The Room Where PSI (The Paranormal) Can Be Experienced By Everyone
You are interested in the paranormal—but nothing has ever convinced you. This is aimed at a particular type of individual. You’ve heard things concerning consciousness. You’ve paid attention to Tom Campbell’s views on reality being something like a virtual world operated by a greater consciousness system. That notion is more plausible to you than the idea that everything is just atoms and is also more convincing than a great deal of New Age nonsense. You are interested in psi phenomena—things such as mind reading and clairvoyance: picking up someone else’s thoughts, seeing or sensing something that is not in front of you, knowing a fact that you have never been told. You want it to be genuine. Yet, in your own life nothing has ever occurred that you couldn’t account for using your intellect. A coincidence was merely a coincidence. A dream had a clear origin. A feeling was nothing but intuition doing its normal job. It is a honest position to take. The problem is that the mind is very good at convincing itself that it is right. Even if it accepts a major theory, it can still wait forever for proof that never actually comes. This essay isn’t aiming to get you to believe anything. Instead, it’s pointing the way to a room you’re actually able to enter. There exists a form of coaching in which you have no need to believe anything at the beginning. You needn’t even take part—you can just sit by the side and observe. Strangers take the place of people they have never met before. When the session is well conducted, there are things that are very difficult to account for by saying they were acting, due to luck, or the result of clever guessing. It is known as systemic coaching, though a great many people still refer to it as family constellations. The latter term is helpful because it reflects how the approach began; it is nevertheless a little misleading because the work is not solely concerned with families, and it is not merely therapeutic. It can apply to friends, work, money, houses, and patterns that keep recurring no matter how much you think about them .What systemic coaching is, and how it helps The fundamental idea is simple: a problem in your life doesn’t always originate with you; it may be part of a larger system to which you belong. That system could be your family, or it could be a friendship, a marriage, a work team, a business, or even your relationship with money or with a house. If anything within that system is wrong—for example, if someone has been left ‘out in the cold’, if someone who should be mourned hasn’t been, or if someone is carrying a burden that doesn’t actually belong to them—then the difficulty can appear in the next person in the line. Talking is helpful, coaching is helpful and therapy is helpful, but certain patterns don’t change merely because you understand them; you may see the cycle and yet still end up going back into it. A person does not have to be present if the client wishes to heal a particular relationship with an individual—for example, a child, a parent, a partner, or a friend—because the work is carried out through stand-ins. During a group session, people typically sit in a circle. The individual with the issue to deal with—let’s call them the client—first has a conversation with the coach about it. This talk is often held privately, not in front of the rest of the group. It is not a detailed account of their entire life. Just a few key points are given: who is involved, who died young, who was left out, who came first. Then, while again in the circle, the client asks, under the coach’s guidance, each person in the group one at a time whether they are willing to stand in for a part of the system, without telling them which part — for instance, the mother, the father, a first love, a child who died, a boss, ‘the money’, ‘the house’, ‘the future’. No one offers themselves voluntarily. Permission must be obtained first. If someone says yes, the client places those people in the room using their intuition, i.e. how it feels.—some closer in, some further away, some facing each other, and some turned aside. After that the client sits down and watches. The next part is the one that shouldn’t function. The stand-ins, having been told very little, begin to experience various sensations. They feel heat, have a heavy chest, feel the urge to look at the floor, or maybe experience a sadness that does not belong to them. They also feel a pull towards someone they have never spoken to before. Coaches call this the knowing field. Whatever this field is, it often seems to know the family—or the friendship, or the business—better than the account the client gave the coach. Next the stand-ins begin to move. They are not performing from a script, but instead start to act out the relationship just as it really is. A husband moves away from his wife. A woman looks at her husband as though he were a stranger or a child or someone she can’t reach. A son turns his back on his father. Two people are unable to look at each other. One person is drawn towards a vacant section of floor. This living scene is the current situation—the hidden pattern the client has been living with. The role of the coach is to alter that existing situation. They might bring in someone who is currently missing. They could ask a person to turn around, to come closer, or to step back into their own generation. Most importantly, they employ brief healing phrases, either spoken by the stand-ins or by the client, which get things back into the right place. I am the child. You are the parent. I leave with you what is yours. I take only what is mine. You belong. I see you. I honour your fate, and I do not have to live it. It was not my job to save you. I take my life now. As soon as a phrase is said, the scene in the room changes. The husband stops leaving. The woman is now able to look at her husband as a partner. Breathing returns. The coach then allows this new image to settle, thanks the stand-ins, and