ESP

Dr. Dean Radin (of the Institute of Noetic Sciences) posted on his blog a note about two recent speeches that he’s done. The first speech was on January 16th in the Google headquarters (Telepathic search engine, anyone ?).

The good thing about the speech is that the video is available on Youtube with the full speech (over 90 minutes), which is really great. The video is edited, showing the slides well and with good sound quality. The abstract of the speech is as follow:

Do telepathy, clairvoyance and other “psi” abilities exist? The majority of the general population believes that they do, and yet fewer than one percent of mainstream academic institutions have any faculty known for their interest in these frequently reported experiences. Why is a topic of enduring and widespread interest met with such resounding silence in academia? The answer is not due to a lack of scientific evidence, or even to a lack of scientific interest, but rather involves a taboo. I will discuss the nature of this taboo, some of the empirical evidence and critical responses, and speculate on the implications.

On January 19th, Dr. Radin talked in a conference entitled “Investigations of Consciousness and the Unseen World: Proof of an Afterlife?” where he talked about the possible implications of Psi on the possibility of afterlife.

Our Parapsychology forums member, WhiteTiger, will give free Tarot readings for forum member in the thread Free tarot readings in the forums.

Tiger is a retired engineer/machinist/inventor, in his mid fifties, passed the Mensa qualification test back when it took a minimum 150 to get in before they lowered the standards. He ended up years back on a quasi-shamanic path as a result of looking for answers to the weirdness that have always been present in his life.

Here’s the offer in Tiger’s words:

I answer direct, specific questions on most subjects. I prefer to have the question only, with absolutely no backstory or qualifications to it that could be “read into” for a mentalist cold reading. “Life readings” and the tired old “does my bf/gf really love me” questions are so open to simple psychological manipulations that they are useless for demonstration purposes. Same goes for the sneering skeptic questions about change in the pocket or color of my car… that isn’t tarot, that would be RV.

Ask your questions in the Tarot readings thread. Free registration to the forums is required in order to post.

On the same occasion I would ask you to check out our forums once again, we’ve got a little nice community of interesting people there. If you like philosophical and scientific discussions of psi phenomena and research, join the discussions in the Skeptiko forum. We also have sections on psi ability development, health and alternative medicine.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, sometimes called Madame Blavatsky (1831-1891), was one of the founders of The Theosophical Society, and was one of the most leading occult teachers of the 19th century. She brought the mystical knowledge of India into the western world and wrote several important occult books, most known of which is The Secret Doctrine, published in 1884.

I’ve found a good written article about her life at: http://blavatskyarchives.com/longseal.htm for those who are interested in the biography of this extraordinary woman.

I first saw the reference to the N’Kisi project – a research into the telepathic abilities of a Congo African Gray Parrot, named N’Kisi at our Skeptiko.com podcast forums where Alex Tsakiris, the podcast host, wrote about it as an example of a research done on animal communication. This appears to be an interesting study and it was actually published in the Journal of Scientific Explorations at Testing a Language-Using Parrot for Telepathy. Full text of the published article in PDF format, together with reviewers’ and editor’s comments, is available there.

The abstract of the article is as follows:

Aimee Morgana noticed that her language-using African Grey parrot, N’kisi, often seemed to respond to her thoughts and intentions in a seemingly telepathic manner. We set up a series of trials to test whether this apparent telepathic ability would be expressed in formal tests in which Aimee and the parrot were in different rooms, on different floors, under conditions in which the parrot could receive no sensory information from Aimee or from anyone else. During these trials, Aimee and the parrot were both videotaped continuously. At the beginning of each trial, Aimee opened a numbered sealed envelope containing a photograph, and then looked at it for two minutes. These photographs corresponded to a prespecified list of words in N’kisi’s vocabulary, and were selected and randomized in advance by a third party. We conducted a total of 147 two-minute trials. The recordings of N’kisi during these trials were transcribed blind by three independent transcribers. Their transcripts were generally in good agreement. Using a majority scoring method, in which at least two of the three transcribers were in agreement, N’kisi said one or more of the key words in 71 trials. He scored 23 hits: the key words he said corresponded to the target pictures. In a Randomized Permutation Analysis (RPA), there were as many or more hits than N’kisi actually scored in only 5 out of 20,000 random permutations, giving a p value of 5/20,000 or 0.00025. In a Bootstrap Resampling Analysis (BRA), only 4 out of 20,000 permutations equaled or exceeded N’kisi’s actual score (p = 0.0002). Both by the RPA and BRA, the mean number of hits expected by chance was 12, with a standard deviation of 3. N’kisi repeated key words more when they were hits than when they were misses. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that N’kisi was reacting telepathically to Aimee’s mental activity.

