Remote Mental Interaction
(Pre-Publication)
Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, Vol. 3 No. 6 (2012)
REMOTE MENTAL INTERACTIONS
A Review of Theoretical Modeling of Consciousness & Psychophysical Anomalies
All mental interaction is remote; all mental interaction is nonlocal.
By Iona Miller, 2012
[email protected]
A Review of Theoretical Modeling of Consciousness & Psychophysical Anomalies
All mental interaction is remote; all mental interaction is nonlocal.
By Iona Miller, 2012
[email protected]
ABSTRACT:
Part I of this article includes an Overview of the History of Psi Research; Part II contains selected abstracts and discussions retrieved from the Emergent Mind Project, led by Lian Sidorov. Beginning in the Cold War Era, and even prior by The Society for Psychichal Research, there is a long colorful history of classified and unclassified psi explorations and research. Many psychoenergetic theories have been proposed. Research institutions of previous decades include the Rhine Institute, Monroe Institute, SRI, IONS, PEARS, MRU, and more. The Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI) began as an attempt to bridge widely scattered evidence and ideas on the frontline of mind-matter research (energetics, remote mind-mind and mind-matter interactions). It was a challenging and exhilarating journey, sustained by multidisciplinary readership interest in the subject.
As many researchers have discovered, the JNLRMI team soon found themselves deep in the quicksand of theoretical speculation, clinging to sparse evidence and ultimately sketching a map of reality that was not only replete with terrae incognitae but also, like the cartographies of old, with the mythical beasts of philosophical prejudices. The journal’s editorial board, after interviewing many of the leaders in anomalous cognition for input, took a step backward, humbly admitting there was simply not enough information to draw that meaningful map. But such humility, under ideal circumstances, hides a great resolve: a stubborn, patient, self-critical enterprise of direct experimentation which slowly uncovers new stepping stones in our theoretical path.
In 2012, JNLRMI’s personnel revived their efforts in conjunction with International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL): The Journal of Nonlocality has been set up to address an experimental and conceptual impasse in understanding the nature of nonlocality and observer effects in quantum mechanics. In conjunction with ICRL’s Mind-Matter Mapping Project, we hope to create a research venue where cutting-edge experimental tools in physics, biology and parapsychology can be combined to design more revealing protocols; to bypass the experimental difficulties identified by Wheeler and Bell; and to cast new light on the role that these effects play in genetic regulatory systems, placebo effects, anomalous perception and retrocausality. (Sidorov, 2012)
Keywords: psi, parapsychology, biophysics, energetics,Schumann Resonance, mind-body, geomagnetism, ELF, ESP, precognition, hypnosis, paraphysics, remote viewing, anomalous cognition, worldview
Part I of this article includes an Overview of the History of Psi Research; Part II contains selected abstracts and discussions retrieved from the Emergent Mind Project, led by Lian Sidorov. Beginning in the Cold War Era, and even prior by The Society for Psychichal Research, there is a long colorful history of classified and unclassified psi explorations and research. Many psychoenergetic theories have been proposed. Research institutions of previous decades include the Rhine Institute, Monroe Institute, SRI, IONS, PEARS, MRU, and more. The Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions (JNLRMI) began as an attempt to bridge widely scattered evidence and ideas on the frontline of mind-matter research (energetics, remote mind-mind and mind-matter interactions). It was a challenging and exhilarating journey, sustained by multidisciplinary readership interest in the subject.
As many researchers have discovered, the JNLRMI team soon found themselves deep in the quicksand of theoretical speculation, clinging to sparse evidence and ultimately sketching a map of reality that was not only replete with terrae incognitae but also, like the cartographies of old, with the mythical beasts of philosophical prejudices. The journal’s editorial board, after interviewing many of the leaders in anomalous cognition for input, took a step backward, humbly admitting there was simply not enough information to draw that meaningful map. But such humility, under ideal circumstances, hides a great resolve: a stubborn, patient, self-critical enterprise of direct experimentation which slowly uncovers new stepping stones in our theoretical path.
In 2012, JNLRMI’s personnel revived their efforts in conjunction with International Consciousness Research Laboratories (ICRL): The Journal of Nonlocality has been set up to address an experimental and conceptual impasse in understanding the nature of nonlocality and observer effects in quantum mechanics. In conjunction with ICRL’s Mind-Matter Mapping Project, we hope to create a research venue where cutting-edge experimental tools in physics, biology and parapsychology can be combined to design more revealing protocols; to bypass the experimental difficulties identified by Wheeler and Bell; and to cast new light on the role that these effects play in genetic regulatory systems, placebo effects, anomalous perception and retrocausality. (Sidorov, 2012)
Keywords: psi, parapsychology, biophysics, energetics,Schumann Resonance, mind-body, geomagnetism, ELF, ESP, precognition, hypnosis, paraphysics, remote viewing, anomalous cognition, worldview
[P]si is always present in space and time, waiting to be accessed by crisis, emotion, or by optimal laboratory stimulus parameters. Geomagnetic activity may affect the detection capacity of the brain for this information, especially the neural pathways that facilitate the consolidation and conscious access to this information. Without this geomagnetic activity, awareness of the psi stimulus might not be as likely and the brain's "latent reserve capacities" would not be utilized. (Krippner)
PART I: INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW OF PSI RESEARCH HISTORY
Introduction
Today, remarkable stories emerge almost daily with such unlikely headlines as, “DNA Found to Have ‘Impossible’ Telepathic Properties”. Even in light of credible scientific evidence, such mind-boggling conclusions beg the question, “how can this be?” The short answer is we have no idea, at least not yet, even though “DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to."
If “intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance” (NOTE 1: Sato) does this suggest we might be able to do similarly at the organismic, rather then molecular level?
Psi research studies anomalous processes of information retrieval or energy transfer that cannot be explained by conventional means.
In 1973, the international expose Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, by Shiela Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder became a best-seller. Former Naval Intelligence Officer, Dr. Carl Schleicher actively wondered why the U.S. had no comparable program in psychotronics, where esoterics meets science. He resolved to create one, recruited authors Ostrander & Schroeder to turn over their untranslated data, and began collecting researchers and creating experimental protocols. Thus, in 1973, Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU) in Washington D.C. was born as a private company, seeking government and corporate contracts. (Miller & Miller, 2003)
The irony of this Cold War era, is that the Soviets thought we were using psychic spies, so they began their program, which in turn sparked actual US interest, based on their claims of success. Soviet interest in psi was piqued in February 1960 by a story in the French magazine Science et Vie (Science and Life) entitled “The Secrets of the Nautilus.” It claimed that the US government secretly used telepaths to communicate with the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, while it was under the Arctic ice pack. This telepathy project allegedly involved President Eisenhower, the Navy, the Air Force, Westinghouse, General Electric, Bell Laboratories and the Rand Corporation.
Communicating with submarines is difficult as radio waves do not penetrate to the depths of the ocean. Extremely low frequency (ELF) waves are used to signal the submarine to come to the surface to receive a message. These super-long waves penetrate almost anything including water but carry little information. If telepathy could work it would be a perfect method of communicating with submerged submarines. The story was probably a propaganda hoax but the Soviets were spurred into action.
The Cold War among psychic spies is recounted in James Mills’ book THE POWER (1990), which is loosely based on MRU’s principle spyentist, “KT,” a longterm advisor to Dr. Schleicher and Joint Chiefs of Staff. The fictional Jack Hammond is a scientific intelligence officer for the "Monday Afternoon Group', America’s top secret paranormal research unit, employing occult forces for intelligence and military objectives. As Mills notes, “The most terrifying weapon lies in the darkest regions beyond the human mind”.
Blue Sky research became of interest to both the government and private sector. It spread from R&D thinktanks into the open-minded counterculture then to the mainstream. Along the way, these revolutionary ideas became the obsession of "spooks", "spyentists", "spycologists", psychedelic physicists (Esalen Physics Group) and a whole host of fringe characters and psychics. Psychotronic researchers broke through the Iron Curtain and brought their discoveries to the West. Many world-class scientists and engineers passed through the threshold of MRU.
In the 1970′s, clandestine programs were conducted at Standford Research Institute (SRI) in Remote Viewing. In the 1980s, the Army applied it militarily in the New Earth Battalion, (“Be all that you can be”), subject a book and of the 2009 movie, “Men Who Stare At Goats.” Likewise Special Forces, such as Navy Seals, began using paranormal ESP training for rapid intuitive decision-making in the field, and more. One of Dr. Schleicher’s earliest experiments involved dowsing — not for ‘witching’ a water well, but to find and trace Vietcong tunnels and tunnel rats. Results warranted contuation of the program in the field.
Complementary medicine, including energetics and transpersonal therapies, was another area of research developing in this same era. Biophotonics led to the detection of biophysical communications systems and healing applications. Some of Japanese scientist Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama’s (Ph.D. degrees in Philosophy and Physiological Psychology) original mind-body research took place in conjunction with MRU and its personnel as well as his California Institute for Human Science, and separately with the first Motoyama-Bentov Fellow, Dr. Marshall F. Gilula, M.D. Research was designed to detect the potential influence of the mind of one person over the body of another, both locally and remotely. This is one scientific root of today's popularized remote healing techniques, including Reiki.
Promising Potential
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who did his own telepathy experiment from the dark side of the Moon, founded the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) in 1973. It explores different ways of “knowing”, including spiritual practices and exploration of transformative relationships. IONS prominent role in Dan Brown’s 2009 best-seller, THE LOST SYMBOL, fixed the meaning of "noetic science" in the public imagination. The Esalan Physics Consciousness Group was founded at the same time by fellow scientists Jack Sarfatti, Nick Herbert, Saul-Paul Sirag, and Fred Alan Wolf, to investigate “The Fringe” by studying frontier science subjects such as time travel, consciousness after death, and ESP.
MRU alumni, Uri Geller with his ESP and spoonbending parlour tricks captured the public imagination and led to crazes in firewalking and other demonstrations of extraordinary human potential. Few in the public understood the spectrum of psychotronics or noetics, but the old mechanical model of the mindbody relationship died and a new model based in psi, mind-body healing and subtle energies emerged aimed at developing innate human potentials and creative capacity. Boundaries between inner and outer experience collapsed.
The pioneering American Psychotronics Assn. (APA) led to other institutions in the following decades, such as The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), an interdisciplinary organization for the study of the basic sciences and medical and therapeutic applications of subtle energies, and The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Laboratory (PEAR) laboratory. The holistic paradigm led to multi- and transdisciplinary approaches to research on psi phenomena and consciousness studies.
The new consciousness paradigm opened our culture to the holistic world of complementary medicine, the human potential movement and the idea that we, too, could participate directly in the mysteries of nature and Cosmos. The premise was that the strangest phenomena have the most to teach us about science and ourselves. New interdisciplinary specialties in parapsychology, biophysics, accelerated learning and alternative medicine emerged. MRU was at the forefront of this cultural revolution, which promised transformational breakthroughs in personal and collective consciousness, integral healing and a new worldview. The fascinating history of early psi research is summarized by Jeffrey Mishlove in his classic The Roots of Consciousness, and MRU’s homepage. http://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/
Many MRU associates went on to produce early classics in paranormal literature. Dr. Stanley Krippner included work by MRU scientists and others in his ground-breaking anthologies, including multiple volumes of Advances in Parapsychological Research (1977-1997) and numerous popular works such as Varieties of Anomalous Experience (2000), Psychoenergetic Systems (1979), and The Energies of Consciousness (1975).
Technovelties
Blue sky projects that begin as implausible can produce incremental advances that eventualy result in applied technologies, even if it takes decades. It is bottom-up versus top-down research. Bottom-up means exploring from the known to the unknown, seeing if there are any serendipitous opportunities that emerge. By its nature, bottom-up work is unpredictable, based in some kind of intuition.
Top-down means problem directed, oriented to solving a problem. The reality dimension, how realistic the project is, shows up independently for either. Some bottom-up projects are highly realistic, other top-down projects are somewhat unrealistic. No one knows in advance which research directions will deliver.
We now take for granted many once-magical technologies even better than those in sci-fi space operas that emerged from the inspiration of the “Star Trek philosophy.” It became Dr. Schleicher’s policy not to dismiss any outlandish idea for fear of missing some breakthrough. That led to a wide scope of blue sky investigation.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), founded in 1958 when the Soviets launched Sputnik, is the Pentagon’s autonomous Blue Sky agency. Such projects are still conducted behind closed doors by DARPA, who’s “holy grail” is cracking the the brain’s code to build a brain-computer interface and Artificial Intelligence.
Many dark chapters in brainwashing and mind control have been written since the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations began its massive social engineering program after WWII and teamed with CIA to deploy nefarious experimental programs, such as MK Ultra. There is a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Psychic Center and the NSA (National Security Agency) studies parapsychology, that branch of psychology that deals with the investigation of such psychic phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, and psychokinesis. They also did experiments where the mind of one person controlled the bodies of others (Motoyama).
MAKES ME WANT TO PSI
The spontaneous event commonly called psychic experience, perception or ability is called 'psi' in scientific arenas. Even more precisely, it is now often referred to as anomalous cognition (AC). A particular form of intentional AC is known as Remote Viewing. Between 1978-1995 the U.S. government sponsored the Stargate Program, in conjunction with Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a psyops development think tank.
The existence of psi or ESP abilities has been hotly debated among scientists for decades, since J. B. Rhine began his experiments in 1927. Both the pro (Dean Radin; Ingo Swann; Jessica Utts, Russell Targ; Hiroshi Motoyama) and con (James Randi, Susan Blackmore, CSICOPS) positions have their "true believers", and it seems never the twain shall meet.
Psi is still a paradigm that lives on the outskirts trying to become a sanctioned science. But just because a subject is controversial, and happens to be a space and time transcending experience, doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate it. In fact, it beckons us to focus on it even more thoroughly to reveal the truths hidden there and the gaps in our current models. We simply need to do it with stringent, critic-proof methodology.
There are a variety of psi powers, rooted in chi, prana or ki, known for centuries in Eastern philosophy as siddhas, exceptional human abilities. The uninitiated or skeptical may be perplexed or daunted at the prospect of coming to any rational conceptual understanding of these anomalous phenomena, which have been associated with the realm of mysticism, superstition and the supernatural.
In actual fact, research by this author, who is a certified hypnotherapist (A.C.H.E.), and others (Miller; Ryzl) shows that nearly anyone can improve their psi ability through simple techniques of self-hypnosis.
Psi is also at the root of focused intent, distant mental interactions, distance healing and therapeutic rapport, where there is a subtle shared consciousness and often brainwave synchronization. This capacity is within everyone’s grasp, as the human potential movement demonstrated with such trance phenomena as fire walking and guided imagery.
We've virtually all had those uncanny or awesome experiences where we seemed to intuit, dream, or "know" something in advance of conventional means. Sometimes it is called pre-sentiment. Around 55% of reported incidents occur in dreams. Krippner was among the first to conduct experiments in Dream Telepathy. Another example, is the synchronicity at work in the affairs of “star-crossed lovers.” When we are in love, we seem to share the same “wavelength,” virtually able to read one another’s minds. Who hasn’t thought of a friend or acquaintance only to have the phone ring?
Often the most compelling stories come from those who don't even "believe" in the phenomenon, but find themselves experiencing it, usually in the unfortunate circumstance of the illness, injury or death of a distant loved-one. Psi is not just a mental perception or conception; we feel it in our guts, in our bones, in our marrow. It is first and foremost a holistic mind/body experience.
According to leading researcher Dr. Stanley Krippner, "At one level of investigation, there already are 'replications' and 'battle-tested' results, specifically the finding that about 50% of an unselected group will report having had a 'psychic experience,' supposedly involving those psi phenomena that have been given such labels as 'telepathy', 'clairvoyance', 'precognition', and 'psychokinesis' [mind over matter]. This percentage may vary from one culture, age group, and educational level to the next, but it has been repeated, in one study after another, for the last several decades."
The move in biophysics is to take psi research from endless theorization, proofs of existence and boring replications beyond the "gee whiz" anecdotes into innovative and practical experimentation. The problem is that in order to do that scientifically, one has to risk credibility and professional suicide, as well as being underfunded.
OPEN SESAME
Though it often seems confined to mediums, channels, sensitives, or ESPers, most individuals are capable of expressing some nonlocal communication or psi phenomena. However, that ability may be blocked for various reasons by an adaptation to consensus reality, to conventional thinking. We need to develop “out of the box” thinking. Even Einstein said that past, present, and future are illusions, even if they are stubborn ones. Conscious calculation rarely plays a role in ESP; the same is true for creativity, including healing.
Both ESP and creativity have deep taproots in the psyche. Pang and Forte (1967) found some evidence of a relationship between creativity and ESP, as did others (Honorton, 1967). Frederick Myers reported that a large proportion of ESP experiences occur in altered states such as dreams, trance, hypnosis and creativity while Masters and Houston (1966) counted it among the varieties of psychedelic experience.
ESP, hypnosis and mind-expanded states have sensitivity to the unconscious at their core. And that subconscious expresses itself through symbols, imagery, and sensations to communicate with the conscious mind. Hypnosis is the "open sesame" to the waking impressions and sensory images of the deeper mind/body.
The elusive ability to swing back 'the doors of perception' and enter the numinous realm of the collective unconscious was described by psychologist C. G. Jung. Whether deliberate or accidental, anyone can open to the force of this revealed process, to this dynamic information field. Those who frustrate themselves with self-defeating behavior in other areas of life often show poor psi performance.
Positive ESP scores seem to correlate generally with traits such as openness, high self-esteem, warmth, sociability, adventuresomeness, relaxation, assertiveness, talkativeness and practicality. However, some psi-talented individuals often don't score well in laboratory settings.
On the other hand Russell Targ (1994) claims, "[P]si is no longer elusive; it can be demonstrated when needed for study and investigation." Even though psychic training to strengthen the signal line is possible, unpredictability has been the hallmark of this emergent gift. To overcome this problem in both the theoretical and experimental arenas requires a marriage of the disciplines of physics, biology, medicine, psychology, and hypnosis. In 2012, Targ released The Reality of ESP: A Physicist's Proof of Psychic Abilities.
Dean Radin's Entangled Minds (2006) and The Conscious Universe (2009) continue the documentation and exploration in this field. Another excellent theoretical review is Claude Swanson's The Synchronized Universe: New Science of the Paranormal (2003) and Life Force: The Scientific Basis (2009). Long-term players in this field, such as Frank Maye, of Maye Holistic Med, have applied such research to integrative global healthcare.
Findings from all these fields converge in the paradoxical subject of Extra-Sensory Perception. As the ideas of quantum mechanics, relativity and parapsychology slowly make their way into our collective consciousness, our common-sense views on time and causality find themselves more strained than they've ever been in the course of human history.
Will this challenge remain the domain of theoretical science, or can we foresee a day in which the general understanding, and even the experience of the average individual, will be shaped by this new perspective on reality? (Sidorov, 2003, “The Mind In Time”).
It takes many disciplines, as well as the latest findings in physiology, neurobiology and information theory to begin to formulate any comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and bridge the conceptual gap. ESP used to be studied in Parapsychology, an adjunct of psychology. But its subject matter has become so mainstream, the field has been return to ordinary Psychology by the APA. ESP “software” is studied in psychology, but ESP “hardware” is the domain of biophysics.
Researchers are probing the interface between matter, spacetime and mind with increasing precision. There is optimism that ultimately conventional pathways will be found to explain their appearance. Suggestions have included Schumann Resonance as a nearly-instantaneous carrier of psi information or perhaps paradoxical quantum nonlocality or coherence to account for it.
There are many models that provide potentially viable explanations. The mental aspects can perhaps be described psychologically, but the mechanics require models from physics. A variety of theories have been proposed, including neurological, holographic, electromagnetic, scalar, and quantum mechanics based hypotheses.
Like electricity, no one knows how psi works. However, to foster and practice psi we don't need to know how it works, anymore than we need to know the mechanics of internal combustion to drive a car.
The faculties of (1) Telepathy; (2) Clairvoyance; and (3) Precognition came into the public eye when stories of Russian and CIA remote viewers broke in the press. Major Ed Dames, a member of the original US Military Intelligence project at SRI, has offered live public classes in RV training as well as a DVD course (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Remote-Viewing-4-DVD-Course/dp/B0007YWY8A).
Remote viewing is a structured, teachable discipline that enlists the unconscious mind in gaining direct conscious knowledge about inaccessible targets - people, places, things, or events - in the past, present, or future. A remote viewer learns to focus and hold his or her unconscious attention on a target. Then, in a sequence of standardized steps, the viewer records information about the target in an organized format, either as written words or as sketches. Dames claims his methodology enables virtually anyone to learn powerful mind skills for information collection. But compelling, anecdotal stories alone do not satisfy the scientific method.
Stories of distance healing, a form of PK or psychokinesis (mind over matter), require another article of their own to do them justice. It may be easier to model virtual information transfer than mind over matter. "Spooky action at a distance" requires even stronger evidence than sensing at a distance. But is "distance" here really a factor or an illusion in a holographic simply-connected universe? The paradox of spacetime and relativity presents itself in psi as psycho-retrocognition, or time-reversed PK.
Though these experiences of knowing at a distance are called "extra-sensory," they often appear "as if" received by conventional sensory or mental means, for how else can we "know what we know"? It is a holistic psychophysical experience, affecting the whole self, physically, emotionally, mentally and often spiritually. The impediments of distance and time seem to dissolve; the barriers of spacetime are mysteriously overcome. The information is 'just there' in one form or another, whether spontaneous or facilitated.
1). Telepathy is a message, direct mind-to-mind communiction, direct knowing through being, a clear intuition or empathic awareness, often demonstrated in the psychotherapeutic setting. Telepathy is a transmission from one mind to another.
2). Clairvoyance appears as information about events at remote locations, manifesting as an image, or gestalt psychic impression, rather than a thought; (it is often linked to perception at a distance: so-called astral travel, out-of-body experience, or remote viewing).
3). Precognition is the most uncanny; transcending time, it seems to rend the veils of the future (jamais vu) and the past (deja vu) with strong, often unpleasant, premonitions.
According to Scientific American (Sept. 2002, p. 103), [apparently long after Pribram's pioneering holographic brain theory from the 70s], "in 1990 Herman Sno, a psychiatrist at Hospital de Heel in Zaandam, the Netherlands, suggested that memories are stored in a format similar to holograms. Unlike a photograph, each section of a hologram contains all the information needed to reproduce the entire picture. But the smaller the fragment, the fuzzier the resultant image. According to Sno, deja vu occurs when some small detail in one's current situation closely matches a memory fragment, conjuring up a blurry image of that former experience."
There are competing theories of deja vu, but the holographic concept of reality remains a leading contender in the biomechanical explanations of psi. Psi meaning comes through emotionally intense visual, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. It is a human potential we can learn to tap. We can use our intentionality as a probability perturbation instrument. We can use mental focus to alternately concentrate and relax our attention. Intent is suggested as a variable in transmission and reception in the exchange of extrasensory information, possibly within the range of ELF electromagnetic frequencies (Sidorov, 2002).
Stanford and Lovin (1970) found possible support for a relationship between the generation of alpha waves and ESP, as did Monroe (1971). More recent research has implicated the electromagnetic signals of Schumann Resonances as carrier of seemingly non-local transfer of information (Pitkanin, 2001). Persinger (1989) has suggested that psi information signals are actually carried on extremely low electromagnetic frequencies and our temporal lobe structures are sensitive to them.
Whether one believes in spontaneous psi experience, or not, it has a long and colorful history, in the mystic and healing arts of the East and West, and in science, even business. The difference is the trigger that evokes the experience. Management trainers have taught self-hypnosis as a means of fostering intuition, rapport and other practical applications of ESP. "Eco-warrior" Jim Channon continues to offer his paradigm-changing military innovations to the corporate world. His impressive client-list for Acturus Research & Design ranges from alphabet agencies, to Apple Computers, to Whirlpool. <http://arcturus.org/arcturus3/?q=node/4>
The role of ESP is inextricably bound up with other creative processes where information or inspiration seemingly appear from nowhere. Data acquired through ESP, prescient dreams and other imaginative thought processes riddles the stories of scientific discovery and creativity. Psychic detective work and investigative reporting has received mixed reviews, since following up on dry leads uses time and vital resources. Without controls, these anecdotes are difficult to evaluate.
In the arts, it has been said that "life imitates art," sometimes to uncanny proportions. Krippner (1972) recounts a story of ESP in creativity, whose prophetic detail later took on ominous tones.
In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a popular novel called Futility. It described the wreck of a giant ship called the Titan, considered "unsinkable" by the characters in the novel. Perhaps you recognize this oft-told tale as that of the Titanic, but it was not wrecked until April 15, 1912. In the novel, the ship displaced 70,000 tons (Titanic 66,000 tons), was 800 feet long (Titanic 828 feet); the Titan carried 3000 passengers and 24 lifeboats, while Titanic had only 20 lifeboats for the same number of people. Both ships sank while encountering an iceberg at the speed of 23-25 knots. The rest, as they say, is history.
FROM TRANCE TO CREATIVITY
The question becomes "How can we facilitate the emergence of psi phenomena, either for greater awareness or creativity?" Knowing what we know about psi expression, how can we train ourselves to encourage its emergence? Hypnosis or self-hypnosis simply helps engage the emotional mind, the imaginal mind, the biophysical mind rather than just approaching the task rationally and conceptually.
Unfortunately, the question of psi-facilitation was asked by covert forces during the Cold War, and much of the statistical and practical data on psi comes from those black-ops sources (CIA, KGB, NSA, DIA, DOD, U.S. Army and Navy). The Russians wanted to use psi for espionage and the US countered with its own team. Much of this government-sponsored work went on at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), by Puharich, Puthoff, Targ, and Swann.
Human potential advocates, Jack Schwarz and Robert Monroe separately pursued independent, more explorative and mystical approaches. Both taught consciousness management techniques through forms of self-hypnosis. Schwarz, practicing as the Aleithea Foundation in Southern Oregon, focused on bioregulation with autohypnosis and subtle human energies.
Monroe's techniques employ neuroregulation with the frequency-following response (which he trademarked with the Monroe Institute in Virginia, as Hemi-Synch) to induce trance, entraining both hemispheres in alpha and theta (1982).
Hemi-Synch, also known as binaural beat technology, actively drives the modulation of electrocortical activity through resonance effects, changing levels of awareness and arousal, attentional focus, and cognitive content. Often combined with biofeedback, it helps shortcut processes that would take years of technologically unassisted yogic training.
Graywolf Swinney (2001), Dr. Stanley Krippner, and Iona Miller have conducted trainings in co-consciousness (Erickson, Rossi & Rossi, 1976) and theta training at Asklepia Foundation, also in Southern Oregon. A deep state of rapport is used in psychotherapeutic journey processes, employing shamanic hypnotherapeutic techniques. Theta is reportedly the psychic range of the mind, generated largely in the temporal lobes. Co-consciousness is a shared virtuality, a telepathic rapport wherein both participant's brainwaves become synchronized into a single shared holographic biofield (Miller and Swinney, 2000).
Spontaneous psi phenomena have been associated with theta waves by Krippner (1977), the Greens (1977), and more recently by Persinger (1987). "Resonance" and "entrainment" have become new age buzzwords. Consciously producing theta requires quieting the body, emotions and thoughts simultaneously, leading to an integrative reverie, a deep focus of attention. Theta is often accompanied by hypnagogic or dream-like imagery emanating from the temporal lobes.
John Curtis Gowan (1975) catalogued the entire spectrum of extraordinary phenomena related to trance, art, and creativity. In his taxonomy, he called these distinctive modes or domains of human dynamics Prototaxic (Trance), Parataxic (Art), and Syntaxic (Creativity).
Trance is characterized by loss of ego, art by emotionally charged (often symbolic) imagery, and in creativity meaning is more or less fully cognized symbolically with ego present. In some ways, these modalities could represent the uncanniness of precognition, the imagery of clairvoyance, and the knowing of telepathy.
Trance is often associated with awe, dread, horror, and panic since ego control is weak or absent. These numinous effects are moderated in the artistic experience that comes as visualization, audialization, emotional inspiration, sensual, symbolic and mythopoetic imagery.
In terms of precognition, artists are often said to be perceptually "ahead of their time." Art is the transition phase in the relationship between the ego and the emergent transcendent function. Transcendence is a "quantum leap," a recurrent process, not a steady-state. It is a phase-transition moving toward illumination. The syntaxic experience of creativity is even more benign since the mind apprehends directly without ego dissociation. Psi experiences become more naturally integrated – regular, inspirational and uplifting while less frightening or awesome.
Gowan's work naturally included both hypnosis and ESP, which he cited as consciously or unconsciously operative at these various levels of dissociation, ego-involvement and levels of arousal (sympathetic and parasympathetic). Puharich (1961) found telepathic reception facilitated by parasympathetic activation, while sending the message was stronger with activation of the sympathetic, or adrenergic system.
For Gowan, the accessibility of certain psychic experiences depended on the mode of functioning. Intuitive self-knowledge is intrinsic to a wide variety of higher mental functions. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis are clearly linked to the primal trance, but can be applied in more integrated modes to enhance psi ability (Krippner, 1968).
PSI DEEPLY: HYPNOSIS & ESP
In 1967, the Czech government tried to co-opt the allegedly successful psychical research and training program of biochemist Milan Ryzl. After screening many candidates, he found 50 high-scoring subjects, and they proceeded to win several rounds of the Czech lottery.
“Milan Ryzl, a chemist who defected to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1967, developed a hypnotic technique for facilitating ESP. . .Ryzl’s technique involved the intensive use of deep hypnosis sessions almost daily for a period of several months. The first stage of the sessions was to instill confidence in his subjects that they could visualize clear mental images containing accurate extrasensory information. Once this stage was reached, Ryzl concentrated on conducting simple ESP tests with immediate feedback so that subjects might learn to associate certain mental states with accurate psychic information. Subjects were taught to reject mental images which were fuzzy or unclear. This process, according to Ryzl, continued until the subject was able to perceive clairvoyantly with accuracy and detail. Finally, Ryzl attempted to wean the subject away from his own tutelage so that he or she could function independently. While still in Czechoslovakia, Ryzl claimed to have used this technique with some five hundred individuals, fifty of whom supposedly achieved success.
Other studies have shown heightened ESP in states of physical relaxation or in trance and hypnotic states. In fact, the use of hypnosis to produce high ESP scores is one of the most replicable procedures in psi research.” (Mishlove, 1975).
The standard definitions used for hypnosis often call it a borderline state between sleeping and waking, i.e. body asleep, mind awake. Any state characterized by an intense concentration of attention in on area, accompanied by a profound lack of attention in other areas, may also be considered hypnosis. It opens us to our psychophysical impressions by limiting external input.
With this type of definition, everyone is considered to be continually in a light state of hypnosis, witness “white line fever” while driving, or the plea, “I was spaced-out.” Musicians call it “being in the groove,” others “sharing a wavelength.” Our social roles are also like trance states with their intrinsic patterns. When we go in public we wear the ‘armour” of our persona and immerse ourselves in that self-image.
Charisma is also a form of hypnosis akin to Mesmer’s original “animal magnetism.” Traumas also create trance states with automatic behaviors that can persist for years. The “scripts, games, and rackets”of Transactional Analysis can also be seen as trance states, where we habitually replay our typical ways of dealing with self, others, and world. So the question becomes not “if” one is hypnotized, but what kind of trance and its depth one is in at any given moment.
The depth of hypnosis, which is an implied issue in this definition, may be defined as the difference between the intensity of concentration in one sphere or area and the depth of inhibition in others. Attention focused in one area creates a corresponding lacuna, or lack of attention, in other areas of the brain. Centering the attention for prolonged periods, often with suggestions for further deepening, leads to deeper states of hypnosis. With these definitions, a useful model for relating hypnosis to psi phenomena is possible, following Milan Ryzl's hypothesis.
Psi Theory:
Postulate I: The conscious experience is associated with the nervous processes which take place above a certain critical level of awareness/alertness. This function, defined as I(c), varies considerably in a state of hypnosis, where attention is focused.
Postulate II: Psi Energy, arbitrarily defined as E(psi), is an equivalent in the field of extra-sensory phenomenon of what, in our three-dimensional world, is called energy.
Correlate A: E(psi) is not limited by time.
Correlate B: E(psi) can not be transformed into other energies (i.e. physical energies,; converting heat into light).
Correlate C: E(psi) operates by manipulating the transformation of physical energies.
Postulate III: Psi Energy, is responsible for extra-sensory perception and psycho-kinetic phenomenon (PK).
Postulate IV: Psi Energy is the product of some aspect of the metabolic processes. Physical data regarding the relationship between metabolic processes and extra-sensory perception can be found in Beyond Telepathy, by Andrija Puharich.
Postulate V: The generation of Psi Energy rapidly decreases the level of alertness. This immediately explains why:
(1) each conscious act has a limited duration,
(2) why we experience a permanent train of changing thoughts, and
(3) why our attention permanently shifts from one object to the next.
When you think, Psi Energy is created. The Psi Energy automatically decreases the level of alertness so that one shifts to something else.
Postulate VI: The intensity of conscious experience, I(c), depends on the time rate of the generation of psi Energy. Mathematically, this is described as dE(psi)/dt = A(e) x I(c).
The rate of change of E(psi) as a function of time is equal to some geographical constant, A(e), times the intensity of concentration, I(c). More simply stated Psi Energy is equal to a geographical constant times the intensity of concentration, I(c), times the amount of time that the thought is held. E(psi) = A(e) x I(c) x t
If we cannot make any particular thought last long enough, it should be sufficient to repeat it again and again until the value of the individual brief periods add up to a sufficient value. The equation now becomes E(psi) = A(e) c I(c) x [t(1) + t(2) + t(3) + …]
Postulate VII: The formation of Psi Energy, which is created by a holistic psychophysical act, preserves the semantic control of the thought that created it. In essence, your thought is uniquely distinct. If you deviate from your thought slightly, it is a different thought-form, including the psychosomatic component. There is a tangible shift in the mind/body.
The Method:
(1). Formulate the question.
(2). Hold that thought for as long as possible.
(3). Assume that the event has occurred.
(4). Drop into a “blank mind” state and wait.
When questioning or desiring thoughts are intense enough, lasting long enough, or repeated frequently enough, psi is produced in sufficient intensity and structure to be detectable in the physical world. This may occur in hypnotic states, in states of intentionality, elated or traumatic emotions, or when interest, motivation, or desire is strongly increased.
The individual confronts the continuum with desire and prolonged concentration. The question being asked must be intense enough to impress itself on the unconscious. Lacking intensity, the signal will not be perceived. Intentionality strengthens the signal path.
Consciousness is then dropped into a “blank” state, an empty state, or “beginner’s mind.” The actual visualization is a switch from the concentrated point to the void. When this occurs the information is impressed on consciousness, resulting in a psychophysical perceptual event. This event is independent of both space and time.
Ordinarily when people spontaneously fall into trance states, they are generally not in a “blank mind” state of expectant emptiness pr "primordial awareness". There is the chatter of subconscious thoughts going on even as the process deepens toward sleep. These thoughts are generated and go on automatically at a subliminal level, often without awareness.
Consequently, the information or signal path gets distorted, and weird patterns emerge, much like those experienced in dreams. In a waking dream, distorted signals may be perceived as “spirit guides”, automatic handwriting, or other autonomous related phenomena of trance states. We have seen earlier that Gowan characterized this loss of ego-awareness as the Prototaxic Mode.
Puharich believes reception is enhanced by "parasympathetic activation" in which there is an increase in released acetylcholine. He claims that telepathic sending of information is easier when there is an increased amount of adrenaline in the system. These metabolic processes are not “causal” but merely correlates of psi. Psi meaning comes through intense visual, auditory, and kinesthetic psychosensory experiences.
This “energized enthusiasm” can be seen in states of emotional involvement and artistic inspiration (Parataxic Mode), as well as creativity (Syntaxic Mode). Parataxic experience consists of relationships with multisensory images whose meaning remains on the symbolic level.
Syntaxic experiences occur when the consciously aware ego cooperates willingly with the subconscious forces. Here knowing and meaning are clearer and fully cognized with minimal distortion. Other higher forms of concentration include biofeedback, meditation, tantra, peak experiences, higher Jhana states of yoga, and so on. Concentration is intense, structured and prolonged.
Discussion:
ESP is often observed in hypnosis, a state characterized by a single intensive thought. Recurrent cases of psycho-kinetic phenomena, such as the haunted-house variety, are often reported to be connected with previous trauma or tragic events, associated with intensity of concentration, I(c).
The frequently reported cases of crisis telepathy – ESP contact between two persons, one of which is dying or in grave danger – are necessarily associated with intense thought or concentration, even obsession and a highly aroused state. The length of time experienced depends entirely upon the circumstances; in some cases there is subjective dilation of time perception.
The discovery of mental impregnation, known in the literature as psychometry suggests that repeated identical thoughts increase the expected psychic effect. Wearing a ring for a long time may “imprint” memory of the wearer onto the ring; just slipping a ring on and off and handing it to a psychometrist will not generally reveal any memory of the wearer.
Religious or spiritual traditions assert that repeated prayers may be more effective than single ones. In other words, the more you repeat the same prayer, or mantra, or the more you do a single ritual, the greater the effect. Along that line of reasoning, “tithing” might be seen as a factor of one’s time or attention, rather than money. Some meditation schools, for example, require no money but 10% of your daily time (2.5 hours) in meditation.
The stimulating action of psi formation on the brain may account for memory, more particularly, active recollection. The influence of psi formation increases the level of awareness of the neuro-patterns corresponding to the thought to be remembered. The synapses are flooded over and over with the same chemical messengers and electrical signals. The correlating psychosomatic content is consciously re-experienced.
DREAM TELEPATHY AND BEYOND
“In 1969, Charles Honorton and Stanley Krippner reviewed the experimental literature of studies designed to use hypnosis to induce ESP. Of nineteen experiments reported, only seven failed to produce significant results. Many of the studies produced astounding success. In a particularly interesting precognition study, conducted by Fahler and Osis with two hypnotized subjects, the task also included making confidence calls – predicting which guesses would be most accurate. The correlation of confidence call hits produced impressive results with a probability of 0.0000002.” (Mishlove, 1975).
Krippner went on to conduct research in Dream Telepathy (1973) with Montague Ullman, following the lead of other Maimonides Hospital (Brooklyn, N.Y.) researchers, such as Frederick Myers. These experiments in nocturnal ESP are foundational and though never replicated, the results were highly suggestive of a strong psi correlation.
Their ten-year study concluded that dream reports can show the effect of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Their hypothesis was that ESP is more common during dreaming than waking and therefore an "agent" could more easily transfer the target thoughts or imagery to a sleeping subject, influencing their dreams.
Such prominent dream researchers as David Foulkes (Belvedere & Foulkes, 1971), Gordon Globus (Globus et al., 1968), Calvin Hall (1967), Robert Van de Castle (1971), and Keith Hearne (1987) attempted to repeat these findings. Because the replication rate from these other laboratories was inconsistent, the Maimonides team did not claim to have conclusively demonstrated that communication in dreams can sometimes transcend space and time. However, they did open a promising line of investigation.
Years later, Stanley Krippner and Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuroscientist, reviewed the entire body of dream research data from Maimonides Medical Center, selecting the first night that each subject in a telepathy experiment had visited the laboratory. They matched the results of these nights with geomagnetic data, discovering that the subjects' telepathy "hits" tended to be higher during calm nights than during nights marked by electrical storms and high sunspot activity (Persinger & Krippner, 1989).
Persinger (1974) has urged using reported psi phenomena in new and ingenious ways, observing, "Across cultures and throughout history people have been reporting psi- experiences. Let us find out what they are saying. . .It is by looking at the similarities of the verbal behavior that we may find enough consistencies to understand the factors responsible for the reports” (p. 13).
Persinger (e.g., Schaut & Persinger, 1985) has examined several collections of spontaneous cases, including the 35 gathered by Stevenson (1970), reporting that they seem to occur most frequently when geomagnetic activity is calmer than the days before or after the experience - - and lower than the month's average activity.
This approach can be applied to any collection of cases (e.g., Persinger & Krippner, 1989) where the date of the alleged experience has been recorded. If repeatable, these effects may help to provide an understanding of the mechanisms underlying psi phenomena, and may even indicate a potentially predictable pattern for such events.(Krippner)
Geomagnetic field perturbations have been reported to affect biological systems by other investigators (e.g., Subrahmanyam, Sanker Narayan, & Srinivasan, 1985). Persinger (1989) has proposed two interpretations of the geomagnetic field effect. The first is that psi is a geomagnetic field correlate; solar disturbances and consequent geomagnetic storms affect this correlate. The second is that the geomagnetic field affects brain receptivity to psi, which remains constant.
In the latter interpretation, psi is always present in space and time, waiting to be accessed by crisis, emotion, or by optimal laboratory stimulus parameters. Geomagnetic activity may affect the detection capacity of the brain for this information, especially the neural pathways that facilitate the consolidation and conscious access to this information. Without this geomagnetic activity, awareness of the psi stimulus might not be as likely and the brain's "latent reserve capacities" would not be utilized.
Taking this argument one step further, Persinger (1989) points out that deep temporal lobe activity exists in equilibrium with the global geomagnetic condition. When there is a sudden decrease in geomagnetic activity, there appears to be an enhancement of processes that facilitate psi reception, especially telepathy and clairvoyance.
Increases in geomagnetic activity may suppress pineal melatonin levels and contribute to reductions of cortical seizure thresholds. Indeed, melatonin is correlated with temporal lobe-related disorders such as depression and seizures. (Krippner)
CYBER PSI TRAINING
So what direction can we expect psi research to take in this new millennium? Clearly, the experimenters themselves want to follow a self-directed course rather than the mandates of a government-driven program. They would like access to private, academic, and government funds, with leading edge equipment: high-ticket brain monitoring equipment such as 90-channel EEG, fMRI, SPECT, and ERP. They would like to practice without a professional stigma attached to their pioneering work.
Several theories of psi have been put forth throughout the years. Psychologist Rex Stanford, altered-states expert Charles Tart, post-quantum physicist Jack Sarfatti, and psi researcher Charles Honorton, as well as physicist Helmut Schmidt have all developed models for ESP and precognition. Each embodies certain possible, even plausible factors. Some researchers worked with Eastern swamis and yogis to understand the mechanisms and induction techniques or evocation of this psychic power.
Quantum theory predits that empty space (the vacuum) contains an enormous amount of residual background energy known as zero-point energy (ZPE). Physicist David Bohm, biologist Rupert Sheldrake (researching psychic pets) with his morphogenetic fields, and Ervin Laszlo propose zero-point or vacuum potential mediation for psi. The superdense quantum vacuum may be a physically real field, including but not limited to gravitation and electromagnetism. Perhaps it can transmit psi.
However, they can’t provide any experimental protocols that might test such theories. Is psi a field or a quantum effect? Fields link phenomena in time as well as space. But, fields themselves cannot be observed; only the influences propagating through them.
Other theories suggest phase-conjugate pilot waves, scalar waves, virtual states, hyperfield flux, holographic hyperchannel effect, complementarity, even uncertainty. Biophysical theories for the paranormal bridge include Josephson junctions, microtubules, and liquid crystals as psi transducers.
Honorton and others long ago found defects in old psi testing techniques and addressed criticisms with new methodology. They eliminated variables like subconscious cueing by covering the subjects’eyes with split ping-pong balls and playing “white noise” into their ears.
Researchers hypothesized that this neutral field would function as a less-distracting “blank canvas” for psi hits. So it served a dual purpose of refining experimental procedure and minimizing distracting sensory input. These experiments, (known as Ganzfield tests), were replicated by many experimenters in many facilities, with encouragingly similar positive results. Other tests were conducted in sensory deprivation chambers and electrically-shielded Faraday cages.
