If you want find water, to dig a well, it is widely accepted that the best way to find the spot is to employ an experienced dowser. John Ryder tells a story that illustrates this. John is a geologist and, as it happens, he’s also Irish. His firm were looking for metal ores in Ireland. They were doing sonic scanning where they let off small explosions and listened to the seismic responses and, unfortunately, after the test explosions the water well of the farmer on whose land they where working dried up! The firm brought in their best "state of the art" scientific equipment to find where best to sink a new well. They drilled ten holes without finding water. They spent tens of thousands of pounds (sterling) on the enterprise to no avail. At this point John suggested, "Let me go down to the pub and speak to Paddy. He’ll dowse it out for a fiver."

The dowser told them to dig just ten foot away from one of their dry bore holes. He said they’d hit water at one hundred feet.

They hit water at ninety four foot.

There are some speculations as to how the physics and physiology of dowsing might work in Chapter Two of my treatise Towards a New Natural Philosophy. But its not the physics and physiology that I want to highlight in this essay.

Another anecdote: I was walking through the King’s College Circle campus of the U of T (University of Toronto) and saw on the green a man in uniform with two bent wire divining rods. "What are you doing?" I asked. He was looking for the metal sprinkler head-sprockets buried there. They needed replacing. He had to find where to have his crew dig them out. He was the chief engineer, plumbing) of the U of T works department: a Mr. Charles Braid. He went on to explain that the divining wire technique would find the metal heads but not the plastic piping; that he would go home that night with a map of King’s College Circle and he would pendulum over it to map out the pipes!
Now there’s no physical/physiological signal (as we know it) here in this process. There’s just a "knowing".

So what is divining? Here’s (my version) of Professor P’s explanation.

There are various ways of dowsing, of divining. What they seem to share is that they set up a motor response as a read out. Examples include dowsing with a forked stick or bent wires, using a pendulum, "muscle testing", drawing ones finger across a radionics "plate", placing one’s finger on a "ouija" board…

Motor reflexes are fast. (In the Olympic sprints they have set 0.09 seconds as the threshold for a reflex start. If you leave your starting blocks 0.08 seconds after the gun you are judged to have made a false start before the gun.)

Thinking, cognition, is generally a slower process then motor reflexes. "Thinking" idles over larger parts of a second and over seconds. Think about it. (Accessing the right "file", the right information can be reflex, can be instant: but thinking about, becoming "aware" of it, takes place in time.)

So if we program a motor response to a question, that reflex response is quicker then thought, and we can bye-pass the conscious mind.

Bye-passing the conscious mind we access what? Spirit? God? The unconscious of preconscious.

Divining is no guarantee of truth. It is just a way of getting past the conscious mind to allow the expression of subtle information that we know somewhere behind the conscious mind.

Professor P (and I) made a fairly extensive study of electrodermal testing (EDT) and electric acupuncture-point finders. We came out of these studies with two slightly different opinions. The Professor is confident the he has demonstrated that there is no "scientific" physiological signal involved in EDT: that electrodermal testing is a divining technique.

I think that there may well be a subtle physiological signal that patient and skilled hands may be able to tease out. In clumsy doubting hands (like ours) the "noise", the "artefacts" are much greater then the "signal". (I will discuss this in a separate paper, "EDT signal:noise ratios", shortly.) It is this low signal to noise ratio that allows EDT to be used as a divining device. The technician, unconsciously, holds the probe in the spot a little longer, presses a little harder, angles the probe a little different. (We borrowed a prominent Clinical Ecologist’s Vega machine [not that prominent Clinical Ecologist. Another one]. Examining the probe under a binocular microscope one could see patterns of corrosion which would change the reading with changes in the angle at which the probe was held.)

Eileen Burford-Mason went sceptically into a booth at a Trade Show and was told by an EDT practitioner that 4 of the 5 substances that would put her into hospital with anaphylaxis were safe foods for her! Was this a reverse divining or a random divining?

Divining is not always going to work. In good hands it is the best way to find water. In good hand it is a very useful diagnostic tool. I have heard amazing anecdotes about the acumen of EDT.

When I’m working with cancer patients I will usually encourage them to find out if they can muscle test (or pendulum) to dowse out what treatments their pre-conscious self "thinks" they should use.

Hold the tips of your left index finger and thumb together. With the right index finger and thumb gently, and then a little firmer, try to run the right finger/thumb through the left, pushing them apart.

Now relax and think, "Show me a "no"." Then test the fingers.

Now relax and think, "Show me a "yes"." Test the finger.

Do they feel different, the "yes" and "no"? If they do, you can use this to dowse by "muscle testing". Start by asking relatively none important questions. If you develop a confidence in this method of accessing your "intuition", your preconscious mind, you can proceed to use the method for more important questions…