concludes the session. The rest of the changes take place later, in everyday life. How is that going to help? It can’t magically improve a person’s life in just one afternoon and it doesn’t take the place of a doctor. What it usually does is alter the way the client perceives their own situation. If, for example, you’ve been in the wrong position within your family system—too close to a parent, faithful to someone who was never given a proper place in the family, or carrying a grief that began before you were born—then a new way of seeing things can enable you to live your own life. And the benefit is not limited to the person sitting in the chair. I have seen cases where parents hadn’t spoken to their children for two years and, that same evening after the session, the child phoned them. The son or daughter who wasn’t even in the room picked up the phone and called their mother or father. People also mention changes in their friendships, at work, in their financial situation, and sometimes in their physical condition. Not every time, but often enough for people to keep coming back. It isn’t merely applied to families; systemic coaching is also used in cases involving friends who are stuck, with teams, when making decisions about property, when dealing with money that fails to come in, and when there’s a sense that something invisible is blocking the way. “Family constellations” is simply the name that most people have come across. Who discovered it, where, and how The technique that is known to us now originated with Bert Hellinger, a German who was born in 1925 and died in 2019. Before becoming a therapist he had been a priest. The period in which he developed his work was in South Africa. For sixteen years he lived in the Zulu community as a missionary, teacher and eventually as head of a big school. There he saw a culture in which the ancestors played a part in everyday life and in which the dead remained part of it; excluding someone was in fact a true injury, not merely a personal sensation. He eventually left the priesthood, returned to Europe, and received training in a number of different forms of therapy. In one of these therapies group members were already being asked to stand in for their relatives. Hellinger noticed something additional here: the stand-ins did not merely act out the client’s story, they also reported facts which had not been told to them and emotions that belonged to people they had never met. In Germany during the 1980s and 1990s he continued to do this publicly and gave a name to what he observed. He called them the Orders of Love. People who are members have the right to be members. Those who arrive first should be first. There must be a balance in giving and receiving. If the Orders are violated, the system attempts to correct the situation in bizarre ways—by a child looking after a parent, by a grandchild keeping a secret, by a life which seems stuck for a reason that is not purely personal. That is the aspect which is important here. Not the rest of his biography. The room. “They must be actors” If you have never been in such a room, your first impression will be that this is all arranged. The people standing in for the others are actors. Or they have been told about it. Or they are assessing the situation and making guesses. If you go as a stranger that idea doesn’t last very long. The people who take their place are generally others who have booked on the same day; they are given a role and a spot in the room, not a full life story. In many cases they are not assigned a name at the beginning. The conversation between the client and the coach is brief and doesn’t include enough detail to build a fake family from clues. What tends to emerge is often something the client had not stated — at times even something the client was unaware of. As reported by journalist Hannah Ewens in The Independent regarding a session in London with the Dutch coach Els van Steijn, the stand-ins identified parts of her family that she had not disclosed, such as her grandmother’s first husband, a man who had been mentioned only briefly in the family. Van Steijn could not have known this. The stand-ins had only been given a few sentences. Ewens then asked her relatives and found that the account was accurate. She also did the useful thing by taking someone else’s place. She had worried she might make something up and ruin that person’s session. But when she was in one of the roles, her stomach grew swollen, and she realised that the person she was standing in for was pregnant, even though no one had told her. What no other article can do is to say that my wife is a highly experienced coach in this field. I’ve witnessed the way the rooms are set up and the way the sessions are conducted. The individuals in the circle are not actors; they are not given any prior instructions. If a competent coach did that, they would ruin their own work. The key thing is that the stand-ins are not given a script. When the work is carried out cleanly, ordinary people temporarily become accurate about a system that does not belong to them, and then they leave the role and return to being ordinary. Acting doesn’t switch off in that way. It isn’t a proof one would accept in a journal; science has not adopted the method. Even the coaches admit that they don’t completely understand how it works. Van Steijn, having carried out more than ten thousand sessions, states that they do see it having an effect. That is the appropriate attitude for someone who is open-minded but not yet convinced. Don’t believe the advertisement and don’t dismiss a room just because you’ve never sat in it. A few things people have seen The stories in this area are mostly individual cases rather than the result of laboratory studies; treat them as pictures not as evidence. A person will never be noticed at work regardless of the amount of coaching they receive; this situation has existed over three generations. Once he is once again placed among the men in his workgroup and with his father, the