Abstract—This study of advanced practitioners of meditation extends our earlier work testing the ... more Abstract—This study of advanced practitioners of meditation extends our earlier work testing the hypothesis that meditation enhances psychic awareness or "psi" (Roney-Dougal, Solfvin, & Fox, 2008). Ten (male) Tibetan Buddhist monks participated individually in eight sessions, each comprising a meditation period and a computerized test of precognition in which they were asked to rate each of four pictures on a 100-point scale in terms of how likely it was to be randomly selected as the "target" to be displayed at the end of the session. The normalized rating assigned to the target itself was defined as the "psi" score, where a score of zero is chance expectation. Overall, psi scores did not exceed chance expectation, t(79) = 0.70, p = 0.49, 2-tailed, r = .08, and the type of meditation (mantra or visualization) did not make a difference. The correlation between years of meditation practice and psi scores was in the predicted direction but not significant...
During the 1970s interest in maximising psi awareness focused on altered states of consciousness ... more During the 1970s interest in maximising psi awareness focused on altered states of consciousness (Braud, 1974, 1978; Honorton, 1977; Tart, 1969, 1975; Ullman & Krippner, 1979). Part of this program of research investigated meditation as a psi-conducive state (for reviews see Braud, 1989; Honorton, 1977; Schmeidler, 1994). Most of the research used beginners in meditation and only a handful of studies were run, with mixed results that do, however, give highly significant results on a combined analysis (Honorton, 1977). Consciousness research is central in parapsychology. In the 1970s, Braud (1974) introduced the concept of the psi-conducive state. This is a model that has driven much of the parapsychological research into altered states of consciousness as a state conducive to the experience of psychic phenomena. The model states that psi functioning is enhanced when there is: (1) cortical arousal sufficient to maintain conscious awareness, (2) muscular relaxation, (3) reduction of s...
Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine Journal Archives, 2004
During the years 2000-2002, research on organic farms looked at the effect of a healer on lenuce ... more During the years 2000-2002, research on organic farms looked at the effect of a healer on lenuce seeds. The basic hypotheses were that the healer would enhance the seeds to produce greater yield and greater health. The first yearl found a significant result for the second hypmhesis, as measured by looking at the fungal damage. The second yea? found significant results on all the measures, greater yield, less fungal damage and less slug damage. However, doing field trials has many problems compared with doing laboratory research, weather being one of the major variables that cannot be controlled. For various reasons, in 2001 trials 6 and 7 were not planted om umil long after they had become pot-bound. The delay in plaming out was so great for trial 6 that the plants never grew properly, and trial 7 was harvested first as those plants grew to a point where they became big enough for sale. In 2002 the research rook place on another farm and was a disaster. For various reasons up to hal...
A classic healing experiment with a very simple design was made famous by Grad (1963, 1964). In t... more A classic healing experiment with a very simple design was made famous by Grad (1963, 1964). In these experiments, two trays of seeds, which have been stressed in some way, are prepared. One of the trays is watered with water that has been held by the healer, and the other with ordinary water. Several of these studies have found that there is greater germination rate and growth in the healed group (Barrington, 1982; Grad, 1963; 1964; Hickman, 1979; Saklani, 1990; Scofield & Hodges, 1991). Over the past few years, there have been several large scale trials of "distant healing" or "prayer" on medical outcomes of patients (e.g., Byrd, 1988; Harris et al., 1999; Sicher, Targ, Moore, & Smith, 1998).. Significant health benefits have been shown for the treatment groups. This demonstrates the feasibility and practical value of researching parapsychological phenomena in real life settings. Earlier, Roney-Dougal & Solfvin (2002) reported the first controlled investigation...
Many traditional Mahayana, and modern Tibetan, Buddhist texts relate meditation attainment to psy... more Many traditional Mahayana, and modern Tibetan, Buddhist texts relate meditation attainment to psychic ability. This teaching served as the hypothesis-that more advanced meditators would choose a psi target correctly, significantly more often than beginners. A basic free-response design was used in which a computer programme (PreCOG) chose a target picture at random from a 4-picture set. There were 25 sets, all pictures of Tibet. PreCOG guided the participants through the procedure, in which they aimed to become aware of the target. 18 participants, Tibetan monks, nuns and Western Buddhist meditators, completed 8 sessions each. Half the sessions used a clairvoyance, and half a precognition, protocol. Age and years of meditation practice correlated significantly with the psi scores (Pearson r = 0.52, p , 0.05). This suggests that, as one practices meditation, psychic awareness begins to manifest more reliably. This result was confounded by a non-significant psi-missing trend. There was no significant difference between the clairvoyance and precognition trials (t-diff (142) = 0.800). There was, however, significant psi-missing from the group of Rinpoches (t ¼ À2.09, 2tail p , 0.05). The three participants who scored most strongly in the psi-missing direction all reported childhood memories of previous lives as monks in Tibet.
Is it fortunate, fortuitous, or foreboding that this book emerges from the shadows of the publish... more Is it fortunate, fortuitous, or foreboding that this book emerges from the shadows of the publishing world even as the embers of the Daryl Bem "feeling the future" controversy are still aglow? Whatever the case may be, and whatever your view of the data at the center of it, many thanks are due Daryl Bem for opening up the tough and much-needed conversation about the nature of science, methodology, statistics, replication, meta-analysis, and, yes, prejudice, via his now well-known Journal of Personality and Social Psychology article (Bem 2011). Moreover, I am reminded of P. T. Barnum's wily wisdom, "I don't care what you say about me, just spell my name right!" During the writing of this review I had a chance encounter with a young man in his third year of Ph.D. studies in psychology at a large (distant) state university. When I mentioned my own special interest in parapsychology, he asked, "What's that?" But as soon as I started to tell him ...
Book review of the recent (2015) book, "Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century", edited ... more Book review of the recent (2015) book, "Parapsychology: A Handbook for the 21st Century", edited by Cardena, Palmer, & Marcusson-Clavertz.
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