“Consciousness Creates Reality” – Physicists Admit The Universe Is Immaterial, Mental & Spiritual

 

November 11, 2014 by Arjun Walia. Co-Evolution/ Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science
 

“Consciousness creates reality,” a statement that has gained a lot of attention across various alternative media outlets around the world. Make no mistake, consciousness has (and has been for quite some time) studied by numerous scientists, especially in its relation to quantum physics and how it might be correlated with the nature of our reality.

What is consciousness? Consciousness includes a number of things. It’s how we perceive our world, our thoughts, being aware, our intentions and more.

“Looking for consciousness in the brain is like looking in the radio for the announcer.” – Nasseim Haramein

The statement that “consciousness creates reality” comes with a number of different questions. Does this mean we as individuals (and on a collective level as one human race) can shape and create whatever reality we’d like for ourselves? Does it mean we can manifest a certain lifestyle, and attract certain experiences? Does it happen instantly? Does it take time? How do we do it?

Although we might not be able to answer these questions with absolute scientific certainty, we do know that yes, a correlation between consciousness and our physical material world does indeed exist in some way, shape or form. The extent of that correlation (again from a modern day scientific point of view) is still not well understood, but we know of the correlation, and we know it must have some sort of significance.

“A fundamental conclusion of the new physics also acknowledges that the observer creates the reality. As observers, we are personally involved with the creation of our own reality. Physicists are being forced to admit that the universe is a “mental” construction. Pioneering physicist Sir James Jeans wrote: “The stream of knowledge is heading toward a non-mechanical reality; the universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine. Mind no longer appears to be an accidental intruder into the realm of matter, we ought rather hail it as the creator and governor of the realm of matter. Get over it, and accept the inarguable conclusion. The universe is immaterial-mental and spiritual.”  – R.C. Henry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University ,  “The Mental Universe” ; Nature 436:29,2005) (source)

The Science Behind The Statement “Consciousness Creates Reality”

The quantum double slit experiment is a very popular experiment used to examine how consciousness and our physical material world are intertwined. It is a great example that documents how factors associated with consciousness and our physical material world are connected in some way.

One potential revelation of this experience is that “the observer creates the reality.” A paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Physics Essays by Dean Radin, PhD, explains how this experiment has been used multiple times to explore the role of consciousness in shaping the nature of physical reality. (source)

In this experiment, a double-slit optical system was used to test the possible role of consciousness in the collapse of the quantum wave-function. The ratio of the interference pattern’s double slit spectral power to its single slit spectral power was predicted to decrease when attention was focused toward the double slit as compared to away from it. The study found that factors associated with consciousness “significantly” correlated in predicted ways with perturbations in the double slit interference pattern. (source)

“Observation not only disturbs what has to be measured, they produce it. We compel the electron to assume a definite position. We ourselves produce the results of the measurement.” (source)

Although this is one of the most popular experiments used to posit the connection between consciousness and physical reality, there are several other  studies that clearly show that consciousness, or factors that are associated with consciousness are directly correlated with our reality in some way. A number of experiments in the field of parapsychology have also demonstrated this.

Sure, we might not understand the extent of this connection, and in most cases scientists can’t even explain it. However they are, and have been observed time and time again.

Below is a video  demonstration from the film “What The Bleep Do We Know.”

Other examples that we’ve written about are government sponsored psychokinesis experiments, the global consciousness experiment, intelligence agency remote viewing experiments, thoughts and intentions altering the structure of water, the placebo effect, teleportation studies and more. You can find more details about those specific experiments HERE.

Some other related CE articles that relate to this subject are listed below:

Buddhist Monks Bless Tea With Good Intention

Fascinating Study Shows Human Intention Can Help Heal Cancer Patients

How We Can Incorporate This Information Into Our Lives & Use Consciousness To Transform The World

Change requires action, but the place within which that action comes from is most important.

Modern day science, especially quantum physics, has been catching up to ancient mysticism and concepts that are/were so deeply ingrained in various cultures throughout the ancient world. One great example of this is the fact that everything is energy , and nothing is solid. You can read more about that here.

“We are what we think, all that we are arises with our thoughts, with our thoughts we make the world.” – Gautama Buddha

“Broadly speaking, although there are some differences, I think Buddhist philosophy and Quantum Mechanics can shake hands on their view of the world. We can see in these great examples the fruits of human thinking. Regardless of the admiration we feel for these great thinkers, we should not lose sight of the fact that they were human beings just as we are.” – Dalai Lama (source)

A great example of quantum physics meeting ancient wisdom is seen in the fact that Nikola Tesla was influenced by Vedic philosophy when pondering his ideas of zero point energy. You can read more about that here.

So why is this relevant? It’s relevant because new physics, as mentioned above, is pointing to the fact that the observer shapes the reality. The way we think and perceive could be  responsible and play a vital role in the physical construct we see in front of us.

“No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” - Unknown

If we look at the world and examine it on a collective level, what do we see? How do we perceive it? Right now, the masses perceive it as being born, going to school, paying bills, raising a family and finding a “job” within the current paradigm to support yourself. No judgement here, but many people on the planet are not resonating with this experience. They want change. We’ve been repeating and perceiving our reality this way for a very long time, with very little information about what is really happening on and to our planet. It’s almost like we are robotic drones that are trained and brainwashed to accept things the way they are. To not question what is happening in our world and to continue on with the status quo, only caring for ourselves and our own lives. As Noam Chomsky would say, our consent has been manufactured. If we continue down this path and continue to perceive and view reality as “this is just the way it is,” we will, in essence, prolong that type of existence and experience for the human race without ever changing it.

