'approved For Reiease 2000/08/07 CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500070001 -1 A PAW Special Report ROBERT G. JAHN'51 WO OFT HF most celebrated joys of the background research in the field. This academic lifestyle are she undertook with consider- the freedom to pursue any scholarly problem,able zest, digesting and reporting no matter how an enormous amount of literature irrelevant or far out it may seem -,it in the process. Together and separately the time, and the impetus We visited numerous labora- to do so provided by the perceptive, tories around the country, attended persistent, sometimes irreverent several professional meetings, questions of the youn.61 students we had discussions with various people are privileged to teach. Never in here and elsewhere, and started my career have these two benefits been a few experiments of our own. As the more beautifully illustrated following academic year be- than in the case of the extraordinary gan, we agreed the project was worth topic of this report. Indeed, it is pursuing. as much the flavor of light-hearted explorationThat winter I happened to be on leave of a very exotic field, at Stanford, where more hand-in-hand with an intelligent and interest is shown inthis field thati dedicated undergraduate, as the at most universities. Carol was substance of the field itself that I able to join me there for a few weeks, would like to share wit 'h you. and together we talked with Late in the spring of 1977, Carol Kay faculty and staff, and worked with Curry '79, an electrical en- a small research group at gineering and computer science major the nearby SRI International laboratory. from Pasco, Washington, A hastily convened,. came to me to ask wbether she mi-ht undertakeinformal seminar just prior to our some inde- leavin the Stanford campus pendent work in psychic phenomena that elicited unexpected interest and audience would build upon her participation, and pro- background and skills in instrumentationvided many more valuable contacts. and data processing. Al- Our more formal Farnurn Lec- though I was well aware of the many timesture at Princeton in April 1978 likewise I have proudly spoken or exposed an unanticipated written about the breadth and flexibilityinterest in this community and led of the, Princeton engineering to the request for this report. curriculum, and the care with which we Thus, the impressions we now hold of hand-tailor each undergrad- the psychic world are uate program to suit indivi 'dual interests,mainly distilled from the past year the involvement of one of and a half of study and light in- our students in psychic research seemed volvement with the subject, and we to me to strain even those hope your reaction to our pre- generous guidelines. liminary findings will be weighted accordingly. In particular, Carol In an attempt to table the issue, I asked,and I wish to cm~hasize that we claim somewhat rhetorically, no authority in this field and which facility member could conceivably take no position of advocacy. Indeed, supervise this work, and we intend no judgment of Carol, with her characteristic bluntness,any sort. Rather, we shall simply set responded that, obviously, before you some of the things I would. With the dilemma thus compounded,we have seen and done, some of the but no retreat path people we have met, some left, I provisionally agreed, pendin- of thethoughts we baveshared, andletyou the results of a full summer of assess themas you will. 0 1 Even this is a difficult task, for (here are a great many threads that On a raitty Monday night last April, need to be woven together. We would tnore than 200 members of the like to begin by describing the Princeton conlinunityjammed into the remote viewing "credibility exercises" TVilson School Auditorium to we undertook just to con- hear Dean of the Engineering School Robertvince ourselves that there is some G. Jahn '51 - nor- scholarly substance to the field. mally noiedfor his ivork on advanced Then we will turn to our early experiments space propulsion systems - in the domain of psycho- lecture on the unlikely subject of psychickincsis, which has become our main research. More than an interest. Finally, we will out- hour after the conclusion of his talk, line sonic of the analytical models many of them ivere still there, that have been proposed for inter- askin,v questions and offering comments preting psychic phenomena, and discuss on various aspects of the possible applications and subject. Since then, he has been besiegedimplications of psychic process. Each with countless requestsfor of these threads is sufficiently transcripts oftis remarks andfor personalstrange to common experience that it interviews by students, must be handled rather care- fieculty, 0 , rmo - Qtf lly bizarre. 'I o *6 ALIkE)" - e ' Mg M o "P ?"" "eCI f 'M if C( AN V fth "I t O 0 A fd S, no one c r , ha ve; only in the inter- , u n 0 , I I ag pF p the hope that PAW's reaclers might shareweaving (toes a pattern seem to emerge, some of thefim ive have and it is that pattern which had in this strange araeleinic adventure."we hove to show volt. - Ei). RenqA~vey:ij%~P&SA90'/QW- jbAA0TPWWMW00500070001 -1 ARLY IN OUR STUDY, We had to make a basic choice Of Strat- egy: Should our work revolve around the talents of gifted Epsychics - people we would import specifically to generate the phenomena we would investigate - or should we focus on."do- it-yourself" experimentation, confining ourselves to those phenom- ena that could be produced more or less routinely by our own stu- dents And star For a number of reasons we chose the latter TOUle. First, with a few exceptions, "blueblood" psychics tend to be dif-' ficult to schedule and work with in a disciplined, academic fashion. Second, involving students in the generation of the phenomena seemed at least as importantas their passive study of it. Finally, we were persuaded that the greater significance of this field lies in what is, or could be, accessible to the general public - rather than in what a few gifted subjects can achieve - and one of our aims was to assess what that domain might be. Having chosen this route, however, we then needed a "credibility exercise" - i.e,, we had to establish that we were indeed capable of generating effects to study. At this point Carol came to me bearing an article from the Proceedings of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, in which two physicists from SRI, Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, claimed it was possible for relatively un- trained persons to transmit significant amounts of information over long distances by a technique they called "remote VieWing."21 Sim_ ply stated, the process involves an outbound experimenter who posi- A4, tions himself at a randomly selected "target" location at a pre- scribed time, and an inbound experimenter who attempts to vis- ualize aspects of the scene in which his colleague is immersed. The authors reported remarkable anecdotal results and described at- tempts to quantify systematically information transferred by this procedure. Because of its simplicity and immediate verifiability, Carol and I decided that this was the thing to try. For our first attempt, I took advantage of a visit to the Brookhaven National Laboratory near Stony Brook, Long Island, where at the appointed time I excused myself from a reception, sat out on the lawn, and sketched the scene I saw in front of me. Carol, who has never been to Brookhaven, was in Princeton baby-sitting at the time. Figure I shows my Sketch (I will apologize only once for the quality of the art work): I,was seated roughly in the lower-right corner, just beside the building labeled "dorm," looking up the hill toward a row of trees on the ridge, a flag pole, and a water tower. On my right was a pine forest with some birds singing in it; on the left wasaroad with acaror two, and some people walking along the edge. The sketch that Carol made is shown in Figure 2. You see that while the general flavor of the picture is somewhat different, there are interesting 'correlations of objects. For example, she has iden. tified (he tower, the cars, birds, trees, and the building behind me. Curiously, there is a right-left inversion in the composition of the The History of Psychic Research IN A SENSE, the study of psychic ing phenomena is one of the oldest