The paradigms of science will limit how the world can realize the hope implied in our theme this year -- Science and Inner Knowing. For many scientists, there will have to be a radical change before they will even consider accepting psychic phenomena as possibly true.

It is curious that this is so. Physicists who deal with quantum mechanical or astronomical phenomena, or cosmological theory, confront realities daily that stretch the imagination beyond all limits. This is so in other fields also, though not so dramatically -- for example, the new field that examines how order arises out of apparent chaos. Yet there are many brilliant people in all these fields who seem to insist that our mundane world must be ordinary, with nothing in it that cannot be touched and felt by anyone. They seem appalled at the idea that the world might be more interesting than is immediately apparent. They label all those believing in psychic phenomena as either predatory quacks, or deluded people bemused by their own fantasies.

Why is this? Why is there such sharp resistance to any psychic study? Argument is to be expected, of course; there is always argument until a phenomenon becomes doctrine. ( Then there may not be enough!) But why the attempt to suppress any interest in, or attention to, evidence? The answer usually given by the advocates of suppression is that the public needs to be protected. They do not say who appointed them the guardians.