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PUTHOFF AND TARG: PERCEPTUAL CHANNEL FOR INFORMATION TRANSFER
IV. Considerations Concerning Time
If the authors may be forgiven a personal note, we wish to
express that this section deals with observations that we have
been reluctant to publish because of their striking apparent in-
compatibility with existing concepts.
The motivating factor
for presenting the data at this time is the ethical consideration
that theorists endeavoring to develop models for paranormal
functioning should be apprised of
all the observable data
if
their efforts to arrive at a comprehensive and correct descrip-
tion are to be successful.
During the course of the experimentation in remote viewing
(Section
III),
subjects occasionally volunteered the informa-
tion that they had been thinking about their forthcoming par-
ticipation in
a remote-viewing experiment and had an image
come to them
as to what the target location was to be.
On
these occasions, the information was given only to the experi-
menter remaining at SRI with the subject and was unknown to
the outbound experimenter
until
completion of the experi-
ment.
Two
of
these
contributions were among
the most
accurate
descriptions
turned
in
during
those
experiments.
Since the target location had not yet been selected when the
subject communicated
his perceptions about
the target, we
found the data difficult to contend with.
We offer these spontaneous occurrences not as proof of pre-
cognitive perception, but rather as the motivation that led us
to do further work in this field. On the basis of this firsthand
evidence, together with the copious literature describing years
of precognition experiments carried out in various other labo-
ratories, we decided to determine whether a subject could per-
form a perceptual task that required both spatial and temporal
remote viewing.
It
is well known and recently has been widely discussed that
nothing in the fundamental laws of physics forbids the appar-
ent transmission of information from the future to the present
(discussed further in Section V).
Furthermore, there is a gen-
eral dictum that “in physical law, everything that is not forbid-
den, is required” [61 ]
.
With this in mind, we set out to con-
duct
very well-controlled experiments to determine whether
we could deliberately design and execute experiments for the
sole
purpose
of
observing
precognition
under
laboratory
conditions.
The experimental protocol was identical to that followed in
previous remote-viewing experiments with but one exception.
The exception was that the subject was required to describe
the remote location during a 15-min period beginning 20 min
before the target was selected and 35 min before the outbound
experimenter was to arrive at the target location.
In detail, as shown in Table IX, each day at ten o’clock one
of the experimenters would
leave. SRI with
a stack of ten
sealed envelopes from a larger pool and randomized daily, con-
taining traveling instructions that had been prepared, but that
were unknown to the two experimenters remaining with the
subject.
The subject for this experiment was Hella Hammid
(S4) who participated in the nine-experiment series replicating
the original Price work described earlier. The traveling experi-
menter was to drive continuously from 10:00 until 10:30 be-
fore selecting his destination with a random number generator.
(The motivation for continuous motion was our observation
that objects and persons in rapid motion are not generally seen
in the remote-viewing mode of perception, and we wished the
traveler to be a poor target until he reached his target site.) At
the end of 30 min of driving, the traveling experimenter gener-
TABLE IX
Experimental Protocol: Precognitive Remote Viewing
Time
Schedule
ExperLnenter/Subject Activity
10:00
Outbound experimenter
leaves
with
10 envelopes
(containing
target
locations)
and
random number
generator;
begins half-hour drive
10:10
Experimenters
remaining with
subject
in
the
laboratory
elicit
from subject
a description of where outbound
experimenter will
be
from 10:45-11:00
10:25
Subject
response completed,
at which
time
laboratory part
of experiment
ia over
10:30
Outbound experimenter obtains
rendom number
from
a random
number generator,
counts down
to associated envelope,
and
proceeds
to
target
location Indicated
10:45
Outbound experimenter remains
at
target
location
for
15 minutes
(10:45-11:00)
Fig. 14.
Subject Hammid (S4) described "some kind of congealing tar,
or maybe an area of condensed lava
.
.