In order to create and manifest a new reality for ourselves, our thought patters and the way we perceive reality must change. What changes the way we perceive reality? Information does. When new information emerges it changes the way we look at things and as a result, our reality changes, and we begin to manifest a new experience and open our minds to a broader view of reality. Not to say that we can’t manifest a new physical form in the blink of an eye, and that we are not capable of doing that, but it appears to be something that takes time, something gradual, something we don’t quite understand yet.

What’s also important about teachings from new physics is that, if factors of consciousness are associated with the creation of our reality, that means change starts within. It starts with the way in which we are observing the outer world from our inner world. This touches on the earlier point of how we perceive our reality. Our perception of the external world might very well be a reflection of our inner world, our inner state of being. So ask yourself, are you happy? Are you observing, perceiving and acting from a place of love? From a place of hate or anger? From a place of peace? All of these factors are associated with our consciousness, with our observation, the one (or the many) who are doing the “observing” might play a large role in what type of physical world the human race manifests for itself, what do you think?

We are indeed the observers,  can we create change and break patterns to open up new possibilities, change our direction, all through the way in which we observe ourselves, others and the world around us.

I believe that the human race is in the process of waking up to a number of different things, simultaneously. As a result, the way we perceive and “observe” the world around us (on a mass scale) is starting to drastically change. So if you want to help change the world, change the way you look at things, and the things you look at will change.

“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Ghandi

“There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.” This statement (worldview statement) was by Lord Kelvin in 1900, which was shattered only five years later when Einstein published his paper on special relativity. The new theories proposed by Einstein challenged the current (at that time) framework of understanding. This forced the scientific community to open up to an alternate view of the true nature of our reality. A great example of how things that once were regarded as truth have changed.

“Lord Kelvins statements bares with it the voice of paradigms past…We knew that the Earth was flat, we knew that we were the center of the universe, and we knew that a manmade heavier than air piece of machinery could not take flight. Through all stages of human history, intellectual authorities have pronounced their supremacy by ridiculing or suppressing elements of reality that simply didn’t fit within the framework of accepted knowledge. Are we really any different today? Have we really changed our acceptance towards things that won’t fit the frame? Maybe there are concepts of our reality we have yet to understand, and if we open our eyes maybe we will see that something significant has been overlooked.” – Terje Toftenes (source)

——–

What the (Bleep) Were They Thinking?

April 18, 2005

Blogger Ref http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science

I decided to see “What The (Bleep) Do We Know!?” (sic!). I had avoided this film, as it looked like what Murray Gell-Mann calls quantum flapdoodle - distortions of quantum physics to support a mystical viewpoint. But the “what the bleep” meme is growing, so I decided I should see it for myself. Now I’ve seen it I can confirm that it does distort quantum physics to support a mystical viewpoint. But it is much more than that. Much worse. Hilariously so, in fact.
This post is rather long, but please read it to the end – there is a surprise there that will astonish you, I promise. But I should start with the science. Or, I should say:

The “science”

The premise of the film is that quantum mechanics proves a conscious observer is necessary to create reality. The conclusion is we literally create reality with our thoughts.
Unfortunately the theory of quantum mechanics does not say this. The film makers are confusing the theory of quantum mechanics with an interpretation of quantum mechanics. This is an explanation to help understand what might be going on, but it is not part of the theory because it is not falsifiable: it cannot be tested in such a way that, if it were false, it would fail the test (without falsifying the whole of quantum mechanics, and therefore all the other interpretations too).
To falsify this interpretation you would have to see what would happen without a conscious observer monitoring the experiment. But that’s Catch-22: you need a conscious observer monitoring the experiment to see what happens. You can’t look at the experiment without looking at it so no one can ever know if this interpretation is true. Even if it were true, extrapolating to “we literally create reality by out thoughts” is applying reductionism to an absurd level.
Don’t believe me? You don’t have to because David Albert, the professor from the Columbia University physics department who was featured in the film, is quoted in Salon.com saying:

I was edited in such a way as to completely suppress my actual views about the matters the movie discusses. I am, indeed, profoundly unsympathetic to attempts at linking quantum mechanics with consciousness. Moreover, I explained all that, at great length, on camera, to the producers of the film ... Had I known that I would have been so radically misrepresented in the movie, I would certainly not have agreed to be filmed.
(My bold.)

The ironic thing is that the film makers tell us quantum mechanics is oh-so-mysterious and can’t be explained - and then they explain it. I am reminded of Richard Feynman’s famous quote, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics". These film makers think they understand quantum mechanics. They don’t, but that doesn’t stop them from making a film explaining it. But it’s just a consciousness-of-the-gaps explanation: we can’t explain it so it must be consciousness.
Any one of the many interpretations could be correct. Or none of them might be correct, and the correct explanation is something not yet thought of. Quantum mechanics is not telling us this is the way the universe necessarily is.

