-_ Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4 troublesome--typically with greater difficulty in determining the order in which the buttons would appear as targets and lesser difficulty in determining which buttons were targets.. Confusion and error would arise when I assumed the tension/vector perceptions were clairvoyant when in fact they were (say) clairvoyant and precognitive. To explain how this felt, refer back to Figure A-l. If the actual sequence of correct answers were Buttons B and D, and if I were assuming the perceptions were clairvoyant only, then it was not uncommon to have the perception that the intervening button (C) was the correct choice, “The rationale for this perception was that it felt like a balance point between Buttons B (present target) and D (next target). In retrospect, when I am more rationally aware of the room for error in the use of this cue mechanism, I am somewhat surprised as to how useful it was in operation, It should be clear from the preceding descriptions that selections were made by a variety of processes which were used sometimes in isolation and oftentimes in combination. A typical sequence in the selection process was: (1) Check for "direct knowing" cues, if not there, then (2) Use "tension/vector" cues, then (3) Make final selection with "closure , " cues. ‘2. Comments on Perceptual Processes a tee’. Rather than work rapidly, I chose to work deliberately, consciously, and therefore slowly. ] would typically take five to thirty seconds to select a button--enough time to have a firm and conscious sense of my internal cues and what I thought they meant. The typical sequence would be as follows: e Clear mind and become quiet e Concentrate internal awareness Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4
’ Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4 e Observe various cues e Rationally interact with cues to sort them out e Select a button and press it ¢ Integrate feedback from response e Clear mind and become quiet. Except during "pattern recognition,” when all buttons seemed equally accessible, I found that the top two buttons on the machine were much more accessible than the bottom two. Three plausible explanations emerge to account for this. First (and least likely I think) is a psychological predisposition against the bottom. two buttons-~perhaps because of the color of the buttons or because of the pictures associated with the tar- gets. Second is the possibility that the circuitry of the ESP machine in some way favors the top two buttons or obscures the bottom two. Third (and most plausible to me) is the possibility that to the extent I used the "tension/vector" cue, then the bottom two buttons would be without a vector below them--making it more difficult to "bracket" the bottom two buttons with this perceptual process, In later phases of the experiment, I was more able to access the bottom two buttons and this seemed to cor- respond with increasing use of the "pattern recognition" cues and the decreasing use of tension/vector cues. The longer I worked with the ESP machine, the more apparent it be- came that, in an extrasensory perception reality, time becomes fluid. In other words, although the experiment was designed to test clairvoyance (selecting the current target) only, I found that the perceptual cues would oftentimes be equally applicable to precognition (selecting a future target--usually the next one), Therefore, making a correct selection required doing two things; first, finding the correct "pattern" of buttons that would be randomly selected by the machine (typically the pattern consisted of two to three buttons) and second, associating a time component Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4
r Ll : Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4 with the buttons in. that pattern. Stated differently, the same cues discussed above held equally well for precognition or for clairvoyance-- so the problem of making a selection was compounded by the additional difficulty of having to determine whether a perceptual cue was associated with the button that had already been selected by the machine or the button that would be selected in the next or even subsequent trial. I definitely felt that if I could consistently separate clairvoyant from precognitive dimensions of identical cues, that I could substantially increase the accuracy of overall scores. The cues were not always consistent in their presence and meaning. For example, I might be obtaining good results with the use of tension/ vector cues and then find them becoming ambiguous, with a commensurate decline in my score. Then I would rely more heavily upon other cues. Or, the cues might. work well for clairvoyant perceptions for a while but then shift to operate for precognition--then I would -have to "recalibrate" myself to the cue mechanisms. So, it was a fluid, dynamic perceptual process which required flexibility and patience. Highly significant scores and perceptions seemed to go in spurts of ten trials or so, then I would fall back to.a chance level until I could resynchronize myself ith the machine and the character of my perceptual cues. I tend to agree with the notion that it might be more appropriate to call these processes "extraconceptual perception" rather than "extra- sensory perception.” The perceptual cues were definitely present and they had sensory dimensions even though they do not fit into our traditional sensory categories. Just "where" and "how" these sensory cues were present is not clear to me-=but these are essentially conceptual rather than sensory issues. Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4
Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4 © 3. Problems in Perceptual Translation ee ee fa bLon ab A basic problem in using the ESP machine was not so much the obtaining of perceptual data as the translating of those data into sufficient information to allow the action of selecting the correct button. While the act itself is so simple as to be trivial, the information processes (gathering, filtering, dynamically translating) underlying that act seemed to me very substantial. It is within this unseen and unrecorded portion of the ESP testing process that most of the "action" takes place. From this vantage point I would like to suggest two impediments that might partially account for relatively low scores. First, I am still not fluent in the "language" of extrasensory perceptions--analogously, it is like hearing many separate commands in Russian (or another unfamiliar language), each time spoken in slightly different ways and with different intonations and inflections. The call for action may be clearly heard but the translation of that command into operational reality is an imprecise process until the language can be better understood. Second is the problem created by shifting back and forth between rational and intuitive knowledge processes during the course of the experiment. In selecting a single button I would use intuitive knowledge processes for perception and oftentimes, rational or semirational knowledge processes to in’ ?rpret those perceptions. This is not to say that the rational component is absolutely necessary, but it did seem to be useful for me. In any event, since the experiment covers thousands of trials (button selections) it required thousands of translations from one knowledge mode to another. Although the rational mode did seem helpful for inter- Approved For Release 2000/08/10 : CIA-RDP96-00787R000200010007-4