Consciousness contemplates no more profound or perplexing question than this: what is its role in the establishment of reality? In one extreme view, endorsed by much of traditional Western science and philosophy and exemplified by modern pragmatic materialism, the mind of man is relegated to a passive processor of experience imposed by a totally deterministic external world--a mere visitor meandering through the grand museum of life. In the opposite extreme, espoused by numerous and enduring mystical traditions of many cultures and eras, all experience is presumed to be created by the consciousness, so that any tangible reality ultimately traces to illusion. Until quite recently, scholarly search for the most satisfying and pragmatic balance between these divergent perspectives has necessarily proceeded on hypothetical and qualitative grounds, since formidable epistemological and technical obstacles have opposed direct experimental investigation of the topic.
This book reexamines the role of consciousness in the light of a new body of experimental data on the interaction of human operators with various technical devices and information-processing systems. Many philosophical fibers are required to sift these results into a coherent model; but once the essential concepts are in place, human consciousness indeed emerges endowed with an active component. By virtue of the manner in which it exchanges information with its environment, orders that information, and interprets it, consciousness has the ability to bias probabilistic processes, and thereby to avail itself of certain margins of reality.
A 16-year empirical assessment of anomalous human/machine interactions provides strong evidence that consciousness can add information to otherwise random digital strings. A parallel program of remote perception studies establishes the inverse process: the anomalous acquisition of information about distant physical targets. Remarkably, neither of these extraordinary capabilities show any dependence on either the distance or the time separating the participant from the target. The relevance of these consciousness abilities to human health follows from recognition that physiology entails a myriad of subtle information processes, all of which involve some degree of randomicity in their normal functions, and thus may be similarly influenced by conscious volition.
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Several million experimental trials investigating the ability of human operators to affect the output of various random physical devices have demonstrated small but statistically significant shifts of the distribution means that correlate with operator intention, exhibit repeatable idiosyncratic individual variations, and display consistent patterns of gender dependence, series position development, and internal distribution structure. These effects also appear to be statistically independent of distance and time. In a complementary program of remote perception studies, experimental protocols and analytical scoring methods have been developed to demonstrate and quantify information acquired by individuals about distant geographical locations without the use of normal sensory channels. A wave-mechanical approach to modeling consciousness/environment interactions, based on a metaphorical application of quantum concepts and formalisms, has proven useful in predicting and interpreting the empirical findings and in guiding the development of more incisive experiments.
Assessment of 270 individual databases produced by 135 human operators in five local and four remote human/machine anomalies experiments conducted in the PEAR laboratory between 1979 and 1993 reveals significant gender-related differences in performance. The 140 databases produced by 62 females are much larger on average than the 130 produced by 73 males, but the average male results display significantly stronger correlations with the operators' pre-recorded intentions to shift the output distribution means of a variety of random devices to higher or lower values. Both groups demonstrate greater success in the high-intention efforts than in the low, but whereas a majority of the males succeed in both directions of effort, producing intentional results that are relatively symmetrical in comparison with their empirical baselines, most of the females' low-intention results are opposite to intention and their baselines tend to high values. The female data also frequently display larger score distribution variances. These gender-related patterns are more pronounced in five local experiments than in four remote databases. No gender differences are found in the two experiments that yield null overall results, suggesting that the gender-related patterns observed in the successful experiments are indicative characteristics of the primary human/machine anomalies.
Comparing effects in different experiments is not generally possible because the effects are measured on differing scales. Yet, especially in anomalies research, such comparisons are important for both theoretical and practical purposes. This exploration seeks to identify a study unit that can render results from various types of anomalies experiments in a common scale. The units in which experiments are posed range across digital and analog measures recorded in a wide variety of defined trials and series, and apparently fundamental units such as bit rates yield disparate calculated effect sizes and potentially misleading inter-experiment comparisons. Across several databases generated in the consistent environment of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory, the number of series and the number of hours are the most promising of several measures considered, but the series definitions are somewhat arbitrary, depending as they do on operator convenience and statistical power considerations. In contrast, the amount of time during which participants attempt to produce anomalous effects can be consistently defined, and the effect size E(h) = Z/sqrt N is demonstrably similar across a number of human/machine experiments, with a magnitude of about 0.2.
