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  • The Changing Face of Russian Psi Research

    The Changing Face of Russian Psi Research

    From New Dawn 104 (Sept-Oct 2007)

    Were the Soviets really experts in paranormal research? Were they, as some researchers claimed during the Cold War, light years ahead of the rest of the world in the field of parapsychology? If so, what kind of work are the Russians up to today?

    The mysterious case of Robert Toth may shed some light on the matter.

    The Toth Incident

    Robert C. Toth, a Los Angeles Times correspondent, was arrested and detained in Moscow on June 11, 1977. He had been given papers by a Soviet scientist named Valery G. Petukhov, who claimed to be Chief of the Laboratory of Bio-Physics at the State Control Institute of Medical and Biological Research. The papers supposedly disclosed ‘state secrets’ and Toth, of course, had obtained them illegally. He was arrested before he had a chance to examine them properly.

    The papers were supposed to offer proof of Petukhov’s grounding breaking scientific research in the field of parapsychology. When living cell undergo division, Toth had been told, they emit certain particles that can be “detected and measured.” These particles can “carry information,” and their function could “explain the basis for telepathy” and other phenomena of this nature.

    Toth claimed that seconds after he had been given the papers, a small car pulled up beside him, from out of which emerged five men, dressed as civilians. They threw him inside the vehicle, which then sped off. “Our car drove through red lights and down one-way streets the wrong way to a militia [police] station,” writes Toth. “My captors were firm and polite, offering me cigarettes… I was ushered into a room with an inspector who declined my requests to phone the US Embassy but said a Soviet Foreign Ministry official would be called.”

    Toth was detained for a period of several days. He was interrogated by police officers and KGB officials. A senior researcher of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Professor I.M. Mikhailov, was asked to provide expert testimony on the information Toth had been given by Petukhov. “This material is secret and shows the kind of work done in some scientific institutes of our state,” he declared.

    Suddenly told he was free to go, Toth caught the next flight back to America. The Toth incident hit newspapers all over the world, including The Washington Post and The New York Times. The story was quickly forgotten, however – at least by the public. “But,” writes the late Martin Ebon, “intelligence analysts understood that Toth had gotten into his hand, if only for a few moments, one of the tips of the enormous iceberg of top secret Soviet research into psychic powers of the human mind.”

    The Psi Warfare Gap

    Another possibility is that the Toth incident was a Soviet orchestrated conspiracy – a set up, in other words. Between 1969 and 1971, during the height of the Cold War, American intelligence sources discovered the Soviets had a deep interest in parapsychology, were researching the subject extensively, and that this research was being well-funded by the Soviet military and the KGB.

    In 1967, it was learned, the Soviets were spending an estimated US$500 million a year on parapsychological related research. The money was being used to fund fourteen separate research institutes. This naturally worried the Americans, who deduced a hostile intent behind the Soviet’s actions.

    As to why the Soviets were spending so much money on psi research, a brief explanation needs to be given. In the aftermath of World War II, Soviet authorities feared the prospect of becoming involved in yet another war – this time with the West – much in the same way that the US authorities were greatly concerned about a possible ‘communist takeover’ and nuclear war with the Soviet Union.

    Acting as an important catalyst for the Soviet ‘psychic boom’ was a story that appeared in the French periodical Constellation, entitled ‘Thought Transmission – Weapon of War’. The article, published in 1959, told of supposed telepathy experiments that were being conducted by the US military. The article claimed that the ‘receivers’ in the experiment, located onboard the submerged nuclear submarine Nautilus, had successfully managed to pick up telepathic transmissions from the ‘senders’ back on land.

    When the US Navy denied the story, the Soviets assumed they were lying, deciding to take it seriously. Not wanting to be left behind in the field of psi research, the Soviets took immediate action. The father of Soviet parapsychology, the physiologist Leonid L. Vasiliev, who, in 1923, had been ordered by Joseph Stalin to investigate telepathy, made the following remark in April 1960, while addressing a group of top Soviet scientists: “Today the American Navy is testing telepathy on their atomic submarines. Soviet scientists conducted a great many successful telepathy tests over a quarter of a century ago. It’s urgent that we throw off our prejudices. We must again plunge into the exploration of this vital field.”

    One theory is that the Nautilus story was a clever piece of American disinformation, aimed to lead the Soviets astray, so that they would start to invest money and energy into a decided waste of time. “Whether telepathic communication experiments were ever carried out aboard the USS Nautilus is a topic that generates much doubt and dispute among paranormal enthusiasts,” explains W. Adam Mandelbaum in his book The Psychic Battlefield.

    Regarding the Toth incident, the parapsychologist Elmar R. Gruber has some interesting comments to offer: “The feeling remains that the Soviets were attempting to impart deliberate disinformation in their power game with the Americans… Did they intend to create the impression that they were far more advanced in this field than the Americans?”

