Continued From Page G-2 legitimate discipline, and a number of other factors have added to its credibility. ● The same ecological anxiety, the same disaffection with materialistic world views that thrust Edgar Mitchell into psychic research occultized millions of Americans throughout the 1960s — in a sense, something happened to all of us on the way back from the moon. ● The dematerialization of contemporary physics, a science filled with such bizarre components as advance potential (waves of electrons perceived before they are generated), tunneling effects (electrons penetrating barriers diagnosed as impenetrable by laws of probability) and tachyons (particles traveling faster than light, which would imply the possibility of a backward flow of time), has meant that this branch of science no longer offers a secure rationale for the denial of any paranormal event. ● The focus of contemporary anthropology has had an equally important impact. It has emphasized cultural relativity, bearing the message that our Western concepts of space, time, causality, and mind-body relationships are cultural constructs of the most diaphanous translucency. ● Finally, the vast new interest in altered states of consciousness — bred on the drug experience and the Orientalization of the West — and a new generation of young scientists whose awareness of consciousness-altering ha[ve] created a friendly environment for psychic research. "Altered states" is a concept absolutely crucial to…