William James. Over the period 1912-18, Thomas W. Stan- of human endeavors.1-6 As far back ford, as can be traced, mortal man brother of the founder of Stanford University, gave and be- has pondered the supernatural in queathed one form or another. Cave well over $500,000 specifically to endow the study of drawings at Lascaux and Altamira, psychic circa 20,000 B.C., reflect research," and to this day Stanford has a "Psychic Re- this preoccupation, and the religioussearch rites of early societies were Fellow." Modest research programs were also undertaken heavily loaded with psychic formalisms.at The golden civilizations Harvard and a few European universities at about this of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romanstime.12-14 dealt extensively in psy- chic process: the Delphic Oracle In was politically important from 1930, Professor William McDougall came from Oxford, the earliest Hellenic times to the via age of Alexander the Great, and. Harvard, to chair the psychology department at Duke Univer- was consulted on problems as diversesity as the proper measures to and there, along with two postdoctoral students, J. B. Rhine stop a plague, the constitutions and of Greek city-states, and the best Louisa Rhine, made Duke the center of academic research locations for new colonies. Even into Aristotle, one of the most em- psychic phenomena. In 1937 they began publication of the pirical of the classical philosophers,Journal studied the causal links in of Parapsychology, which remains a leading journal in prophetic dreams. the field today. A professional organization calling itself the The Bible, like most other basic Parapsychological theological texts, treats psy- Association was formed in 1957, and was chic process as a central ingredient,subsequently in a tone so matter-of-fact recognized by the American Association for the that one is inclined to believe Advancement that people in those times acceptedof Science. There are now seven English- such events rather routinely. Incidentally,language, the Bible is an excel- professional journals in the field," many magazines lent -catalog of psychic phenomena;and virtually every category that newsletters, and an increasing number of scholarly books is identified today is illustrated published there in one form or another. each year. Medieval writing abounds with supernaturalAt allusion, and Princeton, the history of psychic research is rather thin, but even in the renaissance period it not is still difficult to separate entirely psy- void. In the 1930s, Upton Sinclairi whose wife ap- chic interest from religious dogma,pears although it was then trans- to have been a gifted psy6hic, wrote on her abilities in cribed into more organized forms clairvoyance in art and literature. In this and telepathy, including a rather famous book country, colonial hysteria over called witchcraft probably is indicative Mental Radio," and engaged in some dialogues with Al- of more than simple religious paranoia,bert and a variety of more Einstein on the credibility of psychic process. In 1937 our re- sanitary parlor exercises seem to nowned have persisted throughout Professor of Statistics Samuel Wilks found himself in- American history. Even Mary Todd 'volved Lincoln was in the habit of in a controversy over the validity of the statistical proce- having s6ances in the White House dures during the 1860s. of early psychic researchers, and published his own rec- Despite these millennia of human ommendations concern with the para- for methods that could be applied to telepathy ex- normal, the scholarly search for perimentS.17 an understanding of psychic In the 1950s, Hadley Cantril, then chairman of the phenomena began only a century ago,Psychology with the establishment in Department, displayed some interest in parapsy- London, in 1892, of the Society chology, for Psychical Research, in especially in poltergeist phenomena, but apparently did whose proceedings appeared the firstnot formal publications of con- publish anything of substance in the field. At the present trolled experiments in telepathy time, and clairvovance.7-10 Three I am aware of some eight to ten faculty members in as years later the counterpart organizationmany in tiiis country, the disciplines who have a substantial interest in psychic proc- Arnai= Society for Psychical Research,ess re sed a desire to was founded in Bos - W dU ~;NA : 2 QGlUlG7 l R -R.G.J. c ir easer e tol'Appl"eidrEwe Q o ed F6"ease 2000/08/07 Flqure I scene; m .o.st of the things that are on the right side of my sketch ap pear on the left of hers. Note also the comment on the right center of Carol's sketch indicatina that at the beginning of the period she a sensed I was facing up the hill toward the tower, but that five min- utes later I turned around toward the building behind me. Although I had not thought to note it in my sketch, I had indeed done precisely that. We were excited by this first attempt, and shortly thereafter we tried the process in reverse. On this occasion, I was in Pompano Beach, Florida, while Carol was in Princeton, and I attempted to be the percipient and she the outbound target. The scene I perceived, sketched in Figure 3, centered on Carol riding a horse. (That is a horse in the middle; it really has only four legs.) Details include some tall trees, a fence, a small road, and a strange object in the fore-round I identified as a woodpile, old car, or shed. I noted that Carol dismounted eight minutes after the start of the period, and then walked the horse around holding the bridle. Comparing this with Carol's sketch, shown in Figure 4, we find that she was indeed with a horse, not in a field of grass as I had it, but in an outdoor show ring, The fence was not the split-rail type I Figure 3 11,P ILI 4: Oil Approved ~or 001084-71 CIA Aelea 1LDP98;,WA37R6M1r~6ft001 -1 zl~ A Tt=~ If:( F1gure2 had drawn, but the typical show ring of white boards. The strange object in the foreground that I could not identify turns out to be the announcer's stand. Once again, we have a curious inversion: Carol noted that she spent ten minutes sitting under the shelter and tLen five minutes riding the horse, whereas I had perceived her dismount- ing at roughly that time. We have tried this type of experiment many other times with many other people. Almost always there is some correlation be- tween the sketches, rancring from rough impressions of the central features to virtually complete identification of the full scene. Rarely are there total failures, but occasionally we experience quasi-failures that are at least as interesting as the more successful results. For example, there was the instance when, at the appointed time, I found myself jammed in a noisy room with twelve other people in a suburban home in northern New Jersey, Although I suspected this was an unattractive target for Carol, I dutifully sketched the interior details. I was disappointed when I saw Carol's sketch to find she had drawn an outside scene, until I noticed that it was an accurate repre- Figure 4 7 Ull /F"T til _TL A;; lx~ P96-00787ROO0500070001 December 4. 1978 S-3 sentaticni of the yard surrounding the house in which I was seated. real-time. That is, the percipient can acquire his information about On apother occasion our random target-selection proce C 1he outbound experi 0 AppmvedhFarnRehb"at9d Vay wasavery damp,cold, dark, unpleasant place. Carol, confined in Attempts are currtntly being made to refine rem6te viewing tech- an office at SRI, again sketched an outdoor scene: thefront of the niques to permit transmission of information in terms of binary chapel, complete with its arches, the correct.number and disposition choices: regardless of the details of the scene, can the percipient of steps leading up to it, and the identification of the patio as having identify, for example, whether it is dark or light, wet or dry, cold or gray and pink stones, precisely three feet square. This "near-miss" hot, inside or outside, basically man-made or natural, etc.?'" If effect also appeared when we reversed roles: on our next attempt, questions could be found which can be answered routinely with rea- Carol, as outbound experimenter, was directed by the same random sonable accuracy, it would be possible to transfer quite a bit of quan- protocol to a local "Holiday Inn" and there stood inside at the titative