Subtle Energies and the Uncharted Realms of Mind
An Esalen Invitational Conference
June 6 - 11, 1999

Future Directions

The point of our brainstorming session, facilitated by George Leonard, was to break out of habitual thinking patterns and constraints, to intentionally come up with far-out ideas, to suggest things that are truly impossible. In this way, new ideas, connections, and studies might emerge. The following is a list of some of the ideas most intriguing to participants.

1. Grow psychically symbiotic bacteria via selection. The idea would be to get, for instance, bacteria that fluoresce and attempt to increase their rate of fluorescence with mental intention. Those bacteria that are most responsive would then be chosen, reproduced and so on, the hypothesis being that some bacteria would be more sensitive to psychokinetic or intentionality effects, and that this perhaps relates to something genetic. The tricky part, in Beverly Rubik's opinion, is that light emission in this species is not distributed evenly over their lifespan and it isn't a very fast-growing species. One cloning per day would be the maximum. It might be doable in six months.
2. Life-form semiconductor. Russell Targ likes this one because it is a very good step towards a thought-control switch. It appears that we can control various life forms: make fish swim one way, control hemolysis in the blood cells, make changes in human physiology. If we could take an approximate living system (DNA, rhodopsin) and incorporate it into a semi-conductor, we might be closer to a thought-control switch. Focusing one's attention on the semi-conductor would then control the flow of electrons through it. There's a lot of work being done on this, defense funded and otherwise, though the main interest is to make micro computerized chips out of organic molecules. The reason to choose living systems, Russell Targ commented, is that our intentionality is shown to have a stronger effect on them than nonliving systems (effect size is 2-3 times). Living systems are more labile than nonliving ones. Dean Radin and Russell Targ volunteered that they would visit someone if they could find the right person to visit. What they would really like is copies of experimental chips without having to say what they are going to do with them. There are, of course, proprietary problems with this.
3. Kathy Dalton thinks the following experiment is one that must be done in addressing the issue of responsibility in research. Much psychical research indicates that we are, in fact, able to affect others' physiological systems at a distance. By extrapolation, we can cause harm as well as good. She is interested in research addressing how best to block such effects. In Edinburgh, they have done some Distant Mental Influence studies in which they attempted to block the effect (white light bubble, wall, or participant choice of method). The participants then scored at chance, though it is hard to conclude much from this as these results could indicate either psi missing or psi blocking. George Leonard added that another effective visualization is to view the energy body as a transparent mesh that everything passes through. George also felt that neutralize is a better term than blocking, which perpetuates fear-based or aggressive motivations. Dean Radin suggested doing a version of Kathy's proposed study with at least two receivers and one sender and mix-and-match them, one blocking somehow and one not. The group commented that this begins to isolate whether or not the mental intention can be directed specifically.
4. Russell Targ feels strongly that the most important thing we can do is to convene a high-level meeting on theory. Most of the people at this conference have thirty or more years of high-quality data and know a great deal about what works and what doesn't work. What is lacking is a cohesive overarching framework. How can we make a rapprochement between this evidence and mainstream science? High-level physicists would be important to include. (He suggested Basel Hylie and Brian Josephson, for example)
5. Marilyn Schlitz thinks it would be catalytic to have a Center for World Sciences, which would bring together multiple ontologies and epistemologies for cross-cultural interchange. It would be a safe haven where acupuncturists could work with neuroscientists, parapsychologists with Ecuadorian shamans. The idea would be to create different kinds of experimental models, not just quantitative but qualitative as well. A whole battery of experiments could come out of such a center, drawing from a pool of serious practitioners and researchers. Dean Radin added that the researchers should not necessarily be under pressure to present to the mainstream right away. There is some similarity with the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, where people like Oppenheimer or Einstein could pursue their own ideas for a long time. Several participants dissented with this focus on "pure" research, emphasizing the utilitarian importance of research for health, healing, and interconnectivity. Marilyn, however, sees an important role for the purely theoretical end -- the infrastructure of ideas -- which can do a great deal to alter our perception of the world and therefore the way we live our lives. This isn't a product so much as a paradigm shift.
6. Steve Dinan proposed a study, building on Spottiswoode's work, to correlate various extraordinary examples of human performance, such as the setting of world records, with sidereal notch time. The hypothesis would be that sidereal notch time represents a window of heightened receptivity to subtle reaches of the mind and thus might lead to increased capacity for extraordinary achievements.
7. Fred Luskin is intrigued to set up a distant healing study with his heart failure patients at the Stanford Medical School since their prognosis is generally dire.
8. Roger Nelson was taken with the idea of creating experiments that are intentionally funny, since research shows that a light, playful atmosphere is most conducive to good psi results.
9. Dean Radin would like to do an experiment using precognitive remote viewing to bootstrap ourselves in the direction of future experiments. There are almost infinite numbers of things to do, and it would speed things up to peek into future experiments and technology. Dean actually did this for a year with Joe McMoneagle, and they got some details of very interesting psi-mediated devices, although some confusion developed over whether real-time telepathy was interfering. They have blueprints for things using materials that don't exist yet and machines that haven't been created. Dean asked for a maximum of ten years down the road, and McMoneagle picked up on some technologies involving a meshing of organic and inorganic systems into semiconductor chips.
10. Marilyn Schlitz suggested a study of populations engaged in futures work (day traders, arbitrage, futures traders, etc.), testing them for psi abilities, perhaps correlating this with job performance.
11. Marilyn is also interested in funding studies on love, like Jeffrey Levin's pilot project on the epidemiology of love. What are the dimensions of love that can be measured? Wayne Jonas commented that the first step should be to create an integrated mind-body-spirit program like ITP and then to break out individual virtues like love.
12. Wayne Jonas envisions experiments around genetic testing using the new technology of microarrays. A microarray puts several thousand gene fragments with known functions on a slide. Researchers can then test the effects on cells or tissues of whatever influence they want. Very quickly we can ascertain which genes are turned on or off. This allows us to detect very subtle cellular reactions to stimuli ranging from chemical or environmental influences to consciousness and intentionality. They still are quite expensive, though.
13. Dean Radin feels we should concentrate effort on precognition since all other forms of psi can be done via some standard mechanism (e.g. TV). He feels that it is thus the "killer app," since there is no other vehicle that we know of to tap into the future. Russell Targ, however, feels that the big payoff in psychical research will be in personal transformation rather than forecasting stocks or avoiding car crashes. Nonetheless, Dean imagines a time in which pools of psychics scan the environment for such things as approaching asteroids, earthquakes, volcanoes.

