(12-20-2023, 03:10 AM)Ninurta Wrote: Do Psychic Abilities run in families? Are they hardwired in the DNA?It took me 40 years to finally listen to my gut instinct or the klaxon in my head as I call it .
As some of you know, I have an interest in genetic studies, perhaps a morbid interest in them. I ran across this notion in my travels on the Internet, and would like to present it here. The basic question is: do psychic abilities actually run in families? Are they hard-wired in the DNA, and if so, is there evidence for that?
It turns out that the answer to both questions may well be “yes”.
A recent (March 2021) study set out to gather evidence related to those questions. They gathered up a bunch of people, and winnowed them down to just 26 individuals – 13 who believed themselves to have psychic abilities, and 13 who did not – as a “control” group. What did they find?
Quote:Sequencing data were obtained for all samples, except for one in the control group that did not pass the quality controls and was not included in further analyses. After unblinding the datasets, none of the protein-coding sequences (i.e., exons) showed any variation that discriminated between cases and controls. However, a difference was observed in the intron (i.e., non-protein-coding region) adjacent to an exon in the TNRC18 gene (Trinucleotide Repeat-Containing Gene 18 Protein) on chromosome 7. This variation, an alteration of GG to GA, was found in 7 of 9 controls and was absent from all psychic cases.
That quote is found in the “Results” section of the abstract of the paper resulting from the study. Breaking it down, it indicates that a genetic mutation on chromosome 7 strips psychic abilities away from a person. The default setting is “psychic abilities = on”, and this mutation turns them off.
“Introns” make up 97% of our genomes, and were once called “junk DNA”, because scientists couldn’t find a reason for their existence, or what they did. It has since been discovered that contrary to being inert or “junk” DNA, they actually control the expression of their linked genes – they turn those genes “on” or “off”. In this case, the “wild” or original version of the intron is a GG base pair, and the mutation changed one of the G’s to an A → GA. That change in turn “turned off” the TNRC18 gene in those individuals, caused it to stop expressing. The pseudo-visible result of that change was that the mutant form stripped various psychic abilities from those individuals that they would have possessed under the original form of the intron.
That leads me to speculate that humans originally had a “sixth sense” manifesting in various forms, but that the sixth sense may be disappearing from humanity in the modern age. Long ago, there was good reason for that sixth sense – to warn of lurking or looming dangers that may not be present in the modern world. Anyone who has ever hunted knows that most, if not all, animals have that sixth sense, and often preternaturally “know” that danger is afoot. It’s a warning bell to them that causes them to “get scarce” when danger threatens. I can tell you from first-hand experience that, if you look at a prey animal’s eye, it will immediately go on the alert, even if it can’t actually “see” you. If, on the other hand, you concentrate your attention on the back of it’s head, it will be far less likely to detect you. That also has the added advantage of being able to predict it’s motion, for wherever an animal (including humans) goes, it’s head will go first.
The same sort of thing works in humans. Have you ever suddenly noticed someone looking at you from across a room or in a crowd? That’s the same effect, in action. It’s so common in humans that it has a name - “catching their eye”.
It took a little hunting to find the full version of this study. If you go to the original publishing house, they try to charge money for it. However, in the free spirit of the Internet, it can be found here in full at this link:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...cing_study
Apparently, this sort of thing is of high interest in Scotland, particularly the north of Scotland. There is another paper titled “Scottish tradition of second sight and other psychic experiences in families” that I have so far been unable to uncover a full version of. It was published as a dissertation in 1996, but seems to have not found it’s way into the recesses of the Internet even now. Link to the reference for that dissertation: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/9674
“Second sight”, as I understand it, stands in relation to “first sight” like this: “first sight” is the normal sight we all use, the sight that grants us access to the physical visual world. “Second sight”, in contrast, seems to be an “inner sight” that grants access to a less physical, more spiritual world.
My Dear Old Dad had the “second sight”. He just knew things that he had no way of knowing through any normal channels of knowledge acquisition. He told me once he was “born under the veil” - what others refer to as “being born with a caul” that was the basis for his second sight. Whether that is true or not I have no way of knowing, but it does have the potential of being a side effect of the more primary genetic determinative factor, I would think. Being “born under the veil” or “born with a caul” is really nothing more than the baby’s face being covered by a portion or remnant of the amniotic sack at birth.
My paternal grandmother also had the second sight, according to some of my cousins that knew her better than I, because they lived nearby to her.