pattern begins to break down. Several months later he is recognised and promotion then no longer seems dangerous. The woman continually chooses partners who are unable to stay on. The case involves a grandmother who died during the delivery of her eighth child. The grandfather got married again very quickly. The death was never assigned a proper place. The woman is still standing beside the dead grandmother. Only when that is recognised and respected does she become free to select a different type of man. A woman in her thirties is continually drawn to partners who have addictions, just as her mother had been. People who know very little begin to glare, look downwards and avoid eye contact. The anger of the mother stems from a father who was broken down by his experience in the Vietnam War, and behind that father was a mother who had died when he was a child. Each life is restored to its individual by means of simple sentences. Several months later the daughter finds it easier to get on with both her parents and is planning to get married to someone who is not a replica of the old wound. During Ewens’s own session it was pointed out that she was positioned too high in her family tree having taken on an adult amount of weight by the age of ten as a result of switching off; when this was corrected the heaviness decreased sufficiently for her to be able to move her legs. She then went home and sorted out a wardrobe which she had previously been unable to face. A friend noticed that she was making eye contact once There are also other accounts: one instance of a wart which had been present for twenty years disappeared a few months after a session during which an aunt was affected; an eating habit that ceased; a bad back which was inherited from the father and improved when something about the grandfather’s life was considered; a low mood that disappeared when the mother’s parents who had not been properly grieved were brought into view. These are the follow-up remarks given by the coaches, not the results of hospital-based trials. The reason they are interesting to someone interested in psi is the same in each case. The useful information is usually not in the client’s mind; it is transmitted through people who do not have it themselves. And on some occasions the change is noticed by people who were not even in the room.heThe fact shown in that phone call is that the benefits of the work extend beyond the individual who is sitting in the chair; a partner at home becomes less stressed and a child who was not present sleeps more soundly. Each of these effects can be dismissed on its own, but it is much harder to explain them all unless the information and intention are not confined to a single person’s mind.e skull. You can watch What is most important in this situation is if you have never had an experience that you couldn’t explain, in which case you need not enter. Before anybody stands up, a good workshop will mention that there is no need for anyone to represent another person or to bring up a personal matter. The participants are asked to speak first, and a simple ‘no’ is a complete answer. Many coaches tend to have first-time visitors spend the day on the edge by having them watch two or three sessions, get a feel for the atmosphere, and make their decision later on. If you do stand in for someone else, you can always leave the role as soon as you have been asked to. You are not signing up to have psychic abilities; instead, you are lending your body to a question for a period of twenty minutes. People who merely watch are no more outside the experience than that; they frequently feel heat, tears, a sudden insight concerning their own lives, or a kind of tiredness which is not boredom. That is yet another reason to go at least once if you are curious. You can find out for yourself in your body whether or not “nothing is happening” is true; if nothing happens then you have wasted a Saturday, but if something does happen you will have what a book cannot provide — a moment which is your own. One final practical point: this work can be carried out poorly. Choose a quiet and sensible coach rather than one who is merely performing. A quality session won’t pursue trauma for the sake of having an effect and won’t send people away with a story that they can’t cope with. A Netflix series that shows what a session can feel like If you want to get an early glimpse of what takes place before you take part in a circle, then you should watch the Netflix programme Another Self. In Spanish-speaking countries it is known as Mi otra yo. The original Turkish title is Zeytin Ağacı, meaning Olive Tree. Three friends from Istanbul — Ada, Sevgi and Leyla — travel to the coastal town of Ayvalık and there meet people who work with constellations in the circle led by a man named Zaman. The first few seasons depict the shock experienced, particularly Ada’s, since she is a surgeon and therefore not easily convinced: strangers turn up, the past enters the room, and a life which had seemed to be a personal failure is found to be connected with people who had never been given a place. The third series, released on Netflix in June 2026, provides the most realistic insight into what a session might be like from the point of view of someone’s everyday life. Ada returns having completed her training as a therapist. Instead of presenting constellations as something unusual that befalls the three friends, the show now treats them as a skill. There is a scene showing a group session involving a father who has been drinking since the loss of his son. The programme also includes work on adoption and the concept of belonging. Actual coaches gave advice for that series. It remains a drama, not a instructional film. The lighting is more attractive than that found in a rented hall. Yet beneath all that lies the point the article is making: a person who had thought themselves to be only themselves discovers that they are also part of a pattern – and that this pattern can be observed. How My Big