information this way. swimming pool near a pleasant flower garden. Back at the SRI labo- We encourage you to try this remote viewing experiment for ratory, I sketched an accurate simulation of the entrance of the inn, yourself. you may be surprised by what you can achieve. It seems to complete with its large eucalyptus trees, a circular turn-around for require little more thanan open mind and a devil-may-care attitude the cars, the embankment of the highway, and other details. I to succeed, at least to a degree. For us it has been not so much a To compound the mystery of remote viewing, we have further main interest as a credibility exercise and fascinating diversion, but convinced ourselves that it is not necessary to perform the process in it has encouraged us to try something considerably more ambitious. I He Geometry and Geography IN A FIELD as poorly comprehended and controversial as this THE one, it is rather difficult to construct any tidy organizational which chart, but in the table below we have tried one possible outline cluding using the prevailing nomenclature. The two dominant subdivi- are, sions of psychic phenomena (psi [TI) are extrasensory per- research ception (ESP) andpsychokinesis (PK). Extrasensory perception chic refers generally to the acquisition of information from sources much blocked from ordinary perception. Under this category are the which subdivisions of telepathy, which refers to detection of another person's thoughts; clairvoyance, -which refers to contemporary there perception of physical objects or events; precognition and re- Netherlands, trocognition, which refer to perception of future events and and events in the past not accessible by honnal recollection; and ani, fort mal ESP, which encompasses a variety of seemingly inexplica- tional ble capabilities, such as homing, psi-trailing, collective con- sciousness, communication, etc. Psychokinesis (alternatively termed telekinesis, or psychoen- ergetics) refers not to perception, but rather to a palpable disturb- 1. ance of, or interaction with, a physical or biological system. The interaction may be deliberate or spontaneous, and the, energy transfer involved may range from microscopic disturbance of atomic-level processes, through macroscopic distortion or levita- tion of objects, up to some very drastic and dramatic "polter- geist" effects. Psychic healing and man-plant interactions would be two examples of psychokinesis in biological systems. For completeness, our table also lists other domains of psychic research not discussed in this report, such as life-after-death or so-called "survival research," and the family of "out-of-body experiences," which includes astral projection, autoscopy, and bilocittion. Categories of Psychic Phenomena 1. Extrasensory Perception (ESP) A. Telepathy B. Clairvoyance C. Precognition/Retrocognition D. Animal ESP 11. Psychokinesis (PK) A. Physical Systems 1. deliberate 2. spontaneous B. Biological Systems 1. psychic healing 2. plant PK Ill. Survival A. Reincarnation B. Apparitions C. Mediurnship Approv""fRsqvftw4~=08/07: of Psychic Research LIST below, by no means complete, shows locations at psychic research is being done in the western world, in- universities where one or more members of the faculty or recently have been, involved in the field to some degree; institutes, some of which are solely concerned with psy experimentation, and others of which are components of larger enterprises; and two U.S. industrial corporations have authorized publication in this field.""" We have made little attempt to survey foreign work, although is significant research in England, France, Germany, the Scandinavia, and a major effort in the Soviet Union other eastern bloc countries.20*24 Nor have we made any ef to cover Far-Eastern psychic activities, such as the tradi mysticisms of India and the Orient. Psychic Research in the Western World Colleges and Universities Chicago U.C./Los Angeles Colorado U.C./Santa Barbara Columbia Virginia CUNY Wisconsin Drexel Yale Duke Foreig Harvard Cambridge John F. KennedyEdinburgh Kent State London Mundelein Oxford New School for McGill Social Reseach Paris Pittsburgh Freiburg St. John's Tel Aviv St Joseph's Amsterdam U.C./Berkeley Utrecht U.C./Davis Lund If. Research Institutes and Centers American Society for Psychical Research, New York Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen, Maryland Center for Parapsychological Resi;arch, Austin, Texas Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man, Institute for Parapsychology, Durham, North Carolina Menninger Foundation, Topeka, Kansas Maimonides Medical Center. Brooklyn, New York Mind Science Foundation. San Antonio, Texas . Psychical Research Foundation, Durham, North Carolina Science Unlimited Research Foundation, San Antonio, Texas SRI, International, Menlo Park, California Forschungsinstitut for Psychotronik, West Berlin lll,_~raf~lons Airesearch Corrigany I C CIA-RDR966007,EkM'dU"O";Trgi)ol-i ,q-4 * Print-PlInn Ahimn! Wnakfw PSY40W4#0PRel ease 2000/08/07 :,CIA T THIS POINT Carol made a second suggestion - one with which sagreed at the time namely, that for our o I di wn A Ait. studies we should concentrate on psychokinesis. I felt that 7he difficulty of this type of experiment, as I understood it, probably exceeded our abilities and that we would spend our time futilely try- ing to generate effects. As has been the case on more , than one occa- Sion in this project with W her, I was wrong. Why psycholdnesis? Well, if xx~ -~4, the effects could be produced, engineers we would enjoy a number of comparative advantages in their study. First, in contrast to other areas of psychic research, PK involves interaction with r,.. r physical systems, and we are more at home with them than with biological or psychological processes. That same feature makes it possible to deal with a little harder form.of data, and to quantify results a bit more precisely than when dealing with psy- chol4gical or biological phenomena. Also, in th is area our heritage of diagnostic and experimental equipment, data processing techniqum, and analytical methods should serve us well. More specificall y, the PK experiments, and the models'yve OWN- use to represent them, frequently involve the confluence of several basic sciences, and we are accu- tomed to that situation in Dean Jahn and Carol Curry '79 with more conventional engineering dual-thermistor ekpariment tasks. As a further advantage, therehasbeen much lesscontrolled workin psychokinesis than in many of them suffered some debilitating 6thei areas of psychic research, ailment, us ually of an emotional/ and therefore the experiments neurological variety, most commonly can be relatively simple epilepsy, although other dis- at this point, In fact, those we have tried eases were also found. Often a precipitating have all been assembled with event could be idea- off-the-shelf equipment available in ourengineering tified which seemed to initiate laboratories. Finally, there the activity. The general pattern is in- the intriguing possibility volved a period of relatively mild that PK may have some relevance precursor events, a sequence of to the general understanding of energy major disturbances, and a period conversion, a topic of prime of "after shocks," extending as con. temporary engineering concem. much as several weeks after the main events. As mentioned in the box on A typical case, reported at the "Geometry" (page 4), it is 1977 annual meeting of the Para- helpful to divide the field of psychokinesis psychological Association, occurred according to the magnitude in the town of Pearisburg, Vir- of en- ergy transferred. For example, ginia, in December 1976. The precipitating there are the so-called macroscopic individual was a nine- PK effects, such as the spoon-bending year-old foster boy who had been exercises of Uri Geller, made a ward of the court because 27.28 c' the salt-sbAker levitations, of his parents' alcoholism problems, of the Russian woman, Kalagina,21 and was living with a widow. and the self- lev itations of Two weeks of precursors were experienced, the Frenchman, Girard.29 such as flowerpots fall- These have been very highly publicized, but in- off shelves at random intervals. to the best of our knowledge During the major sequence have evaded well-controlled, systematic (when the boy was in bed) pieces