Baaaad examples

So they have the theory wrong, but they must have some good examples, right? Wrong. They have three bad examples. Appallingly bad, actually.
The first was the claim that when Columbus arrived in the West Indies, the natives were literally unable to see his ships. Why? Because they had never seen ships before, so ships did not exist in their reality.
I had to rewind the film to make sure I hadn’t missed the part where they said this was just a fable. But they were stating it as fact. This idea is just too dumb to be considered seriously. Even if true, how could anyone verify it? I have searched the web for the source of this story to no avail, and conclude the film makers just made it up.
The second example was of the supposed “Maharishi Effect.” John Hagelin of the Maharishi University, described how in 1993, violent crime in Washington D.C. was reduced over a two month period, by 4000 people practicing transcendental meditation (TM).
There were many problems with this experiment. One was that the murder rate rose during the period in question. Another was that Hagelin’s report stated violent crime had been reduced by 18% (in the film he says 25%), but reduced compared with what? How did he know what the crime rate would have been without the TM? It was discovered later that all the members of the “independent scientific review board” that scrutinized the project were followers of the Maharishi. The study was pseudoscience: no double blinding, the reviewers were not independent, and the experiment has never been independently replicated. Hagelin deservedly won an Ig Nobel Prize in 1994 for this outstanding piece of work.
The third example was the work of Masura Emoto, who tapes words to bottles of water. The water is chilled and forms into crystals descriptive of the words used. For example, if the word “love” is taped to a bottle, beautiful crystals form; if the words “you make me sick” are used, ugly images appear.
What the film makers didn’t say is that Emoto knows the word used, and looks for a crystal that matches that word (biased data selection). To demonstrate a real effect, Emoto would need to be blind to the word used. James Randi has said that if Emoto could perform this experiment double-blinded, it would qualify for the million dollar prize. (He has never applied.) Such a protocol would show there is no correlation between the words taped to a bottle and the crystals formed within. These experiments have not been performed to a scientific protocol and have never been independently replicated.

Pert scam

The next segment was about neuro-peptides, how they are created in the brain, and regulate other cells in the body. This was presented as another example of how the human brain (consciousness), creates reality. None of this would be new to anyone who has read Candace Pert’s “Molecules of Emotion”. Pert is a talented scientist who went woo woo many years ago for reasons I don’t have time to go into here. (Edited to add: see my May 2005 review of Molecules of Emotion.)  Suffice to say she has made many dubious claims, including this in the film:

Each cell has a consciousness, particularly if we define consciousness as the point of view of an observer.

I think what she saying is that when one cell interacts with another, it fulfills the role of the “observer” in quantum mechanics. Well OK, but by that definition my toaster is conscious. It’s such a general definition of consciousness as to be meaningless: consciousness has to include some degree of self-awareness.  There is no evidence I’ve heard of that individual cells are conscious.
This was followed by someone claiming he literally creates his day with his thoughts, plus some feel-good drivel about god and self that almost put me to sleep. At the end, the main character in the film throws away her prescription meds because, since she creates her own reality, she doesn’t need them. (Don’t try this at home.) And that was it.

Channel No. 5

One thing that puzzled me was who were all the talking heads? I recognized a couple, but who was the bizarre guy who claimed he creates his day just by thinking about it, and who was the heavy-set blonde woman in the boxy red suit making the weird pronouncements in a funny accent? Normally in a documentary, the experts are introduced when they first appear. But here they introduced them after the end of the film. I was amused to see the guy who creates his own day, was a chiropractor. But when I found out the identity of the blonde woman, my eyes nearly popped out. I figured you wouldn’t believe me if I just told you, so I took a screenshot of it:

In case you can’t read the text, it says:

Ramtha
Master Teacher – Ramtha School of Enlightenment
Channeled by JZ Knight

They are stating as a fact, that one of the people you have been listening to for the previous 90 minutes, a main authority for the information being presented, is a 35,000 year old warrior spirit from Atlantis, being channeled by this Tacoma housewife turned cult leader. The woman pictured is JZ Knight, but you are not listening to JZ Knight. You are literally listening to Ramtha. There were people who saw this film and didn’t say, “That’s just a woman putting on a funny accent”. Scary, huh?
At this point the film lost any remaining pretence of being based on any kind of science or facts.
I did a little digging on Ramtha:

Ramtha is a 35,000 year-old spirit-warrior who appeared in J.Z. Knight’s kitchen in Tacoma, Washington in 1977.  Knight claims that she is Ramtha’s channel. She also owns the copyright to Ramtha and conducts sessions in which she pretends to go into a trance and speaks Hollywood’s version of Elizabethan English in a guttural, husky voice.  She has thousands of followers and has made millions of dollars performing as Ramtha at seminars ($1,000 a crack) and at her Ramtha School of Enlightenment, and from the sales of tapes, books, and accessories (Clark and Gallo 1993). She must have hypnotic powers. Searching for self-fulfillment, otherwise normal people obey her command to spend hours blindfolded in a cold, muddy, doorless maze.

Upon further investigation I find the films’ producers, writers, directors, and a number of the featured “experts” are members of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. The film is a propaganda piece for a cult.

What the (Bleep) Were They Thinking?

I can answer that now. They were thinking that if they made a film using the word “quantum” a lot, plus plenty of feel-good drivel they would (a) make a ton of money (not that they are short of the stuff), and (b) gain more recruits to their loony-tunes cult. This is probably one of the few things they got right.