TOE makes sense of this Then what is taking place if it is neither action nor chance? Tom Campbell’s book My Big TOE begins in a sensible manner by saying that consciousness comes before anything else. It is not produced by the brain but is instead an information system; the physical world then resembles a kind of virtual reality operating within that system — a sort of training ground designed to develop love and move away from fear. We act as players in this world and are in fact parts of a greater consciousness, all of us being connected. The past which actually occurred and all the possibilities for the future are stored as information, and psi, in this view, is not a violation of the laws of physics since it simply involves a person accessing information that has always existed, even if it wasn’t picked up through the five senses. If you see it that way, a constellation isn’t magic present in the room; it’s a number of people directing their attention towards the same information. A family, a friendship, or a business — all of these are already patterns of choices, remnants, and unfinished matters. When someone takes on the role of ‘grandmother’, they are not in fact becoming a grandmother; instead, they are taking on the information that belongs to that position within the pattern. They can do this because, according to Campbell’s model, we are all composed of the same consciousness and are connected as a network. The data doesn’t need to travel across the town; space is included in the virtual world and the information was never confined to one person’s body. Others in this field give the same explanation by referring to Rupert Sheldrake’s concept of a morphic field — a type of memory field associated with a family. Campbell does not believe that a morphic field is involved. In his view there is no need for an additional field since consciousness itself is the information system. The so-called knowing field is merely the system being deliberately put to use in a room with bodies rather than with words. The fact that Campbell scores two points shows that his approach is no mere party trick. Firstly, he distinguishes between thinking and being; a clever insight disappears, while a new felt image — I am the child, that grief is yours, I take my own life — represents a change at the level of being. He maintains that it is at this level that the course of events actually changes. Secondly, the aim of this entire virtual world is to reduce fear and increase love. Hellinger’s simple rules — everyone belongs, those who came first come first, and give and take remain in balance — give a practical expression of that idea. A system uses less energy when it ceases to exclude people. Why this is a good first test Individuals who are interested in psi usually look forward to a private occasion such as a clear out-of-body experience, a dream fulfilling a prediction, or a clock coming to a halt. Such things might be genuine, but they are also simple for the mind to dismiss. They occurred in the case of another person. They took place at three in the morning. They only happened once. A constellation workshop is a more reliable test since it’s a normal sort of thing—people sitting in a circle, coffee being served, and attendees who look just like your neighbours. Any unusual thing that’s happening must appear during the day in front of other people. You’re able to observe the same person being ordinary, then strangely accurate, then ordinary once again. You can tell whether the responses are vague in a way that applies to anyone or specific enough to verify them—for example, a first husband, a pregnancy, a war wound, or a child nobody had mentioned. Afterward, you can go home and ask. One good reason for favouring this study is that a great deal of psi discussion centres on special individuals. At its best, this work takes the opposite view: a quiet person wearing jeans can take the place of a dead child and be more accurate than someone who arrived looking the part. If Campbell is correct and consciousness is shared, then that is exactly what you would expect. It is true that a stranger could take on the role. The strange point is that we were told that they could not. Proceed exactly as you are; show interest but don’t feel obliged to commit. You are free to decline if you like. If you wish, you can sit on the edge and observe what the bodies do when they haven’t been given a script. If the room is quiet and there is no movement within you, then you have your answer for the moment. But if a stranger looks at a blank patch of floor and begins to cry for someone who died before they were born, you’ll face a more complicated issue. You’ll have witnessed, in a rented room, a miniature example of the idea that this world is not merely what it appears to be from inside a body; that the system has a memory and that consciousness is able to access it. You needn’t refer to this as psi if the term seems too vast; you simply have to decide whether or not you want to go back. Written and Produced by Stephen Griffin aided by Grok and Notebook If this post resonates with you, consider supporting the work with a paid subscription. Every dollar goes directly to Tom Campbell funded projects and keep most of this content free and accessible for everyone. Your support makes a real difference — thank you so much. If you want to look further Take Bert Hellinger and his books on family systems, in particular Love’s Hidden Symmetry, as a starting point rather than as the final word. Tom Campbell, his book My Big TOE, and his discussions on consciousness, simulation, and psi as a means of accessing information. Hannah Ewens, The Independent, 9 May 2025, writes: “Got a life problem that nothing seems to fix? The answer might be family constellations.” Mark Wolynn, It Didn’t Start with You. Another Self / Mi otra yo / Zeytin Ağacı is available on Netflix, particularly in season 3 (June 2026). This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit theplayersguide.substack.com/subscribe
