Figure 13 EXTERNAL LIGHT SOURCE H active A PHOTOCELL ° “ TO RECOROER LUMINOUS DECAY EXPERIMENT forbidden transition of an atomic electronic configuration from a metastable triplet to a singlet state.*® 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 fromm 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- Theoretical Models of Psychic Phenomena BEYOND THE introduction of more sophisticated measuring Fe-<. and data-handling techniques, the second recent develop- 7 ment which holds some hope of leading psychic research out of the dark ages is the growing interest of a number of theoretical and applied physicists in formulating models of the processes. We would need an entire article to represent any one of these models adequately, and the cursory listing that follows can do little more ‘than indicate their existence, and the breadth of the various ap- proaches. One of the earliest physical models to be proposed invokes very- low-frequency electromagnetic waves, of the order of 10 hertz cyclAAPREQNSG homme lease: 2000/08/07 1 approach, classical electricity and magnetism and information theories are combined to compute the energy and information trans- | 10 kA- The tuminous decay experiment, sketched schematically in Figure 13, yields photocell records like that shown in Figura 14, The task of the subject is to increase or decrease the rate of decay of the iuminosity an command. ; : ts ; 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 7 . se ; ra fer attainable in this mode. The low-frequency range is reflective of certain biological frequencies — e.g., electrical potentials across the hunian heart, and many of the brain potentials, which could provide the mechanisms for launching and receiving these waves in the human physiology. In principle, this model should be experimen- _ tally testable, but in practice that is difficult because at these extraor- dinarily large wavelengths such effects as decay of the signal with propagation distance, diffraction and interference patterns, or at- tenuation in solid and liquid materials require almost global dimen- sions before becoming detectable. Identification of a speed of prop- agation of psychic information consistent with electromagnetic RDRI629OF87RO0G5900 7000 del 1 but no experiments have yet established any definite velocity of propagation for psychic effects.
, Somewhat similar wave propagation models have anes wheriA Ppso ved drank elease p2O0N/08/E.% *munication.*2 For example, infrasonic waves (sound waves of the same low frequéncies) may carry information through the atmos- phere, or signals may be modulated onto the static electric fields in the earth, the piezo-static fields arising from geoseismic activity, or the cloud-to-carth electric fields like those that develop in lightning storms. Similarly, magnetic anomalies of the earth may provide a _ base for such comrnunication, a process studied in the context of the homing capabilities of birds. : Models based on the concepts of statistical thermodynamics have been attempted, with particular attention to the property called ‘“en- tropy.”°° In essense, entropy is an index of the information content or, equivalently, of the degree of order of a physical system. For example, a- large box containing many black-marbles, all of which _are to the left of its center, and many white marbles, all of which are to the right of its center, is a system of relatively low entropy: the arrangement of marbles is highly ordered, and:oné 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 retum the: marbles to their original, separated configuration. ; The concept of entropy is by no. means restricted to such me- _ chanical situations. The unfortunate fate of Humpty Dumpty is an example of a drastic entropy rise of quite a different system. His de- mise from a highly organized whole egg to one that was completely scrambled was also highly irreversible. Jn living systems, the process _ of death and subsequent decay could be represented as a similarly irreversible process of entropy increase. This natural tendency of complex systems towards states of disor- der, which is formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics, is theoretically troublesome and esthetically unappealing in that it lacks a specifiable inverse process. That is, no mechanism for spon- taneous reduction of entropy of an isolated system has been iden- tified. Yet many manifestations of psychokinesis involve just such entropy reduction — a random generator which is caused to display an excess of high numbers, a torsional pendulum that changes from jiggling motion to a periodic oscillation, or the establishment of a temperature differential between two previously isothermal thermis- tors — all are proceeding toward more highly ordered states. Many of the Biblical miracles display similar characteristics: the parting of the Red Sea, the remote healing of the Centurion’s servant, the raising of the dead, and, indeed, the creation of the universe itself are impres- sive examples of ‘‘spontaneous’’ entropy reduction. Question: what is the influence that drives such processes? Is it lurking somewhere int our established thermodynamic formalisms, or can an appropriate new ingredient be assimilated by them? In a more mathematical vein, the general aspects of symmetry of our established physical theories are being re-examined in a search for previously rejected information.