Among the labs that had already independently replicated SRI’s remote viewing work was the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Laboratory, at Princeton University. Remote viewing experiments started there in 1978. The published experiments involved
334 trials between 1978 and 1987. “The final odds against chance for the PEAR researchers’ overall database were 100 billion to one,” said Radin (1997 p. 105).
Ganzfeld experiments
In recent years, psychical researchers have been conducting telepathic experiments with a technique called the ganzfeld (Radin 1997, pp. 69–72). The ganzfeld technique grew out of dream telepathy experiments carried out by psychiatrist Montague Ullman and psychologist Stanley Krippner at the Maimonides Medical center in Brooklyn, new York, during the years 1966–1972. It appeared that if a waking person
194 Human Devolution: a vedic alternative to Darwin’s theory
sent mental images to a dreaming person, the dreaming person would see those images in dreams. The dreamer would go to sleep in a closed room that was soundproofed and shielded from external electromagnetic waves. EEG monitoring of the sleeper’s brain waves would signal the beginning of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, during which dreaming occurs. during the REM period, a sender isolated at a different location would try to send to the dreamer an image, randomly selected from a group of images, in most cases eight. Experimental protocols kept contacts between the experimenters and the sender to an absolute minimum. The sender would simply hear a buzzer at the onset of the dreamer’s REM sleep, and at this signal would begin sending the target image. At the end of the REM period, the sleeper would be awakened, and an experimenter would ask the sleeper to describe the dominant dream image. In some cases, the dreamer would go back to sleep and the process would be repeated. Afterwards, independent judges would compare the dream descriptions to the entire set of eight images from which the actual target image had been selected. The images would be ranked according to how well they matched the dreamer’s description. The best match was assigned first place, the second best match second place, and so on. If it turned out that the actual target image sent by the sender was one of the four best matches, this was counted as a hit. If we assume there was nothing significant in the dream descriptions, and that the judges had no knowledge of the actual target image, then the matchings of the eight images to a particular dream description would be random. In that case we would expect that the actual target image would show up in the best four matches from the whole set of eight images only fifty percent of the time. Radin (1997, p. 70) noted: “In journal articles published between 1966 and
1973, a total of 450 dream telepathy sessions were reported . . . the overall hit rate is seen to be about 63 percent . . . the odds against chance of getting a 63 percent hit rate in 450 sessions, where chance is 50 percent and the confidence interval is . . . small [plus or minus 4 percent], is seventy-five million to one.”
The dream experiments were based on the premise that psychical effects would operate more strongly on a receiver’s mind when ordinary sensory inputs were lessened. charles Honorton, a parapsychologist involved with the Maimonides dream experiments, sought to develop a method for putting subjects into an artificial state of dreamlike sensory deprivation. Researchers would thus have more control over the experimental process, as it no longer depended on waiting for the subject to fall asleep and enter the REM state. William Braud, a psychologist at the University of Houston, and Adrian Parker, a psychologist at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, joined Honorton in producing what came to be called the ganzfeld method.
In their development of this method, the researchers were inspired by states of altered consciousness reported in ancient wisdom traditions. Radin (1997, p. 73) stated: “Honorton, Braud, and Parker had noticed that descriptions of mystical, meditative, and religious states often included anecdotes about psi experiences, and that the association between reduced mental noise and the spontaneous emergence of psi was noted long ago in the ancient religious texts of India, the vedas. for example, in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the first textbooks on yoga dating back at least thirty-five hundred years, it is taken for granted that prolonged practice with deep meditation leads to a variety of siddhis, or psychic abilities.” Statements to this effect are found throughout the vedic literatures. In the Shrimad Bhagavatam (11.15.1), we read: “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: My dear Uddhava, the mystic perfections of yoga are acquired by a yogi who has conquered his senses, steadied his mind, conquered the breathing process and fixed his mind on Me.” In the vedic conception, God is known as Yogesvara, the master of all mystic powers, and the yogi who stills the mind by focusing it on God within attains siddhis. One of these siddhis is named in the Bhagavat Purana (11.15.6) as dura-shravana-darshanam, the ability to see and hear things at a distance. The entire fifteenth chapter of the Eleventh canto of the Shrimad Bhagavatam deals with the yogic siddhis and how they may be attained. Interestingly enough, the siddhis are actually considered obstacles for those on the path of complete spiritual perfection, because one who gets them tends to get absorbed in using them for selfish goals.
In the ganzfeld technique, the person who is to receive a psychic communication is placed in a soundproof room on a comfortable reclining chair. Halves of translucent white ping-pong balls are taped over the eyes, and a light is directed upon them, producing a uniform featureless visual field. Headphones, through which white noise is played, are placed over the ears. The receiver is also guided through some relaxation exercises to reduce inner tensions. The combined effect is a homogeneous state of reduced sensory input called in German the Ganzfeld, or “total field.” When the receiver is in the ganzfeld state, a sender at another location looks at a randomly selected target image (a photograph or video tape clip) and mentally sends the image to the receiver. The session lasts for 30 minutes, during which the receiver continuously reports aloud all mental impressions, emotions, and thoughts. At the end of the session, four images are shown to the receiver, who is asked to select from among them the target. The receiver does this by judging which of the four images best matches the receiver’s own stream of consciousness report. By chance, the hit rate should be 25 percent, but studies have shown that the receivers are able to correctly select the target image at a rate significantly greater than 25 percent. Psychologist d. J. Bem of cornell University reported in 1996 (pp. 163–164): “More than 60 ganzfeld experiments have now been conducted, and a 1985 meta-analysis of 42 ganzfeld studies conducted in 10 independent laboratories up to that time found that receivers achieved an average hit rate of 35 percent—a result that could have occurred by chance with a probability of less than one in a billion. Supplementary analyses have demonstrated that this overall result could not have resulted from selective reporting of positive results or from flawed procedures that might have permitted the receiver to obtain the target information in normal sensory fashion.”