Paranormal
Meets Physics
- CONTINUES BELOW
Scientists
at Princeton University and other respected institutions
are beginning to prove that ESP and telekinesis are real,
measurable phenomena.
"If you consider the world an extension of yourself,
it becomes a better
place."
"The only way I can explain the phenomenon is that
it's occurring... outside of space and time."
"Consciousness is the ground of all being."
"The universe is one and we are one with it."
These are not proclamations from the latest Zen philosophy
self-help book, nor passages from The Celestine Prophecy,
nor quotes from a Marianne Williamson seminar. They are
not even remarks from some Uri Geller video. These are statements
from respected, mainstream scientists,
engineers, and researchers, respectively: Brenda Dunne,
a developmental psychologist at the Princeton Engineering
Anomalies Research laboratory (PEAR); John Haaland, president
and CEO of Mindsong Inc., an electronics firm developing
mind-matter machines; Amit Goswami, professor of Physics
at the Institute of Theoretical Sciences at the University
of Oregon - (picture left); and Victor Stenger, professor
of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii.
CONTINUES
FROM REPORT:
Have all these respected scientists and engineers suddenly
fallen under the influence of some New Age cult? Hardly.
But they are converts of another kind, perhaps, since they
are on the cutting edge of serious ESP and psychokinesis
research - mind over matter. Not too long ago, if one brought
up the subjects of ESP or telekinesis to a scientist, they
would have readily been dismissed as "paranormal"
and relegated to the purview of "fringe science"
and unworthy of serious investigation. This stuff was considered
unprovable, and left to the imaginations of New Age gurus
and others thought of as wackos. This is not to fault those
scientists; it's their job to be skeptical and to be able
to prove, as best they can, whether or not something is
true or likely.
Now science is doing just that with regard to some forms
of ESP and telekinesis. Research conducted at Princeton
University and other research laboratories around the world
is confirming that thought alone can influence random events.
With the aid of computers, sensitive instrumentation, and
robotics, science now has the tools with which to test and
measure the subtle influences of the human mind and reveal
how it can possibly affect inanimate objects, electronics,
and perhaps other human minds.
The
implications are astounding and far-reaching.
Science is beginning to shake hands with the paranormal.
Mind Over Machine
The
PEAR lab at Princeton, under the direction of Professor
Robert Jahn, uses a random event generator (REG) to conduct
their trials. The REG is, essentially, a kind of electronic
coin flipper that, if left alone, would generate as many
heads as tails over a number of coin flips. However, PEAR's
volunteers - normal people who do not claim to have any
ESP powers whatever - are able to influence the REG to come
up with more heads than tails, or vice versa. Certainly,
they cannot make it come up heads every time, but the data
shows that the influence is statistically relevant and much
greater than chance.
This is done without the benefit of electrodes attached
to the head or any other kind of connection. More remarkable
still, the volunteers do not even have to be in the same
room with the REG. The lab in Princeton has produced results
from volunteers as far away as Hungary and Brazil that are
the same as those who are sitting just a few feet from the
machine. Distance is irrelevant.
Jahn, Dunne, and their colleagues at PEAR don't know how
or why people are able to influence their machines, they
just know that they are. What's more, they have demonstrated
that when using two volunteers who have an emotional attachment,
the effects on the REG are even greater. The emotion of
love seems to have a more powerful effect. This fact has
prompted Dunne to theorize that the conscious human mind
creates some kind of "resonance" with the surrounding
world that lessens some of its randomness. "One form
of this resonance," Dunne told Wired magazine, "is
what we know as love. This emotional bond - the 'being on
the same wavelength' - somehow reduces the entropy in the
world a little bit. And random processes seem to reflect
this reduction by showing a more organized physical reality."
Tricks with Chicks
This conscious or unconscious influence on the world isn't
just a hidden power of the human mind either. Animals have
also been shown to have an effect on machinery. In an experiment
set up by René Peoc'h and the Swiss Fondation Marcel
et Monique Odier de Psycho-Physique, a cage of chicks was
able to influence the meanderings of a robot better than
people were. The robot, a self-propelled little device called
a Tychoscope, was programmed to wander in a random manner
around an enclosed room. When the cage of chicks was added
to the room, however, the robot's behavior changed dramatically,
spending much more time in the half of the room where the
chicks were. Did the chicks will the robot to stay near
them? Possibly, because the chicks had a motive. One group
of chicks in the experiment had been "imprinted"
with the sight of the Tychoscope - in other words, it was
the first thing they saw when they hatched. So it could
be that they just wanted "mommy" near. For another
group of chicks, the room was darkened and a candle was
placed on the Tychoscope. Bringing the robot to their side
of the room also brought light to the chicks.
A Quantum Effect
These are just two of the more dramatic experiments that
are bearing out the reality of consciousness over matter.
And it's interesting that these findings are being made
at the same time that scientific research is proving the
bizarre nature of quantum mechanics, which is showing that
the mere observation of subatomic particles can affect how
they behave. Are the Princeton experiments demonstrating
some kind of biological quantum effect that we do not yet
understand? Is the human brain - and the brain of each living
creature, for that matter - a quantum device? Is the collective
unconscious proposed by analytical psychologist Carl Jung
and others actually a quantum effect?
That the conscious minds of living things can influence
our reality has, of course, fantastic implications:
• Perhaps this is how evolution, in conjunction with
natural selection, is actually directed.
• It may explain the "power of prayer."
• It may explain how animal instinct and group behavior
works. (ESP in humans may be a dormant form of instinct
that we can sometimes tune in to.)
• That we do, even in some small degree, create our
own reality. Our destiny is literally in our own minds.
• Our minds, under certain circumstances, could create
the effects attributed to poltergeists, ghosts, and a host
of other so-called paranormal phenomena.
• That love is stronger than evil.
• That we are, in scientific fact, one with the universe.
Of course, all those mystics, yogi masters, religious nuts,
paranormal junkies, and New Age thinkers have known all
this is true for quite some time. It's just that now science
is proving it. And once this truth is widely known and accepted
by human beings, then we will have a powerful tool with
which to change our world. This is just the beginning.
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