Application to abroad range of experiments, including examples from other laboratories, confirms the viability and utility of a time-based effect size calculation. A Chi-square test across 12 local and remote databases from PEAR's human/machine experiments indicates strong homogeneity, while addition of the remote perception database, which has a significantly larger effect size (E (h) = 0.6), immediately renders the distribution of effect sizes heterogeneous. These and other applications yield reasonable and instructive results that recommend the time-based measure as a natural unit for cross-experiment comparisons permitting an integrated view of anomalies research results.
Enduring philosophical convictions about the proactive capacity of human consciousness to insert information into its physical environment and thereby to influence its reality are confirmed by a large experimental program and its complementary theoretical model. A fifteen-year empirical assessment of anomalous human/machine interactions provides inconvertible evidence that consciousness, via its own pre-stated volition, can add information to otherwise random digital strings. A parallel program of remote perception studies establishes the inverse process: the anomalous acquisition of information from physical targets. Remarkably, both of these extraordinary capacities of consciousness show no dependence on either the distance or the time separating the participant from the target. These features, along with many other indicators established in the experiments, guide formulation of a theoretical model where in consciousness / environment interactions are represented by a generalized form of quantum wave mechanics that confirms the role of resonance, or bonding, in anomalous information exchange. Application of these consciousness abilities to human health follows directly from recognition that physiology employs a myriad of subtle information processes, all of which involve some degree of randomicity in their normal functions, and that these may be similarly influenced by conscious volition. In this context, as in fact in all others, the requisite resonance is clearly a focused form of "love, in a very general sense."
Since 1979, a large ensemble of carefully controlled experiments have explored the effect of human volition on the output distributions of various random physical devices and systems. These extensive databases constitute strong evidence for the correlation of marginal but highly significant shifts of the output distribution means, relative to theoretical expectations and to unattended calibrations, with human operators' pre-recorded intentions, in many cases, distinctive individual "signatures" of achievement are observed, suggesting operator-specific modes of interaction that entail differing responses to certain secondary aspects of the experimental protocol, such as whether the direction of effort is volitionally chosen vs. randomly assigned, the experimental run length, and others. The anomalous mean shifts display little dependence on the physical distance between operator and device, up to several thousand miles, or on the relative times of machine operation and operator effort, up to many hours. In instances where two operators function together with a shared intention, gender pairing is observed to be a more relevant parameter than any direct combination of their individual patterns of achievement. In virtually all cases of significant mean shift, the interior details of the output distributions display linear patterns of count deviations from their corresponding chance values that are consistent with operator-specific, infinitesimal changes in the elemental binary probability underlying the random processes.
The inability of prevailing theories to accommodate such phenomena has prompted development of a rudimentary model postulating that physical reality is constituted only in the interpenetrating of consciousness and its physical environment. As such, any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts and formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics are appropriated via metaphor to model the general characteristics of consciousness as in such interactions. By representing consciousness as a quantum mechanical wave function and the environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schrtronger wave mechanics can be applied to define eigenfunctions of experience that prove useful in interpreting the experiments and suggesting successive refinements of them. Further insights follow from transcribing various quantum mechanical principles, such as Exclusion, Correspondence, Indistinguishability, Uncertainty, and, into more explicit consciousness terms and applying them to specific experimental situations. From much of this treatment, the concept of resonant bonding emerges as a primary criterion for the establishment of consciousness-related anomalous effects.
In properly allying itself with traditional scientific tenets and procedures, anomalies research also risks encumbrance by scientific stodginess, scientific segregation, and scientific secularity. In particular, the contemporary rejection by established science of its own metaphysical heritage and essence precludes its further evolution into physical and biological domains where consciousness plays demonstrably active roles. Some orderly rapprochement of subjective and objective experience and representation within the scientific paradigm will be required to make it effective in such arenas.
Anomalous consciousness-related phenomena of possible relevance to basic physical science and modern engineering practice are addressed experimentally and theoretically in an effort to identify those devices, systems, and processes most likely to display operator-related anomalies in their performance, and to illuminate the characteristics of such aberrations. Three interrelated sectors of effort are pursued: the design, implementation, operation and interpretation for experiments in low-level psychokinesis; the development of analytical methodologies for quantitative assessment of precognitive remote perception data: and the development of theoretical models useful for correlation of the experimental data, design of better experiments, and explication of the phenomena on fundamental grounds.
