The Mystery of Mind Over Matter

By John Palmer, Ph.D.
Director, Rhine Research Center

All of us are raised from childhood to believe that nature operates through a fixed set of laws that dictate what can and cannot happen in the world. We learn that if we jump out the window of a tall building, the force of gravity will send us tumbling to the ground in a way that our bodies will not likely survive. We also learn that if we want to communicate a message to someone, we had better put ourselves in a position that allows the other person to see or hear us. Awareness of these laws, even if it is only implicit, allows us to carry on the daily actions necessary to our survival; if they did not exist, our lives would be hopeless chaos.

However, throughout human history people have reported occasional experiences that seem to violate these laws. If the violations concern the interactions between living organisms (most notably, humans) and their external environment, they can be labeled as psychic or psi experiences. Because such experiences suggest that the world may not be as orderly as we had been led to believe, they can be unsettling to some people, although others find them exciting and challenging. Many of these experiences actually have mundane explanations, such that the violations of natural laws are only illusory. However, a minority appear to resist such explanations. This does not mean that our current laws are somehow wrong or should be thrown out; it just means that they do not apply universally. Also, we have good reason to believe that the exceptional experiences are themselves lawful; thus, if we succeed in understanding them, our stable of laws will increase, not decrease. Moreover, if we can bring the experiences under control, we will be able to predict when our current laws apply and when they do not.

Scientists who study psi experiences place them in two distinct categories, based on whether information flows from the environment to the organism, or vice-versa. When information flows from the environment to someone in a way that appears to transcend our known senses (e.g., sight and hearing), we call it extrasensory perception, abbreviated ESP. A common example is knowing what someone else is thinking when they are not present or otherwise in sensory contact with us; the technical term for this is telepathy. The second species of psi can be thought of as someone sending information out to the environment, telling it what to do. If our known laws apply exclusively, the environment will only respond to our intention if a known physical force is applied to it, and this force, in turn, requires some other known physical mechanism for its activation. If this is not the case, and it appears that some unknown force or principle must be involved, even if known forces are involved as well, we call it psychokinesis, abbreviated PK. In summary, then, psi consists of two components, ESP and PK.

I can only do justice to one of these topics in this essay, so I have chosen to focus on PK. To make the topic a bit more manageable, scientists have divided PK into two categories called micro-PK and macro-PK. Although it's a bit more complicated than this, the easiest way to think of the distinction is that micro-PK refers to influence upon small things like individual atoms or molecules that are already in motion, whereas macro-PK refers to the movement of larger things like pencils, or even pieces of furniture, that can be either in motion or stationary.

Scientists study ESP and PK in two separate contexts. First, they study people's experiences in the real world. After all, it is these real-life experiences, which we call spontaneous cases, that we most want to understand, and some believe that the best way to achieve this understanding is to study these experiences directly. Others believe that the mechanisms involved can only be understood if we bring ESP and PK into the more controlled setting of the laboratory, as this affords a better opportunity to tease apart the various alternative explanations, mundane and exceptional, of the psi events.

The most common examples of spontaneous macro-PK are poltergeists and hauntings. They are classified as PK because the events that define them include movements of objects of various sizes. In earlier centuries it was common in such cases for houses to be pelted with stones, which sometimes appeared inside the house as if they magically came through the wall. Then and now we find reports of objects tipping over, falling off tables, sliding across the floor, or flying through the air, sometimes changing trajectory mid-flight. Light switches might turn off and on, doors open and close, and telephones ring with no one on the line. Fires have occasionally been set. Despite all this mayhem, it is rare for anyone to be seriously hurt. It is also common in these cases for people to observe what we call apparitions, which are similar to the proverbial ghost, in appearance if not in origin. Often the apparitions are visual and sometimes they are sufficiently distinct to be confused with a real person at first. Cases sometimes begin with rapping sounds of unknown origin and voices are occasionally heard. Often there is no clear sensory image but a person might just feel a strong sense of presence or a chill in the air.