    Intentional or not, the impression was certainly there, as proven by a now declassified 1972 Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) report, entitled ‘Controlled Offensive Techniques’. The report begins by stating that parapsychology in the Soviet Union is very different to that in West, the former being a “multi-disciplinary field consisting of the sciences of bionics, biophysics, psychophysics, psychology, physiology and neuropsychology.” The Soviets had named this field ‘psychotronics’. The nearest English equivalent to the word is mind (psycho) energy applications (-tronics).

    The report mentions that Soviet scientists had explored “detrimental effects of subliminal perception techniques,” which, using “telepathic means,” might be “targeted against the US or allied personnel in nuclear missile silos.” The report continues: “The potential applications of focusing mental influences on an enemy through hypnotic telepathy have surely occurred to the Soviets… Control and manipulation of the human consciousness must be considered a primary goal. Soviet knowledge in this field is superior to that of the United States.”

    Psychic Discoveries Behind The Iron Curtain

    The year 1970 marked the publication of a now classic book on Soviet psychic research. Called Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, it was written by two Western journalists, Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. During their stay in what was then the Soviet Union, Ostrander and Schroeder travelled far and wide, interviewing numerous scientists who were conducting groundbreaking research in the field of parapsychology.

    When Psychic Discoveries was first released, it caused quite a stir, sparking both public and government interest in ‘psychic warfare’. Had it never been written, the US government’s fear of ‘Soviet psychic mind control’ would probably not have reached the extreme that it did.

    Kirlian photography, dowsing, telepathy, eyeless sight, telekinesis, hypnosis – these are just some of the subjects that Ostrander and Schroeder investigated and wrote about. Their book showed that Soviet scientists had already managed to gain a practical understanding of how these types of phenomena were possible, while the rest of the world was lagging far behind.

    So what had the Soviets discovered about the unknown powers of the human mind? And how did they approach the study of this enigmatic subject?

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    Experiments In Distance Influence

    Existing in the Soviet Union were two different types of parapsychology – one official, the other secret. The former was allowed to exist in public, while the latter was taking place at well-funded, top secret state-controlled research institutes, and was largely military-based. Parapsychologists who wanted to do research in non-military areas often had difficulty obtaining funding.

    To divert attention away from the real research they were doing, the Soviets had established, in Moscow, a military-based parapsychology centre called the Institute of Problems of Information Transmission. To help it look authentic, the Soviets made sure it was well-guarded at all times. As for the real research, that was being conducted in a remote region of western Siberia, near the pioneer town of Novosibirsk, in a massive research facility named Akademgorodok, ‘Science City’.

    Built after World War II, Science City was composed of around 40 scientific centres, and housed tens of thousands of scientists and their families. It was developed, says Martin Ebon, “with such single-mindedness that even the names of the streets and city squares reflect its nature. For example, one could take a bus down Thermophysics Street, get off at the corner of Calculators Street, and walk across the Institute of Hydrodynamics Square.”

    One of its scientific centres was called the Institute for Automation and Electrometry. Located here was the mysterious Special Department 8, where entry was not permitted unless one had access to a special code. Security was such that the code was changed on a weekly basis. For the sixty or so scientists employed at No. 8, their job was to investigate telepathy and distant influence, otherwise called ‘biocommunication’.

    For psi to be possible, thought Soviet scientists, there had to be an exchange of energy taking place. At No. 8, writes Ebon, “physicists sought to discover the nature of ‘psi particles’, the elusive elements that some Soviet scientists regarded as essential to the function of such psychic techniques as biocommunication and bioenergetics.”

    In one series of experiments, telepathic communication was tested among people. Experiments in telekinesis were also conducted. Some of the subjects used were Tibetan monks and Siberian shamans, who had been carefully selected by the KGB for their remarkable psychic abilities. The American journalist Jim Marrs says the KGB “laboriously screened more than a million people in an effort to locate ‘super naturals’, persons with the greatest amount of psychic power.”

    In another series of experiments – which were conducted at No. 8 before it was closed down in 1969 – August Stern, one of the scientists who worked there, and his colleagues tested the properties of biophotons, to see if they could account “for some inexplicable forms of communication.” Photons, by the way, are the smallest physical units of light, the quanta of electromagnetic radiation. Biophotons are a type of photon that radiate from living cells. In this experiment, bacteria was placed on two sides of a glass plate, “to see whether a fatal disease could be transmitted through the glass” with the help of biophotons. “There were also experiments with photon waves, in which frogs’ eyes were used as a more sensitive measuring instrument than a machine,” recalls Stern, who migrated to France in 1977.

    Due to the shutting down of No. 8, the photon communication experiments conducted by Stern and his colleagues were not fully realised. Several years later, however, three Soviet scientists attempted the same problem, achieving impressive results. Their names were Vlail Kanachevy, Simon Shchurin and Ludmilla Mikhailova. In their experiments, two groups of cells were used, one of which was contaminated with a virus, the other of which was not. They were placed adjacent to each other, but remained physically separate. When the two groups were isolated by quartz glass, which ultra-violet waves are able to penetrate, the non-contaminated cells suddenly became contaminated; they ‘caught the disease’, in other words. When regular glass was used, which ultra-violet waves cannot penetrate, this did not occur; the non-contaminated cells remained healthy.