experimentation. of fruit tumbled off a window Then there are PK experiments ledge; the Christmas tree in the which involve much smaller living room fell over; several of the amounts of energy transfer, kitchen cabinets turned onto the where the effects are made floor; an old Singer sewing machine evident by an inherently high gain in the was completely inverted; a rocking experimental design itself. chair tumbled over backwards; For example, magnetometers normally used and a carton of soda bottles was for the detection of weak transported several feet. magnetic fields are very sensitive The widow called in succession her to slight displacement of neighbor, her son who lived their SpoolS.27 cer- tain types of torsional pendula several miles away, and the local can transcribe infinitesimal police - who in turn contacted forces a into measurable deflection team of researchers from the University of a light beam~l electronic of Virginia Medical School strain gauges routinely used for measuring who were on call for such poltergeist propagation of elastic and events. (Their report formed plastic waves in solids can be used the basis of the paper presented to detect very small disturbances atthe meeting.)32 To conclude the of solid objeCtS.28 Most of the experiments story briefly, the widow was sufficiently we have tried fall in this distraught that she eventu- class and are described below in a bit ally left the house. She returned more detail. a week later with the boy to try to Next, there is the so-called collect some belongings, and shortly microscopic PK domain, where after re-entering the house, one is attempting to intervene at. similar activity began again. They the atomic or nuclear scale quickly returned to her son's of a physical system: to influence a radioactive house, and there, on Christmas Eve, decay process, for example, experienced another set of dis- or the emission of an optical photon, turbances. With that, the boy was or the atomic collision processes placed in another foster home, in a gas dischar-e.31 These are and no further record has been presented. the sorts of processes involved in most of the random generator devices, The point of including all of this one version of which Carol is simply to note that while most designed and built for her independent psychokinetic investigations are work, as also described below. straining for very small amounts of energy transfer -the disturbance of a photon, of an atomic nucleus, at best of a very sensitive magnetometer Poltergeist Phenomena - here we find energy 0 transfer of a very large magnitude. To invert the sewing machine, Finally, there are the very for example, would have required rare and spectacular poltergeist much greater physical strength effects, more technically termed "recurrent than this boy could have exerted spontaneous psychokinesis deliberately. Sooner or later, this (RSPK)." For years these phenomena must be dealt with in whatever models were nalively attributed are proposed for psyclio- to manifestations of the spirit kinesis. world, or return of the dead to "haunted" houses, and inspired countless Obviously, one would like to have horror movies and pulp-inagazine a captive poltergeist agent - a ar- ticles. Recently, some order person capable of precipitating has been brought to this this sort of activity on demand bizarre busi- - but ness by systematic surveys that is not likely to happen. Stich of documented poltergeist agents seem unaware that they are cases by 1. G. Pratt,12 W, G. Rol 1,33.34 involved in the process; to them and others.-15 the event is more like an epileptic In one of these surveys, for seizure than anything they can consciously example, 116 cases of poltergeist control. Further, the med- ac-. tivity Mj8/WheG rA0"Q0CItF0qai&Ib.We r20"j IA-fZDP9&*0?t87R0005ftS?M4rJqe PK research in , uals these cases, given the degree of 92 w re f6und to be associatedliving emotional distress normally prevail- with particular individ in the house, the mean age of ing. whom was only 15 years. The majority th d c f evi e may help C1A-WPRrsWJeftAV4Ad=W Ys em, '",OR THE MANY reasons cited, we h' is it with the ave confined our first at- random source, with the logic circuitry, or with the display, or-is this " tempts at PK experiments to the microscopic and low-level even a meaningful question? At present, we have only some baseline K macroscopic domains, For example, as part of her junior in- data and a few'~ isolated PK results. For her senior project, Carol is dependent project, Carol worked on the design, construction, and refining the equipment using micro-processor technology, whereby operation of a random-event generator. She has had a certain amount data may be much more rapidly accumulated and processed. of experience with equipment of this sort; in fact, she has been able to We have also set up a few experiments of the high-gain variety, influence similar devices at SRI, at Schmidt's laboratory in San An- each characterized by a simple physical system which has an inher- tonio,31 and at Morris's laboratory at the University of California, ently large response to a very small disturbance. Such systems can Santa Barbara,31 readily be conceived and implemented in a variety of domains. dynamic, electrical, optical, mechanical, thermodynamic, flul FIgu re5 chemical, nuclear, etc. For our first attempt, we chose to replicate an Gertrude Experimental data from a random-event generator, an electronic de- vice that simulates a rapid succession of "coin flips." The plot displays a significant excess of "heads" during a PK effort (the first 1,700 flips), after which the subject relaxed her attention, and the results reverted to normal. random behavior. A record o f one such experiment is shown in Figure 5. The device involved here is based upon a radioactive decay process, and essentially makes random binary cho.ices - i.e.. flips a coin - very rapidly. Actually, it makes 100 "flips" in a split second, and then displays bow many of these turn out "heads." If the device were governed purely by chance, the cumulative total of many hundred's of flips should progress somewhere near the center horizontal line on the figure. Departures from chance would drive the cumulative data away from this "50-50" line. The parabolic lines sketched on the figure correspond to envelopes of departure by two standard deviations in the "heads" and "tails" direction. The ac- tual results are plotted as the jagged line. As you can see, at the start of the experiment, these departed in a drastic, almost linear fashion from the random-chance line. In fact, of the first 18 groups of 100 flips, 17 yielded greater than 50 "heads." At that point, Carol ceased her effort, and the data abruptly transposed to a stochastic horizontal trace characteristic of normal chance, Carol's current project is an attempt to repeat this sort of experiment with equipment she is building herself, with certain modifications which we think will be help- ful.-" In particular, she has modularized the device to see if we can determine which section is the most vulnerable to PK interference. Her machine consists of a random noise dPd'(F ,g~kp /0 es it apptrboprry;tte~-ly,*aini~,co*nv2eortsWit IRS dom s ia binary signal; and a display unit which counts all experiment using thermistors that was performed by Schmeidler and the psychic Ingo Swann at the City University of New York a few years ago."' Two of these very sensitive ther- mometric devices - each in its own vacuum bottle and surrounding insulation -.are tied into a precisely balanced electrical bridge, and we observe the differential output. In other words, the two thermis- tors are bucking each other, and when this system is properly bal- anced, it yields a null signal if both are at the same temperature. The task of the subject is to attempt to make one of them increase or de- crease its reading with respect to the other. . Again with the warning that this is a preliminary experiment, Fig- ure 6 shows one set of data we obtained. On the chart record, time progresses vertically and the temperature differential horizontally. The best we could do at this particular time in balancing ibis very delicate bridge was to get a baseline signal like the three bottom traces, in which the indicated temperature difference wandered slowly to one side or the other, in this case to the