Consciousness

• seCtIon FIVe: BoRDeRLAnDs
  the mind–body problem. The Rhine Research Center, which still carries on their
  work, defines parapsychology as ‘the scientific study of interactions between liv-
  ing organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known
  physical laws of nature. Parapsychology is a component of the broader study of
  consciousness and the mind’.
  The Rhines began by defining and operationalising their terms, with J. B. Rhine’s
  first book, in 1934, launching the term ‘extra-sensory perception’. ‘ESP’ was pro-
  posed as a general term to include three types of communication without the use
  of the senses: telepathy, in which the information comes from another person;
  clairvoyance, in which it comes from distant objects or events; and precognition,
  in which it comes from the future. In addition, the term ‘psi’ covers both ESP and
  psychokinesis (PK), that is, the effect of mind over matter or the ability to influ-
  ence things at a distance without any physical interaction. These terms are still
  defined this way in parapsychology, although their popular meanings are rather
  different. (Our website has more material on parapsychology, including ESP, PK,
  and some of the many controversies in the field.)

and many failures of replication (Irwin and Watt, 2007). In

general, this method of ‘forced-choice’ guessing with bor-

ing cards obtained only extremely weak effects  – if indeed

they were effects at all. For this reason, by the 1970s various

‘free-response’ methods were developed which, although

more time-consuming, are much more enjoyable to do.

In ‘remote viewing’, for example, a target person goes to a

randomly selected remote location and looks around for a

specified length of time. Meanwhile, the receiver sits and

relaxes, reporting any impressions or images that arise.

Afterwards, either the receiver or an independent judge tries to match up the

impressions with a limited set of possible target locations and pick the right one.

This means that although the descriptions are given freely, inferential statistics

can be used to test the results. Remote viewing became famous when physicists

Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff (1977), at the Stanford Research Institute in Cal-

ifornia, obtained highly significant results. Then two psychologists, David Marks

and Richard Kammann, argued that there were clues in the transcripts which

might have been used to obtain spurious results. This lead to a controversy in the

prestigious journal Nature and attempts by others to determine the relevance of

these clues (Marks, 2000).

In 1995, the American Institutes for Research reported on ‘Stargate’, a 24-year,

$22-million government-funded research project on the feasibility of using

psychic powers for intelligence gathering. Many of their experiments used the

same remote-viewing protocols, but arguments about the adequacy of the

methods used and the significance of the results followed (Hyman, 1995; Utts,

1995; Wiseman and Milton, 1998). American statistician Jessica Utts described

Stargate as providing some of the most solid evidence of psi to date, whereas

Marks described it as ‘a series of closed-off, flawed, nonvalidated, and nonrepli-

cated studies’, concluding that ‘Remote viewing is nothing more than a self-ful-

filling subjective delusion’ (Marks, 2000, p. 92) – that is, the remote-viewers or the

experimenters imagine connections with the target, even though if the protocols

are adhered to correctly, their imaginings should have no effect. Regardless of

who is right, the US government decided that remote viewing could not be used

for gathering intelligence. Documents from the Stargate project were released

and made available online in January 2017. There is no evidence that any other

country has successfully employed ESP for spying.

Targ continued his research and used the findings of remote viewing to illus-

trate his contention that most of us have untapped psychic powers. The clatter

of our conscious minds suppresses our natural abilities, he claims, but if we

learn to quiet this noise through meditation and other forms of self-inquiry,

we may be able to experience what the remote-viewing data show: ‘without

a doubt, that our mind is limitless and that our awareness both fills and tran-

scends our ordinary understanding of space and time’ (Targ, 2004, p. xiii; see

Activity 14.1).

Even more controversy ensued over another method for testing ESP, this time in

the ganzfeld (German for total field). Participants in a ganzfeld experiment lie com-

fortably, listening to white noise or seashore sounds through headphones, and

‘remote viewing must

signify the existence of

an astonishing hidden

human potential’

(Targ and Puthoff, 1977, p. 9)

PRACTICE 14.1

LIVING WITHOUT PSI

The possibility of ESP is comforting. We might sense when a loved one is

in danger, share our deepest feelings with others, or find ourselves guided

by a supernatural power. For this exercise, try living without such comfort.

If you believe in psi, or angels, or life after death, or spirits, take this

opportunity to live without them. If you catch yourself imagining a helping

spirit or guardian angel, watch what comes to mind and gently let the

image go. If you find yourself imagining that someone you know who has

died is still around, watching you or caring what you do, observe where

your imagination leads you and the effects it has on you. You need not

abandon your beliefs forever. Just set them aside for a few days and see

how the world looks when you know you are completely on your own.

Sceptics should do this too. You may be surprised to find yourself willing

something to happen even though you know you cannot affect it, or conjuring

up an image of a friend hoping they will know when you need them. Ask

yourself this. Do we live better or worse for a belief in the supernatural?

Don’t give a glib, intellectual answer. Look and see what happens when

you try to root it out completely

For testing ESP, Rhine used a special pack of twenty-five ESP or Zener cards, with

five distinctive designs: square, circle, star, cross, and wavy lines. For telepathy, a

receiver, or percipient, had to guess the order of a pack of cards being looked at

by a sender, or agent. For testing clairvoyance, the cards were shuffled and hidden

from view; for precognition they were shuffled only after the receiver had made the

guesses. Rhine reported many successful results but not without much controversy