    These results confirmed what many Soviet scientists in the field of bioenergetics had previously theorised – that living cells can ‘communicate’ with each other over distances, and in a non-chemical way. When the affected cells were attacked by the virus, says Shchurin, they “virtually cried out loud about the danger” and “their cry freely penetrated the barrier of quartz glass… Something highly improbable happened. These waves were not only perceived by the neighbouring cells, they also conveyed the sickness to the neighbouring cells.”

    The KGB Takes Control

    No later than 1970, the KGB had taken control of the country’s research in parapsychology. It should be mentioned, however, that the KGB was an integral part of everyday life in the Soviet Union, permeating society on all levels, so their influence on psi research was not exactly sinister.

    During the 1970s, more and more KGB-controlled parapsychology research institutes were established. Because the nature of Soviet psi research was becoming increasingly secret, many Western parapsychologists lost contact with their colleagues ‘behind the iron curtain’. In addition, rumours began to circulate about sinister ‘mind control’ experiments being conducted in clandestine Soviet labs, as well as the development of dangerous ‘psi weapons’ to be used against the West. As mentioned in Psychic Discoveries, a Czech engineer named Robert Pavlita claimed to have invented a ‘psychotronic generator’, which could apparently store, enhance and radiate ‘psychotronic’ energy.

    Also known as ‘bioplasmic’ energy, Soviet scientists claimed that this energy was behind all manner of psychic phenomena, that it filled and animated all living things, and could also be harnessed for healing purposes. Using a process called Kirlian photography, the ‘bioplasmic body’ – or aura – could allegedly be photographed. The Austrian-American scientist Dr. Wilhelm Reich called this energy ‘orgone’. He invented a device called an ‘orgone energy accumulator’, consisting of a box lined with alternating layers of organic and inorganic materials, which was apparently able to trap this energy.

    “A psychotronic generator can influence an individual or a whole crowd of people. It can affect a person’s psyche mentally and emotionally. It can affect memory and attention span. A psychotronic device can cause physical fatigue, disorientation, and alter a person’s behaviour,” asserts the Soviet biologist Edward Naumov. According to Ostrander and Schroeder, “certain generators can arouse fear, anxiety, anger, insomnia, depressions and suicidal thoughts and even lead to cerebral thrombosis.” The KGB, says Naumov, spent more than half a billion roubles on developing psychotronic technology.

    When it comes to alleged Soviet mind control technology, nothing can compare to the immensity of project ‘Woodpecker’. Apparently, using an array of giant transmitters, the Soviets began to beam extremely low frequency (ELF) modulated signals all over Western Europe, Australia, North America and the Middle East. These transmissions, claims Tim Rifat, were designed to “permanently rewire the neural networks in the brains of the entire Western population, thereby destroying their social cohesiveness…” The KGB, it is said, had copied the brain frequencies of pathological criminals, mental patients, clinically depressed people and socio-psychopaths, whose brain wave maps they had studied. It is these negative frequencies that were beamed down on the West – from the early 1980s until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Assuming it was real, project Woodpecker appears to have been a tremendous success!

    Apparently, the Soviets were not the only ones who managed to create advanced ‘psi weapons’ and large scale ‘mind control’ devices; so had countries in the West – most notably the US. This technology was allegedly used against the Soviet Union, in an attempt to bring about its destruction.

    Soviet journalist Emil Bachurin claimed in Young Guard magazine that Yuri Andropov, the head of the KGB, spoke of several “psi weapons centres” in Canada, adding that “Canadian research must be surpassed.” The information was given to Bachurin by a KGB general. Other members of the Soviet intelligence community have mentioned the existence of advanced ‘psi weapons’ created by the West, even claiming that such devices have been used many times against civilian populations in the Soviet Union.

    Comments made by the late Aleksander Lebed, a distinguished General and popular politician, seem to support such charges. As mentioned in New Dawn No. 43, Lebed insisted that Western secret services had carried out a series of psychological operations (or PSYOPS) against the Soviet Union, involving “tech­nologies of psycho-semantic pro­gramming,” brainwashing and hypnosis. One such psychological operation, claimed Lebed, was the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, which had been artificially organised by the West.

    Modern Psi Research

    Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, some interesting psi experiments have been conducted in Russia, many of which involved animals and other living things. The Russians have long tried to develop biological ‘psi detectors’ – and so far they’ve been partially successful. Their theory is that psi is primarily a biological process, and that living systems react far more strongly to mental influence than do material systems. Researchers in the US have also attempted to develop psi detectors, or ‘thought switches’ – electronic devices that respond to mental intention.

    The eminent American parapsychologist Dean Radin has already managed to construct a prototype of such a device, which, he says, “incorporated a new type of physical detector, involving a matrix of random-number generators, and some advanced statistical and signal-processing techniques to detect the predicted psi-influence.” As Radin explains in his book The Conscious Universe, countless laboratory experiments have shown that random number generators – devices that produce a stream of random digits – can be influenced by a focused mind. These ‘electronic coin flippers’ are designed to operate in a truly random fashion, producing an equal number of ‘heads’ and ‘tails’. Due to the influence of consciousness, however, these devices begin to function in a more ordered way, producing statistically less probable results, such as more heads than tails, for instance.