left. Hereour PK effort was to reverse the drift, and as you see, the top trace indeed progressed to the right for some time until we "relaxed," and then it resumed its leftward course. We have seen similar departures, in- dicative of an apparent change in the temperature of one of the thermistors by a few thousandths of a degree, on several other occa- sions; these changes are not particularly reproducible in magnitude or in sign, but hardly ignorable, either. Obviously, we would like to have a more stable baseline to work from, which is the goal of our current efforts with this experiment. Figure 7 shows a more recent result, less drastic than that in Figure 6, but with much better baseline stability. Figure 7 Two chart records of the dual-thermistor experiments- In an early trial (Figure 6), the natural tendency, of the bridge signal to drift to the left (lower three traces) Was reversed by a PK effort (top trace). In a later run (Figure 7), a much more stable circuit responded with a change in signal character and a permanent displacement of the baseline to the left. Figure 6 Hil ~Ili ITVI! 11 TRI;~ 0 ~1' ~ '4 L iT I ;- - 1 RI T 171 ~J! L.J. , T"[. -T 0 0 0 Mi Figure a Approved For ReJ ease 2QQPJQ&07 FABRY PEROT L-TALO44 - - - - - - - MOVING PLATE SCREEW C PAW owe Figure 12 1+RDP96-00787R000500070001-1 'TIME BASE CALIBRATION PK CALIBRATION BASE CALIBRATION PK CALIBRATION BASE YE Another experiment takes advantage of a very' high precision in- terferometer, a so-called "Fabry-Perot" device, which provides very sharp and attractive circular optical fringes. Figure 8 shows a schematic of this instrument (photographed in Figure 9), the central element of which is a pair of circular glass plates with highly reflec- tive coatings on the two inner-facing surfaces. Light from the source on the left reflects between these mirrors several times and emerges in a state of interference with itself, producing a set of circular opti- cal fringes on the screen. A small aperture in the middle of the screen permits the intensity of the central fringe to be detected by the photomultiplier, whose signal is displayed on a chart recorder. From a PK standpoint, the sensitive element of this device should presumably be the optical plates. If they are separated slightly, the fringes propagate radially outward, and the central fringe changes from dark to light to dark in succession. Displacement of the plates of less than one millionth of a centimeter can be readily detected as a change in brightness or position of a given fringe. We normally set a black central fringe, as shown in Figure 10, and attempt to force the platesapart to produce a bright fringe in the center, as shown in Fig- ure I I - When that happens, the photomultiplier Shows a correspond- ing increase in output from its minimum to its maximum signal. . Figure 12 is a representation of one of our photomultiplier re- cords. Time increases upward on the chart, and the initial segment of the trace shows the baseline black central fringe. Using remote Co;itroApprom"ftP ReievfS*200010 fringe progresses through successive dark and bright it urninafions, The Fabry-Perot Interferometer, shown schematically (Figure 8) and photographically (Figure 9), produces a pattern of concentric optical fringes, the geometry of which is dependent upon the degree of sep- aration of its two reflective plates. As the distance between the plates increases, the annular rings progress outward and the central fringe alternates steadily between dark (Figure 10) and light (Figure 11). The chart recording (Figure 12) shows variations in the Intensity of the, cen- tral fringe through a succession of Instrument calibrations, baseline de- terininations, and PK efforts to increase the separation of the plates- maximum excursion to the right, and returns. After this calibration, we begin the PK effort and are rewarded by a transition from central dark to almost full bright - something like four-ienths of a fringe change, which corresponds to some 10-5 cm displacement of the plates. We again tune the instrument, run another fringe calibration, and then leave the device undisturbed to get a second baseline. Another retune and calibration are followed by a second PK effort, this yield- ing slightly less displacement than the first, and a final tuning, cali- bration, and baseline check. Very similar sequences of responses, with the PK segments contrasting sharply with the baselines, have been obtained on several occasions, but by, no ineans have we been successful on all such attempts. Beyond the incomplete reproducibility of this experiment, it also suffers from some possible ambiguity in the details of the interaction - e.g., one might conceivably claim that the influence is not on the plates, but on the index of refraction of the air between the plates, or even on the wavelength of the light source. It is our hope eventually to implement independent determinations of the plate se0aration and light frequency to resolve such questions. One other experiment, which has just been put into a form where we trust the baseline operation, involves the spontaneous decay of I phosphorescent surf,,Ice. Luminous phosphors, similar to those on wristwatch dials and television tubes, have a variety of decay times. some for seconds _P or tractions ot seconas,"'PIRRing Mont Rpga 11tclar substance. The and the recorder swings correspondingly from the left baseline to its . radiation of the phosphor used in our experiment emeqges from I Finum 13 Figure 14 Approved-For Release 2000/08/07 :.C I EXTERNAL LIGHT SOURCE ACTIVE SHUTTER PHOTOCELL SHUTTE 0 1-- - TO RECORDER LUMINOUS SURFACE Z 0 1 - HUTTE Ccwm OL PHOTOCELL VIEWING PORT LUMINOUS DECAY EXPERIMENT forbidden transition of an atomic electronic configuration from a metastable triplet to a singlet state.31 Its decay time is about five minutes. As indicated in Figure 13, the phosphor is initially illuminated by a germicidal lamp. We then observe the spontaneous decay of the phosphorescence with a photomultiplier, which yields the roughly exponential response shown in Figure 14. (This is an overlay of five such events., so we have some confidence in its reproducibility.) Our next task will be to attempt PK interference that causes the decay process to speed up or slow down, on demand. We have several other ideas for high-gain PK experiments that have not yet been implemented, These involve delicately resonant mechanical devices, finely tuned jelectrical circuits, microwave resonators, transition of a fluid dynamic jet from laminar to turbu- lent flow, chemical reactions of very precise inception times, atornic .'clocks," nuclear resonances, and others. By studying many of these, we hope not only to be able to select the most stable, repro- ducible, and effective devices for PK demonstration, but also to identify common aspects of the interactions that may help in the general comprehension of the process. The results we have in hand are typical of the experience of others in this field: i.e., we find suggestive anecdotal effects on isolated oc- casions; but routine reproducibility has not been achieved. Experi- ments that work well on one day work less well, or fail to respond at all, on the next, under apparently identical conditions. By the stand- ard criterion of scientific reproducibility, therefore., the effects ap- The luminous decay experiment, sketched schematically in Figure 13, yields photocell records like that shown in Figure 14. The task of.the subject is to increase or decrease the rate of decay of the luminosity on command. pear spurious; yet in the context of a given experimental protocol, they are classically inexplicable.' At about this point in any of our presentations, the questions inevi- tably arise: What is the ambiance of a successful PK experiment? What is the strategy of the experimenter? How does it feel to influence the device? Regrettably, there seern to be no simple or general an- swers. The .experimenter's interaction with a physical system is a highly personal, subjective, delicate, and elusive experience that de- fies articulation in straightforward terms. The closest analogy I can find - and it is an imperfiect one - is with the biofeedback process, wherein the patient is led to a degree of control over certain physiological functions via a monitoring sys- tem that displays his success, or