The primary effect observed in the psychokinesis experiments is a marginal but replicable shift of the mean of output count distributions with respect to empirical baselines or theoretical expectations, with no discernible alterations in any higher moments. Over large data bases, these mean shifts can compound with considerable statistical regularity to high levels of significance, depending on the particular operator, the direction of effort, and other prevailing experimental conditions. In many cases, individual operator "signatures" of achievement are found to transfer across various experimental devices, including some driven by deterministic pseudo-random sources.
Quantitative analysis of a large data base of remote perception experiments reveals similar departures from chance expectation of the degree for target information acquired by anomalous means. Digital scoring techniques bases on a spectrum of 30 binary descriptors, applied to all targets and perceptions in the experimental pool, consistently indicate acquisition of substantial topical and impressionistic information about remote geographical locations inaccessible by known sensory channels. The degree of such anomalous information by the agent, up to periods of precognition or retrocognition of several days.
In an attempt to illuminate these empirical results, a theoretical model has been proposed that invokes quantum mechanical metaphors to describe the interaction of consciousness with its environment. By representing consciousness by quantum mechanical wave functions and its physical environment by appropriate potential energy profiles, Schr=F6dinger wave mechanics may be used to define eigenfunctions and eigenvalues indicative of psychological and physical experience, both normal and anomalous, in a form applicable to the experimental designs.
The experimental results in hand, along with the generic predictions of the theoretical model, suggest numerous short and longer term practical applications of the phenomena, and raise basic issues about the role of consciousness in the establishment of reality.
Strong correlations between the output distribution means of a variety of random binary processes and the pre-stated intentions of some 100 individual human operators have been established over a 12-year experimental program. More than 1000 experimental series, employing four different categories of random devices and several distinctive protocols, show comparable magnitudes of anomalous mean shifts from chance expectation, with similar distribution structures. Although the absolute effect sizes are quite small, of the order of 10-4 bits deviation per bit processed, over the huge databases accumulated the composite effect exceeds 7s (p =AA 3.5 x 10-13). These data display significant disparities between female and male operator performances, and consistent serial position effects in the individual and collective results. Data generated by operators far removed from the machines and exerting their efforts at times other than those of machine operation show similar effect sizes and structural details to those of the local, on-time experiments. Most other secondary parameters tested are found to have little effect on the scale and character of the results, with one important exception: studies performed using fully deterministic pseudorandom sources, either hard-wired or algorithmic, yield null overall mean shifts, and display no other anomalous features.
Although a variety of so-called psychic phenomena have attracted man's attention throughout recorded history, organized scholarly effort to comprehend such effects is just one century old, and systematic academic research roughly half that age. Over recent years, a sizeable spectrum of evidence has been brought forth form reputable laboratories in several disciplines to suggest that at times human consciousness can acquire information inaccessible by any known physical mechanism (ESP), and can influence the behavior of physical systems or processes (PK), but even the most rigorous and sophisticated of these studies display a characteristic dilemma: The experimental results are rarely replicable in the strict scientific sense, but the anomalous yields are well beyond chance expectations and a number of common features thread through the broad range of reported effects. Various attempts at theoretical modeling have so far shown little functional value in explication experimental results, but have served to stimulate fundamental re-examination of the role of consciousness in the determination of physical reality. Further careful study of this formidable field seems justified, but only within the context of very well conceived and technically impeccable experiments of large data-base capability, with disciplined attention to the pertinent aesthetic factors, and with more constructive involvement of the critical community.
An attractive pendulum consisting of a two-inch crystal ball suspended on a fused silica rod is the focus of an experiment to measure possible effects of conscious intention on an analog physical system. The pendulum is enclosed in a clear acrylic box, and provided with a computer controlled mechanical system to release it from the same starting height in repeated runs. A high speed binary counter registers interruptions of photodiode beams, to measure velocities at the nadir of the pendulum arc with microsecond accuracy. In runs of 100 swings, taking about three minutes, operators attempt to keep swings high, i.e. to decrease the damping rate(HI); to reduce swing amplitude, i.e. to increase the damping rate(LO); or to take an undisturbed baseline(BL).
Over a total of 1545 sets, generated by 42 operators, the HI - LO difference is significant in the direction of intention for five individuals, and the difference between intention and baseline runs is significant and positive for five other operators. The overall HI - LO difference is reduced to non-significance by strong negative performances from several operators, four of whom have comparably large scores in the direction opposite to intention. Analysis of variance reveals significant internal structure in the database (main effects F4,189 = 2.845, p = .025). Subset comparisons indicate that male operators tend to score higher than females, and that randomly instructed trials tend toward higher scores than volitional trials, especially for male operators. Trials generated with the operator in a remote location have a larger effect size than the local trials.
