The Field

by Lynne McTaggart

  23 D. Radin and D. C. Ferrari, ‘Effect of consciousness on the fall of dice: a meta-analysis’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1991; 5: 61 – 84.

  24 Broughton, Parapsychology: 177.

  25 Radin, Conscious Universe: 140.

  26 Radin and Nelson, ‘Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies’.

  27 D. Radin and R. Nelson, ‘Meta-analysis of mind – matter interaction experiments, 1959 – 2000’, unpublished, www.boundaryinstitute.org.

  28 Radin and Nelson, ‘Evidence for consciousness-related anomalies’.

  29 R. D. Nelson, ‘Effect size per hour: a natural unit for interpreting anomalous experiments’, PEAR Technical Note 94003, September 1994.

  30 W. Braud, ‘Wellness implications of retroactive intentional influence: exploring an outrageous hypothesis’, Alternative Therapies, 2000; 6(1): 37 – 48.

  31 For the explanation and analogy of effect size, see Radin, Conscious Universe: 154 – 5; also W. Braud, ‘Wellness implications’.

  32 René Peoc’h, ‘Psychokinetic action of young chicks on the path of an ‘illuminated source’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1995; 9(2): 223.

  33 R. Jahn and B. Dunne, Margins of Reality: 242 – 59.

  34 B. J. Dunne, ‘Co-operator experiments with an REG device’, PEAR Technical Note 91005, December 1991.

  35 Interview with Brenda Dunne, Princeton, June 23, 1998.

  36 Jahn and Dunne, Margins: 257.

  37 Jahn et al., Correlations: 356; also interview with Brenda Dunne, Princeton, June 23, 1998.

  38 B. J. Dunne, ‘Gender differences in human/machine anomalies’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1998; 12(1): 3 – 55.

  39 Interview with Brenda Dunne, Princeton, June 23, 1998.

  40 Interview with Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Amsterdam, October 19, 2000.

  41 R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, ‘ArtREG: a random event experiment utilizing picture preference feedback’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2000: 14(3): 383 – 409.

  42 Interview with Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Amsterdam, October 19, 2000.

  43 R. Jahn, ‘A modular model of mind/matter manifestations’, PEAR Technical Note 2001.01, May 2001.

  44 Ideas in this paragraph: discussion with Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, Amsterdam, October 19, 2000; also R. Jahn, ‘Modular Model’.

  45 Jahn and Dunne, ‘Science of the subjective’.

  CHAPTER SEVEN: SHARING DREAMS

  1 Description of the Amazon indians from a study being conducted by The Institute of Noetic Sciences, which appeared in M. Schlitz, ‘On consciousness, causation and evolution’, Alternative Therapies, July 1998; 4(4): 82 – 90.

  2 R. S. Broughton, Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (New York: Ballantine, 1991): 91 – 2.

  3 Interview with William Braud, California, October 25, 1999.

  4 Interview with William Braud, California, October 25, 1999.

  5 D. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (HarperEdge: New York, 1997); also D. J. Bierman (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers, 37th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, Amsterdam (Fairhaven, Mass.: Parapsychological Association, 1994): 71.

  6 Broughton, Parapsychology: 98.

  7 C. Tart, ‘Physiological correlates of psi cognition’, International Journal of Parapsychology, 1963: 5; 375 – 86; also interview with Charles Tart, California, October 29, 1999.

  8 D. Delanoy, now of the University of Edinburgh, has carried out similar studies, e.g. D. Delanoy and S. Sah, ‘Cognitive and psychological psi responses in remote positive and neutral emotional states’, in Bierman (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers.

  .), 9 C. Tart, ‘Psychedelic experiences associated with a novel hypnotic procedure: mutual hypnosis’, in C. T. Tart (edAltered States of Consciousness (New York: John Wiley, 1969): 291 – 308.

  10 W. Braud and M. J. Schlitz, ‘Consciousness interactions with remote biological systems: anomalous intentionality effects’, Subtle Energies, 1991; 2(1): 1 – 46.

  11 M. Schlitz and S. LaBerge, ‘Autonomic detection of remote observation: two conceptual replications’, in Bierman (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers: 465 – 78.

  12 W. Braud et al., ‘Further studies of autonomic detection of remote staring: replication, new control procedures and personality correlates’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1993; 57: 391 – 409. These studies were replicated by Schlitz and LaBerge, ‘Autonomic detection’.

  13 W. Braud and M. Schlitz, ‘Psychokinetic influence on electrodermal activity’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1983; 47(2): 95 – 119.