Of course, there’s some criticism of the study and the peer reviewers get mixed impressions when reviewing it. One of them states that there’s a methodological error, the other says he asked for more data, received it from the researchers and concludes that ”...concordance between N’kisi’s phrases and the card images Morgana viewed cannot be explained by chance and does not appear to be explainable by methodo logical error.”

About the involved in the study:

The researchers in this study were Rupert Sheldrake, a known biologists, who conducts many studies in the parapsychology fields, including the more recent Telephone telepathy studies and his more known study about the dogs that known when their owner returns home and experiments on The sense of being stared at.

Aimee Morgana works with animals and has been working with parrots since 1985, trying to establish better communication with animals.

N'Kisi

“N’kisi is a captive bred, hand raised Congo African Gray Parrot. He is 4-1/2 years old, and his species has a life span similar to humans. He has received teaching in the use of language for 4 years. He is now one of the world’s top “language-using” animals, with an apparent understanding and appropriate usage of over 700 words (at least 1200 now – Jacob).” – From Sheldrake’s page on the experiment

Since Alex published the reference to this study in the Skeptiko forums, there’s been a hot discussion about it between skeptics and supporters. Start looking from here.

If you’re interested in discussing the topics of psi research (parapsychology) and psychic abilities development, you’re invited to join our Parapsychology forum.

Another interesting article by Drew Hempel, who earlier published here The Secret of Psychic Music Healing and You Can’t Fake The Full-lotus! Testimony of a qigong practitioner in the context of parapsychology.

The Highest Technology of All Technologies: The Yan Xin Secret

By Drew Hempel, MA

anti-copyright (free distribution)

Yan Xin qigong is a simple, yet very powerful free energy practice that Yan Xin calls “the highest technology of all technologies.” I first was introduced to his qigong practice ten years ago by the Chinese community at the University of Minnesota, hosting a Canadian-Chinese Yan Xin presentation from Toronto. The practice worked amazingly well but I just didn’t understand why. Now after, of course, learning the “hard way,” I have figured out the secret and it’s just as effective as flipping a switch to produce free full-spectrum, healing energy.

Qigong master Yan Xin is a “national treasure” of the Chinese government, an official designation that puts him under their protection and supposed control. The Chinese government even produced a documentary called “Yan Xin Supermaster” that I was able to see with the Yan Xin Chinese community at the University of Minnesota. Qigong master Yan Xin was doing “qi-emitting” lectures that were 7 hours straight and were healing thousands of people at a time. One person healed was the now qigong master Chunyi Lin who even studied with Yan Xin’s teacher. Master Chunyi Lin now teaches his http://springforestqigong.com in Minnesota and he himself does amazing healing. I was able to take Master Chunyi Lin’s classes for several years, receiving his energy transmissions.

Dr. David A. Palmer’s new book: “Qigong Fever: Body, science and utopia in China” (Columbia University Press, 2007) gives further details about the efficacy of Yan Xin’s qigong. The Chinese military had qigong master Yan Xin actually put out a vast forest fire! Master Yan Xin also went to the U.S. White House eight times to give energy treatments to President Bush, Sr., which gives some explanation to Bush’s paratroop jump in his 80s! Master Yan Xin continues to do mind-blowing medical healing experiments in collaboration with western-trained scientists—studies published in peer-reviewed international neuroscience journals.

In 1999 there was a big crackdown on qigong in China against Falun Gong and several other practices that had huge movements, larger than the Communist party. At this same time Yan Xin’s chi-emitting lectures were stopped and his international community stopped selling Yan Xin’s meditation tapes, unless a lengthy training course was first completed. There is even claim now that the Chinese military has developed a secret post-apocalypse qigong weapon, which we can guess is probably based on their national treasure: Supermaster Yan Xin.

The Parapsychology forums member, Kim, wrote in the scientific debates forum an interesting post. He titled it "How important is proof?" but I called it "Which kind of a paranormal researcher are you?". Read below and post your answer and thought right into the article's thread on the forum. Below is the post, verbatim.