While direct comparisons are not straightforward, it appears that effects of operator intention on the pendulum damping rate may be similar in magnitude and style to those in other human/machine interaction experiments. Although this result fails to support an experimental hypothesis that the analog nature of the pendulum experiment would engender larger effect sizes, it does confirm a basic similarity of consciousness effects across experiments using fundamentally different physical systems.
Effect sizes achieved by human operators in random event generator anomalies experiments show correlations with the ordinal positions of the experimental series in both the collective and individual databases. Specifically, there are statistically significant tendencies for operators to produce better scores over their first series, then to fall off in performance in their second and third series, and then to recover to some intermediate levels during their fourth, fifth, and subsequent series. Such correlations appear in both local and remote experiments, and are also indicated over a sequence of different experimental protocols, but no similar effects are found in baseline or calibration data. These serial position patterns thus appear to be primarily psychological in origin, and may subsume the rudimentary "decline," "primacy," "recency," and "terminal" effects propounded in the parapsychological and psychological literature. The results also emphasize the importance of very large individual databases in determining the asymptotic effect sizes in any given experiment of this type. An Appendix reviews the literature relating to serial position effects in psychological and parapyschological studies. (Also available in extended form as a Technical Report.)
A large body of remote human-machine interaction data has been collected in a protocol structurally similar to that used for experiments in remote perception, with somewhat comparable anomalous results. This suggests that the effects seen in the former could be attributable to a selection or sorting process on a reservoir of unperturbed data, rather than to any remote influence on the machine behavior per se. Fortunately, the statistical consequences of these two modalities are clearly distinguishable within the available empirical data. When properly evaluated by Bayesian hypothesis-comparison methods, the experimental results overwhelmingly favor the direct influence hypothesis over any selection mechanism.
The remote REG data are considered in terms of selection models versus influence models. In a selection model the operator is assumed to have no effect on the REG's operation and instead to achieve any observed anomaly by choosing the intention labeling of the runs appropriately, or by choosing the starting time of the experiment. An influence model simply assumes that any observed anomaly corresponds to an actual alteration of the REG output. Comparison of the statistical properties of influence processes and selection processes with the actual data indicates that selection gives a poor fit to the statistics of the experimental data.
Several extensive experimental studies of human/machine interactions wherein the human operators and the target machines are separated by distances of up to several thousand miles yield anomalous results comparable in scale and character to those produced under conditions of physical proximity. The output distributions of random binary events produced by a variety of microelectronic random and pseudorandom generator, as well as by a macroscopic random mechanical cascade, display small but replicable and statistically significant mean shift correlated with the remote operators' pre-stated intentions, and feature cumulative achievement patterns similar to those of the corresponding local experiments. Individual operator effect sizes distribute normally, with the majority of participants contributing to the overall effect. Patterns of specific count populations are also similar to those found in the corresponding local experiments. The insensitivity of the size and details of these results to intervening distance and time adds credence to a large database for precognitive remote perception experiments, and suggests that these two forms of anomaly may draw from similar mechanisms of information exchange between human consciousness and random physical processes.
Bayesian analysis may profitably be applied to anomalous data obtained in Random Event Generator and similar human/machine experiments, but only by proceeding form sensible prior probability estimates. Unreasonable estimates or strongly conflicting initial hypotheses can project the analysis into contradictory and misleading results. Depending upon the choice of prior and other factors, the results of Bayesian analysis range from confirmation of classical analysis to complete disagreement, and for this reason classical estimates seem more reliable for the interpretation of data of this class.
A comprehensive analysis of variance has been applied to a random event generator (REG) database comprising over 5.6 million trials, accumulated in 1262 experimental series performed by 108 individual operators over a period of 12 years. In these experiments, operators attempt to shift the means of output distributions of 200-sample binary combinations drawn from random sources in accordance with prespecified intentions, using a variety of devices and protocols designed to address particular questions. Experimental designs are sufficiently similar to allow all data to be pooled in a multiway analysis of variance to examine the factor of primary interest, operator intention, and its modulation by various secondary parameters, such as individual differences among the operators, the specific device and protocol, operator location, run length, assignment mode, control mode, series order, and feedback.