Experimenter bias, the tendency to find what one seeks, is an occupational hazard, though skeptics have found positive psi correlations. But careful interpretations of models, artifacts, experimental method, instrumentation, randomization, target selection, statistical inference, sensory leakage, recording errors, and controls can’t be rigorous enough.
Proper scientific control for ESP research has been refined over the years, though cheating and frauds have plagued the field, and the naïve scientist. One solution to this dilemma lately has been to experiment with the field-tested government Remote Viewers, who have established track records. They have their own reports of their subjective experiences – not the results of their missions – but the sensations that led to the observation or retrieval of those images.
Remote viewer Ingo Swann, called the father of RV, argues for the demystification of psi. Swann’s model supersedes the traditional psi paradigm and focuses on the hardware issues discussed in neurobiology and information theory.
Swann argues for systematic and deliberate development of this ability much like athletic training, as well as conceptual understanding. He prefers the term Distant Mental Interactions with Living Systems (DMILS) to ESP. He wants this capacity tested in the context of physical science as part of man’s natural spectrum of senses. He claims applying focus or attention on the perceptual apparatus with feedback on results “fine tunes” psi ability.
His concrete approach and insightful conclusions include his view of our sensory apparatus as a “transducer array” to convert information from one form to another. He calls his human “software” program a “mental information processing grid.” He simply converts various forms of input energy to another form his sensory system can “read.”
We do much the same when we interpret the electromagnetic signals that come through the air from a voice into meaning in our brains. He suggests we can develop the ability for several transducers of signals, depending on our exposure to the cognitive processing of these signals.
Targ claimed to see reasonably sharp and clear pictures. In remote viewing, if the mental picture doesn’t form, one is left with a mere “impression,” a less-precise signal. The signal is compared against memory to determine if it is meaningful to the task at hand – the target.
In other words, you can develop this ability through practice and feedback of the accuracy of your perceived signals. Pathways that work get reinforced. The process is very similar to psychophysical learning with biofeedback, such as alpha and theta training.
Swann argues for learning to fine tune one’s signal to noise ratio, learning to notice direct sensory data as well as imaginal signals, such as feelings, intuition, impressions. Repeated exposure and accurate feedback strengthens recognition of subtle and implicit relationships. Can cybernetic machines, such as random number generators, computers, and biofeedback devices help us hone psi faculties?
Swann emphasizes the difference between message and its structure. An experienced viewer can put together mental images from subtle cues. In RV, the signal appears as symbols, sounds, feelings, tastes, pictures, and holistic impressions. One learns to organize them based, again, on repeated feedback.
Misconceptions, fears, rigid concepts, body movement, excessive gastrointestinal activity, sleepiness, language categories, and other psychological “baggage” can be sources of confounding noise. Other blocks come from trying too hard, and distracting daydreaming or preoccupying thoughts. Telepathy, empathy or rapport, and charisma seem to be related and clearly come into play during therapeutic entrainment.
BIOPHYSICS OF PSI
Nothing is known about the physical mechanism of ESP, or anomalous cognition. No one knows what modulates performance. Even those who can demonstrate psi in the laboratory on demand, cannot account for signal nonlocality or distant interaction. The origins of the data are not revealed, only the conclusions with their level of resolution or accuracy. This is where the models of information theory and biophysics come into play.
Physicist Lian Sidorov proposes two working models for non-local communication and intent-mediated healing:
1). Direct transmission (entrainment) of specialized electromagnetic frequencies, observed primarily in proximal healing; and,
2). Distant healing and remote viewing/diagnosis, where the target’s electromagnetic profile is modulated from a distance via partial entanglement of subject-target.
She cites the research of Finnish physicst Matti Pitkanen as a model for “directed entanglement” between the subject and target – the magnetic sensory canvas hypothesis. Pitkanen conjectures that distance healing involves transfer of specific electromagnetic frequencies through quantum wormholes for near-instant transfer of information.
The transmission may trigger certain brain frequencies and psychophysical changes. Thus, amplification of the signal leads from quantum to macroscopic effects. Pitkanen suggests the brain is a sensory organ of our electromagnetic selves, and may be linked to planetary rhythms through Schumann Resonance.
In this model, the EM fields are not directly carried from sender to target. They are simultaneously generated at the two locations by a vacuum (geometrical) current. Therefore, they remain coherent while by passing the paradox of non-attenuation with distance. Neural processing and quantum events may interpenetrate.
This still doesn’t really account for origins of the data, but merely the transmission modes. Biophysics researchers are attempting to follow the signal back to its source. The research must be interfaced with current theories in the natural sciences. Then it can be considered empirical; the paradoxical anomaly can then be linked within the known framework of knowledge. Is there really a field, or field-like continua, capable of transmitting information beyond the recognized limits of time and space?
Laszlo (1996) suggests that the natural processes of complexity and chaos could amplify vacuum-level fluctuations into significant inputs to behavior, and that the brain, another chaotic system, could receive and amplify these signals which can penetrate into consciousness.
SHAVING WITH OCCAM’S RAZOR
Occam’s Razor is a principle applied in science that contends problems should be stated in basic terms, not making more assumptions than needed to choose the simplest of equivalent models. Many hypotheses are proposed, tested, and rejected. Their validity is debated exposing their flaws and underlying assumptions.
Additional relevant hypotheses and unrelated statements are weeded out. Experiments with the sensitivity reveal which yield the most accurate predictions. If two rival theories pass empirical tests, the simpler one must be preferred. When it comes to conspiracy theories, we apply Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
But before we can find answers, we have to ask the right questions. Once we ask the right questions, we often have all the information needed to solve the problem. Unfortunately, in the case of psi, it may be that our understanding of physics is still too incomplete to solve the riddle.
Lian Sidorov, as editor of Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions posed many incisive questions:
How is information stored and retrieved nonlocally by consciousness?
This simple question contains the essence of all psi paradoxes, from spontaneous events like precognition and telepathy to carefully engineered processes like retro-psychokinesis.
Sidorov (2003) summarizes this discussion with expert remote viewer, Joe McMoneagle:
“What you are saying seems to be that:
1. everything you will ever know is already contained in your universe, although not necessarily accessible to your conscious mind – that comes with the effort involved in RV, or is revealed spontaneously as in “precognitive”
2. “when” a given target event takes place relative to the experimental present is irrelevant, because all the information is already available;
3. other people’s expectation and feedback should not affect your results, as long you are careful to task yourself in a way which does not include those elements.
4. “Making contact” with the target is more like flipping to the right page in your book than reaching anything in space and time.”
Are there preferred pathways for the signals in psi phenomena, windows of psi “sensitivity”? How specifically is the target recognized? How does one modulate and target “intent”? How does the signal rise above the threshold of awareness?
Mental intent seems to create cognitive bridges between subject and object, operator and target. We can also learn to recognize certain psychophysical patterns in ourselves through feedback. The physical and the psychical are inseparable. There appears to be an energetic/informational component, perhaps based in EM frequencies and holographic interference patterns. Holographic processes do occur in nature, including holographic information storage. The holographic field is a physical reality composed of interference waves.
In Scientific American (Aug. 2003), Bekenstein poses the question “Are you a hologram?” and states quantum physics says the entire universe might be. Can a somatic EM hologram possibly amplify as little as one quantum of energy into an effective signal? Are there holographic hyperchannels? Information in a field is holographic and the propagation of holographic interference patterns is quasi-instantaneous. Every part of the field contains the whole informational content, just in lower resolution. Thomas Bearden echoes that concept in Excalibur Briefing.
“Each particle of mass in our bodies represents one closure of the entire universe – yielding a holographic reality – and deeper communication with ourselves is identical to communication with the universe, including any part of it, at any distance. Furthermore, in hyperspace the future and the past are all present. Since a particle does indeed exhibit a four-dimensional component for 1/137 of the time, each particle does connect to the future and to the past. With selective tuning and kindling any part of this holographic reality is accessible. However, because of the smallness of a single selective signal in the midst of the totality, the channel is quite noisy. For this reason skilled psychics – persons who have been found to have a greater fidelity for selective tuning – can be expected to produce better results than the normal person.” (Bearden, 1988).
Questions remain:
Mind is a dynamic function of the entire organism at all levels of self-organization. Constantly fluctuating local parameters are embodied and amplified through the body’s electromagnetic control hologram. Mind/body modulates our sensitivity to external and internal information. Researchers measure a brainwave known as Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) to measure anticipation, anticipatory strategies, or readiness to respond; this stimulus can be informative or uninformative, carry content or just be an alert. (W. Grey Walter, et al)
Remote viewing requires super-sensitivity and super-efficient states. It is not the result of cognitive training, but a gradual remolding of the entire psychophysical structure and metabolic pathways. Thus, the mind/body becomes a highly coherent, information-transparent transducer -- a dipole antenna and heuristic interpreter or decoder.
Vast information resources are hidden in unexplored manifolds of the mind/body continuum. In psi research, the study of nature and our nature – our potential – becomes entwined. As Einstein (1934, The World As I See It) said, “We are seeking for the simplest possible scheme of thought that will bind together the observed facts.”
PART II: JNLRMI CONTRIBUTIONS
Under the auspices of "Emergent Mind", Lian Sidorov, Matti Pitkanin and others recontextualized the psi research of the past attempting another step forward. As a wealth of expertise, we include original papers, round table discussions and interviews which provide a restated point of departure for the renewed work of Journal of Nonlocality affiliates in 2012 and beyond. References for these materials can be found by refering back to their original posting at emergentmind.org. Summarizations, reframing, and ground breaking papers included the following discussions:
1. The imprinting and transmission of mentally-directed bioinformation
by Lian Sidorov, URL: http://www.emergentmind.org/sidorov_I.htm
Abstract: This paper reviews current experimental data and working models pertaining to non-local communication and proposes that there may be two complementary mechanisms involved in intent-mediated healing: one based on direct transmission (entrainment) of specialized electromagnetic frequencies, observed primarily in proximal healing (therapeutic touch, laying-on-of hands, direct waiqi); and a second one, associated with distant healing and remote viewing/diagnosis, where the target's electromagnetic profile is modulated from a distance via partial entanglement of subject-target cognitive spacetime sheets, as per Pitkanen's Topological Geometrodynamics. In addition, possible mechanisms are suggested for adjunct-mediated distant healing and for the "qi strike" phenomenon of 5-elements Qigong. Several experiments are proposed to test these hypotheses.
2. Control systems, transduction arrays and psi healing: an experimental basis for human potential science
by Lian Sidorov. URL: www.emergentmind.org/sidorovI2.htm
Abstract: Based on the biophysical models of Becker, Popp and Gariaev, the present paper makes the argument that the study of exceptional human abilities such as self-healing and anomalous cognition (AC) should focus on biophoton emissions and conformational changes of biomolecules under the influence of focused intent. The central hypothesis is that practices such as qigong and yoga induce long-term structural and physiological changes in the body's semiconducting liquid crystal matrix, which maintain the system in a higher-than-average state of coherence, hence optimizing energy utilization (Bigu), sensitivity (AC, tohate) and regulatory DC current feedback loops which in turn control the expression of DNA and the "tuning" of sensory transduction arrays.
A comprehensive model of non-local mental interactions (Pitkanen's TGD) is also discussed within this theoretical framework, especially with respect to biophotons as a signature of macroscopic entanglement. Finally, a number of psychophysiological experimental approaches are described as an alternative to current directions in CAM and parapsychology studies.
3. JNLRMI Vol. II No. 1 February 2003, Editor's Note
The scientific controversy over remote mental interactions has been raging for over a century - unfortunately the nature of the dialogue often seems arrested at the level of pre-teen arguments. Is that due to frustration before the lack of a viable theory? But such a theory cannot develop in the absence of official support for a serious experimental programme. Is it the poor statistical evidence? That rationale is difficult to support once one takes an honest look at the reports issued between 1981 and 1995 by US government investigative bodies such as the Congressional Research Service, the Army Research institute, the National Research Council, the Office of Technology Assessment and the American Institutes for Research - all of which independently concluded that the experimental evidence for certain types of psychic phenomena was "genuine", not due to methodological flaws, and had a statistical significance "far beyond what is expected by chance" - in the words of principal investigator (and skeptic) Ray Hyman, the "departures from chance appear to be too large and consistent to attribute to statistical flukes of any sort" (Radin, pp. 4).
The unwillingness of the scientific mainstream to confront the challenge and implications of such evidence might have a partial explanation in the uncertainty associated with the replicability of psi experiments: indeed, while the overall statistical proof for the existence of these phenomena is overwhelming, the probability that a given experiment will be successful is less than 1. We do not yet know the full set of conditions leading to effective psi functioning and while it appears that every human being has some degree of ability, even the most talented subjects in the field are occasionally prone to failure.
4. JNLRMI Vol. II Nr.2 July 2003, Editorial Notes
How is information stored and retrieved by consciousness? This simple question contains the essence of all psi paradoxes, from spontaneous events like precognition and telepathy to carefully engineered processes like retro-psychokinesis. As we have noted before, the real challenge of a nonlocal consciousness is not its transparent, transpersonal nature, but the internal structure that allows for local meaning and interactions to emerge.
5. The Mind in Time: A Round Table Discussion on Causality, Physics and Parapsychology
As the ideas of quantum mechanics, relativity and parapsychology slowly make their way into our collective consciousness, our common-sense views on time and causality find themselves more strained than they've ever been in the course of human history. Will this challenge remain the domain of theoretical science, or can we foresee a day in which the general understanding, and even the experience of the average individual, will be shaped by this new perspective on reality?
To answer this question, we have invited several physicists to share their opinions on the evolving definition of causality in the context of conscious observation and its implications for quantum mechanics and parapsychology. Matti Pitkanen is an independent theoretical physicst. Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist. A well-known scientist, writer and lecturer, he is author of 10 books including the National Book Award-winning "Taking the Quantum Leap". Douglas Matzke, Ph.D. has a long-standing interest in the limits of computation and transpersonal consciousness.
Q1 [Lian Sidorov]. It would seem that the most difficult conceptual challenges in both physics and parapsychology today ultimately point to the notion of causality - hence time. Do you think we have improperly defined either of these two terms - is common experience artificially creating a natural logic that is at odds with physical reality? How so?
Doug Matzke: According to Einstein, space and time are linked, so any theory of time must also entail some theory of space. Quantum objects (qubits, ebits, etc) are defined by the mathematical nature of the spaces created using independent high-dimensional axes (very many orthonormal bases). It is the very nature of these high-dimensional spaces that gives quantum objects the properties (superposition and entanglement) that 3D classical objects do not possess. These properties allow quantum systems to enjoy computational/informational advantages over classical systems (Shor’s algorithm, Grover’s algorithm, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation). The universe is a large quantum simulation producing the classical 4D worldview we interact with macroscopically. It is impossible for the reverse to be true. These quantum information underpinnings must have existed in a protophysical manner before the “big bang” cooled to produce classical matter/energy interacting in 4D spacetime, thereby suggesting the more provocative term of “bit bang”. Bits are so fundamental to physics that black holes are nothing but bit buckets. Throwing a bit into a black hole increases its surface area by the minimum amount (about Planck’s area) otherwise the 2nd law of thermodynamics would be violated. Therefore it is now understandable that “information is physical” and not just a mathematical metric. A bit has a very, very small effective mass just like energy does.
Based on the above most modern and accepted understanding of the relationship of quantum information and the universe’s organization, it is clear that some protophysical informational mechanism underlies the known universe. My primary perspective is that consciousness evolved because biology naturally taps into these ubiquitous information mechanisms at all levels. This is consistent with the thinking that everything contains quantum information, everything is conscious and everything has chi. This approach would have survival advantage because quantum search is faster than classical search. Also, since information is physical, organized states could have an effective energy due to their information content and could affect the physical world.
So everything in the universe is due to a protophysical information substrate, including quantum objects and most likely consciousness (appeal to Ockham’s razor requiring only one such ubiquitous informational mechanism). This information substrate is protophysical, since it is the essence of the “bit bang”, “bit buckets” and zero-point energy. My goal since early 1990s has been to understand why quantum information systems are fundamentally different than classical computation or communications systems. The key to this understanding is that quantum space and quantum time are “outside the box” defined by classical 4D spacetime and essentially creates that 4D box. This naturally leads out of causality and even relativistic time. The very high-dimensional quantum spaces form a quantum foam that fills even the emptiness of outer space (zero point energy).
This protophysical mechanism can bootstrap itself using the informational mechanism of distinction, where each distinction is a new unique dimension that converts from non-existence (the value of 0) to containing the state value of either +1 or -1. Qubits are formed using nothing more than two distinctions/dimensions (see my PhD dissertation from May 2002 that uses geometric algebra). Qubit rules can be derived directly out of the non-commutative combination of two state vectors. At this level, classical time does not yet exist so all states are ideally concurrent. This concurrency can be expressed mathematically as the sum of the orthonormal state vectors, so the + operator means concurrent, (which is the same exact convention used in Hilbert space bracket notation). The precursor of time is change and these non-classical states can change using quantum-like operators. Thus, the seeds of classical spacetime can occur from purely non-classical informational roots.
Quantum state vectors are the precursor to qubits, and not the other way around. Large collections of tiny distinction dimensions can create topological structures (knot theory) and form high level information structures. This can occur using mathematical rules for quantum entanglement. This kind of information structure forming process would create topological structures that are somewhat akin to “rotes” as described by OBErs and remote viewers. Rotes also resemble IP packets of the Internet, since they carry structured information, but do not rely on physical encoding of information using energy or matter. The more distinctions included in the rote packets, the larger they become and the more information they contain. In general, the more dimensions a computation process uses the “smarter” it is (per step) since the locality metric is larger. For example, Shor’s algorithm can factor very larger numbers by computing everything in one step. Classical versions of Shor’s algorithm are restricted by the locality metric, thus requiring so many execution steps that the computation extends past the age of the universe. In contrast, a large collection of purely random distinctions forms a black hole.
Another approach to organizing groups of distinctions also produces topological structures. It is possible to form a larger space by concatenating the distinctions as addresses (as in a qubit). An important step towards determinacy is to understand how implicit quantum randomness can lead to stability of any kind. This is possible due to a little known mathematical field called “probabilistic geometry” plus the information metric used by correlithm theory (see www.LT.com). The idea is simple. First, randomly pick two points in a N-dimensional binary state space. Next, compute how far apart they are using the Cartesian distance formula (same one used by relativity and for unitarity constraint in quantum mechanics). Most likely, you would expect the answer to be something random! It turns out, the distance result is approximately sqrt(N/2) (or =10*sqrt(2) for N=100). This is true for any two pairs of random points and the standard deviation is a constant of .35. All randomly chosen points are at this standard distance, thereby naturally defining a high dimensional tetrahedron or N-equihedron (not a hypercube nor hypersphere). This N-equihedron may be the mathematical structure beneath the Merkaba energy form.
These random points can be used as “soft tokens” for computing since they are intrinsically unique even if some noise is injected. Using this distance metric, it is highly unlikely that two random points will be closer than standard distance, so when two points are forced close together this represents a way to encode information using probabilistic geometry. A set of points that are less than standard distance form a topological structure that again has the characteristics of a rote. Each of these soft tokens can also be treated as normalized vectors, and they can be shown to have a standard angle of 90 degrees (plus a standard deviation) and can be normalized by a standard radius, as a kind of unitarity constraint. This means soft tokens can be used as a generalization of orthonormal basis vectors exactly like quantum state basis vectors in quantum computing, which includes superposition, entanglement, etc.
As N become very large, the normalized standard distance approaches the constant of sqrt(2) and the normalized standard deviation of all these metrics approach 0. These properties robustly occur in any kind of space but only when N>20. In our work, we have shown that these metrics are applicable to randomly generated neural statistics and also when encoding information in a quantum Hilbert space. The brain could provide random but repeatable patterns that uniquely interact with the quantum state spaces. When the same quantum soft token is measured in multiple trials, the answers define points in a binary space that are closer than standard distance, thereby showing that quantum soft tokens survive the quantum measurement process. Additionally, using soft tokens, quantum measurement can be thought of as a noise injection process. The quantum mind could manipulate the statistical processes into the brain thereby allowing amplification of quantum probabilities to from a noise injection based mindbrain link. Early experiments should try to detect quantum noise injection by mental intent.
I believe these soft tokens can be structured to form non-physical, abstract topology rotes, which could be used to represent meaning. Perhaps, this non-local topology would form an interdimensional encyclopedia of meaning (i.e. Akashic Records) that any one could tap for personal growth, remote viewing, NDEs, astral projection and etc. Rotes could also form the universal encoding underpinnings for direct knowing and telepathy. Essentially, the mind is a non-physical information system (perhaps quantum-like) and a mathematical theory of non-physical rotes may be useful to correctly predict experimental RV and PK results.
Therefore, it is essential to start with no-time or quantum time using a pure informational perspective. “Become like the light” is literally a command to switch to a timeless perspective (infinite time dilation means ideal concurrency). Quantum polynomial-time algorithms give us the big clue on the physics side. The zone of sports, gives us the same perspective of exiting classical time from the subjective experience. The higher self is in the “timeless” now. Our culture has a hard time comprehending these temporal abstractions since our thinking and society is spatially dominated.
M. Pitkanen: My answer to this question is probably highly predictable from what I have been saying for few years! There are two times and two causalities and the failure to realize this has led the standard view in which one tries to believe that there is only single time and single causality; is forced to throw away free will and intentionality; accept that time is simultaneously irreversible and reversible and that future exists and does not exist simultaneously. The view inspired by canonically quantized general relativity is that there is no time at all since basic object of dynamics is 3-geometry. Unless one is ready to deny the subjective experience of time flow this statement must be phrased to read "there is no geometric time but there is subjective time". The lack of geometric time however leads to grave difficulties since special relativity, the notions of energy, etc.. rely on the existence of geometric time. If one replaces 3-geometry as fundamental physical entity with 3-surface in the 8-dimensional imbedding space of TGD, one has both geometric and subjective time. Thus the one gets from Barbour to TGD by replacing 3-geometry with 3-surface.
The basic objection against quantum modelsof free will is that they cannot explain precisely targeted intention. They predict only probability distribution for the outcomes of quantum jumps and this means randomness. In TGD intentions are represented at spacetime level as p-adic spacetime sheets and the transformation of intention to action as a quantum jump in which p-adic space-time sheet transforms to a real one is TGD based approach to intentionalty. This does not yet explain the precise targeting of intention. If system generates p-adic ME transformed to positive energy ME it ends up to a state of lower energy and having momentum opposite to that of ME. There are however a large number of spontaneously occurring transitions which would mask the effect of the intentional transition.
Second key element needed is the possibility of negative energy spacetime sheets (spacetime is 4-D surface in imbedding space), in particular negative energy MEs. The generation of p-adic ME which transforms to negative energy ME in intention-to-action quantum jump gives for a system involved positive energy and also a definite momentum as a recoil effect. Transitions to higher energy states do not occur spontaneously so that there is no background masking the intended transition. Thus precisely targeted intention is doing something which does NOT occur at all spontaneously (and is impossible in standard quantum physics)!
A further objection against quantum theories of consciousness is that quantum jumps are random phenomena so that intentionality cannot be really understood. Intuitively intentionality corresponds to local randomness superposed with long term determinism due to the conscious planning. p-Adic fractal statistics realizes this intuition mathematically. The point is that rational spacetime points which are very near to each other p-adically are very far from each other in real sense and vice versa. What is small p-adically is large in real sense and vice versa. Therefore p-adic continuity for a p-adic spacetime sheet implies local chaos and long range correlations for the real spacetime sheet resulting from it in intention-to-action quantum jump.
Statistically intentionality differs from randomness in the following manner. If one measures the state of the system N times during time interval T at evenly spaced time intervals, randomness would predict that the frequencies for different outcomes converge to probabilities as N grows. For p-adic fractal statistics this does not occur and real probability concept fails, much like the attempt to measure the length of fractal coast of Britain fails. In p-adic case however the frequencies for N and N+ kp^n, n large enough number are near to each other. One can perform this intentionality test for any system, be it molecule or magnetosphere, and determine the value of p and resolution dependence of the statistics is the signature of intentionality.
Fred Alan Wolf: The problem arises when we attempt to conceptualize time. We can only do this through metaphor and the metaphors aren’t really capable of encompassing time itself. Hence we do improperly define time. Here is the crux: what we experience and how we order our experiences are not interchangeable-one doesn’t map onto the other except approximately. We see this approximation in terms of causality and synchronicity-two broad categories that each attempt to provide logical but inconsistent description to experience. In the causality camp we have the usual logical western point of view of one thing-event-2-happening after another-event-1-because of the first thing-event-1-that happens. In the synchronicity camp the order of the events becomes immaterial and often we see event-2 determining event-1 even if the events occur simultaneously or for that matter in any time order. Logic is a subject-predicate construction of mind, hence we will order or attempt to order the events as consistent either way.
Q2. What do you think is the relation between our consensus notion of time and the reality in which RV information exists? Does information "flow" back from a future event as in retro-pk and precognition, or is it already "out there", as Joe McMoneagle suggests, in "no time"? What is the meaning of action, of separation between events, if all information about all events is already available? Do we construct spacetime as a function of intersecting perspectives?
M. Pitkanen: If quantum jump is the the "elementary particle of consciousness", it is not possible to locate consciousness in spacetime but is in the nowhere between two different quantum realities which in turn are quantum superpositions of classical realities (spacetime surfaces). Conscious information can however be said to be *about* a particular region of spacetime, spacetime sheet. This spacetime sheet changes its shape and size in every quantum jump (10^39 quantum jumps per second), and if mindlike (having finite duration with respect to geometric time), it drifts towards geometric future. The belief that there is single objective reality so that information is already there would leave the conscious mind outside the classical universe or force to identify the conscious mind with it. That the concious information is always in the change replacing reality with a new one conforms with the fact that we perceive only changes.
For instance, we perceive only spatial changes in illuminations at particular wavelength as color transformed to changes with respect to subjective time by saccadic motion of the eye. How to define information measures is however a highly nontrivial problem.
a) One could define information as gain of negentropy/ loss of entropy: this looks very natural definition as far as one considers conscious information.
b) We are also used to assign simple information measures to static objects such as computer files representing bit sequences. This suggests that Shannon entropy somehow fails to detect all that is relevant to information. Conscious information is certainly associated with cognition and in TGD framework cognition corresponds to p-adic physics. p-Adic entanglement entropy must be defined using number theoretical counterpart of Shannon entropy and the real surprise was that this entropy can be also negative so that cognitive entanglement can carry positive information.The interpretationis that the experience of understanding corresponds to p-adic entanglement with negative number theoretic entropy. One could generalize this notion also to real bound state entanglement with rational or algebraic entanglement coefficients.
Quantum classical correspondence suggests that spacetime surfaces to some degree represent various aspects of quantum and consciousness and that one can assign information measures to spacetime sheets. The non-determinism of TGD based classical spacetime physics indeed allows even a (non-faithful) representation of quantum jump sequences as sequences of fully deterministic spacetime regions. If spacetime sheet contains N fully deterministic regions one can assign to it statistical ensembles by dividing this set of regions to equivalence classes by some criterion and assign to the i:th equivalence class containing N_i regions a rational valued probability as the ratio p_i= N_i/N .
If one accepts the new number theoretic information measures allowed by p-adic variant of the Shannon entropy, one can assign to any spacetime sheet a positive definite and unique information measure as that number theoretic entropy (Shannon entropy defines always non-positive information measure) which is maximum. Same applies to p-adic spacetime sheets. I believe that spacetime surfaces, imbedding space, and configuration space of 3-surfaces are real. I can never prove my belief since neither space-time surface, imbedding space, configuration space, nor configuration space spinor fields are conscious. The fact is however that if I want to construct a theory explaining what I experience I must assume all this ontology: without the notion of spacetime I would lose all basic concepts of physics.
Doug Matzke: From the perspective of quantum spacetime, there is an infinite locality metric and no time. Using this panoramic view above/outside time, any information can be addressed directly without memory (movement of information thru time) or communications (movement of information thru space) resources. This involves directly tapping into the probabilistic based topologies of specific non-physical states, which most likely has universal meaning. I personally know several telepathic pairs of people and have experienced direct knowing in connection with nature. This agrees with descriptions of expansion of self in mystical traditions.
Fred Alan Wolf : I think Joe McMoneagle has it right. The need now arises to deal with the “no-time” realm with full insight and power gained from the research being carried out in psychology including quantum physics and RV. Defining meaning itself has different meanings. For me, meaning has an almost Socratic flavor; it means a kind of funny feeling that arises within my bodily boundaries when events both appearing within those bodily boundaries and outside of them appear to be intimately connected-as if I had rediscovered them again after having learned about them in some ancient time.
Q3. Joe McMoneagle has described a phenomenon he refers to as "a snap in reality", where essentially a remote viewer engaged with a target about to undergo a violent transformation at a quantum level (such as nuclear fission) is unexpectedly forced into a different spacetime perspective which makes it impossible to witness the critical event itself (see McMoneagle interview in this issue). Since a number of these experiments have been done blindly, with the subject having no prior information about the target, and such identical, atypical experiences were reported, one is forced to wonder about a possible connection between spacetime, matter and consciousness at a quantum level. Do you believe that consciousness gives rise to spacetime as a result of observation, that consciousness is embedded at the smallest level of material quanta, or is there another way in which you see these three representational aspects come together to form our reality?
Fred Alan Wolf : In “no-time” these events are not separate for “no-time” also means “no-space” and “no-matter”. Perhaps a bubbly cauldron of frothy spacetimematter at the Planck level is where we need to look.
M. Pitkanen: If remote viewing envolves entanglement with the target remotely viewed and if everything is conscious, it would not be surprising if the catastrophic event in target could induce sudden change of perspective. Sharing of mental images is what remote quantum entanglement makes possible. In TGD universe every piece of spacetime contributes to the contents of conscious experience of some self so that also the target would somehow contribute to the contents of consciousness of some self. The changing perspective would correspond to a change of mental image about target. Consciousness does not give rise to spacetime as a fictive notion. By quantum-classical correspondence spacetime surfaces can be seen as symbolic and cognitive representations for quantum and consciousness. We experience universe as 3-dimensional because the points of the configuration space are 3-D surfaces and we are quantum superpositions of 3-D surfaces. The notion of primary cognition introduced by Steve Bacster on basis of his experimental findings is the counterpart of sharing of mental images: plants, cells, bacteria and even molecules react to our emotions and violence suffered by animals or plans. At the level of our consciousness this ability is almost lost since the evolution of more and more privatized consciousness accompanying evolution of cognitive abilities tends to reduce entanglement with environment. Remote viewers possess this ability.
Doug Matzke: I would fully expect this based on a quantum mind perspective. This perspective is compatible with PK using radioactive REG devices, early mortality of semiconductor devices around some people, perception of mechanically generated chi (using quantum processes), copper wall, occult chemistry phenomena and etc etc. Let’s stop trying to prove it and embrace predicative theories to design useful next generation devices based on quantum noise injection principles.
Q4. In somewhat of a corollary to this question - is there any way, from a purely physics-theoretical point of view, that we can continue to hold onto the standard materialistic model - i.e. matter existing on an absolute background of space-time and giving rise to consciousness as an emergent property of increasingly complex living systems? If not - what are the major theoretical and experimental counter-arguments as far as you can list them?
Fred Alan Wolf : I find it hard to believe that even so-called “standard materialists” still exist. I feel more or less sure that even materialism has undergone a big change these days what with relativity bending minds as well as space and time, and quantum physics implying a deeper “mindlike” reality or essential probabilistic reality underlying materialism.
M. Pitkanen: I see no way to hold onto the materialistic view, even the proper definition for the notion of emergence is impossible in materialistic framework. I list only the most important philosophical paradoxes implied by the materialistic view. Determinism-non-determinism paradox related to quantum measurement problem; observer as an outsider only able to affect the physical reality by quantum measurement; the dissipative and irreversible observed reality versus the non-dissipative and reversible realities of fundamental physics; the problem of how the initial values in Big Bang were selected; the lacking justification of anthropic principle; the assumption that only single solution of field equations represents the "real" reality meaning that there is in principle no way to test the theories since one cannot study the entire solution spectrum. What puzzles me is that the deep crisis of modern physics obvious from this list is not topic number one in the discussion when two physicists meet.
D. Matzke: This topic is so last millennium’s physics. Everything is quantized even classical space and time at Planck’s level. Everything is bits even black holes and qubits. Quantum research proves this. Everything is quantum and everything is intelligent. The problem is this cannot be directly measured, since is quantum based.
Q5: It has been argued repeatedly over the past century that the formalism of QM, as well as macro-scale evidence such as retro-pk, seem to require that observation become an integral component of reality - that is, all events exist in a superposition of probable states up until the moment of observation. Braud's and Radin's RPK reviews have recently pointed out (2000) just how ubiquitous the effect of conscious intent is - retroactively biasing the behavior of random number generators, human skin conductance and heart rate, the movement of steel marbles, small mammals and humans. At the same time, the evidence seems to suggest (Braud) that once a state has been conciously observed, it is no longer susceptible to modification by intent (that is, if an intermediary observer views the pre-recorded RNG data in the typical Schmidt retro-pk experiement, the data is no longer amenable to skewing by the subsequent observer). Clearly, the question that begs to be asked is - what exactly constitutes "observation"? Peoch's chick/robot pk studies (PA Conference 1998) suggest that animal intent is capable of interacting with RNG events as well as human intent. What about subliminal awareness - would that interfere with retro-pk susceptibility as well? How can we begin to quantify the effect of consciousness on material systems, and what might that tell us about the possible qualitative differences between conscious, local mind and subconscious, nonlocal Mind?
M. Pitkanen: The notion of self hierarchy forces to take seriously that both higher and lower conscious entities are present: our mental images are the nearest conscious creatures below us in the hierarchy and we can experience their presence directly. One is forced to reconsider what one means by subsystem in many-sheeted spacetime since the spacetime sheets a resp. b glued to larger spacetime A resp. B can be joined by what I call join along boundaries bond. This means that the selves A and B which are unentangled can have sub-selves a and be which are entangled to represent a mental image shared by A and B. This is impossible in standard physics. It could mean that the levels of self hierarchy below us can involve shared mental images which we are not directly conscious of.
TGD based model for sensory organs leads to the view that primary senesory organs are the seats of sensory qualia. Even more, skin and olfactory organs could routinely entangle with external world and provide remote sensory information which is not directly conscious to us. There is a good reason for this: there is not much sense to get drowned to information not directly relevant to us. For instance, the galvanic skin response associated with remote mental interactions could reflect the fact that it is skin which consciously shares mental images and that these mental images are sometimes communicated to our level. Some dog's are known to have ability to precognize that their master is coming home or is going to have an epileptic attack. The explanation that dog's olfaction is somehow involved might be correct in the sense that it olfactory remote sensing is involved. Callahan has shown that at least in case of insects oflaction is basically infrared vision and one can ask whether negative energy IR vision could be basically involved and give rise to olfactory qualia. Support comes from several findings. For instance, Callahan has found that insects find more easily plants suffering from denutrition: the explanation is that the starving plants generates negative energy IR MEs getting in this manner metabolic energy and these MEs entangle it with the insect which thus pays the metabolic energy bill and gets the honey as a reward. Same mechanism could apply to epileptic attacks and dogs.
Fred Alan Wolf : Certainly a first person’s observation-whatever that means-alters the ability of a second observer to perceive; that fact quantum physics indicates very well. My question would be what would it mean to quantify consciousness? How could it be numerically comparable with another “thing”?
D. Matzke: If a quantum god existed outside classical spacetime, he/she could influence any quantum state any where at any time, even if this is overriding some local physical effect and even if causing a temporal paradox. The quantum world allows complete paradox (called superposition). It is only the physical world and the narrow mind of classical physicists that do not believe such a thing is possible.
Q6: How does a given system's state probability distribution affect its susceptibility to mental influence? That is - are more likely outcomes easier to obtain psychokinetically than the less probable ones? How does this correlate with the consequences flowing out of particular outcomes -are states "causally entangled" with other systems less labile to retro-pk than those of no further consequence, and could we eventually devise a quantitative measure of such "causal inertia"?
Fred Alan Wolf: Good question! This could lead to quite a debate. Probability distributions arise in two related but distinct manners.
(1) In the first manner known as the classical realm of estimating events, probabilities refer strictly to the subjective world of mind and its ability to estimate on a numerical scale the relative possibilities of events occurring. In this classical case the only reason a probability distribution arises at all, simply because the mind has incomplete knowledge as for example in the case of a flipped fairly weighted coin hidden from view where the probability of “heads” must be 0.50. The coin, although hidden, must have a “tails” side as well, and it could be “up”.
(2) In the second realm probability arises differently coming about through what is called a quantum wave function. A quantum wave function describes in a very specific manner based on complex variable theory, an abstract space of vectors called Hilbert space, and other abstract mathematical constructs together with their rules of operation, our knowledge of any physical system-that is any system that can be considered to be “physical”, external to mind, “out there”, “real” existing, and so on. Most physicists would agree with this. However quantum wave functions surprisingly and perhaps mysteriously include something else as well-they not only describe probabilities of physical things and events, but they also can change physical events and things when the quantum wave functions describing those events undergo change. It’s kind of like putting the cart before the horse.
In (1) we have the usual horse in front pulling the cart along wherein the horse is the physical world and the cart is the abstract world of mathematical functions. Change the physical world and the numbers-the probabilities-must accordingly follow. But in (2) the cart pulls the horse-change the numbers and the horse changes to suit.
Hence it is definitely true that the more likely outcomes are easier to obtain psychokinetically, if we posit that the mind is the realm of quantum wave functions and hence when the mind undergoes some form of change it must alter the odds, ergo the events. Going back to the hidden flipped coin. in realm (2) the coin is thought to not possess either a “heads” up or a “tails” up until an observer equipped with “head-tail” observational equipment arrives on the scene and has a look. He could arrive on the scene with a different apparatus that does not measure face details of the coin, but perhaps its color code and color code and side might be complementary variables. Hence if the knowledge of the coin were to become available to the mind, it would follow that the coin would change accordingly.
D. Matzke: Actually, our belief system keeps us from effecting probabilistic things except by accident. I am convinced that our brain is such a system and we influence it all the time. Did you ever wonder why the motor neurons are shaped like little pyramids (they are called pyramidal cells)?? Many people constantly cause infant mortality in electronic devices (watches, cameras, etc) and have boxes full of such dead electronics. They give up wearing watches of any kind and only buy disposable cameras. The copper wall experiments showed that people could generate 200 volts on isolated copper plates, which is more than enough to fry modern semiconductor devices. Nothing is truly causal, only highly probable.
M. Pitkanen: I am not sure whether I understood this question. I would use instead of "probability distribution" the word "the state of system". With this replacement the question transforms to the next question.
Q7. What type of targets are most prominent in remote viewing and why? Empirical evidence suggests that those events which have a survival value to the subject are more likely to induce pre-cognitive or pre-sentiments episodes. What does that say about the characteristics/ "storage"/ access of such information by an observer?
M. Pitkanen: In TGD based model of remote viewing viewer receives negative energy from target if target is in geometric future and sends negative energy to the target if the target is in the geometric past. For the remote viewing of the future the target which is in need of energy is optimal. For instance, dogs could precognize the epileptic attacts of their masters for this reason. This suggests obvious tests: could dogs precognize the arrival of a tired and hungry master better than master who is happy and well-fed? For instance, Backster's findings support this view in case of plants, bacteria and cells. In the viewing of the past the target which can provide energy by receiving negative energy is optimal. Sleeping brain satisfies the criterion since it does not utilize metabolic energy to motor actions and sensory perception. Remote viewing of thoughts of sleeping person might be a good idea. Also precognition should be optimal during (lucid) dreaming. Dunne's classic "Experiment with Time" and Joe McMoneagle provide support for this prediction. Critical systems are certainly optimal for remote viewing and PK.
D. Matzke: Something that a person has an affinity to or can correctly address. Mental noise due to mental chatter also can swamp the deciphering of an incoming rote. The key to connection is we attract similar information (birds of a feather is an information law, where as opposites attract is an energy law -N/S poles and +/- charges). Much more could be said on this topic, especially regarding the topic area: the don’t ask for the negation of some state, since according to quantum principles, that is it’s own unique state and you are attracting what you do not want.
Fred Alan Wolf: I would only guess here that the simpler the target is to visualize the easier it would be to “see.” Survival values I would only guess here would not help since I believe we have used biological adaptation to desensitize ourselves to not remote view. Indeed survival of the species seems quite pronounced into survival of the individual with a little help from our friends rather than survival of us all.
Q8: Beyond this subject-dependent target significance, what target-intrinsic aspects make some pieces of information more readily accessible than others? May and his team have demonstrated that targets with a higher entropy gradient yield a greater amount of data in RV (see the 1998 Convention of the Parapsychology Association and McMoneagle interview in this issue), while empirical evidence suggests (McMoneagle) that highly energetic targets, especially nuclear material, are particularly easy to identify. Any ideas about why these features would make a target more prominent to the subconscious - or whether it is merely the translation into conscious thought that is facilitated in such cases?
M. Pitkanen: I think that the finding of May and his team reduces to a general fact about sensory perception be it remote or ordinary (even ordinary sensory perceptions can be seen as memories in time scale of fraction of second, Libet's experiments). Entropy gradients correspond to spatial or temporal gradients are transformed to subjectotemporal gradients and qualia correspond to average increments of quantum numbers. Subjectotemporal entropy gradient measures the intensity of experience. There are also many findings supporting the view that collective multibrained/bodied selves are essential for remote viewing. These higher level selves could serve as kind of relay stations contacting remote viewer with target by quantum entanglement. This higher level multibrained self would entangle only with the targets which we find most interesting. I do not believe that the microscopic properties of targets are too important here, it is the relevance of target for the brains composing the multibrain. On the other hand, my previous argument suggests that targets which are highly energetic in the sense that they can receive negative energy are optimal for the remote viewing of the past.
D. Matzke: These are both unusual informational structures. We have worked with mechanically generated chi encoded on audiotapes. We continually had people coming up to us attracted by the unusual signature of these chi tapes (both consciously and unconsciously aware). The tapes were a kind of private “blue light special”.
Q9. If consciousness is indeed a fundamental (rather than emergent) ingredient of reality, what do you believe would be the most relevant experimental approaches we could conduct in order to understand more about the way it interfaces with matter and space-time? And what is further being done within the physics community to further probe the implications of Quantum Mechanics' "observer effect"? Has this branch of physics effectively transmuted into parapsychology - and if so, why is there virtually no support for parapsychology research from the physics community in the mainstream scientific publications?
Fred Alan Wolf: A considerable effort must be made to form theoretical models of what to look for. Again this may be the cart before the horse idea, but I am led to think that the main discoveries to be made will come to mind first before they are witnessed as physical events. I think of how Dirac “discovered” the positron in his own equations, well before anyone even thought to look for antimatter.
I am currently working on a number of possibilities having to do with self-reference arising through a means to directly record a quantum wave function in the brain and some ways to use the mind to accomplish time travel. Of these more shall be released in good time.
D. Matzke: In the same manner that quantum mechanics has a particle/wave duality (which leads to a paradoxical understanding) it also contains a energy/information duality, with its subsequent paradoxes. This duality effects our understanding and even affects our language. For example, I believe that the term “subtle energy” is a complete misnomer, because most of the effects are completely informational. The above question also betrays the same kind of classical bias (matter/energy/space/time) rather than a quantum perspective (informational, self consistency, a-temporal, non-local). Experiments should also be proposed from the quantum mind perspective (informational, probabilistic, noise, etc).
M. Pitkanen: I would regard quantum measurement theory with an intentional observer included essentially as a quantum theory of consciousness. If one accepts fractality and manysheeted spacetime, the problem of how cell can behave as a coherent whole differs in no essential manner from the problem what the mechanisms of remote mental interactions are.