. that has oozed out to fill up
some kind of boundaries.”
ated
a random
digit from 0 to 9 with a Texas Instruments
SR-51 random number
generator;
while
still
in motion, he
counted down
that number of envelopes and proceeded
di-
rectly to the target location so as to arrive there by 10:45. He
remained
at the target
site until
1 1 :00, at which time he re-
turned to the laboratory, showed his chosen target name to a
security guard, and entered the experimental room.
During the same period, the protocol in the laboratory was
as follows.
At 10:10, the subject was asked to begin a descrip-
tion of the place to which the experimenter would go 35 min
hence.
The subject then generated a tape-recorded description
and associated drawings from 10:10 to 10:25, at which time
her part in the experiment was ended.
Her description was
thus entirely concluded 5 min before the beginning of the tar-
get selection procedure.
Four such experiments were carried out.
Each of them ap-
peared to be successful, an evaluation later verified in blind
judging without error by three judges.
We
will briefly sum-
marize the four experiments below.
The
first
target, the Palo Alto Yacht Harbor, consisted en-
tirely of mud flats because of an extremely low tide (see Fig.
14).
Appropriately, the entire transcript of the subject per-
tained to “some kind of congealing tar, or maybe an area of
condensed lava.
It looks like the whole area is covered with
some kind of wrinkled elephant skin that has oozed out to fill
up some
kind
of boundaries where
(the outbound
experi-
menter)
is standing.”
Because of the lack of water, the dock
where the remote experimenter was standing was in fact rest-
ing directly on the mud.
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Fig. 17.
Subject (S4) described a very tall structure located among city
streets and covered with “Tiffany-like glass.”
Fig. 15. Subject (S4) described
a formal garden “very well manicured”
behind a double colonnade.
Note that the subject has learned not to rush into interpreta-
tion as to the nature or purpose of the place.
This is a result
of our cautioning based on the observation that such efforts
tend to be purely analytical and in our experience are almost
invariably incorrect.
If a subject can limit himself to what he
sees, he
is often then able to describe a scene with sufficient
accuracy that an observer can perform the analysis for him and
identify the place.
The second target visited was the fountain at one end of a
large formal garden at Stanford University Hospital (Fig.
15).
The subject gave a lengthy description of a formal garden be-
hind a wall with a “double colonnade” and “very well mani-
cured.”
When we later took the subject to the location, she
was herself taken aback to find the double colonnaded wall
leading into the garden just as described.
The third target was a children’s swing at a small park 4.6 km
from the laboratory (Fig.
1 6). The subject repeated again and
again that the main focus of attention at the site was a “black
iron
triangle
that the outbound experimenter had somehow
walked
into or was standing on.”
The triangle was “bigger
than a man,” and she heard a “squeak, squeak, about once a
second,” which we observe is a match to the black metal swing
that did squeak.
The final target was the Palo Alto City Hall (Fig.
17).
The
subject
described
a
very,
very
tall
structure
covered with
“Tiffany-like glass.”
She had it located among city streets and
with little cubes at the base. The building is glass-covered, and
the
little cubes are
a good match to the small elevator exit
buildings located in the plaza in front of the building.
To obtain a numerical evaluation of the accuracy of the pre-
cognitive viewing, the experimental results were subjected to
independent judging on a blind basis by three SRI scientists
who were not otherwise associated with the experiment. The
judges were asked
to match the four locations, which they
visited,
against
the unedited typed manuscripts of the tape-
recorded narratives, along with the drawings generated by the
remote viewer.
The transcripts were presented unlabeled and
in random order and were to be used without replacement. A
correct match required that the transcript of a given experi-
ment be matched with the target of that experiment.
All three
judges independently matched the target data to the response
data without error. Under the null hypothesis (no information
channel and
a random
selection of descriptions without re-
placement), each judge independently obtained a result signifi-
cant at p = (4!)
—
= 0.042.
For reasons we do not as yet understand, the four transcripts
generated in the precognition experiment show exceptional co-
herence and accuracy as evidenced by the fact that all of the
judges were able to match successfully all of the transcripts to
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puTHoff and TARGAfifir6^^L^ftto^°fi^^1AibP^J^^-00787R000700070001-9
the corresponding target locations. A long-range experimental
program devoted to the clarification of these issues and involv-
ing a number of subjects is under way. The above four experi-
ments are the first four carried out under this program.