  14 W. Braud et al., ‘Attention focusing facilitated through remote mental interaction’, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1995; 89(2): 103 – 15.

  15 M. Schlitz and W. Braud, ‘Distant intentionality and healing: assessing the evidence’, Alternative Therapies, 1997: 3(6): 62 – 73.

  16 W. Braud and M. Schlitz, Psychokinetic influence on electrodermal activity’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1983; 47: 95 – 119. Braud’s studies were also independently replicated at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Nevada. D. Delanoy, ‘Cognitive and physiological psi responses to remote positive and neutral emotional states’, in Bierman (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers: 1298 – 38; also R. Wezelman et al., ‘An experimental test of magic: healing rituals’, in E. C. May (ed.), Proceedings of Presented Papers, 39th Annual Parapsychological Association Convention, San Diego, Calif. (Fairhaven, Mass.: Parapsychological Association, 1996): 1 – 12.

  17 W. Braud and M. Schlitz, ‘A methodology for the objective study of transpersonal imagery’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1989; 3(1): 43 – 63.

  18 W. G. Braud, ‘Psi-conducive states’, Journal of Communication, 1975; 25(1): 142 – 52.

  19 Broughton, Parapsychology: 103.

  20 Proceedings of the International Symposium on the Physiological and Biochemical Basis of Brain Activity, St Petersburg, Russia, June 22 – 4, 1992; see also Second Russian – Swedish Symposium on New Research in Neurobiology, Moscow, Russia, May 19 – 21, 1992.

  21 R. Rosenthal, ‘Combining results of independent studies’, Psychological Bulletin, 1978; 85: 185 – 93.

  22 Radin, Conscious Universe: 79.

  23 W. G. Braud, ‘Honoring our natural experiences’, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1994; 88(3): 293 – 308.

  24 Years later, this very idea became the subject of a book. L. Dossey’s Be Careful What you Pray For … You Just Might Get It (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997) provides exhaustive examples of the power of negative thoughts to harm and also how to protect yourself from them.

  25 W. G. Braud, ‘Blocking/shielding psychic functioning through psychological and psychic techniques: a report of three preliminary studies’, in R. White and I. Solfvin (eds), Research in Parapsychology, 1984 (Metuchen, NY: Scarecrow Press, 1985): 42 – 4.

  26 W. G. Braud, ‘Implications and applications of laboratory psi findings’, European Journal of Parapsychology, 1990 – 91; 8: 57 – 65.

  27 W. Braud et al., ‘Further studies of the bio-PK effect: feedback, blocking, generality/ specificity’, in White and Solfvin (eds), Research in Parapsychology: 45 – 8.

  28 D. Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980).

  29 E. Laszlo, The Interconnected Universe: Conceptual Foundations of Transdisciplinary Unified Theory (Singapore: World Scientific, 1995): 101.

  30 J. Grinberg-Zylberbaum and J. Ramos, ‘Patterns of interhemisphere correlations during human communication’, International Journal of Neuroscience, 1987; 36: 41 – 53; J. Grinberg-Zylberbaum et al., ‘Human communication and the electrophysiological activity of the brain’, Subtle Energies, 1992; 3(3): 25 – 43.

  31 These have been explored in detail by Ian Stevenson; see I. Stevenson, Children Who Remember Previous Lives (Charlottesville, Va: University Press of Virginia, 1987).

  32 Laszlo, Interconnected Universe: 102 – 3.
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  33 Braud, Honoring Our Natural Experiences.

  34 Indeed, Marilyn Schlitz and Charles Honorton carried out an experiment showing that artistically gifted individuals were better at ESP than the ordinary population. See M. J. Schlitz and C. Honorton, ‘Ganzfeld psi performance within an artistically gifted population’, The Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1992; 86(2): 83 – 98.

  35 L. F. Berkman and S. L. Syme, ‘Social networks, host resistance and mortality: a nine-year follow-up study of Alameda County residents,’ American Journal of Epidemiology, 1979; 109(2): 186 – 204.

  36 L. Galland, The Four Pillars of Healing (New York: Random House, 1997): 103 – 5.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: THE EXTENDED EYE

  1 C. Backster, ‘Evidence of a primary perception in plant life’, International Journal of Parapsychology, 1967; X: 141. Hal’s paper ‘Toward a quantum theory of life process’, written in 1972, was never published. ‘With 30 years’ hindsight, and the lack of un-ambiguous verification of either the Backster effect or tachyons – the two lynchpins of this proposal – it seems somewhat naïve. But it got me started,’ wrote Puthoff to the author on March 15, 2000. He also notes: ‘By the way, I never did get to do the proposed experiment.’