Q10. Is there any compelling reason for which we should believe that the brain is the primary physical detector for nonlocal (psi) information and focus our comparative physiology studies on it? While the brain may be the primary transducer to conscious, analytical thought, the weight of evidence from DMILS experiments (from Backster and Sheldrake to Braud, Schlitz and Peoch, to Radin, May, Yamamoto and the Chinese histo-molecular studies with external qi) strongly suggests that all living systems, regardless of the existence or complexity of a brain, react in a consistent, intelligent manner to directed nonlocal information. The fact that this reaction is reproducible all the way down to the level of DNA, RNA and protein behavior (as directional changes in configuration, synthesis and transcription rates, mutagenesis and programmed death) seems to indicate that genetic material might be, both from an evolutionary and ontological point of view, the oldest, possibly most sensitive detector of psi information in our bodies. Given the relative simplicity of studying electromagnetic, physiological and metabolic DMILS signatures in a living tissue sample (see Backster), compared to the human brain, why is there no such work being done in the West? More specifically, why study the frequency spectra of an enormously complex environment like the brain and not those of a simple tissue sample during altered states of consciousness/psi function?
Fred Alan Wolf: Good question, I see no reason to focus in strictly on the brain. You might gather this from my remarks above.
M. Pitkanen: As far as human conscious experience is concerned, I see brain as a builder of symbolic and cognitive (p-adic) representations and a realizer of desires of the magnetic body, which is the intentional agent transforming its p-adic topological light rays representing intentions to negative energy topological light rays representing desires quantally communicated to brain of geometric past and inducing a response of the brain and material body as action. Ordinary sensory perception, motor action and memory are all based on same basic mechanism involving remote mental interactions in astrophysical length scales. Libet's strange findings about unreasonably long time delays of consciousness provide direct support for the view that sensory input is communicated to the magnetic body having size measured Earth's circumference as a natural unit.
For instance, long term memories involve quantum entanglement of the magnetic body with the brain of the geometric past to communicate the desire to remember by sharing of mental images. The time scale of geometrotemporal nonlocality is lifetime at least. In case of sensory and episodal memories also the remembered mental images results from sharing of mental images but since sensory and episodal memories are rare, the dominating communication mechanims would seem to be based on classical communications. But also this communication involves the magnetic flux tubes structures of Earth's magnetic field and/or Z^0 magnetic fields analogous to wave guides so that astrophysical length scales are involved.
In TGD framework qualia are at the level of sensory organs. Sensory receptors hear the music and brain puts it into notes and communites the symbolic representations to magnetic body. It might be that skin senses and olfaction involve also the highly nonlocal aspect and that we are in continual communication with other organisms without knowing it. One common language might be provided by memes. Memetic codons would be represented as sequences of 21 DNA triplets in intronic portion of the genome and expressed in terms of em or Z^0 field patterns associated with MEs. The duration of meme is .1 seconds and it consists of 126 bits. The common memes would define the vocabulary understood by the communication life forms.
The recent work with the model of EEG has however made it clear that memetic code what is only a special case although it might be common to all prekaryotes due to the universality of alpha band in ZEG. Any p-adic prime nearly equal to 2^k, k power of prime, defines a hierarchy of k-bit codes and durations of codon defined by n-ary p-adic time scales. The p-adic frequencies are constants of nature, and it turns out that the narrow resonance frequencies of EEG correspond to these frequencies and their differences and sums. This follows solely from simple number theory, not a single world about horrible complexities of brain dynamics! This model predicts also correctly that sleep involves 4 stages and relates the hierarchy p-adic codes in EEG range with the structure and function of brain. Universe seems indeed to be an infinite conscious computer communicating at all levels: both quantally by sharing of mental images and classical using these cognitive codes. Our level is only single node in this enormous Indra's net.
D. Matzke: Quantum/chi effects biological systems at every level, chemical binding, neurotransmitter gap, microtubules, DNA, brain statistics. I am convinced we can design an electronic device to amplify the probability distributions of mind, sort of a high-gain, advanced PK device. People can train to use these using biofeedback techniques and include them with children from day one. It is not electromagnetic, but rather shaking the quantum ether, as occurs with succussion in homeopathic preparations. Electromagnetics, gravity and sound can all shake the ether using acceleration/deacceleration. Think information not energy.
Q11. In his post-quantum mechanics, Sarfatti talks about self-referential Godel loops - two way "causal" relations between brain and mind, the quantum matter embedded in space-time and the quantum wave, existing in the field of information of Bohm's "implicate order", beyond space-time. Such action-reaction loops suggest that mind and matter continuously modulate each other, rather than exist as absolute causative agents. Considering what we now know about the experimenter effect, retro-PK and telepathic overlay, is physics heading into a new logical landscape - and what type of science is likely to come out of it? Do you believe our research goals are likely to change as a result - and how?
D. Matzke: Repeatable brain random correlithm object patterns can stabilize quantum correlithm object patterns. Stability of non-physical rote encoding is something that needs to be discussed more by this group. Perhaps this is like a dynamic balance, similar to a beach ball above a fan. I call this new field of study “spirited science” and is a union of physics and spirit. For example, I expect a “love pattern” machine could be built, using next generation chi generator technology. This entire field is ripe for technological discovery. For example, I hear a story about someone who had the most patents in a high tech company. He claimed to have brought them into existence by peering into his own future and writing them down. Also there are stories about people “walking” around in the “hall of inventions” in the virtual library of the akashic records. Many inventions are inspired in non-ordinary ways. Good ethics and social responsibility is key to the future unfolding of this kind of technology.
M. Pitkanen: I do not share the dualistic matter-mind view of Sarfatti and Bohm about reality. The self-referentiality of consciousness is a fact and probably one of the hardest challenges for quantum theories of consciousness. I see the self referentiality as resulting from quantum-classical correspondence. Quantum aspects of existence and even consciousness can be represented by (but not identified as) the topological structure of space-time surface. The possibility to represent some aspects of quantum jump sequences (selves) at spacetime level is basically due both to the nondeterminism of the fundamental variational principle and to inhered nondeterminism. of p-adic differential equations. Becoming conscious about one is conscious means quantum jump replacing the superposition of spacetime surfaces with a superposition in which surfaces represent something about the contents of consciousness before the quantum jump. What this means that the universe that we are exploring becomes more and more complex as we explore it: when we understand we create something which we do not yet understand. This is very much what mathematician is doing when he/she calculates: he/she is continually representing his/her contents of consciousness symbolically and this in turn is crucial for the evolution of contents of consciousness.
Fred Alan Wolf: Sarfatti’s ideas are worth considering. He believes the quantum physics will not be enough to come to grips with this. I, on the other hand, think that quantum physics with perhaps some slight modification may be sufficient.
6. Memes, Societies and the Functional Architecture of the Collective Unconscious
For the past two years we have devoted our attention to remote mind-mind and mind-matter interactions, attempting to identify preliminary observations, draw empirical conclusions and draft working models of this yet very primitive human skill. We have done so by focusing almost exclusively on the personal perspective, with little or no consideration for possible interactions between two or more individuals.
The time has come to ask ourselves: if one human being can remotely perceive and influence distant events, then what happens when over six billion individuals live, feel, believe, wish, fear and physically interact in a tightly bound space like our planetary home? Does the intent to acquire information or modify physical reality have to be explicit in order for such nonlocal communication to occur? Or are there information-loaded transactions which occur just beneath the limit of conscious awareness? Do we communicate with each other and the rest of this biosphere only by explicit intent - or is it the case, as Pitkanen suggests, that our conscious interactions occur on the surface of a vast ocean of inter-species and trans-species, subliminal sharing of mental images, which to a large degree account for the strength of social habits, instincts and mutual understanding? And if that is the case, how can we use this insight to responsibly and effectively evolve as a species?
The paradox of nonlocal consciousness is that the acute sense of freedom to which it leads is surpassed only by the enhanced appreciation for the myriad of physical details and emotions which form our spacetime-bound manifestation. Rather than a prison which one strives to escape, the place we inhabit becomes an act of constant creation, a dance in which perception, belief, intent and above all the ability to create resonant interactions with others become the tools allowing us to re-shape reality in the image of our collective psyche (see Elgin's Collective Consciousness and Cultural Healing). But for these tools to become more attractive to the average human being than the time-tested stratagems of narrow self-interest and material power, the scientific community will have to openly embrace and actively pursue this area of research. The scientists featured in this issue are all pioneers whose courage and vision has, for the first time in our history, cracked open the door to an official overhaul of our self-image as a species. Hopefully their work will be not only admired, but continued with the same degree of seriousness and integrity by new generations of researchers. (Sidorov)
Today, remarkable stories emerge almost daily with such unlikely headlines as, “DNA Found to Have ‘Impossible’ Telepathic Properties”. Even in light of credible scientific evidence, such mind-boggling conclusions beg the question, “how can this be?” The short answer is we have no idea, at least not yet, even though “DNA has been found to have a bizarre ability to put itself together, even at a distance, when according to known science it shouldn't be able to."
If “intact double-stranded DNA has the “amazing” ability to recognize similarities in other DNA strands from a distance” (NOTE 1: Sato) does this suggest we might be able to do similarly at the organismic, rather then molecular level?
Psi research studies anomalous processes of information retrieval or energy transfer that cannot be explained by conventional means.
In 1973, the international expose Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, by Shiela Ostrander & Lynn Schroeder became a best-seller. Former Naval Intelligence Officer, Dr. Carl Schleicher actively wondered why the U.S. had no comparable program in psychotronics, where esoterics meets science. He resolved to create one, recruited authors Ostrander & Schroeder to turn over their untranslated data, and began collecting researchers and creating experimental protocols. Thus, in 1973, Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU) in Washington D.C. was born as a private company, seeking government and corporate contracts. (Miller & Miller, 2003)
The irony of this Cold War era, is that the Soviets thought we were using psychic spies, so they began their program, which in turn sparked actual US interest, based on their claims of success. Soviet interest in psi was piqued in February 1960 by a story in the French magazine Science et Vie (Science and Life) entitled “The Secrets of the Nautilus.” It claimed that the US government secretly used telepaths to communicate with the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, while it was under the Arctic ice pack. This telepathy project allegedly involved President Eisenhower, the Navy, the Air Force, Westinghouse, General Electric, Bell Laboratories and the Rand Corporation.
Communicating with submarines is difficult as radio waves do not penetrate to the depths of the ocean. Extremely low frequency (ELF) waves are used to signal the submarine to come to the surface to receive a message. These super-long waves penetrate almost anything including water but carry little information. If telepathy could work it would be a perfect method of communicating with submerged submarines. The story was probably a propaganda hoax but the Soviets were spurred into action.
The Cold War among psychic spies is recounted in James Mills’ book THE POWER (1990), which is loosely based on MRU’s principle spyentist, “KT,” a longterm advisor to Dr. Schleicher and Joint Chiefs of Staff. The fictional Jack Hammond is a scientific intelligence officer for the "Monday Afternoon Group', America’s top secret paranormal research unit, employing occult forces for intelligence and military objectives. As Mills notes, “The most terrifying weapon lies in the darkest regions beyond the human mind”.
Blue Sky research became of interest to both the government and private sector. It spread from R&D thinktanks into the open-minded counterculture then to the mainstream. Along the way, these revolutionary ideas became the obsession of "spooks", "spyentists", "spycologists", psychedelic physicists (Esalen Physics Group) and a whole host of fringe characters and psychics. Psychotronic researchers broke through the Iron Curtain and brought their discoveries to the West. Many world-class scientists and engineers passed through the threshold of MRU.
In the 1970′s, clandestine programs were conducted at Standford Research Institute (SRI) in Remote Viewing. In the 1980s, the Army applied it militarily in the New Earth Battalion, (“Be all that you can be”), subject a book and of the 2009 movie, “Men Who Stare At Goats.” Likewise Special Forces, such as Navy Seals, began using paranormal ESP training for rapid intuitive decision-making in the field, and more. One of Dr. Schleicher’s earliest experiments involved dowsing — not for ‘witching’ a water well, but to find and trace Vietcong tunnels and tunnel rats. Results warranted contuation of the program in the field.
Complementary medicine, including energetics and transpersonal therapies, was another area of research developing in this same era. Biophotonics led to the detection of biophysical communications systems and healing applications. Some of Japanese scientist Dr. Hiroshi Motoyama’s (Ph.D. degrees in Philosophy and Physiological Psychology) original mind-body research took place in conjunction with MRU and its personnel as well as his California Institute for Human Science, and separately with the first Motoyama-Bentov Fellow, Dr. Marshall F. Gilula, M.D. Research was designed to detect the potential influence of the mind of one person over the body of another, both locally and remotely. This is one scientific root of today's popularized remote healing techniques, including Reiki.
Promising Potential
Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who did his own telepathy experiment from the dark side of the Moon, founded the Institute of Noetic Science (IONS) in 1973. It explores different ways of “knowing”, including spiritual practices and exploration of transformative relationships. IONS prominent role in Dan Brown’s 2009 best-seller, THE LOST SYMBOL, fixed the meaning of "noetic science" in the public imagination. The Esalan Physics Consciousness Group was founded at the same time by fellow scientists Jack Sarfatti, Nick Herbert, Saul-Paul Sirag, and Fred Alan Wolf, to investigate “The Fringe” by studying frontier science subjects such as time travel, consciousness after death, and ESP.
MRU alumni, Uri Geller with his ESP and spoonbending parlour tricks captured the public imagination and led to crazes in firewalking and other demonstrations of extraordinary human potential. Few in the public understood the spectrum of psychotronics or noetics, but the old mechanical model of the mindbody relationship died and a new model based in psi, mind-body healing and subtle energies emerged aimed at developing innate human potentials and creative capacity. Boundaries between inner and outer experience collapsed.
The pioneering American Psychotronics Assn. (APA) led to other institutions in the following decades, such as The International Society for the Study of Subtle Energies and Energy Medicine (ISSSEEM), an interdisciplinary organization for the study of the basic sciences and medical and therapeutic applications of subtle energies, and The Princeton Engineering Anomalies Laboratory (PEAR) laboratory. The holistic paradigm led to multi- and transdisciplinary approaches to research on psi phenomena and consciousness studies.
The new consciousness paradigm opened our culture to the holistic world of complementary medicine, the human potential movement and the idea that we, too, could participate directly in the mysteries of nature and Cosmos. The premise was that the strangest phenomena have the most to teach us about science and ourselves. New interdisciplinary specialties in parapsychology, biophysics, accelerated learning and alternative medicine emerged. MRU was at the forefront of this cultural revolution, which promised transformational breakthroughs in personal and collective consciousness, integral healing and a new worldview. The fascinating history of early psi research is summarized by Jeffrey Mishlove in his classic The Roots of Consciousness, and MRU’s homepage. http://mankindresearchunlimited.weebly.com/
Many MRU associates went on to produce early classics in paranormal literature. Dr. Stanley Krippner included work by MRU scientists and others in his ground-breaking anthologies, including multiple volumes of Advances in Parapsychological Research (1977-1997) and numerous popular works such as Varieties of Anomalous Experience (2000), Psychoenergetic Systems (1979), and The Energies of Consciousness (1975).
Technovelties
Blue sky projects that begin as implausible can produce incremental advances that eventualy result in applied technologies, even if it takes decades. It is bottom-up versus top-down research. Bottom-up means exploring from the known to the unknown, seeing if there are any serendipitous opportunities that emerge. By its nature, bottom-up work is unpredictable, based in some kind of intuition.
Top-down means problem directed, oriented to solving a problem. The reality dimension, how realistic the project is, shows up independently for either. Some bottom-up projects are highly realistic, other top-down projects are somewhat unrealistic. No one knows in advance which research directions will deliver.
We now take for granted many once-magical technologies even better than those in sci-fi space operas that emerged from the inspiration of the “Star Trek philosophy.” It became Dr. Schleicher’s policy not to dismiss any outlandish idea for fear of missing some breakthrough. That led to a wide scope of blue sky investigation.
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), founded in 1958 when the Soviets launched Sputnik, is the Pentagon’s autonomous Blue Sky agency. Such projects are still conducted behind closed doors by DARPA, who’s “holy grail” is cracking the the brain’s code to build a brain-computer interface and Artificial Intelligence.
Many dark chapters in brainwashing and mind control have been written since the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations began its massive social engineering program after WWII and teamed with CIA to deploy nefarious experimental programs, such as MK Ultra. There is a Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Psychic Center and the NSA (National Security Agency) studies parapsychology, that branch of psychology that deals with the investigation of such psychic phenomena as telepathy, clairvoyance, extrasensory perception, and psychokinesis. They also did experiments where the mind of one person controlled the bodies of others (Motoyama).
MAKES ME WANT TO PSI
The spontaneous event commonly called psychic experience, perception or ability is called 'psi' in scientific arenas. Even more precisely, it is now often referred to as anomalous cognition (AC). A particular form of intentional AC is known as Remote Viewing. Between 1978-1995 the U.S. government sponsored the Stargate Program, in conjunction with Stanford Research Institute (SRI), a psyops development think tank.
The existence of psi or ESP abilities has been hotly debated among scientists for decades, since J. B. Rhine began his experiments in 1927. Both the pro (Dean Radin; Ingo Swann; Jessica Utts, Russell Targ; Hiroshi Motoyama) and con (James Randi, Susan Blackmore, CSICOPS) positions have their "true believers", and it seems never the twain shall meet.
Psi is still a paradigm that lives on the outskirts trying to become a sanctioned science. But just because a subject is controversial, and happens to be a space and time transcending experience, doesn't mean we shouldn't investigate it. In fact, it beckons us to focus on it even more thoroughly to reveal the truths hidden there and the gaps in our current models. We simply need to do it with stringent, critic-proof methodology.
There are a variety of psi powers, rooted in chi, prana or ki, known for centuries in Eastern philosophy as siddhas, exceptional human abilities. The uninitiated or skeptical may be perplexed or daunted at the prospect of coming to any rational conceptual understanding of these anomalous phenomena, which have been associated with the realm of mysticism, superstition and the supernatural.
In actual fact, research by this author, who is a certified hypnotherapist (A.C.H.E.), and others (Miller; Ryzl) shows that nearly anyone can improve their psi ability through simple techniques of self-hypnosis.
Psi is also at the root of focused intent, distant mental interactions, distance healing and therapeutic rapport, where there is a subtle shared consciousness and often brainwave synchronization. This capacity is within everyone’s grasp, as the human potential movement demonstrated with such trance phenomena as fire walking and guided imagery.
We've virtually all had those uncanny or awesome experiences where we seemed to intuit, dream, or "know" something in advance of conventional means. Sometimes it is called pre-sentiment. Around 55% of reported incidents occur in dreams. Krippner was among the first to conduct experiments in Dream Telepathy. Another example, is the synchronicity at work in the affairs of “star-crossed lovers.” When we are in love, we seem to share the same “wavelength,” virtually able to read one another’s minds. Who hasn’t thought of a friend or acquaintance only to have the phone ring?
Often the most compelling stories come from those who don't even "believe" in the phenomenon, but find themselves experiencing it, usually in the unfortunate circumstance of the illness, injury or death of a distant loved-one. Psi is not just a mental perception or conception; we feel it in our guts, in our bones, in our marrow. It is first and foremost a holistic mind/body experience.
According to leading researcher Dr. Stanley Krippner, "At one level of investigation, there already are 'replications' and 'battle-tested' results, specifically the finding that about 50% of an unselected group will report having had a 'psychic experience,' supposedly involving those psi phenomena that have been given such labels as 'telepathy', 'clairvoyance', 'precognition', and 'psychokinesis' [mind over matter]. This percentage may vary from one culture, age group, and educational level to the next, but it has been repeated, in one study after another, for the last several decades."
The move in biophysics is to take psi research from endless theorization, proofs of existence and boring replications beyond the "gee whiz" anecdotes into innovative and practical experimentation. The problem is that in order to do that scientifically, one has to risk credibility and professional suicide, as well as being underfunded.
OPEN SESAME
Though it often seems confined to mediums, channels, sensitives, or ESPers, most individuals are capable of expressing some nonlocal communication or psi phenomena. However, that ability may be blocked for various reasons by an adaptation to consensus reality, to conventional thinking. We need to develop “out of the box” thinking. Even Einstein said that past, present, and future are illusions, even if they are stubborn ones. Conscious calculation rarely plays a role in ESP; the same is true for creativity, including healing.
Both ESP and creativity have deep taproots in the psyche. Pang and Forte (1967) found some evidence of a relationship between creativity and ESP, as did others (Honorton, 1967). Frederick Myers reported that a large proportion of ESP experiences occur in altered states such as dreams, trance, hypnosis and creativity while Masters and Houston (1966) counted it among the varieties of psychedelic experience.
ESP, hypnosis and mind-expanded states have sensitivity to the unconscious at their core. And that subconscious expresses itself through symbols, imagery, and sensations to communicate with the conscious mind. Hypnosis is the "open sesame" to the waking impressions and sensory images of the deeper mind/body.
The elusive ability to swing back 'the doors of perception' and enter the numinous realm of the collective unconscious was described by psychologist C. G. Jung. Whether deliberate or accidental, anyone can open to the force of this revealed process, to this dynamic information field. Those who frustrate themselves with self-defeating behavior in other areas of life often show poor psi performance.
Positive ESP scores seem to correlate generally with traits such as openness, high self-esteem, warmth, sociability, adventuresomeness, relaxation, assertiveness, talkativeness and practicality. However, some psi-talented individuals often don't score well in laboratory settings.
On the other hand Russell Targ (1994) claims, "[P]si is no longer elusive; it can be demonstrated when needed for study and investigation." Even though psychic training to strengthen the signal line is possible, unpredictability has been the hallmark of this emergent gift. To overcome this problem in both the theoretical and experimental arenas requires a marriage of the disciplines of physics, biology, medicine, psychology, and hypnosis. In 2012, Targ released The Reality of ESP: A Physicist's Proof of Psychic Abilities.
Dean Radin's Entangled Minds (2006) and The Conscious Universe (2009) continue the documentation and exploration in this field. Another excellent theoretical review is Claude Swanson's The Synchronized Universe: New Science of the Paranormal (2003) and Life Force: The Scientific Basis (2009). Long-term players in this field, such as Frank Maye, of Maye Holistic Med, have applied such research to integrative global healthcare.
Findings from all these fields converge in the paradoxical subject of Extra-Sensory Perception. As the ideas of quantum mechanics, relativity and parapsychology slowly make their way into our collective consciousness, our common-sense views on time and causality find themselves more strained than they've ever been in the course of human history.
Will this challenge remain the domain of theoretical science, or can we foresee a day in which the general understanding, and even the experience of the average individual, will be shaped by this new perspective on reality? (Sidorov, 2003, “The Mind In Time”).
It takes many disciplines, as well as the latest findings in physiology, neurobiology and information theory to begin to formulate any comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and bridge the conceptual gap. ESP used to be studied in Parapsychology, an adjunct of psychology. But its subject matter has become so mainstream, the field has been return to ordinary Psychology by the APA. ESP “software” is studied in psychology, but ESP “hardware” is the domain of biophysics.
Researchers are probing the interface between matter, spacetime and mind with increasing precision. There is optimism that ultimately conventional pathways will be found to explain their appearance. Suggestions have included Schumann Resonance as a nearly-instantaneous carrier of psi information or perhaps paradoxical quantum nonlocality or coherence to account for it.
There are many models that provide potentially viable explanations. The mental aspects can perhaps be described psychologically, but the mechanics require models from physics. A variety of theories have been proposed, including neurological, holographic, electromagnetic, scalar, and quantum mechanics based hypotheses.
Like electricity, no one knows how psi works. However, to foster and practice psi we don't need to know how it works, anymore than we need to know the mechanics of internal combustion to drive a car.
The faculties of (1) Telepathy; (2) Clairvoyance; and (3) Precognition came into the public eye when stories of Russian and CIA remote viewers broke in the press. Major Ed Dames, a member of the original US Military Intelligence project at SRI, has offered live public classes in RV training as well as a DVD course (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Remote-Viewing-4-DVD-Course/dp/B0007YWY8A).
Remote viewing is a structured, teachable discipline that enlists the unconscious mind in gaining direct conscious knowledge about inaccessible targets - people, places, things, or events - in the past, present, or future. A remote viewer learns to focus and hold his or her unconscious attention on a target. Then, in a sequence of standardized steps, the viewer records information about the target in an organized format, either as written words or as sketches. Dames claims his methodology enables virtually anyone to learn powerful mind skills for information collection. But compelling, anecdotal stories alone do not satisfy the scientific method.
Stories of distance healing, a form of PK or psychokinesis (mind over matter), require another article of their own to do them justice. It may be easier to model virtual information transfer than mind over matter. "Spooky action at a distance" requires even stronger evidence than sensing at a distance. But is "distance" here really a factor or an illusion in a holographic simply-connected universe? The paradox of spacetime and relativity presents itself in psi as psycho-retrocognition, or time-reversed PK.
Though these experiences of knowing at a distance are called "extra-sensory," they often appear "as if" received by conventional sensory or mental means, for how else can we "know what we know"? It is a holistic psychophysical experience, affecting the whole self, physically, emotionally, mentally and often spiritually. The impediments of distance and time seem to dissolve; the barriers of spacetime are mysteriously overcome. The information is 'just there' in one form or another, whether spontaneous or facilitated.
1). Telepathy is a message, direct mind-to-mind communiction, direct knowing through being, a clear intuition or empathic awareness, often demonstrated in the psychotherapeutic setting. Telepathy is a transmission from one mind to another.
2). Clairvoyance appears as information about events at remote locations, manifesting as an image, or gestalt psychic impression, rather than a thought; (it is often linked to perception at a distance: so-called astral travel, out-of-body experience, or remote viewing).
3). Precognition is the most uncanny; transcending time, it seems to rend the veils of the future (jamais vu) and the past (deja vu) with strong, often unpleasant, premonitions.
According to Scientific American (Sept. 2002, p. 103), [apparently long after Pribram's pioneering holographic brain theory from the 70s], "in 1990 Herman Sno, a psychiatrist at Hospital de Heel in Zaandam, the Netherlands, suggested that memories are stored in a format similar to holograms. Unlike a photograph, each section of a hologram contains all the information needed to reproduce the entire picture. But the smaller the fragment, the fuzzier the resultant image. According to Sno, deja vu occurs when some small detail in one's current situation closely matches a memory fragment, conjuring up a blurry image of that former experience."
There are competing theories of deja vu, but the holographic concept of reality remains a leading contender in the biomechanical explanations of psi. Psi meaning comes through emotionally intense visual, auditory and kinesthetic experiences. It is a human potential we can learn to tap. We can use our intentionality as a probability perturbation instrument. We can use mental focus to alternately concentrate and relax our attention. Intent is suggested as a variable in transmission and reception in the exchange of extrasensory information, possibly within the range of ELF electromagnetic frequencies (Sidorov, 2002).
Stanford and Lovin (1970) found possible support for a relationship between the generation of alpha waves and ESP, as did Monroe (1971). More recent research has implicated the electromagnetic signals of Schumann Resonances as carrier of seemingly non-local transfer of information (Pitkanin, 2001). Persinger (1989) has suggested that psi information signals are actually carried on extremely low electromagnetic frequencies and our temporal lobe structures are sensitive to them.
Whether one believes in spontaneous psi experience, or not, it has a long and colorful history, in the mystic and healing arts of the East and West, and in science, even business. The difference is the trigger that evokes the experience. Management trainers have taught self-hypnosis as a means of fostering intuition, rapport and other practical applications of ESP. "Eco-warrior" Jim Channon continues to offer his paradigm-changing military innovations to the corporate world. His impressive client-list for Acturus Research & Design ranges from alphabet agencies, to Apple Computers, to Whirlpool. <http://arcturus.org/arcturus3/?q=node/4>
The role of ESP is inextricably bound up with other creative processes where information or inspiration seemingly appear from nowhere. Data acquired through ESP, prescient dreams and other imaginative thought processes riddles the stories of scientific discovery and creativity. Psychic detective work and investigative reporting has received mixed reviews, since following up on dry leads uses time and vital resources. Without controls, these anecdotes are difficult to evaluate.
In the arts, it has been said that "life imitates art," sometimes to uncanny proportions. Krippner (1972) recounts a story of ESP in creativity, whose prophetic detail later took on ominous tones.
In 1898, Morgan Robertson published a popular novel called Futility. It described the wreck of a giant ship called the Titan, considered "unsinkable" by the characters in the novel. Perhaps you recognize this oft-told tale as that of the Titanic, but it was not wrecked until April 15, 1912. In the novel, the ship displaced 70,000 tons (Titanic 66,000 tons), was 800 feet long (Titanic 828 feet); the Titan carried 3000 passengers and 24 lifeboats, while Titanic had only 20 lifeboats for the same number of people. Both ships sank while encountering an iceberg at the speed of 23-25 knots. The rest, as they say, is history.
FROM TRANCE TO CREATIVITY
The question becomes "How can we facilitate the emergence of psi phenomena, either for greater awareness or creativity?" Knowing what we know about psi expression, how can we train ourselves to encourage its emergence? Hypnosis or self-hypnosis simply helps engage the emotional mind, the imaginal mind, the biophysical mind rather than just approaching the task rationally and conceptually.
Unfortunately, the question of psi-facilitation was asked by covert forces during the Cold War, and much of the statistical and practical data on psi comes from those black-ops sources (CIA, KGB, NSA, DIA, DOD, U.S. Army and Navy). The Russians wanted to use psi for espionage and the US countered with its own team. Much of this government-sponsored work went on at Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International), by Puharich, Puthoff, Targ, and Swann.
Human potential advocates, Jack Schwarz and Robert Monroe separately pursued independent, more explorative and mystical approaches. Both taught consciousness management techniques through forms of self-hypnosis. Schwarz, practicing as the Aleithea Foundation in Southern Oregon, focused on bioregulation with autohypnosis and subtle human energies.
Monroe's techniques employ neuroregulation with the frequency-following response (which he trademarked with the Monroe Institute in Virginia, as Hemi-Synch) to induce trance, entraining both hemispheres in alpha and theta (1982).
Hemi-Synch, also known as binaural beat technology, actively drives the modulation of electrocortical activity through resonance effects, changing levels of awareness and arousal, attentional focus, and cognitive content. Often combined with biofeedback, it helps shortcut processes that would take years of technologically unassisted yogic training.
Graywolf Swinney (2001), Dr. Stanley Krippner, and Iona Miller have conducted trainings in co-consciousness (Erickson, Rossi & Rossi, 1976) and theta training at Asklepia Foundation, also in Southern Oregon. A deep state of rapport is used in psychotherapeutic journey processes, employing shamanic hypnotherapeutic techniques. Theta is reportedly the psychic range of the mind, generated largely in the temporal lobes. Co-consciousness is a shared virtuality, a telepathic rapport wherein both participant's brainwaves become synchronized into a single shared holographic biofield (Miller and Swinney, 2000).
Spontaneous psi phenomena have been associated with theta waves by Krippner (1977), the Greens (1977), and more recently by Persinger (1987). "Resonance" and "entrainment" have become new age buzzwords. Consciously producing theta requires quieting the body, emotions and thoughts simultaneously, leading to an integrative reverie, a deep focus of attention. Theta is often accompanied by hypnagogic or dream-like imagery emanating from the temporal lobes.
John Curtis Gowan (1975) catalogued the entire spectrum of extraordinary phenomena related to trance, art, and creativity. In his taxonomy, he called these distinctive modes or domains of human dynamics Prototaxic (Trance), Parataxic (Art), and Syntaxic (Creativity).
Trance is characterized by loss of ego, art by emotionally charged (often symbolic) imagery, and in creativity meaning is more or less fully cognized symbolically with ego present. In some ways, these modalities could represent the uncanniness of precognition, the imagery of clairvoyance, and the knowing of telepathy.
Trance is often associated with awe, dread, horror, and panic since ego control is weak or absent. These numinous effects are moderated in the artistic experience that comes as visualization, audialization, emotional inspiration, sensual, symbolic and mythopoetic imagery.
In terms of precognition, artists are often said to be perceptually "ahead of their time." Art is the transition phase in the relationship between the ego and the emergent transcendent function. Transcendence is a "quantum leap," a recurrent process, not a steady-state. It is a phase-transition moving toward illumination. The syntaxic experience of creativity is even more benign since the mind apprehends directly without ego dissociation. Psi experiences become more naturally integrated – regular, inspirational and uplifting while less frightening or awesome.
Gowan's work naturally included both hypnosis and ESP, which he cited as consciously or unconsciously operative at these various levels of dissociation, ego-involvement and levels of arousal (sympathetic and parasympathetic). Puharich (1961) found telepathic reception facilitated by parasympathetic activation, while sending the message was stronger with activation of the sympathetic, or adrenergic system.
For Gowan, the accessibility of certain psychic experiences depended on the mode of functioning. Intuitive self-knowledge is intrinsic to a wide variety of higher mental functions. Hypnosis and self-hypnosis are clearly linked to the primal trance, but can be applied in more integrated modes to enhance psi ability (Krippner, 1968).
PSI DEEPLY: HYPNOSIS & ESP
In 1967, the Czech government tried to co-opt the allegedly successful psychical research and training program of biochemist Milan Ryzl. After screening many candidates, he found 50 high-scoring subjects, and they proceeded to win several rounds of the Czech lottery.
“Milan Ryzl, a chemist who defected to the United States from Czechoslovakia in 1967, developed a hypnotic technique for facilitating ESP. . .Ryzl’s technique involved the intensive use of deep hypnosis sessions almost daily for a period of several months. The first stage of the sessions was to instill confidence in his subjects that they could visualize clear mental images containing accurate extrasensory information. Once this stage was reached, Ryzl concentrated on conducting simple ESP tests with immediate feedback so that subjects might learn to associate certain mental states with accurate psychic information. Subjects were taught to reject mental images which were fuzzy or unclear. This process, according to Ryzl, continued until the subject was able to perceive clairvoyantly with accuracy and detail. Finally, Ryzl attempted to wean the subject away from his own tutelage so that he or she could function independently. While still in Czechoslovakia, Ryzl claimed to have used this technique with some five hundred individuals, fifty of whom supposedly achieved success.
Other studies have shown heightened ESP in states of physical relaxation or in trance and hypnotic states. In fact, the use of hypnosis to produce high ESP scores is one of the most replicable procedures in psi research.” (Mishlove, 1975).
The standard definitions used for hypnosis often call it a borderline state between sleeping and waking, i.e. body asleep, mind awake. Any state characterized by an intense concentration of attention in on area, accompanied by a profound lack of attention in other areas, may also be considered hypnosis. It opens us to our psychophysical impressions by limiting external input.
With this type of definition, everyone is considered to be continually in a light state of hypnosis, witness “white line fever” while driving, or the plea, “I was spaced-out.” Musicians call it “being in the groove,” others “sharing a wavelength.” Our social roles are also like trance states with their intrinsic patterns. When we go in public we wear the ‘armour” of our persona and immerse ourselves in that self-image.
Charisma is also a form of hypnosis akin to Mesmer’s original “animal magnetism.” Traumas also create trance states with automatic behaviors that can persist for years. The “scripts, games, and rackets”of Transactional Analysis can also be seen as trance states, where we habitually replay our typical ways of dealing with self, others, and world. So the question becomes not “if” one is hypnotized, but what kind of trance and its depth one is in at any given moment.
The depth of hypnosis, which is an implied issue in this definition, may be defined as the difference between the intensity of concentration in one sphere or area and the depth of inhibition in others. Attention focused in one area creates a corresponding lacuna, or lack of attention, in other areas of the brain. Centering the attention for prolonged periods, often with suggestions for further deepening, leads to deeper states of hypnosis. With these definitions, a useful model for relating hypnosis to psi phenomena is possible, following Milan Ryzl's hypothesis.
Psi Theory:
Postulate I: The conscious experience is associated with the nervous processes which take place above a certain critical level of awareness/alertness. This function, defined as I(c), varies considerably in a state of hypnosis, where attention is focused.
Postulate II: Psi Energy, arbitrarily defined as E(psi), is an equivalent in the field of extra-sensory phenomenon of what, in our three-dimensional world, is called energy.
Correlate A: E(psi) is not limited by time.
Correlate B: E(psi) can not be transformed into other energies (i.e. physical energies,; converting heat into light).
Correlate C: E(psi) operates by manipulating the transformation of physical energies.
Postulate III: Psi Energy, is responsible for extra-sensory perception and psycho-kinetic phenomenon (PK).
Postulate IV: Psi Energy is the product of some aspect of the metabolic processes. Physical data regarding the relationship between metabolic processes and extra-sensory perception can be found in Beyond Telepathy, by Andrija Puharich.
Postulate V: The generation of Psi Energy rapidly decreases the level of alertness. This immediately explains why:
(1) each conscious act has a limited duration,
(2) why we experience a permanent train of changing thoughts, and
(3) why our attention permanently shifts from one object to the next.
When you think, Psi Energy is created. The Psi Energy automatically decreases the level of alertness so that one shifts to something else.
Postulate VI: The intensity of conscious experience, I(c), depends on the time rate of the generation of psi Energy. Mathematically, this is described as dE(psi)/dt = A(e) x I(c).
The rate of change of E(psi) as a function of time is equal to some geographical constant, A(e), times the intensity of concentration, I(c). More simply stated Psi Energy is equal to a geographical constant times the intensity of concentration, I(c), times the amount of time that the thought is held. E(psi) = A(e) x I(c) x t
If we cannot make any particular thought last long enough, it should be sufficient to repeat it again and again until the value of the individual brief periods add up to a sufficient value. The equation now becomes E(psi) = A(e) c I(c) x [t(1) + t(2) + t(3) + …]
Postulate VII: The formation of Psi Energy, which is created by a holistic psychophysical act, preserves the semantic control of the thought that created it. In essence, your thought is uniquely distinct. If you deviate from your thought slightly, it is a different thought-form, including the psychosomatic component. There is a tangible shift in the mind/body.
The Method:
(1). Formulate the question.
(2). Hold that thought for as long as possible.
(3). Assume that the event has occurred.
(4). Drop into a “blank mind” state and wait.
When questioning or desiring thoughts are intense enough, lasting long enough, or repeated frequently enough, psi is produced in sufficient intensity and structure to be detectable in the physical world. This may occur in hypnotic states, in states of intentionality, elated or traumatic emotions, or when interest, motivation, or desire is strongly increased.
The individual confronts the continuum with desire and prolonged concentration. The question being asked must be intense enough to impress itself on the unconscious. Lacking intensity, the signal will not be perceived. Intentionality strengthens the signal path.
Consciousness is then dropped into a “blank” state, an empty state, or “beginner’s mind.” The actual visualization is a switch from the concentrated point to the void. When this occurs the information is impressed on consciousness, resulting in a psychophysical perceptual event. This event is independent of both space and time.
Ordinarily when people spontaneously fall into trance states, they are generally not in a “blank mind” state of expectant emptiness pr "primordial awareness". There is the chatter of subconscious thoughts going on even as the process deepens toward sleep. These thoughts are generated and go on automatically at a subliminal level, often without awareness.
Consequently, the information or signal path gets distorted, and weird patterns emerge, much like those experienced in dreams. In a waking dream, distorted signals may be perceived as “spirit guides”, automatic handwriting, or other autonomous related phenomena of trance states. We have seen earlier that Gowan characterized this loss of ego-awareness as the Prototaxic Mode.
Puharich believes reception is enhanced by "parasympathetic activation" in which there is an increase in released acetylcholine. He claims that telepathic sending of information is easier when there is an increased amount of adrenaline in the system. These metabolic processes are not “causal” but merely correlates of psi. Psi meaning comes through intense visual, auditory, and kinesthetic psychosensory experiences.
This “energized enthusiasm” can be seen in states of emotional involvement and artistic inspiration (Parataxic Mode), as well as creativity (Syntaxic Mode). Parataxic experience consists of relationships with multisensory images whose meaning remains on the symbolic level.
Syntaxic experiences occur when the consciously aware ego cooperates willingly with the subconscious forces. Here knowing and meaning are clearer and fully cognized with minimal distortion. Other higher forms of concentration include biofeedback, meditation, tantra, peak experiences, higher Jhana states of yoga, and so on. Concentration is intense, structured and prolonged.
Discussion:
ESP is often observed in hypnosis, a state characterized by a single intensive thought. Recurrent cases of psycho-kinetic phenomena, such as the haunted-house variety, are often reported to be connected with previous trauma or tragic events, associated with intensity of concentration, I(c).
The frequently reported cases of crisis telepathy – ESP contact between two persons, one of which is dying or in grave danger – are necessarily associated with intense thought or concentration, even obsession and a highly aroused state. The length of time experienced depends entirely upon the circumstances; in some cases there is subjective dilation of time perception.
The discovery of mental impregnation, known in the literature as psychometry suggests that repeated identical thoughts increase the expected psychic effect. Wearing a ring for a long time may “imprint” memory of the wearer onto the ring; just slipping a ring on and off and handing it to a psychometrist will not generally reveal any memory of the wearer.
Religious or spiritual traditions assert that repeated prayers may be more effective than single ones. In other words, the more you repeat the same prayer, or mantra, or the more you do a single ritual, the greater the effect. Along that line of reasoning, “tithing” might be seen as a factor of one’s time or attention, rather than money. Some meditation schools, for example, require no money but 10% of your daily time (2.5 hours) in meditation.
The stimulating action of psi formation on the brain may account for memory, more particularly, active recollection. The influence of psi formation increases the level of awareness of the neuro-patterns corresponding to the thought to be remembered. The synapses are flooded over and over with the same chemical messengers and electrical signals. The correlating psychosomatic content is consciously re-experienced.
DREAM TELEPATHY AND BEYOND
“In 1969, Charles Honorton and Stanley Krippner reviewed the experimental literature of studies designed to use hypnosis to induce ESP. Of nineteen experiments reported, only seven failed to produce significant results. Many of the studies produced astounding success. In a particularly interesting precognition study, conducted by Fahler and Osis with two hypnotized subjects, the task also included making confidence calls – predicting which guesses would be most accurate. The correlation of confidence call hits produced impressive results with a probability of 0.0000002.” (Mishlove, 1975).
Krippner went on to conduct research in Dream Telepathy (1973) with Montague Ullman, following the lead of other Maimonides Hospital (Brooklyn, N.Y.) researchers, such as Frederick Myers. These experiments in nocturnal ESP are foundational and though never replicated, the results were highly suggestive of a strong psi correlation.
Their ten-year study concluded that dream reports can show the effect of telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition. Their hypothesis was that ESP is more common during dreaming than waking and therefore an "agent" could more easily transfer the target thoughts or imagery to a sleeping subject, influencing their dreams.
Such prominent dream researchers as David Foulkes (Belvedere & Foulkes, 1971), Gordon Globus (Globus et al., 1968), Calvin Hall (1967), Robert Van de Castle (1971), and Keith Hearne (1987) attempted to repeat these findings. Because the replication rate from these other laboratories was inconsistent, the Maimonides team did not claim to have conclusively demonstrated that communication in dreams can sometimes transcend space and time. However, they did open a promising line of investigation.
Years later, Stanley Krippner and Michael Persinger, a Canadian neuroscientist, reviewed the entire body of dream research data from Maimonides Medical Center, selecting the first night that each subject in a telepathy experiment had visited the laboratory. They matched the results of these nights with geomagnetic data, discovering that the subjects' telepathy "hits" tended to be higher during calm nights than during nights marked by electrical storms and high sunspot activity (Persinger & Krippner, 1989).
Persinger (1974) has urged using reported psi phenomena in new and ingenious ways, observing, "Across cultures and throughout history people have been reporting psi- experiences. Let us find out what they are saying. . .It is by looking at the similarities of the verbal behavior that we may find enough consistencies to understand the factors responsible for the reports” (p. 13).
Persinger (e.g., Schaut & Persinger, 1985) has examined several collections of spontaneous cases, including the 35 gathered by Stevenson (1970), reporting that they seem to occur most frequently when geomagnetic activity is calmer than the days before or after the experience - - and lower than the month's average activity.