Overall there are two types of explorers in the world of paranormal investigation. There is nothing wrong with either POV in my opinion, but either you are one or the other:

Category 1.) wants to find proof, to establish beyond a shadow of a doubt that there really are psychic phenomonon.
Category 2.) wants to research the most extreme phenomonon out there, no matter what method they have to resort to, and not worry about whether they can explain or prove it. There are pitfalls to both sides to be sure.

The people who want to PROVE something, have many of the same problems as mainstream evangelists like Billy Graham. Billy Graham was a very intelectual theologian. He knew much more than he put forth in 99 percent of his sermons. Yet he constantly repeated the slavation message because it was most important. Occasionally he got a chance to speculate a bit, and teach those who were also advanced in his field, but despite his brilliance, and substantial abilities, he spent most of his time explaining the basics to non-believers, and novices. Like Rev. Graham, those provers, are always stuck with the basics. They repeat the same experiments, and listen to the same dull skeptics explain away their 'proof' over and over. These guys are ghost hunting with a camera, while most phenomonon don't photograph. All they want is a scrap of film they can blow up into an 8x10 glossy of some snarly ghost, so skeptics can insist they doctored it on photoshop.

The most problematic part of this plight, whether evangelist, or psychic investigator, is trying to prove a spiritual reality, with physical means, in a physical world, to people who are so caught up in the concrete physical, they can't even wrap their minds around a simple phenomonon.

The plus to this is credibility, for the movement and for themselves. Even if they don't find their proof, they are scientists. Some people still scoff of course, but they don't get accused of being insane very often. Fruther if they prefer they can keep what they are trying to prove and explain fairly simple, and they dont' have to draw extrapolated conclusions involving contradictions with various religious belief systems. Also by keeping at least one foot in the physical realm, they don't risk the delusions the other types are at risk for.

The other types have largely abandoned the idea of proving anything. It becomes irrelivant what the masses believe. The factors involved in their quests vary, so maybe I should subdivide them. They are either

A.) Obcessed with finding deep spiritual truth for themselves
B.) Seeking to help others, or even save the world with their abilities
C.) Curious, intelectual, spiritual, and bored enough to seek other worlds
D.) All of the above.

These people could care less if they can photograph a ghost, though they would give their eye teeth to see the picture, having no doubt it was real. They would type and categorize it, then find out who the creature was and who he worked for. Would their findings be credible? Not to anyone but themselves and others like them.

These people are the Tent Revivalists of the Psi movement. They heal, they cast out devils, and they tell the wildest most hell fire and brimstone stories you can imagine. They may have seen heaven, hell, and all the 32 plains of astral existance... but they can't prove it. Proving things takes time, and limits their exploration. They realize their stories lack credibility with most people, but those who know, know... right? They delight in finding other explorers to compare notes with. Like the healing preacher Earnest Angely, they are made fun of, but I'll tell you what. I went to one of his meetings once, and I saw hundreds of empty wheelchairs at the end of that. The man may seem crazy, and he might talk funny but his stuff works. Sometimes those crazy explorers of the shadowlands hit on something that works too. Still normal people listening to them, are hard pressed to understand, much less believe...

The plus side, involves a lot of freedom in practice, attitude, and of course the ability to keep a low profile if they choose. There are a lot of opportunities to go further... way further with extrapolation, and theory, than one could if they had to prove themselves at every turn...

But that leads us to a huge pitfall, and the deepest pit of all; becoming self deluded, confused and appearing to be an idiot even to your peers. There are also physical and emotional side effects to that kind of work, and it is a major commitment of time and sweat, for which you can't really take credit or even acknowledge to most of the people around you. The pitfalls of this approach, are numerous, and involve potential for delusions, and a serious risk to sanity. I mean actual loss of sanity is possible even probable, but being perceived as sane, goes out the window the minute they open their mouths outside their own group. Heck there are times just observing a quiet visionary, in public can make you wonder what is wrong with them, unless you see what they see.

Which am I? I am pretty much Category 2. D) which is all of the above crazy tent preaching investigator. Why? I figured out even as a child, that most people don't believe in stuff like this... except late at night, in a dimly lit room listening to the best darned experiences I can remember. Then I can scare the pants off even the most logical skeptics... and for a little while they believe. They sit on the edge of their chairs, and scream if the cat moves.