References

Some further reading if you’re interested.  First a good expose of the film as infomercial for Ramtha, by Salon.com.
A site with masses of information about Ramtha.
A blog with information about some of the talking heads.
A blog with some comments about Hagelin. Read the comments section.
An amusing review of the movie by Orkut Media.
CSICOP’s review of the film.
Skeptic Magazine’s review of the film.
A really good explanation of the real science involved, as opposed to the fanciful "what The Bleep" version of it. 
Bloggingheads interview with David Albert about his role in the film and how they edited his piece to distort his views.
And for the other side of the story, read the film makers’ reply to their critics. If you have any remaining doubt about the criticisms of this movie, read this. It is an (unintentionally) hilarious martyr piece where they blame the media for “publicly crucify(ing) people with new ideas”, and where they say the US government and way of life, not Ramtha, is a cult. All the usual fallacies are in evidence: scientists were wrong before so they are wrong now, we only use 10% of our brain, the film’s critics feel discomfort in their mindset (ie it is not the film makers’ fault the film makes no sense, it is our fault).  Plenty of fallacies and playing victim. Nothing to refute the criticisms.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to Tez for reviewing and making suggestions about the quantum mechanics section.




Article taken from ....Skeptico

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'Quantum Cheshire Cat' becomes reality

By James Morgan Science reporter, BBC News July 2014
Blogger Ref Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science

The Cheshire Cat mysteriously disappeared leaving only his mischievous grin

Scientists have for the first time separated a particle from one of its physical properties - creating a "quantum Cheshire Cat".

The phenomenon is named after the curious feline in Alice in Wonderland, who vanishes leaving only its grin.

Researchers took a beam of neutrons and separated them from their magnetic moment, like passengers and their baggage at airport security.

They describe their feat in Nature Communications.

The same separation trick could in principle be performed with any property of any quantum object, say researchers from Vienna University of Technology.........

Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!”

End Quote Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

..........Their technique could have a useful application in metrology - helping to filter out disturbances during high-precision measurements of quantum systems.

Schrodinger's paradox
In Lewis Carroll's classic children's story, the Cheshire Cat gradually disappears, leaving only its mischievous grin.

This prompts Alice to exclaim: "Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin, but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in my life!"

In the world familiar to us, an object and its properties are always bound together. A rotating ball, for instance, cannot become separated from its spin.

The cat (the neutron) goes via the upper beam path, while its grin (the magnetic moment) goes via the lower

But quantum theory predicts that a particle (such as a photon or neutron) can become physically separated from one of its properties - such as its polarisation or its magnetic moment (the strength of its coupling to an external magnetic field).

"We find the cat in one place, and its grin in another," as the researchers once put it.

The feline analogy is a nod to Schrodinger's Cat - the infamous thought experiment in which a cat in a box is both alive and dead simultaneously - illustrating a quantum phenomenon known as superposition.

To prove that the Cheshire Cat is not just a cute theory, the researchers used an experimental set-up known as an interferometer, at the Institute Laue-Langevin (ILL) in Grenoble, France.

A neutron beam was passed through a silicon crystal, sending it down two different paths - like passengers and their luggage at airport security.

By applying filters and a technique known as "post-selection", they were able to detect the physical separation of the neutrons from their magnetic moment - as measured by the direction of their spin.

"The system behaves as if the neutrons go through one beam path, while their magnetic moment travels along the other," the researchers reported.

The high flux neutron source at the ILL made the weak signal of the 'Cheshire Cat' detectable

Glimpsing this Cheshire Cat requires what quantum physicists call "weak measurement," whereby you interact with a system so gently that you avoid collapsing it from a quantum state to a classical one.

Their delicate apparatus could have useful applications in high-precision metrology, the researchers say.

"For example, one could imagine a situation in which the magnetic moment of a particle overshadows another of the particle's properties which one wants to measure very precisely.

"The Cheshire Cat effect might lead to a technology which allows one to separate the unwanted magnetic moment to a region where it causes no disturbance to the high-precision measurement of the other property."

Remote Viewing..

Blogger Reference Link http://www.p2pfoundation.net/Multi-Dimensional_Science

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[show]Part of a series of articles on theparanormal

Remote viewing
Claims	Believers say anyone can useparanormal ability to see hidden, distant locations usingextra-sensory perception.
Related scientific disciplines	Physics, Biology, Psychology
Year proposed	1974
Original proponents	Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff
Subsequent proponents	Ingo Swann, Russell Targ,Joseph McMoneagle, andCourtney Brown
Pseudoscientific concepts

Remote viewing (RV) is the practice of seeking impressions about a distant or unseen target using paranormal means, in particular, extra-sensory perception (ESP) or "sensing with mind". Unlike traditional psychic practices, remote viewers use physical models to organize their alleged extra-sensory perceptions and to stabilized the virtual umwelt.Scientific studies have been conducted, some earlier, less sophisticated experiments produced positive results but they had invalidating flaws,^[1] and none of the newer experiments had positive results when under properly controlled conditions.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The scientific community rejects remote viewing due to the absence of an evidence base, the lack of a theory which would explain remote viewing, and the lack of experimental techniques which can provide reliably positive results.^[7] It is also considered apseudoscience.^[8]

Typically a remote viewer is expected to give information about an object that is hidden from physical view and separated at some distance.^[9][10] The term was coined in the 1970s by Russell Targ and Harold Puthoff, parapsychology researchers at Stanford Research Institute, to distinguish it from clairvoyance.^[2]

Remote viewing was popularized in the 1990s, following the declassification of documents related to the Stargate Project, a $20 million research program sponsored by the U.S. Federal Government to determine any potential military application of psychic phenomena. The program was eventually terminated in 1995, because it had failed to produce any useful intelligence information.^[3][4]

Contents   [hide]  ·         1 History o    1.1 Early background o    1.2 US government-funded research o    1.3 Decline and termination o    1.4 UK government research o    1.5 PEAR's Remote Perception program ·         2 Scientific studies and claims ·         3 Recent research ·         4 Selected RV study participants ·         5 References ·         6 External links

[edit]History

Early background

The study of psychic phenomena by major scientists started in the mid-nineteenth century; early researchers included Michael Faraday,Alfred Russel Wallace, Rufus Osgood Mason and William Crookes. Their work predominantly involved carrying out focused experimental tests on specific individuals who were thought to be psychically gifted. Reports of apparently successful tests were met with much skepticism from the scientific community.