These analyses confirm the existence of anomalous results with operator intention as the primary correlate, at a p-value of 2.4 x 10-4 in the full database, and reveal internal structure that is dependent on some of the other parameters. Most striking of these is a significant difference among prolific operators, supporting earlier evidence for individual operator performance "signatures". Results are very similar for a diode-based white noise source and a hardwired, deterministic pseudorandom source, indicating that the effects are not specific to a particular device. Local and remote operator databases, and series number shows a suggestive pattern across operators. Random vs. volitional instruction, manual vs. automatic trial initiation, and run length differences have no significant influence in the overall concatenations, but are important determinants in some individual operator databases.
The analysis, like the experiments, has been designed to negate various conventional explanations for the deviations from chance expectation, including machine bias, informed optional stopping, data selection, or cheating. The effect of disproportionate operator contributions can also be resolved, leaving firm evidence for a broad array of operator-specific anomalies in experiments of this class.
Experiments in anomalous human/machine interaction wherein two operators simultaneously attempt to shift the means of output distributions produced by a microelectronic random event generator (REG) yield statistically significant correlations with the operators' shared intentions. The overall results of 256,500 trials of 200 binaries each, produced by 15 co-operator pairs in 42 independent experimental series, are consistent with those of a benchmark database of 2,520,000 trials generated on the same device by 91 individual operators. The patterns of achievement are characteristic of the particular operator pairs, but bear no evident resemblance to those of either of the two individuals operating separately, or to any simple combinations thereof. The composite performance of eight operator pairs of the same sex is opposite to intention, while that of seven opposite-sex pairs conforms significantly to intention, with an average effect size 3.7 times larger than that of the single operator data. Of the opposite-sex pairs, four "bonded" couples achieve average effects more than twice the size of those of three unbonded pairs, and nearly six times those of the single operators. These results contrast with those of a substantial body of remote perception data, where effects produced by agent/percipient pairs of opposite sex are smaller than those generated by pairs of the same sex, suggesting that gender-pairing is a complex parameter in consciousness-related anomalies research.
Four technically and conceptually distinct experiments-a random binary generator driven by a microelectronic noise diode; a deterministic pseudorandom generator; a large-scale random mechanical cascade; and a digitized remote perception protocol-display strikingly similar patterns of count deviations from their corresponding chance distributions. Specifically, each conforms to a statistical linear regression of the form Dn/n = d(-m), where Dn/n is the deviation from chance expectation of the population frequency of the score value c divided by its chance frequency, m is the mean of the chance distribution, and d is the slope of the regression line, constant for a given data subset, but parametrically dependent on the experimental device, the particular operator or data concatenation, and the prevailing secondary conditions. In each case, the result is tantamount to a simple marginal transposition of the appropriate chance Gaussian distribution to a new mean value m' = m + N e, where N is the sample size, or equivalently to a change in the elemental probability of the basic binary process to p' = p + e, where p is the chance value and e = d / 4. Proposition of a common psychophysical mechanism by which the consciousness of the operator may achieve these elemental probability shifts is thwarted by the complexity and disparity of the several technical and logical talks that would be involved. More parsimonious, albeit more radical, explication may be posed via a holistic information-theoretic approach, wherein the consciousness adds some increment of information, in the technical sense, into the particular experimental system, which then deploys it in the most efficient fashion to achieve the experimental goal, i.e., the volition-correlated mean shift. The relationship of this technical information transfer to the subjective teleological process of the consciousness remains to be understood.
A brief tutorial summary of the status of modern physical science research on extrasensory perception and psychokinesis is presented in encyclopedic style, with examples drawn from the PEAR experimental and theoretical programs.
Speculations about the role of consciousness in physical systems are frequently observed in the literature concerned with the interpretation of quantum mechanics. While only three experimental investigations can be found on this topic in physics journals, more than 800 relevant experiments have been reported in the literature of parapsychology. A well-defined body of empirical evidence from this domain was reviewed using meta-analytic techniques to assess methodological quality and overall effect size. Results showed effects conforming to chance expectation in control conditions and unequivocal non-chance effects in experimental conditions. This quantitative literature review agrees with the findings of two earlier reviews, suggesting the existence of some form of consciousness-related anomaly in random physical systems.
