new and hitherto unsuspected involved in the operation
of the pendulum. I want to make it clear that I do not
wish to sound dogmatic when I present hypotheses. It
could very well be that it all happens because it pleases
the Great God Bog as part of his arcane if whimsical way
of running the Universe for his own amusement. But I
really doubt it. I could be wrong, of course. One must
keep an open mind when dealing with these machines....
When Occam's Razor is applied to the hand-supported pendulum, the simplest explanation is that the operator is consciously or unconsciously affecting or modulating the innate natural nervous tremor, the "noise" in the human nervous system, possessed by everyone, thereby causing the pendulum to swing.
However, there are other problems that are not addressed or answered by this simplest and most straight-forward of hypotheses. How does the operator know the answer? What if the question doesn't involve an answer with a high content of wishful thinking? What if the pendulum taps the super-hyper-ultra-conscious or even the subconscious? What if it's tapping "subconscious" or
"racial" memories? If it is indeed doing these things, it's doing them better, a lot faster, and far more positively than any psychiatrist or psychological technique I've ever known.
Obviously, in spite of a simplistic hypothesis that resists the cutting edge of Occam's Razor, there must be something more to the hand-held pendulum. I don't know what it is. But it deserves more investigation.
With respect to the independently-suspended pendulum, almost every freshman physics student is aware of the demonstration or experiment in which a light object such as a bit of paper or cork is attracted to a rubber or glass rod which has been rubbed gently with silk or cat's fur. This is an exhibition of electrification. In
the previous chapter, the first law of electrostatics was stated: Objects that are similarly charged repel each other while bodies with unlike charges attract each other.
In addition to various objects that have been given an electrostatic charge by various means, the equipment used to demonstrate this principle usually consists of a small, light object suspended from a thread as a pendulum. It is surprisingly easy to give an object enough electrostatic charge to affect another object such as a suspended lightweight pendulum bob.
We also saw in the previous chapter that the human body carries an electrostatic charge on the surface of the skin and that the action of the nervous system can change the polarity and strength of this electrostatic field. In all people, it is an unconscious phenomenon, which means that it is accomplished without the person being aware of it in much the same manner that people are unaware of their breathing or heartbeat. However, like breathing or the heartbeat, it can be voluntarily and willfully controlled.
Therefore, the operational hypothesis here is nearly the same as that proposed for the energy wheel: The human mind causes the nervous system to change the electrostatic charge on the skin of the hands in such a way as to cause the independently-suspended pendulum to swing. When the charge on the right palm is plus and the other palm minus, and if the pendulum carries a minus charge, it will swing toward the right hand. The
mind then causes the electric charge on both palms to reverse, in turn causing the pendulum to swing in the other direction. To cause the pendulum to swing toward and away from the experimenter, the charge on the heel of both hands must be the same while that at both fingertips the same.
It would not take a very strong change in electro-static charge of the skin of the palms to cause the pendulum to swing.
Here again, the physical factors can be measured as in the energy wheel tests. Solid-state electronic mea-surement sensors exist that will detect and determine the electric field.
But, again, this hypothesis begs the question...and it is a most important question: How does the operator know how to make the swinging pendulum answer the question for which the operator has no conscious answer?
And, again, claiming that the pendulum triggers racial memories or other deep-seated psychological factors raises even more important questions that basically involve the elusive "how": How can the simple pendulum accomplish this so easily when it requires hours, weeks, or even months of intense psychological therapy, treatment, or investigation to dig these things out otherwise?
Conclusions:
Here is a very simple mind machine whose op-erating principles appear to be both obscure and complex.
But the hypotheses may only appear to be complex because the operating mechanism is still totally unknown. The device works and will indeed answer questions with a reliability that has been shown to be much better than random chance.
It is also a device that lends itself to experimentation by amateurs. The instrumentation involved in measuring the physical factors involved is not complex or expensive.
Furthermore, the instrumentation is totally within the current state of the art.
We are perhaps confronting two separate phe-nomena with the hand-supported pendulum and the independently-supported pendulum. But, with the present level of knowledge in this area, there did not appear to be much to be gained by considering them separately.