Other Strategies & Thoughts

1. One way to access and encourage the public fascination with these topics and thereby bypass the financial control of scientific opinion elites, is through entertainment. For instance the two producers of the film What Dreams May Come are very idealistic and want to take on similar projects; there's a great hunger for metaphysical movies, and metaphysical TV programs like the X-files are at the top of the ratings. Psi is simply hot in entertainment. Perhaps there are ways to harness some of this enthusiasm for research purposes or use it to disseminate our best work.
2. Many formerly secret programs have been released to the public. For example, after the news broke in 1995 of the CIA sponsored remote-viewing work, Russell and his co-workers have trained many people in the protocols and those people have gone on to train perhaps a thousand more. Much of the work gets sidetracked into paranoid New Age fascinations with aliens, reptilians, grays, etc. but there are also good people doing good work. There is an International Remote Viewing Association that serves as a bureau of standards (www.irva.org).
3. Wayne Jonas felt that there is an element of reframing that is needing to address the deeper issues raised by this conference. He thinks it would behoove us to invite people from cultures that don't deal in cause and effect. Also worthwhile would be to have people who deal with semiotics and individual experts in spirituality and religion, as well as more biological and medical input, such as from molecular biology and immunology. Basically, the discussion needs to be expanded a great deal.
4. Related to the need for deeper discussions, Dean Radin suggested having a two-week conference with an hour of brainstorming every morning.
5. Kathy Dalton thinks that a grass-roots effort to include this kind of information in textbooks at the primary and secondary levels would be invaluable in creating a more open climate for research in the future.