Later, in the 1930s, J. B. Rhine expanded the study of paranormal performance into larger populations, by using standard experimental protocols with unselected human subjects. But, as with the earlier studies, Rhine was reluctant to publicize this work too early, because of the fear of criticism from mainstream scientists.^[11]

This continuing skepticism, with its consequences for peer review and research funding, ensured that paranormal studies remained a fringe area of scientific exploration. However, by the 1960s, the countercultural attitudes of the time muted some of the prior hostility. The emergence of New Age thinking and the popularity of the human potential movement provoked a "mini-renaissance" that renewed public interest in consciousness studies and psychic phenomena, and helped to make financial support more available for research into such topics.^[12]

In the early 1970s, Harold E. Puthoff and Russell Targ joined the Electronics and Bioengineering Laboratory at Stanford Research Institute (SRI)^[13]. In addition to their mainstream scientific research work on quantum mechanics and laser physics, they initiated several studies of the paranormal. These were supported with funding from the Parapsychology Foundation and the newly-formedInstitute of Noetic Sciences.

One of the early experiments, lauded by proponents as having improved the methodology of remote viewing testing and as raising future experimental standards, was criticized as leaking information to the participants by inadvertently leaving clues.^[14] Some later experiments had negative results when these clues were eliminated.

US government-funded research

From World War II until the 1970s the US government occasionally funded ESP research. When the US intelligence community learned that the USSR and China were conducting ESP research, it became receptive to the idea of having its own competing psi research program. (Schnabel 1997)

In 1972, Puthoff tested remote viewer Ingo Swann at SRI, and the experiment led to a visit from two employees of the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology. The result was a $50,000 CIA-sponsored project. (Schnabel 1997, Puthoff 1996,^[15] Kress 1977/1999^{[citation needed]}, Smith 2005) As research continued, the SRI team published papers in Nature,^[16] in Proceedings of the IEEE(Puthoff & Targ, 1976),^[17] and in the proceedings of a symposium on consciousness for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (Puthoff, et al., 1981^{[citation needed]}).

The initial CIA-funded project was later renewed and expanded. A number of CIA officials, including John N. McMahon (then the head of the Office of Technical Service and later the Agency's deputy director), became strong supporters of the program.

In the mid 1970s sponsorship by the CIA was terminated and picked up by the Air Force. In 1979, the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, which had been providing some taskings to the SRI investigators, was ordered to develop its own program by the Army's chief intelligence officer, General Ed Thompson. CIA operations officers, working from McMahon's office and other offices, also continued to provide taskings to SRI's subjects. (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005, Atwater 2001)

In 1984, remote viewer Joseph McMoneagle was awarded a legion of merit for determining "150 essential elements of information...producing crucial and vital intelligence unavailable from any other source".^[18]

Unfortunately, the viewers' advice in the "Stargate project" was always so unclear and non-detailed that it has never been used in any intelligence operation.^[2][4][3] Despite this, SRI scientists and remote viewers have claimed that a number of "natural" psychics were crucial in a number of intelligence operations. The most famous claimed results from these years were the description of "a big crane" at a Soviet nuclear research facility by Pat Price (Kress 1977/1999, Targ 1996^{[citation needed]}) and Joseph McMoneagle,^[19] a description of a new class of Soviet strategic submarine by a team of three viewers which included McMoneagle,(Smith 2005, McMoneagle 2002) and Rosemary Smith's location of a downed Soviet bomber in Africa^[20]. By the early 1980s numerous offices throughout the intelligence community were providing taskings to SRI's psychics, (Schnabel 1997, Smith 2005) but the collaboration never resulted in useful intelligence information.^[2][4][3]

Decline and termination

In the early 1990s the Military Intelligence Board, chaired by DIA chief Soyster, appointed an Army Colonel, William Johnson, to manage the remote viewing unit and evaluate its objective usefulness. Funding dissipated in late 1994 and the program went into decline. The project was transferred out of DIA to the CIA in 1995.

In 1995, the CIA hired the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to perform a retrospective evaluation of the results generated by the Stargate project. Reviewers included Ray Hyman and Jessica Utts. Utts maintained that there had been a statistically significantpositive effect,^[21] with some subjects scoring 5%-15% above chance.^[3] Hyman argued that Utts' conclusion that ESP had been proven to exist, "is premature, to say the least."^[22] Hyman said the findings had yet to be replicated independently, and that more investigation would be necessary to "legitimately claim the existence of paranormal functioning."^[22] Based upon both of their studies, which recommended a higher level of critical research and tighter controls, the CIA terminated the 20 million dollar project in 1995.^[4] Timemagazine stated in 1995 that three full-time psychics were still working on a $500,000-a-year budget out of Fort Meade, Maryland, which would soon be shut down.^[4]

The AIR report concluded that no usable intelligence data was produced in the program.^[3] David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research said, "There's no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community."^[4]