  2 H. Puthoff, ‘Toward a quantum theory of life process’.

  3 G. R. Schmeidler, ‘PK effects upon continuously recorded temperatures’, Journal of the American Society of Psychical Research, 1997; 67(4), cited in H. Puthoff and R. Targ, ‘A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: historical perspective and recent research’, Proceedings of the IEEE, 1976; 64(3): 329 – 54.

  4 S. Ostrander and L. Schroeder, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (now abridged in Psychic Discoveries, New York: Marlowe & Company, 1997), published in 1971, caused a flood of concern about so-called ‘psychic warfare’.

  5 J. Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America’s Psychic Spies (New York: Dell, 1997): 94 – 5.

  6 Hank Turner is a pseudonym of a CIA employee referred to as ‘Bill O’Donnell’ in Schnabel’s book.

  7 For entire description of the West Virginia military installation facility and Pat Price, see Schnabel, Remote Viewers: 104 – 13.

  8 H. Puthoff and R. Targ, ‘Final report, covering the period January 1974 – February 1975 Part II – Research Report, December 1, 1975, Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, SRI Project 3183; also H. E. Puthoff, ‘CIA-initiated remote viewing program at Stanford Research Institute, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1996; 10(1): 63 – 75.

  9 R. Targ, Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (Novato, Calif: New World Library, 1999): 46 – 7; D. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (New York: HarperEdge, 1997): 25 – 6.

  10 C. A. Robinson, Jr, ‘Soviets push for beam weapon’, Aviation Week, May 2, 1977.

  11 Interview with Edwin May, California, October 25, 1999.

  12 H. Puthoff, ‘CIA-initiated remote viewing program at Stanford Research Institute’.

  13 Interview with Hal Puthoff, January 20, 2000; also Schnabel, Remote Viewers.

  14 H. Puthoff, ‘Experimental psi research: implication for physics’, in R. Jahn (ed.), The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, AAA Selected Symposia Series (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1981): 41.

  15 R. Targ and H. Puthoff, Mind-Reach: Scientists Look at Psychic Ability (New York: Delacorte Press, 1977): 50.

  16 Schnabel, Remote Viewers: 142.

  17 Puthoff and Targ, ‘Perceptual channel’: 342.

  18 Ibid.: 338.

  19 Ibid.: 330 – 1.

  20 Ibid.: 336.

  21 B. Dunne and J. Bisaha, ‘Precognitive remove viewing in the Chicago area: a replication of the Stanford experiment’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1979; 43:17 – 30.

  22 Radin, Conscious Universe: 105.

  23 L. M. Kogan, ‘Is telepathy possible?’ Radio Engineering, 1966; 21 (Jan): 75, quoted in Puthoff and Targ, ‘Perceptual channel’: 329 – 53.

  24 H. Puthoff and R. Targ, ‘Final report, covering the period January 1974 – February 1975 Part II – Research Report, December 1, 1975, Perceptual Augmentation Techniques, SRI Project 3183: 58.

  25 Telephone interview with Hal Puthoff, January 20, 2000; see also Targ and Puthoff, Mind-Reach.

  26 Schnabel, Remote Viewers: 74 – 5.

  27 Interview with Edwin May and Dean Radin, California, October 25, 1999.

  28 Various telephone interviews with Hal Puthoff, August 2000.

  29 J. Utts, ‘An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1996; 10: 3 – 30.

  CHAPTER NINE: THE ENDLESS HERE AND NOW

  1 R. Targ and J. Katra, Miracles of Mind: Exploring Nonlocal Consciousness and Spiritual Healing (Novato, Calif: New World Library, 1999): 42 – 4.

  2 B. J. Dunne and R. G. Jahn, ‘Experiments in remote human/machine interaction’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1992; 6(4): 311 – 32.

  3 In all the SRI experiments, they never found a limit to the distance over which the channel worked. Many years later, in an ironical reversal of the SRI studies, Russell Targ would have a Russian psychic in Moscow do a remote viewing of an unknown target site in San Francisco. Djuna Davitashvili, a noted Russian psychic healer, who had never done remote-viewing experiments before, was asked to describe where a colleague of theirs was at the time in a location in San Francisco even unknown to Targ. After being shown his photo, she correctly described a plaza with a merry-go-round (eventually Targ was told that the colleague was standing in front of one at a plaza on San Francisco’s Pier 39). The picture she drew of both the plaza and of the carousel’s horses bore a remarkable similarity to the actual site. For a full account, see R. Targ and J. Katra, Miracles of Mind: 29 – 36.

