PSYCHIC PROCESS, ENERGY TRANSFER, AND THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE NIGHT. ROBERT G. JAHN '51

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Approved For Release 2000/08/07 CIA-RDP96-00787R000500070001-1
A PAW pecial Report
WOOFT HF most celebrated joys of the academic lifestyle are
the freedom to pursue any scholarly problem, no matter how
irrelevant or far out it may seem at the time, and the impetus
to do so provided by the perceptive, persistent, sometimes irreverent
questions of the young students we are privileged to teach. Never in
my career have these two benefits been more beautifully illustrated
than in the case of the extraordinary topic of this report. Indeed, it is
as much the flavor of light-hearted exploration of a very exotic field,
hand-in-hand with an intelligent and dedicated undergraduate, as the
substance of the field itself that I would like to share with you.
Late in the spring of 1977, Carol Kay Curry '79, an electrical en-
gineering and computer science major from Pasco, Washington,
came to me to ask whether she might undertake some inde-
pendent work in psychic phenomena that would build upon her
background and skills in instrumentation and data processing. Al-
though I was well aware of the many times I have proudly spoken or
written about the breadth and flexibility of the Princeton engineering
curriculum, and the care with which we hand-tailor each undergrad-
uate program to suit individual interests, the involvement of one of
our students in psychic research seemed to me to strain even those
generous guidelines.
In an attempt to table the issue, I asked, somewhat rhetorically,
which faculty member could conceivably supervise this work, and
Carol, with her characteristic bluntness, responded that, obviously,
I would. With the dilemma thus compounded, but no retreat path
left, I provisionally agreed, pending the results of a full summer of
On a rainy Monday night last April, more than 200 members of the
Princeton community jammed into the Wilson School Auditorium to
hear Dean of the Engineering School Robert G. Jahn '51 --- nor-
mally noted for his work on advanced space propulsion systems -
lecture on the unlikely subject of psychic research. More than an
hour after the conclusion of his talk, many of them were still there,
asking questions and offering comments on various aspects of the
subject. Since then, he has been besieged with countless requests for
transcripts of his remarks curd for personal interviews by students,
background research in the field. This she undertook with consider-
able zest, digesting and reporting an enormous amount of literature
in the process. Together and separately We visited numerous labora-
tories around the country, attended several professional meetings,
had discussions with various people here and elsewhere, and started
a few experiments of our own. As the following academic year be-
gan, we agreed the project was worth pursuing.
That winter I happened to be on leave at Stanford, where more
interest is shown in this field than at most universities. Carol was
able to join me there for a few weeks, and together we talked with
faculty and staff, and worked with a small research group at
the nearby SRI International laboratory. A hastily convened,.
informal seminar just prior to our leaving the Stanford campus
elicited unexpected interest and audience participation, and pro-
vided many more valuable contacts. Our more formal Famum Lec-
ture at Princeton in April 1978 likewise exposed an unanticipated
interest in this community and led to the request for this report.
Thus, the impressions we now hold of the psychic world are
mainly distilled from the past year and a half of study and light in-
volvement with the subject, and we hope your reaction to our pre-
liminary findings will be weighted accordingly. In particular, Carol
and I wish to emphasize that we claim no authority in this field and
take no position of advocacy. Indeed, we intend no judgment of
any sort. Rather, we shall simply set before you some of the things
we have seen and done, some of the people we have met, some
of the thoughts we have shared, and let you assess them as you will.
Even this is a difficult task, for there are a great many threads that
need to be woven together. We would like to begin by describing the
remote viewing "credibility exercises" we undertook just to con-
vince ourselves that there is some scholarly substance to the field.
Then we will turn to our early experiments in the domain of psycho-
kinesis, which has become our main interest. Finally, we will out-
line some of the analytical models that have been proposed for inter-
preting psychic phenomena, and discuss possible applications and
implications of psychic process. Each of these threads is sufficiently
strange to common experience that it must be handled rather care-
faculty, of~e ~jr yrF j~qt c~' (the uh.,, . , ' Q lly bizarre. To
editors' stN c"0ro , ' II agrTefd'tc7 p pa In """e
"P
c-'sa rep/n'rl "'inCI"i ,rn? t Thal p~ Re~ ire y persuasive; only in the inter-
hope that PAw's readers aright share some of the firm we have weaving does a pattern seem to emerge, and it is that pattern which
had in this strange academic adventure." Er). we hope to showou.
 A5WVi%W*9&;sThvo'GT@d
ARLY IN OUR STUDY, we had to make a basic choice of strat-
egy: Should our work revolve around the talents of gifted
psychics - people we would import specifically to generate
tions himself at a randomly selected "target" location aia 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 (1
will apologize only once for the quality of the art work): l 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 wasa road with a car or 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 the tower, the cars, birds, trees, and the building behind me.
Curiously, there is a right-left inversion in the composition of the
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 staff? For a number of reasons we chose the latter route.