Statistical anomalies in the interaction of human operators with microelectronic random event generators (REGs) can be credibly established only after the equipment, protocols, and analytical methods been demonstrated to be free of any consequential irregularities, biases, or artifacts. Extensive qualification and calibration procedures, designed to provide a complete background of information about machine performance in the absence of operator interactions, are an integral part of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program. Initial qualification tests ensure that the REGs perform as specified by the design criteria and are insensitive to environmental factors such as ambient temperature and electromagnetic fields. Ongoing calibration tests, using samples of the size generate in the formal experiments, confirm that the undisturbed REG outputs constitute normally distributed random variates with parameters indistinguishable from theoretical predictions of the Gaussian approximations to the appropriate binomial combinatorials. Various features of the standard operating and contingency protocols further preclude any unforeseen biases or intermittent aberrations. A battery of statistical tests, including time-series analyses, goodness-of-fit tests, Fourier power spectra, and arcsine comparisons, show no evidence of non-randomicity at any level of concatenation of the calibration data. The same statistical tests applied to the active experimental data are thus appropriate for identifying anomalies that may be attributed to operator-machine interactions.
Experiments with a "Random Mechanical Cascade" (RMC) apparatus have yielded anomalous results correlated with pre-stated intentions of human operators. Based upon a common statistical demonstration device, this machine allows 9000 polystyrene balls to drop through a matrix of 330 pegs, scattering them into 19 collecting bins with a populationdistribution that is approximately Gaussian. As the balls enter the bins, exact counts are accumulated photoelectrically, displayed as feedback for the operator, and recorded on-line. Operators attempt to shift the mean of the developing distributions to the right or left, relative to a concurrently generated baseline distribution. Of the 25 operators who have completed one or more experimental series with this device, four have achieved anomalous separations of their right and left efforts, and two others have displayed significant separations of either their right or left efforts from their baselines. The overall mean difference of right versus left efforts concatenated across the total data base of 87 series (3393 runs), has a probability against chance of <10-4, with 15% of the individual series significant at p <.05, and 63% conforming to the intended directions.
The concatenated results display a stark and curious asymmetry, in that virtually all of the right vs. left separation is provided by the left vs. baseline separation. This pattern also appears in the data of several individual operators, and is not attributable to any known physical asymmetry in the experimental system. In addition to the systematic asymmetric deviation of the distribution means, cumulative excesses in the variances of the left and right distributions relative to baseline are also observed, progressing to statistical probabilities of .003 in the left efforts, but only .2 in the right. More detailed study of the individual bin population patterns reveals that while most of the bins contribute to the overall mean shifts and variance changes, those on the outer portions are more influential than those near the center.
Operator achievements tend to compound marginally but systematically in cumulative deviation patterns characteristic of the particular individuals and, in several cases, similar to those produced by the same operators in microelectronic Random Event Generator (REG) experiments. Within these characteristic patterns of achievement, some operators also show sensitivities to secondary experimental parameters, such as instructed vs. volitional establishment of the intended directions, or the presence or absence of feedback displays. Other successful operators seem insensitive to such options.
Protocol variations employing remote operators and multiple operators have also been explored. In the former, operators with well-established performance in local experiments attempt to influence the bin distributions from remote locations up to several thousand miles from the laboratory. Significant results are again obtained that are quite similar to those of the local experiments, with the exception that the overall right and left distribution variances are smaller than those of the baseline. In the multiple operator experiments, early results show little resemblance to those achieved by the participating individuals alone.
Most of the issues raised by Hansen, Utts, and Markwick, including shared descriptor preferences, environmental or temporal cues, and agent encoding, have long been acknowledged, adequately addressed in our experimental designs and analytical techniques, and fully documented in our literature. The remainder of their concerns, including randomization of targets and reference score distributions, trial-by-trial feedback, stacking, and cheating are either misapplied, fundamentally incorrect, or have trivial impact. Additional calculations and derivations, supplementing those previously published, further demonstrate the insensitivity of our matrix scoring methods to target and descriptor dependence from any source. In sum, it is readily shown, both empirically and theoretically, that analytical methods, which remain rigorous and effective methodologies for remote perception research. Thus, the published results and conclusions of our entire 336 trial database are fully reaffirmed.