- We have been in the habit of taking only one class of solutions out of the differential equations of physics. The classical wave equation, for instance, yields both a retarded wave and an advanced wave solution, and we normally dis- card the advanced wave because “it does not conform to experi- ence.” This may be short-sighted; perhaps, for example, we could represent precognition in terms of advanced waves. There are also several “hyperspace” theories. which contend that our usual presumption of using only four coordinates to describe na- _ ture, three spatial and one temporal, limits our deductive capacity.** If we start all over again with five or six or seven, we may still ex- tract the information needed for our traditional four-dimensional ‘world, while in addition representing phenomena that would be re- garded as paranormal on the basis of a strictly four-dimensional analysis. Some of the mostpinterasting attempts ‘tras rom PRRG VEST HO RAISER AHO BLO es the first class of scientific theory to depart significantly from strictly al deterministic representation of cause and effect in the physical ROP S60 0487 ROO 5600 RO GO1wh mechanics deals with “probability densities” and “expectation values,” which are in turn expressed in terms of wave functions or matrices rather than individual explicit quantities. One of the problems with which quan- tum mechanics has labored for years is that of experimental observa- tion. It turns out not to be possible to observe any physical quantity or process without disturbing it in some way; the system inevitably. reacts to any attempt to measure it. (Stated more formally, the quan- tum mechanical state vector of a system is not specified until a suita- ble measurement is made upon it.) This in turn leads to certain paradoxes, as epitomized in various famous examples, such as that of “Schrddinger’s Cat,” or “Wigner's Friend,” or the “Einstein- Poldosky-Rosen Paradox.’’ (The Wigner referred to is Princeton’s Nobel Laureate and Professor of Physics Emeritus Eugene P. Wigner.) so, “Every phenomenon Is unexpected and most unlikely until it has been discovered—~ . a. and some of them | remain unreasonable. for a long time. after they: have been discovered.” —£ugena P. Wigner, Symmetries and Reflections (7967) ’ After one concedes that the person conducting an experiment exerts an unavoidable influence on it, and in this sense becomes an integral part of it, the step to allowing a person to interfere in a de- liberate way with a physical system is not quite so unpalatable. A number of attempts have been made to represent psychokinesis in this. way. Some have invoked previously neglected. “hidden vari- ables” in the quantum theory to specify the human component. Others have made analogy of the synaptic transitions in the brain to quantum mechanical “tunnelling” processes, such as the escape of beta particles from radioactive nuclei. All of this clearly involves a daring extension of mathematical physics to cover human charac- teristics. ; ; In still another approach, it is claimed that psychic process can largely be assigned to inadequate comprehension of random physi- cal processes.5! The central point here is that a truly random process is unattainable; all sources and all receivers in nature, because they are finite in dimension and finite in time, must show some departure from the truly random. That is, if enough correlations are examined, biases will prevail in those sources and receivers. The proposition, then, is that so-called paranormal communication is simply the res- onant tuning of those very slightly biased sources and receivers. Left unexplained is the specific mechanism of the resonance, thus defer- ting the propagation problem to some other model. Less analytical models propose empirical postulates for psychic functioning. For example, there is the proposition of “conformance behavior,” which assigns to living systems the ability to influence the physical world to their own advantage. Some experiments have addressed this concept, employing human subjects, monkeys, gald- fish, cockroaches, and even seeds.5? Again, the details of the influ- ence are not specified. St ROU SRAAAPR/RUBBD REALS rvs we are not very well qualified to assess them, and second because we