Currently, we have no precise model of this spatial and tem-
poral remote-viewing phenomenon.
However, models of the
universe involving higher order synchronidty
or correlation
have been proposed by the physicist Pauli and the psychologist
Carl Jung [62]
.
ACAUSALITY.
If natural law5 were an absolute truth, then of
course
there
could not possibly be any processes that deviate
from
it.
But since causality 5
is a statistical truth,
it holds good
only on average and thus leaves room for exceptions which must
somehow be experienceable, that
is to say, real.
I try to regard
synchronistic events as acausal exceptions of this kind.
They
prove to be relatively independent of space and time; they rela-
tivize space and time insofar as space presents in principle no ob-
stacle to their passage and the sequence of events in time is in-
verted so that
it looks as if an event which has not yet occurred
were causing a perception in the present.
We
shall
see
in
the next
section
that such a description,
though poetic, has some basis in modem physical theory.
V.
DISCUSSION
It
is important to note at the outset that many contempo-
rary
physicists are of the view that the phenomena that we
have
been
discussing
are
not
at
all
inconsistent
with
the
framework of physics as currently understood.
In this emerg-
ing view, the often-held
belief that observations of this type
are incompatible with known laws
in
principle
is erroneous,
such
a concept
being based on
the
naive
realism prevalent
before
the
development
of modem quantum
theory
and
information theory.
One hypothesis, put forward by
I. M. Kogan of the USSR,
is
that
information
transfer
under
conditions
of
sensory
shielding
is
mediated
by
extremely
low-frequency
(ELF)
electromagnetic
waves
in
the
300-1 000-km
region
[37]-
[40].
Experimental support
for the
hypothesis
is claimed
on the basis of slower than inverse square attenuation, com-
patible
with
source-percipient
distances
lying
in
the
induc-
tion field range
as opposed to the radiation
field range; ob-
served
low
bit
rates
(0.005-0.1
bit/s)
compatible with the
information carrying capacity of ELF waves; apparent ineffec-
tiveness of ordinary electromagnetic shielding as an attenuator;
and standard antenna calculations entailing biologically gener-
ated currents yielding results compatible with observed signal-
to-noise ratios.
M. Persinger, Psychophysiology Laboratory, Laurentian Uni-
versity, Toronto, Canada, has narrowed the ELF hypothesis to
the
suggestion
that
the 7.8-Hz “Shumann waves” and their
harmonics propagating along the earth-ionosphere waveguide
duct may be responsible.
Such an hypothesis
is compatible
with driving by brain-wave currents and leads to certain other
hypotheses such as asymmetry between east-west and west-
east propagation,
preferred
experimental
times (midnight-4
A.M.),
and
expected
negative
correlation
between
success
and
the U
index
(a
measure
of geomagnetic
disturbance
throughout
the
world).
Persinger claims
initial support
for
these factors on the basis of a literature search [63]
, [64]
.
,
On the negative side with regard to a straightforward ELF
interpretation as a blanket hypothesis are the following: a) ap-
5 As usually understood.
parent real-time descriptions of remote activities in sufficient
detail to require a channel capacity in
all probability greater
than that allowed by a conventional modulation of an ELF
signal; b) lack of a proposed mechanism for coding and decod-
ing the information onto the proposed ELF carrier; and c) ap-
parent precognition data. The hypothesis must nonetheless re-
main open at this stage of research, since it is conceivable that
counterindication a) may eventually be circumvented on the
basis that the apparent high bit rate results from a mixture of
low bit rate input and high bit rate “filling in the blanks” from
imagination; counterindication b)
is common to a number of
normal perceptual
tasks and may therefore simply reflect a
lack of sophistication on our part with regard to perceptual
functioning
[65]; and
counterindication
c) may be accom-
modated by an ELF hypothesis
if advanced waves as well as
retarded waves are admitted [66], [67].