lack of it, in the desired effort. So in PK, the behavior of the display unit - whether it be a set of illumi- nated numbers, the needle on a chart recorder, (lie position of optical fringes, or any other indicator - leads the experimenter to select out of his conscious and subconscious repertoire of attitudes. those which happen to be productive at the time for the task at hand. Many of the gifted psychics we have met, far more effective than we at PK, speak in abstract terms of "resonance with the sys- tem," "becoming an element in the system," "holistic attitudes," "global views," and "protoplasmic levels" - none of which ac- quires meaning short of the subjective experience of a given experi- menter in a specific task. The problem of instructing a person in PK, I suspect, is akin to that of instructing him how to create a work of art. Theoretical Models of Psychic Phenomena EYOND THE introduction of more sophisticated measuring and data-handling techniques, the second recent develop ment which holds some hope of leading psychic research out B of the dark ages is the growing interest of a number of theoretical and applied physicists in formulating models of the processes. We would need an entire article to represent any one of these models adequately, and the cursory listing that follows can do little more ,than indicate their existence, and the breadth of the various ap- proaches. One of the earliest physical. models to be proposed invokes very- low- frequency electromagnet ic waves, of the order of 10 hertz (10 cycl-Ar% rQmqdsF&aRaLeg"i2QWA&/0T map approach, classical electricity and magnetism and information theories are combined to compute the energy and information trans- fer attainable in this mode. The low-frequency rang e is reflective of certain biological frequencies - e.g., electrical potentials across (be hunian heart, and many of the brain potentials, which could provide the mechanisms for launching and receiving these waves in the human physiology. In principle, this model should be experimen- tally testable, but in practice that is difficult because at these extracrr- dinarily large wavelengths such, effects as decay of the signal with propagation distance, diffraction and interference patterns, or at- tenuation in solid and liquid materials require almost global dimen- sions before becoming detectable. Identification of a speed of prop- agation of psychic information consistent with electromagnetic no experiments have yet established any definite velocity of propagation for psychic effects. l deterministi t ti of cause and effect in the physical Soniewhat similar wave pro xagation models have been ro c represen a ion C, p o to to , (Wdi A-RDEP9640767AD006NO70001t4i wherciAPPfGVed(E0rnA61ews,P ~ mechanics 4 deals .munication.42 For example, infrasonic with waves (sound waves of the "probability densities" and "expectation values," which are in same low frequencies) may carry information turn through the atmos. expressed in terms of wave functions or matrices rather than phere, or signals may be modulated individual onto the static electric fields in explicit quantities. One of the problems with-which quan- the earth, the piezo-static fields tum arising from geoseismic activity, mechanics or has labored for years is tbatof experimental obsma- the cloud-to-carth electric fields tion. like those that develop in lightning It turns out not to be possible to observe any physical quantity storms, Similarly, magnetic anomalies or of the earth may provide a process without disturbing it in some way; the system inevitably base for such comrilunication, a process reacts studied in the context of the to any attempt to measure it. (Stated more formally, the quan- homing capabilities of birds .43 tum mechanical state vector of a system is not specified until a suita- Models based on the concepts of statistical ble thermodynamics have measurement is made upon it.) This in tum leads to certain been attempted, with particdlar attention paradoxes, to the property called "en'- as epitomized in various famous examples, such as that tropy."30 In essense, entropy is an of index of the information content "Schrbdinger's Cat," or "Wigner's Friend," or the "Einstein- or, equivalently, of the degree of Poldosky-Ros.eft order of a physical system. For Paradox." (The Wigner referred to is Princeton's example, a large box containing many Nobel black marbles, all of which Laureate and Professor of Physics Emeritus Euc-ene, are to the left of its center, and P.Wigner.) many white marbles, all of which are to the right of its centers is a system of relatively low entropy: the ' il~ "th cer- arrangement of marbles is highly,ordiiredj-v~ :one may wt tainty extract a black marble by reaching into the left side of the box. If the box is steadily shaken, however, the black and white marbles will intermix and eventually achieve a random distribution. Now the operator has less information about the system: he cannot tell which color marble he will extract, no matter where in the box he reaches-, ' the, system now has higher entropy. .AM Furthermore, its arrangement is highly irreversible, i.e. no amount of shaking is likely to return the marbles to their original, separated configuration. The concept of entropy is by no means "Every phenomenon is restricted to such me- 4171 .chanical situations. The unfortunate fate of Humpty Dumpty is an unexpected and most ex e of quite a different system. His de- unlikely urild it has ample of a drastic entropy ris mise from a highly organized whole egg to one that was completely movered- scrambled was also highly irreversible. and some of them in living systems, the process remain unreasonable of death and subsequent decay could be represented as a similarly irreversible process of entropy increase. for a long time aftertheyhave or- This natural tendency of complex systems been discovered" towards states of dis der, which is formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is J,- --Eugene A Wigner, theoretically troublesome and esthetically Symmetries and unappealing in that it lacks a specifiable inverse process. ~(1967) That is, no mechanism for spon- taneous reduction of entropy of an isolated system has been iden- tified. Yet many manifestations of After psychokinesis involve just such one concedes that the person conductin.t, an experiment entropy reduction - a random generator exerts which is caused to display an unavoidable influence on it, and in this sense becomes an an excess of high numbers, a torsional integral pendulum that changes from part of it, the step to allowing a person to interfere in a de- jiggling motion to a periodic oscillation, liberate or the establishment of a way with a physical system is not quite so unpalatable. A temperature differential between two number previously isothermal thermis- of attempts have been made to represent psychokinesis in tors ~ all are proceeding toward more this highly ordered states. Many way. Some have invoked previously neglected "hidden vui- of the Biblical miracles display similar ables" characteristics: the parting of in the quantum theory to specify the human component. the Red Sea, the remotehealingof the Others Centurion's servant, the raising have made analogy of the synaptic transitions in the brain t6 of the dead, and, indeed, the creation quantum of the universe itself are impres- mechanical "tunnelling" processes, such as the escape of sive examples of "spontaneous" entropy beta reduction. Question: what particles from radioactive nuclei.49 All of this clearly involves a is the influence that drives such daring processes? Is it lurking somewhere extension it! of mathematical physics to cover human charac- our established thermodynamic formalisms, teristics. or can an appropriate new ingredient be assimilated by them? In still another approach, it is claimed that psychic process can In a more mathernatical vein, the largely general aspects of symmetry of be assigned to inadequate comprehension of random physi- our established physical theories cal are being re-examined in a search processes.51 The central point here is that a truly random process for previously rejected information.44. is 11, We have been in the habit unattainable; all sources and all receivers in nature, because they of taking only one class of solutions are out of the differential equations