The Parsifal Effect

Psychics have often been asked: "If you are so psychic, why aren't you rich?"

People assume, that either:
A psychic should be able to watch the Lotto draw and force - using psychokinesis (PK) - his or her numbers to come up.
or
Foresee the numbers of the next Lotto draw, and simply play those numbers.

There are some very obvious logical problems with these simplistic assumptions:
Firstly you have to ask yourself, what the "fabric of reality" actually is. Are the Lotto numbers pre-determined or not? Are ALL or ANY future events pre-determined?
The concurrent existence of PK and prophecy suggests that SOME BUT NOT ALL future events are pre-determined.

The first of the above scenarios assumes that the Lotto numbers are NOT pre-determined, therefore open to be influenced by PK.
This belief is shared by quite a few Lotto players. Thus many of them will try to psychokinetically influence the Lotto machine to bring up their own numbers. So it will be a psychic "tug of war" - probably with no winner.

The second scenario assumes that the numbers of the next Lotto draw ARE pre-determined, and therefore a psychic should be able to perceive them. But it also assumes, that the fact of the psychic winning or not winning Lotto is NOT pre-determined, and therefore open to the intervention of the psychic's free will.
This distinction - which many make without so much as pausing to think about it - is obviously arbitrary. What if it is pre-determined, that the psychic should NOT win Lotto? Then there are only two possibilities, the first of course being, that the psychic will not be able to perceive the winning numbers, and the second one, that the psychic will be able to perceive the numbers provided (s)he does not play Lotto on the day in question.

The latter scenario has been reported several times, and it highlights a spiritual law, that was detected by Parapsychologists, one of whom - Elmar Gruber - called it The Parsifal Effect. This law can be formulated as follows:

If you approach psychic phenomena with a pure heart, you will experience them - clairvoyance, clairsentinence, astral travel, mediumship - all will be open to you. If however you want to harness psychic phenomena for your own financial gain, you will notice that your psychic abilities do not work for this purpose.

There are many examples in the Parapsychological literature, that highlight this. People could predict stock market movements, as long as their own stocks were not involved. Similar failures were experienced when people "tried to prove PSI", i.e. wanted to "show off" their psychic abilities. Therefore the large sums of money, that sceptics offer to anyone, who "can prove that psychic phenomena are real" seem pretty safe for now - protected by spiritual law.

Some related observations: Large scale PK experiments involving slowing down or speeding up radioactive decay of unstable elements showed, that after a successful experiment the decay-rate bounced back in the opposite direction, until again over time a statistical equilibrium was reached. It is as if the mind walks on an elastic surface rather than on snow - our influence does not last, and is annulled over time.

Elmar Gruber chose the name "Parsifal Effect" quite deliberately. Parsifal reached the castle of the holy grail twice - the first time as a naive person, and the second time as an enlightened one, who was well aware of what was expected of him.

So far the view of Elmar Gruber. The presented evidence does however not quite support his idealistic interpretation that effectiveness of PSI requires the psychic to have a basically moral and unselfish attitude (many of the worlds worst villains are said to have been psychic). What the evidence seems to support is James Law saying according to Colin Wilson: "Where psychical research is concerned, there is always just enough proof to convince the believers and never quite enough to overwhelm the sceptics". This leaves room for psychics to use their powers for monetary or other gain, provided they do not use this to excess.

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