differentiates between two groups of phenomena: there is the animistic (bio-) communication within this world, and, pointing beyond it, there is  transcommunication, interpretable as spiritistic.  

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All attempts within classical physics to describe the fleeting correspondences of correlations which are called telepathy, clairvoyance, and extrasensory or tele-perception, have failed. Neither has been achieved success in constructing efficient material shieldings, nor has it been possible to detect the involvement of any matter- and energy-based information carrier, which is technically indispensable for information to bridge spatial distances. Only two conclusions are possible: either one denies the existence of such phenomena, or one must recognize the incompleteness of the existing scientific model [5]; (NEUHAEUSLER; PARANORMAL COMMUNICATION).

The phenomenon of precognition, or ‘afore-vision’, implies a further and more fundamental challenge: it overturns the linear principle of cause and effect (causality) and evidences the inadequacy of a serial definition of time [6]. Psychokinetic manifestations and instances of materialization place the validity of the conservation principles of physics in question. As a result, the apparently reliable order of a supposedly real and objective external world (reality) breaks down, and is revealed to be, at best, an intersubjective construct, in fact a psychic construct unique to each individual.

There are further difficulties involved in the attempt to classify those human experiences which are understood in the spiritistic/spiritualistic sense as ‘mediumistic’, or here as ‘transcommunicative’. While partners in telepathic communication can be identified as living persons, and the validity of a telepathic perception can and must be verified by means of the usual procedures, a medium’s statements referring to the Beyond appear at first to be subjective and unverifiable. Possible originators or agents who might ‘lie behind’ them (sources, entities, transbeings, extraterrestrians, or complex information structures) are not immediately perceivable. The ‘animist’ sticks to his reductionary claim that the medium, endowed with otherwise never observed ‘supertelepathic’ abilities, is producing the transinformation him- or herself by a process of unconscious dramatization, or supposes partly autonomous ‘split personalities’. Spiritists, on the other hand, largely in accordance with the form and content of the messages and dialogues, accept the existence of autonomous transbeings who are ‘transmitting’ transinformation from transregions to our ‘level’ of consciousness by means of, or through the medium acting as an (information) ‘channel’ [7].

Our difficulty in coming to a decision on these matters may become more comprehensible in the light of a generalized interpretation of GOEDEL’s principle of incompleteness (WATZLAWICK, 1984). According to this, a complex system, in this case a human being, is not capable of completely describing either itself or structures of still greater complexity. The most it can do is ‘understand’ systems possessing a lower degree of complexity (see system theory, chapter D-27). 

Despite of discrepancies, impossible to overlook, of many inherent contradictions, and of provably false contents, the entire lot of transcommunicative utterances can certainly induce or support the adoption of a perspective open to transcendence. Given the obvious importance of these problems for humanity, the tendency of a number of ostensibly scientific materialists/animists to invoke OCKHAM’s RAZOR appears to be a quite transparent, materialistically determined evasion manoeuver. By the way, OCKHAM’s epistemological assumptions are highly questionable (SCHOENHERR, OBERTH in [140]).

Transcommunication therefore describes the informational linking of human beings possessing a bodily, terrestrial form with entities and/or structures existing on other, for the time being undefinable levels of existence or consciousness, the conscious access to which is normally blocked by a - very ingenious – ‘psi barrier’ functioning as a ‘reducing valve’ to prevent the individual mind from becoming overwhelmed and confused (HUXLEY). In the simplest case, i.e., when this barrier is lifted for a short while, transcommunication is a matter of one-sided receiving of transinformation; complete two-way communication takes the form of a dialogue. The broad spectrum of purely mediumistic transcommunication phenomena, excellently described by TYRRELL (1972), and, more recently, in French language by GRANDSIRE, has been expanded and confirmed since the introduction of electromagnetic telecommunication by a wealth of ‘anomalous’ events within electro-technical devices and systems. In the terms of parapsychology, these constitute a ‘psychokinetic’ influencing of matter- and energy-based systems; this novel linking of psychic and physical components produces something which embodies information potential and may be termed instrumental transcommunication. This complex of phenomena encompasses the voices on tape (VOT), which are only perceivable when listening to the tape after recording, the direct electro-acoustic voices (DEAV), partly capable of dialogue, music, telegraphic signals, computer texts, video-, television- and digitalized images.

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Ill. 3:  FORMS OF INSTRUMENTAL TRANSCOMMUNICATION 

These events are significant in several ways. As interventions within technical systems they provide an objective correlate to the mediumistic, purely subjective sphere of experience. On the one hand, they pertain to physics, and require serious attempts at classification within it. On the other hand, their information potential far exceeds that of events more usually considered to be paranormal phenomena, since their contents unmistakebly suggest the continued existence of human beings as individuals after their physical deaths and the existence of non-human entities, and hence contribute to answering the ‘fundamental question lying behind all science’ (DRIESCH, 1975, p. 132). Remains to be seen whether and to what extent instrumental transcommunication will promote the development of a more-embracing world-view, a new imago mundi. The summary amalgamation of the traditional religious and scientific systems - similarly dogmatic - does however not appear to be a practicable way, since both these systems are too narrow and immobile. A chance may rather reside in the resurrection and adapted interpretation of the overriding ‘eternal thruths’. According to a transinformation received by BACCI, transcommunication is an instrument that has characterized the modern epoch in a unique manner. 

Ill. 4 shows several characteristic qualities and connexions of the normal and paranormal-mediumistic communications. While for describing normal communication, a fix consistent scientific terminology is available, the classification of transcommunication demands an expanded system and new conceptions. As the fundamental notion of the human world of experiences appears ‘information’ which is perceived within or by our consciousness.