finite iri dimension and finite in time, must show some departure. of physics. The classical wave equation, from for instance, yields both a the truly random. That is, if enough correlations are examined, retarded wave and an advanced wave biases solution, and we non-nally dis- will prevail in those sources and receivers. The proposition, card the advanced wave because "it then, does not conform to experi- is that so-called paranormal communication is simply the res- ence. " This may be short-sighted; onant perhaps, for example, we could tuning of those very slightly biased sources and receivers. Left represent precognition in terms of unexplained advanced waves. is the specific mechanism of the resonance, thus defer- There are also several "hyperspace" ring theories which contend that the propagation problem to some other model. our usual presumption of using only Less four coordinates to describe na- analytical models propose empirical postulates for psychic ture, three spatial and one temporal, functioning. limits our deductive capacity." For example, there is the proposition of "conformance If we start all over again with five behavior," or six or seven, we may still ex- which assigns to living systems the ability to influence tract the information needed for our the traditional four-dimensional physical world to their own advantage.5' Some experiments have world, while in addition representing addressed phenomena that would be re- this concept, employing human subjects, monkeys, gold- garded as paranormal on the basis fish, of a strictly four-dimensional cockroaches, and even seeds." Again, the details of the influ- analysis. ence are not specified. So e of the t nter in atl they nX neurophysiological e9 t, &A - R Q~A NUU4 WIN It first because we fti DW Q% cild gg~ MAIWO W XPP%A&T MU nUn _ . ~ c s , ' 0 f l . , q the first class of scientific theory are to depart significantly from strictly not very well qualified to assess them, and second because we have not seen any that help much with It should also be emphasized the physical side of the prob. that the absence of good neuro- K b" ocess does not eVn.,pAwrmLucPtKoih*Ln4 aso, d:10AAD f 0187 Vl'c Ls h2 q i P9" . i "Ie i i b T r h b i i i M O M v" t- . m ra n s un n an( t mpor- ra IS t e n percept in any sense imply r l n F ties. cft on capab a, deals ig with the more analytic affairs of life;tant. On the contrary, it is the part that deduces, in- it underscores the difficulty of the entim mod- terprets, counts, and reasons. The righteling effort. As Laurence brain, on the other hand, Veysey puts it: "The elusiveness of psy- handles the more esthetic perceptions chic phenomena is simply and sensations. Interestingly the elusiveness of the ordinary human enough, those people who Seem most adeptmind."" at Performing psychic feats tend to be right-brained; they Finally, there seems are highly aesthetic and im- to he a growing suspicion that psychic phe- I pressionistic in their thinking and representation by any articulation. The people needed to model drawn solely frorh a nomena may defy make sense out of it, however, are the single domain of established analytical types who have the science. In other words, psychic proc- more highly developed left brain. Unfortunately,ess may be fundamentally there is some evi. holistic, and any attempt to separate out dence that each of these talents can the physical, biological, interfere with the other. Those or psychological aspect., either in the exper- who are predominantly analytic seem iments or in the theories, less adept at psychic demon- will inevitably obscure the phenomena. stration. For example, Targ and PuthoffShould this indeed have reported that people be the case, the analytical tasks become even who have photographic memories are totallymore formidable, but incapable of doing this type of approach seems to be of growing their remote-viewing experiments .27 importance in many other fields of scholarship as well.13 ApplicCat, 'Ions and Implications F RESEAPCH like that outlined above tion as such. How do is eventually successful in you handle a "scientific" field which seems advancing our understanding of psychic basically irreproducible, phenomena from simply sensitive to the observer, l evasive of close bemused observation to some capability scrutiny, strongly for more regular and goal-oriented, and heavily interactive with do- controlled practice, then a wide range mains like theology of applications can be seri- and philosophy? In many respects psychic proc- ously considered, involving an equally ess seems as much akin wide range of personal and to art, and music, and creative process in social impact. For example, one can general as it is to readily extrapolate from the analytical and replicable science. It has one foot in present abilities of gifted psychics the esthetic and one who can perceive remote scenes foot in the analytic. it occupies an interface re- with remarkable precision, identify gion like those Willis equipment and documents in Harman has identified as the most urgent for scaled rooms, describe geographical society to develop features of a location given if it is to extract itself from its present socio- merely its map coordinates, and even technological predicament." now are called upon by police .. and rescue units to locate lost personsThe fourth level, once or objects. The extent and ef- again personal in nature, concerns the in- fectiveness of such applications clearlydividual "world-view" depends on (he number and that derives. This was expressed rather well competence of people who can be found by our ex-astronaut, or trained to perform such Edgar Mitchell, who has been for some time an tasks, which again raises the fundamentaladvocate of this field, issue of what degree of and who carried out psychic experiments on psychic capability is latent in the board his Apollo mission: human race, and susceptible to or- derly development. With regard to applications of psychokinesisThe profundity of the in particular, the. issue lies in the implications to our system of prognosis is even more clouded, pendingthought about the nature more definitive basic ex- of man, the universe, and reality. In spite of the " periments and serviceable theoretical Could it be models. Disturbing negative relative rarity of these events, the question must be asked, that we, each one of us, everyday, by our thoughts are subtly influencing applications, such as interference withour environment, our delicate technological reality, our Universe, without consciously knowing equipment, jump to mind - and have concernedit, or is this type various public and control strictly the province of a few rare individuals who private agencies.56 More profound and possess this unique significant, however, is the capability?"58 spectrum of potential personal applications whereby individuals might advantageously modify their immediateFinally, there are environment, and the personal and collective reactions of others themselves, by this capacity. Already the people to whom there is a ST11all group of you try to explain all this, on an airp?ari~, in a psycbo-physiologists who feel that the corporate meeting, early cognitive processes of in a sponsor's office, or in a report like this. control of body function - muscles, What has been your vision, blood flow, etc. - in- reaction to this article? How much (if a threat, volve a significant component of trial-and-erroror a challenge, has self-PK, which by it been to you? Out of the sum of such reactions maturity has long since become routine comes the sociological and imperceptible. The prac- and political acceptance or rejection of the tical distinction between this view field. At present I and the more conventional models suspect that the major portion of society still finds of infantile learning may not be of the business somewhat major consequence, but in matters incredible, and hopes that it will quietly go. of rehabilitation, some useful techniquesaway. But there is might evolve. a minor fraction, possibly a growing fraction, Rather than belabor the unavoidably which has a zest for speculative applicationsper this as a new frontier, and for whom the search se, it might be better to turn to more for links between the general musitig about the impli- mundane aitd sublime experiences of life havi; cations of psi, i.e., the