This approach can be applied to any collection of cases (e.g., Persinger & Krippner, 1989) where the date of the alleged experience has been recorded. If repeatable, these effects may help to provide an understanding of the mechanisms underlying psi phenomena, and may even indicate a potentially predictable pattern for such events.(Krippner)
Geomagnetic field perturbations have been reported to affect biological systems by other investigators (e.g., Subrahmanyam, Sanker Narayan, & Srinivasan, 1985). Persinger (1989) has proposed two interpretations of the geomagnetic field effect. The first is that psi is a geomagnetic field correlate; solar disturbances and consequent geomagnetic storms affect this correlate. The second is that the geomagnetic field affects brain receptivity to psi, which remains constant.
In the latter interpretation, psi is always present in space and time, waiting to be accessed by crisis, emotion, or by optimal laboratory stimulus parameters. Geomagnetic activity may affect the detection capacity of the brain for this information, especially the neural pathways that facilitate the consolidation and conscious access to this information. Without this geomagnetic activity, awareness of the psi stimulus might not be as likely and the brain's "latent reserve capacities" would not be utilized.
Taking this argument one step further, Persinger (1989) points out that deep temporal lobe activity exists in equilibrium with the global geomagnetic condition. When there is a sudden decrease in geomagnetic activity, there appears to be an enhancement of processes that facilitate psi reception, especially telepathy and clairvoyance.
Increases in geomagnetic activity may suppress pineal melatonin levels and contribute to reductions of cortical seizure thresholds. Indeed, melatonin is correlated with temporal lobe-related disorders such as depression and seizures. (Krippner)
CYBER PSI TRAINING
So what direction can we expect psi research to take in this new millennium? Clearly, the experimenters themselves want to follow a self-directed course rather than the mandates of a government-driven program. They would like access to private, academic, and government funds, with leading edge equipment: high-ticket brain monitoring equipment such as 90-channel EEG, fMRI, SPECT, and ERP. They would like to practice without a professional stigma attached to their pioneering work.
Several theories of psi have been put forth throughout the years. Psychologist Rex Stanford, altered-states expert Charles Tart, post-quantum physicist Jack Sarfatti, and psi researcher Charles Honorton, as well as physicist Helmut Schmidt have all developed models for ESP and precognition. Each embodies certain possible, even plausible factors. Some researchers worked with Eastern swamis and yogis to understand the mechanisms and induction techniques or evocation of this psychic power.
Quantum theory predits that empty space (the vacuum) contains an enormous amount of residual background energy known as zero-point energy (ZPE). Physicist David Bohm, biologist Rupert Sheldrake (researching psychic pets) with his morphogenetic fields, and Ervin Laszlo propose zero-point or vacuum potential mediation for psi. The superdense quantum vacuum may be a physically real field, including but not limited to gravitation and electromagnetism. Perhaps it can transmit psi.
However, they can’t provide any experimental protocols that might test such theories. Is psi a field or a quantum effect? Fields link phenomena in time as well as space. But, fields themselves cannot be observed; only the influences propagating through them.
Other theories suggest phase-conjugate pilot waves, scalar waves, virtual states, hyperfield flux, holographic hyperchannel effect, complementarity, even uncertainty. Biophysical theories for the paranormal bridge include Josephson junctions, microtubules, and liquid crystals as psi transducers.
Honorton and others long ago found defects in old psi testing techniques and addressed criticisms with new methodology. They eliminated variables like subconscious cueing by covering the subjects’eyes with split ping-pong balls and playing “white noise” into their ears.
Researchers hypothesized that this neutral field would function as a less-distracting “blank canvas” for psi hits. So it served a dual purpose of refining experimental procedure and minimizing distracting sensory input. These experiments, (known as Ganzfield tests), were replicated by many experimenters in many facilities, with encouragingly similar positive results. Other tests were conducted in sensory deprivation chambers and electrically-shielded Faraday cages.
Experimenter bias, the tendency to find what one seeks, is an occupational hazard, though skeptics have found positive psi correlations. But careful interpretations of models, artifacts, experimental method, instrumentation, randomization, target selection, statistical inference, sensory leakage, recording errors, and controls can’t be rigorous enough.
Proper scientific control for ESP research has been refined over the years, though cheating and frauds have plagued the field, and the naïve scientist. One solution to this dilemma lately has been to experiment with the field-tested government Remote Viewers, who have established track records. They have their own reports of their subjective experiences – not the results of their missions – but the sensations that led to the observation or retrieval of those images.
Remote viewer Ingo Swann, called the father of RV, argues for the demystification of psi. Swann’s model supersedes the traditional psi paradigm and focuses on the hardware issues discussed in neurobiology and information theory.
Swann argues for systematic and deliberate development of this ability much like athletic training, as well as conceptual understanding. He prefers the term Distant Mental Interactions with Living Systems (DMILS) to ESP. He wants this capacity tested in the context of physical science as part of man’s natural spectrum of senses. He claims applying focus or attention on the perceptual apparatus with feedback on results “fine tunes” psi ability.
His concrete approach and insightful conclusions include his view of our sensory apparatus as a “transducer array” to convert information from one form to another. He calls his human “software” program a “mental information processing grid.” He simply converts various forms of input energy to another form his sensory system can “read.”
We do much the same when we interpret the electromagnetic signals that come through the air from a voice into meaning in our brains. He suggests we can develop the ability for several transducers of signals, depending on our exposure to the cognitive processing of these signals.
Targ claimed to see reasonably sharp and clear pictures. In remote viewing, if the mental picture doesn’t form, one is left with a mere “impression,” a less-precise signal. The signal is compared against memory to determine if it is meaningful to the task at hand – the target.
In other words, you can develop this ability through practice and feedback of the accuracy of your perceived signals. Pathways that work get reinforced. The process is very similar to psychophysical learning with biofeedback, such as alpha and theta training.
Swann argues for learning to fine tune one’s signal to noise ratio, learning to notice direct sensory data as well as imaginal signals, such as feelings, intuition, impressions. Repeated exposure and accurate feedback strengthens recognition of subtle and implicit relationships. Can cybernetic machines, such as random number generators, computers, and biofeedback devices help us hone psi faculties?
Swann emphasizes the difference between message and its structure. An experienced viewer can put together mental images from subtle cues. In RV, the signal appears as symbols, sounds, feelings, tastes, pictures, and holistic impressions. One learns to organize them based, again, on repeated feedback.
Misconceptions, fears, rigid concepts, body movement, excessive gastrointestinal activity, sleepiness, language categories, and other psychological “baggage” can be sources of confounding noise. Other blocks come from trying too hard, and distracting daydreaming or preoccupying thoughts. Telepathy, empathy or rapport, and charisma seem to be related and clearly come into play during therapeutic entrainment.
BIOPHYSICS OF PSI
Nothing is known about the physical mechanism of ESP, or anomalous cognition. No one knows what modulates performance. Even those who can demonstrate psi in the laboratory on demand, cannot account for signal nonlocality or distant interaction. The origins of the data are not revealed, only the conclusions with their level of resolution or accuracy. This is where the models of information theory and biophysics come into play.
Physicist Lian Sidorov proposes two working models for non-local communication and intent-mediated healing:
1). Direct transmission (entrainment) of specialized electromagnetic frequencies, observed primarily in proximal healing; and,
2). Distant healing and remote viewing/diagnosis, where the target’s electromagnetic profile is modulated from a distance via partial entanglement of subject-target.
She cites the research of Finnish physicst Matti Pitkanen as a model for “directed entanglement” between the subject and target – the magnetic sensory canvas hypothesis. Pitkanen conjectures that distance healing involves transfer of specific electromagnetic frequencies through quantum wormholes for near-instant transfer of information.
The transmission may trigger certain brain frequencies and psychophysical changes. Thus, amplification of the signal leads from quantum to macroscopic effects. Pitkanen suggests the brain is a sensory organ of our electromagnetic selves, and may be linked to planetary rhythms through Schumann Resonance.
In this model, the EM fields are not directly carried from sender to target. They are simultaneously generated at the two locations by a vacuum (geometrical) current. Therefore, they remain coherent while by passing the paradox of non-attenuation with distance. Neural processing and quantum events may interpenetrate.
This still doesn’t really account for origins of the data, but merely the transmission modes. Biophysics researchers are attempting to follow the signal back to its source. The research must be interfaced with current theories in the natural sciences. Then it can be considered empirical; the paradoxical anomaly can then be linked within the known framework of knowledge. Is there really a field, or field-like continua, capable of transmitting information beyond the recognized limits of time and space?
Laszlo (1996) suggests that the natural processes of complexity and chaos could amplify vacuum-level fluctuations into significant inputs to behavior, and that the brain, another chaotic system, could receive and amplify these signals which can penetrate into consciousness.
SHAVING WITH OCCAM’S RAZOR
Occam’s Razor is a principle applied in science that contends problems should be stated in basic terms, not making more assumptions than needed to choose the simplest of equivalent models. Many hypotheses are proposed, tested, and rejected. Their validity is debated exposing their flaws and underlying assumptions.
Additional relevant hypotheses and unrelated statements are weeded out. Experiments with the sensitivity reveal which yield the most accurate predictions. If two rival theories pass empirical tests, the simpler one must be preferred. When it comes to conspiracy theories, we apply Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
But before we can find answers, we have to ask the right questions. Once we ask the right questions, we often have all the information needed to solve the problem. Unfortunately, in the case of psi, it may be that our understanding of physics is still too incomplete to solve the riddle.
Lian Sidorov, as editor of Journal of Non-Locality and Remote Mental Interactions posed many incisive questions:
How is information stored and retrieved nonlocally by consciousness?
This simple question contains the essence of all psi paradoxes, from spontaneous events like precognition and telepathy to carefully engineered processes like retro-psychokinesis.
- How can one strengthen the signal line?
- What is the significance of electromagnetic signatures detected at the target in remote conscious interactions?
- What is the earliest physiological detector of psi information in the transduction pathway to conscious awareness?
- What determines the direction of information flow in nonlocal interactions; for example, between healer and patient?
- What are the technical requirements of an experimental program and how do we develop the most suitable types of equipment to detect such effects?
Sidorov (2003) summarizes this discussion with expert remote viewer, Joe McMoneagle:
“What you are saying seems to be that:
1. everything you will ever know is already contained in your universe, although not necessarily accessible to your conscious mind – that comes with the effort involved in RV, or is revealed spontaneously as in “precognitive”
2. “when” a given target event takes place relative to the experimental present is irrelevant, because all the information is already available;
3. other people’s expectation and feedback should not affect your results, as long you are careful to task yourself in a way which does not include those elements.
4. “Making contact” with the target is more like flipping to the right page in your book than reaching anything in space and time.”
Are there preferred pathways for the signals in psi phenomena, windows of psi “sensitivity”? How specifically is the target recognized? How does one modulate and target “intent”? How does the signal rise above the threshold of awareness?
Mental intent seems to create cognitive bridges between subject and object, operator and target. We can also learn to recognize certain psychophysical patterns in ourselves through feedback. The physical and the psychical are inseparable. There appears to be an energetic/informational component, perhaps based in EM frequencies and holographic interference patterns. Holographic processes do occur in nature, including holographic information storage. The holographic field is a physical reality composed of interference waves.
In Scientific American (Aug. 2003), Bekenstein poses the question “Are you a hologram?” and states quantum physics says the entire universe might be. Can a somatic EM hologram possibly amplify as little as one quantum of energy into an effective signal? Are there holographic hyperchannels? Information in a field is holographic and the propagation of holographic interference patterns is quasi-instantaneous. Every part of the field contains the whole informational content, just in lower resolution. Thomas Bearden echoes that concept in Excalibur Briefing.
“Each particle of mass in our bodies represents one closure of the entire universe – yielding a holographic reality – and deeper communication with ourselves is identical to communication with the universe, including any part of it, at any distance. Furthermore, in hyperspace the future and the past are all present. Since a particle does indeed exhibit a four-dimensional component for 1/137 of the time, each particle does connect to the future and to the past. With selective tuning and kindling any part of this holographic reality is accessible. However, because of the smallness of a single selective signal in the midst of the totality, the channel is quite noisy. For this reason skilled psychics – persons who have been found to have a greater fidelity for selective tuning – can be expected to produce better results than the normal person.” (Bearden, 1988).
Questions remain:
- Entanglement seems to occur somehow between all participants of a given intentional set-up. We have no idea how the non-local factor of target specificity is accomplished, other than intent and training. Do subject and target share a unified holographic field? Are standing waves picked up and carried by the Schumann Resonance, or transmitted by scalar waves or a gradient in the vacuum potential? Are the brains entrained on a resonant frequency? Does DNA function as a multi-mode antenna regulating growth, evolution, and perhaps psi?
- Are specific interference patterns in the brain decoded and amplified? Ambient ELF fields and human bioreceptors, such as liquid crystals and piezoelectric crystal calcifications, have been suggested.
- How we can increase our sensitivity is yet another question. The signal is perceived against a transient background of chaotic noise, and amplified by the body’s physiological pathways. Desire, intense concentration, and spiritual focus have been suggested. The trance state has been proposed as restricting the amount of input while allowing access to subtle perceptions.
Mind is a dynamic function of the entire organism at all levels of self-organization. Constantly fluctuating local parameters are embodied and amplified through the body’s electromagnetic control hologram. Mind/body modulates our sensitivity to external and internal information. Researchers measure a brainwave known as Contingent Negative Variation (CNV) to measure anticipation, anticipatory strategies, or readiness to respond; this stimulus can be informative or uninformative, carry content or just be an alert. (W. Grey Walter, et al)
Remote viewing requires super-sensitivity and super-efficient states. It is not the result of cognitive training, but a gradual remolding of the entire psychophysical structure and metabolic pathways. Thus, the mind/body becomes a highly coherent, information-transparent transducer -- a dipole antenna and heuristic interpreter or decoder.
Vast information resources are hidden in unexplored manifolds of the mind/body continuum. In psi research, the study of nature and our nature – our potential – becomes entwined. As Einstein (1934, The World As I See It) said, “We are seeking for the simplest possible scheme of thought that will bind together the observed facts.”
PART II: JNLRMI CONTRIBUTIONS
Under the auspices of "Emergent Mind", Lian Sidorov, Matti Pitkanin and others recontextualized the psi research of the past attempting another step forward. As a wealth of expertise, we include original papers, round table discussions and interviews which provide a restated point of departure for the renewed work of Journal of Nonlocality affiliates in 2012 and beyond. References for these materials can be found by refering back to their original posting at emergentmind.org. Summarizations, reframing, and ground breaking papers included the following discussions:
1. The imprinting and transmission of mentally-directed bioinformation
by Lian Sidorov, URL: http://www.emergentmind.org/sidorov_I.htm
Abstract: This paper reviews current experimental data and working models pertaining to non-local communication and proposes that there may be two complementary mechanisms involved in intent-mediated healing: one based on direct transmission (entrainment) of specialized electromagnetic frequencies, observed primarily in proximal healing (therapeutic touch, laying-on-of hands, direct waiqi); and a second one, associated with distant healing and remote viewing/diagnosis, where the target's electromagnetic profile is modulated from a distance via partial entanglement of subject-target cognitive spacetime sheets, as per Pitkanen's Topological Geometrodynamics. In addition, possible mechanisms are suggested for adjunct-mediated distant healing and for the "qi strike" phenomenon of 5-elements Qigong. Several experiments are proposed to test these hypotheses.
2. Control systems, transduction arrays and psi healing: an experimental basis for human potential science
by Lian Sidorov. URL: www.emergentmind.org/sidorovI2.htm
Abstract: Based on the biophysical models of Becker, Popp and Gariaev, the present paper makes the argument that the study of exceptional human abilities such as self-healing and anomalous cognition (AC) should focus on biophoton emissions and conformational changes of biomolecules under the influence of focused intent. The central hypothesis is that practices such as qigong and yoga induce long-term structural and physiological changes in the body's semiconducting liquid crystal matrix, which maintain the system in a higher-than-average state of coherence, hence optimizing energy utilization (Bigu), sensitivity (AC, tohate) and regulatory DC current feedback loops which in turn control the expression of DNA and the "tuning" of sensory transduction arrays.
A comprehensive model of non-local mental interactions (Pitkanen's TGD) is also discussed within this theoretical framework, especially with respect to biophotons as a signature of macroscopic entanglement. Finally, a number of psychophysiological experimental approaches are described as an alternative to current directions in CAM and parapsychology studies.
3. JNLRMI Vol. II No. 1 February 2003, Editor's Note
The scientific controversy over remote mental interactions has been raging for over a century - unfortunately the nature of the dialogue often seems arrested at the level of pre-teen arguments. Is that due to frustration before the lack of a viable theory? But such a theory cannot develop in the absence of official support for a serious experimental programme. Is it the poor statistical evidence? That rationale is difficult to support once one takes an honest look at the reports issued between 1981 and 1995 by US government investigative bodies such as the Congressional Research Service, the Army Research institute, the National Research Council, the Office of Technology Assessment and the American Institutes for Research - all of which independently concluded that the experimental evidence for certain types of psychic phenomena was "genuine", not due to methodological flaws, and had a statistical significance "far beyond what is expected by chance" - in the words of principal investigator (and skeptic) Ray Hyman, the "departures from chance appear to be too large and consistent to attribute to statistical flukes of any sort" (Radin, pp. 4).
The unwillingness of the scientific mainstream to confront the challenge and implications of such evidence might have a partial explanation in the uncertainty associated with the replicability of psi experiments: indeed, while the overall statistical proof for the existence of these phenomena is overwhelming, the probability that a given experiment will be successful is less than 1. We do not yet know the full set of conditions leading to effective psi functioning and while it appears that every human being has some degree of ability, even the most talented subjects in the field are occasionally prone to failure.
- Is psi function non-deterministic? Indeed, we have every indication that it is - and the papers in this issue will strive to show why. But where the benefits have been valuable enough, we have shown that we were willing to put up with indeterminism in our scientific pursuit - be it the fundamental indeterminism of quantum computation, or the practical one of non-linear dynamics.
- We believe that psi research - the study of nonlocal conscious interactions - should be judged with the same standard; and that, as in these two other examples, every effort should be made to discover the laws allowing us to make probabilistic predictions, chart the dynamics and use the functional maps of psi interactions with the greatest effectiveness.
- We are standing today before a journey unlike any other in the history of mankind: the significance of nonlocality for our understanding of space-time, matter and consciousness is practically impossible to overestimate. We are setting out to discover, not a new continent or the earliest snapshots of the Big Bang, but the very fabric that supports these phenomena and their reflection in our intelligence.
- Contrary to what many would like to believe, psi research is not the product of the human mind trying to cling to a primitive need for religious reassurance. On the contrary - it takes the highest form of intellectual and spiritual courage to abandon the solid conventions of which our world and sense of self are built. It is the ultimate challenge - and very few among us have had the courage to take that leap so far. (Sidorov)
4. JNLRMI Vol. II Nr.2 July 2003, Editorial Notes
How is information stored and retrieved by consciousness? This simple question contains the essence of all psi paradoxes, from spontaneous events like precognition and telepathy to carefully engineered processes like retro-psychokinesis. As we have noted before, the real challenge of a nonlocal consciousness is not its transparent, transpersonal nature, but the internal structure that allows for local meaning and interactions to emerge.
- Clearly, we are not aware of the totality of mental processes going on around us - as, at any given moment, we are not conscious of the majority of our own mental contents. And yet, as three decades of remote viewing research has shown, it is possible, under certain conditions, to access specifically targeted information at will, regardless of its spacetime coordinate. What does this tell us about the function of intent in both individual memory recall and transpersonal information access? And what can we infer about the specific terms in which such intent is formulated - about the interface between a culturally designated spacetime framework, personal meaning and the "substrate" on which this transpersonal information exists, apparently independent of our common-sense notions of past and future?
- Do such personal and cultural reference frames serve as a global information cataloguing system, helping to evoke specific events by interpersonal association? Do they anchor us like a psychological attractor in a reality in which all "past" and "future" information simply is - in "no-time"? What is the connection between our collective intent, or expectation, and the events we observe? What is the meaning of action and how can we interpret something as inherently paradoxical as retro-causality - the ability to influence an event in the past, as demonstrated by Schmidt's classic RNG retro-pk experiments, and dozens of other studies since then?
- The problem of time and causality in parapsychological phenomena is perhaps the most difficult one to grasp on a conceptual level, and our attempts to approach a resolution of this paradox are bound to miss the mark by various degrees. Faced with direct experience of this reality (see McMoneagle interview) it is impossible not to realize how awkward and often inappropriate our theoretical questions are at the moment. On the other hand, it is only by recognizing the fallacy of our various approaches, by negatively defining the features of this mental map, that we can begin to internalize the nature of the mental territory we are setting out to explore. From this perspective, our current issue is as much a cautionary tale against unwarranted assumptions as a survey of brave new inroads which may one day lead us closer to the truth. (Sidorov)
5. The Mind in Time: A Round Table Discussion on Causality, Physics and Parapsychology
As the ideas of quantum mechanics, relativity and parapsychology slowly make their way into our collective consciousness, our common-sense views on time and causality find themselves more strained than they've ever been in the course of human history. Will this challenge remain the domain of theoretical science, or can we foresee a day in which the general understanding, and even the experience of the average individual, will be shaped by this new perspective on reality?
To answer this question, we have invited several physicists to share their opinions on the evolving definition of causality in the context of conscious observation and its implications for quantum mechanics and parapsychology. Matti Pitkanen is an independent theoretical physicst. Fred Alan Wolf, Ph.D. is a theoretical physicist. A well-known scientist, writer and lecturer, he is author of 10 books including the National Book Award-winning "Taking the Quantum Leap". Douglas Matzke, Ph.D. has a long-standing interest in the limits of computation and transpersonal consciousness.
Q1 [Lian Sidorov]. It would seem that the most difficult conceptual challenges in both physics and parapsychology today ultimately point to the notion of causality - hence time. Do you think we have improperly defined either of these two terms - is common experience artificially creating a natural logic that is at odds with physical reality? How so?
Doug Matzke: According to Einstein, space and time are linked, so any theory of time must also entail some theory of space. Quantum objects (qubits, ebits, etc) are defined by the mathematical nature of the spaces created using independent high-dimensional axes (very many orthonormal bases). It is the very nature of these high-dimensional spaces that gives quantum objects the properties (superposition and entanglement) that 3D classical objects do not possess. These properties allow quantum systems to enjoy computational/informational advantages over classical systems (Shor’s algorithm, Grover’s algorithm, quantum cryptography, quantum teleportation). The universe is a large quantum simulation producing the classical 4D worldview we interact with macroscopically. It is impossible for the reverse to be true. These quantum information underpinnings must have existed in a protophysical manner before the “big bang” cooled to produce classical matter/energy interacting in 4D spacetime, thereby suggesting the more provocative term of “bit bang”. Bits are so fundamental to physics that black holes are nothing but bit buckets. Throwing a bit into a black hole increases its surface area by the minimum amount (about Planck’s area) otherwise the 2nd law of thermodynamics would be violated. Therefore it is now understandable that “information is physical” and not just a mathematical metric. A bit has a very, very small effective mass just like energy does.
Based on the above most modern and accepted understanding of the relationship of quantum information and the universe’s organization, it is clear that some protophysical informational mechanism underlies the known universe. My primary perspective is that consciousness evolved because biology naturally taps into these ubiquitous information mechanisms at all levels. This is consistent with the thinking that everything contains quantum information, everything is conscious and everything has chi. This approach would have survival advantage because quantum search is faster than classical search. Also, since information is physical, organized states could have an effective energy due to their information content and could affect the physical world.
So everything in the universe is due to a protophysical information substrate, including quantum objects and most likely consciousness (appeal to Ockham’s razor requiring only one such ubiquitous informational mechanism). This information substrate is protophysical, since it is the essence of the “bit bang”, “bit buckets” and zero-point energy. My goal since early 1990s has been to understand why quantum information systems are fundamentally different than classical computation or communications systems. The key to this understanding is that quantum space and quantum time are “outside the box” defined by classical 4D spacetime and essentially creates that 4D box. This naturally leads out of causality and even relativistic time. The very high-dimensional quantum spaces form a quantum foam that fills even the emptiness of outer space (zero point energy).
This protophysical mechanism can bootstrap itself using the informational mechanism of distinction, where each distinction is a new unique dimension that converts from non-existence (the value of 0) to containing the state value of either +1 or -1. Qubits are formed using nothing more than two distinctions/dimensions (see my PhD dissertation from May 2002 that uses geometric algebra). Qubit rules can be derived directly out of the non-commutative combination of two state vectors. At this level, classical time does not yet exist so all states are ideally concurrent. This concurrency can be expressed mathematically as the sum of the orthonormal state vectors, so the + operator means concurrent, (which is the same exact convention used in Hilbert space bracket notation). The precursor of time is change and these non-classical states can change using quantum-like operators. Thus, the seeds of classical spacetime can occur from purely non-classical informational roots.
Quantum state vectors are the precursor to qubits, and not the other way around. Large collections of tiny distinction dimensions can create topological structures (knot theory) and form high level information structures. This can occur using mathematical rules for quantum entanglement. This kind of information structure forming process would create topological structures that are somewhat akin to “rotes” as described by OBErs and remote viewers. Rotes also resemble IP packets of the Internet, since they carry structured information, but do not rely on physical encoding of information using energy or matter. The more distinctions included in the rote packets, the larger they become and the more information they contain. In general, the more dimensions a computation process uses the “smarter” it is (per step) since the locality metric is larger. For example, Shor’s algorithm can factor very larger numbers by computing everything in one step. Classical versions of Shor’s algorithm are restricted by the locality metric, thus requiring so many execution steps that the computation extends past the age of the universe. In contrast, a large collection of purely random distinctions forms a black hole.
Another approach to organizing groups of distinctions also produces topological structures. It is possible to form a larger space by concatenating the distinctions as addresses (as in a qubit). An important step towards determinacy is to understand how implicit quantum randomness can lead to stability of any kind. This is possible due to a little known mathematical field called “probabilistic geometry” plus the information metric used by correlithm theory (see www.LT.com). The idea is simple. First, randomly pick two points in a N-dimensional binary state space. Next, compute how far apart they are using the Cartesian distance formula (same one used by relativity and for unitarity constraint in quantum mechanics). Most likely, you would expect the answer to be something random! It turns out, the distance result is approximately sqrt(N/2) (or =10*sqrt(2) for N=100). This is true for any two pairs of random points and the standard deviation is a constant of .35. All randomly chosen points are at this standard distance, thereby naturally defining a high dimensional tetrahedron or N-equihedron (not a hypercube nor hypersphere). This N-equihedron may be the mathematical structure beneath the Merkaba energy form.
These random points can be used as “soft tokens” for computing since they are intrinsically unique even if some noise is injected. Using this distance metric, it is highly unlikely that two random points will be closer than standard distance, so when two points are forced close together this represents a way to encode information using probabilistic geometry. A set of points that are less than standard distance form a topological structure that again has the characteristics of a rote. Each of these soft tokens can also be treated as normalized vectors, and they can be shown to have a standard angle of 90 degrees (plus a standard deviation) and can be normalized by a standard radius, as a kind of unitarity constraint. This means soft tokens can be used as a generalization of orthonormal basis vectors exactly like quantum state basis vectors in quantum computing, which includes superposition, entanglement, etc.
As N become very large, the normalized standard distance approaches the constant of sqrt(2) and the normalized standard deviation of all these metrics approach 0. These properties robustly occur in any kind of space but only when N>20. In our work, we have shown that these metrics are applicable to randomly generated neural statistics and also when encoding information in a quantum Hilbert space. The brain could provide random but repeatable patterns that uniquely interact with the quantum state spaces. When the same quantum soft token is measured in multiple trials, the answers define points in a binary space that are closer than standard distance, thereby showing that quantum soft tokens survive the quantum measurement process. Additionally, using soft tokens, quantum measurement can be thought of as a noise injection process. The quantum mind could manipulate the statistical processes into the brain thereby allowing amplification of quantum probabilities to from a noise injection based mindbrain link. Early experiments should try to detect quantum noise injection by mental intent.
I believe these soft tokens can be structured to form non-physical, abstract topology rotes, which could be used to represent meaning. Perhaps, this non-local topology would form an interdimensional encyclopedia of meaning (i.e. Akashic Records) that any one could tap for personal growth, remote viewing, NDEs, astral projection and etc. Rotes could also form the universal encoding underpinnings for direct knowing and telepathy. Essentially, the mind is a non-physical information system (perhaps quantum-like) and a mathematical theory of non-physical rotes may be useful to correctly predict experimental RV and PK results.
Therefore, it is essential to start with no-time or quantum time using a pure informational perspective. “Become like the light” is literally a command to switch to a timeless perspective (infinite time dilation means ideal concurrency). Quantum polynomial-time algorithms give us the big clue on the physics side. The zone of sports, gives us the same perspective of exiting classical time from the subjective experience. The higher self is in the “timeless” now. Our culture has a hard time comprehending these temporal abstractions since our thinking and society is spatially dominated.
M. Pitkanen: My answer to this question is probably highly predictable from what I have been saying for few years! There are two times and two causalities and the failure to realize this has led the standard view in which one tries to believe that there is only single time and single causality; is forced to throw away free will and intentionality; accept that time is simultaneously irreversible and reversible and that future exists and does not exist simultaneously. The view inspired by canonically quantized general relativity is that there is no time at all since basic object of dynamics is 3-geometry. Unless one is ready to deny the subjective experience of time flow this statement must be phrased to read "there is no geometric time but there is subjective time". The lack of geometric time however leads to grave difficulties since special relativity, the notions of energy, etc.. rely on the existence of geometric time. If one replaces 3-geometry as fundamental physical entity with 3-surface in the 8-dimensional imbedding space of TGD, one has both geometric and subjective time. Thus the one gets from Barbour to TGD by replacing 3-geometry with 3-surface.
The basic objection against quantum modelsof free will is that they cannot explain precisely targeted intention. They predict only probability distribution for the outcomes of quantum jumps and this means randomness. In TGD intentions are represented at spacetime level as p-adic spacetime sheets and the transformation of intention to action as a quantum jump in which p-adic space-time sheet transforms to a real one is TGD based approach to intentionalty. This does not yet explain the precise targeting of intention. If system generates p-adic ME transformed to positive energy ME it ends up to a state of lower energy and having momentum opposite to that of ME. There are however a large number of spontaneously occurring transitions which would mask the effect of the intentional transition.
Second key element needed is the possibility of negative energy spacetime sheets (spacetime is 4-D surface in imbedding space), in particular negative energy MEs. The generation of p-adic ME which transforms to negative energy ME in intention-to-action quantum jump gives for a system involved positive energy and also a definite momentum as a recoil effect. Transitions to higher energy states do not occur spontaneously so that there is no background masking the intended transition. Thus precisely targeted intention is doing something which does NOT occur at all spontaneously (and is impossible in standard quantum physics)!
A further objection against quantum theories of consciousness is that quantum jumps are random phenomena so that intentionality cannot be really understood. Intuitively intentionality corresponds to local randomness superposed with long term determinism due to the conscious planning. p-Adic fractal statistics realizes this intuition mathematically. The point is that rational spacetime points which are very near to each other p-adically are very far from each other in real sense and vice versa. What is small p-adically is large in real sense and vice versa. Therefore p-adic continuity for a p-adic spacetime sheet implies local chaos and long range correlations for the real spacetime sheet resulting from it in intention-to-action quantum jump.
Statistically intentionality differs from randomness in the following manner. If one measures the state of the system N times during time interval T at evenly spaced time intervals, randomness would predict that the frequencies for different outcomes converge to probabilities as N grows. For p-adic fractal statistics this does not occur and real probability concept fails, much like the attempt to measure the length of fractal coast of Britain fails. In p-adic case however the frequencies for N and N+ kp^n, n large enough number are near to each other. One can perform this intentionality test for any system, be it molecule or magnetosphere, and determine the value of p and resolution dependence of the statistics is the signature of intentionality.
Fred Alan Wolf: The problem arises when we attempt to conceptualize time. We can only do this through metaphor and the metaphors aren’t really capable of encompassing time itself. Hence we do improperly define time. Here is the crux: what we experience and how we order our experiences are not interchangeable-one doesn’t map onto the other except approximately. We see this approximation in terms of causality and synchronicity-two broad categories that each attempt to provide logical but inconsistent description to experience. In the causality camp we have the usual logical western point of view of one thing-event-2-happening after another-event-1-because of the first thing-event-1-that happens. In the synchronicity camp the order of the events becomes immaterial and often we see event-2 determining event-1 even if the events occur simultaneously or for that matter in any time order. Logic is a subject-predicate construction of mind, hence we will order or attempt to order the events as consistent either way.
Q2. What do you think is the relation between our consensus notion of time and the reality in which RV information exists? Does information "flow" back from a future event as in retro-pk and precognition, or is it already "out there", as Joe McMoneagle suggests, in "no time"? What is the meaning of action, of separation between events, if all information about all events is already available? Do we construct spacetime as a function of intersecting perspectives?
M. Pitkanen: If quantum jump is the the "elementary particle of consciousness", it is not possible to locate consciousness in spacetime but is in the nowhere between two different quantum realities which in turn are quantum superpositions of classical realities (spacetime surfaces). Conscious information can however be said to be *about* a particular region of spacetime, spacetime sheet. This spacetime sheet changes its shape and size in every quantum jump (10^39 quantum jumps per second), and if mindlike (having finite duration with respect to geometric time), it drifts towards geometric future. The belief that there is single objective reality so that information is already there would leave the conscious mind outside the classical universe or force to identify the conscious mind with it. That the concious information is always in the change replacing reality with a new one conforms with the fact that we perceive only changes.
For instance, we perceive only spatial changes in illuminations at particular wavelength as color transformed to changes with respect to subjective time by saccadic motion of the eye. How to define information measures is however a highly nontrivial problem.
a) One could define information as gain of negentropy/ loss of entropy: this looks very natural definition as far as one considers conscious information.
b) We are also used to assign simple information measures to static objects such as computer files representing bit sequences. This suggests that Shannon entropy somehow fails to detect all that is relevant to information. Conscious information is certainly associated with cognition and in TGD framework cognition corresponds to p-adic physics. p-Adic entanglement entropy must be defined using number theoretical counterpart of Shannon entropy and the real surprise was that this entropy can be also negative so that cognitive entanglement can carry positive information.The interpretationis that the experience of understanding corresponds to p-adic entanglement with negative number theoretic entropy. One could generalize this notion also to real bound state entanglement with rational or algebraic entanglement coefficients.
Quantum classical correspondence suggests that spacetime surfaces to some degree represent various aspects of quantum and consciousness and that one can assign information measures to spacetime sheets. The non-determinism of TGD based classical spacetime physics indeed allows even a (non-faithful) representation of quantum jump sequences as sequences of fully deterministic spacetime regions. If spacetime sheet contains N fully deterministic regions one can assign to it statistical ensembles by dividing this set of regions to equivalence classes by some criterion and assign to the i:th equivalence class containing N_i regions a rational valued probability as the ratio p_i= N_i/N .
If one accepts the new number theoretic information measures allowed by p-adic variant of the Shannon entropy, one can assign to any spacetime sheet a positive definite and unique information measure as that number theoretic entropy (Shannon entropy defines always non-positive information measure) which is maximum. Same applies to p-adic spacetime sheets. I believe that spacetime surfaces, imbedding space, and configuration space of 3-surfaces are real. I can never prove my belief since neither space-time surface, imbedding space, configuration space, nor configuration space spinor fields are conscious. The fact is however that if I want to construct a theory explaining what I experience I must assume all this ontology: without the notion of spacetime I would lose all basic concepts of physics.
Doug Matzke: From the perspective of quantum spacetime, there is an infinite locality metric and no time. Using this panoramic view above/outside time, any information can be addressed directly without memory (movement of information thru time) or communications (movement of information thru space) resources. This involves directly tapping into the probabilistic based topologies of specific non-physical states, which most likely has universal meaning. I personally know several telepathic pairs of people and have experienced direct knowing in connection with nature. This agrees with descriptions of expansion of self in mystical traditions.
Fred Alan Wolf : I think Joe McMoneagle has it right. The need now arises to deal with the “no-time” realm with full insight and power gained from the research being carried out in psychology including quantum physics and RV. Defining meaning itself has different meanings. For me, meaning has an almost Socratic flavor; it means a kind of funny feeling that arises within my bodily boundaries when events both appearing within those bodily boundaries and outside of them appear to be intimately connected-as if I had rediscovered them again after having learned about them in some ancient time.
Q3. Joe McMoneagle has described a phenomenon he refers to as "a snap in reality", where essentially a remote viewer engaged with a target about to undergo a violent transformation at a quantum level (such as nuclear fission) is unexpectedly forced into a different spacetime perspective which makes it impossible to witness the critical event itself (see McMoneagle interview in this issue). Since a number of these experiments have been done blindly, with the subject having no prior information about the target, and such identical, atypical experiences were reported, one is forced to wonder about a possible connection between spacetime, matter and consciousness at a quantum level. Do you believe that consciousness gives rise to spacetime as a result of observation, that consciousness is embedded at the smallest level of material quanta, or is there another way in which you see these three representational aspects come together to form our reality?
Fred Alan Wolf : In “no-time” these events are not separate for “no-time” also means “no-space” and “no-matter”. Perhaps a bubbly cauldron of frothy spacetimematter at the Planck level is where we need to look.
M. Pitkanen: If remote viewing envolves entanglement with the target remotely viewed and if everything is conscious, it would not be surprising if the catastrophic event in target could induce sudden change of perspective. Sharing of mental images is what remote quantum entanglement makes possible. In TGD universe every piece of spacetime contributes to the contents of conscious experience of some self so that also the target would somehow contribute to the contents of consciousness of some self. The changing perspective would correspond to a change of mental image about target. Consciousness does not give rise to spacetime as a fictive notion. By quantum-classical correspondence spacetime surfaces can be seen as symbolic and cognitive representations for quantum and consciousness. We experience universe as 3-dimensional because the points of the configuration space are 3-D surfaces and we are quantum superpositions of 3-D surfaces. The notion of primary cognition introduced by Steve Bacster on basis of his experimental findings is the counterpart of sharing of mental images: plants, cells, bacteria and even molecules react to our emotions and violence suffered by animals or plans. At the level of our consciousness this ability is almost lost since the evolution of more and more privatized consciousness accompanying evolution of cognitive abilities tends to reduce entanglement with environment. Remote viewers possess this ability.
Doug Matzke: I would fully expect this based on a quantum mind perspective. This perspective is compatible with PK using radioactive REG devices, early mortality of semiconductor devices around some people, perception of mechanically generated chi (using quantum processes), copper wall, occult chemistry phenomena and etc etc. Let’s stop trying to prove it and embrace predicative theories to design useful next generation devices based on quantum noise injection principles.
Q4. In somewhat of a corollary to this question - is there any way, from a purely physics-theoretical point of view, that we can continue to hold onto the standard materialistic model - i.e. matter existing on an absolute background of space-time and giving rise to consciousness as an emergent property of increasingly complex living systems? If not - what are the major theoretical and experimental counter-arguments as far as you can list them?
Fred Alan Wolf : I find it hard to believe that even so-called “standard materialists” still exist. I feel more or less sure that even materialism has undergone a big change these days what with relativity bending minds as well as space and time, and quantum physics implying a deeper “mindlike” reality or essential probabilistic reality underlying materialism.
M. Pitkanen: I see no way to hold onto the materialistic view, even the proper definition for the notion of emergence is impossible in materialistic framework. I list only the most important philosophical paradoxes implied by the materialistic view. Determinism-non-determinism paradox related to quantum measurement problem; observer as an outsider only able to affect the physical reality by quantum measurement; the dissipative and irreversible observed reality versus the non-dissipative and reversible realities of fundamental physics; the problem of how the initial values in Big Bang were selected; the lacking justification of anthropic principle; the assumption that only single solution of field equations represents the "real" reality meaning that there is in principle no way to test the theories since one cannot study the entire solution spectrum. What puzzles me is that the deep crisis of modern physics obvious from this list is not topic number one in the discussion when two physicists meet.
D. Matzke: This topic is so last millennium’s physics. Everything is quantized even classical space and time at Planck’s level. Everything is bits even black holes and qubits. Quantum research proves this. Everything is quantum and everything is intelligent. The problem is this cannot be directly measured, since is quantum based.
Q5: It has been argued repeatedly over the past century that the formalism of QM, as well as macro-scale evidence such as retro-pk, seem to require that observation become an integral component of reality - that is, all events exist in a superposition of probable states up until the moment of observation. Braud's and Radin's RPK reviews have recently pointed out (2000) just how ubiquitous the effect of conscious intent is - retroactively biasing the behavior of random number generators, human skin conductance and heart rate, the movement of steel marbles, small mammals and humans. At the same time, the evidence seems to suggest (Braud) that once a state has been conciously observed, it is no longer susceptible to modification by intent (that is, if an intermediary observer views the pre-recorded RNG data in the typical Schmidt retro-pk experiement, the data is no longer amenable to skewing by the subsequent observer). Clearly, the question that begs to be asked is - what exactly constitutes "observation"? Peoch's chick/robot pk studies (PA Conference 1998) suggest that animal intent is capable of interacting with RNG events as well as human intent. What about subliminal awareness - would that interfere with retro-pk susceptibility as well? How can we begin to quantify the effect of consciousness on material systems, and what might that tell us about the possible qualitative differences between conscious, local mind and subconscious, nonlocal Mind?
M. Pitkanen: The notion of self hierarchy forces to take seriously that both higher and lower conscious entities are present: our mental images are the nearest conscious creatures below us in the hierarchy and we can experience their presence directly. One is forced to reconsider what one means by subsystem in many-sheeted spacetime since the spacetime sheets a resp. b glued to larger spacetime A resp. B can be joined by what I call join along boundaries bond. This means that the selves A and B which are unentangled can have sub-selves a and be which are entangled to represent a mental image shared by A and B. This is impossible in standard physics. It could mean that the levels of self hierarchy below us can involve shared mental images which we are not directly conscious of.
TGD based model for sensory organs leads to the view that primary senesory organs are the seats of sensory qualia. Even more, skin and olfactory organs could routinely entangle with external world and provide remote sensory information which is not directly conscious to us. There is a good reason for this: there is not much sense to get drowned to information not directly relevant to us. For instance, the galvanic skin response associated with remote mental interactions could reflect the fact that it is skin which consciously shares mental images and that these mental images are sometimes communicated to our level. Some dog's are known to have ability to precognize that their master is coming home or is going to have an epileptic attack. The explanation that dog's olfaction is somehow involved might be correct in the sense that it olfactory remote sensing is involved. Callahan has shown that at least in case of insects oflaction is basically infrared vision and one can ask whether negative energy IR vision could be basically involved and give rise to olfactory qualia. Support comes from several findings. For instance, Callahan has found that insects find more easily plants suffering from denutrition: the explanation is that the starving plants generates negative energy IR MEs getting in this manner metabolic energy and these MEs entangle it with the insect which thus pays the metabolic energy bill and gets the honey as a reward. Same mechanism could apply to epileptic attacks and dogs.
Fred Alan Wolf : Certainly a first person’s observation-whatever that means-alters the ability of a second observer to perceive; that fact quantum physics indicates very well. My question would be what would it mean to quantify consciousness? How could it be numerically comparable with another “thing”?
D. Matzke: If a quantum god existed outside classical spacetime, he/she could influence any quantum state any where at any time, even if this is overriding some local physical effect and even if causing a temporal paradox. The quantum world allows complete paradox (called superposition). It is only the physical world and the narrow mind of classical physicists that do not believe such a thing is possible.
Q6: How does a given system's state probability distribution affect its susceptibility to mental influence? That is - are more likely outcomes easier to obtain psychokinetically than the less probable ones? How does this correlate with the consequences flowing out of particular outcomes -are states "causally entangled" with other systems less labile to retro-pk than those of no further consequence, and could we eventually devise a quantitative measure of such "causal inertia"?
Fred Alan Wolf: Good question! This could lead to quite a debate. Probability distributions arise in two related but distinct manners.
