Ur Kapitel 3:

Mind over Matter

Does mental intention directly affect the physical world, without an intermediary?
This question , posed by Dean Radin, director of the Consciousness Research Laboratory at the University of Nevada, is a crucial one if we are to argue the case of the soul. If the answer to this question is negative, the concept of spirit will pretty much remain a matter of philosophical discourse and religious faith. If the answer is positive, on the other hand, then the concept of spirit must be taken seriously, and may even be acknowledged as a possible creative force by mainstream science in the not too distant the future, perhaps even studied as such.

Fortunately for us, the answer to Radin's question turns out to be yes. The statistical and experimental evidence is quite overwhelming. So overwhelming in fact that few previously hardcore sceptics retain their opinion after reviewing the available data. Those who do remain sceptical seem to be more motivated by stubborn belief in a mechanistic view of the universe than by any actual power of reasoning. This should not come as any surprise, though, as Albert Einstein was ridiculed by most of his contemporaries in 1905 when he proposed his theory of relativity, and would himself not acknowledge any evidence produced in the field of quantum physics after 1920. Our frame of mind shapes our view of the universe, the consequences and evidences be damned. But this is beside the point and of little relevance for now, though of fundamental importance as we shall see towards the final chapters of this book. Let us therefore review some of the more recent research into mind over matter, or psychokinesis as it is also called, along with the arguments for and against the results.

Influencing Outcome

One of the best known and also one of the largest studies to date is the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) programme , established in 1979. The idea of undertaking research at PEAR into how mind may affect matter, or more specifically how conscious intent may affect sensitive electronic circuitry, originated from results achieved at Boeing Research Laboratories. These results implied that people and machines interacted on a quantum level in some inexplicable way.
Robert G. Jahn, Professor of Aerospace Sciences and Dean Emeritus of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University, was approached by a graduate student who wished to develop an electronic device which could measure these effects. Jahn, sceptic to the reported effects but open to the potential pedagogic benefit of the project, agreed to review the literature before committing himself to the project. Two years later Jahn was still sceptical, but felt a growing concern with the implications of the first experiments. The man/machine anomalies suggested that crucial electronic systems might be vulnerable in ways previously unknown. A thorough study into the matter was in order, and this resulted in the PEAR programme. What one set out to observe were "…interactions of human consciousness with various physical devices, systems, or processes resulting in statistical output characteristics significantly deviant from those expected on known scientific mechanisms."
More simply put, if and to what extent, mind influences matter or material devices. Supervising this research apart from Jahn were psychologists Brenda Dunne and Roger Nelson.

To determine if humans could influence the outcome of physical processes, without physical interaction, the team used a Random Number Generator (RNG), a system originally pioneered by physicist Helmut Schmidt at Boeing Industries mentioned above.

The main reason that a random numbers generator was selected as the "physical system" is the assumption that such a device should be easier to influence. This device produces zeroes and ones in a random pattern, as it is equally prone to produce either. Mentally nudging it in one direction or the other should therefore not demand any great mental effort, as this does not demand that the physical system behaves in any 'impossible' way.
During each individual trial, the subject of the experiment attempts to mentally influence the outcome of the generator in a particular way. The subject does not come into physical contact with the RNG or influence it in any known way. The possible results of the subject's intent will either have the random number generator display numbers around average, significantly above average or significantly below average. If the result is either one of the latter two, this will imply that human consciousness does indeed influence physical devises. It does not matter if the subject was aiming for an above average result yet achieved a below average result, the result will still indicate that intent or consciousness influenced the outcome (as it was not average). Thousands of trial tests were done over a span of several years at PEAR's laboratories. And did mind influence matter?

Yes, it did. Though the results were only slight, they were statistically significant. This means that by common scientific standards the results cannot be explained by pure chance, or at least that they are not explained as chance in any other scientific circumstances. And if the results cannot be explained as chance, or possibly by faulty experiments or forgery, two common arguments but invalid in this case , the only explanation left is that consciousness is the culprit.

If the PEAR laboratory was the only one to demonstrate the phenomena, one might perhaps argue that some unknown factor in this particular laboratory was responsible for the effect rather than consciousness, but this is not the case. Examining all the RNG experiments between 1959 to 1987, some 832 studies done by 68 different investigators, Radin and Nelson jointly concluded that overall results produced odds against chance by a trillion to one. That is to be compared with the corresponding control results, when RNGs were not influenced by anyone consciously, of well within the chance levels of two to one.

The overall effect of conscious intent was slight, calculated to be 51 percent, where pure 'randomness' would correspond to 50 percent, but this is beside the point. Mind affects matter, and an effect is still an effect, however slight. That there was any effect at all should be enough to shake the very foundations of scientific materialism, or scientism as this school of thought/faith is also called. The body of scientific evidence for mind over matter goes well beyond this however, as random number generators are only one of the many 'representatives' of the physical world that can be influenced by consciousness. The grandfathers of random number generators, dice, also seem to fall pray to human intent.