effect on a numenistic appeal. the individual, and on society, of such talents if they could be more broadlyThe present majority and routinely developed. opinion does inhibit establishment of care- From this point of view, therc seem ful, disciplined research to be at least five levels of chal- that could settle the issues of validity rather lenge: directly. As a consequence, the scholars and investigators tend to be First, a rather defensive there are the phenomena themselves, and hunted group, which, if valid, pose a in some cases actually perse- - - cuted by their peers . for association with very serious question, namely: are we a field which admittedly facing a basic modification of has our physical laws, or are we simply had more than its share looking to identify new forces of tawdry and fraudulent exploitation. I-or add new energy transfer processes to the same reason, the insert in the established physi. financial support of psychic research is minus- cal formalisms? cule; there is less spent on it per year in this country than the cost of Second, there is the level of personal one modem tank or one discipline with which one fighter aircraft. I had occasion to discuss must approach the field. One has to this issue recently be critical enough to insist on, with a well-placed officer of the Department of rigorous fact, but not so stubborn thatEnergy. Let me quote information is rejected be- two sentences from a letter be sent me: The cause it does not conform to previous first says, ". . . conceptions. One must distin- As I have mentioned on several occasions to you and guish between high vision and naive your staff, this subject delusion; between open- is a personal interest to me . and later in R-1haLeuer but the national ener roblein is an urgent one, r 11 t Aneg w , Y ter this is a science at all. If it is, it has some difficulties in representa- our national efforts. . . A# Reflecti ons HERE DOEs all this leave us? At the start we promised a complex fabric of many implausible threads, and I think that has been fulfilled. Also sustained is our promise to W advocate nothing, save possibly that we keep our eyes and minds and hearts open to this very new, yet very old, field. Certainly, the experiments are no. more than suggestive, the models only vaguely promising, the applications and implications highly speculative. Ul- timately, of course, the choice - and in a field such as this, it has to be a personal choice ~ must be between the assignment of all the inexplicable to rnere chance, which is somehow bedazzling hyper- romantic minds to delusion of order where there is none, or the acknowledgment of a legitimate, potentially coherent and useful, albeit.very elusive, phenomenological domain. Some 45 years ago, Albert Einstein confessed this same dilemma in his preface to Upton Sinclair's book, Mental Radio: . . . The results of the telepathic experiments carefully and plainly set forth in this book stand surely far beyond those which a mature investigator holds to be thinkable. On the other hand, it is out of the question in the case of so conscientious an observer and writer as Upton Sinclair that he is carrying on a conscious deception of the reading world-, his good faith and dependability are not to be questioned .... to One might tum to historical analogies for insight, for there are certainly many examples of originally inexplicable phenomena gradually congealing into an established science and then into a use- ful technology. Take the field of electricity and magnetism men- tioned earlier. At the same time the Greeks were consulting their Delphic Oracle, they were also rubbing amber to get static electrical effects, using lodestones to navigate their boats, and observing an occasional li-htning bolt in the sky. They had no Maxwell's equa- tions, not even a Coulomb's law, let alone television sets or hydro- electric generators. Those came much later.. Again at Princeton, the physicist Joseph Henry was repeatedly criticized by his peers for undertaking experiments that violated es- tablished scientific principles and common sense, yet we now live by many implementations of those same unreasonable ideas. The choice between assignment of the mysterious to thoughtless chance, or to a more purposeful higher order, has occupied many thinkers and authors through the ages, One of my favorite opinions on the subject is voiced by Schiller's epic hero Wallenstein at the time of his impending tragic death: 0 Es gibt keinen Zufall; und was uns blindes Ohngefijhr nur danki, geraele das steigt aus den tiefsten Quellen. ("There is no such thing as chance; and that which seems to us blind accident, actually stems from the deepest source Of all. ")" so1A1?9ri9Y~0uF,Prh proper and productive for a university such as Princeton to involve itself to any significant degree in so slippery, soggy, and suspect a Possible applications of psychokinesis: a cartoonisfs view field as psychic research, and ther e will doubtless be manyopinions on this. My own is not at all fully formed, but there has hung on my wall for the past six years a statement which may have some rele- vance it that time: In the long history ofcivilization there are always strong pressures in favor of low-level sorts of conformity - pressures against unorthodgxy,.indi- viduality, and self-won responsibility. And all the while from left and from right aggressive voices proclaim that truth and virtue are theirs alone. But there is one place above all where it is (or should be) possible for men to think and act as their own reasoned judgment and best conscience dic- tate - namely, a university. Here it is that the willingness to think other- wise, to dream, to question, and to dare.should flourish. Ifan utter stram,er to our civilization should ask: -Where in your soci ety can a person disagreewith impunity with accepted practices, do-m2s 0 and doctrines?" the answer should be, "The universities, That is part of their being. Their role is to conserve the best of the past and to look for- ward from it. On both counts they are committed to freedom for the indi- vidual, the dignity of the human person, and tolerance toward dissent within broad and agreed upon limits." This is signed by the U.S. Ambassador to India and president emeritus of Princeton University, the Honorable Robert F. Goheen '40.60 At the very least, Carol and I do hope that you have enjoyed shar- ing our own brief exposure to the psychic tapestry; that the colors have not been too garish for your taste, or the pattern too bizarre; and that some of you may now care to hold the cloth in your own hands, and attempt your own interpretation of its message. 11 Robert G. Jahn '51, *55 has been dean afArinceton's School ofEngineering and Applied Science since 1971. At the invita- tion ofthe Soviet Academy ofSciences, he visited several re- search centers in the U.S.S.R. this pastfall to lecture all his principalfield: pulsed, high-power plasma discharges, which tire of interest for deep-space propulsion, plasmadynamic lasers, basic studies in arc phenomena materials resting, and other industrial processes. He is a me'mber ofthe Univer- sity Research Board and serves as 6!rairman of the Council on Environmental Studies, chairman of the Committee on Athletics, and faculty adviser to the football program. His extra-Princeton assignments include heading the Executive Committee of (lie Board of Trustees of Associated Univer- sities, Inc. (the oversight and policy-making bodyfor the Brookhaven National Laboratory and National Radio As- ilwm a number of %"A 0,0Aft9%90MeXy ofSciences. ry"FA Approved For Release 2000108/07 CIA-RDP96-00787ROO0500070001 -1 References 1. Mitchell, E. D., ed. Psychic Exploration. New York: Putnam, 1974. 2. Gauld. A. The Founders of Psychical Research. New York: Schocken, 1968. 3. Rhino, 1. B. and associates. Parapsychology from Duke to FRNM. Durham, N. C.: Parapsychology Press, 1965. 4. Carrington, H. The Story of Psychic Science (Psychical Research). New York: Ives Washburn, 1931. 5. LeClair. R. C., ed. The Letters of William James and Thiodore Flournoy. Foreword by Gardner Murphy. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1966. 6. Walman, B. B., ed. Handbook of Parapsychology. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1977. 7. Barrett. W. F. 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