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 important as 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-
The History of Psychic Research
IN A SENSE, the study of psychic phenomena is one of the oldest
of human endeavors.'-6 As far back as can be traced, mortal man
has pondered the supernatural in one form or another. Cave
drawings at Lascaux and Altamira, circa 20,000 B.C., reflect
this preoccupation, and the religious rites of early societies were
heavily loaded with psychic formalisms. The golden civilizations
of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans dealt extensively in psy-
chic process: the Delphic Oracle was politically important from
the earliest Hellenic times to the age of Alexander the Great, and
was consulted on problems as diverse as the proper measures to
stop a plague, the constitutions of Greek city-states, and the best
locations for new colonies. Even Aristotle, one of the most em-
pirical of the classical philosophers, studied the causal links in
prophetic dreams.
The Bible, like most other basic theological texts, treats psy-
chic process as a central ingredient, in a tone so matter-of-fact
that one is inclined to believe that people in those times accepted
such events rather routinely. Incidentally, the Bible is an excel-
lent catalog of psychic phenomena; virtually every category that
is identified today is illustrated there in one form or another.
Medieval writing abounds with supernatural allusion, and
even in the renaissance period it is still difficult to separate psy-
chic interest from religious dogma, although it was then trans-
cribed into more organized forms in art and literature. In this
country, colonial hysteria over witchcraft probably is indicative,
of more than simple religious paranoia, and a variety of more
sanitary parlor exercises seem to have persisted throughout
American history. Even Mary Todd Lincoln was in the habit of
having seances in the White House during the 1860s.
Despite these millennia of human concern with the para-
normal, the scholarly search for an understanding of psychic
phenomena began only a century ago, with the establishment in
London, in 1882, of the Society for Psychical Research, in
whose proceedings appeared the first formal publications of con-
trolled experiments in telepathy and clairvovance.7-10 Three
years later the counterpart organization in this country, the
American Society for Psychical Research, was founded in Bos- ess
tong yodir eRe16geon2QQGlUlG7iricZ A- a ~
ing William James. Over the period 1912-18, Thomas W. Stan-
ford, brother of the founder of Stanford University, gave and be-
queathed well over $500,000 specifically to endow the study of
psychic research," and to this day Stanford has a "Psychic Re-
search Fellow." Modest research programs were also undertaken
at Harvard and a few European universities at about this
time 12'"
In 1930, Professor William McDougall came from Oxford,
via Harvard, to chair the psychology department at Duke Univer-
sity and there, along with two postdoctoral students, J. B. Rhine
and Louisa Rhine, made Duke the center of academic research
into psychic phenomena. In 1937 they began publication of the
Journal of Parapsychology, which remains a leading journal in
the field today. A professional organization calling itself the
Parapsychological Association was formed in 1957, and was
subsequently recognized by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. There are now seven English-
language, professional journals in the field," many magazines
and newsletters, and an increasing number of scholarly books
published each year.
At Princeton, the history of psychic research is rather thin, but
not entirely void. In the 1930s, Upton Sinclair; whose wife ap-
pears to have been a gifted psychic, wrote on her abilities in
clairvoyance and telepathy, including a rather famous book
called Mental Radio,'6 and engaged in some dialogues with Al-
bert Einstein on the credibility of psychic process. In 1937 our re-
nowned Professor of Statistics Samuel Wilks found himself in-
volved in a controversy over the validity of the statistical proce-
dures of early psychic researchers, and published his own rec-
ommendations for methods that could be applied to telepathy ex-
periments." In the 1950s, Hadley Cantril, then chairman of the
Psychology Department, displayed some interest in parapsy-
chology, especially in poltergeist phenomena, but apparently did
not publish anything of substance in the field. At the present
time, I am aware of some eight to ten faculty members in as
many disciplines who have a substantial interest in psychic proc-
r 4~t 10VA0 l re1sed a desire R.G.J.
 IA RDP960,87Rid'd63'001-1
scene; most 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 indicating that at the beginning of the period she
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
foreground 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 2
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 then
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, ranging 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-
December 4, 1978 ? S-3
 sentatirat of the yard surrounding the house in which I was seated. real-time. That is, the percipient can acquire his information about
On a pother occasion our random target-selection pro esec a s}~ *04 ~jv~j a outbound experi-
me to Appm CQdhEQr'nRe t9d_ i4~hror~ WA-0bV AC'14C MiY ~tt~s',`t7tE ar et.zs
-day was a very damp, cold, dark, unpleasant place. Carol, confined in Attempts are currently being made to refine remote viewing tech-
an office at SRI, again sketched an outdoor scene: the front of the
chapel, complete with its arches, the correct.number and disposition
of steps leading up to it, and the identification of the patio as having
gray and pink stones, precisely three feet square. This "near-miss"
effect also appeared when we reversed roles: on our next attempt,
Carol, as outbound experimenter, was directed by the same random
protocol to a local "Holiday Inn" and there stood inside at the
swimming pool near a pleasant flower garden. Back at the SRI labo-
ratory, I sketched an accurate simulation of the entrance of the inn,
complete with its large eucalyptus trees, a circular turn-around for
the cars, the embankment of the highway, and other details.