    Georgi Gurtovoy, head of the Laboratory on Applying Isotopes in Ophthalmology in Moscow, and Alexander Parkhamov, a physicist, have done some interesting research on the distant influence of living systems that produce random fluctuations. Some of their instruments have been able to register micro-PK effects. They have also carried out anomalous distant influence experiments involving a species of fish called Gnathonemus petersii. These fish are known for their ability to emit pulsed electric signals, which they use to assist navigation in the darkness. Psychics were asked to slow down the rate of the fishes’ pulses – allegedly with much success.

    Also compelling are the experiments of Sergei Speransky, a toxicologist at the Institute of Hygiene in Novosibirsk. His findings seem to confirm the existence of ‘morphogenetic fields’, as proposed by the controversial British biologist Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. In one experiment, a population of mice that had grown up together in the same cage were split into two groups. The mice in one group were fed as usual, while the mice in the other group were made to starve. Almost instantly, noticed Speransky, the non-starving mice began to consume much more food than before, as though trying to compensate for their ‘friends’. There appeared to be a telepathic link between the two groups. Had the non-starving mice picked up a signal from the starving mice, warning them that food was scarce and that they needed to increase food consumption and storage within their bodies?

    Out of the thirty experiments conducted, twenty-seven had a positive outcome. Speransky then carried out an additional series of experiments, so as to refine his methodology, varying weight, sex and other variables. Once again, the results were nothing less than astonishing. Speransky concluded that the “biological significance of the rapid increase in weight in mice which received signals about starvation from their ‘friends’ is clear: a danger of starvation has to give them an additional stimulus to be sated.”

    It’s interesting to note that the famous British biologist Sir Alister Hardy had formulated a similar theory to Speransky’s, stating that telepathic communication between animals might play a role in evolution and adaptation. Animal habits, he suggested, might be spread by “telepathic-like means.” He further suggested that a “psychic pool of existence” might operate among members of a species.

    This brings us back to the work of Sheldrake. He believes morphogenetic fields contain the information that is required to shape the form of living things, much in the same way that certain frequencies of sound ‘contain the information’ to create complex geometric patterns in sand. We are reminded here of the bioplasmic body, which, as mentioned in Psychic Discoveries, was thought by Soviet scientists to be “some kind of matrix, some kind of invisible organising pattern inherent in living things.” Morphogenetic fields also serve a social function, shaping behaviour on both an individual and group level.

    Furthermore, due to a process called ‘morphic resonance’, remarkable forms of ‘communication’ – not limited by space or time – are able to occur within a species. “The fields organising the activity of the nervous system are likewise inherited through morphic resonance, conveying a collective, instinctive memory,” writes Sheldrake. “Each individual both draws upon and contributes to the collective memory of the species. This means that new patterns of behaviour can spread more rapidly than would otherwise be possible.”

    A Revolutionary New Approach

    When, in the 1920s, parapsychology was beginning to establish itself as a legitimate scientific field in the Soviet Union, Leonid Vasiliev greatly influenced the course of its development – more so, by far, than anyone else. In his highly influential books, articles and presentations, he continued to assert that the study of psi phenomena should be approached in a purely physiological manner, as he feared it would be exploited by proponents of “religious superstition.”

    Nowadays, parapsychology in Russia is undergoing a gradual yet fundamental transformation, thanks partly to a growing interest in transpersonal psychology. New approaches to psi research are being sought out, with an emphasis on Asian religious concepts. Scientists, moreover, are no longer so averse to ‘spiritual’ ideas. Ever since the end of the totalitarian communist regime, explains Gruber, “spirituality and religion, the pre-eminent features of the Russian soul, which were forced underground for so many decades, are again raising their claims to be the guiding principles in the understanding of man and his position in the world.”

    Russia’s leading expert on parapsychology, Alexander Dubrov, who is regarded as the spokesman for the modern approach to psi research, believes there is more to psychic phenomena than biology and neurophysiology. Psi phenomena, he says, is a quantum-mechanical process, and man is a ‘quantum subject’. Be that as it may, says Dubrov, the physical side of psi and the psychophysics of altered states of consciousness should also be taken into account, so as to gain a complete understanding of the matter.