  4 For the Chicago, Arizona and Moscow remote-viewing experiment, R. G. Jahn and B. J. Dunne, Margins of Reality (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987): 162 – 7.

  5 For the NASA and irrigation-ditch examples, Jahn and Dunne, Margins: 188.

  6 D. Radin, The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena (New York: HarperEdge, 1997): 113 – 4; R. Broughton, Parapsychology: The Controversial Science (New York: Ballantine, 1991): 292.

  7 For an excellent summary of this and other precognitive studies, see Radin, The Conscious Universe: 111 – 25.

  8 R. S. Broughton, Parapsychology: 95 – 7.

  9 Ibid.: 98. Maimonides wasn’t the first to scientifically document dreams. In the early part of this century, J. W. Dunne conducted experiments with subjects and their dreams, scientifically demonstrating that what people dreamed largely came true. J. W. Dunne, An Experiment in Time (London: Faber, 1926).

  10 As it happened, Radin’s expectation that he’d reached a safe haven to carry out his research was premature. As soon as he published a book on psychic research and began to attract some media attention, the University refused to renew his contract. He was left to find work in privately funded research projects. At the time of writing, he is working at the Institute of Noetic Sciences.

  11 For a full description of the Radin experiment, see Radin, Conscious Universe: 119 – 24.

  12 D. J. Bierman and D. I. Radin, ‘Anomalous anticipatory response on randomized future conditions’, Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1997; 84: 689 – 90.

  13 D. J. Bierman, ‘Anomalous aspects of intuition’, paper presented at the Fourth Biennial European meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration, Valencia, October 9-11, 1998; also interview with Professor Bierman, Valencia, October 9, 1998.

  14 D. I. Radin and E. C. May, ‘Testing the intuitive data sorting model with pseudorandom number generators: a proposed method’, in D. H. Weiner and R. G. Nelson (eds), Research in Parapsychology 1986 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1987): 109 – 11. For a description of the test, see Broughton, Parapsychology: 137 – 9.

  15 Broughton, Parapsychology: 175 – 6; also telephone i
nterviews with Helmut Schmidt, May 2001.

  16 H. Schmidt, ‘Additional affect for PK on prerecorded targets’, Journal of Parapsychology, 1985; 49: 229 – 44; ‘PK tests with and without preobservation by animals’, in L. S. Henkel and J. Palmer (eds), Research in Parapsychology 1989 (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1990): 15 – 9, in W. Braud, ‘Wellness implications of retroactive intentional influence: exploring an outrageous hypothesis’, Alternative Therapies, 2000, 6(1): 37 – 48.

  17 R. G. Jahn et al., ‘Correlations of random binary sequences with pre-stated operator intention: a review of a 12-year program’, Journal of Scientific Exploration, 1997; 11(3): 345 – 67.

  18 Braud, ‘Wellness implications’.

  19 J. Gribbin, Q Is for Quantum: Particle Physics from A to Z (Phoenix, 1999): 531 – 4.

  20 Radin, various telephone interviews in 2001.

  21 E. Laszlo, The Interconnected Universe, Conceptual Foundations of Transdisciplinary Unified Theory (Singapore: World Scientific, 1995): 31.

  22 D. Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (London: Routledge, 1980): 211.

  23 Ibid.

  24 Braud, ‘Wellness implications’.

  CHAPTER TEN: THE HEALING FIELD

  1 Interview with Elisabeth Targ, California, October 28, 1999.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Both experiments, B. Grad, ‘Some biological effects of “laying-on of hands”: a review of experiments with animals and plants’, Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, 1965; 59: 95 – 127.

  4 L. Dossey, Be Careful What You Pray For … You Just Might Get It (HarperSan-Francisco, 1997): 179.

  5 B. Grad, ‘Dimensions in “Some biological effects of the laying on of hands” and their implications,’ in H. A. Otto and J. W. Knight (eds), Dimensions in Wholistic Healing: New Frontiers in the Treatment of the Whole Person (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1979): 199 – 212.

  6 B. Grad, R. J. Cadoret and G. K. Paul, ‘The influence of an unorthodox method of treatment on wound healing in mice’, International Journal of Parapsychology, 1963; 3: 5 – 24.