JOE COOPER: Man of Mystery

Joe Cooper Msc. Bsc. is a man of mystery who has dedicated himself to the scientific study and research of psychic phenomena. He is, by birth, a native of Yorkshire and has all the determination and tenacity associated with those bred in that ancient English county. But THE Joe Cooper is not just strong of arm (a former R.A.F. Amateur Boxer) he is even stronger of head and has written numerous Internationally published books. Among his titles is one that on publication took the academic world by storm. For Joe Cooper, the Sociologist and University tutor, researched and wrote ‘The Mystery of Telepathy’ for one of the UK’s most prestigious publishing houses: Constable. In this book Joe applies his scientific analytical mind to the examination, discussion and exploration of the truth behind humankinds apparent ability to assimilate knowledge and information without recourse to the five accepted senses of touch, taste, sight, sound and smell.

‘What is telepathy? How and why does it work? To what extent is it wishful thinking or coincidence?’ The book Joe wrote concerns itself with these questions and attempts, using insights of history, sociology, and parapsychology, to extend previous analyses of the subject. Data from family experiences, primative society, hypnotism, clairvoyance and wartime are freely drawn upon, as are methods of investigation used by early researchers such as Gurney, Myers and Barrett and also the later J.B. Rhine studies using the now familiar Zener cards.

In the book ‘The Mystery of Telepathy’ Joe Cooper offers many examples of telepathic communication amongst primative tribes as witnessed by writers and explorers during the 19^th and early 20^th century. Joe Cooper quotes Laurence Van der Post who wrote about his experience of telepathy whilst living with the Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert: ‘The Bushman’s letters are not in their bodies. The letters speak, they move, they make the Bushman’s bodies move. The Bushmen order the others to be silent: a man is altogether silent when he feels his body tapping inside’ Van der Post was describing the way the Bushmen received information within their physical bodies as though they were totally tuned in to their environment. Van der Post then compares this native, natural atunement to the complexities of modern society that surround us and our ‘clamour of words’ stating that he believes we today have ‘rejected our original self’. So that unlike the primative Bushmen we are locked out of our natural ability to tune in telepathically by the artificial, material methods of communication that we invented i.e. the telephone, radio etc.

In his search for the truth behind the mystery of telepathy Joe Cooper refers to the noted psychical researcher Hereward Carrington who wrote ‘Psychic Phenomena and the War’: In this book Carrington gives an account of a lady who experienced a telepathic communication from her soldier fiancé during WWI: ‘It was during the great war, my fiancé was with the Army of the Rhine and for a long time we had no news of him. During the night of the 23^rd August I had a singular dream that tormented me. I found myself in a hospital ward, in the midst of which was a kind of table on which my fiancé was lying. His right arm was bare and a severe wound could be seen near the right shoulder; two physicians, a Sister of Charity, and myself were near him. All at once he looked at me and with his large eyes said ‘Do you still love me?’ Within days the lady received notification from the War Department that her fiancé had been mortally wounded in battle and had died on the day that she had that dream.

In his book Joe Cooper, forever the scientist, considers the many theories about telepathy:

‘Commonly it is imagined that brain waves somehow transmit specific shapes, pictures or numbers. However, there have been other theories and models. Wallace, in the 1860’s favoured spirit intervention of some kind; towards the end of the 19^th century scholars such as Myers in England and Osgood Mason in America favoured explanations involving the subconscious or subliminal. Whatley Carrington in the 1940’s considered the concept of a group mind and today there are models of bio-energetics (the energy field surrounding the body) and quantum theories borrowed from physics which look beyond space and time for explanations of telepathy. ESP, extra-sensory-perception is by no means a new concept. In ancient China, for example, the concept of Chi – an all surrounding vitality or cosmic breath – has been accepted for centuries.

Anton Mesmer (mesmerism) attempted to translate the concept of Chi: ‘A universally distributed fluid, so continuous as to admit of no vacuums anywhere, rarefie beyond all comparison, and by nature able to receive, propogate and communicate all motion – this is the medium of influence’. Sir Oliver Lodge also developed the concept of ether, which fulfilled an identical function. In the Victoria magazine Borderland (Vol 1. No 111.) he maintained in an article on thought-transference that the real medium of communication in the process was, in fact, ether. Today Professor Rupert Sheldrake offers his theory of the Morphogenic field that surround all living things and through which information may be assimilated without recourse to the accepted five senses.

To better understand the complexities surrounding the study of telepathy you should refer to Joe Cooper’s work. He is the man of mystery who has created what I believe to be the definitive study of this subject. He is also a highly accomplished writer, academic and a damn fine chap despite the fact that he wears wrinkly shirts and soup stained ties.

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