To compound the mystery of remote. viewing, we have further
convinced ourselves that it is not necessary to perform the process in
niques to permit transmission of information in terms of binary
choices: regardless of the details of the scene, can the percipient
identify, for example, whether it is dark or light, wet or dry, cold or
hot, inside or outside, basically man-made or natural, etc.?'" If
questions could be found which can be answered routinely with rea-
sonable accuracy, it would be possible to transfer quite a bit of quan-
titative information this way.
We encourage you to try this remote viewing experiment for
yourself: you may be surprised by what you can achieve. It seems to
require little more than an open mind and a devil-may-care attitude
to succeed, at least to a degree. For us it has been not so much a
main interest as a credibility exercise and fascinating diversion, but
it has encouraged us to try something considerably more ambitious.
The Geometry and Geography of Psychic Research
IN A FIELD as poorly comprehended and controversial as this
one, it is rather difficult to construct any tidy organizational
chart, but in the table below we have tried one possible outline
using the prevailing nomenclature. The two dominant subdivi-
sions of psychic phenomena (psi [WI) are extrasensory per-
ception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK). Extrasensory. perception
refers generally to the acquisition of information from sources
blocked from ordinary perception. Under this category are the
subdivisions of telepathy, which refers to detection of another
person's thoughts; clairvoyance, 'which refers to contemporary
perception of physical objects or events; precognition and re-
trocognition, which refer to perception of future events and
events in the past not accessible by normal recollection; and ani-
mal ESP, which encompasses a variety of seemingly inexplica-
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-
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
bilocation.
Categories of Psychic Phenomena
THE LIST below, by no means complete, shows locations at
which psychic research is being done in the western world, in-
cluding universities where one or more members of the faculty
are, or recently have been, involved in the field to some degree;
research institutes, some of which are solely concerned with psy-
chic experimentation, and others of which are components of
much larger enterprises; and. two U.S. industrial corporations
which have authorized publication in this field.re''a
We have made little attempt to survey foreign work, although
there is significant research in England, France, Germany, the
Netherlands, Scandinavia, and a major effort in the Soviet Union
and other eastern bloc countries.20-24 Nor have we made any ef-
fort to cover Far-Eastern psychic activities, such as the tradi-
tional mysticisms of India and the Orient.
Psychic Research in the Western World
1. Colleges and Universities
Chicago
Colorado
Columbia
CUNY
Drexel
Duke
Harvard
John F. Kennedy
Kent State
Mundelein
New School for
Social Reseach
Pittsburgh
St. John's
St. Joseph's
U.C./Berkeley
U.C./Los Angeles
U.C./Santa Barbara
Virginia
Wisconsin
Yale
Foreign
Cambridge
Edinburgh
London
Oxford
McGill
Paris
Freiburg
Tel Aviv
Amsterdam
Utrecht
Lund
1. Extrasensory Perception (ESP) U.C./Davis
A. Telepathy
B. Clairvoyance
C. PrecognitioNRetrocognition
D. Animal ESP
11. Psychokinesis (PK)
A. Physical Systems
1. deliberate
2. spontaneous
B. Biological Systems
1. psychic healing
2. plant PK
III. Survival
A. Reincarnation
B. Apparitions
11. Research Institutes and Centers
American Society for Psychical Research, New York
Ballistic Research Laboratories, Aberdeen, Maryland
Center for Parapsychological Research, 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
111. Corporations
I Q 'rOO01-1
C. Medwmship Airesearch Corrigan
ADD rov" th a e 2O 108/07: C IA-R ?OQ
 Psy
Release 2000/08/07 CIA-RCS
T THIS POINT Carol made a second suggestion - one with
which 1 disagreed at the time - namely, that for our own
studies we should concentrate on psychokinesis. I felt that
the 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 her, I was wrong.
Why psychokinesis? Well, if the effects could be produced, as
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 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-
chological or biological phenomena. Also, in this area our heritage of
diagnostic and experimental equipment, data processing techniques,
and analytical methods should serve us well. More specifically, the
PK experiments, and the models we use to represent them, frequently
involve the confluence of several basic sciences, and we are accus.
tomed to that situation in more conventional engineering tasks.
As a further advantage, there has been much less controlled work in
psychokinesis than in many other areas of psychic research, and
therefore the experiments can be relatively simple at this point. In
fact, those we have tried have all been assembled with off-the-shelf
equipment available in our engineering laboratories. Finally, there is
the intriguing possibility that PK may have some relevance to the
general understanding of energy conversion, a topic of prime con-
temporary engineering concern.
As mentioned in the box on "Geometry" (page 4), it is helpful to
divide the field of psychokinesis according to the magnitude of en-
ergy transferred. For example, there are the so-called macroscopic
PK effects, such as the spoon-bending exercises of Uri Geller, 27.28
the salt-shaker levitations of the Russian woman, Kalagina,21 and
the self- levitations of the Frenchman, Girard 29 These have been
very highly publicized, but to the best of our knowledge have
evaded well-controlled, systematic experimentation.