Experimentation to
determine whether the ELF hypothesis is viable can be carried
out by the use of ELF sources as targets, by the study of para-
metric
dependence on
propagational
directions and
diurnal
timing, and by the exploration of interference effects caused
by
creation of a high-intensity ELF environment during ex-
perimentation, all of which are under consideration in our lab-
oratory and elsewhere.
Some physicists believe that the reconciliation of observed
paranormal functioning with modern theory may take place at
a more fundamental level—namely, at the level of the founda-
tions of quantum theory.
There
is a continuing dialog, for
example, on the proper interpretation of the effect of an ob-
server
(consciousness)
on
experimental measurement
[68],
and there
is considerable current interest in the implications
for our notions of ordering in time and space brought on by
the observation [69], [70]
of nonlocal correlation or “quan-
tum interconnectedness” (to use Bohm’s term [7 1 ] ) of distant
parts of quantum systems of macroscopic dimensions.
The
latter,
Bell’s theorem
[72], emphasizes
that “no theory of
reality compatible with quantum theory can require spatially
separated events to be independent”
[73], but must permit
interconnectedness of distant events in a manner that is con-
trary to ordinary experience [74] -[75].
This prediction has
been
experimentally
tested
and
confirmed
in
the
recent
experiments
of,
for example, Freedman and
Clauser
[69],
[70].
E.
H. Walker and
O.
Costa de Beauregard, independently
proposing theories of paranormal functioning based on quan-
tum concepts, argue that observer effects open the door to the
possibility
of nontrivial coupling between consciousness and
the environment and
that
the
nonlocality principle permits
such coupling to transcend spatial and temporal barriers [76]
,
[77].
Apparent “time reversibility”-that
is, effects (e.g., observa-
tions) apparently preceding causes (e.g., events)—though con-
ceptually difficult at
first glance, may be the easiest of appar-
ent paranormal phenomena
to assimilate within the current
theoretical
structure of our world view.
In addition to the
familiar retarded potential solutions f(t - r/c), it is well known
that the equations of, for example, the electromagnetic field
admit of advanced potential solutions f(t +r/c)-solutions that
would appear to imply a reversal of cause and effect.
Such
solutions are conventionally discarded as not corresponding to
any observable physical event.
One is cautioned, however, by
statements such as that of Stratton in his basic text on electro-
magnetic theory [78]
.
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The reader has doubtless noted that the choice of the function
f[t - r/c) is highly arbitrary, since the field equation admits also
a solution f{t + r/c). This function leads obviously to an advanced
time, implying that the field can be observed before
it has been
generated by the source.
The familiar chain of cause and effect
is thus reversed and this alternative solution might be discarded
as logically inconceivable. However, the application of “logical”
causality principles offers very insecure footing in matters such
as these and we shall do better to restrict the theory to retarded
action solely on the grounds that this solution alone conforms to
the present physical data.
Such caution is justified by the example in the early 1920’s of
Dirac’s development
of the mathematical description of the
relativistic electron that also yielded a pair of solutions, one of
which was discarded as inapplicable until the discovery of the
positron in 1932.
In an analysis by O. Costa de Beauregard, an argument is put
forward
that
advanced
potentials
constitute
a convergence
toward “finality”
in
a manner symmetrical to the divergence
of retarded
potentials
as
a
result
of causality
[77].
Such
phenomena are generally unobservable, however, on the gross
macroscopic scale for
statistical reasons.
This
is codified
in
the thermodynamic concept that for an isolated system entropy
(disorder) on the average increases.
It
is just this requirement
of isolation, however, that has been weakened by the observer
problem in quantum theory, and O. Costa de Beauregard argues
that the finality principle is maximally operative in just those
situations where the intrusion of consciousness as an ordering
phenomenon results in
a significant local reversal of entropy
increase.
At this point, further discussion of the subtleties of
such considerations, though apropos, would take us far afield,
so we simply note that such advanced waves, if detected, could
in certain cases constitute a carrier of information precognitive
to the event.
The above arguments are not intended to indicate that the
precise
nature of the information channel
coupling remote
events and human perception
is understood.
