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Why Psionics? Why Now? Steering Human Consciousness Toward Artificial Digital Reality

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Guest Post by Rebecca Hardcastle Wright Ph.D.

When intelligence and military switched the ufology words from UFO to UAP and from Extraterrestrial to NHI, I made observations about the use of language in influencing our thinking and beliefs with subtle, seemingly harmless word replacements—that actually resulted in steering consciousness.[1]

Then recently, intelligence and military promoted another word switch from Exoconsciousness, psychic abilities, and psychic intelligence to psionics.

At their foundation, these word changes (UAP, NHI, psionics) have similar goals of steering human consciousness in a designated yet covert direction.

This Substack, one of four, will examine the history of psionics and why psionics surfaced to replace familiar words like psychic, psychic intelligence, and, yes, Exoconsciousness.

Here comes Psionics: Jake Barber, Master of Ceremonies

Psionic Summit 2/23/2025

Jim Garrison: explain in your own words what you mean by psionics.

Jake Barber: It’s kind of a fun word…you can play with this thing…it’s digital intelligence or digital consciousness.[2]

Early History of Psionics

In American science fiction of the early 1930s and 1950s, 1960s, psionics was defined as applying engineering principles (especially electronics) to studying (and employment) of paranormal or psychic phenomena, such as extrasensory perception, telepathy, and psychokinesis.[3]

Father of Psionics: Science Fiction Author John W. Campbell

In the 1930s, John W. Campbell termed psionics a “new science of mind.” Campbell, one of the notable writers of the Science Fiction Golden Age, began his early life as a disturbed child who created a fantasy world he could control when his life went out of control. His emotional issues unaddressed, he fled into a world of magical horrific creations:

Born in Newark, N.J., in 1910, he was raised by combative parents who embodied the extremes of their son’s divided personality: his father, an engineer with Bell Telephone, stressed rationality, planning, and control over emotions, while his mother was a wild, tantrum-prone woman who couldn’t be controlled so much as fought “to a draw.” After their divorce, Campbell grew up, like many writers, unhappy, lonely, and distressed; he often felt like a disappointment to his father, and his mother’s unpredictable cruelties instilled in him a deep sense of panic about a world that couldn’t be adequately rationalized or controlled.

Often, for a joke, Campbell’s mother and her twin sister assumed each other’s identities to greet him when he returned from school, contributing to Campbell’s lifetime suspicion of anybody who wasn’t himself. This eventually led to one of his finest stories, “Who Goes There?,” in which a shape-shifting alien serially devours scientific researchers in the Antarctic, then assumes their identities in order to trap the next meal.[4]

Unlike Barber, Campbell’s psionics don’t sound like much fun.

His was a childhood characterized by fear, confusion, and anxiety. In military language, Campbell’s life was filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA)

Military VUCA: Confusion for Control

Coined in 1985 by Army War College professors Warren Bennis and Burt Nanus after the collapse of the USSR and Eastern Bloc, VUCA described the military challenges of finding new ways to navigate and respond to the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity in international relations. The loss of One enemy developed into multiple enemies and a grander empire vision.

After 911, VUCA came into public use as the military increasingly used technology solutions like reconnaissance, surveillance, drones, and robots to combat a multitude of cultures and nations.[5] As space, air, and online data collection, combined with AI solutions, these tools made the uncertain post-USSR 911 world more manageable.

Humans Corralled to VUCA

It didn’t take long for VUCA theories and tools to be used in psychology, especially for individual behavior and extensive crowd-cultural control. If the military could control multiple cultures, then it wasn’t long before psychology wanted to apply military tools to individual citizens.

According to psychology, humans adapted to the VUCA environment through resilience theory, which initially referenced a child’s adaptability in challenging circumstances—an innocent child, like Campbell. Child psychology self-help assisted parents and children when dealing with an uncertain life lacking traditional cultural identity, family, community, or faith anchors.

VUCA From Battlefield to Home Front

All is well when VUCA is applied to the battlefield or war strategy, but what happens when it is deliberately used to create individual and community confusion and uncertainty by using fear to control an anxious citizenry?

What happens to generations of children who grow up in a socially engineered environment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity sourced in video games, films, social media, and the proliferation of street drugs? They develop anxiety and become overwhelmed, or they create the avoidance of numb isolation, adopting homelessness and nonstop gaming. Either way, they shut down and are easily influenced and controlled.

Was an anxious, unmoored citizenry deliberately created to test military VUCA theories? It would not be the first time citizens were used in military experiments—WW1 soldiers and trauma research (Tavistock), the Cold War nuclear threat, and the COVID pandemic as a psychological operation.[6]

Monetizing Anxious Insecure Humans

Social media and online dating quickly learned to appeal to anxious, socially awkward personalities with the lure of superficial attachments and the promise of relationships. The advent of influencers was primarily generated by triggering insecure females to display public narcissism. As females acted out online—males followed them. Narcissism created easy eyes and money for social media influencers, albeit damaging for many women involved.

It is interesting how UAP Psionic promoters flipped the female influencer to males. They learned the social media lesson—offer events (recorded or in person) that trigger the anxious, insecure personality who fears being left out of seeing an orb or UAP.

Lure prospective customers with promises of insider information and thrilling sky events hosted by the military or intelligence. Nothing translates a safe attachment to women and men alike than a man in uniform, a tattooed secretive counterintelligence agent, or a suited government agent with an official title—offering you insider exclusive knowledge and experience. Exclusivity being the dominant offer.