Then there are PK experiments which involve much smaller
amounts of energy transfer, where the effects are made evident by an
inherently high gain in the experimental design itself. For example,
magnetometers normally used for the detection of weak magnetic
fields are very sensitive to slight displacement of their spools;27 cer-
tain types of torsional pendula can transcribe infinitesimal forces
into measurable deflection of a light beam3? electronic strain gauges
routinely used for measuring propagation of elastic and plastic
waves in solids can be used to detect very small disturbances of solid
objects28 Most of the experiments we have tried fall in this class and
are described below in a bit more detail.
Next, there is the so-called microscopic PK domain, where one is
attempting to intervene at. the atomic or nuclear scale of a physical
system: to influence a radioactive decay process, for example, or the
emission of an optical photon, or the atomic collision processes in a
gas discharge.31 These are the sorts of processes involved in most of
the random generator devices, one version of which Carol designed
and built for her independent work, as also described below.
Poltergeist Phenomena
Finally, there are the very rare and spectacular poltergeist effects,
more technically termed "recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis
(RSPK)." For years these phenomena were naively attributed to
manifestations of the spirit world, or return of the dead to "haunted"
houses, and inspired countless horror movies and pulp-magazine ar-
ticles. Recently, some order has been brought to this bizarre busi-
ness by systematic surveys of documented poltergeist cases by J. G.
Pratt,a2 W. G. Roll 3a. 34 and others.-15
Dean Jahn and Carol Curry '79 with dual-therrnistor ekporimenf
of them suffered some debilitating ailment, usually of an emotional/
neurological variety, most commonly epilepsy, although other dis-
eases were also found. Often a precipitating event could be iden-
tified which seemed to initiate the activity. The general pattern in-
volved a period of relatively mild precursor events, a sequence of
major disturbances, and a period of "after shocks," extending as
much as several weeks after the main events.
A typical case, reported at the 1977 annual meeting of the Para-
psychological Association, occurred in the town of Pearisburg, Vir-
ginia, in December 1976. The precipitating individual was a nine-
year-old foster boy who had been made a ward of the court because
of his parents' alcoholism problems, and was living with a widow.
Two weeks of precursors were experienced, such as flowerpots fall-
ing off shelves at random intervals. During the major sequence
(when the boy was in bed) pieces of fruit tumbled off a window
ledge; the Christmas tree in the living room fell over; several of the
kitchen cabinets turned onto the floor; an old Singer sewing machine
was completely inverted; a rocking chair tumbled over backwards;
and a carton of soda bottles was transported several feet.
The widow called in succession her neighbor, her son who lived
several miles away, and the local police - who in turn contacted a
team of researchers from the University of Virginia Medical School
who were on call for such poltergeist events. (Their report formed
the basis of the paper presented at.the meeting.)32 To conclude the
story briefly, the widow was sufficiently distraught that she eventu-
ally left the house. She returned a week later with the boy to try to
collect some belongings, and shortly after re-entering the house,
similar activity began again. They quickly returned to her son's
house, and there, on Christmas Eve, experienced another set of dis-
turbances. With that, the boy was placed in another foster home,
and no further record has been presented.
The point of including all of this is simply to note that while most
psychokinetic investigations are straining for very small amounts of
energy transfer--the disturbance of a photon, of an atomic nucleus,
at best of a very sensitive magnetometer - here we find energy
transfer of a very large magnitude. To invert the sewing machine,
for example, would have required much greater physical strength
than this boy could have exerted deliberately. Sooner or later, this
must be dealt with in whatever models are proposed for psycho-
kinesis.
Obviously, one would like to have a captive poltergeist agent- a
person capable of precipitating this sort of activity on demand - but
that is not likely to happen. Such agents seem unaware that they are
involved in the process; to them the event is more like an epileptic
In one of these surveys, for example, 116 cases of poltergeist ac- seizure than anything they can consciously control. Further, the med-
tivity, rAp cdtlre0,t1Jb.ger20001M4i3/07heilA- 1~ 1 ~ ~Ie PK research in
92 were found to be associated with particular individuals living in these cases, given the degree of emotional distress normally prevail-
the house, the mean age of whom was only 15 years. The majority ing.
 ~,) lF~C~tytiit7Y' :/~1-it~ltbdlfeNdr~~~G1Ms~M~td 7s emevis it with the
tempts at PK experiments to the microscopic and low-level
.. macroscopic domains, For example, as part of her junior in-
dependent project, Carol worked on the design, construction, and
operation of a random-event generator. She has had a certain amount
of experience with equipment of this sort; in fact, she has been able to
influence similar devices at SRI, at Schmidt's laboratory in San An-
tonio,31 and at Morris's laboratory at the University of California,
Santa Barbara ae
Figure 5
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 of one such experiment is shown in Figure 5.