Rather, we in-
tend to show only that modem theory is not without resources
that can be brought to bear on the problems at hand, and we
expect that these problems will, with further work, continue
to yield to analysis and specification.
Furthermore, independent of the mechanisms that may be
involved
in remote sensing, observation of the phenomenon
implies
the
existence
of
an
information
channel
in
the
information-theoretic sense.
Since such channels are amenable
to analysis on the basis of communication theory techniques,
as indicated earlier, channel characteristics such as bit rate can
be determined independent of a well-defined physical channel
model in the sense that thermodynamic concepts can be ap-
plied
to
the
analysis of systems independent of underlying
mechanisms.
Furthermore, as we have seen from the work of
Ryzl discussed in Section II, it is possible to use such a channel
for error-free transmission of information if redundancy coding
is used.
(See also Appendix A.)
Therefore, experimentation
involving the collection of data under specified conditions per-
mits headway to be made despite the formidable work that
needs
to
be
done
to
clarify
the
underlying
bases
of
the
phenomena.
VI. Conclusion
For the past three years we have had a program in the Elec-
IEEE, MARCH 1976
bilities.
The primary achievement of this program has been
the
elicitation of high-quality “remote viewing”-the
ability
of both
experienced
subjects and
inexperienced
volunteers
to view, by means
of innate mental processes, remote geo-
graphical
or technical
targets such
as roads,
buildings, and
laboratory apparatus.
Our accumulated data from over fifty
experiments
with more
than
a half-dozen
subjects
indicate
the following,
a) The phenomenon
is not a sensitive function
of distance over a range of several kilometers,
b) Faraday cage
shielding does not appear to degrade the quality or accuracy of
perception,
c) Most of the correct information that subjects
relate
is
of
a nonanalytic nature pertaining to shape, form,
color, and material rather than to function or name.
(This
aspect
suggests
a
hypothesis
that information
transmission
under
conditions
of sensory shielding may be mediated
pri-
marily
by
the
brain’s
right hemisphere.)
d) The
principal
difference
between
experienced
subjects and
inexperienced
volunteers is not that the latter never exhibit the faculty, but
rather that their results are simply less reliable.
(This observa-
tion
suggests
the
hypothesis
that remote viewing may be a
latent
and
widely
distributed, though
repressed,
perceptual
ability.)
Although the precise nature of the information channel cou-
pling remote events and human perception
is not yet under-
stood,
certain
concepts
in
information
theory,
quantum
theory, and neurophysiological research appear to bear directly
on the issue.
As a result, the working assumption among re-
searchers
in
the
field
is that the phenomenon of interest
is
consistent with modem
scientific thought, and can therefore
be expected to yield to the scientific method.
Further, it
is
recognized*
that
communication
theory
provides
powerful
techniques, such as the use of redundancy coding to improve
signal-to-noise ratio, which can be employed to pursue special-
purpose application of the remote-sensing channel independent
of an understanding of the underlying mechanisms. We there-
fore consider
it important to continue data collection and to
encourage others to do likewise; investigations such as those
reported here need replication and extension under as wide a
variety of rigorously controlled conditions as possible.
Appendix A
Signal Enhancement in a Paranormal
Communication Channel by Application
of Redundancy Coding
Independent of
the mechanisms that may
be
involved
in
remote
sensing,
observation of the phenomenon implies the
existence
of
an
information
channel
in
the
information-
theoretic
sense.
As we have seen from the work of Ryzl dis-
cussed in Section II,6
it is even possible to use such a (noisy)
channel
for
error-free
transmission
of information
if
suf-
ficient redundancy coding is used [30]
, [31]
Following is a
general procedure
that we have used successfully for signal
enhancement.
We
shall assume that the “message" consists of a stream of
binary
digits
(0,1)
of equal probability
(e.g., binary sort of
green/white cards as in Ryzl’s case, English text encoded as in
Table X and sent long distance by strobe light on/off, and so
on).
To combat channel noise, each binary
digit to be sent
through the channel requires the addition of redundancy bits
(coding).
Efficient coding requires a compromise between the
and the desire to minimize re-
‘See also the note added
in proof on the successful work done by
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