UK government research

In 2001–2002 the UK Government performed a study on 18 untrained subjects. The experimenters recorded the E field and H fieldaround each viewer to see if the cerebral activity of successful viewings caused higher-than-usual fields to be emitted from the brain. However, the experimenters did not find any evidence that the viewers had accessed the targets in the data collection phase, the project was abandoned, and the data was never analyzed since no RV activity had happened. Some "narrow-band" E-fields were detected during the viewings, but they were attributed to external causes. The experiment was disclosed in 2007 after a Freedom of Information request.^[5]

PEAR's Remote Perception program

Following Utts' emphasis on replication and Hyman's challenge on interlaboratory consistency in the AIR report, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab conducted several hundred trials to see if they could replicate the SAIC and SRI experiments. They created an analytical judgment methodology to replace the human judging process that was criticized in past experiments, and they released a report in 1996. They felt the results of the experiments were consistent with the SRI experiments.^[23]

In 2007 the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Lab laboratory was closed.^[24]

Scientific studies and claims

According to psychologist David Marks in experiments conducted in the 1970s at the Stanford Research Institute, the notes given to the judges contained clues as to which order they were carried out, such as referring to yesterday's two targets, or they had the date of the session written at the top of the page. Dr. Marks concluded that these clues were the reason for the experiment's high hit rates.^[1][25]

Marks has also suggested that the participants of remote viewing experiments are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly.^[26] Details and transcripts of the SRI remote viewing experiments themselves were found to be edited and even unattainable.^[27][28]

The information from the Stargate Project remote viewing sessions was vague and included a lot of irrelevant and erroneous data, it was never useful in any intelligence operation, and project managers changed the reports so they would fit background cues.^[3]

According to James Randi, controlled tests by several other researchers, eliminating several sources of cuing and extraneous evidence present in the original tests, produced negative results. Students were also able to solve Puthoff and Targ's locations from the clues that had inadvertently been included in the transcripts.^[6]

Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI) has said that he agrees remote viewing has been proven using the normal standards of science, but that the bar of evidence needs to be much higher for outlandish claims that will revolutionize the world, and thus he remains unconvinced:^[29]

I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do. (...) if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence. Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionize [sic] the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence.

—Richard Wiseman Daily Mail, January 28, 2008, pp 28–29 ^[29]

Wiseman also pointed at several problems with one of the early experiments at SAIC, like information leakage. However, he indicated the importance of its process-oriented approach and of its refining of remote viewing methodology, which meant that researchers replicating their work could avoid these problems.^[7] Wiseman later insisted there were multiple opportunities for participants on that experiment to be influenced by inadvertent cues and that these cues can influence the results when they appear.^[14]

Psychologist Ray Hyman says that, even if the results were reproduced under specified conditions, they would still not be a conclusive demonstration of the existence of psychic functioning. He blames this on the reliance on a negative outcome—the claims on ESP are based on the results of experiments not being explained by normal means. He says that the experiments lack a positive theory that guides as to what to control on them and what to ignore, and that "Parapsychologists have not come close to (having a positive theory) as yet".^[30] Ray Hyman also says that the amount and quality of the experiments on RV are way too low to convince the scientific community to "abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles", due to its findings still not having been replicated successfully under careful scrutiny.^[31]

Science writer Martin Gardner, and others, describe the topic of remote viewing as pseudoscience.^[8][32] Gardner says that founding researcher Harold Puthoff was an active Scientologist prior to his work at Stanford University, and that this influenced his research at SRI. In 1970, the Church of Scientology published a notarized letter that had been written by Puthoff while he was conducting research on remote viewing at Stanford. The letter read, in part: "Although critics viewing the system Scientology from the outside may form the impression that Scientology is just another of many quasi-educational quasi-religious 'schemes,' it is in fact a highly sophistical and highly technological system more characteristic of modern corporate planning and applied technology."^[8] Among some of the ideas that Puthoff supported regarding remote viewing was the claim in the book Occult Chemistry that two followers of Madame Blavatsky, founder of theosophy, were able to remote-view the inner structure of atoms.^[8]

Various skeptic organizations have conducted experiments for remote viewing and other alleged paranormal abilities, with no positive results under properly controlled conditions. Some of the organizations would provide large monetary rewards to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural power under fraud-proof and fool-proof conditions.^[33] For the largest paranormal research institution, theJames Randi Educational Foundation, out of all of the applicants who applied for the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, nobody has even passed the preliminary tests.^[34]

Recent research

Recent studies into remote viewing suggest positive results.^[35][36][37]Michael Persinger, Cognitive neuroscientist and professor atLaurentian University has published increases in remote viewing accuracy of remote viewer Ingo Swann, as measured by a group of ratings of congruence (between Swann's drawings and the locale being 'viewed') by 40 experimentally blind participants^[35]during stimulation with complex magnetic fields using a circumcerebral (around the head) eight-channel system. In 2010, Persinger (et al.) published a report of his work with the psychic Sean Harribance,^[38] reporting that blind-rated accuracies in his psychic insights correlated with specific Quantitative Electroencephalography profiles; specifically, congruence between activity over the left temporal lobe of those being 'read' by Mr. Harribance and his right temporal lobe.^[37] "The results indicate even exceptional skills previously attributed to aberrant sources are variations of normal cerebral dynamics associated with intuition and may involve small but discrete changes in proximal energy."