The device involved here is based upon a radioactive
decay process, and essentially makes random binary
choices -- i.e.; flips a coin - very rapidly. Actually, it
makes 100 "flips" in a split second, and then displays
how many of these turn out "heads." If the device were
governed purely by chance, the cumulative total of many
hundreds 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
random source, with the logic circuitry, or with the display, or-is this
even a meaningful question? At present, we have only some baseline
data and a few isolated PK results. For her senior project, Carol is
refining the equipment using micro-processor technology, whereby
data may be much more rapidly accumulated and processed.
We have also set up a few experiments of the high-gain variety,
each characterized by a simple physical system which has an inher-
ently large response to a very small disturbance. Such systems can
readily be conceived and implemented in a variety of domains.
mechanical, thermodynamic, fluid dynamic, electrical, optical,
chemical, nuclear, etc. For our first attempt, we chose to replicate an
experiment using thermistors that was performed by Gertrude
Schmeidler and the psychic Ingo Swann at the City University of
New York a few years ago 38 Two of these very sensitive ther-
mometric devices - each in its own vacuum bottle and surrounding
insulation -.aretied into a precisely balanced electrical bridge, and
we observe the differential output. In other words, the two thermic-
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 this 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. Here our 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.
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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-
terminations, and PK efforts to increase the separation of the plates-
Another experiment takes advantage of a very high precision in- maximum excursion to the right, and returns. After this calibration,
terferometer, a so-called "Fabry-Perot" device, which provides we begin the PK effort and are rewarded by a transition from central
very sharp and attractive circular optical fringes. Figure 8 shows a dark to almost full bright - something like four-tenths of a fringe
schematic of this instrument (photographed in Figure 9), the central change, which corresponds to some 10-5 cm displacement of the
element of which is a pair of circular glass plates with highly reflec- plates.
tive coatings on the two inner-facing surfaces. Light from the source We again tune the instrument, run another fringe calibration, and
on the left reflects between these mirrors several times and emerges then leave the device undisturbed to get a second baseline. Another
in a state of interference with itself, producing a set of circular opti- retune and calibration are followed by a second PK effort, this yield
cal fringes on the screen. A small aperture in the middle of the ing slightly less displacement than the first, and a final tuning, cali-
screen permits the intensity of the central fringe to be detected by the bration, and baseline check. Very similar sequences of responses,
photomultiplier, whose signal is displayed on a chart recorder. with the PK segments contrasting sharply with the baselines, have
From a PK standpoint, the sensitive element of this device should been obtained on several occasions, but by, no means have we been
presumably be the optical plates. If they are separated slightly, the successful on all such attempts.
fringes propagate radially outward, and the central fringe changes Beyond the incomplete reproducibility of this experiment, it also
from dark to light to dark in succession. Displacement of the plates suffers from some possible ambiguity in the details of the interaction
of less than one millionth of a centimeter can be readily detected as a - e.g., one might conceivably claim that the influence is not on the
change in brightness or position of a given fringe. We normally set a plates, but on the index of refraction of the air between the plates, or
black central fringe, as shown in Figure 10, and attempt to force the even on the wavelength of the light source. It is our hope eventually
plates apart to produce a bright fringe in the center, as shown in Fig- to implement independent determinations of the plate separation and
ure 11. When that happens, the photomultiplier shows a correspond- light frequency to resolve such questions.
ing increase in output from its minimum to its maximum signal. One other. experiment, which has just been put into a form where
Figure 12 is a representation of one of our photomultiplier re- we trust the baseline operation, involves the spontaneous decay of a
cords. Time increases upward on the chart, and the initial segment phosphorescent surface. Luminous phosphors, similar to those on
of the trace shows the baseline black central fringe. Using remote wristwatch dials and television tubes, have a variety of decay times.
colitroJdll R?4 a le @n20061 107cenVA-l'~ 1 ' O O ~r}'~es~ some for seconds
fringe progresses through successive dark and bright it uminations, or tractions o secon s, epee ing on the particular substance. The
and the recorder swings correspondingly from the left baseline to its . radiation of the phosphor used in our experiment emerges from a
Figure 8
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on command.
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
forbidden transition of an atomic electronic configuration from a
metastable triplet to a singlet state 39 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 electrical circuits, microwave
resonators, transition of a fluid dynamic jet from laminar to turbu-
lent flow, chemical reactions of very precise inception times, atomic
.'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-
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 seem 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 imperfect 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, the 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 fer attainable in this mode. The low-frequency range is reflective of
and data-handling techniques, the second recent develop- certain biological frequencies -- e.g., electrical potentials across the
ment which holds some hope of leading psychic research out human heart, and many of the brain potentials, which could provide
of the dark ages is the growing interest of a number of theoretical the mechanisms for launching and receiving these waves in the
and applied physicists in formulating models of the processes. We human physiology. In principle, this model should be experimen-
would need an entire article to represent any one of these models . tally testable, but in practice that is difficult because at these extraor-
adequately, and the cursory listing that follows can do little more dinarily large wavelengths such effects as decay of the signal with
than indicate their existence, and the breadth of the various ap- propagation distance, diffraction and interference patterns, or at-
proaches. tenuation in solid and liquid materials require almost global dimen-
One of the earliest physical. models to be proposed invokes very- sions before becoming detectable. Identification of a speed of prop-
low-frequency electromagnetic waves, of the order of 10 hertz 1 10 agation of psychic information consistent with electromagnetic
cycled{ r'Qkkgds F&aRaLe "ic2 &/?717 I #uA-R~R9&eOO R? 7 04 1brrt no experiments
approach, classical electricity and magnetism and information have yet established any definite velocity of propagation for psychic
theories are combined to compute the energy and information trans- effects.
