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James Carpenter’s First Sight Theory is explained in a 2015 book, First Sight: ESP and Parapsychology in Everyday Life. (13) (the link is to Amazon, ISBN-13: 978-1442213913) Since its introduction, I have noted that First Sight Theory is becoming increasingly accepted amongst parapsychologists as the model for psi functioning. Describing the theory only takes a few of the 500+ pages in the book. The rest offers background supporting his conclusions. I have taken the liberty of explaining it in Your Immortal Self in terms of the Implicit Cosmology. The related pages are under the Concepts tab of EthericStudies.org as the Perception Essay. (10) Much of that is repeated here.

In his book, Carpenter explains that people first sense the world psychically. As he puts it: “What if ESP is like subliminal perception? What if psychokinesis is like unconsciously but psychologically meaningful expressive behaviors?” He answers these questions by proposing two propositions based on the following assumptions:

Assumption (paraphrasing)

Everything and everyone, every action in the past, now or in the future, perturbs the subtle energy space that connects all of us. Carpenter argues that research indicates people psychically sense these changes in psi space just as they physically sense changes in physical space.

If that is True, then: (paraphrasing)

Proposition One

People sense their environment psychically as well as with their physical senses.

Proposition Two

People process this information unconsciously, and it is the conclusion of that processing that they are aware of and react to … not what has been psychically or physically sensed or unconsciously considered. A person might psychically sense someone near or far, a person’s actions and apparently their thoughts when they are expressed as intention.

Note 1: The Intention Channel shown in the Functional Areas of Perception and Expression Diagram above represents the mechanism by which the conscious self is able to influence the perceptual process.

Note 2: In this theory, the expression of intention is what produces a change in psi space which can be sensed by others. Simply thinking of something does not appear to produce information which is detectable by others.

Note 3: The result of the unconscious perceptual process is described by Carpenter as formatting “experience and action.” This is the perception functional area in the Functional Areas of Perception and Expression Diagram above. In this context, the person does not directly experience information from the environment. Instead, the person becomes aware of the information after it is formatted in a way that agrees with Worldview.

Note 4: The Implicit Cosmology model predicts that reality consists of life fields and expressions of life fields. As such, objects we would consider inanimate and thoughtforms are expressions. This would mean that, in Proposition One, the environmental information a person senses originates from another life field, in the physical or not.

Therefore

The following 13 corollaries address the perceptual process: (paraphrasing):

1. Personalness Corollary: The unconscious processes that constitute consciousness are personal and deliberate.

2a.  Ubiquity Corollary Part 1: Psi sensing is not limited by time or distance.

2b.  Ubiquity Corollary Part 2: PK contributes to the formation of experience by bringing intention to bear upon the physical processes of the nervous system.

3. Integration Corollary: Other preconscious processes are processed together with psi in a rapid, holistic, efficient, unconscious manner to format experience and action.
4. Anticipation Corollary: The mind seeks to anticipate events.
5. Weighting and Signing Corollary: The importance of sensory and extrasensory information is weighted as being more or less important before it is acted upon.
6. Summation Corollary: The content of conscious experience, emotional states and behavioral choices are constituted in a summative way by unconscious thought.
7. Bidirectionality Corollary: In this summative process, the person may turn toward information (signed positively) to include it in the construction of experience, affect or action, or turn away from information (signed negatively) and exclude it.
8. Intentionality Corollary: Including or excluding information is a function of unconscious intention in regard to an element of potential meaning.
9. Switching Corollary: A person will be fairly consistent in how information is processed, (but) may switch in how information is weighted, the sign attributed to it, and therefore, whether or not it is included in behavior. This switching will occur rapidly or slowly depending on the consistency and purity (focus) of unconscious intention, and this, in turn, is determined by the relative weight of the information over time, situational factors that promote or diminish critical analysis, changes of approach in a task and mood.

Persons who are disposed to switch rapidly include those who:

• tend to approach situations cognitively and analytically
• lack consistent purpose and motivation
• take a detached-observer posture toward most situations
• are chronically ambivalent
• are cognitively disorganized are highly distractible

Persons who tend to switch slowly, conversely, tend to be persons who:

• approach situations globally and holistically
• are strongly and consistently purposive
• engage themselves wholeheartedly in situations
• are not overly self-doubting or uncertain
• are well-integrated cognitively
• are prone to hold focus purposively and not become distracted
• are dissociative (when in certain states).

Note 5: Highly dissociative people often experience altered ways of being that are more complex and enduring than simple moods.

10. Extremity Corollary: The frequency of switching affects the relative density of accumulated additive or subtractive references to the meaning in question. Rapid switching renders potential meaning irrelevant to ongoing experience.
11. Inadvertency and Frustration Corollary: Information gathered via psi is not available to conscious experience but does contribute to the formation of conscious experience by the arousal of anticipatory networks of ideas and feelings (assuming that they are heavily weighted, afforded slow switching and approached with the intention of assimilation). Because of this arousal, their action can be glimpsed consciously only by observing thoughts, feelings and behaviors that are inadvertent; that is, not intentional and not obviously caused by any current experiences. Someone who has become skillful in interpreting them is thought of as relatively psychic.
12. Liminality Corollary: The arousal of anticipatory networks of ideas and feelings resulting from unconscious psi information may be considered liminal ones, in terms of the boundary between conscious and unconscious thought. Habitual interest in liminal experiences facilitates expression of psi processes (openness), leading to unconscious reference to psi material (and other streams of unconscious material). A more positive, open, secure state of mind will tend to facilitate reference to a broader spectrum of contextual, potentially liminal experience.