My sisters call me a “witch” because there are times I just know things that I have no way of knowing. That “knowing” usually takes the form of an uneasy feeling when I am being watched, or danger is about, the same as any other wild animal has. Some times, it takes the form of “seeing the future”, but never far ahead, and usually not too specific. For example, I once told them “something bad” was about to happen, and a few minutes later one of them fell and broke a finger trying to catch herself from falling. Just little stuff, so the CIA doesn’t need to be coming around trying to recruit me into their psychic army or anything.
Be that as it may, I do seem to have some anecdotal evidence that psychic abilities – not necessarily spectacular ones, just “something”, may well run in families. This study does seem to lend some support to that notion, and may give a scientific reason for it.
Other studies have indicated that up to 85% of people surveyed, including some scientists, have had some sort of “paranormal” experience at least once in their lives that they could not explain away. Of course any such studies are likely more anecdotal than scientific, as they are by nature subjective – the opinion of the reporting person – rather than objective.
All of the psychic subjects winnowed out into the survey for this particular study happened to be female. That doesn’t mean all psychics are female, but it could mean the bulk of them are. More, wider-ranging, studies are needed to confirm or refute that notion. It could be that the study was skewed because females may be more responsive to the notion than males, rather than reflecting any real concentration in human females. It could be that a higher concentration of females reported for the study, which would have a necessary effect on the gender of the folks eventually included in it.
The study also found that the prevalence of the mutation was linked to the spread of Christianity. One of the authors, digging deeper into that question, came up with the hypothesis that it was actually linked to the “Holy Roman Empire” area, specifically because of the Inquisition. Think of it – in an age where “witches” are feared and an organization instituted to root them out and eliminate them, persons with “unusual” abilities may be perceived of as “witches”, sought out, and eliminated from the gene pool. That would tend to increase the percentages of the mutation in the gene pool, because carriers of the mutation – those with their psychic abilities “turned off” - would be more likely to survive and reproduce, thus increasing their percentage in any given population… such as the Holy Roman Empire under the Inquisition.
Altogether, I think this study provides some food for thought, although it’s certain that more investigation into the phenomena needs to be done.
.
I smoked a couple of joints a week back then and just put it down to a paranoid mind shrugged my shoulders and carried on , I lived in a really old property in the north of Scotland 30 + years ago that no one would live in for more than a few weeks before fleeing , if it had not been for my pets reactions I would have thought I was going nuts with what was going on in that cottage , doors banging ,milk cartons flying across the kitchen and really heavy boots clanking up and down the stairs and all this while I lived there alone .
That property had a very chequered past in its 250 plus year history , for the second time in my life I witnessed what some call apperitions the first time was just after my grandfather died and I tried to grab it it vanished before my hands got to it , that old farm house was also 200 years old and near water also , a's was the second property .
The second time I saw this smokey grey apperitions was early 90s , one was a small woman and the other a extremely tall male behind her with a dickens style hat on , my pets who had been sound asleep instantly fled the living room and the cat would never come back into the house again , it went and lived in the 2 acres of garden I had dragging rabbits into the bushes .
One night I heard those heavy footsteps on the stairs and totally lost it ,telling what ever it was to F.O or pay some rent money and was never bothered again by it , the old lady had been burned to death nearby in the Highland clearness because she would not leave her croft house and the big dude with the hat was the Duke of sutherland who ordered it , I saw a painting of him and nearly fell over when I was in his family castle .
I am not a religious person but I do now recognise there is something there , what it is well above my pay grade or understanding but I know not to be frightened of it as I have come to understand it is just nature or whatever teaching me something .
I also distinctly heard my old dog bark late one evening 2 days after I buried him , and you always know your dog's distinctive sound . And over the years I have heard a few people comment on this phenomenon without me saying anything about it to them or anyone for fear of being called a nutter .
I am convinced that this is something genetic that is in our blood , just like some people can smoke and drink like mad into a ripe old age and still look young and the next person can live a quiet clean life and drop dead at 40 and look like 80 years old .
My gut instinct is interesting to me , I ignored it for decades when it went off then one day I listened to it and it has always been 100 right , normally it is the cops hunting for me that triggered it of but I can state it is not just a coincidence with the amount of times it has happened , and the old people with the second sight spent many hours staring at a open fire and the dancing flames way before television much like Nostradamus.
The more you know about life the less you really know I find , G.R Martin used a character from my area in his Game of thrones series ,The Brahan seer