    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 104.[/alert]

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    References

    Lucid Viewing – The Way Forward in Remote Viewing, How it all Started – In Russia, www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vision_remota/esp_visionremota_9a.htm

    Compare Martin Ebon, Amplified Mind Power Research in the Former Soviet Union, 1996-7, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/Ebon1.html

    Deep Black Magic: Government Research into ESP and Mind Control, Ingo Swann on CIA/ESP Connection, 1995, www.mindspring.com/~txporter/iswann.htm

    Rupert Sheldrake, Biologist and Author, Morphic Fields and Morphic Resonance – an Introduction, 2005, www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html

    Elmar R. Gruber, Psychic Wars: Parapsychology in Espionage – and Beyond (Blandford, UK, 1999)

    Jim Marrs, Psi Spies (AlienZoo Publishing, US, 2000)

    Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries (Marlowe & Company, USA, 1970

    Adam Mandelbaum, The Psychic Battlefield: A History of the Military-Occult Complex (St. Martin’s Press, USA, 2000)

    Dean Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (HarperCollins, USA, 1997)

    Tim Rifat, Remote Viewing – What is it, Who uses it and How to do it (Vision Paperbacks, UK, 2001)

    Holly DeNio Stephens, The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture (Cornell University Press, 1997)

    © New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
    For our reproduction notice, click here.

  • Developing Your Unseen Powers: A Practical Guide

    Developing Your Unseen Powers: A Practical Guide

    Repeated ignorant or stubborn denial of the existence of certain powers does not keep them from existing – except for us! 
    – Harold M. Sherman, psychic

    Everyone has some level of innate intuitive capability, as has been demonstrated repeatedly over several decades of experiments by the parapsychological community through tens of thousands of trials utilising thousands of regular people with no known or presupposed psychic gifts. (That is to say nothing, of course, of those many successful experiments carried out with people having well established reputations for performing “paranormal” feats.)

    While some people are born with obvious psychic talents, most of us have to invest time and effort over the long-term in order to develop them from their latent state. In this article we will look at some guidelines and relevant principles for unblocking and developing your innate intuitive abilities.

    Open Your Mind & Eliminate Closed Ones

    Have you ever noticed how closed-minded sceptics (CMS) rarely if ever have any experiences with the siddhis (psychic faculties) or “the paranormal” in general? Soviet research into psychokinesis involving Nina Kulagina demonstrated qualitatively that a sceptic’s mere presence has an effect on a psychic’s ability to function properly. Hence, with a CMS (or several) in the room or otherwise involved in the experiment, a psychic is more likely to “fail,” thus “proving” the CMS right (at least in his own narrow reality tunnel). It is merely a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. Thus, regarding your own psi abilities what you believe is true, to a large extent – and unfortunately the presence of non-believers nearby or within the experimental setup can be detrimental.

    Dr. Valerie Hunt’s research in Infinite Mind showed a correlation between electromagnetic auric frequencies and the “level” of consciousness occupied by the individual. Healers, mediums and mystics show higher frequencies in their electromagnetic fields than others not of those categories, illustrating that those possessed of “higher” consciousness are, in some sense, literally “on a higher frequency.” Those fixated on or believing solely in “material reality” exhibited lower dominant frequencies and were bereft of the higher.

    In fact, gamma frequencies in the brain of 40-100 Hertz – the highest of the better known bands of brainwave frequencies (the higher band being Lambda, reaching up to about 200 Hz1) – have been linked to the ability to manifest intention in the world. Gamma states represent the brain in hyperdrive, working at its most intensity. “This oscillation is conducive to creating links across many parts of the brain,”2 facilitating an integrated whole-brain state. Paradoxically, the extreme high and low ends of the brainwave spectrum have the same states of consciousness associated with them, and different oscillations can be present at once in different parts of the same brain.3

    To illustrate, Russian psychokinetic (PK) psi star Nina Kulagina (1926–1990) – who, under controlled experimental conditions, could (among other things) separate an egg yoke from the white from a distance of 6 feet while it floated in a saline solution using only her intention – exhibited low frequency theta brainwaves of 4 Hz – normally associated with a deeply relaxed trance – whilst simultaneously showing extreme physiological agitation/arousal, including a pulse rate of 240 bpm. These strenuous efforts left her absolutely exhausted, and temporarily blind on that particular occasion.4

    Perhaps all of the above explains why Kulagina’s PK abilities “worked better in an atmosphere of friendly mutual trust and belief” – PK, as we know, generally requires intense states of physiological arousal and higher frequency brainwave activity, all of which drains large reserves of bioenergy. PK is a higher brain function. Kulagina experienced less stress when working alone and it was said that her PK ability was mood-dependent (both her own mood and that of the observers) and expended more energy in a hostile or sceptical atmosphere5 (where the local consciousness fields would have been less coherent). Hostile sceptics have something of an innate psi- or consciousness-damping effect; they literally operate at a lower frequency, their mind fields interfering with those of the test subject (and even the target). The fact that separate minds interact via measurable electromagnetic fields (and some not-so-measurable fields) has been proven by Hunt and others, and I detail much of this research in The Grand Illusion (TGI).

    Negativity causes chaos and/or entropy in the personal and local ambient energy fields, whereas positivity, gratitude, or love – heart-based emotions – cause coherence, beauty and order – just look at the instances of saints and yogis whose dead bodies have remained impervious to decay for weeks, months, and even years!6 This is worth considering before any psi endeavour where you intend to act as a receiver of information. Firstly, open-mindedness is a bare minimum requirement (confidence and trust in the process is even better). Additionally, being in a state of peaceful heart-based coherence is likely to enhance receptive abilities. In combination with deliberate intention, this has been shown to also be enough to wind and unwind DNA samples at will in laboratory conditions, with powerful implications for self-healing possibilities (see TGI).

