The New Paradigm: A Confrontation Between Physics and the Paranormal Phenomena

by John O'M Bokris

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College Station, TX: D&M Enterprises 2004. 504 pp Heavily referenced after each chapter (many irregularities in refs), with generous footnotes. $34.95 (Payment via PayPal) www.thenewparadigmbook.com 

John O'M Bokris, PhD presents an excellent discussion of the interdigitations between physics and psi phenomena. Bokris is well qualified on the physics side of this book: he is a chemist who has worked in Physical Electrochemistry (University of Pennsylvania) and Solar Hydrogen Alternatives (Flinders University of South Australia), Energy and Environmental Chemistry at Texas A & M University, and has been acknowledged professionally by his peers in many of these areas of study. On the psi and spiritual side of the book, his background appears weaker. He has had numbers of encounters with spirit entities and is broadly familiar with the spectrum of psi phenomena and literature in this area.

Bokris has an obviously awesome gift of pattern recognition. This enables him to do an excellent job of summarizing the theories and experimental findings in modern physics that suggest there is an interconnectedness between every conscious being and between consciousness and inanimate matter in the universe. He does an excellent job as well of summarizing research in psi, with a very broad range of references. The book is well organized by topics and numbered subheadings, and generously illustrated with helpful diagrams and figures.

Likewise, he does a reasonable job of summarizing succinctly the dangerous state of our world today, with threats of overpopulation; poor management of resources by industry and government and pollution; problems of societal ignorance and complacency about these issues; and with the entrenched positions of scientists in paradigms and approaches that have contributed to the worsening of the problems they were supposed to be addressing and solving.

Bokris also points out the limitations of mathematics to analyze the findings of physics, and some of the pitfalls in math that have led to errors in assumptions and conclusions about the nature of the world - points often ignored by other writers in these areas. He also boldly lays bare the stultifying atmosphere in academic research, which shies away from innovative findings that might threaten the funding of established lines of research and thereby threaten the jobs and careers of scientists whose theories are becoming outmoded.  

The best parts of the book are his summaries, often in excellent tables, of the findings in a given area of research, and his discussions of the ways in which these areas interdigitate.

The most frustrating thing about this book are the numerous errors in citations of names, references and occasionally in content that is familiar to me. Here are a few of many examples:

p. 384-5: "Leskom, 1981' is cited as author of a study of healing for bacterial growth, (noted by Bokris as being from p. 287 of my book, Healing Research, V. 1) and "Muchsam, 1994' for healing effects on enzymes. Facts: There is no author "Leskom' but there is a Leikam; there is no reference to Leikam in either the popular or the professional edition of my book on p. 287; there is no "Muchsam' but there is a Muehsam.

p. 461: The psi conditioning of a laboratory is discussed. A related observation from healing research is the linger effect, where anesthetized mice were wakened by a healer more quickly than control mice placed on the opposite side of the same table. If anesthetized mice are placed on the same side of the table as the mouse that received healing (within 20 minutes of the healing) they also waken more quickly. Bokris states, "... if a mouse is laid to die in a certain place, a succeeding mouse, equally ill will die more quickly..."

I was therefore left with questions about how much I could rely on any of the content that was unfamiliar to me.

Technically, this book gets some low grades: There are no running headers in the book, so it is difficult to know where I was when I picked it up after a break, or when I was searching for the end of the chapter to locate references. The index is rough and rudimentary, again making it difficult to navigate the book. Another minor issue is the rough formatting of the book, with empty parts of pages preceding tables or figures, adding to the feeling that this was thrown together in a hurry, without due attention to details.

If this book were cleaned up and the cited details reliable, it would be an outstanding reference.

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