(1) In the first manner known as the classical realm of estimating events, probabilities refer strictly to the subjective world of mind and its ability to estimate on a numerical scale the relative possibilities of events occurring. In this classical case the only reason a probability distribution arises at all, simply because the mind has incomplete knowledge as for example in the case of a flipped fairly weighted coin hidden from view where the probability of “heads” must be 0.50. The coin, although hidden, must have a “tails” side as well, and it could be “up”.
(2) In the second realm probability arises differently coming about through what is called a quantum wave function. A quantum wave function describes in a very specific manner based on complex variable theory, an abstract space of vectors called Hilbert space, and other abstract mathematical constructs together with their rules of operation, our knowledge of any physical system-that is any system that can be considered to be “physical”, external to mind, “out there”, “real” existing, and so on. Most physicists would agree with this. However quantum wave functions surprisingly and perhaps mysteriously include something else as well-they not only describe probabilities of physical things and events, but they also can change physical events and things when the quantum wave functions describing those events undergo change. It’s kind of like putting the cart before the horse.
In (1) we have the usual horse in front pulling the cart along wherein the horse is the physical world and the cart is the abstract world of mathematical functions. Change the physical world and the numbers-the probabilities-must accordingly follow. But in (2) the cart pulls the horse-change the numbers and the horse changes to suit.
Hence it is definitely true that the more likely outcomes are easier to obtain psychokinetically, if we posit that the mind is the realm of quantum wave functions and hence when the mind undergoes some form of change it must alter the odds, ergo the events. Going back to the hidden flipped coin. in realm (2) the coin is thought to not possess either a “heads” up or a “tails” up until an observer equipped with “head-tail” observational equipment arrives on the scene and has a look. He could arrive on the scene with a different apparatus that does not measure face details of the coin, but perhaps its color code and color code and side might be complementary variables. Hence if the knowledge of the coin were to become available to the mind, it would follow that the coin would change accordingly.
D. Matzke: Actually, our belief system keeps us from effecting probabilistic things except by accident. I am convinced that our brain is such a system and we influence it all the time. Did you ever wonder why the motor neurons are shaped like little pyramids (they are called pyramidal cells)?? Many people constantly cause infant mortality in electronic devices (watches, cameras, etc) and have boxes full of such dead electronics. They give up wearing watches of any kind and only buy disposable cameras. The copper wall experiments showed that people could generate 200 volts on isolated copper plates, which is more than enough to fry modern semiconductor devices. Nothing is truly causal, only highly probable.
M. Pitkanen: I am not sure whether I understood this question. I would use instead of "probability distribution" the word "the state of system". With this replacement the question transforms to the next question.
Q7. What type of targets are most prominent in remote viewing and why? Empirical evidence suggests that those events which have a survival value to the subject are more likely to induce pre-cognitive or pre-sentiments episodes. What does that say about the characteristics/ "storage"/ access of such information by an observer?
M. Pitkanen: In TGD based model of remote viewing viewer receives negative energy from target if target is in geometric future and sends negative energy to the target if the target is in the geometric past. For the remote viewing of the future the target which is in need of energy is optimal. For instance, dogs could precognize the epileptic attacts of their masters for this reason. This suggests obvious tests: could dogs precognize the arrival of a tired and hungry master better than master who is happy and well-fed? For instance, Backster's findings support this view in case of plants, bacteria and cells. In the viewing of the past the target which can provide energy by receiving negative energy is optimal. Sleeping brain satisfies the criterion since it does not utilize metabolic energy to motor actions and sensory perception. Remote viewing of thoughts of sleeping person might be a good idea. Also precognition should be optimal during (lucid) dreaming. Dunne's classic "Experiment with Time" and Joe McMoneagle provide support for this prediction. Critical systems are certainly optimal for remote viewing and PK.
D. Matzke: Something that a person has an affinity to or can correctly address. Mental noise due to mental chatter also can swamp the deciphering of an incoming rote. The key to connection is we attract similar information (birds of a feather is an information law, where as opposites attract is an energy law -N/S poles and +/- charges). Much more could be said on this topic, especially regarding the topic area: the don’t ask for the negation of some state, since according to quantum principles, that is it’s own unique state and you are attracting what you do not want.
Fred Alan Wolf: I would only guess here that the simpler the target is to visualize the easier it would be to “see.” Survival values I would only guess here would not help since I believe we have used biological adaptation to desensitize ourselves to not remote view. Indeed survival of the species seems quite pronounced into survival of the individual with a little help from our friends rather than survival of us all.
Q8: Beyond this subject-dependent target significance, what target-intrinsic aspects make some pieces of information more readily accessible than others? May and his team have demonstrated that targets with a higher entropy gradient yield a greater amount of data in RV (see the 1998 Convention of the Parapsychology Association and McMoneagle interview in this issue), while empirical evidence suggests (McMoneagle) that highly energetic targets, especially nuclear material, are particularly easy to identify. Any ideas about why these features would make a target more prominent to the subconscious - or whether it is merely the translation into conscious thought that is facilitated in such cases?
M. Pitkanen: I think that the finding of May and his team reduces to a general fact about sensory perception be it remote or ordinary (even ordinary sensory perceptions can be seen as memories in time scale of fraction of second, Libet's experiments). Entropy gradients correspond to spatial or temporal gradients are transformed to subjectotemporal gradients and qualia correspond to average increments of quantum numbers. Subjectotemporal entropy gradient measures the intensity of experience. There are also many findings supporting the view that collective multibrained/bodied selves are essential for remote viewing. These higher level selves could serve as kind of relay stations contacting remote viewer with target by quantum entanglement. This higher level multibrained self would entangle only with the targets which we find most interesting. I do not believe that the microscopic properties of targets are too important here, it is the relevance of target for the brains composing the multibrain. On the other hand, my previous argument suggests that targets which are highly energetic in the sense that they can receive negative energy are optimal for the remote viewing of the past.
D. Matzke: These are both unusual informational structures. We have worked with mechanically generated chi encoded on audiotapes. We continually had people coming up to us attracted by the unusual signature of these chi tapes (both consciously and unconsciously aware). The tapes were a kind of private “blue light special”.
Q9. If consciousness is indeed a fundamental (rather than emergent) ingredient of reality, what do you believe would be the most relevant experimental approaches we could conduct in order to understand more about the way it interfaces with matter and space-time? And what is further being done within the physics community to further probe the implications of Quantum Mechanics' "observer effect"? Has this branch of physics effectively transmuted into parapsychology - and if so, why is there virtually no support for parapsychology research from the physics community in the mainstream scientific publications?
Fred Alan Wolf: A considerable effort must be made to form theoretical models of what to look for. Again this may be the cart before the horse idea, but I am led to think that the main discoveries to be made will come to mind first before they are witnessed as physical events. I think of how Dirac “discovered” the positron in his own equations, well before anyone even thought to look for antimatter.
I am currently working on a number of possibilities having to do with self-reference arising through a means to directly record a quantum wave function in the brain and some ways to use the mind to accomplish time travel. Of these more shall be released in good time.
D. Matzke: In the same manner that quantum mechanics has a particle/wave duality (which leads to a paradoxical understanding) it also contains a energy/information duality, with its subsequent paradoxes. This duality effects our understanding and even affects our language. For example, I believe that the term “subtle energy” is a complete misnomer, because most of the effects are completely informational. The above question also betrays the same kind of classical bias (matter/energy/space/time) rather than a quantum perspective (informational, self consistency, a-temporal, non-local). Experiments should also be proposed from the quantum mind perspective (informational, probabilistic, noise, etc).
M. Pitkanen: I would regard quantum measurement theory with an intentional observer included essentially as a quantum theory of consciousness. If one accepts fractality and manysheeted spacetime, the problem of how cell can behave as a coherent whole differs in no essential manner from the problem what the mechanisms of remote mental interactions are.
Q10. Is there any compelling reason for which we should believe that the brain is the primary physical detector for nonlocal (psi) information and focus our comparative physiology studies on it? While the brain may be the primary transducer to conscious, analytical thought, the weight of evidence from DMILS experiments (from Backster and Sheldrake to Braud, Schlitz and Peoch, to Radin, May, Yamamoto and the Chinese histo-molecular studies with external qi) strongly suggests that all living systems, regardless of the existence or complexity of a brain, react in a consistent, intelligent manner to directed nonlocal information. The fact that this reaction is reproducible all the way down to the level of DNA, RNA and protein behavior (as directional changes in configuration, synthesis and transcription rates, mutagenesis and programmed death) seems to indicate that genetic material might be, both from an evolutionary and ontological point of view, the oldest, possibly most sensitive detector of psi information in our bodies. Given the relative simplicity of studying electromagnetic, physiological and metabolic DMILS signatures in a living tissue sample (see Backster), compared to the human brain, why is there no such work being done in the West? More specifically, why study the frequency spectra of an enormously complex environment like the brain and not those of a simple tissue sample during altered states of consciousness/psi function?
Fred Alan Wolf: Good question, I see no reason to focus in strictly on the brain. You might gather this from my remarks above.
M. Pitkanen: As far as human conscious experience is concerned, I see brain as a builder of symbolic and cognitive (p-adic) representations and a realizer of desires of the magnetic body, which is the intentional agent transforming its p-adic topological light rays representing intentions to negative energy topological light rays representing desires quantally communicated to brain of geometric past and inducing a response of the brain and material body as action. Ordinary sensory perception, motor action and memory are all based on same basic mechanism involving remote mental interactions in astrophysical length scales. Libet's strange findings about unreasonably long time delays of consciousness provide direct support for the view that sensory input is communicated to the magnetic body having size measured Earth's circumference as a natural unit.
For instance, long term memories involve quantum entanglement of the magnetic body with the brain of the geometric past to communicate the desire to remember by sharing of mental images. The time scale of geometrotemporal nonlocality is lifetime at least. In case of sensory and episodal memories also the remembered mental images results from sharing of mental images but since sensory and episodal memories are rare, the dominating communication mechanims would seem to be based on classical communications. But also this communication involves the magnetic flux tubes structures of Earth's magnetic field and/or Z^0 magnetic fields analogous to wave guides so that astrophysical length scales are involved.
In TGD framework qualia are at the level of sensory organs. Sensory receptors hear the music and brain puts it into notes and communites the symbolic representations to magnetic body. It might be that skin senses and olfaction involve also the highly nonlocal aspect and that we are in continual communication with other organisms without knowing it. One common language might be provided by memes. Memetic codons would be represented as sequences of 21 DNA triplets in intronic portion of the genome and expressed in terms of em or Z^0 field patterns associated with MEs. The duration of meme is .1 seconds and it consists of 126 bits. The common memes would define the vocabulary understood by the communication life forms.
The recent work with the model of EEG has however made it clear that memetic code what is only a special case although it might be common to all prekaryotes due to the universality of alpha band in ZEG. Any p-adic prime nearly equal to 2^k, k power of prime, defines a hierarchy of k-bit codes and durations of codon defined by n-ary p-adic time scales. The p-adic frequencies are constants of nature, and it turns out that the narrow resonance frequencies of EEG correspond to these frequencies and their differences and sums. This follows solely from simple number theory, not a single world about horrible complexities of brain dynamics! This model predicts also correctly that sleep involves 4 stages and relates the hierarchy p-adic codes in EEG range with the structure and function of brain. Universe seems indeed to be an infinite conscious computer communicating at all levels: both quantally by sharing of mental images and classical using these cognitive codes. Our level is only single node in this enormous Indra's net.
D. Matzke: Quantum/chi effects biological systems at every level, chemical binding, neurotransmitter gap, microtubules, DNA, brain statistics. I am convinced we can design an electronic device to amplify the probability distributions of mind, sort of a high-gain, advanced PK device. People can train to use these using biofeedback techniques and include them with children from day one. It is not electromagnetic, but rather shaking the quantum ether, as occurs with succussion in homeopathic preparations. Electromagnetics, gravity and sound can all shake the ether using acceleration/deacceleration. Think information not energy.
Q11. In his post-quantum mechanics, Sarfatti talks about self-referential Godel loops - two way "causal" relations between brain and mind, the quantum matter embedded in space-time and the quantum wave, existing in the field of information of Bohm's "implicate order", beyond space-time. Such action-reaction loops suggest that mind and matter continuously modulate each other, rather than exist as absolute causative agents. Considering what we now know about the experimenter effect, retro-PK and telepathic overlay, is physics heading into a new logical landscape - and what type of science is likely to come out of it? Do you believe our research goals are likely to change as a result - and how?
D. Matzke: Repeatable brain random correlithm object patterns can stabilize quantum correlithm object patterns. Stability of non-physical rote encoding is something that needs to be discussed more by this group. Perhaps this is like a dynamic balance, similar to a beach ball above a fan. I call this new field of study “spirited science” and is a union of physics and spirit. For example, I expect a “love pattern” machine could be built, using next generation chi generator technology. This entire field is ripe for technological discovery. For example, I hear a story about someone who had the most patents in a high tech company. He claimed to have brought them into existence by peering into his own future and writing them down. Also there are stories about people “walking” around in the “hall of inventions” in the virtual library of the akashic records. Many inventions are inspired in non-ordinary ways. Good ethics and social responsibility is key to the future unfolding of this kind of technology.
M. Pitkanen: I do not share the dualistic matter-mind view of Sarfatti and Bohm about reality. The self-referentiality of consciousness is a fact and probably one of the hardest challenges for quantum theories of consciousness. I see the self referentiality as resulting from quantum-classical correspondence. Quantum aspects of existence and even consciousness can be represented by (but not identified as) the topological structure of space-time surface. The possibility to represent some aspects of quantum jump sequences (selves) at spacetime level is basically due both to the nondeterminism of the fundamental variational principle and to inhered nondeterminism. of p-adic differential equations. Becoming conscious about one is conscious means quantum jump replacing the superposition of spacetime surfaces with a superposition in which surfaces represent something about the contents of consciousness before the quantum jump. What this means that the universe that we are exploring becomes more and more complex as we explore it: when we understand we create something which we do not yet understand. This is very much what mathematician is doing when he/she calculates: he/she is continually representing his/her contents of consciousness symbolically and this in turn is crucial for the evolution of contents of consciousness.
Fred Alan Wolf: Sarfatti’s ideas are worth considering. He believes the quantum physics will not be enough to come to grips with this. I, on the other hand, think that quantum physics with perhaps some slight modification may be sufficient.
6. Memes, Societies and the Functional Architecture of the Collective Unconscious
For the past two years we have devoted our attention to remote mind-mind and mind-matter interactions, attempting to identify preliminary observations, draw empirical conclusions and draft working models of this yet very primitive human skill. We have done so by focusing almost exclusively on the personal perspective, with little or no consideration for possible interactions between two or more individuals.
The time has come to ask ourselves: if one human being can remotely perceive and influence distant events, then what happens when over six billion individuals live, feel, believe, wish, fear and physically interact in a tightly bound space like our planetary home? Does the intent to acquire information or modify physical reality have to be explicit in order for such nonlocal communication to occur? Or are there information-loaded transactions which occur just beneath the limit of conscious awareness? Do we communicate with each other and the rest of this biosphere only by explicit intent - or is it the case, as Pitkanen suggests, that our conscious interactions occur on the surface of a vast ocean of inter-species and trans-species, subliminal sharing of mental images, which to a large degree account for the strength of social habits, instincts and mutual understanding? And if that is the case, how can we use this insight to responsibly and effectively evolve as a species?
The paradox of nonlocal consciousness is that the acute sense of freedom to which it leads is surpassed only by the enhanced appreciation for the myriad of physical details and emotions which form our spacetime-bound manifestation. Rather than a prison which one strives to escape, the place we inhabit becomes an act of constant creation, a dance in which perception, belief, intent and above all the ability to create resonant interactions with others become the tools allowing us to re-shape reality in the image of our collective psyche (see Elgin's Collective Consciousness and Cultural Healing). But for these tools to become more attractive to the average human being than the time-tested stratagems of narrow self-interest and material power, the scientific community will have to openly embrace and actively pursue this area of research. The scientists featured in this issue are all pioneers whose courage and vision has, for the first time in our history, cracked open the door to an official overhaul of our self-image as a species. Hopefully their work will be not only admired, but continued with the same degree of seriousness and integrity by new generations of researchers. (Sidorov)
7. Who and where is the Self? A round-table discussion on memory, information and the limits of identity
The hard problem of consciousness is no petty adversary but the abyss staring us back in the face. The universal record is an undecidable proposition which intent turns into an acute paradox. -- Chris King
Introduction
In 1964 Dr. Ian Stevenson, chief psychiatrist at the hospital of the University of Virginia, took a step that many regarded as professionally suicidal: he abandoned his practice in order to focus his full attention on the investigation of alleged cases of reincarnation. His decision, in Stevenson's own words, was prompted by his increasing frustration with the current psychiatric dogma, which attributes human personality development to a combination of genetics and pre-/post-natal environmental factors. As he saw it, some of the psychiatric disorders confronting him in his practice simply could not make sense within that framework. With a rare combination of visionary zeal and highly-trained investigative skepticism, he went on to document, analyze and archive over 2,000 cases over the next 4 decades (Stevenson, 1975-1983; Stevenson, 1993; Cranston and Williams,1984; Becker, 1993; Secrest, 1988). In 1977, the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases devoted a special issue to his studies. Since then, he has published numerous scientific papers as well as a series of books in which he makes the case for this extraordinary body of evidence in a refreshingly dry, critical and understated tone that has earned him universal professional accolades as well as academic followers - such as Dr. Jim Tucker, assistant professor of psychiatry also at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Their studies focus on young children (primarily for credibility reasons, but also because these memories tend to fade around the age of seven, as the child enters the turbulence of the outside world and starts forming abundant new impressions once in the school environment) and rely on a thorough investigation of subject statements, witnessed behavior, medical and legal documents, verification of names, dates and factual information that the child could not have been exposed to by other means. Particularly strong evidence comes from skills (typically xenoglossia, or the use of unlearned dialects, old or foreign languages); behaviors (phobias, philias); and biological traits (rare birthmarks corresponding to documented cause of death or maiming in the claimed "previous personality"). This pioneering work continues to evolve as innovative investigative methods and theoretical approaches are developed by a new generation of researchers (see Keil J. and Tucker JB, 2000; Tucker JB, 2000; Tucker JB and Keil J, 2001).
Technically coincidental with Stevenson's decision to delve full-time into the study of alleged reincarnation cases, in 1964 Dr. Stanley Krippner joined the staff of the newly-funded Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklin. There, in collaboration with Montague Ullman and a small team including Sol Feldstein, Robert Van de Castle and other occasional collaborators, he went on to develop what has become a landmark in experimental parapsychology: a series of studies in dream telepathy, which made use of rank-ordering techniques by independent judges in order to assess whether a sleeping subject could successfully perceive imagery transmitted by a sender.
In the prototypical experiment (see Ullman and Krippner, 1973) the subject slept in an isolated room, while his EEG tracings were monitored by the experimenter in a nearby room. The agent, whose location varied from 98 feet away to a separate building in later experiments, would randomly choose an envelope containing one of a pre-selected group of art-prints, then - once informed by the experimenter that the subject had entered REM sleep - would focus his/her full attention on trying to transmit that image to the subject. After each REM period, the subject would be awakened and allowed to tape-record his dream impressions, then was allowed to go back to sleep. The same target and agent were to be used for the entire night. Once the night's dreams were transcribed, the transcripts were sent with the entire pool of 12 art-prints to a panel of three independent judges, who would rank the dream reports for correspondence against all 12 prints, with number 1 for the best match, down to number 12 for the least degree of correspondence. A similar rank-order matching was performed by the subjects themselves.
Over the course of several years, this protocol was varied to incorporate precognitive function tests, comparisons between the effect of multiple versus single agents and between multiple/single targets for a given night, while other experiments studied the impact of target-enhancing, multi-sensory agent "immersion" (such as a combination of visual, auditory and tactile stimuli) on the success of telepathic transmission. Out of ten formal studies described in "Dream Telepathy", seven yielded statistically significant results.
This type of rank-order judging has also been used in the context of another well-studied paranormal function: remote viewing, defined as "the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time", has been the subject of the most extensive government-sponsored psi research program to date (see 1; 2; Targ and Katra, 1998; Radin, 1997; McMoneagle, 1997, 2000, 2002). Over 24 years, various intelligence-gathering agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army, the Navy and NASA have contributed about 20 million dolars in funding to test the limits of human remote perception and collect information for their various operations. Typical examples included the nature of foreign military installations, the location and condition of kidnap victims, the description of nuclear facilities or nuclear events, surface and atmospheric characteristics of yet-unvisited planets, etc. The essential feature of all RV protocols is that the viewer and anyone else who may be present during the session is completely blind to the nature of the target - which is typically designated by a nonsensical string of random alpha-numeric characters called the coordinate; under these conditions, trained viewers produced results in which the overall odds against chance were 10^20 to one (Radin 1997, pp. 101). Even though "blueprint accuracy" is a relatively rare event even for the top viewers in the world, the results were judged sufficiently valuable to ensure continued funding from these various agencies over more than two decades (see above references for a full history, or Sidorov 2003 for a discussion of main RV characteristics). After 1995, when the CIA decided to discontinue this program following a Congressional investigation, remote viewing became part of the public domain; while some of the viewers went on to establish formal teaching programs (with varying degrees of respect for the original methodology and protocol rigors), a small number of motivated researchers have continued to develop innovative experimental approaches meant to shed light on the physical mechanisms that are at work behind this phenomenon (see May & al. 1994; McMoneagle 1997, 2000, 2002; Swann 1996; 4)
One of the most remarkable observations made by telepathy and remote viewing researchers, starting with Rene Warcollier at the beginning of last century, is that study participants sometimes seemed to involuntarily tap into each other's subconscious, retrieving data which had nothing to do with the intended target (Warcollier 2001; Warcollier 1927, 1928; Targ & Katra 1998; Swann 1996). For example, in "La telepathie experimentale" (Revue Metapsychique, 1926-1927), Warcollier discusses his series of studies with batteries of senders and recipients, noting that "the most extraordinary observation we have made [under our experimental conditions] is that the percipients have very frequently shared identical spontaneous images (perceived visually or intuitively) whose origin remained unknown."
But such group interference effects are not restricted to anomalous cognition: since 1998 the Princeton-based Global Consciousness Project, headed by Dr. Roger Nelson, has been involved in what is probably the largest, most coordinated and innovative PK study ever conducted: using a synchronized array of over 50 RNGs (random number generators) hosted by labs all over the surface of the globe, the project members have looked for statistical deviations in the generated data stream which can be linked with events of global significance - such as the funeral ceremonies of Princess Diana, New Year's Eve celebrations, World Cup Soccer, or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Nelson & al., 2002). While not every one of the 98 predictions made as of January 2002 behaved as expected, the composite probability for the whole array of events was 8.3 x 10^ -8 - a strikingly robust demonstration that the RNG network reacts to major collective experiences (Nelson, 2002).
But what do all these apparently distinct phenomena have in common, beyond the stigma of "subjective states" or "paranormal function" imposed on them by the scientific orthodoxy? Although not evident at first glance, there is a remarkable common feature that emerges from their study, and it is simply this: that in questioning their underlying mechanism, one is forced, sooner or later, to recognize the fluid nature of individual boundaries. If one's personality can be dramatically affected by "memories" which could not have possibly originated in the present life; if a trained person can successfully remote view complex physical targets, the emotions of people present at the site, and past or future events including their cognitive context; if our dream experiences can reflect the contents of another human being's simultaneous circumstances or deliberate intent; and if our minds can collectively create such a powerful constructive interference that distant RNGs are capable of detecting it - then how do we decide where one mind ends and another begins? Is is reasonable to believe that telepathy, remote viewing, pre-cognition, reincarnation memories and similar experiences are based on one consciousness mode (non-local in space and time) while our common, waking mind is the emergent product of brain activity? And if we choose to believe that all consciousness is non-local - that it can survive separation from bodily functions - then what can we conclude about the substrate of our individual memories and the limits of the self? What is the role of the brain, beyond a local motor control unit? Clinical amnesia cases suggest that memories can be intactly stored, but non-retrievable. Could the same be one day extended to a vast range of mental experiences - such as dream material and past life events? If what we are is dictated by our memories, then how do we draw the line between experiences acquired via "normal", sensory means, and those we access mentally, such as reincarnation-type data or the rare but powerful remote viewing bi-location event?
Of course, this is merely a rhetorical question: just as we can temporarily immerse in a book or film to the point of identifying with the character, we can emerge from the typical remote viewing experience unscathed, with as strong a sense of identity as ever. The same goes for the majority of Stevenson's cases, where the child spontaneously and gradually stops talking about his "other life" around the age of six, as he/she begins to interact intensely with the outside world and its demands - to the point that these memories fade into oblivion. But the observation needs to be made that in both cases it is one and the same mechanism which restores one's sense of identity - and that mechanism is focus. It is complete focus on a target which allows the remote viewer to retrieve correct information about it, with nothing but a string of numbers and letters as a coordinate and the joint intent of the tasker to assign that particular coordinate to the given target; it is the collective focus of the sender and percipients which allows group telepathy to work; and it is a powerful emotional experience (which creates its own focal attraction) that presumably results in mind-matter interactions such as the GCP's sharp statistical deviations, or the birth defects described by Stevenson.
There is also, from a theoretical point of view, the question of how exactly information is encoded, or imprinted, into the fabric of reality. Regardless of what we choose to call the collection of memories produced by Stevenson's children, there is no question that, in the cases validated by him and others, there is at least proof of anomalous cognition involved. Yet, as he and others have repeatedly argued (see Becker, 1993), this is no typical psychic ability: these children have not given any indication that they are able to produce extrasensory information about subjects other than the personality they claim to be, or show any other aptitude for psychic functioning. From a remote viewer's perspective, there is a highly significant phenomenological discrepancy between the fragmentary, subtle mental impressions that form the typical RV data and the coherent, controlled retrieval of information that these individuals are capable of - spontaneously or under questioning. A similar chasm separates the experience of conscious or dream telepathy from that demonstrated by Stevenson's cases. If both sets of information (those involved in remote perception and those verified as "reincarnation evidence") require a non-physical substrate as an intermediary storage medium, why are the latter so much more cohesive?
Finally, Stevenson's case for biological "imprinting" of information on the foetus forces us to re-examine the problem of mind-matter interactions in light of their highly charged emotional content. As Stevenson has noted, about 35% of children who allege to remember previous lives present with atypical birthmarks or birth defects which are claimed to correspond to bodily wounds in the previous personality. From the 210 such cases he has investigated, 43 out of the 49 cases in which a post-mortem report was obtained showed a high concordance between wounds and birth defects - typically within a 10 square centimeter radius of the same anatomical location, but often much closer or present at multiple locations, as in the case of bullet entry and exit points (Stevenson,1993). The parapsychology literature is also unanimous in recognizing the importance of emotionally-charged targets in functions like presentiment/precognition (with negative emotions showing by far more prominence to the percipient's mind). Does powerful emotion bind together cognitive representations and automatic reactions (including a possibly archaic psi function) in the same way as the emotional memory shortcut loop studied by neurophysiologists (Chin 1996)? Is this the basis of karmic doctrine, of belief in the persistence of psychic complexes which are fated to seek new physical experiences until gradually dissolved by enlightenment?
Regardless of how we choose to interpret Stevenson's data, his evidence should give fresh impetus to the study of anomalous cognition. While most of the parapsychology literature has tended to focus on subject parameters (psychological profile, brain states, etc) it is our belief that the careful investigation of target characteristics (the type of information that best manifests in psi function, and how this information packet is organized) has just as much to teach us about remote perception. It is our hope that this joint discussion may bring to light some novel perspectives and research possibilities - as well as a deeper understanding of the functional organization of Global Consciousness.
PARTICIPANTS: RN: Roger Nelson; SK: Stanley Krippner; JT: Jim Tucker; MG: Mark Germine; CK: Chris King; MP: Matti Pitkanen; GZ: Gerry Zeitlin; Moderator: Lian Sidorov
Dr. Roger Nelson:
1. Could you share with our readers the origins of the Global Consciousness Project? How was the idea initially received by the parapsychology community - was the scientific world ready for it?
RN: Origins go back to philosophical considerations, for example, being impressed by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, presented in The Phenomenon of Man and The Future of Man. In the early '90's it became possible to do field work with REGs in group situations, and this led to some prototype, ad hoc experiments with multiple REGs at separated locations: the OJ Simpson trial, the Gaiamind Meditation, the funeral ceremonies for Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. This work developed into the idea of a permanent network of continuously recorded REGs placed around the world in late 1997, and after some months of preparation, the GCP (EGG) network was in place by August 1998.
Most people in parapsychology were interested, and positive but careful; several became participant contributors. The consensus, I think, was that this was a good idea even if far out, but that it had to be done with scientific rigor.
2. What is the rough number and distribution of the GCP random number generators?
RN: There are, as of October 2003, about 60 active eggs in the network. They are distributed as broadly as we can arrange with volunteer hosts, and we have sites from Alaska to Fiji, in both hemispheres, all continents but Antarctica, and in most time zones.
3. What is the most sparsely populated area in which you have located a RNG ? Have you noticed any correlations between a region's population density or its degree of media exposure and the magnitude/temporal onset of the statistical deviation?
RN: I don't know what is the most sparsely populated area -- maybe Alaska? I have not seen evidence of correlations with population density, and we have not looked at questions like the local media exposure on individual eggs, except informally. In the coming year we will develop greater facility to examine questions like that, but they require subsidiary information and measures that have to be developed. We do not assume that the eggs are affected primarily by the local environment, though that remains a research question. The evidence points to nonlocal effects, and toward "relevance" as the more potent manifestation of "distance".
4. Is there any evidence for a "wave of deviations" reflecting spatio-temporally dependent events such as local New Year celebrations? In other words, are local RNGs more likely to be influenced by geographically proximal human reactions (i.e. analyses for 1999 Indian elections, Wien University exams)?
RN: See the previous question. As for New Years, we do signal averaging that simply combines all time zones to yield a result representing, in effect, a single, synchronous celebration. In this case, the data from eggs all over the world are used for each sequential midnight. The strong result is one piece of evidence favoring the notion that the anomalous structuring effect is nonlocal. Yet we have seen some evidence of stronger deviations in geographically local eggs, specifically, in the data from September 11 2001 (but note the relevance conundrum.) We can in principle do an analysis that would test whether the New Year's effect is larger on relatively local eggs. This is one of the areas we will focus on in the next year of comprehensive analytical work.
5. Is there any indication, from your preliminary analysis, that some kind of amplification also occurs at a cognitive level? In other words, have you tried to look for RNG effects in isolated locations or populations without access to current news? Have you any indication that such populations might have been cognitively affected by a global tidal wave of psychological upheaval - the source of which nevertheless remained hidden to these individuals?
RN: While we have not looked for effects on isolated locations as you suggest, there is good evidence in the data that much or most of what happens in the "global consciousness" is unconscious. For example, the huge deviations on September 11th 2001 began some hours before the overt events. I think, by implication, there may indeed be subtle effects of major global upheavals on people who don't know about the primary source.
6. This might be a stretch - but based on Cleve Backster's well-known work with plant "primary perception" (Stone 1994, 1995; Jensen 1997) there is reason to hypothesize that large plant populations might also be capable of an effect on RNGs when exposed to a powerful threat. Have you ever considered placing a number of RNGs in the vicinity of, say, a forest area scheduled for controlled burning? It would probably be important, in such a study, to separate any major human reaction from that of the organisms involved - therefore a controlled fire would be better suited than a wild one, which can evoke large-scale reactions of fear and loss among humans. Along the same line, it might be interesting to test a field RNG's reaction to half of an animal population when the other one is removed and distantly sacrificed - as might happen on laboratory subjects or farm animals diagnosed with a contagious disease. According to a series of preliminary studies published in the July issue of JNL (see Agadjanian, 2003) such split animal populations appear capable of communicating their experience at least to the point of stimulating an increased replication rate in the unexposed group. It might therefore be interesting to note any possible RNG effects from such remote "primary perceptions". How do you feel about expanding the GCP paradigm beyond the scope of human consciousness?
RN: The experiments you propose are interesting but out of the line of development of the GCP. Someone else could use our technology, but we don't plan to go there. Our mission is to develop and manage a monitor for the globe that might give us insight into subtle manifestations of events that are important to humans. This is a big enough task to preclude excursions into other areas that themselves would require serious and ongoing investment to do properly. As for expanding beyond the scope of human consciousness, it is apparent to me that we have lots to learn before concluding that what we see in the data is in fact due exclusively to humans. My guess is there are other sources than the nominal. In one direction, we have to consider the experimenters; in the other we have to consider the whole universe, animals, trees, and the earth herself.
7. The September 11, 2001 event was one of the most shocking, reverberating tragedies in recent memory - and presumably the one with the greatest cultural resonance since the start of the GCP experiment. Your results demonstrate not only a significant deviation from typical RNG behavior, but, surprisingly, that this pattern began several hours prior to the onset of the events (Nelson, 2002; Radin, 2002) Have you noted this type of "pre-sentient" RNG behavior in any other circumstances - and if so, can you make any observations about the type of event that tends to trigger it - are major catastrophic occurrences more likely to manifest this pattern than positive events? What about unscheduled (i.e. earthquakes, deaths) versus scheduled (large group meditations, New Year Celebrations) events? Does the magnitude (presumably demonstrating the size of the impact on our collective subconscious) correlate with the onset of the deviation?
RN: Good questions, and ones that we do have some preliminary experience with. There is a little evidence that surprise catastrophic events like earthquakes may register a little ahead of the nominal time. I have not seen any similar suggestive evidence in the scheduled events, but the question has not been well-defined. Except for September 11, we have not done thorough assessments, and conclusions are not yet warranted. This topic will be one of several specific areas we will be addressing in the intense analysis program planned for the next year.
8. It is also very interesting to note, in this context, that the data obtained on Monday, September 10, 2001 by a group of trained remote viewers (the Hawaii Remote Viewing Guild) meeting for their weekly class was remarkably congruent with the events that were to take place approximately 7 hours later (see "Migrations into the near future" by Sita Seery in this issue). How do you try to interpret such "intrusions" of future events into our consciousness?
RN: I don't try to interpret these descriptions. I find them interesting, but I would have to be much better educated about the material, the sources and context, before I would feel comfortable attempting any interpretation.
Dr. Stanley Krippner:
9. Dr. Krippner, in your book "Dream Telepathy" you conclude that "an important ingredient in the success of experiments [...] is the use of potent, vivid, emotionally impressive human interest pictures to which both agent and subject can relate". You have also made the observation that certain basic themes (for example eating, drinking, or religious themes) tend to come through more predictibly. Have you been able to further differentiate between various classes of targets - i.e. are archetypal images, or culturally prominent symbols, more readily transmitted?
SK: No. These are great ideas; we did not have the financial resources to do this, but perhaps someone will in the future.
10. Have you noticed any "contaminating" elements (information originating from one participant's personal experience or circumstances, rather than the expected association basin of the designated target) that seem to inadvertently manifest in other participants' dreams?
SK: Yes. We have discussed this "contamination" in our book and articles. It happened early in our studies, but did not happen once we took steps to keep the "sender" from reading extraneous material, etc.
11. In 1971, you attempted an experiment in which the telepathic image was to be transmitted by approximately 2,000 agents simultaneously. The target slide was "The seven spinal chakras" by Scralian and was projected on a wall, before a concert audience, with the words "Try using your ESP to 'send' this picture to Malcolm Bessent. He will try to dream about the picture. Try to 'send it to him. Malcolm Bessent is now at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn". A number of clear correspondences (mean score of 83 out of 100) appeared in Bessent's dream that night, whereas the control subject, whose name and location was not disclosed to the audience, showed a high correspondence score (96 out of 100) for this image two nights later. Overall, however, there was no significant improvement in dream correspondence scores with 2,000 agents as opposed to the typical single one.
How do you interpret these findings in light of the purported field effect observed by the Global Consciousness Project? Do you feel there might be a difference between emotional and symbolic cognitive interactions at the global level - that perhaps a resonant effect, or constructive interference, is only possible for the former? Does your body of research support such a hypothesis - have you noted a difference between the group communication patterns of abstract versus emotional content?
SK: Here you are asking questions on the basis of one study, a study that did not yield overall positive results. So to make a conjecture would not be possible.
12. Another one of your experiments (the "Vaughan Study") showed that using the same target over several nights decreased, rather than increased, the overall correspondence scores. In other words, the amount of time an agent spent "transmitting" the target image did not result in improved performance. In your book, you assign this observation to the gradual loss of interest on the part of the agent, who found herself increasingly bored with the single target.
This is a particularly interesting finding in light of RV performance, because it suggests that the amount of time spent "probing" a target aspect may be less important than the intensity of the focus with which it is probed (assuming that telepathy and remote viewing share a similar mechanism, as suggested by Ingo Swann). Somehow, for both sender (target) and percipient, remote sensing appears to require a critical threshold of intent, which typically seems to undergo a rapid decay rate once generated - hence the need for persistent re-focusing, re-probing and re-cueing...
Have you found that particular agent focusing techniques tended to enhance the probability of successful telepathy? For example, you have noted that a "sensory bombardment" with visual, auditory and tactile stimuli meant to reinforce a particular idea for the agent (such as "Birds" or "Painter") appeared to evoke significant dream correspondences in the subjects. How does that compare with situations in which the agent is simply asked to think of multiple associations for his target - and do these sensory associations tend to appear in the subject's dream more vividly or consistently when there is a real multi-sensory immersion on the part of the agent? To translate this into RV analysis language, do you feel it might be possible to differentiate between valid remote perception and cognitive contamination among multiple viewers on the basis of how complex and multi-faceted a piece of data appears across their reports - or do associated, recalled mental images easily morph into various sensory aspects in your experience?
SK: The pilot study you mention was such a minor attempt that no conclusions can be drawn from it. Your suggestion to compare abstract vs. emotional content is a good one, and if someone would like to do it, I would be delighted. The Maimonides dream transcripts were destroyed (without my permission) and so we can not do it retrospectively. And your other questions can not be answered because there are not enough data available from the work that we did.
I must say that these questions are extremely perceptive. If the dream transcripts had not been destroyed, it would be possible to go back and make a retrospective analysis. All that I have is the record of judgings that were done and the dates on which the experiments took place. This enabled Michael Persinger and me to look for geomagnetic correlates with the studies as a whole and with the subject who spent the most nights in our laboratory. In both analyses we found such correlates at statistically significant levels (and published the results).
Dr. Jim Tucker
13. Dr. Tucker, you have directly investigated a number of cases suggestive of reincarnation. How many points of validated evidence do you typically require to consider a case solved, and what type of evidence do you feel is most persuasive?
JT: While we have criteria for when to register a case, the determination that a case is solved is more subjective. Occasionally, a child’s statements need to be compared to the specifics of the life of more than one deceased individual to see which one is a better match. A case being solved does not mean that we are convinced that it is a case of reincarnation but rather that the child’s reported statements appear to correspond to one particular individual.
As for which evidence is most persuasive, that can certainly vary from case to case, but the rare cases that include written documentation of the child’s statements made before the case was solved I find hard to dismiss, particularly the ones that include very specific details about the previous personality.
14. How is your research approach today different from the methods pioneered by Dr. Stevenson? Which aspects of this phenomenon intrigue you most? What about the theoretical approach - are there any comparative studies attempting to place such cases within a broader class of phenomena? How do you see the future evolution of your field?
JT: The basic approach to investigating the cases is the same-trying to document as accurately as possible what each child said, whether he or she had access to the information through normal means, the details of the previous personality’s life, etc. Beyond that, as we are getting more and more of this data in our computer database, we are now able to look more at features of the cases as a group, so we may be able to get insights that we cannot get from simply looking at individual cases. Nonetheless, the careful study of strong individual cases remains the backbone of the work.
One area that intrigues me is that of cases in the West. We have gotten a number of reports of cases from parents with no previous belief in reincarnation or with a previous distain for the idea, and while the American cases are weaker that the best of the Asian ones, this may be because we haven’t collected enough yet to find the really strong ones. If we could find cases here that were as strong as the best Asian ones, then I think they would have to make an impact on people’s thinking regarding reincarnation.
For now, the predominant question in the work is whether the cases are evidence of reincarnation or at least of the ability of young children to have memories of previous lives, and until we are able to answer that question with reasonable confidence, we will have difficulty moving the field to other areas. People have asked from time to time, “Why collect more cases?” but until we’ve collected enough so that we can say with confidence, “Some young children have memories of previous lives” or “Young children are not capable of remembering previous lives,” then moving on to other issues is difficult.
15. In a recent JSE paper (Stevenson and Haraldsson, 2003), the authors compare certain features of reincarnation type cases as documented about one generation apart by two different investigators. Remarkable in both series is the mean age when the child first began speaking about his previous life (31 months for IS; 32 months for EH); the mention of the previous personality's name (in 88%, respectively 63% of the children); the percentage of cases in which the child mentioned the mode of death (82% for IS; 83% for EH); the proportion of violent deaths among these (73% for IS and 80% for EH); and the prevalence of unusual behaviors such as phobias related to the previous life (typically mode of death), which occurred in 77% of IS's cases and 42% of EH's cases. How do these memories typically present, how many specific details tend to be spontaneously described at one time?
JT: The memories present in different ways. Often, the children are very young when they begin making a statement here or there, and the statements gradually form a cohesive story. At times, families have difficulty being certain that a particular statement relates to the previous life that the child has described, and the children often resist questioning. In other situations, however, the children come out with the bulk of the story in one sitting and remain very consistent during any questioning about it.
16. How consistently are the children able to retrieve specific information when prompted to do so? Is there any qualitative difference you have observed between the way they describe current life memories and those of the alleged past personality - such as richness of sensory detail, the speed of information retrieval, logical associations between memories, temporal coherence of the perspective on a given episode, etc? (This would be particularly interesting to compare with the usual mode of information retrieval in remote viewing, where the data most typically manifests as fragmented sensory or conceptual material; and "normal" episodal memories, where one's mental film remains more or less a replay of the events as perceived at the time.)
JT: Many of the children are not able or at least not willing to answer questions about their memories. They seem to have to be in the right frame of mind to express them, and this is often during relaxed times. Certainly, exceptions exist, and some of the children talk about the past lives on a nearly constant basis. Parents often report that the children are very serious when they discuss their memories--that their manner is very different from when they are fantasizing. The memories often seem rather fragmentary, though some of the fragments, of course, are much bigger than others are. I cannot give a good answer to the question of differences between their descriptions of current life memories and the past life ones except to say that many show an intense emotional attachment to the past life ones. That emotion may be quite intermittent, but the children may cry intensely as they describe missing previous parents or other family members.
17. Recent brain imaging studies into multiple personality syndrome (MPS) have shown that the patterns of hippocampus activation (which are associated with the laying down and retrieval of personal memories) vary markedly between the different personalities. For example, Condie and Tsai found that when a dominant personality was replaced by a weaker alter, hippocampal activity died down only to light up again when the dominant personality returned - as if they both had access to different memory basins. These changes, however, were not observed when simply "play-acting" a personality shift. It is also interesting to note that the consensus explanation for MPS involves a defense mechanism against emotional trauma, which scars or severs natural memory pathways (Carter, 2003).
Has there been any attempt so far to use this type of imaging in order to study children in the act of recollecting past life memories? Especially in cases where there is a strong behavioral or skill-type effect, one might hypothesize that the past-life, adult memories of the previous personality might overwhelm the set of memories formed by the child in this life. Were hippocampal activation patterns to differ in this fashion, we would have not only a further indication that these personality-centered memories are far more complex than mere imagination, but also a proof that they affect the very physical foundation of the brain - which would not be surprising, given Dr. Stevenson's remarkable findings with respect to the high correlations between atypical birthmarks/birth defects and the validated mode of death in the previous personality (Stevenson, 1993). Indeed, the brain and its activity during foetal development may be an important link in understanding the impact of these psychic information clusters on the child's somatic evolution.