Selected RV study participants

§  Ingo Swann, one of the prominent research participants of remote viewing. He wrote a book about his experience:

§  Kiss the Earth Good-bye: Adventures and Discoveries in the Nonmaterial, Recounted by the Man who has Astounded Physicists and Parapsychologists Throughout the World by Ingo Swann, Hawthorne Books, 1975

§  Pat Price, one of the early remote viewers

§  Russell Targ, cofounder of the investigation at Stanford Research Institute^[13] into psychic abilities in the 1970s and 1980s

§  Joseph McMoneagle, one of the early remote viewers.^[39] See: Stargate Project

§  Courtney Brown, founder of the Farsight Institute

§  David Marks, the critic of remote viewing, after finding sensory cues and editing in the original transcripts generated by Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff at Stanford Research Institute in the 1970s

References

Footnotes

1.     ^ ^a b Marks, D.F. & Kammann, R. (1978). "Information transmission in remote viewing experiments", Nature, 274:680–81.

2.     ^ ^a b c d Joe Nickell (March 2001), "Remotely Viewed? The Charlie Jordan Case", Skeptical Inquirer

3.     ^ ^{a b c d e f g} "An Evaluation of Remote Viewing: Research and Applications" by Mumford, Rose and Goslin "remote viewings have never provided an adequate basis for ‘actionable’ intelligence operations-that is, information sufficiently valuable or compelling so that action was taken as a result (...) a large amount of irrelevant, erroneous information is provided and little agreement is observed among viewers' reports. (...) remote viewers and project managers reported that remote viewing reports were changed to make them consistent with know background cues (...) Also, it raises some doubts about some well-publicized cases of dramatic hits, which, if taken at face value, could not easily be attributed to background cues. In at least some of these cases, there is reason to suspect, based on both subsequent investigations and the viewers' statement that reports had been "changed" by previous program managers, that substantially more background information was available than one might at first assume."

4.     ^ ^{a b c d e f g} Time magazine, 11 December 1995, p.45, The Vision Thing by Douglas Waller, Washington

5.     ^ ^a b "Remote Viewing". UK's Ministry of Defence. June 2002, disclosed in 2007-02-23. p. 94 (page 50 in second pdf).

6.     ^ ^a b c Randi & Clarke, An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural "Remote viewing" definition "The data of Puthoff and Targ were reexamined by the other researchers, and it was found that their students were able to solve the locations without use of any psychic powers, using only the clues that had inadvertently been included in the Puthoff and Targ transcripts."

7.     ^ ^a b Wiseman, R. & Milton, J. (1999). "Experiment One of the SAIC Remote Viewing Program: A critical reevaluation"(PDF). Journal of Parapsychology 62 (4): 297–308. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website

8.     ^ ^a b c d Gardner, Martin (2000). Did Adam and Eve have navels? : debunking pseudoscience. New York: W.W. Norton.ISBN 978-0-393-32238-5.

9.     ^ Leonard Zusne, Warren H. Jones (1989). Anomalistic psychology: a study of magical thinking. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. pp. 167. ISBN 0-8058-0508-7.

10.   ^ Search for the Soul by Milbourne Christopher, Thomas Y. Crowell, 1979

11.   ^ Hyman R, "Parapsychological Research: A Tutorial Review and Critical Appraisal", Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol 74 No 6, pp 823–849, June 1986.

12.   ^ Wade N, "Psychical Research: the Incredible in Search of Credibility", Science, 181, July 13, 1973, pp 138–143.

13.   ^ ^a b SRI International is now an independent research institute, unconnected with Stanford University.

14.   ^ ^a b Wiseman, R. & Milton, J. (1999). "Experiment one of the SAIC remote viewing program: A critical re-evaluation. A reply to May." (PDF). Journal of Parapsychology 63 (1): 3–14. Retrieved 2008-06-26.
* Obtained from listing of research papers on Wiseman's website

15.   ^ Puthoff, 1996. Journal of Scientijc Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 63-76

16.   ^ Nature 251, 602-607 (18 October 1974)

17.   ^ Puthoff & Targ, 1976. A perceptual channel for information transfer over kilometer distances: Historical perspective and recent research, Proceedings of the IEEE, March 1976, Volume: 64 Issue:3, page(s): 329 - 354 [1]

18.   ^ Edwin C. May, "The American Institutes for Research Review of the Department of Defense's STAR GATE Program", Journal of Parapsychology. 60. 3-23. March 1996. Also in published as [2] Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 89-107, 1996

19.   ^ Sergei Nechiporuk (2004-12-06). "CIA's remote viewers initiated quest for WMD in Iraq. Extrasensory agents helped the CIA arrest KGB spies and detect secret objects in the USSR".Pravda.

20.   ^ Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate, America's Psychic Espionage Program by Paul H. Smith, Tom Doherty, 2005, p.100

21.   ^ An assessment of the evidence for psychic functioning Julia Utts

22.   ^ ^a b Hyman, Ray. "Evaluation of a Program on Anomalous Mental Phenomena". Journal of Society for Scientific Exploration Volume 10: Number 1: Article 2. Society for Scientific Exploration. Archived from the original on June 3, 2008. Retrieved 2008-06-24.

23.   ^ "Precognitive Remote Perception: Replication of Remote Viewing" (PDF). Journal of Scientific Exploration (Society for Scientific Exploration) 10 (1): 109–110. 1996. Archived from the original on 2008-04-07. Retrieved 2008-06-02.

24.   ^ Carey, Benedict (2007-02-06). "A Princeton Lab on ESP Plans to Close Its Doors". New York Times. Retrieved 2007-08-03.

25.   ^ "A comprehensive review of major empirical studies in parapsychology involving random event generators or remote viewing" by Alcock, J.

26.   ^ Marks, D.F. (2000). The Psychology of the Psychic. Amherst, New York:Prometheus Books.

