Skip to content
Gems Press

Gems Press

Books Worth Remembering

  • Books Worth Remembering from Gems Press
  • Classic True Stories
  • Books to Read Free
  • Selected Graphics
  • Shop
  • Toggle search form

The Quest for the Fourth Monkey: A Thinker’s Guide to the Psychic and Spiritual Revolution • by Sylvia Fraser

Posted on July 18, 2022 By Gayla

☀   You can borrow and read The Quest for the Fourth Monkey free below.   ☀

Author Sylvia Fraser* has good reason to know the truth of the Albert Einstein quotation with which she begins this ebook about parapsychology (borrow or buy below): “The Universe is stranger than we imagine.” Her long life has been filled with episodes of “telepathy, disconcerting webs of coincidence, premonitions, dreams of prophecy — subtle yet powerful, enriching and unnerving.”

Personal Quest for the Truth of Parapsychology

In The Quest for the Fourth Monkey, she uses her nonconforming experiences as springboards to explore the nature of the human psyche and of the universe. She investigates the history and ideas of a multitude of experiences that are denied by conventional reality.

On the radio of my natal home sat a statue of three squatting monkeys — See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil. In the original symbol, imported from India, four monkeys sat side by side. The fourth was lopped off when that statue was imported as a trinket by Victorian society. The fourth monkey had its hands over its genitals. By eliminating the fourth monkey, Victorian society did not eliminate sex but only public acknowledgment of it. The missing monkey fell into the unconscious, where it acquired almost unlimited psychic power, visible only through its mysterious and distorting effects. The fourth monkey — whose name was never spoken aloud — was the true ruler of the psychic life of my family and probably of Victorian society.

Everyone has a fourth monkey-on-the-back, as does every family, institution and society. The fourth monkey represents that which we repress out of ignorance or convenience or fear, exaggerating its power to help or to harm.

The author’s attitude is always open-minded — she clearly wants to know the truth, not prove some predetermined conclusion. But the fact that she has experienced things that are said not to exist has, as she said, caused her to emphasize ‘the psychic viewpoint over the materialistic viewpoint because that is the one that has been so grossly underrepresented in Western society for the past three hundred years. However, since both have persisted in the face of relentless persecution, both must be important to the human race.”

The Ideas of Great Thinkers and Scientists Regarding Parapsychology

Fraser’s exploration of the human psyche takes her on an in-depth tour of the history of psychic healing, telepathy, extraordinary dreams, and the self. In her investigation of the concept of the fourth monkey — the unseen, the unacknowledged — as it relates to the universe, she studies prophecy, reincarnation, possession, and spiritualism “within a framework of ancient thought, tribal wisdom and modern physics”. She also devotes chapters to precognition, coincidence, ghosts, and “soulful journeys”.

The book is rich in details and anecdotes, covering a wide range of relevant events and information, and looking into the minds of great thinkers and scientists, from Aristotle to Zukav, all carefully annotated and with an intriguing bibliography.

Even when celebrating its heroes, Western society has often toasted only half a brain. Ironically, materialists forged their clockwork Universe in the name of Sir Isaac Newton, a devout Christian, a practicing occultist and a fervent alchemist…. Having squeezed most of his scientific discoveries into what he described as “the two plague years,” Newton gave himself over to what he really wanted to be: a magician.

Borrow or Buy This Ebook about Parapsychology

You can borrow and read the ebook Quest for the Fourth Monkey free via the nonprofit Internet Archive or buy* it from Amazon.

*As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

books Tags:mind

Post navigation

Previous Post: That’s Celebrity Journalism
Next Post: Robert Lowell on Confessional Poetry

Related Posts

Cartoon Collections books
A Morbid Taste for Bones • by Ellis Peters books
Passport to Magonia: On UFOs, Folklore, and Parallel Worlds • by Jacques Vallée books
Scott Fitzgerald • by Andrew Turnbull books
Off the Map: Tales of Endurance and Exploration • by Fergus Fleming books
Mandala Books You Can Borrow books

A Premium from Gems Press

Sign up for our mailing list (all it takes is your email address), and get a free PDF of the first 70 pages of the Gems Press book, Courtly Quips & Gentry Gems: The Best of Early English Wit*.

Recent Posts

  • Help with Using HTML to Make Kindle Books
  • Selected Graphic Elements
  • Selected Graphics: Decaying Daguerreotypes by Mathew Brady, Circa 1850
  • Selected Graphics: Dante’s Divine Comedy
  • Selected Graphics: Grunty Animals from The Flower of Nature, Circa 1350
  • More Great Books to Read for Free
  • Selected Graphics from The Black Cat, September 1905
  • Selected Graphics from The Black Cat, October 1904
  • About Gems Press
  • The Book of Glimmer: Adventures of Marcus & Stub
  • Courtly Quips & Gentry Gems: The Best of Early English Wit
  • A Collection of Tracts, on the Subjects of Taxing the British Colonies in America, and Regulating Their Trade.: Volume I
  • Gem’s Fascinating Leisure Reader: Volume One
  • Gem’s Fascinating Leisure Reader: Volume Two
  • Health in Your Homes, by J. Fletcher Horne
  • The House I Live In, by J.W. Ford, M.D.
  • How to Work, by Amos R. Wells
  • The Brother Cadfael Medieval Mystery Series, by Ellis Peters
  • List of 63 More Great Books You Can Read for Free
  • Sex Tips for Girls • by Cynthia Heimel
  • Books About Sleep That You Can Borrow
  • French Horn Hell
  • Eppie Lederer Becomes Ann Landers
  • A Love Letter from Dylan Thomas
  • Adventures of Madame Godin in the Country of the Amazons
  • Flower Spirals and the Fibonacci Sequence
  • Edward Snowden Explains What Happens When You Enter a URL in a Browser
  • Like a Fart in a Trance
  • Thomas Edison Explains Electricity in Paris, 1889
  • A Dubious Business Tip from Aristotle Onassis

*As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

Sign up for our mailing list and get a free PDF of the first 70 pages of the Gems Press book, Courtly Quips & Gentry Gems: The Best of Early English Wit.*

About Gems Press

Contact us at contact (at) gemspress.earth

Copyright © 2025 Gems Press.

Powered by PressBook Masonry Blogs