JT: No functional imaging studies have been done with these children. Logistical difficulties would have to be overcome-such as having equipment and cases available in the same location, having the children recall the memories on demand, etc-but beyond that, we would not know at this point what to look for. Recent studies in neuropsychology have looked at functional imaging differences when general subjects recall accurate memories vs. false ones, but at this point, tests are not available to assess a particular memory in a particular subject. I would not expect the patterns in these subjects to be the same as the ones with multiple personality disorder (or dissociative identity disorder, as it is now known). Many of the children talk about the past life in the past tense; they do not appear to dissociate and “become” the previous personality.
18. What is the typical age and experience these children seem to recall? Do most of these alleged past life memories center around a particular age or event, or can the children easily move along their previous life time-line and produce information on demand? Have you been able to identify any general patterns - are children most likely to dwell on their routine environment and habits, or on particularly traumatic events, including death, in their previous incarnation? Are there particular types of memories, particular sensory modalities (such as visual, auditory, olfactory, texture) reported more frequently than others? Any particular trends in "archetypal experiences" - ie. are children more likely to evoke the life of a soldier? mother? leader? And has it been your general experience that these individuals are not aware of events which occurred between their purported death and their new life?
JT: The children tend to talk about people and events from the end of the previous life, and 75% of them state the mode of death for the previous personality. Along with that traumatic memory are more mundane ones, as the children recall various everyday details of the previous life. Most of the children do not seem able to easily move along their previous life time-line, and many of those who recall lives as adults appear unable to access early life events at all. The memories do not appear to involve any particular sensory modalities, but that can be difficult to judge from the children’s statements. The children do not report “archetypal experiences” but rather the details of routine lives. While most of the children do not say anything about events between lives, a few describe intermission memories. These can involve either memories of events on Earth that occurred after the death, usually near either the home or the place of death of the previous personality and occasionally at least partially verifiable, or ones of another realm with spiritual beings.
19. Have you seen cases in which the child confused events in the lives of past relatives or friends with his own experiences (as the previous personality) - perhaps trying to fit all these memories into a meaningful pattern, as we do in dreams?
JT: By all appearances, the children report memories from the vantage point of only one deceased individual. One possible exception is Stevenson’s case in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation of Imad Elawar, who vividly described a fatal accident in which the uncle of the man eventually identified as the previous personality died, but that is a very complex case. Otherwise, the details given by the children match the life of the identified previous personalities and not their relatives. The parents sometimes try to fit the various statements of the children into a meaningful pattern (as in the case of Imad Elawar when the parents were judged to have inferred details about the previous life that were not accurate), but when the previous personality is identified, the statements that are correct are correct for that one individual. Some statements are incorrect, of course, just as some of our memories of our own childhoods are incorrect.
20. The question I am working toward is whether such memory complexes might in fact linger in our collective subconscious and be "adopted" by a young child on the basis of some yet-unknown predisposing factors. Both Warcollier and Krippner (Warcollier 2001; Ullman and Krippner, 1973), to mention only two major investigators, have noted that a certain latency between information transmission and reception is rather common in telepathy - ranging from minutes to days or even longer; is it conceivable that such information becomes part of our collective, trans-temporal record and that anyone might be able to tap into it? Is there any persuasive argument you can invoke for interpreting this validation data (otherwise a spectacular body of evidence for nonlocal, trans-temporal information access) as proof for reincarnation, rather than a single-target, recurrent type of anomalous perception? How would you ultimately differentiate between "reincarnation" and remote "tapping" into the collective unconscious?
JT: Well, depending on how you define “single-target, recurrent type of anomalous perception,” you might end up with what amounts to being another term for reincarnation, but many of these cases clearly involve more than just information transmission. The birthmarks, emotions, and behaviors that accompany the memories all suggest an individual consciousness that has continued from a previous life rather than adopted memory complexes that have somehow attached to a young child. A child who cries every day for his previous parents certainly appears to be an individual who is missing his parents from a previous life rather than a child who has unknowingly tapped into the collective unconscious. Likewise, the fact that the memories cluster around items that would have been on the mind of the previous personality at the time of death suggests that the consciousness has somehow continued from the end of that life, as opposed to a super-psi explanation that might be expected to include more varied memories.
Two other arguments against the idea of nonlocal information access: as in the case of crying children, it runs directly opposite to the subjective experiences of the subjects, who believe that they are remembering events that they previously experienced in a prior life, and in addition, almost all of these children show no other paranormal abilities that would predispose them to being able to access such information.
Joint questions
21. A recent series of independent studies has shown that one's focus, or global brain configuration, has an unexpected effect on the firing patterns of sensory processing neurons, starting as early as the bottom of the visual hierarchy (McCrone, 1997). This top-down modulation runs contrary to everything neurophysiologists traditionally believed about the emergence of mental processes - but it is not much of a surprise from the empirical perspective of remote viewing, where the strength and specificity of intent produces data that is highly specific to particular cues (such as visual, auditory, olfactory, emotional, aesthetic impact, etc).
RV analysis presents a particularly fertile area for studying the way in which information is decoded by each viewer. Of course, as in psychoanalysis, symbols are highly individualized and fluctuate with time; the focus also tends to vary, with viewers apparently attracted by different aspects of the target: some viewers tend to produce very detailed technical data while others are more sensitive to landscapes or the emotions and personal rapport of humans detected at the target. Finally, the angle from which a target is "approached" on initial contact, as determined from the post-session analysis of sketches and visual descriptors, seems to vary considerably between individual viewers - with some describing the view from overhead while others approach it from ground level or even the center of the target... This observation, in particular, seems to hide some important clues about the formalism of data encoding and processing in the global information space - perhaps analogous to the sensitivity of specialized neurons to particular lines, angles, directions of movement, etc. (see Diamond & al., 1999)
What, in your opinion, might account for two or more remote viewers seeing the same target from different perspectives, or "picking up" different conceptual aspects?
RN: Seems likely to be much the same as in ordinary perception, where most who study the topic agree that it is constructive. We bring to our view of the world the characteristics of the viewer, biases, experience, motivations, etc. I think we should expect something like that, perhaps even more pervasively, in remote viewing.
SK: Of course two remote viewers could "pick up" different aspects of the target. Just look at the data from mainstream psychology, especially that concerning eyewitness reports of crimes and accidents. People see events through their own lens, and these lens are based on early experience as well as genetic perceptual differences.
GZ: In addressing this question one must keep in mind that the formal RV protocol is based on a model of a viewer fixed in the laboratory and recording incoming impressions, not actually traveling as in the "OOBE" model. Although some RVers occasionally eschew the formal protocol and undertake a "trip" to the target, we need to assume that this question does not allow for that, which would actually create a second and very different question. Thus when this question refers to 'the angle from which a target is "approached" on initial contact, as determined from the post-session analysis of sketches and visual descriptors', it is already contradicting the protocol assumed to be in operation during the RV session.
It is impossible, however, to draw an image of the target or to describe its appearance without interjecting an apparent visual angle, but one must not impute an actual approach from the data. But a viewing angle does not require an actual approach. One could as well imagine the viewer had used a powerful telescopic capability that could be used from the viewing position. I suppose it would be useful to check whether the recorded viewing angle actually matched what would be seen under those circumstances. Assuming the answer to that check is "no", then the viewing perspective is just another aspect of the recording, along with the other conceptual aspects picked up. And that simplifies the question.
When something is observed or experienced, a conceptual model of the actual thing that it is, seems to be constructed or encoded by the observer based on the raw sensory data received and the observer's choices in ordering or prioritizing the data. In the RV situation there is no raw sensory data input, but all the other faculties of integrating and modeling, whatever they may be, are there and are used to construct the observer's inner model. We don't know what those faculties are, and we don't know how or of what the model is "constructed". In fact there is a deeper mystery here, because the existence of a model implies that sensory organs etc. are used to view it, and of course this leads to an infinite succession of model making and viewing.
Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili in Brain, Symbol, & Experience postulate Conscious Network (always capitalized) as the ultimate experiencer in the brain, sidestepping the infinite regress of models viewed by homunculi. But they haven't actually located Conscious Network. It's just another postulate. Does the literature on consciousness contain any more satisfactory proposition as to how things are experienced? Lacking that, my answer to the current question would be that we need to have a general explanation for conscious experience of ordinary, local objects and events before we can explain features of the remote viewing process.
MP: That focus would have strong effect on neuronal firing patterns conforms with the hypothesis that time mirror mechanism is a general mechanism of brain functioning. In this approach neural firing is preceded by a process, which is much like a desire communicated from the top of organization downwards and generating lower level desires. This process proceeds downwards along the hierarchy of magnetic bodies down to the level of sensory organs and from there to brain and brain and CNS finally respond to the process by generating neural activity (remember Libet's findings about time delays of consciousness).
That different viewers pick up different conceptual aspects is quite an interesting finding. If the remote viewer is like a single neuron of a higher level collective self, the personal RV profile would be analogous to the specialization of the neuron, and also reflect the "wiring" between the "neurons" of the multi-brained higher level self.
CK: Actually standard tests of perceptual judgment show that active cognition is able to determine the mode of perceptual discrimination when different strategies of visual assessment of the sameness of two stimuli with respect to two differing populations are proposed.
I have a problem with the preponderance of remote viewing as an idea. I want to explain why it is limited and limiting as a concept. All conscious viewing is essentially remote viewing. Also remote viewing is an attempt to tame and confine the 'otherness' of psychic consciousness.
Firstly remote viewing tends to assume we have a clairvoyant capacity to se other places and know the conditions of those places. However this doesn't in any way address the mystery of intent, the nature of consciousness, or any idea of the after life or disincarnate consciousness. Evidence that there is a mental plane is little help to us unless we can begin to understand the "otherness" - the deep and utterly wild differences this 'abyss' might have. Basically we want remote viewing powers to convince ourselves that life is worth living because it has a supernatural dimension, but we want it to be tame enough that we don't have our own ideas too seriously challenged.
Central to this is the failure of remote viewing to address of itself the paradox of intentionality or how to deal with anticipating reality - not just precognition, but survival through anticipating change in terms of the quantum realm. This is a similar failing to the initial ideas of morphic resonance which were primarily spatial without fully addressing the paradoxes time and intentionality raise about reality. It is only when we begin to consider how present can anticipate future and what kind of universe it is that permits this that we are beginning to face these questions.
22. In his work with plant "primary perception", Cleve Backster has repeatedly noted that his subjects only seemed to respond to authentic, spontaneous emotions: for example, a sincere impulse to burn the plant would evoke a marked electrophysiological response, but only pretending to did not (Stone 1994, 1995; Jensen 1997). Furthermore, when he correlated his out-of-laboratory experiences with the polygraph tracings of the experimental plants or cells, he consistently found the significant deviations to coincide with emotional reactions - whereas neutral conversation and events did not produce any remarkable signatures.
How do you interpret these results, especially in light of the preceding discussion? Why would the same mental image (i.e. burning a leaf) only evoke a response when genuine emotion (such as aggression) accompanied it?
RN: How could it be otherwise? To the extent there is plant perception, or anomalous perception of any kind, it seems sensible to expect it to penetrate facade and deception as easily as it penetrates the barriers of locality and missing physical medium. In other words, if we are talking about a truly "psychic" phenomenon, we must expect it to operate transparently in a transparent world.
SK: I can not comment on this question because I do not consider Backster's work sufficiently well established. The experiments you cite have never been published in a refereed scientific journal.
MP: Authentic emotions are necessary if sharing of mental images is involved.
CK: If you are talking mental action you have to explain why you think an image of burning will be transmitted but lethal intent or the sense of deceit in cheating will not. Isn't the raw emotion simpler, more direct an organismic reality than a complex image of fire?
23. One alternative to the hypothesis of reincarnation would be that past-life memories are simply association basins strengthened by a powerful emotional event - such as when people report that "their life flashed before their eyes" . If there is a non-physical information substrate accounting for anomalous, non-local perception, then one might surmise that a group of trained remote viewers blindly targeting such a case would be able to produce more cohesive data about the "past-life impressions" of a very young child than about his recent memories. Alternatively, blind RV targeting of the previous personality (once a reasonable identification has been made by the field researcher) could give us a clue about which events in his/her life are most salient to remote perception. Comparing these three sets of data (the child's, the viewers' and the objective history of the previous personality) might yield valuable insights into how information is encoded and accessed nonlocally.
How do you feel about such an experiment - do you think there may be anything worth learning from it, and would it be ethical, in your opinion?
SK: The proposed experiment would, indeed, produce valuable information. But it would be expensive. Who would fund it?
JT: To repeat, the past-life memory cases involve a lot more than just information, and any explanation that starts with an information transfer to explain the other features, the birthmarks, emotions, and behaviors, becomes rather convoluted. Having remote viewers attempt to access facts from the previous life might be interesting, but I'm not sure what it would really tell us. Similarly, having mediums try to contact the previous personality could be very interesting, but interpreting the results might be challenging.
GZ: Lian has clarified the first part of this question, up to the word "Alternatively", for me (personal communication).
Lian explained that most RV theories invoke something like a pure information substrate, and reincarnation research suggests the same. Thus past-life memories might be susceptible to probing through RV. Since the bulk of past-life memories would have been recorded by the past personality in a mature state of development, these memories might be more cohesive than the present-life memories of a 3-4 year-old child, and in fact might overwhelm them as well. RV of the previous life could perhaps be used to check on these memories. If the match was not good, various other explanations for them could be considered.
As to how I would feel about an experiment along the lines of the first part of this question as clarified, I think that the idea is generally logical, but there must be a well-thought-out experimental design; otherwise the results could be rather chaotic. The design should clearly state the issue that the experiment is intended to elucidate. Presumably the point of the experiment is to remote-view the presumed past life in order to shed light on the hypothesis that the subjects' memories are indeed due to a connection with a past-life personality (via the substrate). Is the relative cohesiveness of two sets of memories (present-life and "past") significant and will the differences in cohesiveness themselves be used to select subjects for the experiment? Will a standard RV judging protocol be used, and is it clear how the results will be statistically evaluated? Will the aforementioned cohesiveness enter into the evaluation in some way? (I would expect not, but this question needs to be asked.)
The alternative proposed experiment is intended to reveal information about the nature and functioning of the "substrate" or other means of accessing nonlocal information. This one is also interesting, but appears to be less amenable to formal design and more of an exploration. Insights gained from this experiment could then lead into a more structured follow-up study to either test the validity of the insights or to develop further detail.
Now as to the ethics - and perhaps this should have been addressed first - I cannot see how these experiments could be considered ethical. Young children are not competent to decide whether or not to enter into such experiments. In matters of health and other vital issues, decisions are expected to be made by the parents. However, these proposed experiments are not vital to the child's well-being, and in fact might well prove to be damaging in some way, such as by revealing information that would actually be hurtful. In this case I cannot support letting the decision as to whether to participate be made by the parents, the child, or by anyone else.
In other words, these experiments are unethical and should not be performed.
MP: The experiment would be very interesting. A skeptic would probably argue that the experiment is quite too complex. Concerning the proposed interpretation of re-incarnation: normal personal identity could also be seen as being determined by the mental images that I have/share. For instance, the inhabitant of the TGD Universe identifies himself with his physical body during his biological life and with his magnetic body after his biological death. The personal evolution from highly ego-centered consciousness of a teenager could be seen as a process in which the sharing of mental images gradually delocalizes the contents of consciousness and ego centeredness gradually disappears.
CK: The sheaf of incarnation is the unravelling of reincarnation and the afterlife. I am a sheaf of incarnation containing threads of the incarnate in many beings. There is for example no need for me to be reincarnated nor to have past lives to be a living manifestation of another from another time. I may even be born on the epiphany, as I am, and yet not simply a reincarnation of Jesus while at the same time here to unveil the reunion. Furthermore we may each exist at the crest of full organismic consciousness only in the biological frame and still consciousness is eternal from alpha to omega and we are yet witness to the totality in this life.
Again the problem is one of taming the wilderness.
I'm not remote viewing the Messiah - rather I am viewing reality remotely as I stand here in the living flesh - it's a question of being one with my own cubic centimetre of chance.
24. Although no spontaneous psi abilities are typically associated with children claiming to remember past lives, it is not unreasonable to suspect that they might be more gifted at such functions, should the opportunity present itself. Have there been any formal attempts at testing the anomalous perception scores of such children? (Perhaps a simple field test kit could be included in the general investigation of future cases in order to compare their scores to standard performance...)
SK: I like this suggestion but know of no attempt to discover possible psi capacities of children who claim to recall past lives. The "field test kit" is an intriguing idea. But because I do no work in this field, I can not comment on its feasibility.
JT: No such attempts have been made to my knowledge. At this point, we only have preliminary data about the psychological functioning of the subjects, and we haven't looked at any parapsychological functioning.
CK: The problem with natural psychic consciousness is that it is not recognized 're-cog-nized' in our culture. It is a natural evolutionary endowment of the non-ordinary reality in which consciousness manifests. There is no reason to expect it to be a rare gift in a uniquely talented individual but a hidden repressed aspect of human nature.
25. Jung saw symbols as "the best possible expression for something relatively unfamilar" (Vedfelt 1999, p40). He found that "the earliest dreams of childhood emanate from the very deepest layers of the personality and are so meaningful that they often foretell a person's life"; they are also "often more archetypal and impersonal than those of adults" (ibid., pp. 54)
Do you find that primitive, archetypal imagery is more commonly activated in remote viewing or telepathic transmission of targets which involve major emotional events? And do you feel that such targets tend to be associated with higher success rates in typical anomalous perception trials?
SK: In our experiments, we tried to use what you would call primitive, archetypal imagery. If the transcripts were still available, we could do an analysis of the dream telepathy sessions comparing targets along these dimensions.
MP: Jung's comment about symbols as emanating from the deepest levels of personality and even foretelling a person's life is highly interesting. I would like to relate it to the general TGD-inspired vision about cognitive hierarchies, and about the relationship between information and emotions.
p-Adic physics as physics of cognition means that p-adic space-time sheets represent correlates of cognition and intentionality. Real and p-adic topologies differ in a profound manner from each other: two rational points very near to each other p-adically are usually very far from each other in the real sense. This leads to the view that cognitive growth (proceeding from p-adically short to p-adically long scales) proceeds from long to short real scales. Typical example is a development of a skill from a clumsy movement to a refined pattern of motor activity.
That it is children who can remember from earlier lives and that the memories are archetypal symbols rather than detailed maps, has following interpretation in this picture. When child cognitively grows, her attention turns into details and the memories of earlier life and precognitions of life to come, disappear from the focus. The life as 4-D statue is not seen anymore so clearly. Note that the dominance of theta and delta in the EEG of child and the shift of EEG to higher frequencies during ageing conforms with this view.
Also remote viewing could represent cognitively less detailed perception, kind of "overall viewing", involving long time and spatial scales. On the other hand, emotions represent overall summaries, only the few most significant bits of information, and thus correspond to long scales. That information molecules are also molecules of emotion is not an accident. Therefore the events inducing strong emotions should be the ones which can be remotely experienced.
"Overall view" could mathematically correspond to a statistical description involving concepts like entropy and negentropy. Suppose that a given sensory quale corresponds to a quantum average for the increment of a particular quantum in a sequence of quantum jumps defining the mental image. One can assign to each sensory quale a negentropy defined by the probability distribution of the corresponding quantum number increment. This negentropy or (and) its gradient with respect to subjective time might be identifiable as emotion(s) associated with that particular quale. The sign of this gradient would determine whether emotion is positive or negative.
CK: No - the most active manifestation of the archetypal is right here in the marketplace. It has to be to become manifest in the flesh. In the real world the skeins of karma are entwined with the collapsing wave function of history in a way which brings the supernormal into its fullest play.
26. Jung (see Vedfelt pp. 42) once described a series of dreams containing birth-and-death archetypal imagery written down by an 8-year old child who could not possibly have been exposed to this material - but which Jung interpreted as premonitory/preparatory dreams for her premature death (which occurred three years later).
What, in your opinion, is the likely origin of archetypes and universal symbols? Do you believe they merely reflect a parallel cognitive ontogeny that arises from the earliest life experiences of each individual and finds mental representation at the intersection of many such association basins - or are they somehow hard-wired into our collective unconscious? In other words, do you think some universal symbols (and their meaning) exist independently of, and prior to, an individual's sensory experiences?
SK: I do not believe there are "universal symbols." People forget that symbols are not the same as archetypes. Jung himself wrote that archetypes are expressed in symbols that reflect one's culture; hence there could be different symbols for each culture. As to the origin of archetypes, I believe they are physiological and that the neurosciences offer the best research arena for their study. I do not use the word "collective unconscious," preferring to think of a "pattern that connects" (to use Bateson's term), a pattern evident in the Nelson-Radin data.
MP: Perhaps one could see archetypes as mental images shared by very many selves, perhaps memories shared by many generations of humans (or even something much more general?). The most fundamental archetypes could be shared by different species, and shamanic experience might involve this kind of sharing.
Sharing is not a passive event but affects the mental image since some mental image of the sharer necessarily fuses with the shared mental image. Archetypes would be in some sense universal, objective mental images representing consensus, kind of a stereo vision using the eyes of the entire humanity.
CK: No they are a manifestation of collective aspects of consciousness. Archetypes are cultural cosmology in action.
27. If we do share a Meta-Mind, to use Ingo Swann's terminology, then what do you think lies ahead of us in terms of scientific challenge: beyond the immediate implications for society (increased sensitivity to each other, compassion, a more coherent application of collective intent), what is our next great area of discovery?
RN: Survival of our human environment? We certainly seem to need something like a metamind to get moving on the major problems of population, environmental depredation, social dis-harmony and imbalances, destructive (war) vs constructive intent and actions. A major challenge is for consciousness science to become more useful in social terms.
SK: If something like a "Meta-Mind" exists, the challenge is to research it, and to find the funds to study it. Until the data are available, speculation is not something I would feel comfortable doing.
JT: Some physicists are already discussing the importance of consciousness in the universe, and given the fact that the effects of consciousness may be retroactive in time, I wonder if the Meta-Mind may one day be considered to have been a driving force in the evolution of the universe and of life on Earth so that the evolution would include conscious beings. Future consciousness may have willed conscious beings into existence, so perhaps we will one day judge our Creator to have been, at least in part, ourselves. When a giant figure in physics like John Wheeler designs a thought experiment that shows that a conscious observer on Earth in the present could determine which path a photon from a distant galaxy took millions of years ago, then science may well be moving toward an understanding of the effects of consciousness as our next great area of discovery.
MG: My work has involved the One Mind Model of quantum reality, which somehow seems to be excluded from among the many viable models of quantum reality. My most recent work, along with references to my other work, has been published in Dynamical Psychology (2003), URL: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2003/onemind.htm
Essentially, the One Mind model holds reality is knowledge, that the Universe exists purely by virtue of being known, and that we all share this Universal knowledge in an implicit or unconscious sense. Applied to quantum physics, the model predicted that the brains response to a pre-observed stimulus would differ from that of an observed stimulus. Such differences have been found and described (see also Germine, 1998; 2002, cited by Lian Sidorov in his Concluding Remarks).
Henry Stapp summed the One Mind model up well at the Quantum Mind 2003 conference: “Instead of one universe, there is one mind.” Although various other interpretations have been made of my experimental results, that fact is that these interpretations are post-facto, and were not generated by the hypothesis the experiment was designed to test.
The Universe of information is potentially available to the human brain. My experiments show that actualizing an event or bringing into reality is a function of the observing brain, and that, once actualized, the brain responds in a different manner to a stimulus representing the actualized event. The differences in response involve a regular alpha periodic function (8 to 12 Hertz), which seems to be subcortical in origin.
I have proposed that the mechanics of the differing alpha responses in the pre-observed and observed conditions involves cortical inhibition or a subcortical alpha generator, in particular inhibition of perseveration of common tone response in the condition of first observation. Inhibition of perseveration involves the prefrontal cortex, in particular the anterior cingulate, medial prefrontal, and lateral prefrontal cortices (Mesulam, 2002). The inhibition of responses by the prefrontal cortices gives rise to information, according to my current interpretation, on a quantum basis, employing Prigogine’s (1980) quantum entropy operator.
The implications of the idea that all of our individual minds arise from a single, Universal Mind are enormous. It is a shame that one cannot conduct science without one’s results being subject to post-hoc revision of the initial hypothesis. The initial hypothesis of my experiments is the One Mind Model. There is a wealth of information to be gleaned from further advances using this experimental paradigm.
GZ: If we share a "Metamind", or "Biomind", meaning a mind external to the brain with access to a great store of consciousness, there is no impact on our path of discovery as long as we don't recognize the fact. That is, it has always been there and obviously there has been no discovery; why should we now expect such?
The point of the question, however, is that some of us perhaps do recognize the fact, based on either the scant data available or on internal awareness of it. For those willing to go with the premise, there are potential discoveries to be made, and ultimately great ones that have revolutionary significance.
I see two major areas.
The first is in learning more about the basis of the "biomind". If it is not in the brain (or other organs such as suggested by Gurdjieff with his "three-brained beings"), then it is certainly not physical at all. So what is the basis?
I am convinced that the basis is intimately connected with what we call quantum processes because only these have aspects of nonlocality, acausality, and even nonreality. These aspects, though not well understood, qualify quantum processes as candidates for support of the biomind, or at least gateways to it. Thus I think that a study of quantum mechanics aimed at elucidating a basis for biomind could bear significant fruit.
The second major area of discovery could come from a study of the features and capabilities of the biomind. In other words, accepting that there may actually be a biomind empowers us to focus on what its features and capabilities might be.
I do not refer simply to a renewal of psychic research (i.e., testing for higher powers, examining "anomalies", etc.). Nelson's Global Consciousness Project is an example of a study of the global features of the biomind, in that it looks for global recognition of events that are unknown to the conventional senses at the time the recognition takes place.
I can think of other avenues of research. One that "comes to mind" is a search for trauma, or let us simply say "effects", stemming from past racial events that are not in the everyday awareness of people. In other words, does the biomind possess racial memory?
Yet another would be the possibility that the biomind is mediating the evolution of society, or even planning events that will shape society. Are there signs, for example, that people or groups position themselves geographically or in other ways to help to bring about group events or to survive or handle them?
Both the first and second avenues of discovery have the potential of revolutionizing humanity's self-concept and allowing humanity to enter consciously into its larger roles and potentials.
MP: Suppose that it would be possible to prove convincingly that there is a common pool of shared mental images and that the privacy of consciousness and biological death as the end of conscious existence are illusions. At least one might hope that this could transform the society of lonely winners and losers to people fascinated about the possibility of breaking down the barrier of personal consciousness.
Knowing the physical correlates for remote viewing would no doubt lead to a technology of consciousness. Of course, also ethical issues would appear: most of us have painful little secrets of past and might feel the loss of the personal privacy rather humiliating.
CK: Why does the meta-mind relate to the issue of futures as if the one key here? What IS a meta-mind? What IS an incarnation? What IS the bardo? We need to understand how the sheaf of self becomes loosened into the flux of the bardo without trying to cling on to one personality or reincarnate life history. The human brain may be the cosmic sanctuary of consciousness. We may be running the great cosmic race once and for all time from alpha to omega even as we speak as fragile living beings trapped in the mortal coil. We shouldn't assume the luxury of the bardo as an excuse for failing to take responsibility for the pain of the present and the angst of mass extinction.
28. The research described or alluded to in this discussion seems to converge on the possibility of future human exploration which transcends the domain of current human experience. So far, most of our forays into distant mental interactions with living systems (or inert targets such as the GCP array) have focused on a one way communication - specifically, from humans to non-human targets. However, the past three decades of remote viewing research have opened the door on what is by far the more exciting aspect of this communication - that is, the ability of humans to probe distant targets and expand their understanding of the universe into new realms of experience. How difficult will it be to make sense of our perceptions as we move further away from the experiential pool of our species, and how could such a future exploratory program maintain an objective, scientific approach - as opposed to the mystical, quintessentially subjective explorations of the past?
SK: I have never believed that what you call "an objective, scientific approach" is possible in any branch of science. For me, all scientific inquiry is, to some extent, subjective. I would eliminate the word "mystical" because that term is packed with too many connotations. However, the sooner scientists realize that their work is inevitably subjective, the better will be the resulting data and the more sense it will make.
GZ: Indeed there have been remarkable explorations by remote viewers when allowed by their taskers and protocols to view beyond the local pool of experience. And there is a rich literature of reported experiences from down the centuries to the present day. Yet, with all the stories and reports, a cohesive and consistent picture of a larger system in which we might be embedded has yet to emerge.
We do not know if this lack of consistency is due to the vastness of the larger system, large enough to contain all that seems to us inconsistent, or if the experiencers or viewers are somehow creating or dreaming or perhaps simply modifying what they see.
I can see two possible approaches to objective methodologies for developing clearer, coherent and consistent descriptions.
1. Collect a suitably large number of free-form reports. Scan them individually. From each report, extract salient, high-level features of what was described and collect these into a database. These would be features of the environment and of any objects or beings described. Collect these into a database structured so as to facilitate comparisons between corresponding aspects. Review corresponding aspects and assess the distribution of "values" for each aspect. From this, possibly a central range of values can be found with some degree of confidence.
2. Formulate a set of high-level questions about the realms of experience and what is found in them. Generate a set of tasks relating to each of these questions. Have a team of viewers work those tasks and employ standard methods for combining their reports or extracting the most likely truth from them.
Approach No. 1 has the advantage of making fewer presuppositions and allowing for the many unforeseen possibilities to be experienced and reported. However, the range of reported things may be so broad as to be difficult to organize in any coherent way.
Approach No. 2 is obviously more controlled. Its drawback is that it allows us to impose our common views and ways of thinking, thereby perhaps depriving us from the most interesting information about the realms we seek to explore. Nevertheless, this second approach gives us the chance to formulate questions of very great interest.
A word, however, about the quest for an objective, scientific approach vs. the mystical and subjective exploration. Are we certain the former is the better approach? If our efforts to find coherent and consistent descriptions of the far unknown are confounded by frequent irreducible contradictions, we may have to consider the methods of tribal peoples and their shamans. In the words of Vine Deloria, Jr. (Red Earth, White Lies), "Tribal elders did not worry if their version of creation was entirely different from the scenario held by a neighboring tribe. People believed that each tribe had its own special relationship with the superior spiritual forces that governed the universe."
There may be a deeper meaning in that statement than would first appear. My suggestion is that options be kept open in approaching this research.
MP: If I take seriously the idea about p-adic physics as physics of cognition and its basic implication that the space-time correlates of cognitive mental images have literally infinite spatio-temporal size, I am forced to ask whether the recent scientific world view already comes from a universal pool of shared ideas scattered around cosmos.
The same mechanism which makes possible remote viewing in TGD universe also makes possible quantum remote sensing as its techno-version and involving no active human agent: no problems with objectivity here. Quantum remote sensing would apply time mirror mechanism and rely on existing technology (phase conjugate laser beams sent to past and reflected back as ordinary laser beams), and would make possible an active study of remote astrophysical objects. Light velocity would not pose any first principle limitations on communications with distant civilizations.
CK: Please just partake of the divine sacraments of the living biosphere and witness the totality with care and compassion. Evolution didn't provide them for a random twist of fate. They are our completion in the greater biospheric consciousness. They hold the source of the conscious ground beneath the feet of our fantasies of the cosmic. They hold keys to long-term survival. Our consciousness becomes integrated biologically through engaging the fabric of reality from alpha to omega - therein lies the true compassion of the disincarnate soul from everlasting to everlasting. Use the time you have on earth to ensure the living fabric is sustained for the unfolding future. This is not a technological quest nor is it some greener pasture for the abyss of the totality is already within our sentient gaze. We need more to learn how to coexist intuitively, creatively and abundantly over millennia than to conquer new realms of the clairvoyant. These all follow naturally anyway from shedding our prior constructions and finding our original intuitive virtue.
29. As a corollary to the previous question - do you believe that there is a universal, trans-species "language" which accounts for the apparent form of communication observed by Backster between humans and plants, cells and humans, or plants and animals? Is there a subtle vocabulary which acts as a mediator between participants in dream telepathy or remote viewing experiments? How can a remote viewer effectively probe an inert target? Ultimately the same question extends even to DMILS and PK phenomena - how can a statistical deviation in the direction of intent be "communicated" to the remote living or inert target other than through some type of information-encoding?
If indeed such a universal "language" exists, as Matzke proposes (3; Matzke; Matzke 1994) , what type of formalism should we be looking for?
SK: Again, I can not comment on Backster's work because it has not appeared in scientific journals (with one exception, and that was his first set of experiments). As for a "subtle vocabulary," this possibility is open to serious inquiry. Until such inquiry is done, I could not speculate on the other aspects of this question.
MP: The quantum communication of intent and desire could be relatively simple and be based on direct sharing of mental images: emotions rather than bits would represent. This does not exclude coding but the coding is not involved with classical signal. The communication of say declarative memory would however require classical signaling using codes and highly symbolic representations.
I have a temptation to believe in universal languages. The hierarchy of p-adic time scales coming as half octaves (powers of square roots of two (p=about 2^k, k positive integer) could define a hierarchy of pinary cognitive codes.
a) The duration of cognitive codeword would be given by n-ary p-adic time scale
T_p(n)=p^[(n-1)/2]*T_p, p=about 2^k, k integer, n=1,2,...
The primary p-adic time scale T_p appearing in the above formula is given by
T_p=L_p/c== L(k)/c= 2^[(k-151)/2]*L(151), L(151)=10 nm.
b) The number of bits of the code word would be given by the largest prime power in the decomposition of the integer k to prime factors. If k is prime, the information content of the codeword is maximal. For instance, for p=M^{127}=2^{127}-1, the number of bits would be 127 and duration T_p(2) would be .1 seconds. Also spatial codes could be imagined with T_p(n) replaced by corresponding p-adic length scale and temporal bit patterns replaced by spatial bit patterns.
The minimal assumption is that this hierarchy defines a set of preferred frequencies used for radio communications. A stronger assumption is that the code words have universal meaning implied by the universal interaction of the temporal field patterns with the receiver organism. The intronic portion of DNA, memes, could play the role of a computer software whereas genes would code for chameleon like hardware built only when needed (chameleon like hardware is probably an essential part of future information technology). Memes could express themselves as temporal field patterns using pinary cognitive codes. The common portion of intronic DNA could make possible interspecies communications, which need not be conscious at the level of organism.
A series of "miracle" frequencies coming as powers of sqrt(2) is predicted, and it would be interesting to check whether the bit patterns realized as electromagnetic field patterns have effects on living matter. Persinger has demonstrated that temporal patterns of magnetic pulses induce various altered states of consciousness. Unfortunately, I do not know the duration of single pulse nor of the possible codeword. There is also evidence that spatially patterned laser beams can induce healing but not even illuminations (the fact that even monochromatic illumination does not induce color sensation suggest that laser light used for healing is "perceived". Spatial counterparts of cognitive codes could be involved here.
GZ: I find it difficult to accept that there would be a universal language, and a vocabulary (set of symbols) as a mediator between remote viewer and target, or between any arbitrary pair of consciousness and target. I think the idea that there would be such an arrangement is an unwarranted projection of our human situation.
After all, how would the symbol system be "taught" to all of nature? If it is pre-encoded into DNA, well, that raises many more questions.
Then how is knowledge "communicated"?
I am not a quantum physicist but I think there is enough of a suggestion from the work of physicists who publish in JNLRMI and others, that consciousness is linked to quantum processes, and that we can look to that structure for insights into how communication takes place.
I might say that when we understand the meaning of quantum entanglement, we will be on the way to understanding universal communication.
Meanwhile, there is a suggestion from "Seth" in Jane Roberts' The World View of Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation":
In that infinite gallery there exists a unique individual view of the world as seen through the eyes of each person ever graced to follow the paths of physical experience….If there were a sign outside it would read, "The Gallery of the World's Mind."
In my mind I see each quantum event as being a point of consciousness that can potentially observe the whole, and a "person", or a personal life or worldview, as a particular threading of these events. No language needed here. This is a direct contact via nonlocality.
CK: This is a Chomskian idea of a universal 'grammar' transcended to a cosmic principle. But we don't know there is a grammar as such, more likely a dynamical process at the edge of chaos which happens to evoke semantic language as an offshoot of more general principles. So don't bank on any simple language of inter-species communion. Better just to look into the eyes of the self which we meet in the NDE and recognize the other and the self are one in conscious intentionality.
The way that cannot be told is not the Tao of one or another formalism. We have to have a way of engaging the wilderness of the psyche with no restraints.
30. Do you believe that there are resolution limits of perception or intelligibility between different levels of reality?
SK: Yes. I suspect that resolution limits exist at each level of reality, as you put it, and that there are limits on perception and intelligibility as well. This should reinforce our modesty when dealing with these topics.
My major problem with your questions is that many of them are based on a very small number of data points. As a result you make assumptions that are not necessarily valid. Nevertheless, your questions are thoughtful and deserve serious consideration.
MP: p-Adic number fields R_p define a hierarchy of intelligences labelled by primes and the p-adic length and time scales associated with these primes can be seen as a hierarchy of scales defining a temporal and spatial cognitive and sensory resolution. This hierarchy of preferred p-adic scales might relate directly to the evolution of cognition and special properties of the preferred primes.
Consider first briefly the ideas about how cognition and number theory could relate in TGD universe before going to the argument for how preferred p-adic primes might appear.
a) p-Adic number fields allow also extensions based on algebraic numbers (like n:th roots) and even transcendentals like e. For instance, the minimal extension involving e is p-dimensional containing e, e^1,..,e^p-1 as added "units" analogous to imaginary unit whereas e^p exists as an ordinary p-adic number. There are good reasons to believe that the evolution of cognition means also the increase of the dimension of the extension of p-adic numbers besides the increase of p. Thus the evolution of cognition would mean a gradual "discovery" of more and more complex algebraic and transcendental numbers so that the p-adic space-time sheets correspond to increasingly higher-dimensional extensions. Cognitive world has arbitrary dimension whereas sensory world of real numbers is always 3-dimensional.
b) The recent formulation of TGD is based on the idea of algebraic continuation: real physics and various p-adic physics can be obtained from a rational number based physics by algebraic continuation analogous to a continuation of a real function to the entire complex plane. This principle poses strong conditions on physics itself since physics would be defined for generalized numbers obtained by gluing real and p-adic numbers fields together along rational numbers. One can also say that the physics of cognition becomes part of physics itself.
c) The continuation from rationals to p-adics involves always some resolution scale above which it is possible. For instance, the values of functions sin(pi*x/N) and cos(pi*x/N), N=p^k, do not exist p-adically at x=n in R_p unless one extends R_p itself to contain these irrational numbers. The better the resolution and shorter the corresponding length and time scales, the higher the dimension of the extension of p-adic numbers needed. Thus the evolution of intelligence would be essentially number theoretic shadow for the evolution of the cognitive resolution scale (or vice versa!). The metaphor about evolution of science as the increase of the resolution of microscope fits nicely with this picture.
The preferred primes could appear as follows.
a) The model of cognition leads to the hypothesis that for any prime, the numbers log(q)/pi are rational numbers for any prime q. Restrict the focus on the diagonal case q=p and use the notation
log(p)/pi = p^k * q,
where the rational number q has R_p-norm one (neither numerator nor denominator of q is divisible by p). If k does not vanish, p can be said to be "self-referential" for obvious reasons.
b) The logarithmic waves exp(iKlog(x)), K integer, appear as the basic elements in the formulation of quantum TGD and closely relate to the conformal and Lorentz invariance of quantum TGD. The algebraic continuation of these logarithmic waves to p-adic number field R_p requires that they exist at rational points x, in particular x = p, as elements of extended R_p. Thus exp(iK*log(p)) is the object that should exist in extended R_p. Accepting the above hypothesis, its existence is equivalent with the existence of exp(i*p^k*pi) in R_p.
c) For k>=0, there is no problem but for self-referential primes having k<0 the existence is possible only if e(i*pi/p^|k|), k<0 exists as an element of extended R_p. This requires p^|k|-dimensional extension so that self-referential primes would correspond to especially high levels of cognitive intelligence. This might explain why Mersennes and Gaussian Mersennes are in a preferred role in TGD Universe.
GZ: Have we defined levels of reality? At any rate, given the kind of direct perception implied by my response to the previous question, I would not expect any intrinsic limits on resolution or intelligibility. However, in the context of remote viewing, where layers of information processing (and even symbol interpretation as suggested in the preceding question) must be navigated before impressions are perceived, there may well be limitations.
CK: I don't believe there are 'levels' to reality. It's an example of what Chogyam Trungpa might call 'spiritual materialism'. We use a physic world analogy for something we have difficulty classifying. We sense 'other' states or conditions, so call these 'higher levels'. It might be easier simply to reserve a ticket for chaos in our consciousness and never let go of the centre of the cyclone for all the wild winds blowing past our verandah.
Intent is a fundamental mystery of existential reality. Focused or thrown casually into uncertainty it is not just something to do with remote viewing ... ALL viewing is 'remote viewing' in the dream-time of subjective conscious reality from 'waking life' to the 'real-time movie of dream' and intent is the central character - the effect of the self - villain and hero - god and satan. This is the prisoner's dilemma of evolution and of consciousness.
Start from the paradox of conscious intentionality and the acute instabilities of history it creates. Then try to proceed into how the universe collapses the super-abundance of many worlds into one knife-edge of history and you will begin to see why we have to be able to anticipate reality supernaturally to participate in it. The universal record is an undecidable proposition which intent turns into an acute paradox. We can't understand self or intent without an acute conscious intentional appreciation for taking living advantage of the loophole this paradox creates. The rest is history.
Consciousness is a cosmological manifestation complementary to the physical universe. Yes it could be thought of as a many in one bardo manifesting in incarnate consciousness. Yes we can become trapped in our incarnate consciousness so we can't experience the bardo. We NEED to know the disincarnate so we can become the grateful dead incarnate and do the good thing. Talking in terms of function and structure is a real world analogy but it is valid to pose the cosmic generic nature of consciousness.
Non-linear and quantum science can encompass heaps of non-mechanistic physical world descriptions which evoke all manner of possibilities. It is a fallacy to think psychic investigation is anti-science or heresy. But the hard problem of consciousness is no petty adversary but the abyss staring us back in the face. Creationism is a flawed extremely mechanistic philosophy which flies in the face of fact.
The subjective cannot be divided because division is an aspect of the physical. Whether this means there is a 'mind' which is undivided is a koan. Mind itself is a chimera. Yet consciousness and intent are complimentary to the cosmic origin and each of us is a walking incarnation of the big bang. Careful here - we have to do rather more than think to win the jackpot. There is more to intentionality than mere stealth.
Concluding remarks by Sidorov:
Emotional content and focused intent. Why are they the key to spontaneous, respectively controlled, remote mental interactions? If there are limits to symbolic communication, is emotion a form of universal currency - a primitive empathic language which allows us to perceive and respond to each other's needs as a mutually interdependent hierarchy of conscious structures? This might account for Backster's findings and the prominence of emotionally-charged events throughout the spectrum of psi functions - the ubiquitous attraction and sensitivity of the Mind to information "clusters" encoding powerful emotional reactions. Children who are psychologically (and sometimes physically) traumatized by the memory of violent injuries they claim to have suffered in a previous life; plants and cells which react to physical threats or excitement; RNGs which demonstrate marked deviations synchronously with mass display of grief or celebration, even anticipating surprise catastrophic events; precognitive and telepathic data making its way into a group remote viewing session, or into thousands of dreams throughout history... These are observations which ought to make us think about the possible organization of information in the universe, and its possible flow paths. It is perhaps too early to talk of parallelisms with the brain's neural loop organization and emotional memory shortcuts - but as Pitkanen has repeatedly stressed throughout his work, nature has a remarkable degree of symmetry built into its blueprints (see Pitkanen 2003a,b and previous issues of JNLRMI).
