Telepathy Inside and Out
When more than one Chondestes grammacus gathers (commonly known as the Lark Sparrow), we refer to the group as an exaltation of larks. Other curious terms for collectives include a charm of hummingbirds, a parliament of owls, and an implausibility of gnus. In August 2005 on the IONS campus another implausible gathering occurred--a haunting of parapsychologists. This fortuitous event came about because IONS hosted the 48th annual convention of the Parapsychological Association (PA). The PA is an international scientific society interested in the study of psychic experiences, evidence for survival of bodily death, reincarnation, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and reports of apparitions and poltergeist activity.
There are no shortage of societies and groups devoted to these interests. The PA's distinction is that its members-- about 300 rare birds--approach these phenomena from a scientific perspective; most hold advanced degrees in conventional disciplines. In recognition of its dedication to a scientific approach, since 1969 the PA has been an elected affiliate of the largest scientific organization in the world, the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
After three decades and thousands of [ganzfeld telepathy experiments], the overall observed hit rate is about 34 percent, which is astronomically beyond chance expectation.
I'll briefly describe two talks that illustrate progress in understanding telepathy. The first was presented by Leila Kozak from the Bastyr University/University of Washington Consciousness Science Laboratory. Kozak described an experiment investigating correlations in brain activity between people at a distance who had practiced a meditation technique called "Primordial Sound Meditation," developed by celebrated author Deepak Chopra.
Volunteers who had been practicing Primordial Sound Meditation for at least two years were asked to meditate with a partner each day for 30 days prior to participating in the experiment. A total of 16 people were recruited for the study; each pair came to the laboratory on three separate occasions. When arriving at the lab, they first meditated together for 30 minutes, and then they were separated into two rooms about 10 meters apart. Each person was connected to an electroencephalograph (EEG) monitor to record his or her brainwaves, and at random times one of the pair (say, Jack) was exposed to a flashing checkerboard pattern or an equivalent length control period with a static (nonflashing) checkerboard. The flashing pattern was used to create the well-known "visual evoked response" in Jack's brain. Meanwhile, Jack's partner (say, Jill) was sitting quietly in the distant room. After collecting 150 periods of flashing stimuli and 150 control periods with Jack sending, the experimenters reversed their roles and now Jill was exposed to the stimuli while Jack sat quietly. If telepathic connections are real, then the prediction was that Jill's brain ought to become more activated when Jack was viewing the stimuli, and vice versa.
The study confirmed the prediction (p = 0. 0001), and it replicated similar findings recently reported by labs in Scotland, Germany, and at IONS. These experiments suggest that when pairs of people keep each other in mind, their brainwaves become more intercorrelated than one would predict based on conventional theories of brain-mind interaction. This provides an objective proof of principle that telepathic-like interconnections between mind-brains exist, but what these studies do not measure is what's happening subjectively, inside the minds of both Jack and Jill.
To learn more about the experiential side of telepathy, we turn to a second presentation, by James Carpenter of the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina. Carpenter analyzed hundreds of experimental telepathy studies conducted in the ganzfeld condition (Ganzfeld is a German word for "whole field"). His idea was that perhaps certain kinds of subjective states are more receptive to telepathic information, or more accurately able to perceive what the sender is trying to mentally convey.
The ganzfeld experiment involves asking a telepathic receiver to sit in a reclining chair while listening to headphones playing white noise and while wearing halved ping-pong balls over the eyes. A red light is then aimed at the participant's face so that with eyes open or closed only a soft red light is seen. While relaxing in this condition, many people report experiencing mild visual and auditory hallucinations, similar to the hypnogogic state. While a distant sender views a one-minute video clip, the receiver is asked to speak aloud or mentate their ongoing experience. After the sender views the video clip 10 times, the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld condition and shown 4 video clips in a random order: One is the target clip and three are decoys. The task is to select the right target; by chance it would be selected 1 in 4 times, or 25 percent. After three decades and thousands of such tests, the overall observed hit rate is about 34 percent, which is astronomically beyond chance expectation.
So telepathy is being demonstrated in these experiments, but what have we learned about the experience of telepathy? Based on an examination of the mentation transcripts from 364 ganzfeld sessions, Carpenter developed 36 rating scales that quantified the receiver's experience. He asked independent raters who didn't know whether a session had been a "hit" or "miss" to use these scales to judge each transcript. The scales included items such as physical and cognitive aspects of imagery, defense mechanisms, and the use of color or luminosity.
From these dimensions of inner experience, Carpenter formed a model to predict the results of a ganzfeld session. He found that successful sessions were associated with experiences of positive imagery, a fluid progression of imagery over time, images with a sense of shape and luminosity that carried a sense of persistence and autonomy, as well as images that exhibited a sense of harmony. Failed sessions were associated with complex images, a sense of anxiety, and over-intellectualization.
Then the analysts examined another set of 251 ganzfeld transcripts to see if the model would predict those outcomes; it did (p = 0. 002). Mentation transcripts predicted to produce positive results actually did obtain an overall hit rate of 40 percent, and those predicted to do poorly got the chance-expected 25 percent hit rate.
The multifaceted nature of human interconnectedness is a tremendously complex problem, ensuring that progress in understanding will be slow for many decades to come. But with dedicated scientists chipping away at the puzzle from many angles, progress will also remain steady. The next haunting of parapsychologists is anticipated to take place in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden.
Dean Radin, Ph.D. is IONS' Senior Scientist. Dr. Radin earned a Masters degree in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Illinois, Champaign. He has held research appointments at Princeton University, Edinburgh University, University of Nevada, and several Silicon Valley industrial research labs, where he has conducted basic research on exceptional human capacities, including psychic phenomena. He has presented over a hundred lectures for popular and technical audiences around the world.
