Supporting Scientific Research

Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a Spirit is manifest in the Laws of the Universe.

~ Albert Einstein

The term ESP or extrasensory perception simply refers to the method by which we sense information outside the normal 5 senses of touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell. ESP was once dismissed as superstition but its existence has been repeatedly verified by numerous scientist and academics in leading universities around the world. Today it is generally accepted that ESP does exist and everyone has it to some extent but science has yet to identify how or why it works. However we do not need to know how it works to use it – we only need to know that it does work.

A number of theories have been put forth on how ESP works including the Holographic Theory of the Mind by University of London physicist David Bohm, one o f the world’s most respected quantum physicist; and Karl Pribram, a neurophysiologist at Stanford University and author of the classic neuropsychological textbook Languages of the Brain. (I will not detail the theory here but I do recommend the book The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot which will convince even the most ardent skeptic).

Dr J. B. Rhine of Duke University conducted the first scientific experiments on ESP in the 1930s and 1940s. His experiments on telepathy, clairvoyance and telekinesis were sponsored by British psychologist William McDougall, a fellow of the Royal Society and at that time department head of psychology at Duke University. Rhine’s work on psychokinesis showed that certain people could clearly influence the chance of a specific combination occurring when a pair of dice was repeatedly thrown by a machine. His experiments on telepathy and clairvoyance showed that distance, space and time played no significant effect on the success of the phenomenon. His experiments sent shockwaves across academia as other scientist raced to confirm them.

In 1944, Dr. H. S. Burr of Yale University, after 12 years of research, concluded that a self-made aura surrounds all living things and all life is connected electrically. This is partially true but there is more to the force field phenomenon than can be explained by electricity.

Dr. G. R. Schmeidler of the Harvard Psychological Clinic showed that telepathy was not only real but was strongly affected by a person’s belief in his or her own telepathic abilities. He also performed experiments that proved that telepathic power exists in everyone.

In the 1960s Dr. Montague Ullman, founder of the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York and professor emeritus of clinical psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York conducted a series a experiments that provided strong empirical evidence that everyone possess psychic ability. Volunteers who claimed to possess no psychic ability were asked to sleep in a room in the lab while a person in another room concentrated on a randomly selected painting and tried to get the volunteer to dream of the image it contained. Sometimes the results were inconclusive. But other times the volunteers had dreams that were clearly and strikingly influenced by the paintings.

Dr. O. Carl Simonton, a radiation oncologist and medical director of the Cancer Counseling and Research Center in Dallas, Texas conducted a study on relaxation and mental-imagery techniques on 159 patients with cancers considered medically incurable. Patients were taught to visualize their cancer cells bombarded by millions of tiny bullets of energy while white blood cells swarmed over the cancer cells and carried them to the liver and kidneys to be flushed out of the body. The survival time of these patients were typically 12 months. Four years later 63 of the patients were still alive. Of these, 14 showed no evidence of the disease, the cancers were regressing in 12 and in 17 the disease was stable. The average survival rate of the group as a whole was 24.4 months, over twice as long as the traditional norm.

Dr. Harold Puthoff of Stanford University’s Electrical Engineering Department and co-author of the book Fundamentals of Quantum Electronics conducted a series of experiments at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) on famed psychic Ingo Swann. Swann was able to successfully influence the behavior of an experimental magnetometer, a device designed to measure very small magnetic field changes. The success of the experiments attracted US Government interest and they were later funded by the CIA.

Dean Radin, Director of the Consciousness Research Lab at the University of Arizona conducted a remarkable series of experiment on pre-cognition. Subjects were connected to biofeedback devices that measured heartbeat and skin conductance and seated in front of a computer monitor that showed random pictures designed to elicit a strong emotional response. The study had some fascinating findings, for instance before seeing a calm picture the subjects heart rate would increase. It was as if the subject knew the picture was going to be relaxing. In comparison, before the person saw a disturbing picture the participants pre-acted to their own future emotional state. Radin found that the subject’s electro-dermal activity was much higher before the emotional picture than before the calm pictures although the volunteers were not consciously aware of what kind of picture would be shown next.

In the 1980s and 1990s Dr. Robert G. Jahn and Dr. Brenda J. Dunne of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory showed that some humans possess telekinetic power and various forms of telepathy and that these are both distance and time independent. Dr. Jahn is Professor of Aerospace science and dean emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University (1994). Dr. Dunne is the manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory (P.E.A.R). Their book Margins of Reality – The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World will make even the strongest skeptic think twice.

More recently. Professor Robert Morris and Dr. Caroline Watt of the Koestler Institute at Edinburgh University conducted experiments where over 100 subjects in a locked room were asked to pick out which of 4 pictures were “beamed” to them by a subject in another room. Success rates were 50%, twice the 25% that pure statistical results should have produced. The odds of this occurring are approximately 1 in 14 million. These results are 35,000 times more significant than the level of evidence governments demand from pharmaceutical companies before a new drug is let out on the market.

Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington, the English mathematician and astrophysicist is quoted as saying “I believe that the mind has the power to affect groups of atoms and even tamper with the odds of atomic behavior, and that even the course of the world is not predetermined by physical law, but may be altered by the uncaused volition of human beings.”

Other proponents of telepathy include Thomas A. Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb, Charles P. Steinmetz, electrical engineer, Nikola Tesla, inventor of the air core electrical transformer, Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone, and Guglielmo Marconi, inventor of wireless telegraphy.

There are no unnatural or supernatural phenomena, only very large gaps in our knowledge of what is natural? We should strive to fill those gaps of ignorance.

~ Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 Astronaut, Founder, Institute of Noetic Sciences.

Sources:

  • “Scientific Evidence Man has a Soul”, Dr. J. B. Rhine. American Weekly Magazine, August 25, 1946.
  • “Experiments in Remote Human/Machine Interaction,” Brenda J. Dunne and Robert G. Jahn, Journal of Scientific Exploration 6, no. 4 (1992): 311-32.
  • “Operator-Related Anomalies in a Random Mechanical Cascade,” Brenda J. Dunne, Robert D. Nelson and Robert G. Jahn, Journal of Scientific Exploration 2 (1988): 155-79
  • “Engineering Anomalies Research,” Robert G. Jahn, Brenda J. Dunne and Roger D. Nelson, Journal of Scientific Exploration 1, no. 1 (1987): 21-50
  • “Law of Success”, Napolean Hill (Evanston, IL: Success Unlimited, 1992)
  • “Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature”, Niels Bohr (Cambridge: The University Press, 1961).
  • “The Conscious Universe”, Radin, Dean, Ph.D. New York: Harper Edge, 1997.
  • “Mind-Reach”, Targ, Russell and Puthoff, Harold. USA: Delacorte Press, 1977.