Somehow, even when talking about a collective unconscious, we have always taken the perspective that our minds are the primary cause, that their convergence creates some kind of universal record. Our selves, we assume, are independent entities under the control of a personal will. That this will remains an impenetrable quantity, impossible to trace back to origins either philosophically or neurophysiologically, does not seem to pose a problem to reductionists: just a few more years, just a few more breakthroughs in brain imaging technology, and we'll "get it". Others, like Susan Blackmore, espouse the Buddhist view that will and the sense of self are artificial constructs emerging from the collective dynamics of "selfish memes" (Blackmore 1996). But what are memes then, and what is their origin? Most importantly, how does focus, this apparent seed of selfhood, emerge from their interactions?
Independent studies (Puthoff and Targ, 1979; Grinberg-Zylberbaum & al., 1994; Yamamoto & al. 1997, 1999; Wackermann & al., 2003) have shown that the brainwave patterns of people engaged in a common experiment from distant locations synchronized when one was exposed to a random stimulus, even though the other participant was unaware of the stimulus periods; Germine's work also showed that the brain's evoked response potential to a random stimulus depended on whether another participant observed that stimulus or not - in a neurophysiological version of Young's double slit experiment (Germine 1998, 2002). Is consciousness the result of a bottom-up process, as our current dogma insists, or does the mind actually modulate brain/body physiology, as an increasing number of parapsychology studies suggest? What would happen to the study of collective consciousness if we turned the problem on its head and started from the universal set of information (to which remote viewers appear to have access at will) - with an eye on what characterizes our routine, spacetime-localized awareness? Would it be reasonable to investigate the possibility that deep symmetries exist between known brain processes and the mechanisms of nonlocal information transfer as Pitkanen proposes (Pitkanen 2003a,b)? Are there any parallels between psychiatric phenomena like depersonalization or multiple personality syndrome and anomalous cognition events associated with remote viewing, out-of-body experiences or reincarnation-type cases? In other words - does our collective mind possess any type of functional structure which may account for the varieties of conscious experience and remote interactions we have discussed so far? Is it more reasonable to theorize that human consciousness evolved from complex chemical reactions to a transcendent perception of space and time, than to expect, on the basis of everything we now know about such experiences, that our diurnal focus on a narrow space-time domain is merely a temporary constraint, much like the single-mindedness required to complete a piece of carving on the facade of a cathedral? If we can routinely split our attention between several tasks, is it totally inconceivable that a greater consciousness can split itself between several billion relatively independent tasks - and in that case, what can we conclude about our "ground state"? Indeed, it may be time to join Dr. Tart's proposal (Tart , 2000) that our ordinary mode of awareness need not necessarily be seen as the only, or the "natural" state of consciousness - and in so re-formulating the challenge of parapsychology, begin at last to take advantage of the neurophysiologist's insights.
We realize that even asking such questions represents the worst kind of heresy in the current scientific climate, but creationism in the traditional sense is not necessarily the only alternative to reductionism. One does not need to posit the intent to create a particular world design - only to realize that individualized, local awareness can evolve from a primary undifferentiated universal consciousness, following a basic set of dynamic laws, as easily as planetary systems and their complex processes are supposed to have evolved from the post-Big Bang inflationary broth. If we are not bothered by the idea of sharing a common material origin, why should the notion of cognitive differentiation - indeed of awareness embedded into every element of reality - be perceived as an intellectual threat?
But opening up to the possibility of a shared Mind is only the beginning of our challenge. The hard questions are merely prefigured on the horizon at this point, foremost among them being "the paradox of conscious intentionality and the acute instabilities of history it creates", to use Chris King's insightful formulation. It is no exaggeration to say that facing this "abysmal" problem holds the key not only to our understanding of reality, but to our future as a species... A long time ago, Descartes uttered his immortal cogito, ergo sum: but if anything is knowable by the right application of focus, then the boundary between what we choose to make conscious and what falls below the limit of attention, forgotten or ignored, becomes critically important - it becomes, in effect, our new skin. In this universe of temporal illusion and non-locality we know to inhabit today, what we are seems to be determined by what we think about. Not only that, but our separation may turn out to be a function of the same random focus: it is anyone's guess how our coherent intent may be able to transform reality.
CONCLUSIONS:
Among other theories from the original JNLRMI, Pitkanin and Sidorov proposed that the Schumann resonance (SR) may be the substrate for a radar-type extrasensory perception mechanism common to all living beings. Like water bouncing off of rocks and other submerged objects, this non-specific frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in unique interference patterns by all objects it encounters. This interference pattern is a composite of external and internal properties, as the constituent atoms, molecules and their global assembly all re-transmit this energy according to their specific configurations. They suggest that the “sounding waves” can be frequency and pattern modulated by conscious intent in order to yield specific information (interference patterns). Decoded by the brain they return almost instantly on the “back” of the Schumann Resonance.
Once recaptured, the patterns are then decoded by the brain. In this Fourier-type transformation the information is translated into conscious data, much like other sensory processing. Conversely, specific effects may be imprinted as bioinformation and made to exercise a "mysterious action at a distance", once the signal wave reaches the target. That pattern, in turn, may, under the right ("pre-requisite") global conditions, avoid routine dissipation and become instead coupled to the dominating ("state-of-consciousness") standing wave that is picked up and carried by the Schumann resonance. Mental intent may function as a variable window of transmission/reception in the exchange of extrasensory information. Tuned into the Schumann resonance, it may carry such bio-regulating information to distant targets and act as a primitive, radar-type sensory interface. All these and more mechanisms depend on the SR frequencies staying within their median range.
Continuing research in frontier science is likely to create new evidence and theories, though vexing mysteries may continue to exist. Our psychophysical potential is of great importance both to science and the human spirit, and it deserves the funding that can lead to best practice protocols and repeatable results that satisfy rigorous scientific criteria.
NOTE:
1. Sato, Rebecca (2012), DNA Found to Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties, http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/02/dna-found-to-ha.html
Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
Even so, the research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules or chemical signals.
In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The “telepathic” effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.
“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.
This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.
The hard problem of consciousness is no petty adversary but the abyss staring us back in the face. The universal record is an undecidable proposition which intent turns into an acute paradox. -- Chris King
Introduction
In 1964 Dr. Ian Stevenson, chief psychiatrist at the hospital of the University of Virginia, took a step that many regarded as professionally suicidal: he abandoned his practice in order to focus his full attention on the investigation of alleged cases of reincarnation. His decision, in Stevenson's own words, was prompted by his increasing frustration with the current psychiatric dogma, which attributes human personality development to a combination of genetics and pre-/post-natal environmental factors. As he saw it, some of the psychiatric disorders confronting him in his practice simply could not make sense within that framework. With a rare combination of visionary zeal and highly-trained investigative skepticism, he went on to document, analyze and archive over 2,000 cases over the next 4 decades (Stevenson, 1975-1983; Stevenson, 1993; Cranston and Williams,1984; Becker, 1993; Secrest, 1988). In 1977, the prestigious Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases devoted a special issue to his studies. Since then, he has published numerous scientific papers as well as a series of books in which he makes the case for this extraordinary body of evidence in a refreshingly dry, critical and understated tone that has earned him universal professional accolades as well as academic followers - such as Dr. Jim Tucker, assistant professor of psychiatry also at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Their studies focus on young children (primarily for credibility reasons, but also because these memories tend to fade around the age of seven, as the child enters the turbulence of the outside world and starts forming abundant new impressions once in the school environment) and rely on a thorough investigation of subject statements, witnessed behavior, medical and legal documents, verification of names, dates and factual information that the child could not have been exposed to by other means. Particularly strong evidence comes from skills (typically xenoglossia, or the use of unlearned dialects, old or foreign languages); behaviors (phobias, philias); and biological traits (rare birthmarks corresponding to documented cause of death or maiming in the claimed "previous personality"). This pioneering work continues to evolve as innovative investigative methods and theoretical approaches are developed by a new generation of researchers (see Keil J. and Tucker JB, 2000; Tucker JB, 2000; Tucker JB and Keil J, 2001).
Technically coincidental with Stevenson's decision to delve full-time into the study of alleged reincarnation cases, in 1964 Dr. Stanley Krippner joined the staff of the newly-funded Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklin. There, in collaboration with Montague Ullman and a small team including Sol Feldstein, Robert Van de Castle and other occasional collaborators, he went on to develop what has become a landmark in experimental parapsychology: a series of studies in dream telepathy, which made use of rank-ordering techniques by independent judges in order to assess whether a sleeping subject could successfully perceive imagery transmitted by a sender.
In the prototypical experiment (see Ullman and Krippner, 1973) the subject slept in an isolated room, while his EEG tracings were monitored by the experimenter in a nearby room. The agent, whose location varied from 98 feet away to a separate building in later experiments, would randomly choose an envelope containing one of a pre-selected group of art-prints, then - once informed by the experimenter that the subject had entered REM sleep - would focus his/her full attention on trying to transmit that image to the subject. After each REM period, the subject would be awakened and allowed to tape-record his dream impressions, then was allowed to go back to sleep. The same target and agent were to be used for the entire night. Once the night's dreams were transcribed, the transcripts were sent with the entire pool of 12 art-prints to a panel of three independent judges, who would rank the dream reports for correspondence against all 12 prints, with number 1 for the best match, down to number 12 for the least degree of correspondence. A similar rank-order matching was performed by the subjects themselves.
Over the course of several years, this protocol was varied to incorporate precognitive function tests, comparisons between the effect of multiple versus single agents and between multiple/single targets for a given night, while other experiments studied the impact of target-enhancing, multi-sensory agent "immersion" (such as a combination of visual, auditory and tactile stimuli) on the success of telepathic transmission. Out of ten formal studies described in "Dream Telepathy", seven yielded statistically significant results.
This type of rank-order judging has also been used in the context of another well-studied paranormal function: remote viewing, defined as "the acquisition and description, by mental means, of information blocked from ordinary perception by distance, shielding or time", has been the subject of the most extensive government-sponsored psi research program to date (see 1; 2; Targ and Katra, 1998; Radin, 1997; McMoneagle, 1997, 2000, 2002). Over 24 years, various intelligence-gathering agencies such as the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Army, the Navy and NASA have contributed about 20 million dolars in funding to test the limits of human remote perception and collect information for their various operations. Typical examples included the nature of foreign military installations, the location and condition of kidnap victims, the description of nuclear facilities or nuclear events, surface and atmospheric characteristics of yet-unvisited planets, etc. The essential feature of all RV protocols is that the viewer and anyone else who may be present during the session is completely blind to the nature of the target - which is typically designated by a nonsensical string of random alpha-numeric characters called the coordinate; under these conditions, trained viewers produced results in which the overall odds against chance were 10^20 to one (Radin 1997, pp. 101). Even though "blueprint accuracy" is a relatively rare event even for the top viewers in the world, the results were judged sufficiently valuable to ensure continued funding from these various agencies over more than two decades (see above references for a full history, or Sidorov 2003 for a discussion of main RV characteristics). After 1995, when the CIA decided to discontinue this program following a Congressional investigation, remote viewing became part of the public domain; while some of the viewers went on to establish formal teaching programs (with varying degrees of respect for the original methodology and protocol rigors), a small number of motivated researchers have continued to develop innovative experimental approaches meant to shed light on the physical mechanisms that are at work behind this phenomenon (see May & al. 1994; McMoneagle 1997, 2000, 2002; Swann 1996; 4)
One of the most remarkable observations made by telepathy and remote viewing researchers, starting with Rene Warcollier at the beginning of last century, is that study participants sometimes seemed to involuntarily tap into each other's subconscious, retrieving data which had nothing to do with the intended target (Warcollier 2001; Warcollier 1927, 1928; Targ & Katra 1998; Swann 1996). For example, in "La telepathie experimentale" (Revue Metapsychique, 1926-1927), Warcollier discusses his series of studies with batteries of senders and recipients, noting that "the most extraordinary observation we have made [under our experimental conditions] is that the percipients have very frequently shared identical spontaneous images (perceived visually or intuitively) whose origin remained unknown."
But such group interference effects are not restricted to anomalous cognition: since 1998 the Princeton-based Global Consciousness Project, headed by Dr. Roger Nelson, has been involved in what is probably the largest, most coordinated and innovative PK study ever conducted: using a synchronized array of over 50 RNGs (random number generators) hosted by labs all over the surface of the globe, the project members have looked for statistical deviations in the generated data stream which can be linked with events of global significance - such as the funeral ceremonies of Princess Diana, New Year's Eve celebrations, World Cup Soccer, or the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (Nelson & al., 2002). While not every one of the 98 predictions made as of January 2002 behaved as expected, the composite probability for the whole array of events was 8.3 x 10^ -8 - a strikingly robust demonstration that the RNG network reacts to major collective experiences (Nelson, 2002).
But what do all these apparently distinct phenomena have in common, beyond the stigma of "subjective states" or "paranormal function" imposed on them by the scientific orthodoxy? Although not evident at first glance, there is a remarkable common feature that emerges from their study, and it is simply this: that in questioning their underlying mechanism, one is forced, sooner or later, to recognize the fluid nature of individual boundaries. If one's personality can be dramatically affected by "memories" which could not have possibly originated in the present life; if a trained person can successfully remote view complex physical targets, the emotions of people present at the site, and past or future events including their cognitive context; if our dream experiences can reflect the contents of another human being's simultaneous circumstances or deliberate intent; and if our minds can collectively create such a powerful constructive interference that distant RNGs are capable of detecting it - then how do we decide where one mind ends and another begins? Is is reasonable to believe that telepathy, remote viewing, pre-cognition, reincarnation memories and similar experiences are based on one consciousness mode (non-local in space and time) while our common, waking mind is the emergent product of brain activity? And if we choose to believe that all consciousness is non-local - that it can survive separation from bodily functions - then what can we conclude about the substrate of our individual memories and the limits of the self? What is the role of the brain, beyond a local motor control unit? Clinical amnesia cases suggest that memories can be intactly stored, but non-retrievable. Could the same be one day extended to a vast range of mental experiences - such as dream material and past life events? If what we are is dictated by our memories, then how do we draw the line between experiences acquired via "normal", sensory means, and those we access mentally, such as reincarnation-type data or the rare but powerful remote viewing bi-location event?
Of course, this is merely a rhetorical question: just as we can temporarily immerse in a book or film to the point of identifying with the character, we can emerge from the typical remote viewing experience unscathed, with as strong a sense of identity as ever. The same goes for the majority of Stevenson's cases, where the child spontaneously and gradually stops talking about his "other life" around the age of six, as he/she begins to interact intensely with the outside world and its demands - to the point that these memories fade into oblivion. But the observation needs to be made that in both cases it is one and the same mechanism which restores one's sense of identity - and that mechanism is focus. It is complete focus on a target which allows the remote viewer to retrieve correct information about it, with nothing but a string of numbers and letters as a coordinate and the joint intent of the tasker to assign that particular coordinate to the given target; it is the collective focus of the sender and percipients which allows group telepathy to work; and it is a powerful emotional experience (which creates its own focal attraction) that presumably results in mind-matter interactions such as the GCP's sharp statistical deviations, or the birth defects described by Stevenson.
There is also, from a theoretical point of view, the question of how exactly information is encoded, or imprinted, into the fabric of reality. Regardless of what we choose to call the collection of memories produced by Stevenson's children, there is no question that, in the cases validated by him and others, there is at least proof of anomalous cognition involved. Yet, as he and others have repeatedly argued (see Becker, 1993), this is no typical psychic ability: these children have not given any indication that they are able to produce extrasensory information about subjects other than the personality they claim to be, or show any other aptitude for psychic functioning. From a remote viewer's perspective, there is a highly significant phenomenological discrepancy between the fragmentary, subtle mental impressions that form the typical RV data and the coherent, controlled retrieval of information that these individuals are capable of - spontaneously or under questioning. A similar chasm separates the experience of conscious or dream telepathy from that demonstrated by Stevenson's cases. If both sets of information (those involved in remote perception and those verified as "reincarnation evidence") require a non-physical substrate as an intermediary storage medium, why are the latter so much more cohesive?
Finally, Stevenson's case for biological "imprinting" of information on the foetus forces us to re-examine the problem of mind-matter interactions in light of their highly charged emotional content. As Stevenson has noted, about 35% of children who allege to remember previous lives present with atypical birthmarks or birth defects which are claimed to correspond to bodily wounds in the previous personality. From the 210 such cases he has investigated, 43 out of the 49 cases in which a post-mortem report was obtained showed a high concordance between wounds and birth defects - typically within a 10 square centimeter radius of the same anatomical location, but often much closer or present at multiple locations, as in the case of bullet entry and exit points (Stevenson,1993). The parapsychology literature is also unanimous in recognizing the importance of emotionally-charged targets in functions like presentiment/precognition (with negative emotions showing by far more prominence to the percipient's mind). Does powerful emotion bind together cognitive representations and automatic reactions (including a possibly archaic psi function) in the same way as the emotional memory shortcut loop studied by neurophysiologists (Chin 1996)? Is this the basis of karmic doctrine, of belief in the persistence of psychic complexes which are fated to seek new physical experiences until gradually dissolved by enlightenment?
Regardless of how we choose to interpret Stevenson's data, his evidence should give fresh impetus to the study of anomalous cognition. While most of the parapsychology literature has tended to focus on subject parameters (psychological profile, brain states, etc) it is our belief that the careful investigation of target characteristics (the type of information that best manifests in psi function, and how this information packet is organized) has just as much to teach us about remote perception. It is our hope that this joint discussion may bring to light some novel perspectives and research possibilities - as well as a deeper understanding of the functional organization of Global Consciousness.
PARTICIPANTS: RN: Roger Nelson; SK: Stanley Krippner; JT: Jim Tucker; MG: Mark Germine; CK: Chris King; MP: Matti Pitkanen; GZ: Gerry Zeitlin; Moderator: Lian Sidorov
- Roger Nelson is the director of the Global Consciousness Project. Until his retirement in 2002, he served as the coordinator of experimental work in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR lab, directed by Robert Jahn in the department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, School of Engineering/Applied Science, Princeton University.
- Stanley Krippner is professor of psychology at Saybrook Graduate School, San Francisco and a former director of the Kent State University Child Study Center, Kent OH, and of the Maimonides Medical Center Dream Research Laboratory, Brooklyn NY. He is author of numerous academic and popular books on human psychophysical potential.
- Jim Tucker is Assistant Professor in the Division of Personality Studies, Department of Psychiatric Medicine of the University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA). His research on cases suggestive of reincarnation has been published in Psychological Reports, The Journal of Scientific Exploration and The Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality.
- Chris King is a senior lecturer in the Department of Mathematics, University of Auckland, NZ. and author of numerous articles in biophysics and other subjects.
- Mark Germine is a clinical psychiatrist with a post-doctoral clinical neuroscience research fellowship in 1990-1992 at Yale University School of Medicine. He is associate editor of the Journal Dynamical Psychology and a recipient of the American Psychological Foundation F. J. McGuigan Award for contributions to the understanding of the human mind.
- Matti Pitkanen is a former professor in the Department of Physical Sciences, High Energy Physics Division at the University of Helsinki, Finland and independent researcher, associated with Quantum Dream, Inc.
- Gerry Zeitlin is a graduate of Cornell University (B.E.E. 1960) and the University of Colorado (M.S.E.E. 1969), in physics and astronomy. He currently runs the Open SETI Initiative http://openseti.org/ .
Dr. Roger Nelson:
1. Could you share with our readers the origins of the Global Consciousness Project? How was the idea initially received by the parapsychology community - was the scientific world ready for it?
RN: Origins go back to philosophical considerations, for example, being impressed by the ideas of Teilhard de Chardin, presented in The Phenomenon of Man and The Future of Man. In the early '90's it became possible to do field work with REGs in group situations, and this led to some prototype, ad hoc experiments with multiple REGs at separated locations: the OJ Simpson trial, the Gaiamind Meditation, the funeral ceremonies for Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. This work developed into the idea of a permanent network of continuously recorded REGs placed around the world in late 1997, and after some months of preparation, the GCP (EGG) network was in place by August 1998.
Most people in parapsychology were interested, and positive but careful; several became participant contributors. The consensus, I think, was that this was a good idea even if far out, but that it had to be done with scientific rigor.
2. What is the rough number and distribution of the GCP random number generators?
RN: There are, as of October 2003, about 60 active eggs in the network. They are distributed as broadly as we can arrange with volunteer hosts, and we have sites from Alaska to Fiji, in both hemispheres, all continents but Antarctica, and in most time zones.
3. What is the most sparsely populated area in which you have located a RNG ? Have you noticed any correlations between a region's population density or its degree of media exposure and the magnitude/temporal onset of the statistical deviation?
RN: I don't know what is the most sparsely populated area -- maybe Alaska? I have not seen evidence of correlations with population density, and we have not looked at questions like the local media exposure on individual eggs, except informally. In the coming year we will develop greater facility to examine questions like that, but they require subsidiary information and measures that have to be developed. We do not assume that the eggs are affected primarily by the local environment, though that remains a research question. The evidence points to nonlocal effects, and toward "relevance" as the more potent manifestation of "distance".
4. Is there any evidence for a "wave of deviations" reflecting spatio-temporally dependent events such as local New Year celebrations? In other words, are local RNGs more likely to be influenced by geographically proximal human reactions (i.e. analyses for 1999 Indian elections, Wien University exams)?
RN: See the previous question. As for New Years, we do signal averaging that simply combines all time zones to yield a result representing, in effect, a single, synchronous celebration. In this case, the data from eggs all over the world are used for each sequential midnight. The strong result is one piece of evidence favoring the notion that the anomalous structuring effect is nonlocal. Yet we have seen some evidence of stronger deviations in geographically local eggs, specifically, in the data from September 11 2001 (but note the relevance conundrum.) We can in principle do an analysis that would test whether the New Year's effect is larger on relatively local eggs. This is one of the areas we will focus on in the next year of comprehensive analytical work.
5. Is there any indication, from your preliminary analysis, that some kind of amplification also occurs at a cognitive level? In other words, have you tried to look for RNG effects in isolated locations or populations without access to current news? Have you any indication that such populations might have been cognitively affected by a global tidal wave of psychological upheaval - the source of which nevertheless remained hidden to these individuals?
RN: While we have not looked for effects on isolated locations as you suggest, there is good evidence in the data that much or most of what happens in the "global consciousness" is unconscious. For example, the huge deviations on September 11th 2001 began some hours before the overt events. I think, by implication, there may indeed be subtle effects of major global upheavals on people who don't know about the primary source.
6. This might be a stretch - but based on Cleve Backster's well-known work with plant "primary perception" (Stone 1994, 1995; Jensen 1997) there is reason to hypothesize that large plant populations might also be capable of an effect on RNGs when exposed to a powerful threat. Have you ever considered placing a number of RNGs in the vicinity of, say, a forest area scheduled for controlled burning? It would probably be important, in such a study, to separate any major human reaction from that of the organisms involved - therefore a controlled fire would be better suited than a wild one, which can evoke large-scale reactions of fear and loss among humans. Along the same line, it might be interesting to test a field RNG's reaction to half of an animal population when the other one is removed and distantly sacrificed - as might happen on laboratory subjects or farm animals diagnosed with a contagious disease. According to a series of preliminary studies published in the July issue of JNL (see Agadjanian, 2003) such split animal populations appear capable of communicating their experience at least to the point of stimulating an increased replication rate in the unexposed group. It might therefore be interesting to note any possible RNG effects from such remote "primary perceptions". How do you feel about expanding the GCP paradigm beyond the scope of human consciousness?
RN: The experiments you propose are interesting but out of the line of development of the GCP. Someone else could use our technology, but we don't plan to go there. Our mission is to develop and manage a monitor for the globe that might give us insight into subtle manifestations of events that are important to humans. This is a big enough task to preclude excursions into other areas that themselves would require serious and ongoing investment to do properly. As for expanding beyond the scope of human consciousness, it is apparent to me that we have lots to learn before concluding that what we see in the data is in fact due exclusively to humans. My guess is there are other sources than the nominal. In one direction, we have to consider the experimenters; in the other we have to consider the whole universe, animals, trees, and the earth herself.
7. The September 11, 2001 event was one of the most shocking, reverberating tragedies in recent memory - and presumably the one with the greatest cultural resonance since the start of the GCP experiment. Your results demonstrate not only a significant deviation from typical RNG behavior, but, surprisingly, that this pattern began several hours prior to the onset of the events (Nelson, 2002; Radin, 2002) Have you noted this type of "pre-sentient" RNG behavior in any other circumstances - and if so, can you make any observations about the type of event that tends to trigger it - are major catastrophic occurrences more likely to manifest this pattern than positive events? What about unscheduled (i.e. earthquakes, deaths) versus scheduled (large group meditations, New Year Celebrations) events? Does the magnitude (presumably demonstrating the size of the impact on our collective subconscious) correlate with the onset of the deviation?
RN: Good questions, and ones that we do have some preliminary experience with. There is a little evidence that surprise catastrophic events like earthquakes may register a little ahead of the nominal time. I have not seen any similar suggestive evidence in the scheduled events, but the question has not been well-defined. Except for September 11, we have not done thorough assessments, and conclusions are not yet warranted. This topic will be one of several specific areas we will be addressing in the intense analysis program planned for the next year.
8. It is also very interesting to note, in this context, that the data obtained on Monday, September 10, 2001 by a group of trained remote viewers (the Hawaii Remote Viewing Guild) meeting for their weekly class was remarkably congruent with the events that were to take place approximately 7 hours later (see "Migrations into the near future" by Sita Seery in this issue). How do you try to interpret such "intrusions" of future events into our consciousness?
RN: I don't try to interpret these descriptions. I find them interesting, but I would have to be much better educated about the material, the sources and context, before I would feel comfortable attempting any interpretation.
Dr. Stanley Krippner:
9. Dr. Krippner, in your book "Dream Telepathy" you conclude that "an important ingredient in the success of experiments [...] is the use of potent, vivid, emotionally impressive human interest pictures to which both agent and subject can relate". You have also made the observation that certain basic themes (for example eating, drinking, or religious themes) tend to come through more predictibly. Have you been able to further differentiate between various classes of targets - i.e. are archetypal images, or culturally prominent symbols, more readily transmitted?
SK: No. These are great ideas; we did not have the financial resources to do this, but perhaps someone will in the future.
10. Have you noticed any "contaminating" elements (information originating from one participant's personal experience or circumstances, rather than the expected association basin of the designated target) that seem to inadvertently manifest in other participants' dreams?
SK: Yes. We have discussed this "contamination" in our book and articles. It happened early in our studies, but did not happen once we took steps to keep the "sender" from reading extraneous material, etc.
11. In 1971, you attempted an experiment in which the telepathic image was to be transmitted by approximately 2,000 agents simultaneously. The target slide was "The seven spinal chakras" by Scralian and was projected on a wall, before a concert audience, with the words "Try using your ESP to 'send' this picture to Malcolm Bessent. He will try to dream about the picture. Try to 'send it to him. Malcolm Bessent is now at the Maimonides Dream Laboratory in Brooklyn". A number of clear correspondences (mean score of 83 out of 100) appeared in Bessent's dream that night, whereas the control subject, whose name and location was not disclosed to the audience, showed a high correspondence score (96 out of 100) for this image two nights later. Overall, however, there was no significant improvement in dream correspondence scores with 2,000 agents as opposed to the typical single one.
How do you interpret these findings in light of the purported field effect observed by the Global Consciousness Project? Do you feel there might be a difference between emotional and symbolic cognitive interactions at the global level - that perhaps a resonant effect, or constructive interference, is only possible for the former? Does your body of research support such a hypothesis - have you noted a difference between the group communication patterns of abstract versus emotional content?
SK: Here you are asking questions on the basis of one study, a study that did not yield overall positive results. So to make a conjecture would not be possible.
12. Another one of your experiments (the "Vaughan Study") showed that using the same target over several nights decreased, rather than increased, the overall correspondence scores. In other words, the amount of time an agent spent "transmitting" the target image did not result in improved performance. In your book, you assign this observation to the gradual loss of interest on the part of the agent, who found herself increasingly bored with the single target.
This is a particularly interesting finding in light of RV performance, because it suggests that the amount of time spent "probing" a target aspect may be less important than the intensity of the focus with which it is probed (assuming that telepathy and remote viewing share a similar mechanism, as suggested by Ingo Swann). Somehow, for both sender (target) and percipient, remote sensing appears to require a critical threshold of intent, which typically seems to undergo a rapid decay rate once generated - hence the need for persistent re-focusing, re-probing and re-cueing...
Have you found that particular agent focusing techniques tended to enhance the probability of successful telepathy? For example, you have noted that a "sensory bombardment" with visual, auditory and tactile stimuli meant to reinforce a particular idea for the agent (such as "Birds" or "Painter") appeared to evoke significant dream correspondences in the subjects. How does that compare with situations in which the agent is simply asked to think of multiple associations for his target - and do these sensory associations tend to appear in the subject's dream more vividly or consistently when there is a real multi-sensory immersion on the part of the agent? To translate this into RV analysis language, do you feel it might be possible to differentiate between valid remote perception and cognitive contamination among multiple viewers on the basis of how complex and multi-faceted a piece of data appears across their reports - or do associated, recalled mental images easily morph into various sensory aspects in your experience?
SK: The pilot study you mention was such a minor attempt that no conclusions can be drawn from it. Your suggestion to compare abstract vs. emotional content is a good one, and if someone would like to do it, I would be delighted. The Maimonides dream transcripts were destroyed (without my permission) and so we can not do it retrospectively. And your other questions can not be answered because there are not enough data available from the work that we did.
I must say that these questions are extremely perceptive. If the dream transcripts had not been destroyed, it would be possible to go back and make a retrospective analysis. All that I have is the record of judgings that were done and the dates on which the experiments took place. This enabled Michael Persinger and me to look for geomagnetic correlates with the studies as a whole and with the subject who spent the most nights in our laboratory. In both analyses we found such correlates at statistically significant levels (and published the results).
Dr. Jim Tucker
13. Dr. Tucker, you have directly investigated a number of cases suggestive of reincarnation. How many points of validated evidence do you typically require to consider a case solved, and what type of evidence do you feel is most persuasive?
JT: While we have criteria for when to register a case, the determination that a case is solved is more subjective. Occasionally, a child’s statements need to be compared to the specifics of the life of more than one deceased individual to see which one is a better match. A case being solved does not mean that we are convinced that it is a case of reincarnation but rather that the child’s reported statements appear to correspond to one particular individual.
As for which evidence is most persuasive, that can certainly vary from case to case, but the rare cases that include written documentation of the child’s statements made before the case was solved I find hard to dismiss, particularly the ones that include very specific details about the previous personality.
14. How is your research approach today different from the methods pioneered by Dr. Stevenson? Which aspects of this phenomenon intrigue you most? What about the theoretical approach - are there any comparative studies attempting to place such cases within a broader class of phenomena? How do you see the future evolution of your field?
JT: The basic approach to investigating the cases is the same-trying to document as accurately as possible what each child said, whether he or she had access to the information through normal means, the details of the previous personality’s life, etc. Beyond that, as we are getting more and more of this data in our computer database, we are now able to look more at features of the cases as a group, so we may be able to get insights that we cannot get from simply looking at individual cases. Nonetheless, the careful study of strong individual cases remains the backbone of the work.
One area that intrigues me is that of cases in the West. We have gotten a number of reports of cases from parents with no previous belief in reincarnation or with a previous distain for the idea, and while the American cases are weaker that the best of the Asian ones, this may be because we haven’t collected enough yet to find the really strong ones. If we could find cases here that were as strong as the best Asian ones, then I think they would have to make an impact on people’s thinking regarding reincarnation.
For now, the predominant question in the work is whether the cases are evidence of reincarnation or at least of the ability of young children to have memories of previous lives, and until we are able to answer that question with reasonable confidence, we will have difficulty moving the field to other areas. People have asked from time to time, “Why collect more cases?” but until we’ve collected enough so that we can say with confidence, “Some young children have memories of previous lives” or “Young children are not capable of remembering previous lives,” then moving on to other issues is difficult.
15. In a recent JSE paper (Stevenson and Haraldsson, 2003), the authors compare certain features of reincarnation type cases as documented about one generation apart by two different investigators. Remarkable in both series is the mean age when the child first began speaking about his previous life (31 months for IS; 32 months for EH); the mention of the previous personality's name (in 88%, respectively 63% of the children); the percentage of cases in which the child mentioned the mode of death (82% for IS; 83% for EH); the proportion of violent deaths among these (73% for IS and 80% for EH); and the prevalence of unusual behaviors such as phobias related to the previous life (typically mode of death), which occurred in 77% of IS's cases and 42% of EH's cases. How do these memories typically present, how many specific details tend to be spontaneously described at one time?
JT: The memories present in different ways. Often, the children are very young when they begin making a statement here or there, and the statements gradually form a cohesive story. At times, families have difficulty being certain that a particular statement relates to the previous life that the child has described, and the children often resist questioning. In other situations, however, the children come out with the bulk of the story in one sitting and remain very consistent during any questioning about it.
16. How consistently are the children able to retrieve specific information when prompted to do so? Is there any qualitative difference you have observed between the way they describe current life memories and those of the alleged past personality - such as richness of sensory detail, the speed of information retrieval, logical associations between memories, temporal coherence of the perspective on a given episode, etc? (This would be particularly interesting to compare with the usual mode of information retrieval in remote viewing, where the data most typically manifests as fragmented sensory or conceptual material; and "normal" episodal memories, where one's mental film remains more or less a replay of the events as perceived at the time.)
JT: Many of the children are not able or at least not willing to answer questions about their memories. They seem to have to be in the right frame of mind to express them, and this is often during relaxed times. Certainly, exceptions exist, and some of the children talk about the past lives on a nearly constant basis. Parents often report that the children are very serious when they discuss their memories--that their manner is very different from when they are fantasizing. The memories often seem rather fragmentary, though some of the fragments, of course, are much bigger than others are. I cannot give a good answer to the question of differences between their descriptions of current life memories and the past life ones except to say that many show an intense emotional attachment to the past life ones. That emotion may be quite intermittent, but the children may cry intensely as they describe missing previous parents or other family members.
17. Recent brain imaging studies into multiple personality syndrome (MPS) have shown that the patterns of hippocampus activation (which are associated with the laying down and retrieval of personal memories) vary markedly between the different personalities. For example, Condie and Tsai found that when a dominant personality was replaced by a weaker alter, hippocampal activity died down only to light up again when the dominant personality returned - as if they both had access to different memory basins. These changes, however, were not observed when simply "play-acting" a personality shift. It is also interesting to note that the consensus explanation for MPS involves a defense mechanism against emotional trauma, which scars or severs natural memory pathways (Carter, 2003).
Has there been any attempt so far to use this type of imaging in order to study children in the act of recollecting past life memories? Especially in cases where there is a strong behavioral or skill-type effect, one might hypothesize that the past-life, adult memories of the previous personality might overwhelm the set of memories formed by the child in this life. Were hippocampal activation patterns to differ in this fashion, we would have not only a further indication that these personality-centered memories are far more complex than mere imagination, but also a proof that they affect the very physical foundation of the brain - which would not be surprising, given Dr. Stevenson's remarkable findings with respect to the high correlations between atypical birthmarks/birth defects and the validated mode of death in the previous personality (Stevenson, 1993). Indeed, the brain and its activity during foetal development may be an important link in understanding the impact of these psychic information clusters on the child's somatic evolution.
JT: No functional imaging studies have been done with these children. Logistical difficulties would have to be overcome-such as having equipment and cases available in the same location, having the children recall the memories on demand, etc-but beyond that, we would not know at this point what to look for. Recent studies in neuropsychology have looked at functional imaging differences when general subjects recall accurate memories vs. false ones, but at this point, tests are not available to assess a particular memory in a particular subject. I would not expect the patterns in these subjects to be the same as the ones with multiple personality disorder (or dissociative identity disorder, as it is now known). Many of the children talk about the past life in the past tense; they do not appear to dissociate and “become” the previous personality.
18. What is the typical age and experience these children seem to recall? Do most of these alleged past life memories center around a particular age or event, or can the children easily move along their previous life time-line and produce information on demand? Have you been able to identify any general patterns - are children most likely to dwell on their routine environment and habits, or on particularly traumatic events, including death, in their previous incarnation? Are there particular types of memories, particular sensory modalities (such as visual, auditory, olfactory, texture) reported more frequently than others? Any particular trends in "archetypal experiences" - ie. are children more likely to evoke the life of a soldier? mother? leader? And has it been your general experience that these individuals are not aware of events which occurred between their purported death and their new life?
JT: The children tend to talk about people and events from the end of the previous life, and 75% of them state the mode of death for the previous personality. Along with that traumatic memory are more mundane ones, as the children recall various everyday details of the previous life. Most of the children do not seem able to easily move along their previous life time-line, and many of those who recall lives as adults appear unable to access early life events at all. The memories do not appear to involve any particular sensory modalities, but that can be difficult to judge from the children’s statements. The children do not report “archetypal experiences” but rather the details of routine lives. While most of the children do not say anything about events between lives, a few describe intermission memories. These can involve either memories of events on Earth that occurred after the death, usually near either the home or the place of death of the previous personality and occasionally at least partially verifiable, or ones of another realm with spiritual beings.
19. Have you seen cases in which the child confused events in the lives of past relatives or friends with his own experiences (as the previous personality) - perhaps trying to fit all these memories into a meaningful pattern, as we do in dreams?
JT: By all appearances, the children report memories from the vantage point of only one deceased individual. One possible exception is Stevenson’s case in Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation of Imad Elawar, who vividly described a fatal accident in which the uncle of the man eventually identified as the previous personality died, but that is a very complex case. Otherwise, the details given by the children match the life of the identified previous personalities and not their relatives. The parents sometimes try to fit the various statements of the children into a meaningful pattern (as in the case of Imad Elawar when the parents were judged to have inferred details about the previous life that were not accurate), but when the previous personality is identified, the statements that are correct are correct for that one individual. Some statements are incorrect, of course, just as some of our memories of our own childhoods are incorrect.
20. The question I am working toward is whether such memory complexes might in fact linger in our collective subconscious and be "adopted" by a young child on the basis of some yet-unknown predisposing factors. Both Warcollier and Krippner (Warcollier 2001; Ullman and Krippner, 1973), to mention only two major investigators, have noted that a certain latency between information transmission and reception is rather common in telepathy - ranging from minutes to days or even longer; is it conceivable that such information becomes part of our collective, trans-temporal record and that anyone might be able to tap into it? Is there any persuasive argument you can invoke for interpreting this validation data (otherwise a spectacular body of evidence for nonlocal, trans-temporal information access) as proof for reincarnation, rather than a single-target, recurrent type of anomalous perception? How would you ultimately differentiate between "reincarnation" and remote "tapping" into the collective unconscious?
JT: Well, depending on how you define “single-target, recurrent type of anomalous perception,” you might end up with what amounts to being another term for reincarnation, but many of these cases clearly involve more than just information transmission. The birthmarks, emotions, and behaviors that accompany the memories all suggest an individual consciousness that has continued from a previous life rather than adopted memory complexes that have somehow attached to a young child. A child who cries every day for his previous parents certainly appears to be an individual who is missing his parents from a previous life rather than a child who has unknowingly tapped into the collective unconscious. Likewise, the fact that the memories cluster around items that would have been on the mind of the previous personality at the time of death suggests that the consciousness has somehow continued from the end of that life, as opposed to a super-psi explanation that might be expected to include more varied memories.
Two other arguments against the idea of nonlocal information access: as in the case of crying children, it runs directly opposite to the subjective experiences of the subjects, who believe that they are remembering events that they previously experienced in a prior life, and in addition, almost all of these children show no other paranormal abilities that would predispose them to being able to access such information.
Joint questions
21. A recent series of independent studies has shown that one's focus, or global brain configuration, has an unexpected effect on the firing patterns of sensory processing neurons, starting as early as the bottom of the visual hierarchy (McCrone, 1997). This top-down modulation runs contrary to everything neurophysiologists traditionally believed about the emergence of mental processes - but it is not much of a surprise from the empirical perspective of remote viewing, where the strength and specificity of intent produces data that is highly specific to particular cues (such as visual, auditory, olfactory, emotional, aesthetic impact, etc).
RV analysis presents a particularly fertile area for studying the way in which information is decoded by each viewer. Of course, as in psychoanalysis, symbols are highly individualized and fluctuate with time; the focus also tends to vary, with viewers apparently attracted by different aspects of the target: some viewers tend to produce very detailed technical data while others are more sensitive to landscapes or the emotions and personal rapport of humans detected at the target. Finally, the angle from which a target is "approached" on initial contact, as determined from the post-session analysis of sketches and visual descriptors, seems to vary considerably between individual viewers - with some describing the view from overhead while others approach it from ground level or even the center of the target... This observation, in particular, seems to hide some important clues about the formalism of data encoding and processing in the global information space - perhaps analogous to the sensitivity of specialized neurons to particular lines, angles, directions of movement, etc. (see Diamond & al., 1999)
What, in your opinion, might account for two or more remote viewers seeing the same target from different perspectives, or "picking up" different conceptual aspects?
RN: Seems likely to be much the same as in ordinary perception, where most who study the topic agree that it is constructive. We bring to our view of the world the characteristics of the viewer, biases, experience, motivations, etc. I think we should expect something like that, perhaps even more pervasively, in remote viewing.
SK: Of course two remote viewers could "pick up" different aspects of the target. Just look at the data from mainstream psychology, especially that concerning eyewitness reports of crimes and accidents. People see events through their own lens, and these lens are based on early experience as well as genetic perceptual differences.
GZ: In addressing this question one must keep in mind that the formal RV protocol is based on a model of a viewer fixed in the laboratory and recording incoming impressions, not actually traveling as in the "OOBE" model. Although some RVers occasionally eschew the formal protocol and undertake a "trip" to the target, we need to assume that this question does not allow for that, which would actually create a second and very different question. Thus when this question refers to 'the angle from which a target is "approached" on initial contact, as determined from the post-session analysis of sketches and visual descriptors', it is already contradicting the protocol assumed to be in operation during the RV session.
It is impossible, however, to draw an image of the target or to describe its appearance without interjecting an apparent visual angle, but one must not impute an actual approach from the data. But a viewing angle does not require an actual approach. One could as well imagine the viewer had used a powerful telescopic capability that could be used from the viewing position. I suppose it would be useful to check whether the recorded viewing angle actually matched what would be seen under those circumstances. Assuming the answer to that check is "no", then the viewing perspective is just another aspect of the recording, along with the other conceptual aspects picked up. And that simplifies the question.
When something is observed or experienced, a conceptual model of the actual thing that it is, seems to be constructed or encoded by the observer based on the raw sensory data received and the observer's choices in ordering or prioritizing the data. In the RV situation there is no raw sensory data input, but all the other faculties of integrating and modeling, whatever they may be, are there and are used to construct the observer's inner model. We don't know what those faculties are, and we don't know how or of what the model is "constructed". In fact there is a deeper mystery here, because the existence of a model implies that sensory organs etc. are used to view it, and of course this leads to an infinite succession of model making and viewing.
Laughlin, McManus, and d'Aquili in Brain, Symbol, & Experience postulate Conscious Network (always capitalized) as the ultimate experiencer in the brain, sidestepping the infinite regress of models viewed by homunculi. But they haven't actually located Conscious Network. It's just another postulate. Does the literature on consciousness contain any more satisfactory proposition as to how things are experienced? Lacking that, my answer to the current question would be that we need to have a general explanation for conscious experience of ordinary, local objects and events before we can explain features of the remote viewing process.
MP: That focus would have strong effect on neuronal firing patterns conforms with the hypothesis that time mirror mechanism is a general mechanism of brain functioning. In this approach neural firing is preceded by a process, which is much like a desire communicated from the top of organization downwards and generating lower level desires. This process proceeds downwards along the hierarchy of magnetic bodies down to the level of sensory organs and from there to brain and brain and CNS finally respond to the process by generating neural activity (remember Libet's findings about time delays of consciousness).