A data base of some 300 remote perception trials has been accumulated, largely in the precognitive mode, ranging over geographical separations of up to 11,000 miles, and over times of precognition and retrocognition of more than 48 hours. The degree of anomalous information acquisition implicit in this data base has been evaluated by analytical scoring techniques bases on a sequence of 30 binary descriptors in terms of which all targets and perceptions are encoded. Each of these methods is capable of establishing the statistical merit of any individual perception by comparison of its score with a distribution of chance scores derived empirically from 42,000 mismatched permutations of targets and perceptions. The overall statistical results are internally consistent, vary little from method to method, and are consistent with more impressionistic assessments. By any method applied, over any of several subdivisions of the data base, the results imply significant anomalous information acquisition via this experimental protocol. None of the parameters explored has been found to influence substantially the yield of such experiments. In particular, no systematic dependence on the spatial separation of the percipient from the target, or on the degree of precognition, is apparent over the range of these data.
Within the constellation of activities comprising the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, a program addressing precognitive remote perception (PRP) experiments and analytical methodology provides important indicators of the basic nature of the consciousness-related phenomena under study. As the project has evolved, the binary scoring techniques used to quantify the PRP results have been refined to preclude a hierarchy of possible strategic or computational artifacts, thereby permitting more discriminating assessment of the experimental data, the design of more effective experiments, and the formulation of more appropriate theoretical models.
In this report are presented a complete update of the PRP data, descriptions of the analytical refinements, and a summary of the salient results. In brief, the PRP protocol continues to prove a viable means for achievement of anomalous information acquisition about remote physical targets by a broad range of volunteer participants. The full data base consists of 411 trails, 336 of which meet the criteria for formal data, generated by 48 individuals over a period of approximately ten years. Effects are found to compound incrementally over a large number of experiments, rather than being dominated by a few outstanding efforts or a few exceptional participants. The yield is statistically insensitive to the mode of target selection, to the number of percipients addressing a given target, and, over the ranges tested, to the spatial separation of the percipient from the target and even to the temporal separation of the perception effort from the time of target visitation. Overall results are unlikely by chance to the order of 10 e-10.
The following brief description of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) Remote Perception program has been prepared at the invitation of the Editor, in order to augment this special report section of the Journal with information about another substantial database of experiments related to those of SRI and SAIC to which the above reports are addressed. Given Utts' attention tothe importance of replication (Section 3.4), and Hyman's challenge ofinterlaboratory consistency (Point #3 of his Introduction and Point #2of his "Suggestions for Future Research"), it is curious that neither acknowledges the largest extant body of experimental data that meets their criteria for interlaboratory replication. In point of fact, both the PEAR remote perception program, and the prior studies of Dunne and Bisaha on which it was originally based, were undertaken as formal replications of the SRI experiments of Puthoff and Targ. Although the PEAR program has accumulated several hundred experimental trials, its primary goal has been to develop a sophisticated analytical judging methodology to replace the human judging process, and thereby to facilitate more precise quantitative assessment of results and their correlation with various experimental parameters. In our basic procedure, the "free response" of the percipient is encoded using a list of 30 binary descriptor questions, allowing algorithmic comparison with the target, similarly encoded by the agent at the scene. For randomly assigned targets, further comparison can be made with an encoding by the person who prepared the target pool. The analysis proceeds by constructing a square matrix of scores calculated by comparing each perception against all targets in the given dataset. The properly matched trials (on the main diagonal of the matrix) can be assigned statistical merit by comparison with the distribution of off-diagonal, mismatched scores, which has sufficiently Gaussian characteristics to allow robust parametric statistical tests. Beyond the primary experimental question of the degree of anomalous acquisition of information, several other issues have been explored, among them the correlation of analytical and human judge scores, the efficacy of different scoring algorithms and descriptor sets, ex post facto vs. participant encoded descriptions, agent chosen versus randomly assigned targets, single vs. multiple percipients, variations among individual agent and percipient pairs, and the relationship of scores to the distance and time intervals separating the perception and the target. The results in all phases of this experimental program are quite consistent with those of their SRI predecessors and with the more contemporary SAIC studies. Overall they show avverage effect sizes well within the range described by Utts (Sections 3.4, 4.2, and 4.3). For example, for the entire 336 trials comprising the formal PEAR database, the effect size (composite Z-score normalized by the square root of the number of trials) is 0.347 +/- 0.055. When these are separated into randomly assigned vs. volitionally chosen target subsets, the 125 randomly assigned targets show an effect size of 0.516 +/- 0.089, and the 211 volitional targets an effect size of 0.244 +/- 0.069. Assessment of individual performance indicates that the overall yield is an accumulation of small contributions from the majority of the participant pairs, rather than from a few outstanding efforts. Among the more interesting findings is parametric evidence that the degree of anomalous information transfer is unaffected by spatial and temporal separations. Regression modeling indicates a significant mean shift, but no evidence for a decline of scoring with increasing distance, up to several thousand miles. Similarly, there is no evidence that scoring is related to positive or negative temporal separations of the perception effort and the target visit, up to as much as a few days. The precognitive subset of these data, consisting of about 75% of the independent trials, seems particularly important to the postulation of viable theoretical models, and has been emphasized throughout. Thus, these databases, comprising one of the largest accumulations of relevant experiments performed under consistent and well controlled experimental protocols, have already provided robust evidence that the findings in the SRI/SAIC Remote Viewing experiments can be replicated in independent, but essentially similar designs.