 models have been ro t t' of cause and effect in the physical
ar wave p to whereji~i~vPhaPtaco . edr Eo n9601easep QO , (Wdi cdwtJA-~~lP deterministic rt ~OO5~Ot1'~QQ~At i mechanics deals
munication 42 For example, infrasonic waves (sound waves of the with "probability densities" and "expectation values," which are in
same low frequencies) may carry information through the atmos- turn expressed in terms of wave functions or matrices rather than
phere, or signals may be modulated onto the static electric fields in individual explicit quantities. One of the problems with-which quan-
the earth, the piezo-static fields arising from geoseismic activity, or tum mechanics has labored for years is that of experimental observa-
the cloud-to-earth electric fields like those that develop in lightning Lion. It turns out not to be possible to observe any physical quantity
storms. Similarly, magnetic anomalies of the earth may provide a or process without disturbing it in some way; the system inevitably
base for such communication, a process studied in the context of the reacts 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 thermodynamics have ble measurement is made upon it.) This in turn leads to certain
been attempted, with particular attention to the property called "en- paradoxes, as epitomized in various famous examples, such as that
tropy."30 In essense, entropy is an index of the information content of "Schradinger's Cat," or "Wigner's Friend," or the "Einstein-
or, equivalently, of the degree of order of a physical system. For Poldosky-Rosen Paradox." (The Wigner referred to is. Princeton's
example, a large box containing many black marbles, all of which Nobel Laureate and Professor of Physics Emeritus Eugene
to the right of its center, is a system of relatively low entropy: the
arrangement of marbles is h ghly.orilered, and one may with cer-
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. 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 restricted to such me-
"Every phenomenon is
chanical situations. The unfortunate fate of Humpty Dumpty is an
;zk #~ unexpected and most
example of a drastic entropy rise of quite a different system. His de- - ~ a unlikely until it has
mise from a highly organized whole egg to one that was completely - "` been discovered-
scrambled was also highly irreversible. In living systems, the process and some olthem
of death and subsequent decay could be represented as a similarly remain unreasonable
for a tang time
irreversible process of entropy increase.
aftertheyhave
This natural tendency of complex systems towards states of disor-
c ez'. w been discovered:"
der, which is formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is
Eugene P. Wigner,
theoretically troublesome and esthetically unappealing in that it A~ ~, , , r $ Symmetries and
lacks a specifiable inverse process. That is, no mechanism for spon- Reflections(1967
tified. Yet many manifestations of psychokinesis involve just such After one concedes that the person conducting an experiment
entropy reduction - a random generator which is caused to display exerts an unavoidable influence on it, and in this sense becomes an
an excess of high numbers, a torsional pendulum that changes from integral part of it, the step to allowing a person to interfere in a de-
jiggling motion to a periodic oscillation, or the establishment of a liberate way with a physical system is not quite so unpalatable. A
temperature differential between two previously isothermal thermis- number of attempts have been made to represent psychokinesis in
tors _ all are proceeding toward more highly ordered states. Many this way. Some have invoked previously neglected "hidden vari-
of the Biblical miracles display similar characteristics: the parting of ables" in the quantum theory to specify the human component.
the Red Sea, the remote healing of the Centurion's servant, the raising Others have made analogy of the synaptic transitions in the brain to
of the dead, and, indeed, the creation of the universe itself are impres- quantum mechanical "tunnelling" processes, such as the escape of
sive examples of "spontaneous" entropy reduction. Question: what beta particles from radioactive nuclei.40 All of this clearly involves a
is the influence that drives such processes? Is it lurking somewhere in . daring extension of mathematical physics to cover human charac-
our established thermodynamic formalisms, or can an appropriate teristics.
new ingredient be assimilated by them? In still another approach, it is claimed that psychic process can
In a more mathematical vein, the general aspects of symmetry of largely be assigned to inadequate comprehension of random physi-
our established physical theories are being re-examined in a search cal processes.51 The central point here is that a truly random process
for previously rejected information 44.43 We have been in the habit is unattainable; all sources and all receivers in nature, because they
of taking only one class of solutions out of the differential equations are finite in dimension and finite in time, must show some departure
of physics. The classical wave equation, for instance, yields both a from the truly random. That is, if enough correlations are examined,
retarded wave and an advanced wave solution, and we normally dis- biases will prevail in those sources and receivers. The proposition,
card the advanced wave because "it does not conform to experi- then, is that so-called paranormal communication is simply the res-
ence." This may be short-sighted; perhaps, for example, we could onant tuning of those very slightly biased sources and receivers. Left
represent precognition in terms of advanced waves. unexplained is the specific mechanism of the resonance, thus defer-
There are also several "hyperspace" theories which contend that ring the propagation problem to some other model.
