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- seCtIon FIVe: BoRDeRLAnDs
wear half ping-pong balls over their eyes to produce a uniform
white or pink field – the ganzfeld. This tends to produce a very
relaxed state with free-flowing imagery, and researchers hoped
this would be conducive to psi success. While in the ganzfeld,
people report what they experience, and this is recorded for
judging afterwards. Meanwhile, a sender in a distant room
views a picture or video clip, the target. After half an hour or
so, participants are shown four such pictures or videos, and
are asked to decide which one was the target, so that as with
remote viewing, a free-response method culminates in a forced
choice. Alternatively, independent judges make the decision
by comparing the transcripts of the session with the possible
targets. Claims of success and counter-claims of failures led to
the ‘Great Ganzfeld Debate’ (Concept 14.1).
A more everyday blurring between imagination and reality is
where people claim they can feel when someone is staring at
them, or conversely can get people to turn around by staring at
them. British researcher Rupert Sheldrake is among those who
have experimented on ‘remote staring’ using video cameras or
online methods to avoid sensory leakage and claiming highly
successful results. These, he argues, suggest the existence of a
perceptual field that extends beyond the head, and are ‘more
compatible with theories of vision that involve both inward
and outward movements of influence’ (2005, p. 32). In other
words, some paranormal influence extends from the eye of
an observer and is detectable by the observed. His numerous
critics have accused him of many inconsistencies, mistaking
signal for noise, over-hyping weak evidence, and being deeply
confused over theories of vision (2005, with commentaries).
Let us suppose that experiments like these one day produce
reliable evidence for ESP. What would the implications be for
understanding consciousness? Interestingly, although many
researchers claim that this would prove the power of con-
sciousness, or the independence of mind, there is little in the
experiments to support this claim. Even in the most successful
ESP experiments, participants are not consciously aware of
which guesses are hits and which are misses. If they were, these
guesses could be separated out and the scoring rate dramati-
cally improved, and this has never proved possible.
Some methods, such as the ganzfeld, do involve a mild ‘altered
state’ of consciousness, but there is no evidence that people
who enter a ‘deeper’ state do better, or that an altered state is
necessary for success in the ganzfeld. There is also no consen-
sus over what it is about the ganzfeld that makes it psi-condu-
cive, if indeed it is, other than that it provides a blank slate on
which the imagination can trace its images.
Hypnosis has also been used as an induction technique, but
again there has been no clear demonstration that, even if
‘Remote viewing is nothing
more than a self-fulfilling
subjective delusion’
(Marks, 2000, p. 92)
ACtIVItY 14.1
Telepathy tests1 A (reasonably) controlled
experiment
The problem with testing for telepathy is the many
ways in which subtle, but normal, communication can
appear to be telepathic. In experiments with cards or
pictures, for example, there is not only the possibility
of sensory leakage via subtle sounds, movements, or
deliberate fraud, but if the targets to be guessed at are
not properly randomised, people’s natural tendency
to prefer certain targets or even orders of targets can
produce spurious results. Even worse, if the ‘sender’
and ‘receiver’ know each other and can choose the
target, they are likely to choose the same things.
Bearing this in mind, it can be fun to try experiments
which allow these faults before comparing it with
one that does not. Here is a reasonably controlled
experiment that can be done in class (a sample
answer sheet, as well as a more basic experiment and
an impressive demonstration, can be found on the
website).
Advance preparation. Remove the
court cards from a pack of playing cards, leaving forty
cards of four suits. Use a random number generator
(not shuffling) to decide the target order. Assign
1 – hearts, 2 – spades, 3 – clubs, 4 – diamonds.
Make a record of the target order. Arrange the cards
in that order with the first card on the top when the
pack is face down. Place an unused card on the bottom
to conceal the last card. Seal the pack in an opaque
envelope and the list in another envelope. Get two
stopwatches, prepare answer sheets as provided on the
website, and find a room for the sender.
The experiment. Choose someone to be
sender, give her a watch and the sealed pack, and
arrange the exact time at which she will turn over
the first card. She then goes to the appointed room,
opens the envelope, and places the pack face down
on the table. At the pre-arranged time she turns over
the first card and concentrates on it, turning over the
rest at 15-second intervals. The whole test will take 10
minutes. Meanwhile, you call out the numbers 1–40