 

Experimet 2:

Influencing the Living

Though it is sufficient for us to know at the moment that consciousness affects the physical world, it is interesting to examine to what extent conscience can influence a living organism. It is after all our own living organism that our spirit must interact with, and this influence needs to be a bit more than slight. On the other hand it need not be absolute, as it is often said that we humans are body and soul, meaning that the both spirit and flesh influence us. It is not an uncommon theme that life is a battle between our 'higher' spiritual qualities and our more 'base' animal ones. Again, a discussion to save until later.

So are living organisms perhaps more sensitive to this kind of influence than are RNGs or dice? As the influencing force is consciousness, this would not seem to be an unreasonable assumption to make, if our hypothesis that spirit in the form of consciousness dwells at the core of our being. If spirit is the prime influence behind our own personal organism, why should it not be able to influence other organisms also? We will be looking at the interaction of consciousness and other living systems throughout this book, but one specific experiment springs naturally to mind at this point.

Peek-A-Boo

One of the most commonly experienced phenomena is the "feeling of being stared at". Maybe it's the hairs on the back of the neck that start to tingle, maybe it is a tickle at the base of the skull or just a strange sensation of being observed, but almost everybody seems to have experienced this particular sensation at one time or another. Even the feeling of "being thought of" is sometimes connected with physical phenomena. In many Anglo-Saxon cultures warm or reddening ears are jokingly attributed to that someone is thinking of the owner of the ears in question. So, is there any truth to this uncanny sensation and what folklore attaches to it?

When the feeling of being stared at is studied in the modern laboratory environment, the person observing and the person being observed are separated and placed in two different rooms. Various different devices are then connected to the person or subject about to be observed which monitor the autonomous nervous system, and the observer looks at the former through a closed-circuit video system. The observer is then randomly instructed to look at the subject over the video for different periods of time during the course of the experiment, and instructed not to look or in any other way concentrate on the subject during the intervals between these periods. The subject thus has no way of knowing when he or she is actually being stared at, and may not even be consciously aware of any reactions taking place in his or her nervous system, which is why monitoring is necessary.

Though the phenomena has been studied and modified in several different ways over the years, the size of the effects remain some of the highest reported. Size, in this case, means how often the subject reacts to being stared at. When chance expectation is represented by the value of 50 percent, the overall effect of all the studies is 63 percent. Compared to random number generators, this would have corresponded to a series of numbers that on average deviated largely rather than slightly from what would be expected by chance. As Dean Radin points out this is "remarkably robust for a phenomenon that - according to conventional scientific models - is not supposed to exist." There remains some controversy here, not concerning the reliability of the evidence per se but what it is actually evidence of. Though at first glance it seems a clear cut matter of psychokinesis, of one persons mind affecting the matter of another's body, what we might actually have evidence of here is telepathy. It is possible that the mind of the observer is unconsciously in contact with the mind of the subject, who in turn causes the physiological reactions in his or her own body. As will become evident in the next three chapters, it is impossible to say with any certainty which specific 'parapsychological' phenomena is being uncovered. As will also become evident this is of no major significance as any expression of consciousness moving outside its traditional scientific boundaries supports the soul and helps prove our case. And the boundary-breaking experiments are many.

Getting On Peoples Nerves

Psychologist William Braud has reported the largest systematic body of experiments into influencing humans solely through the effect of consciousness or mind. The many experiments contributing to this body of evidence were mainly conducted at the Mind Science Foundation in San Antonio, and consisted of participants attempting to influence the nervous systems of "receivers" both human and animal in nature. Senders and receivers were always separated from each other by distance, sometimes several miles, and sometimes by special soundproof and electromagnetically shielded rooms. The senders then attempted to mentally influence the receivers in various ways.

Measuring several different physiological effects, such as blood pressure and muscle tremor, the 37 different experiments comprising of 655 sessions, 153 senders and 449 receivers produced results in odds against chance of more than a hundred trillion to one. That is, the likelihood that the effects measured in the nervous systems of the receivers were simply due to chance corresponds to the likelihood that if you flip a coin it would land on the same side more than 46 times in a row. If you do not find this very impressive, imagine instead a roulette table that consists not of the numbers 1 through 36 but 1 through 100 000 000 000 000. Such a table would, if it was square, have sides some 300 kilometres long and if you wanted to place a bet somewhere in the middle you would have to walk several days to get to the 3 by 3 centimetre square that has your lucky number inscribed. Of course, when the giant wheel finally stopped rolling, if the little white ball did not end up on your number your bet would go to the house. The house here representing the reality of psychokinesis or some other phenomenon that is not supposed to exist according to the traditional materialist view of the world.

Unless these experiments were seriously flawed (such as the comparative coin having the same image on both sides or the gigantic wheel being rigged), which no one so far has managed to demonstrate, we have here an unbelievable amount of evidence in supporting consciousness effect on other living systems. But perhaps it takes more than this unbelievable amount of evidence if people are to believe something as unbelievable as mind influencing matter.

If this were not enough to seriously reconsider our view of the universe and the role of consciousness therein, there exist at least a further 130 publications dealing with similar experiments of consciousness influencing living systems. The living systems in these cases have not only been humans but everything from cell cultures, plants, mice, hamsters and dogs. Of these studies 56 reported results with odds against chance of a hundred to one or better. These odd 130 experiments taken together result in odds against chance of more than a trillion to one, making another robust case for mind over matter.

 

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