27.   ^ "The Psychology of the Psychic" by David Marks and Richard Kamman, Prometheus Books. Amherst, New York, 2000, 2nd edition.
* note: 1st edition, 1980, does not contain all of this information
* Book review of 2nd edition: James Alcock (January–February, 2002). "Even better the second time 'round. . - book review" (–^{Scholar search}). Skeptical Inquirer. Archived from the originalon May 15, 2006. Retrieved 2008-06-26.^{[dead link]}

28.   ^ Flim Flam by James Randi, Prometheus books, New York, 1987, 9th printing

29.   ^ ^a b Penman, Danny (January 28, 2008). "Could there be proof to the theory that we're ALL psychic?". Daily Mail UK. pp. 28–29. Retrieved 2008-01-29.

30.   ^ "Because even if Utts and her colleagues are correct and we were to find that we could reproduce the findings under specified conditions, this would still be a far cry from concluding that psychic functioning has been demonstrated. This is because the current claim is based entirely upon a negative outcome – the sole basis for arguing for ESP is that extra-chance results can be obtained that apparently cannot be explained by normal means. But an infinite variety of normal possibilities exist and it is not clear than one can control for all of them in a single experiment. You need a positive theory to guide you as to what needs to be controlled, and what can be ignored. Parapsychologists have not come close to this as yet." – Ray Hyman, The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1996 [3]

31.   ^ "What seems clear is that the scientific community is not going to abandon its fundamental ideas about causality, time, and other principles on the basis of a handful of experiments whose findings have yet to be shown to be replicable and lawful." – Ray Hyman, The Evidence for Psychic Functioning: Claims vs. Reality Skeptical Inquirer, March/April 1996

32.   ^ Bennett, Gary L. (NASA, Washington, DC) (1994) (PDF).Heretical science – Beyond the boundaries of pathological science. Washington, DC: American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. pp. 1207–1212. ISBN AIAA-1994-4003.

33.   ^ List of prizes for evidence of the paranormal

34.   ^ Challenge Info

35.   ^ ^a b Persinger, MA; Roll, WG; Tiller, SG; Koren, SA; Cook ., CM (2002). "Remote viewing with the artist Ingo Swann: neuropsychological profile, electroencephalographic correlates, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and possible mechanisms.". Perceptual and Motor Skills. 94 (3 Pt1): 927–949. PMID 12081299.

36.   ^ "Sean Harribance".

37.   ^ ^a b Hunter, Matthew; Mulligan, Bryce P; Dotta, Blake; Saroka, Kevin; Lavallee, Christina; Koren, Stanley; Persinger, Michael (2010). "Cerebral Dynamics and Discrete Energy Changes in the Personal Physical Environment During Intuitive-Like States and Perceptions". Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 1 (9): 1179–1197.

38.   ^ "Sean Harribance".

39.   ^ Mind Trek: Exploring Consciousness, Time, and Space Through Remote Viewing by Joseph McMoneagle, Hampton Roads, Publishing Co., Inc., 1997

Bibliography

§  Edward A. Dames, Tell Me What You See: Remote Viewing Cases from the World's Premier Psychic Spy. Wiley, 2010. ISBN 09780470581773

§  David Marks, Ph.D., "The Psychology of the Psychic (2nd edn.)" Prometheus Books, 2000. ISBN 1-57392-798-8

§  Courtney Brown, Ph.D., Remote Viewing : The Science and Theory of Nonphysical Perception. Farsight Press, 2005. ISBN 0-9766762-1-4

§  David Morehouse, Psychic Warrior, St. Martin's, 1996, ISBN 0-312-96413-7

§  Jim Schnabel, Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies, Dell, 1997 , ISBN 0-440-22306-7

§  Paul H. Smith, Reading the Enemy's Mind: Inside Star Gate—America's Psychic Espionage Program, Forge, 2005, ISBN 0-312-87515-0

§  Ronson, Jon, The Men who Stare at Goats, Picador, 2004, ISBN 0-330-37547-4, written to accompany the TV series The Crazy Rulers of the World [4] The military budget cuts after Vietnam and how it all began.

§  Buchanan, Lyn, The Seventh Sense: The Secrets Of Remote Viewing As Told By A "Psychic Spy" For The U.S. Military, ISBN 0-7434-6268-8

§  F. Holmes Atwater, Captain of My Ship, Master of My Soul: Living with Guidance, Hampton Roads 2001, ISBN 1-57174-247-6

§  McMoneagle, Joseph, The Stargate Chronicles: Memoirs of a Psychic Spy, Hampton Roads 2002, ISBN 1-57174-225-5

§  Targ, Russell & Puthoff, Harold, Information transmission under conditions of sensory shielding, Nature 251, 602-607 (18 October 1974) doi:10.1038/251602a0 Letter0

[edit]External links

§  "Seeing is Believing", Fortean Times visits the Monroe Institute, a remote viewing laboratory

§  "Scientific Remote Viewing", article at CSICOP

§  "Remote Viewing", entry on Skeptics Dictionary.

§  "Remote viewing" Study for U.K. Ministry of Defence 2001–2002, obtained through Freedom of Information Act

§  "Visual History Map" A complete visual map of remote viewing History and its participants]

§  The Truth About Remote Viewing: The psychic technique of remote viewing is consistent with simple, well known magic tricks.,Skeptoid

§  Remote Viewing Institute

§  The Arlington Institute Presents Dr. Harold (Hal) Puthoff

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