our usual presumption of using only four coordinates to describe na- Less analytical models propose empirical postulates for psychic
Lure, three spatial and one temporal, limits our deductive capacity 46 functioning. For example, there is the proposition of "conformance
If we start all over again with five or six or seven, we may still ex- behavior," which assigns to living systems the ability to influence
tract the information needed for our traditional four-dimensional the physical world to their own advantage'- Some experiments have
world, while in addition representing phenomena that would be re- addressed this concept, employing human subjects, monkeys, gold-
garded as paranormal on the basis of a strictly four-dimensional fish, cockroaches, and even seeds 53 Again, the details of the influ-
analysis. ence are not specified.
So e of the 7 t ''rifer m attem t' rc &A- a e ~t~ v v t het n neurophysiological
cr first because we
nun> PROW ~thQ o ~ r, grfa~4ht'l~Pi4hiesi' R~Frp ~ t c51~tf+l`1krl IfUO
-fti Q% the first class of scientific theory to depart significantly from strictly are not very well qualified to assess them, and second because we
 have not seen any that help much with the physical side of the prob. It should also be emphasized that the absence of good neuro-
PDPl9C ~1~9 hiid~ process does not
lelr-. p lU(-~iPID1 t(v~* th2 (mod:l*A- '(~ 8
brain and right-brain perception capabilities. e eft_br_ain deals in any sense imply that t is com nent~ t e prdblem is unimpor-
with the more analytic affairs of life; it is the part that deduces, in- tans. On the contrary, it underscores the difficulty of the entire mod-
f
i
"
terprets, counts, and reasons. The right brain, on the other hand,
handles the more esthetic perceptions and sensations. Interestingly
enough, those people who seem most adept at performing psychic
feats tend to be right-brained; they are highly aesthetic and im-
pressionistic in their thinking and articulation. The people needed to
make sense out of it, however, are the analytical types who have the
more highly developed left brain. Unfortunately, there is some evi-
dence that each of these talents can interfere with the other. Those
who are predominantly analytic seem less adept at psychic demon-
stration. For example, Targ and Puthoff have reported that people
who have photographic memories are totally incapable of doing
their remote-viewing experiments 27
aim and Implications
'TrF RESEARCH like that outlined above is eventually successful in
advancing our understanding of psychic phenomena from simply
bemused observation to some capability for more regular and
controlled practice, then a wide range of applications can be seri-
ously considered, involving an equally wide range of personal and
social impact. For example, one can readily extrapolate from the
present abilities of gifted psychics who can perceive remote scenes
with remarkable precision, identify equipment and documents in
sealed rooms, describe geographical features of a location given
merely its map coordinates, and even now are called upon by police
and rescue units to locate lost persons or objects. The extent and ef-
fectiveness of such applications clearly depends on the number and
competence of people who can be found or trained to perform such
tasks, which again raises the fundamental issue of what degree of
psychic capability is latent in the human race, and susceptible to or-
derly development.
With regard to applications of psychokinesis in particular, the.
prognosis is even more clouded, pending more definitive basic ex-
periments and serviceable theoretical models. Disturbing negative
applications, such as interference with delicate technological
equipment, jump to mind - and have concerned various public and
private agencies 55 More profound and significant, however, is the
spectrum of potential personal applications whereby individuals
might advantageously modify their immediate environment, and
themselves, by this capacity. Already there is a small group of
psycho-physiologists who feel that the early cognitive processes of
control of body function - muscles, vision, blood flow, etc. - in-
volve a significant component of trial-and-error self-PK, which by
maturity has long since become routine and imperceptible. The prac-
tical distinction between this view and the more conventional models
of infantile learning may not be of major consequence, but in matters
of rehabilitation, some useful techniques might evolve.
Rather than belabor the unavoidably speculative applications per
se, it might be better to turn to more general musing about the impli-
cations of psi, i.e., the effect on the individual, and on society, of
such talents if they could be more broadly and routinely developed.
From this point of view, there seem to be at least five levels of chal-
lenge:
First, there are the phenomena themselves, which, if valid, pose a
very serious question, namely: are we facing a basic modification of
our physical laws, or are we simply looking to identify new forces
and new energy transfer processes to insert in the established physi-
cal formalisms?