IF I wanted proof, I'd still be ghost busting my first case. I still wouldn't have incontestable proof, and I wouldn't know jack about what really causes these things, or how to deal with them. People either believe, or they don't want to, and life is too short to explain and argue over the same baby steps over and over, to the willfully ignorant. Sometimes people have good reason to be skeptical... not because it isn't true, but because they couldn't handle knowing. I'd rather deal with being called insane, than argue with someone who needs their doubts. I'd rather risk insanity... (well it's too late to do that anyway, it's gone)... than deny what I see, to myself. I'll deny it to others if necessary.

"In a world of only blind people, what is a man with 20-80 vision called? Delusional!" I'll be the first to admit that my sight and understanding is probably less than equal to 20-80 vision, when it comes to all that is really out there, but I've definitely seen a lot of stuff, and comprehended at least a tiny fraction of it.

Which kind of parinormal investigator are you?

A forum user posted a question asking about using remote viewing to find lost object (on forum). Apparently, he lost one his gameboy games inside the house and now can't find it. Do you know if Remote Viewing can be used to locate lost things?

This question comes in at a good time for me, too, since I seem to have lost my wrist watch and I'm not even sure it's at my home. I've never actually learned remote viewing so I don't know if it can be used for that but I've learned some dowsing and my mother-in-law, who also studied it, once found my wife's lost jewelry, in only 2 minutes, using an L-Shaped rod to answer the questions of its location. So, I guess something is possible. See more what I wrote about Dowsing.

Also, back in Oct' 2005, when I only started this blog I've already written about this subject, but mostly related to Silva Method, see: Remote viewing to find lost objects (blog)

OpenSourceScience released a press-release about their search for psychic dogs:

Researchers at OpenSourceScience.net have offered a $1,000 prize to dogs who successfully demonstrate they know when their owners are coming home. Many dog owners claim their pets anticipate their arrival by going to wait at a door, window, or driveway. Some claim their dogs do this even when they arrive home unexpectedly or at odd hours. While some researchers, including Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist, and former Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge University have investigated this phenomena, many scientists remain unconvinced it really occurs.

OpenSourceScience is a project started by Alex Tsakiris, host of the Skeptiko.com podcast, where he interviews leading scientists and their critics on topics of controversial science, like psi research, consciousness and its survival after death. Alex started the OpenSourceScience.net projects in order to create scientific experiments on collaborative ground between all kinds of researcher, skeptics and not. The first experiment is a replication of a famous research performed by Rupert Sheldrake, which deals with the subject of whether dogs know when their owners return home.

If you have a dog who, in your opinion, knows when you come home, you’re invited to take part in the experiment and you could earn a $1000 prize for a successful demonstration. For an example, look at Dogs That Know:de la Cuadra Dogs.

The researchers are encouraging dog owners who have noticed this anticipating behavior in their dogs to take part in the experiments and have set-up a special website address for participants: www.dogsthatknow.com. OpenSourceScience.net founder Alex Tsakiris explains: “This is an experiment that anyone can join in on and make a real contribution. We feel very confident this happens all the time. It’s a matter of finding dog owners who are willing to help demonstrate just how special these animal abilities are.”

For an interview I’ve done with Alex Tsakiris, where he explains more of the project read Interview with Alex Tsakiris.

I’m presenting today another article by Bryan. This time it’s about ESP during dreams and describes an interesting experiment being done in this field with the help of the “Greatful dead” band.

Revisiting a Dream ESP Experiment with “The Grateful Dead”

The band “The Grateful Dead” has become well-known throughout the decades for its classic rock sound and concerts at Winterland, with its status and recognition becoming even more elevated with the passing of band member Jerry Garcia. Probably less known about The Grateful Dead is that the band had once participated in a dream ESP experiment in the early 1970s.

If we look at the ESP experiences of people in everyday life, we might notice that a great deal of ESP information seems to come in the form of dreams, sometimes manifesting as detailed, realistic representation of distant events that appear as part of our dream images (Irwin, 1994, p. 19; Targ, Schlitz, & Irwin, 2000, pp. 223 – 224). In particular, precognitive dreams (dreams of the future) seem to be most common (Rhine, 1954). Early on, this prominence of ESP in dreams led parapsychologists to try and study ESP in the laboratory by having people try and dream about a distant event while being monitored in a sleep lab. The most extensive and well known series of dream ESP experiments to date was carried out by Montague Ullman, Stanley Krippner, and Charles Honorton at the Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY, from the mid-1960s to early 1970s (Ullman, Krippner, & Vaughan, 1973).