Although the term poltergeist mean "boisterous ghost" in German, most scientists who have studied these cases do not believe they are the result of discarnate spirits. One reason is that they tend to center on a particular person and follow that person from place to place. Statistics show that these "focal persons" are often teenagers, frequently raised by someone other than their biological parents, and often in situations of family discord or turmoil. One theory is that the poltergeist phenomena are vehicles for repressed or suppressed hostility that the focal person cannot express in more conventional ways and for which they need not take responsibility. The focal persons usually deny that they are trying to cause the events. For these reasons, poltergeists are often labeled by the more conservative expression, recurrent spontaneous psychokinesis, abbreviated RSPK.

Hauntings differ from poltergeists in several ways. First and foremost, they tend to be place-centered rather than person-centered. Whereas poltergeists involve intense activity over a relatively short period of time (e.g., several weeks), hauntings can last for years, but the phenomena are much more intermittent. Also, apparitions are more dominant than in the typical poltergeist. Scientists have recently discovered that specific locations where haunting phenomena have been frequently reported reveal relatively strong electromagnetic or geomagnetic fields. This finding has led some investigators to speculate that these fields can sometimes trigger hallucinations in the brain that account for the experience of apparitions, and some go so far as to suggest that they might play a role in producing raps and object movements. Thus, these scientists conclude that even hauntings are not of discarnate origin, although the spirit theory seems to fit hauntings better than poltergeists.

PK research in the laboratory began in earnest in the 1930s when a gambler approached the pioneer parapsychologist J. B. Rhine with the claim that he could make dice come up with the face he intended. This led to a large number of successful studies of dice throwing. To eliminate the possibility of physical skill being responsible for the results, machines were devised that threw the dice mechanically, and each die face was aimed for an equal number of times to control for dice bias. In the late 1960s dice were replaced by electronic random event generators, or REGs, that produced random electronic noise that research participants tried to control with their minds. Originally these REGs were self-contained boxes, but now they are circuit boards or attachments to PCs that allow the PK tasks to be presented as entertaining video games. Surveys of large groups of REG experiments find the results to be even more successful than those with dice throwing.

How to explain these PK results has proven to be more of a challenge, and no one has arrived at the definitive answer. One theory appeals to quantum mechanics in physics. According to this view, when someone observes the results of a PK experiment, they cause an undetermined situation, defined mathematically in physics as the state vector, to become determined in a manner corresponding to the intention of the participant. This theory has led to the prediction that people can produce PK effects backwards in time, and there has been some research suggesting that this may indeed be possible. Another theory is that the REG results are not PK at all, but rather ESP of the future, also called precognition. These theorists suggest that instead of changing the REG output by force, the participant picks a precise time to interact with the REG when by chance it happens to produce a desirable result, kind of like choosing to stop shuffling a deck of cards at a point when you will be dealt a good poker hand.

REG results are an example of micro-PK. Although there have been experiments with macro-PK, they tend to be unsystematic and not as scientifically convincing as the micro-PK studies. Examples of macro-PK include PK metal-bending, popularized by the controversial Israeli psychic Uri Geller, and ostensibly putting images on photographic film with one's mind. One problem is that only a handful of people can produce such macro-PK effects reliably, and it is hard to rule out that they are using magic tricks to mimic PK. Another possible example of macro-PK, which seems less susceptible to these problems, is distant healing. For example, studies have been published in reputable medical journals suggesting that distant prayer can have beneficial effects on patients with heart disease and AIDS. Results like these remind us that the investigation of psi is not just an abstract intellectual exercise; understanding and controlling psi have the promise of great practical benefits for society if they are vigorously pursued as scientific objectives.

My institute, the Rhine Research Center (RRC), has been studying psychic phenomena since 1962, when J. B. Rhine established the Foundation for Research on the Nature of Man. Currently, the RRC is embarking on an exciting new chapter in our history. In the spring of 2002, we will be moving into a brand new, state-of-the-art building that we designed ourselves. Along with this upgrade in facilities, we are expanding our research program and updating our museum and library facilities. Additionally, the RRC is increasing its educational program to include community events year round and a distance-learning component. If you are interested in learning more about the RRC, please check out our website at www.rhine.org.