Like Barber says: You can play with this thing. (Or You can play with these people. )

Psionics Language Replacement and Hall of Fame

Before we leave John W. Campbell, the emotionally traumatized father of psionics, let’s review a few honorable mentions in the field. These men broaden the goal of psionics to control human consciousness.

You see, Jake Barber didn’t choose psionics by accident. (The truth may eventually emerge that, as an agent, he was given the psionic assignment—he is literally the “psionic agent.”)

Psionic is a term with deep history and meaning. It’s neither fun nor playful.

Replacing psychic or psychic intelligence and Exoconsciousness with Psionic was deliberate. Psionic fits our age of reconnaissance, surveillance, drones, orbs, and robots. Applying the term psionic assists in building the citizenry’s comfort level. We are being pulled gently and lovingly into a comprehensive, unimaginable, yet complex control grid.

The Psionic Hall of Fame

· Norbert Wiener—the father of cybernetics

· Joseph Bank Rhine—Duke’s Rhine Institute for the study of parapsychology

· L Ron Hubbard—creator of Dianetics and the Church of Scientology

Each of these men offers a deeper understanding of psionics, but let’s focus on Wiener and Cybernetics, which leads to our knowledge of technocracy—the control grid.

According to author and historian Patrick Wood, the goal of Technocracy is a Scientific Dictatorship.[7] He defines technocracy as a technology-based global economic system managed by scientists and engineers for optimum efficiency, including monitoring, metering, and monetizing humans as commodities similar to agricultural products and natural resources. Note how Wood’s emphasis on scientific dictatorship via engineers ties into Barber’s use of psionics—mind engineering as digital intelligence, and digital consciousness.

Norbert’s Cybernetics: The Socially Engineered Transhuman Self

According to Norbert Wiener, information isn’t linear; it forms a closed feedback loop. Wiener realized that the human brain processes information in closed feedback loops and that machines could be used to influence human thinking and behavior when caught in these digital loop systems. Thus, Cybernetics was born, a new form of mind control via computers and advanced with AI.

According to Paul Pangaro, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, cybernetics’ root meaning comes from the Greek word “Kubernan,” which means to steer. He uses the metaphor of a ship sailing in the ocean amid wave movements that continually divert it from its chosen direction. The ship’s captain has a desired port toward which they must steer through these continual diversions of its ocean environment. It’s a system of self-correcting adjustments.

If you realize you are going in the wrong direction while taking a walk, you correct. If you go online to research a subject and watch music videos, you correct. We sense and see that we need to steer a determined course. Thus, cybernetics identifies a continual loop of intelligent life as we act, sense, and correct by steering. Steering is a constant and repetitive action.

Kurt Lewin, founder of social psychology, is credited with the dramatic psychological use of cybernetics research. Lewin transitioned from studying human behavior to work aimed at engineering and changing human behavior. He invented sensitivity training and seeded ideas that would develop into political correctness. He employed the principles of cybernetics to influence human beliefs and actions.

(While propaganda may have misled us that computers were striving to become more human—in reality, Lewin led the psychological movement to make humans more like computers.)

The beginnings of cybernetics involved steering the human into designated behaviors of closed loops—just like computers operated in closed loops (0s and 1s). In other words, cybernetics developed a means of social control through engineering. It created the means for humans to act like computers. And machines to mirror humans. This marks the beginning of Transhumanism.

Transhumanism is a social and philosophical belief or theory that humans will evolve beyond current physical and mental limitations by utilizing science and technology. It entails mind control via synthetic biology, robotics, nanotechnology, and technocracy. Transhumanism is a computerized incursion into individual rights, consciousness, soul, and morality.

Psionics’ cybernetic roots of closed-loop engineered mind control and popularizing humans as computers/machines lead directly into Transhumanism.

Psionics promises that advancing your consciousness will occur if you engage with and attach to an engineered psychic reality.

But….

Back to Barber on Psionics: It’s kind of a fun word…you can play with this thing…it’s digital intelligence or digital consciousness.

Fun until you are the one being steered and controlled by AI or a machine. Or your psychic intelligence is being metered, monitored, and monetized. Thus, you become the psionic agent in a larger AI plan to steer humanity.

At least Barber is accurate when describing Psionics as digital intelligence or consciousness. We must comprehend what Barber means by psionics. Is engineered psionics representative of our human reality or consciousness?

Stay tuned for Part 2: Psionics as Fun and Games

Rebecca Hardcastle Wright, Ph.D., is a Phoenix-based futurist, author, coach, and host of Exoconscious Humans YouTube. She founded the Institute for Exoconsciousness (I-EXO), the first post-disclosure organization to support co-creation between natural human and off-planet intelligences. Rebecca also taught one of the first Ufology courses in the nation at Scottsdale Community College in 2005.

Read more from Rebecca Hardcastle Wright on her Substack


[1] https://a.co/d/4u92Hx9 Exoconscious Humans: Will Free Will Survive in an Increasingly Non Human World? All of my articles are free at https://independent.academia.edu/rebeccawright11

[2] https://www.ubiquityuniversity.org/psionics-summit/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psionics

[4]https://www.reddit.com/r/scifi/comments/9xg89w/john_w_campbell_a_chief_architect_of_science/

[5] https://www.vuca-world.org/where-does-the-term-vuca-come-from/

[6] Exoconscious Humans offers extensive coverage of Tavistock and mind control. David A Hughes Substack on COVID as a psychological operation https://substack.com/home/post/p-144934963?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

[7] Patrick Wook, Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation

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