    In 1942 psychologist and parapsychologist Gertrude Schmeidler initiated her infamous “sheep-goat” experiments, designed to test whether belief and open-mindedness would enhance psi function in contrast to scepticism. Two groups, “sheep” who believed in or were simply open to psi, and “goats” who did not believe it could happen for them under test conditions (but were not hostile to the possibility of it happening to or for other people), were put through identical standard controlled Extrasensory Perception (ESP) tests. The outcome indicated that believers in the possibility of ESP scored better than those who did not: the disbelievers scored lower, ergo belief is a legitimate variable mediating psi functions.7 “A meta-analysis by [psychologist Tony Lawrence], covering 73 experiments by 37 different researchers, clearly confirms that subjects who believe in psi obtain, on the average, higher results than those who do not believe in it.”8

    American psychic and author Harold Sherman (1898–1987) had noted in the early 1940s that while it is possible to receive thought impressions from a sceptic, it is extremely difficult for someone of that mindset to act as receiver.9 Sherman, who was ahead of his time, explained that telling yourself with certitude there is no such thing as psi is tantamount to instructing your subconscious mind to shut down the psi faculties so they do not operate for you.10 In a dream-like reality such as ours, it pays to be open-minded – especially if you want to be more intuitive.

    Meaning, Emotion, Need, Novelty & Other Factors in Psi

    Need, novelty, and emotion have long been known to play a part in psi phenomena. Carl Jung (1875–1961) – the originator of the theory of psychological archetypes – noted with interest that the English medium Eileen Garrett fared poorly in parapsychologist J.B. Rhine’s card-guessing experiments because she was unable to conjure any feelings for Rhine’s “soulless” test-cards.11 Much experimentation has also shown that psi effects have a tendency to start out higher in the initial stages of testing and then drop off as the participants lose interest and boredom sets in (the “decline effect”).

    Charles Tart actually went so far as stating that card-guessing experiments are, ironically, “a technique for extinguishing [psi] in the laboratory,” that is, they bore the subjects into a decline effect.12 Rhetorically, Sherman asked how he could possibly be expected to get excited over five abstract symbols that had nothing to do with his emotional system or that of the sender (they lacked meaning/personal significance or relevance).13

    Biologist and author Lyall Watson notes in Supernature that the most effective telepathic messages generally are bound up in trauma and crisis – and we see plenty of evidence to that effect in The Grand Illusion Vol. 1. He continues to explain that it makes sense biologically, since states of well-being and pleasure produce no sense of urgency – such information can be leisurely conveyed by the “normal” channels. However, for alarm signals to be of real use, they have to travel the fastest way possible.14 That “way” is superluminally/nonlocally. Much as Cleve Backster’s plants could detect the death of bacteria and brine shrimp nearby, our human telepathic connections must – even if only subliminally – serve a biological imperative, helping us survive and propagate as a species by sensing and avoiding danger.

    The limbic system, which includes the amygdala and hippocampus, is considered today to be the emotional centre in the brain, as well as the seat of our survival instinct. We might therefore suppose that life-threatening events, usually being highly emotionally charged, might ignite the temporal lobe and related structures in the brain into downloading nonlocal psi information from the vacuum/aether. Dr. Melvin Morse believes humans have a sixth sensory ability located “within” the right temporal lobe, hippocampus, and related limbic structures. According to him, this region “interprets information obtained through communication with an interactive universe,” and allows for telepathic communication with other people through their right temporal lobes. “It involves perception of other realities.” He states that we perceive the operation of the right temporal lobe as “intuition.”15

    In 1889 a committee of psychical researchers began a five-year project of compiling what they named a Report on the Census of Hallucinations – the first major research effort of the English Society for Psychical Research, featuring 410 data collectors. The committee included Henry and Eleanor Sidgwick, Alice Johnson, arch-sceptic Frank Podmore, and the esteemed Frederick Myers. Out of the 17,000 responses, 2,273 people reported having had “hallucinations” (psi experiences). Tellingly, most occurred in a crisis, usually a death crisis, signifying the importance of emotion, need, and above all, meaning in paranormal events.16 These were some of the earliest scientific results illustrating nonlocal correlations between well-acquainted (meaningfully connected) people.

    Aside from raw emotion, biological threats to loved ones (or oneself), and so on, another factor conducive to psi is simply novelty. Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff in their scientific remote viewing research in the 1970s found that the more difficult and challenging a remote viewing (RV) task they devised for test subjects, the more likely the results were to be good. They, too, observed a need-serving theme in their RV research at Stanford (see Chapter 12 of TGI). As a result of consistently challenging and interesting tests and protocols (with the added benefits of feedback and encouragement), they found that their subjects actually improved their psi performance over time, in contrast to Rhine’s and others’ results with card-guessing and other repetitious and dull forms of testing, where decline effects were often observed.