Second, there is the level of personal discipline with which one
must approach the field. One has to be critical enough to insist on
stubborn that information is rejected be-
t
t
b
i
so
u
no
gorous fact,
r
cause it does not conform to previous conceptions. One must distin- first says, "... As I have mentioned on several occasions to you and
guish between high vision and naive delusion; between open- your staff, this subject is a personal interest to me ...." and later in
roblem is be urgent one,
mi ~et tjl~y Q' p^^n~nQf ~ iii ,.{ a cry butQ~the national n1 enW&
NNW Ifjltbt P1 ~d l-RURKPy5~ i u.~7^ma O14me to be a dilution of
veness o
psy-
The elus
eling effort. As Laurence Veysey puts it:
chic phenomena is simply the elusiveness of the ordinary human
mind."sa
Finally, there seems to he a growing suspicion that psychic phe-
nomena may defy representation by any model drawn solely from a
single domain of established science. In other words, psychic proc-
ess may be fundamentally holistic, and any attempt to separate out
the physical, biological, or psychological aspects, either in the exper-
iments or in the theories, will inevitably obscure the phenomena.
Should this indeed be the case, the analytical tasks become even
more formidable, but this type of approach seems to be of growing
importance in many other fields of scholarship as well-55
tion as such. How do you handle a "scientific" field which seems
basically irreproducible, sensitive to the observer, evasive of close
scrutiny, strongly goal-oriented, and heavily interactive with do-
mains like theology and philosophy? In many respects psychic proc-
ess seems as much akin to art, and music, and creative process in
general as it is to analytical and replicable science. It has one foot in
the esthetic and one foot in the analytic. It occupies an interface re-
gion like those Willis Harman has identified as the most urgent for
society to develop if it is to extract itself from its present socio-
technological predicament 57 .
The fourth level, once again personal in nature, concerns the in-
dividual "world-view" that derives. This was expressed rather well
by our ex-astronaut, Edgar Mitchell, who has been for some time an
advocate of this field, and who carried out psychic experiments on
board his Apollo mission:
The profundity of the issue lies in the implications to our system of
thought about the nature of man, the universe, and reality. In spite of the
relative rarity of these events, the question must be asked, "Could it be
that we, each one of us, everyday, by our thoughts are subtly influencing
our environment, our reality, our Universe, without consciously knowing
it, or is this type control strictly the province of a few rare individuals who
possess this unique capability?"58
Finally, there are the personal and collective reactions of others
the people to whom you try to explain all this, on an airplane, in a
corporate meeting, in a sponsor's office, or in a report like this.
What has been your reaction to this article? How much of a threat,
or a challenge, has it been to you? Out of the sum of such reactions
comes the sociological and political acceptance or rejection of the
field. At present I suspect that the major portion of society still finds
the business somewhat incredible, and hopes that it will quietly go.
away. But there is a minor fraction, possibly a growing fraction,
which has a zest for this as a new frontier, and for whom the search
for links between the mundane and sublime experiences of life have
a numenistic appeal.
The present majority opinion does inhibit establishment of care-
ful, disciplined research that could settle the issues of validity rather
directly. As a consequence, the scholars and investigators tend to be
a rather defensive and hunted group, in some cases actually perse-
cuted by their peers for association with a field which admittedly has
had more than its share of tawdry and fraudulent exploitation. For
the same reason, the financial support of psychic research is minus-
cule; there is less spent on it per year in this country than the cost of
one modem tank or one fighter aircraft. I had occasion to discuss
this issue recently with a well-placed officer of the Department of
Energy. Let me quote two sentences from a letter be sent me:. The
this is a science at all. If it is, it has some difficulties in representa- our national efforts....
 1tse-200008/07 '
Possible applications of psychokinesis: a cartoonist's view
HERE DOES all this Ieav4 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
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 mere 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 .... te
One might turn 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 liehtning bolt in the sky. They had no Maxwell's equa-
field as psychic research, and there will doubtless be many opinions
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 at that time:
In the long history of civilization there are always strong pressures in favor
of low-level sorts of conformity - pressures against unorthodoxy, 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.
If an utter stranger to our civilization should ask: "Where in your soci-
ety can a person disagree with impunity with accepted practices, dogmas
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
'4Q.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. ^
tions, not even a Coulomb's law, let alone television sets or hydro- Robert G. John '51, *55 has been dean of Princeton's School
Again at Princeton, the physicist Joseph Henry was repeatedly ti on of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he visited several re-
criticized by his peers for undertaking experiments that violated es- search centers in the U.S.S.R. this past fall to lecture on his
by many implementations of those same unreasonable ideas. are of interest for deep-space propulsion, plasmadynantic
or to a more purposeful higher order, has occupied many and other industrial processes. He is a member of the Univer
chance
,
thinkers and authors through the ages. One of my favorite opinions sity Research Board and serves as chairman of the Council
time of his impending tragic death: Athletics, and faculty adviser to the football program. His
Es gibs keinen Zufall; and was uns blindes Ohngefuhr nur dunk!, gerade extra-Princeton assignments include heading the Executive
.,f ,l, Rn,,.v4 nr T,'?atppv nC Aconrinted Univer-
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 Approved For Release 2000/08/07 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000500070001-1
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