Michael Cremo - Human Devolution - A Vedic Alternative To Darwin's Theory

In their development of this method, the researchers were inspired by states of altered consciousness reported in ancient wisdom traditions. Radin (1997, p. 73) stated: “Honorton, Braud, and Parker had noticed that descriptions of mystical, meditative, and religious states often included anecdotes about psi experiences, and that the association between reduced mental noise and the spontaneous emergence of psi was noted long ago in the ancient religious texts of India, the vedas. for example, in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras , one of the first textbooks on yoga dating back at least thirty-five hundred years, it is taken for granted that prolonged practice with deep meditation leads to a variety of siddhis, or psychic abilities.” Statements to this effect are found throughout the vedic literatures. In the Shrimad Bhagavatam (11.15.1), we read: “The Supreme Personality of Godhead said: My dear Uddhava, the mystic perfections of yoga are acquired by a yogi who has conquered his senses, steadied his mind, conquered the breathing process and fixed his mind on Me.” In the vedic conception, God is known as Yogesvara, the master of all mystic powers, and the yogi who stills the mind by focusing it on God within attains siddhis. One of these siddhis is named in the Bhagavat Purana (11.15.6) as dura-shravana-darshanam, the ability to see and hear things at a distance. The entire fifteenth chapter of the Eleventh canto of the Shrimad Bhagavatam deals with the yogic siddhis and how they may be attained. Interestingly enough, the siddhis are actually considered obstacles for those on the path of complete spiritual perfection, because one who gets them tends to get absorbed in using them for selfish goals.

In the ganzfeld technique, the person who is to receive a psychic communication is placed in a soundproof room on a comfortable reclining chair. Halves of translucent white ping-pong balls are taped over the eyes, and a light is directed upon them, producing a uniform featureless visual field. Headphones, through which white noise is played, are placed over the ears. The receiver is also guided through some relaxation exercises to reduce inner tensions. The combined effect is a homogeneous state of reduced sensory input called in German the Ganzfeld, or “total field.” When the receiver is in the ganzfeld state, a sender at another location looks at a randomly selected target image (a photograph or video tape clip) and mentally sends the image to the receiver. The session lasts for 30 minutes, during which the receiver continuously reports aloud all mental impressions, emotions, and thoughts. At the end of the session, four images are shown to the receiver, who is asked to select from among them the target. The receiver does this by judging which of the four images best matches the receiver’s own stream of consciousness report. By chance, the hit rate should be 25 percent, but studies have shown that the receivers are able to correctly select the target image at a rate significantly greater than 25 percent. Psychologist d. J. Bem of cornell University reported in 1996 (pp. 163–164): “More than 60 ganzfeld experiments have now been conducted, and a 1985 meta-analysis of 42 ganzfeld studies conducted in 10 independent laboratories up to that time found that receivers achieved an average hit rate of 35 percent—a result that could have occurred by chance with a probability of less than one in a billion. Supplementary analyses have demonstrated that this overall result could not have resulted from selective reporting of positive results or from flawed procedures that might have permitted the receiver to obtain the target information in normal sensory fashion.”

The 1985 meta-analysis cited by Bem was conducted by Honorton (1985). A second study of the same cases was conducted by the skeptic Ray Hyman (1985a, 1985b). Even Hyman was forced to conclude that the results were not the result of improper use of statistics, sensory leakage, or cheating (Radin 1997, p. 82). He suggested that improper randomization techniques might have been responsible, although Honorton had given arguments against this. Radin (1997, p. 83) noted, “In this case, ten psychologists and statisticians supplied commentaries alongside the Honorton-Hyman published debate . . . everyone [including Honorton and Hyman] agreed that the ganzfeld results were not due to chance, nor to selective reporting, nor to sensory leakage. And everyone, except one confirmed skeptic [Hyman], also agreed that the results were not plausibly due to flaws in randomization procedures.” nevertheless, Honorton, in a joint communiqué with Hyman, did agree to modify the ganzfeld protocols to take into account Hyman’s concerns (Hyman and Honorton 1986; in Radin 1997, p. 84). This had the good effect of getting Hyman to give his conditions in writing, so that he could not in the future simply raise vague possible objections to the ganzfeld results.

It turned out that Honorton had been conducting ganzfeld studies that complied with Hyman’s stringent conditions since 1983, when the process of image selection had been taken out of the hands of human experimenters and given over to computers. The entire procedure of data recording was automated. Measures were taken to isolate the receiver more effectively, and the whole physical set-up and experimental protocol were reviewed by two professional magicians, who attested the experiments were not vulnerable to cheating (Radin 1997, pp. 85–86). Between 1983 and 1989, 240 persons participated in 354 automated ganzfeld experiments (Honorton and Schechter, 1987; Honorton et al. 1990). In these sessions, the hit rate was 37 percent. The odds against chance were 45,000 to one (Radin 1997, p. 86).

Hyman (1991), ever the skeptic, asked for independent replication. The Honorton experiments at the Psychological Research Laboratories were in fact later replicated by several researchers: Kathy dalton and her coworkers at the Koestler chair of Parapsychology, department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh; Professor dick Bierman, department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam; Professor daryl Bem, cornell University department of Psychology; dr. Richard Broughton and coworkers at the Rhine Research center, durham, north carolina; Professor Adrian Parker and coworkers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden; and doctoral candidate Rens Wezelman, Institute of Parapsychology, Utrecht, netherlands (Radin 1997, pp. 87–88). When combined with the experiments documented in the 1985 meta-analysis and the 1983–1989 series of Honorton, the total number of sessions was 2,549. “The overall hit rate of 33.2 percent is unlikely with odds against chance beyond a million billion to one,” said Radin (1997, p. 88).

More recently, Bem was coauthor, with Honorton, of an important report on ganzfeld studies of telepathy. Science news said of the report, “new evidence supporting the existence of what most folks refer to as telepathy . . . boasts a rare distinction: It passed muster among skeptical peer reviewers and gained publication in a major, mainstream psychology journal” (Bower 1994). In the Science news article, Bem said, “I used to be a skeptic, but we met strict research guidelines and the results are statistically significant. We hope the findings prompt others to try replicating this effect.” The actual report was published in the January 1994 issue of Psychological Bulletin. Bem and Honorton, using statistical meta-analysis, combined the results of 11 studies involving 240 subjects. The hit rate was one in three, compared to the chance expectation of one in four. In one study, 29 dance, drama, and music students got a hit rate of one in two. One of the reviewers of the article for Psychological Bulletin was Robert Rosenthal, a psychologist at Harvard. He said, “Bem and Honorton’s article is very sophisticated statistically and you can’t dismiss their findings” (Bower 1994).