    In Sherman’s view, the absence of a strong or even an ordinary emotional factor is the greatest handicap in any psychic endeavour. Since his pioneering long-distance telepathy experiment with Sir Hubert Wilkins decades ago (detailed in New Dawn 136 and Chapter 11 of TGI), much data has accumulated indicating there is a great deal of truth in this. The stronger the emotional charge, the greater the likelihood that psi data will penetrate from the “subconscious” to the conscious mind.

    It is well known by occultists that emotionally charged events are more likely to impress themselves, inadvertently or otherwise, on the mind of another than are events with little emotional content. In occult terms, this interaction beyond the standard space-time realm is occurring via the astral plane/octave – the home of emotion. The more strongly the plasma-like astral body/field (or mind-field) can be made to vibrate in response to emotional content, the more likely the relevant data penetrates through from the subconscious to the conscious level of awareness. When sleep is involved, the conditions seem to be even more conducive to accidental telepathic contact, as it is an altered state of consciousness (theta and delta brainwave states) that opens us up to the frequencies of the astral or even mental planes while simultaneously eliminating most data/noise from the physical senses.

    Undoubtedly, much “paranormal phenomena” (including poltergeist phenomena, PK, and telepathy) can be linked to strong emotional content. There are indications that what we experience as presentiment or precognition may be, in some sense, the strong emotional content of a probable “future” event (which is actually occurring in a parallel universe in present time, along with all our “past” and “future” lives) then filtering “back” through time into our subconscious or even conscious awareness. (See Chapter 12 of TGI.)

    Hypnosis

    Hypnosis can aid our ability to peer into these “future” events and timelines. The young actress Irene Muza was in a hypnotic trance when she was asked if she could see what awaited her in her future. She wrote that her career would be short and her death would be “terrible,” though she dared not specify how she would die. The experimenters erased what Muza had written before bringing her out of the trance so she would not see it. She therefore had no conscious knowledge of what she had written. Some months later, however, in 1909, her prediction of a short career and terrible death was unexpectedly fulfilled when her hairdresser allowed some drops of an antiseptic lotion made of mineral essences to fall on a lighted stove, instantly enveloping Muza in flames. Her hair and clothing set alight, she was severely burned and tragically died in hospital a few hours later.17

    Hypnosis has been successfully employed for psychokinetic purposes as well. Take American Ted Serios, the “thoughtographer” born in 1918 who could create colour pictures on unexposed film simply through sheer will and intention while he stared into the lens of a Polaroid camera. His talent grew out of a DIY hypnosis experiment with a friend (a fellow bellhop at the Chicago Conrad Hilton Hotel) who instructed Serios under hypnosis that he could take photos of the contents of his mind. And thereafter, so he could – somewhat erratically, mind you. (Serios was tested extensively under controlled conditions.)

    Interestingly, Serios had to work himself virtually into a state of rage to be effective during these experiments. Notably, Israeli “paranormalist” Uri Geller has been able to achieve similar feats, taking photos of himself on high-speed black and white film through a solid black lens cap. Dr. Chris Humphrey explains this is due to quantum tunnelling: if the quantum de Broglie probability wave exists on both sides of a barrier, then its particle (photons in this case) can sometimes be on one side, and sometimes on the other, without ever passing through the barrier.18

    PK: Set Your Intent, Let Go & “Let God”

    During his first stay at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI – now Stanford Research Institute International), Ingo Swann worked on experiments with physicist Hal Puthoff, who was making forays into researching psi ability. This example demonstrates that we can and do interact with matter via our minds, whether we intend to consciously or not (and even under pressure and in the presence of sceptics in this case).

    On the evening of the 6th of June 1972, Swann was asked to try to influence a magnetometer located in the basement, which he was duly escorted down to, with one catch: the magnetometer – inside a quark detector, in actual fact – was buried under five feet of concrete underneath his feet, and thus invisible to him. What was visible to the extremely chagrined Swann (who was not forewarned by Puthoff of the nature of the experiment) was a chart recorder with its pen slowly tracing out a graceful wavy line. It was “monitoring the magnetic stability of the magnetometer and had been doing so for some weeks without any change in the rhythmic fluctuations,” Swann recalls. “The whole of this contraption was encased in an aluminium container and insulating copper canister. As well, it was in a supercooled, hence superconducting shield.” The Josephson junction inside the detector would detect any variation of magnetic flux in the supercooled equipment and the effect would show up as a change in the steady sine wave recording on the chart which they could all see.

    Swann started “probing” mentally to see if he could identify the expensive underground device, and when he sensed some “metallic differences” he tried to affect them, stating so as he went along. With all eyes glued on the sine wave, Swann attempted several times to perturb the well-shielded system, but to no avail. Insisting that he could see something, Swann proposed that sketching it out might assist the process. When no paper could be found to draw on, Puthoff suggested he draw directly onto the chart paper. “So I sketched a this, and then a that: ‘Is this the Josephson junction?’ I asked. ‘If so, I think I can see it quite well’.”