The concept of complementarity, originally proposed by Bohr in a microphysical context, and subsequently extended by himself, Heisenberg and Pauli to encompass subjective as well as objective dimensions of human experience, can be further expanded to apply to many common attitudes of human consciousness. At issue is the replacement of strict polar opposition of superficially antithetical consciousness capacities, such as analysis and synthesis, logic and intuition, or doing and being, by more generous conjugation that allows the pairs to operate in constructive triangulation and harmony. In this format, the physical principle of uncertainty also acquires metaphoric relevance in limiting the attainable sharpness of specification of any consciousness complements, and may serve to define their optimum balance in establishing reality. These principles thus lend themselves to representation of wave-like vs. particle-like operations of consciousness; to trade-offs between rigor and ambience in consciousness research; to generic masculine/feminine reinforcement; and to the interplay of science and spirit in any creative enterprise.
Theoretical explication of a growing body of empirical data on consciousness-related anomalous phenomena is unlikely to be achieved in terms of known physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of physical processes. Rather, it will first be necessary to formulate the basic role of consciousness in the definition of reality before such anomalous experience can adequately be represented. This paper takes the position that reality is constituted only in the interaction of consciousness with its environment, and therefore that any scheme of conceptual organization developed to represent that reality must reflect the processes of consciousness as well as those of its environment. In this spirit, the concepts and formalisms of elementary quantum mechanics, as originally proposed to explain anomalous atomic-scale physical phenomena, are appropriated via metaphor to represent the general characteristics of consciousness interacting with any environment. More specifically, if consciousness is represented by a quantum mechanical wave function, and its environment by an appropriate potential profile, Schroedinger wave mechanics defines eigenfunctions and eigenvalues that can be associated with the cognitive and emotional experiences of that consciousness in that environment. To articulate this metaphor it is necessary to associate certain aspects of the formalism, such as the coordinate system, the quantum numbers, and even the metric itself, with various impressionistic descriptors of consciousness, such as its intensity, perspective, approach/avoidance attitude, balance between cognitive and emotional activity, and receptive/assertive disposition. With these established, a number of the generic features of quantum mechanics, such as the wave/particle duality, and the uncertainty, indistinguishability, and exclusion principles, display metaphoric relevance to familiar ability, and exclusion principles, display metaphoric relevance to familiar individual and collective experiences. Similarly, such traditional quantum theoretic exercises as the central force field and atomic structure, covalent molecular bonds, barrier penetration, and quantum statistical collective behavior become useful analogies for representation of a variety of consciousness experiences, both normal and anomalous, and for the design of experiments to study these systematically.
Portable random event generators with software to record and index continuous sequences of binary data in field situations are found to produce anomalous outputs when deployed in various group environments. These "FieldREG" systems have been operated under formal protocols in ten separate venues, all of which subdivide naturally into temporal segments, such as sessions, presentations, or days. The most extreme data segments from each of the ten applications, after appropriate correction for multiple sampling, compound to a collective probability against chance expectation of 2x10-4. Interpretation remains speculative at this point, but logbook notes and anecdotal reports from participants suggest that high degrees of attention, intellectual cohesiveness, shared emotion, or other coherent qualities of the groups tend to correlate with the statistically unusual deviations from theoretical expectation in the FieldREG sequences. If sustained over more extensive experiments, such effects could add credence to the concept of a consciousness "field" as an agency for creating order in random physical processes.