Ne have not seen any that help much with the physical side of the prob- tem. PAK i. ; hi brain an proved For Retedse 200010 1OF ie A-RDPOSHOTSIROBOS IOS with the more analytic affairs of life; itis the part that deduces, in- 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 Puthotf have reported that people who have photographic memories are totally incapable of doing their remote-viewing experiments.?” a ‘ : Applications and Implications “HPF RESEARCH like that outlined above is eventually successful in [vec our. understanding of psychic phenomena from simply sbemused 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 cailed 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 concemed various public and private agencies.** 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 staall group of psycho-physiologists who feel that the early cognitive processes of control of body function — muscles, vision, blcoad 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 upplications per se, it might be better to turn to more general musitig 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 roulinely 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 arid new energy transfer processes to insert in the estatilished 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. rigorous fact, but not so stubborn that information is rejected be- cause it does not conform to previous conceptions. One must distin- guish between high vision and naive delusion, between open- "TABRRAVEH ERY Release, 20Al08I07 7 Cla-RORME- gO ZkeRBadoqadza this is a science at all. If it is, it has some difficulties in representa- It should also be emphasized that the absence of good neuro- process does not in any sense imply the problem is unimpor- tant. On the contrary, it underscores the difficulty of the entire mod- eling effort. As Laurence Veysey puts it: “The elusiveness of psy- chic phenomena is simply the elusiveness of the ordinary human mind.”"54 , Finally, there seems to be 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 wel]. 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 ane 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.5” ~ - 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 sonie 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 knawing it, or is this type control strictly the province of a few rare individuals who possess this unique capability?” Finally, there aré the personal and collective reactions of others. — the people to whom you try to explain all this, on an airplane, ina 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 sunt 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. a ' 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 atather 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 modern 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 he sent me: The first says, “. .. As | have mentioned on several occasions to you and your staff, this subject is a personal interest to me . . .”" and later in roblem is an urgent one, $<4me to be a dilution of our national efforts... .”-
Jaga Cmca - Reflections Ue REL cea i RS Aca a EE So Ppa seme ME EME TR e+ fA THERE DOES all this leave. us? At the start we promised a A 4 complex fabric of many implausible threads, and I think uy «YY 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 ina 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... .*° ; ; 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 lightning bolt in the sky. They had no Maxwell’s equa- tions, not even a Coulomb’s law, let alone television sets or hydro- electric generators, Those came much later. . Again at Princeton, the physicist Joseph Henry was repeatedly criticized by his peers for undertaking experiments that violated es- tablished scientific principles and common sense, yet we now live by many implementations of those same unreasonable ideas. The choice between assignment of the mysterious to thoughtless chance, or to a more purposeful higher order, has occupied many thinkers and authors through the ages. One of my favorite opinions on the subject is voiced by Schiller’s epic hero Wallenstein at the time of his impending tragic death: . Es gibt keinen Zufall; und was uns blindes Ohngefahr nur dinkt, gerade das steigt aus den tiefsten Quellen. (“There is no such thing as chance; and that which seems to us blind accident, actually stems from the deepest source of all.””)%* ; SoMRPOVEDEORREGASe 2000/08/Oha CiA- proper and productive for a university such as Princeton to involve itself to any significant degree in so slippery, soggy, and suspect a Possible applications of psychokinesis: a cartaonist's view ” 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 freedoin 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 *40.60 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. O Robert G. Jahn’51, *55 has been dean of Princeton’ s School of Engineering and Applied Science since 1971. At the invita- tion of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, he visited several re- search centers in the U.S.S.R. this past fall to lecture on his principal field: pulsed, high-power plasma discharges, which are of interest for deep-space propulsion, plasmadynamic lasers, basic studies in arc phenomena, materials testing, and other industrial processes. He is.a member of the Univer- sity Research Board and serves as chairman of the Council on Environmental Studies, chairman of the Committee on Athletics, and faculty adviser to the football program. His extra-Princeton assignments include heading the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees of Associated Univer- sities, Inc. (the oversight and policy-making body for the Brookhaven National Laboratory and National Radia As- DESEO TRTRADNEMOO TOMO EL, of scinces.