    With that comment, the ink pen gave a tiny jerk, and then stopped momentarily. Then it lifted up above its previous pattern, and “somewhat above this it wobbled along for no less than about TEN SECONDS – long enough for two wavy line intervals to have occurred.”19

    The point here is that when the distortion in the sine wave took place Swann was not trying to affect the equipment – he was simply trying to sketch what he could see with his mind’s eye. In those moments where his volitional mind was distracted and his goal momentarily suspended, the desired outcome occurred effortlessly. In laboratory tests with PK in ordinary people (Swann is known to be a gifted psychic, though more in the realm of remote viewing than PK), effects often fail to appear until the subject has their attention diverted.20 This is something that astral traveller Sylvan Muldoon wrote of some 80 years ago, explaining that charging the mind with desire or intent creates “stress” for which the mind seeks an outlet or release via a part of the subconscious he called the cryptoconscious Will: “Then [it] gets a chance to work on the ‘stress,’ and that which you had given up trying to attain ‘materialises’!”21

    Tips for Development

    • Open your mind to the possibility that psi can work for you
    • Believe in yourself
    • Operate in a peaceful state of heart-based coherence for receptive psi (such as receiving a telepathic signal)
    • Remove yourself from distractions and hostile or sceptical parties whose chaotic energy fields may negatively influence your own
    • Meditate for psi development (the more the better). If you can participate in a group of people with a mutual interest in their perceptual development, then all the better. I used to attend a trance mediumship group – not necessarily because I wanted to “channel,” but it did accelerate my clairvoyant development. The coherent group energy will heighten and refine your own through a “quantum additive” effect, accelerating your development. When I stopped attending the group my nascent clairvoyant faculties unfortunately regressed back to square one.
    • For PK, a less passive, more aroused state of heightened emotion may be desirable. If you want to bend spoons or change the weather it might help to get fired up!
    • Eliminate psi-negative beliefs at the conscious level by being well informed on the reality of the psi faculties (reading my book TGI 1 will definitely achieve that goal).
    • Eliminate subconscious negative (psi-blocking) beliefs through techniques such as Psyche-K and perhaps also EFT.
    • Try letting go and “getting out of the way.” Sometimes your intention has a way of manifesting when you direct your attention on to something else, or, as some have put it, when you “let go and let God.” Try setting your intention, letting the thought go, and trusting that the deed will be done.
    • A slightly different tactic: be grateful in advance that your attempt has already been successful. “All great masters know in advance that the deed has been done.” The aether/vacuum doesn’t “do” linear time. It only “knows” the present moment. Thus, what is true for you in the present is what will continually present itself to you until that truth changes.
    • If you want to design experiments or tests for receptive/perceptual psi, find ways to make it novel, interesting, and meaningful to you personally. Avoid boredom at all costs!
    • Practise some form of pranayama (yogic breathing) on a daily basis for maximal development of your health and psychic faculties.

    You can read more about this subject matter in Brendan Murphy’s book The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis Of Science And Spirituality – Book 1, available for purchase at www.brendandmurphy.net.
    [alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue Vol 7 No 2.[/alert]

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    Footnotes

    1. Extraordinary States, www.bethcoleman.net/gamma.html.

    2. D. Church, The Genie in Your Genes, Energy Psychology Press, 2009, 99.

    3. Extraordinary States.

    4. L. Watson, Supernature, Coronet Books, Hodder Paperbacks Ltd, 1974, 139-40.

    5. J.D. LaMoth & L.F. Maire III (Defence Intelligence Agency), Soviet and Czechoslovakian Parapsychology Research, 1975.

    6. See B.D. Murphy, The Grand Illusion: A Synthesis of Science & Spirituality Vol. 1, Balboa Press, 2013.

    7. I. Swann, Dr. Gertrude Schmeidler, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh9.html

    8. Who is Mario Varvoglis?, www.parapsych.org/members/m_varvoglis.html.

    9. H. Wilkins & Harold Sherman, Thoughts Through Space, Hampton Roads, 2004, xx.

    10. Thoughts Through Space, xxi.

    11. C.G. Jung, Synchronicity, First Princeton/Bollingen Paperback Edition, 1973, 18.

    12. Russell Targ & Harold Puthoff, Mind-Reach, Hampton Roads, 2005, 11.

    13. Thoughts Through Space, 129.

    14. Supernature, 260.

    15. P.M.H. Atwater, The Big Book of Near-Death Experiences, Hampton Roads, 2007, 340.

    16. M. Grosso, Experiencing the Next World Now, Paraview Pocket Books, 2004, 27-8.

    17. C. Wilson, The Occult, Watkins Publishing, 2004, 127-8.

    18. C. Humphrey, UFOs, Psi and Spiritual Evolution, Adventures Unlimited Press, 2004.

    19. I. Swann, The Varian Hall of Physics, www.biomindsuperpowers.com/Pages/RealStoryCh37.html.

    20. Supernature, op. cit., 151-2.

    21. S. Muldoon & Hereward Carrington, The Projection of the Astral Body, Rider Books, 1992.

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