The basic procedure for these experiments, most of which had tested for telepathy (mind-to-mind communication), was as follows: As one person (the receiver) slept in one room, another person (the sender) in a separate room concentrated on a visual target (like an art print), and attempted to mentally “send” details about it to the receiver in the hopes that doing so would influence the images that the receiver would see in his or her dream. The receiver was awakened soon after and asked to describe the dream they were having. The description of the dream provided by the receiver was then compared to the target (along with three or four decoys) to see if they matched to a notable degree. If the receiver’s description seemed to match the target the closest (as opposed to the decoys), then the experiment was considered a success (a “hit”). Years after the Maimonides dream ESP experiments, psychologist Irvin Child (1985) of Yale University statistically analyzed the experimental series database, finding that on the whole the entire series of experiments was successful to a degree far beyond that expected by mere chance alone (odds of* more than 500,000 to 1 against chance!*).

Paranormal review reports that police in Portugal has confirmed that they are following up leads by psychic in their search for Madeleine McCann, who disappeared in the country four weeks ago.

Three British psychics, all of who claim previous successes in such cases, flew to Portugal in order to be closer to the place of the event. This, in their opinion, will help them to “sense” better information. The three psychic mediums are: Amanda Hart, Ben Murphy and Diane Lazarus.

The article then cites a long report from Amanda Hart, where she describes her vision if Madeleine, her abductors and whereabouts, including such claims that her hair was cut like a boy, that there’s a woman and two men involved in the kidnapping and that she gets two locations, one Mombassa and other Amsterdam. She furthermore describes the countryside where the child is held.

I have recently wrote about Sharon Neill, a psychic medium, also from the UK, who helps the police in lost people cases. It will be interesting to see how this story will progress from here and if she will be close to the truth or be like Sylvia Browne in her famous false prediction in the Shawn Hornbeck case.

Yet another article by Brian regarding a study of ESP and OBE.

On the Latest Study of ESP & OBEs

The most recent study that examines the possibility of OBE in relation to ESP performance was reported by two Italian researchers, Guido Del Prete _and _Patrizio Tressoldi (2005), in the latest issue of the Journal of Parapsychology. Their study, inspired in part by the successful ESP/OBE study by Palmer and Lieberman (1975) described in my review post, in particular focused on the possibility of enhancing ESP performance through an altered state of consciousness, specifically the hypnagogic state (the state between wakefulness and sleep). Simon Sherwood (2002) of the University College Northampton has done extensive research over the past few years on the possible relation between hypnogogic states and the experience of ostensibly anomalous phenomena (to include hallucinations of a sense of presence related to apparitions, sensations of body paralysis or weightlessness that may given the impression of OBE, and the experience of ESP-like dream imagery), finding that, although many natural hypnagogic experiences may be misinterpreted as being anomalous, some may also be influenced by ESP and other psi processes. The study by Del Prete and Tressoldi explores that possibility further in a lab setting by attempting to artificially induce a hypnagogic-like state in their study participants through hypnosis (this hypnagogic-like state was characterized by deep muscle relaxation, slow and calm breaths, reports of seeing spontaneous images, slow eye movement, and a sensation of hand paralysis). The OBE aspect comes in through Del Prete and Tressoldi giving the participants suggestions emphasizing the experience of OBE while they are in a hypnotic state (e.g, they gave the participant indirect suggestions on the experience of flying away from the body, and words of encouragement to believe that OBE was possible and to want an OBE to happen during the test).

Marcel Cairo, host of AfterlifeFM podcast, is a psychic medium. Today, in response to the James Randi’s Milion Dollar Challenge, he proposes his own challenge, dubbed The intuitive to inquirer (i2i) Challenge.

Challenge premise: An intuitive (medium) and an Inquirer (control) travel to a public space in a randomly chosen city and each will approach 40 randomly chosen people (the subject), and each will conduct a spontaneous reading for a randomly chosen set of subjects.

The objective of the experiment is to see if under the same test conditions, the intuitive (medium), can score higher across the 40 random readings than the inquirer (control) can.

Full text of the challenge can be read on the Official Skeptiko Podcast’s forum on this site.

Marcel also tells why he doesn’t support JREF’s Milliom Dollar Challenge. For more critique on the JREF’s challenge by other people, read About the James Randi Million dollar challenge.

I hope you find the challenge interesting and some of you will be willing to participate.