That different viewers pick up different conceptual aspects is quite an interesting finding. If the remote viewer is like a single neuron of a higher level collective self, the personal RV profile would be analogous to the specialization of the neuron, and also reflect the "wiring" between the "neurons" of the multi-brained higher level self.
CK: Actually standard tests of perceptual judgment show that active cognition is able to determine the mode of perceptual discrimination when different strategies of visual assessment of the sameness of two stimuli with respect to two differing populations are proposed.
I have a problem with the preponderance of remote viewing as an idea. I want to explain why it is limited and limiting as a concept. All conscious viewing is essentially remote viewing. Also remote viewing is an attempt to tame and confine the 'otherness' of psychic consciousness.
Firstly remote viewing tends to assume we have a clairvoyant capacity to se other places and know the conditions of those places. However this doesn't in any way address the mystery of intent, the nature of consciousness, or any idea of the after life or disincarnate consciousness. Evidence that there is a mental plane is little help to us unless we can begin to understand the "otherness" - the deep and utterly wild differences this 'abyss' might have. Basically we want remote viewing powers to convince ourselves that life is worth living because it has a supernatural dimension, but we want it to be tame enough that we don't have our own ideas too seriously challenged.
Central to this is the failure of remote viewing to address of itself the paradox of intentionality or how to deal with anticipating reality - not just precognition, but survival through anticipating change in terms of the quantum realm. This is a similar failing to the initial ideas of morphic resonance which were primarily spatial without fully addressing the paradoxes time and intentionality raise about reality. It is only when we begin to consider how present can anticipate future and what kind of universe it is that permits this that we are beginning to face these questions.
22. In his work with plant "primary perception", Cleve Backster has repeatedly noted that his subjects only seemed to respond to authentic, spontaneous emotions: for example, a sincere impulse to burn the plant would evoke a marked electrophysiological response, but only pretending to did not (Stone 1994, 1995; Jensen 1997). Furthermore, when he correlated his out-of-laboratory experiences with the polygraph tracings of the experimental plants or cells, he consistently found the significant deviations to coincide with emotional reactions - whereas neutral conversation and events did not produce any remarkable signatures.
How do you interpret these results, especially in light of the preceding discussion? Why would the same mental image (i.e. burning a leaf) only evoke a response when genuine emotion (such as aggression) accompanied it?
RN: How could it be otherwise? To the extent there is plant perception, or anomalous perception of any kind, it seems sensible to expect it to penetrate facade and deception as easily as it penetrates the barriers of locality and missing physical medium. In other words, if we are talking about a truly "psychic" phenomenon, we must expect it to operate transparently in a transparent world.
SK: I can not comment on this question because I do not consider Backster's work sufficiently well established. The experiments you cite have never been published in a refereed scientific journal.
MP: Authentic emotions are necessary if sharing of mental images is involved.
CK: If you are talking mental action you have to explain why you think an image of burning will be transmitted but lethal intent or the sense of deceit in cheating will not. Isn't the raw emotion simpler, more direct an organismic reality than a complex image of fire?
23. One alternative to the hypothesis of reincarnation would be that past-life memories are simply association basins strengthened by a powerful emotional event - such as when people report that "their life flashed before their eyes" . If there is a non-physical information substrate accounting for anomalous, non-local perception, then one might surmise that a group of trained remote viewers blindly targeting such a case would be able to produce more cohesive data about the "past-life impressions" of a very young child than about his recent memories. Alternatively, blind RV targeting of the previous personality (once a reasonable identification has been made by the field researcher) could give us a clue about which events in his/her life are most salient to remote perception. Comparing these three sets of data (the child's, the viewers' and the objective history of the previous personality) might yield valuable insights into how information is encoded and accessed nonlocally.
How do you feel about such an experiment - do you think there may be anything worth learning from it, and would it be ethical, in your opinion?
SK: The proposed experiment would, indeed, produce valuable information. But it would be expensive. Who would fund it?
JT: To repeat, the past-life memory cases involve a lot more than just information, and any explanation that starts with an information transfer to explain the other features, the birthmarks, emotions, and behaviors, becomes rather convoluted. Having remote viewers attempt to access facts from the previous life might be interesting, but I'm not sure what it would really tell us. Similarly, having mediums try to contact the previous personality could be very interesting, but interpreting the results might be challenging.
GZ: Lian has clarified the first part of this question, up to the word "Alternatively", for me (personal communication).
- The connection of "a powerful emotional event" with the "life flash" experience is a reference to the commonly-reported review experienced at the time of a major life-threatening event or NDE, which are presumed to be powerful emotional events.
- "Case" refers to Ian Stevenson's use of the term, as in "cases suggestive of reincarnation". This does not imply, as I understand it, that the flash life review itself qualifies the case as being suggestive of reincarnation, and in fact I don't believe Lian is suggesting using subjects who have had the life flash experience. The suggestion is simply to remote-view "cases suggestive of reincarnation", and the purpose would be to determine if information could be developed by RV that could be attributed to previous lives.
- I had asked: Why would the proposition of a non-physical substrate lead one to surmise that RV would produce this particular result, and why is this limited to a case of a very young child? Given that very young children are more likely to have "past-life impressions", I still don't see why data about those past-life impressions should be more cohesive than recent memories if there is a non-physical substrate.
Lian explained that most RV theories invoke something like a pure information substrate, and reincarnation research suggests the same. Thus past-life memories might be susceptible to probing through RV. Since the bulk of past-life memories would have been recorded by the past personality in a mature state of development, these memories might be more cohesive than the present-life memories of a 3-4 year-old child, and in fact might overwhelm them as well. RV of the previous life could perhaps be used to check on these memories. If the match was not good, various other explanations for them could be considered.
As to how I would feel about an experiment along the lines of the first part of this question as clarified, I think that the idea is generally logical, but there must be a well-thought-out experimental design; otherwise the results could be rather chaotic. The design should clearly state the issue that the experiment is intended to elucidate. Presumably the point of the experiment is to remote-view the presumed past life in order to shed light on the hypothesis that the subjects' memories are indeed due to a connection with a past-life personality (via the substrate). Is the relative cohesiveness of two sets of memories (present-life and "past") significant and will the differences in cohesiveness themselves be used to select subjects for the experiment? Will a standard RV judging protocol be used, and is it clear how the results will be statistically evaluated? Will the aforementioned cohesiveness enter into the evaluation in some way? (I would expect not, but this question needs to be asked.)
The alternative proposed experiment is intended to reveal information about the nature and functioning of the "substrate" or other means of accessing nonlocal information. This one is also interesting, but appears to be less amenable to formal design and more of an exploration. Insights gained from this experiment could then lead into a more structured follow-up study to either test the validity of the insights or to develop further detail.
Now as to the ethics - and perhaps this should have been addressed first - I cannot see how these experiments could be considered ethical. Young children are not competent to decide whether or not to enter into such experiments. In matters of health and other vital issues, decisions are expected to be made by the parents. However, these proposed experiments are not vital to the child's well-being, and in fact might well prove to be damaging in some way, such as by revealing information that would actually be hurtful. In this case I cannot support letting the decision as to whether to participate be made by the parents, the child, or by anyone else.
In other words, these experiments are unethical and should not be performed.
MP: The experiment would be very interesting. A skeptic would probably argue that the experiment is quite too complex. Concerning the proposed interpretation of re-incarnation: normal personal identity could also be seen as being determined by the mental images that I have/share. For instance, the inhabitant of the TGD Universe identifies himself with his physical body during his biological life and with his magnetic body after his biological death. The personal evolution from highly ego-centered consciousness of a teenager could be seen as a process in which the sharing of mental images gradually delocalizes the contents of consciousness and ego centeredness gradually disappears.
CK: The sheaf of incarnation is the unravelling of reincarnation and the afterlife. I am a sheaf of incarnation containing threads of the incarnate in many beings. There is for example no need for me to be reincarnated nor to have past lives to be a living manifestation of another from another time. I may even be born on the epiphany, as I am, and yet not simply a reincarnation of Jesus while at the same time here to unveil the reunion. Furthermore we may each exist at the crest of full organismic consciousness only in the biological frame and still consciousness is eternal from alpha to omega and we are yet witness to the totality in this life.
Again the problem is one of taming the wilderness.
I'm not remote viewing the Messiah - rather I am viewing reality remotely as I stand here in the living flesh - it's a question of being one with my own cubic centimetre of chance.
24. Although no spontaneous psi abilities are typically associated with children claiming to remember past lives, it is not unreasonable to suspect that they might be more gifted at such functions, should the opportunity present itself. Have there been any formal attempts at testing the anomalous perception scores of such children? (Perhaps a simple field test kit could be included in the general investigation of future cases in order to compare their scores to standard performance...)
SK: I like this suggestion but know of no attempt to discover possible psi capacities of children who claim to recall past lives. The "field test kit" is an intriguing idea. But because I do no work in this field, I can not comment on its feasibility.
JT: No such attempts have been made to my knowledge. At this point, we only have preliminary data about the psychological functioning of the subjects, and we haven't looked at any parapsychological functioning.
CK: The problem with natural psychic consciousness is that it is not recognized 're-cog-nized' in our culture. It is a natural evolutionary endowment of the non-ordinary reality in which consciousness manifests. There is no reason to expect it to be a rare gift in a uniquely talented individual but a hidden repressed aspect of human nature.
25. Jung saw symbols as "the best possible expression for something relatively unfamilar" (Vedfelt 1999, p40). He found that "the earliest dreams of childhood emanate from the very deepest layers of the personality and are so meaningful that they often foretell a person's life"; they are also "often more archetypal and impersonal than those of adults" (ibid., pp. 54)
Do you find that primitive, archetypal imagery is more commonly activated in remote viewing or telepathic transmission of targets which involve major emotional events? And do you feel that such targets tend to be associated with higher success rates in typical anomalous perception trials?
SK: In our experiments, we tried to use what you would call primitive, archetypal imagery. If the transcripts were still available, we could do an analysis of the dream telepathy sessions comparing targets along these dimensions.
MP: Jung's comment about symbols as emanating from the deepest levels of personality and even foretelling a person's life is highly interesting. I would like to relate it to the general TGD-inspired vision about cognitive hierarchies, and about the relationship between information and emotions.
p-Adic physics as physics of cognition means that p-adic space-time sheets represent correlates of cognition and intentionality. Real and p-adic topologies differ in a profound manner from each other: two rational points very near to each other p-adically are usually very far from each other in the real sense. This leads to the view that cognitive growth (proceeding from p-adically short to p-adically long scales) proceeds from long to short real scales. Typical example is a development of a skill from a clumsy movement to a refined pattern of motor activity.
That it is children who can remember from earlier lives and that the memories are archetypal symbols rather than detailed maps, has following interpretation in this picture. When child cognitively grows, her attention turns into details and the memories of earlier life and precognitions of life to come, disappear from the focus. The life as 4-D statue is not seen anymore so clearly. Note that the dominance of theta and delta in the EEG of child and the shift of EEG to higher frequencies during ageing conforms with this view.
Also remote viewing could represent cognitively less detailed perception, kind of "overall viewing", involving long time and spatial scales. On the other hand, emotions represent overall summaries, only the few most significant bits of information, and thus correspond to long scales. That information molecules are also molecules of emotion is not an accident. Therefore the events inducing strong emotions should be the ones which can be remotely experienced.
"Overall view" could mathematically correspond to a statistical description involving concepts like entropy and negentropy. Suppose that a given sensory quale corresponds to a quantum average for the increment of a particular quantum in a sequence of quantum jumps defining the mental image. One can assign to each sensory quale a negentropy defined by the probability distribution of the corresponding quantum number increment. This negentropy or (and) its gradient with respect to subjective time might be identifiable as emotion(s) associated with that particular quale. The sign of this gradient would determine whether emotion is positive or negative.
CK: No - the most active manifestation of the archetypal is right here in the marketplace. It has to be to become manifest in the flesh. In the real world the skeins of karma are entwined with the collapsing wave function of history in a way which brings the supernormal into its fullest play.
26. Jung (see Vedfelt pp. 42) once described a series of dreams containing birth-and-death archetypal imagery written down by an 8-year old child who could not possibly have been exposed to this material - but which Jung interpreted as premonitory/preparatory dreams for her premature death (which occurred three years later).
What, in your opinion, is the likely origin of archetypes and universal symbols? Do you believe they merely reflect a parallel cognitive ontogeny that arises from the earliest life experiences of each individual and finds mental representation at the intersection of many such association basins - or are they somehow hard-wired into our collective unconscious? In other words, do you think some universal symbols (and their meaning) exist independently of, and prior to, an individual's sensory experiences?
SK: I do not believe there are "universal symbols." People forget that symbols are not the same as archetypes. Jung himself wrote that archetypes are expressed in symbols that reflect one's culture; hence there could be different symbols for each culture. As to the origin of archetypes, I believe they are physiological and that the neurosciences offer the best research arena for their study. I do not use the word "collective unconscious," preferring to think of a "pattern that connects" (to use Bateson's term), a pattern evident in the Nelson-Radin data.
MP: Perhaps one could see archetypes as mental images shared by very many selves, perhaps memories shared by many generations of humans (or even something much more general?). The most fundamental archetypes could be shared by different species, and shamanic experience might involve this kind of sharing.
Sharing is not a passive event but affects the mental image since some mental image of the sharer necessarily fuses with the shared mental image. Archetypes would be in some sense universal, objective mental images representing consensus, kind of a stereo vision using the eyes of the entire humanity.
CK: No they are a manifestation of collective aspects of consciousness. Archetypes are cultural cosmology in action.
27. If we do share a Meta-Mind, to use Ingo Swann's terminology, then what do you think lies ahead of us in terms of scientific challenge: beyond the immediate implications for society (increased sensitivity to each other, compassion, a more coherent application of collective intent), what is our next great area of discovery?
RN: Survival of our human environment? We certainly seem to need something like a metamind to get moving on the major problems of population, environmental depredation, social dis-harmony and imbalances, destructive (war) vs constructive intent and actions. A major challenge is for consciousness science to become more useful in social terms.
SK: If something like a "Meta-Mind" exists, the challenge is to research it, and to find the funds to study it. Until the data are available, speculation is not something I would feel comfortable doing.
JT: Some physicists are already discussing the importance of consciousness in the universe, and given the fact that the effects of consciousness may be retroactive in time, I wonder if the Meta-Mind may one day be considered to have been a driving force in the evolution of the universe and of life on Earth so that the evolution would include conscious beings. Future consciousness may have willed conscious beings into existence, so perhaps we will one day judge our Creator to have been, at least in part, ourselves. When a giant figure in physics like John Wheeler designs a thought experiment that shows that a conscious observer on Earth in the present could determine which path a photon from a distant galaxy took millions of years ago, then science may well be moving toward an understanding of the effects of consciousness as our next great area of discovery.
MG: My work has involved the One Mind Model of quantum reality, which somehow seems to be excluded from among the many viable models of quantum reality. My most recent work, along with references to my other work, has been published in Dynamical Psychology (2003), URL: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2003/onemind.htm
Essentially, the One Mind model holds reality is knowledge, that the Universe exists purely by virtue of being known, and that we all share this Universal knowledge in an implicit or unconscious sense. Applied to quantum physics, the model predicted that the brains response to a pre-observed stimulus would differ from that of an observed stimulus. Such differences have been found and described (see also Germine, 1998; 2002, cited by Lian Sidorov in his Concluding Remarks).
Henry Stapp summed the One Mind model up well at the Quantum Mind 2003 conference: “Instead of one universe, there is one mind.” Although various other interpretations have been made of my experimental results, that fact is that these interpretations are post-facto, and were not generated by the hypothesis the experiment was designed to test.
The Universe of information is potentially available to the human brain. My experiments show that actualizing an event or bringing into reality is a function of the observing brain, and that, once actualized, the brain responds in a different manner to a stimulus representing the actualized event. The differences in response involve a regular alpha periodic function (8 to 12 Hertz), which seems to be subcortical in origin.
I have proposed that the mechanics of the differing alpha responses in the pre-observed and observed conditions involves cortical inhibition or a subcortical alpha generator, in particular inhibition of perseveration of common tone response in the condition of first observation. Inhibition of perseveration involves the prefrontal cortex, in particular the anterior cingulate, medial prefrontal, and lateral prefrontal cortices (Mesulam, 2002). The inhibition of responses by the prefrontal cortices gives rise to information, according to my current interpretation, on a quantum basis, employing Prigogine’s (1980) quantum entropy operator.
The implications of the idea that all of our individual minds arise from a single, Universal Mind are enormous. It is a shame that one cannot conduct science without one’s results being subject to post-hoc revision of the initial hypothesis. The initial hypothesis of my experiments is the One Mind Model. There is a wealth of information to be gleaned from further advances using this experimental paradigm.
GZ: If we share a "Metamind", or "Biomind", meaning a mind external to the brain with access to a great store of consciousness, there is no impact on our path of discovery as long as we don't recognize the fact. That is, it has always been there and obviously there has been no discovery; why should we now expect such?
The point of the question, however, is that some of us perhaps do recognize the fact, based on either the scant data available or on internal awareness of it. For those willing to go with the premise, there are potential discoveries to be made, and ultimately great ones that have revolutionary significance.
I see two major areas.
The first is in learning more about the basis of the "biomind". If it is not in the brain (or other organs such as suggested by Gurdjieff with his "three-brained beings"), then it is certainly not physical at all. So what is the basis?
I am convinced that the basis is intimately connected with what we call quantum processes because only these have aspects of nonlocality, acausality, and even nonreality. These aspects, though not well understood, qualify quantum processes as candidates for support of the biomind, or at least gateways to it. Thus I think that a study of quantum mechanics aimed at elucidating a basis for biomind could bear significant fruit.
The second major area of discovery could come from a study of the features and capabilities of the biomind. In other words, accepting that there may actually be a biomind empowers us to focus on what its features and capabilities might be.
I do not refer simply to a renewal of psychic research (i.e., testing for higher powers, examining "anomalies", etc.). Nelson's Global Consciousness Project is an example of a study of the global features of the biomind, in that it looks for global recognition of events that are unknown to the conventional senses at the time the recognition takes place.
I can think of other avenues of research. One that "comes to mind" is a search for trauma, or let us simply say "effects", stemming from past racial events that are not in the everyday awareness of people. In other words, does the biomind possess racial memory?
Yet another would be the possibility that the biomind is mediating the evolution of society, or even planning events that will shape society. Are there signs, for example, that people or groups position themselves geographically or in other ways to help to bring about group events or to survive or handle them?
- Is the human biomind in some way an active part of a larger, planetary biomind? What is the true relationship between humanity and the planet on which it lives? Is the human race really guilty of ruining the ecosystem or is something larger unfolding that has been planned by the planetary biomind?
- Is the planetary biomind a part of a still larger mind? How would we know?
- Is there a way to consciously and directly converse with the biomind? Can it answer direct questions, once we find out how to present them?
Both the first and second avenues of discovery have the potential of revolutionizing humanity's self-concept and allowing humanity to enter consciously into its larger roles and potentials.
MP: Suppose that it would be possible to prove convincingly that there is a common pool of shared mental images and that the privacy of consciousness and biological death as the end of conscious existence are illusions. At least one might hope that this could transform the society of lonely winners and losers to people fascinated about the possibility of breaking down the barrier of personal consciousness.
Knowing the physical correlates for remote viewing would no doubt lead to a technology of consciousness. Of course, also ethical issues would appear: most of us have painful little secrets of past and might feel the loss of the personal privacy rather humiliating.
CK: Why does the meta-mind relate to the issue of futures as if the one key here? What IS a meta-mind? What IS an incarnation? What IS the bardo? We need to understand how the sheaf of self becomes loosened into the flux of the bardo without trying to cling on to one personality or reincarnate life history. The human brain may be the cosmic sanctuary of consciousness. We may be running the great cosmic race once and for all time from alpha to omega even as we speak as fragile living beings trapped in the mortal coil. We shouldn't assume the luxury of the bardo as an excuse for failing to take responsibility for the pain of the present and the angst of mass extinction.
28. The research described or alluded to in this discussion seems to converge on the possibility of future human exploration which transcends the domain of current human experience. So far, most of our forays into distant mental interactions with living systems (or inert targets such as the GCP array) have focused on a one way communication - specifically, from humans to non-human targets. However, the past three decades of remote viewing research have opened the door on what is by far the more exciting aspect of this communication - that is, the ability of humans to probe distant targets and expand their understanding of the universe into new realms of experience. How difficult will it be to make sense of our perceptions as we move further away from the experiential pool of our species, and how could such a future exploratory program maintain an objective, scientific approach - as opposed to the mystical, quintessentially subjective explorations of the past?
SK: I have never believed that what you call "an objective, scientific approach" is possible in any branch of science. For me, all scientific inquiry is, to some extent, subjective. I would eliminate the word "mystical" because that term is packed with too many connotations. However, the sooner scientists realize that their work is inevitably subjective, the better will be the resulting data and the more sense it will make.
GZ: Indeed there have been remarkable explorations by remote viewers when allowed by their taskers and protocols to view beyond the local pool of experience. And there is a rich literature of reported experiences from down the centuries to the present day. Yet, with all the stories and reports, a cohesive and consistent picture of a larger system in which we might be embedded has yet to emerge.
We do not know if this lack of consistency is due to the vastness of the larger system, large enough to contain all that seems to us inconsistent, or if the experiencers or viewers are somehow creating or dreaming or perhaps simply modifying what they see.
I can see two possible approaches to objective methodologies for developing clearer, coherent and consistent descriptions.
1. Collect a suitably large number of free-form reports. Scan them individually. From each report, extract salient, high-level features of what was described and collect these into a database. These would be features of the environment and of any objects or beings described. Collect these into a database structured so as to facilitate comparisons between corresponding aspects. Review corresponding aspects and assess the distribution of "values" for each aspect. From this, possibly a central range of values can be found with some degree of confidence.
2. Formulate a set of high-level questions about the realms of experience and what is found in them. Generate a set of tasks relating to each of these questions. Have a team of viewers work those tasks and employ standard methods for combining their reports or extracting the most likely truth from them.
Approach No. 1 has the advantage of making fewer presuppositions and allowing for the many unforeseen possibilities to be experienced and reported. However, the range of reported things may be so broad as to be difficult to organize in any coherent way.
Approach No. 2 is obviously more controlled. Its drawback is that it allows us to impose our common views and ways of thinking, thereby perhaps depriving us from the most interesting information about the realms we seek to explore. Nevertheless, this second approach gives us the chance to formulate questions of very great interest.
A word, however, about the quest for an objective, scientific approach vs. the mystical and subjective exploration. Are we certain the former is the better approach? If our efforts to find coherent and consistent descriptions of the far unknown are confounded by frequent irreducible contradictions, we may have to consider the methods of tribal peoples and their shamans. In the words of Vine Deloria, Jr. (Red Earth, White Lies), "Tribal elders did not worry if their version of creation was entirely different from the scenario held by a neighboring tribe. People believed that each tribe had its own special relationship with the superior spiritual forces that governed the universe."
There may be a deeper meaning in that statement than would first appear. My suggestion is that options be kept open in approaching this research.
MP: If I take seriously the idea about p-adic physics as physics of cognition and its basic implication that the space-time correlates of cognitive mental images have literally infinite spatio-temporal size, I am forced to ask whether the recent scientific world view already comes from a universal pool of shared ideas scattered around cosmos.
The same mechanism which makes possible remote viewing in TGD universe also makes possible quantum remote sensing as its techno-version and involving no active human agent: no problems with objectivity here. Quantum remote sensing would apply time mirror mechanism and rely on existing technology (phase conjugate laser beams sent to past and reflected back as ordinary laser beams), and would make possible an active study of remote astrophysical objects. Light velocity would not pose any first principle limitations on communications with distant civilizations.
CK: Please just partake of the divine sacraments of the living biosphere and witness the totality with care and compassion. Evolution didn't provide them for a random twist of fate. They are our completion in the greater biospheric consciousness. They hold the source of the conscious ground beneath the feet of our fantasies of the cosmic. They hold keys to long-term survival. Our consciousness becomes integrated biologically through engaging the fabric of reality from alpha to omega - therein lies the true compassion of the disincarnate soul from everlasting to everlasting. Use the time you have on earth to ensure the living fabric is sustained for the unfolding future. This is not a technological quest nor is it some greener pasture for the abyss of the totality is already within our sentient gaze. We need more to learn how to coexist intuitively, creatively and abundantly over millennia than to conquer new realms of the clairvoyant. These all follow naturally anyway from shedding our prior constructions and finding our original intuitive virtue.
29. As a corollary to the previous question - do you believe that there is a universal, trans-species "language" which accounts for the apparent form of communication observed by Backster between humans and plants, cells and humans, or plants and animals? Is there a subtle vocabulary which acts as a mediator between participants in dream telepathy or remote viewing experiments? How can a remote viewer effectively probe an inert target? Ultimately the same question extends even to DMILS and PK phenomena - how can a statistical deviation in the direction of intent be "communicated" to the remote living or inert target other than through some type of information-encoding?
If indeed such a universal "language" exists, as Matzke proposes (3; Matzke; Matzke 1994) , what type of formalism should we be looking for?
SK: Again, I can not comment on Backster's work because it has not appeared in scientific journals (with one exception, and that was his first set of experiments). As for a "subtle vocabulary," this possibility is open to serious inquiry. Until such inquiry is done, I could not speculate on the other aspects of this question.
MP: The quantum communication of intent and desire could be relatively simple and be based on direct sharing of mental images: emotions rather than bits would represent. This does not exclude coding but the coding is not involved with classical signal. The communication of say declarative memory would however require classical signaling using codes and highly symbolic representations.
I have a temptation to believe in universal languages. The hierarchy of p-adic time scales coming as half octaves (powers of square roots of two (p=about 2^k, k positive integer) could define a hierarchy of pinary cognitive codes.
a) The duration of cognitive codeword would be given by n-ary p-adic time scale
T_p(n)=p^[(n-1)/2]*T_p, p=about 2^k, k integer, n=1,2,...
The primary p-adic time scale T_p appearing in the above formula is given by
T_p=L_p/c== L(k)/c= 2^[(k-151)/2]*L(151), L(151)=10 nm.
b) The number of bits of the code word would be given by the largest prime power in the decomposition of the integer k to prime factors. If k is prime, the information content of the codeword is maximal. For instance, for p=M^{127}=2^{127}-1, the number of bits would be 127 and duration T_p(2) would be .1 seconds. Also spatial codes could be imagined with T_p(n) replaced by corresponding p-adic length scale and temporal bit patterns replaced by spatial bit patterns.
The minimal assumption is that this hierarchy defines a set of preferred frequencies used for radio communications. A stronger assumption is that the code words have universal meaning implied by the universal interaction of the temporal field patterns with the receiver organism. The intronic portion of DNA, memes, could play the role of a computer software whereas genes would code for chameleon like hardware built only when needed (chameleon like hardware is probably an essential part of future information technology). Memes could express themselves as temporal field patterns using pinary cognitive codes. The common portion of intronic DNA could make possible interspecies communications, which need not be conscious at the level of organism.
A series of "miracle" frequencies coming as powers of sqrt(2) is predicted, and it would be interesting to check whether the bit patterns realized as electromagnetic field patterns have effects on living matter. Persinger has demonstrated that temporal patterns of magnetic pulses induce various altered states of consciousness. Unfortunately, I do not know the duration of single pulse nor of the possible codeword. There is also evidence that spatially patterned laser beams can induce healing but not even illuminations (the fact that even monochromatic illumination does not induce color sensation suggest that laser light used for healing is "perceived". Spatial counterparts of cognitive codes could be involved here.
GZ: I find it difficult to accept that there would be a universal language, and a vocabulary (set of symbols) as a mediator between remote viewer and target, or between any arbitrary pair of consciousness and target. I think the idea that there would be such an arrangement is an unwarranted projection of our human situation.
After all, how would the symbol system be "taught" to all of nature? If it is pre-encoded into DNA, well, that raises many more questions.
Then how is knowledge "communicated"?
I am not a quantum physicist but I think there is enough of a suggestion from the work of physicists who publish in JNLRMI and others, that consciousness is linked to quantum processes, and that we can look to that structure for insights into how communication takes place.
I might say that when we understand the meaning of quantum entanglement, we will be on the way to understanding universal communication.
Meanwhile, there is a suggestion from "Seth" in Jane Roberts' The World View of Cezanne: A Psychic Interpretation":
In that infinite gallery there exists a unique individual view of the world as seen through the eyes of each person ever graced to follow the paths of physical experience….If there were a sign outside it would read, "The Gallery of the World's Mind."
In my mind I see each quantum event as being a point of consciousness that can potentially observe the whole, and a "person", or a personal life or worldview, as a particular threading of these events. No language needed here. This is a direct contact via nonlocality.
CK: This is a Chomskian idea of a universal 'grammar' transcended to a cosmic principle. But we don't know there is a grammar as such, more likely a dynamical process at the edge of chaos which happens to evoke semantic language as an offshoot of more general principles. So don't bank on any simple language of inter-species communion. Better just to look into the eyes of the self which we meet in the NDE and recognize the other and the self are one in conscious intentionality.
The way that cannot be told is not the Tao of one or another formalism. We have to have a way of engaging the wilderness of the psyche with no restraints.
30. Do you believe that there are resolution limits of perception or intelligibility between different levels of reality?
SK: Yes. I suspect that resolution limits exist at each level of reality, as you put it, and that there are limits on perception and intelligibility as well. This should reinforce our modesty when dealing with these topics.
My major problem with your questions is that many of them are based on a very small number of data points. As a result you make assumptions that are not necessarily valid. Nevertheless, your questions are thoughtful and deserve serious consideration.
MP: p-Adic number fields R_p define a hierarchy of intelligences labelled by primes and the p-adic length and time scales associated with these primes can be seen as a hierarchy of scales defining a temporal and spatial cognitive and sensory resolution. This hierarchy of preferred p-adic scales might relate directly to the evolution of cognition and special properties of the preferred primes.
Consider first briefly the ideas about how cognition and number theory could relate in TGD universe before going to the argument for how preferred p-adic primes might appear.
a) p-Adic number fields allow also extensions based on algebraic numbers (like n:th roots) and even transcendentals like e. For instance, the minimal extension involving e is p-dimensional containing e, e^1,..,e^p-1 as added "units" analogous to imaginary unit whereas e^p exists as an ordinary p-adic number. There are good reasons to believe that the evolution of cognition means also the increase of the dimension of the extension of p-adic numbers besides the increase of p. Thus the evolution of cognition would mean a gradual "discovery" of more and more complex algebraic and transcendental numbers so that the p-adic space-time sheets correspond to increasingly higher-dimensional extensions. Cognitive world has arbitrary dimension whereas sensory world of real numbers is always 3-dimensional.
b) The recent formulation of TGD is based on the idea of algebraic continuation: real physics and various p-adic physics can be obtained from a rational number based physics by algebraic continuation analogous to a continuation of a real function to the entire complex plane. This principle poses strong conditions on physics itself since physics would be defined for generalized numbers obtained by gluing real and p-adic numbers fields together along rational numbers. One can also say that the physics of cognition becomes part of physics itself.
c) The continuation from rationals to p-adics involves always some resolution scale above which it is possible. For instance, the values of functions sin(pi*x/N) and cos(pi*x/N), N=p^k, do not exist p-adically at x=n in R_p unless one extends R_p itself to contain these irrational numbers. The better the resolution and shorter the corresponding length and time scales, the higher the dimension of the extension of p-adic numbers needed. Thus the evolution of intelligence would be essentially number theoretic shadow for the evolution of the cognitive resolution scale (or vice versa!). The metaphor about evolution of science as the increase of the resolution of microscope fits nicely with this picture.
The preferred primes could appear as follows.
a) The model of cognition leads to the hypothesis that for any prime, the numbers log(q)/pi are rational numbers for any prime q. Restrict the focus on the diagonal case q=p and use the notation
log(p)/pi = p^k * q,
where the rational number q has R_p-norm one (neither numerator nor denominator of q is divisible by p). If k does not vanish, p can be said to be "self-referential" for obvious reasons.
b) The logarithmic waves exp(iKlog(x)), K integer, appear as the basic elements in the formulation of quantum TGD and closely relate to the conformal and Lorentz invariance of quantum TGD. The algebraic continuation of these logarithmic waves to p-adic number field R_p requires that they exist at rational points x, in particular x = p, as elements of extended R_p. Thus exp(iK*log(p)) is the object that should exist in extended R_p. Accepting the above hypothesis, its existence is equivalent with the existence of exp(i*p^k*pi) in R_p.
c) For k>=0, there is no problem but for self-referential primes having k<0 the existence is possible only if e(i*pi/p^|k|), k<0 exists as an element of extended R_p. This requires p^|k|-dimensional extension so that self-referential primes would correspond to especially high levels of cognitive intelligence. This might explain why Mersennes and Gaussian Mersennes are in a preferred role in TGD Universe.
GZ: Have we defined levels of reality? At any rate, given the kind of direct perception implied by my response to the previous question, I would not expect any intrinsic limits on resolution or intelligibility. However, in the context of remote viewing, where layers of information processing (and even symbol interpretation as suggested in the preceding question) must be navigated before impressions are perceived, there may well be limitations.
CK: I don't believe there are 'levels' to reality. It's an example of what Chogyam Trungpa might call 'spiritual materialism'. We use a physic world analogy for something we have difficulty classifying. We sense 'other' states or conditions, so call these 'higher levels'. It might be easier simply to reserve a ticket for chaos in our consciousness and never let go of the centre of the cyclone for all the wild winds blowing past our verandah.
Intent is a fundamental mystery of existential reality. Focused or thrown casually into uncertainty it is not just something to do with remote viewing ... ALL viewing is 'remote viewing' in the dream-time of subjective conscious reality from 'waking life' to the 'real-time movie of dream' and intent is the central character - the effect of the self - villain and hero - god and satan. This is the prisoner's dilemma of evolution and of consciousness.
Start from the paradox of conscious intentionality and the acute instabilities of history it creates. Then try to proceed into how the universe collapses the super-abundance of many worlds into one knife-edge of history and you will begin to see why we have to be able to anticipate reality supernaturally to participate in it. The universal record is an undecidable proposition which intent turns into an acute paradox. We can't understand self or intent without an acute conscious intentional appreciation for taking living advantage of the loophole this paradox creates. The rest is history.
Consciousness is a cosmological manifestation complementary to the physical universe. Yes it could be thought of as a many in one bardo manifesting in incarnate consciousness. Yes we can become trapped in our incarnate consciousness so we can't experience the bardo. We NEED to know the disincarnate so we can become the grateful dead incarnate and do the good thing. Talking in terms of function and structure is a real world analogy but it is valid to pose the cosmic generic nature of consciousness.
Non-linear and quantum science can encompass heaps of non-mechanistic physical world descriptions which evoke all manner of possibilities. It is a fallacy to think psychic investigation is anti-science or heresy. But the hard problem of consciousness is no petty adversary but the abyss staring us back in the face. Creationism is a flawed extremely mechanistic philosophy which flies in the face of fact.
The subjective cannot be divided because division is an aspect of the physical. Whether this means there is a 'mind' which is undivided is a koan. Mind itself is a chimera. Yet consciousness and intent are complimentary to the cosmic origin and each of us is a walking incarnation of the big bang. Careful here - we have to do rather more than think to win the jackpot. There is more to intentionality than mere stealth.
Concluding remarks by Sidorov:
Emotional content and focused intent. Why are they the key to spontaneous, respectively controlled, remote mental interactions? If there are limits to symbolic communication, is emotion a form of universal currency - a primitive empathic language which allows us to perceive and respond to each other's needs as a mutually interdependent hierarchy of conscious structures? This might account for Backster's findings and the prominence of emotionally-charged events throughout the spectrum of psi functions - the ubiquitous attraction and sensitivity of the Mind to information "clusters" encoding powerful emotional reactions. Children who are psychologically (and sometimes physically) traumatized by the memory of violent injuries they claim to have suffered in a previous life; plants and cells which react to physical threats or excitement; RNGs which demonstrate marked deviations synchronously with mass display of grief or celebration, even anticipating surprise catastrophic events; precognitive and telepathic data making its way into a group remote viewing session, or into thousands of dreams throughout history... These are observations which ought to make us think about the possible organization of information in the universe, and its possible flow paths. It is perhaps too early to talk of parallelisms with the brain's neural loop organization and emotional memory shortcuts - but as Pitkanen has repeatedly stressed throughout his work, nature has a remarkable degree of symmetry built into its blueprints (see Pitkanen 2003a,b and previous issues of JNLRMI).
Somehow, even when talking about a collective unconscious, we have always taken the perspective that our minds are the primary cause, that their convergence creates some kind of universal record. Our selves, we assume, are independent entities under the control of a personal will. That this will remains an impenetrable quantity, impossible to trace back to origins either philosophically or neurophysiologically, does not seem to pose a problem to reductionists: just a few more years, just a few more breakthroughs in brain imaging technology, and we'll "get it". Others, like Susan Blackmore, espouse the Buddhist view that will and the sense of self are artificial constructs emerging from the collective dynamics of "selfish memes" (Blackmore 1996). But what are memes then, and what is their origin? Most importantly, how does focus, this apparent seed of selfhood, emerge from their interactions?
Independent studies (Puthoff and Targ, 1979; Grinberg-Zylberbaum & al., 1994; Yamamoto & al. 1997, 1999; Wackermann & al., 2003) have shown that the brainwave patterns of people engaged in a common experiment from distant locations synchronized when one was exposed to a random stimulus, even though the other participant was unaware of the stimulus periods; Germine's work also showed that the brain's evoked response potential to a random stimulus depended on whether another participant observed that stimulus or not - in a neurophysiological version of Young's double slit experiment (Germine 1998, 2002). Is consciousness the result of a bottom-up process, as our current dogma insists, or does the mind actually modulate brain/body physiology, as an increasing number of parapsychology studies suggest? What would happen to the study of collective consciousness if we turned the problem on its head and started from the universal set of information (to which remote viewers appear to have access at will) - with an eye on what characterizes our routine, spacetime-localized awareness? Would it be reasonable to investigate the possibility that deep symmetries exist between known brain processes and the mechanisms of nonlocal information transfer as Pitkanen proposes (Pitkanen 2003a,b)? Are there any parallels between psychiatric phenomena like depersonalization or multiple personality syndrome and anomalous cognition events associated with remote viewing, out-of-body experiences or reincarnation-type cases? In other words - does our collective mind possess any type of functional structure which may account for the varieties of conscious experience and remote interactions we have discussed so far? Is it more reasonable to theorize that human consciousness evolved from complex chemical reactions to a transcendent perception of space and time, than to expect, on the basis of everything we now know about such experiences, that our diurnal focus on a narrow space-time domain is merely a temporary constraint, much like the single-mindedness required to complete a piece of carving on the facade of a cathedral? If we can routinely split our attention between several tasks, is it totally inconceivable that a greater consciousness can split itself between several billion relatively independent tasks - and in that case, what can we conclude about our "ground state"? Indeed, it may be time to join Dr. Tart's proposal (Tart , 2000) that our ordinary mode of awareness need not necessarily be seen as the only, or the "natural" state of consciousness - and in so re-formulating the challenge of parapsychology, begin at last to take advantage of the neurophysiologist's insights.
We realize that even asking such questions represents the worst kind of heresy in the current scientific climate, but creationism in the traditional sense is not necessarily the only alternative to reductionism. One does not need to posit the intent to create a particular world design - only to realize that individualized, local awareness can evolve from a primary undifferentiated universal consciousness, following a basic set of dynamic laws, as easily as planetary systems and their complex processes are supposed to have evolved from the post-Big Bang inflationary broth. If we are not bothered by the idea of sharing a common material origin, why should the notion of cognitive differentiation - indeed of awareness embedded into every element of reality - be perceived as an intellectual threat?
But opening up to the possibility of a shared Mind is only the beginning of our challenge. The hard questions are merely prefigured on the horizon at this point, foremost among them being "the paradox of conscious intentionality and the acute instabilities of history it creates", to use Chris King's insightful formulation. It is no exaggeration to say that facing this "abysmal" problem holds the key not only to our understanding of reality, but to our future as a species... A long time ago, Descartes uttered his immortal cogito, ergo sum: but if anything is knowable by the right application of focus, then the boundary between what we choose to make conscious and what falls below the limit of attention, forgotten or ignored, becomes critically important - it becomes, in effect, our new skin. In this universe of temporal illusion and non-locality we know to inhabit today, what we are seems to be determined by what we think about. Not only that, but our separation may turn out to be a function of the same random focus: it is anyone's guess how our coherent intent may be able to transform reality.
CONCLUSIONS:
Among other theories from the original JNLRMI, Pitkanin and Sidorov proposed that the Schumann resonance (SR) may be the substrate for a radar-type extrasensory perception mechanism common to all living beings. Like water bouncing off of rocks and other submerged objects, this non-specific frequency is absorbed and re-radiated in unique interference patterns by all objects it encounters. This interference pattern is a composite of external and internal properties, as the constituent atoms, molecules and their global assembly all re-transmit this energy according to their specific configurations. They suggest that the “sounding waves” can be frequency and pattern modulated by conscious intent in order to yield specific information (interference patterns). Decoded by the brain they return almost instantly on the “back” of the Schumann Resonance.
Once recaptured, the patterns are then decoded by the brain. In this Fourier-type transformation the information is translated into conscious data, much like other sensory processing. Conversely, specific effects may be imprinted as bioinformation and made to exercise a "mysterious action at a distance", once the signal wave reaches the target. That pattern, in turn, may, under the right ("pre-requisite") global conditions, avoid routine dissipation and become instead coupled to the dominating ("state-of-consciousness") standing wave that is picked up and carried by the Schumann resonance. Mental intent may function as a variable window of transmission/reception in the exchange of extrasensory information. Tuned into the Schumann resonance, it may carry such bio-regulating information to distant targets and act as a primitive, radar-type sensory interface. All these and more mechanisms depend on the SR frequencies staying within their median range.
Continuing research in frontier science is likely to create new evidence and theories, though vexing mysteries may continue to exist. Our psychophysical potential is of great importance both to science and the human spirit, and it deserves the funding that can lead to best practice protocols and repeatable results that satisfy rigorous scientific criteria.
NOTE:
1. Sato, Rebecca (2012), DNA Found to Have "Impossible" Telepathic Properties, http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2008/02/dna-found-to-ha.html
Somehow they are able to identify one another, and the tiny bits of genetic material tend to congregate with similar DNA. The recognition of similar sequences in DNA’s chemical subunits, occurs in a way unrecognized by science. There is no known reason why the DNA is able to combine the way it does, and from a current theoretical standpoint this feat should be chemically impossible.
Even so, the research published in ACS’ Journal of Physical Chemistry B, shows very clearly that homology recognition between sequences of several hundred nucleotides occurs without physical contact or presence of proteins. Double helixes of DNA can recognize matching molecules from a distance and then gather together, all seemingly without help from any other molecules or chemical signals.
In the study, scientists observed the behavior of fluorescently tagged DNA strands placed in water that contained no proteins or other material that could interfere with the experiment. Strands with identical nucleotide sequences were about twice as likely to gather together as DNA strands with different sequences. No one knows how individual DNA strands could possibly be communicating in this way, yet somehow they do. The “telepathic” effect is a source of wonder and amazement for scientists.
“Amazingly, the forces responsible for the sequence recognition can reach across more than one nanometer of water separating the surfaces of the nearest neighbor DNA,” said the authors Geoff S. Baldwin, Sergey Leikin, John M. Seddon, and Alexei A. Kornyshev and colleagues.
This recognition effect may help increase the accuracy and efficiency of the homologous recombination of genes, which is a process responsible for DNA repair, evolution, and genetic diversity. The new findings may also shed light on ways to avoid recombination errors, which are factors in cancer, aging, and other health issues.
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