News from the IONS Research Department
FRONTIERS
T E L E PA T H Y, I N S I D E A N D O U T
W hen more than one Chondestes grammacus
gathers (commonly known as the Lark
Sparrow), we refer to the group as an
exaltation of larks. Other curious terms
for collectives include a charm of hummingbirds, a
parliament of owls, and an implausibility of gnus. In
August 2005 on the IONS campus another implausible
gathering occurred—a haunting of parapsychologists.
This fortuitous event came about because IONS hosted
the 48th annual convention of the Parapsychological
Association (PA). The PA is an international scientific
society interested in the study of psychic experiences,
evidence for survival of bodily death, reincarnation,
near-death and out-of-body experiences, and reports of
apparitions and poltergeist activity.
There are no shortage of societies and groups devoted
to these interests.The PA’s distinction is that its members—
about 300 rare birds—approach these phenomena from
a scientific perspective; most hold advanced degrees in
After three decades and thousands
of [ganzfeld telepathy experiments],
the overall observed hit rate is about
34 percent, which is astronomically
beyond chance expectation.
conventional disciplines. In recognition of its dedication
to a scientific approach, since 1969 the PA has been an
elected affiliate of the largest scientific organization in
the world, the American Association for the Advancement
of Science.
I’ll briefly describe two talks that illustrate progress in
understanding telepathy.The first was presented by Leila
Kozak from the Bastyr University/University of
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Washington Consciousness Science Laboratory. Kozak
described an experiment investigating correlations
in brain activity between people at a distance who had
practiced a meditation technique called “Primordial Sound
Meditation,” developed by celebrated author Deepak Chopra.
Volunteers who had been practicing Primordial Sound
Meditation for at least two years were asked to meditate
with a partner each day for 30 days prior to participating
in the experiment.A total of 16 people were recruited for
the study; each pair came to the laboratory on three
separate occasions. When arriving at the lab, they first
meditated together for 30 minutes, and then they were
separated into two rooms about 10 meters apart. Each
person was connected to an electroencephalograph (EEG)
monitor to record his or her brainwaves, and at random
times one of the pair (say, Jack) was exposed to a flashing
checkerboard pattern or an equivalent length control
period with a static (nonflashing) checkerboard. The
flashing pattern was used to create the well-known
“visual evoked response” in Jack’s brain. Meanwhile, Jack’s
partner (say, Jill) was sitting quietly in the distant room.After
collecting 150 periods of flashing stimuli and 150 control
periods with Jack sending, the experimenters reversed
their roles and now Jill was exposed to the stimuli while
Jack sat quietly. If telepathic connections are real, then the
prediction was that Jill’s brain ought to become more
activated when Jack was viewing the stimuli, and vice versa.
The study confirmed the prediction (p = 0.0001), and
it replicated similar findings recently reported by labs in
Scotland, Germany, and at IONS. These experiments
suggest that when pairs of people keep each other in
mind, their brainwaves become more intercorrelated than
one would predict based on conventional theories of
brain-mind interaction.This provides an objective proof
of principle that telepathic-like interconnections between
mind-brains exist, but what these studies do not measure
is what’s happening subjectively, inside the minds of both
Jack and Jill.
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 of S C I E N C E
DREW GALLOWAY. PHOTO: JEANNE CLAYTON
To learn more about the experiential side of telepathy,
we turn to a second presentation, by James Carpenter of
the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina.
Carpenter analyzed hundreds of experimental telepathy
studies conducted in the ganzfeld condition (Ganzfeld
is a German word for “whole field”). His idea was that
perhaps certain kinds of subjective states are more
receptive to telepathic information, or more accurately able
to perceive what the sender is trying to mentally convey.
The ganzfeld experiment involves asking a telepathic
receiver to sit in a reclining chair while listening to
headphones playing white noise and while wearing halved
ping-pong balls over the eyes. A red light is then aimed at
the participant’s face so that with eyes open or closed only
a soft red light is seen.While relaxing in this condition,
many people report experiencing mild visual and auditory
hallucinations, similar to the hypnogogic state. While a
distant sender views a one-minute video clip, the receiver
is asked to speak aloud or mentate their ongoing
experience.After the sender views the video clip 10 times,
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the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld condition and
shown 4 video clips in a random order: One is the target
clip and three are decoys.The task is to select the right
target; by chance it would be selected 1 in 4 times, or 25
percent. After three decades and thousands of such tests,
the overall observed hit rate is about 34 percent, which
is astronomically beyond chance expectation.
So telepathy is being demonstrated in these experiments,
but what have we learned about the experience of telepathy?
Based on an examination of the mentation transcripts from
364 ganzfeld sessions, Carpenter developed 36 rating scales
that quantified the receiver’s experience. He asked
independent raters who didn’t know whether a session
had been a “hit” or “miss” to use these scales to judge each
transcript.The scales included items such as physical and
cognitive aspects of imagery, defense mechanisms, and
the use of color or luminosity.
From these dimensions of inner experience, Carpenter
formed a model to predict the results of a ganzfeld
session. He found that successful sessions were associated
with experiences of positive imagery, a fluid progression
of imagery over time, images with a sense of shape
and luminosity that carried a sense of persistence and
autonomy, as well as images that exhibited a sense of
harmony. Failed sessions were associated with complex
images, a sense of anxiety, and over-intellectualization.
Then the analysts examined another set of 251 ganzfeld
transcripts to see if the model would predict those
outcomes; it did (p = 0.002). Mentation transcripts
predicted to produce positive results actually did obtain
an overall hit rate of 40 percent, and those predicted to
do poorly got the chance-expected 25 percent hit rate.
The multifaceted nature of human interconnectedness
is a tremendously complex problem, ensuring that progress
in understanding will be slow for many decades to come.
But with dedicated scientists chipping away at the
puzzle from many angles, progress will also remain steady.
The next haunting of parapsychologists is anticipated to
take place in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden.
DEAN RADIN, PHD
IONS Senior Scientist
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